ɴᴇʀᴅʟᴏᴠᴇʀ💗

"Even Angry Little Ladies Need Love."

joel miller x f!reader

tw ┆age gap (J!52)(F¡reader!24) . gentlehusband!joel . aggressivewife!f¡reader . mating press . cockwarm . soft!joel . hotheaded!bratty reader . pinv unprotected . nsfw . smutt .

Joel Miller x Female Reader

Mmm thinking about Female Reader who's obviously never had sex-ed because... you know... the whole apocalypse thing?

cw: Previous Malnourishment Mentioned, Reader Ovulates and is a Virgin, Heavy DDLG Vibes, Joel is the Consent King, Age Gap, Praise Kink, Fingering, Aftercare of a sort? a/n: Straight up PWP, slightly icky but the retraint I showed was insane. Still, heed the warning. Sorry for being a freak 😔🍑. I feel like I've been uploading like crazy lately but brainfog is insane bc I don't have a clue what I'm writing ngl. I may have been possessed or smth.

1.9k Words

AO3

"Hell, I never thought I'd be giving this particular speech again." Joel mutters under his breath. "You... you do know about sex, right? When a man and a woman– or– just two people. Can be whoever. When two people get together and—"

"I know what sex is." You cut him off.

"Okay." He scratches the back of his head. "Well, what you're feelin' is your body's way of sayin' it wants it."

[Joel Masterlist]

pairing: soft!joel x f!reader wc: 11k

summary: thirty-nine hours without joel feels like forever... luckily, he might just know exactly how to make it up to you♡

warnings/tags: 18+ mdni, no outbreak, age gap (reader age not explicitly stated but is significantly younger than joel), abandontmend anxiety, emotional dependency, needy reader, slight daddy issues kink, size difference, spitting, little bit o cryinn, heavy praise kink, dirty talk, protective!joel, unprotected piv sex, fingering, creampieeee

a/n: i loooved looved writing this!! i love soft!joel so much it hurts</3 i have so much free time now that i'm done with classes so please if you have any requests, mine are open(; now playing... needy - ariana grande

It’s been thirty-seven hours, twenty-four minutes and fifteen seconds since you last heard from Joel.

Not a call. Not a text. Not a single damn thing.

He usually doesn’t do this. Not to you.

Joel was always extra considerate when it came to you. If he couldn’t make it over, he’d always let you know. A quick call, his voice low and distracted, telling you he’d been caught up at work.

 “Can’t swing by today, baby girl. Tomorrow.” Or “Busy as hell today. Call you tonight.”

Just enough to keep you from spiraling.

You hated the days when you didn’t get to see him. You always did. But at least he never let you sit around waiting.  Never let a whole day pass without reminding you that you were still on his mind.

Lately though, he’s been… distant.

In the past month you’ve only seen him three times. And one of those barely counted — he just came by to grab the tool belt he’d left on your kitchen table and barely stayed ten minutes. That’s it. Three measly visits when you used to get him at least three times a week, sometimes even twice on the weekends.

Now you’re counting hours.

Minutes.

Seconds.

You were already missing your movie nights – where you’d force him to sit through some awful chick flick you loved, only for him to grumble the whole time before you both ended up dozing off halfway through, your legs draped over his lap. Or the nights he’d pick something scary with too much blood on purpose to watch you squirm, your face eventually burying itself in his chest, his big hand rubbing slow circles on your back while he pretended not to laugh at how tightly you clung to him.

You missed the lazy mornings when he’d take you out to your favorite diner for breakfast. He always ordered the same thing – eggs over easy, bacon crispy, hash browns – and still let you steal bites off his plate like you didn’t have your own. Afterward he’d take you for ice cream, even if it was barely ten in the morning, and you’d end up eating half his cone and yours while he shook his head and wiped the mess of it off your chin with his thumb.

Or the late nights when you were fresh out of the shower, hair still damp, shouting his name from across the hall to come to you. You’d sit on the floor in front of the bed in between his legs, hand him a brush, and beg him to braid it—two pigtails, every time—because he always said you looked pretty like that. His thick fingers were clumsy with the strands, and the braids usually came out a little crooked and uneven, too tight in some places, too loose in others, but you loved them anyway. You loved them because he did them – because for those few minutes he was only focused on you, jaw tight in concentration while muttering under his breath about how damn stubborn your hair was.

And most of the time? He didn’t even fuck you.

No matter how much you begged.

 He’d look down at you with your head in his lap, your bottom lip pink and puckered and begging, his head tilted to the side and ask, “You ain’t sore?”

And that’s the thing—you usually were.

He was big. Almost too big, to the point where the first few times were almost too much for you, and even after that, it never really got easier. Your body never fully got used to it. He tried to be careful; he did— he was—but the two of you always got so wrapped up in each other that it didn’t always end that way. And you’d feel it the next day, and the day after.

But you never complained, not once, but he could always tell anyway – the limp in your walk the next morning, or the way your legs would shake after he pulled out.

Still. It wasn’t enough.

You’d tuck your lip back in and shake your head, the back of your head brushing back and forth against the zipper of his jeans. “You haven’t touched me since last week.”

He’d laugh, shake his head, and squeeze the hand resting on your thigh, his thumb pressing into the inside of it. “I’m touchin’ you now, ain’t I?”

But that’s not what you meant, and he knew it.

A part of you—no, most of you—was sure he felt guilty every time he fucked you. That’s why he tried to keep it so infrequent, like he thought wanting you made him a worse man.

You were over half his age, and even though you never cared, he did.

He never said it outright, but you could see the way it ate at him sometimes — the way his eyes would travel over you once the need had passed, taking in your swollen mouth, your bare thighs, the marks his hands would leave behind. His face would change then.

 Not regret exactly. He never made you feel unwanted. It was worse than that. It was guilt, heavy and stubborn, sitting behind his eyes while he pulled your shirt back down, kissed your forehead, and held you close as if he were trying to make up for wanting you in the first place.

It bothered him. You knew it did.

But not you. If anything, the age between you made the ache worse.

There was something about being wanted by him, chosen by him, cared for by him, that dug into you in places nobody else ever reached.

Maybe because the first man who was supposed to stay had made leaving look easy, and Joel did the opposite.

Until now.

You’re trying to not be pathetic about it—you really are—but the silence is loud.

It fills up the room, presses in on you the longer it goes on. And every minute that passes makes it worse – that low, restless ache that won’t leave you alone. The kind that has your checking your phone every minute, replaying the last time you saw him, picking it apart for any sign of distance you might have missed.

Anything that would explain this.

Maybe he got caught up at a sight, too busy to check his phone. Or maybe he dropped it in the sink, ruined it, hasn’t had a second to replace it.

Or maybe that’s not it at all.

Maybe he met someone. Someone his age. Someone easier to be around. Someone who doesn’t sit around counting hours, who doesn’t need to hear from him every day just to feel okay.

Because maybe it is you.

Maybe you pushed too far. Wanted too much. Let it show in ways he just couldn’t ignore anymore.

Because you are needy.

For him. For his voice, his hands, his attention. For the way he looks at you like he just wants to take care of you even when he knows he shouldn’t…

So you try to take your mind off it. You tell yourself you’re not going to sit around waiting,

You get up and start moving, needing something to do with your hands, with your body, with all of it. The place is already clean, but that doesn’t stop you. You wipe down the counters again, rearrange things that don’t need rearranging, pick up a shirt from the back of the chair just to fold it and put it right back where it was.

Your phone stays within reach the whole time.

Face up.

Silent.

You check it anyway, but still nothing.

You try not to let it get to you. Try to act normal, like this isn’t eating at you the way it is. Like you’re not counting every second that passes without his name lighting up your screen.

It doesn’t work.

You end up in the shower longer than you need to be, standing under the spray, letting the water run over you while your mind drifts right back to him. The last time he had you in here, his hand braced against the tile, his voice low in your ear telling you to stay still—

You shut the thought down, pressing your forehead against that same tile for a second before you turn the water off.

Afterward, you sit on the edge of your bed like Joel would, hair still a little damp, and braid it into two pigtails the way Joel always did them. Your fingers aren’t nearly as big or clumsy as his, so they come out neater than his do, but you still pull the strands the same way he does, trying to chase the memory of the way his hands moved in your hair, of the way he tugged and pulled on them.

You pace the living room in nothing but the thin tank top and the soft pink cotton panties he bought you a couple months back — the ones you only wear when you need to feel him on you somehow. One hand keeps twisting the end of a pigtail around your finger while the other scrolls through every text you’ve sent him in the last day and a half.

All delivered. All unanswered.

You stare at them, thumb hovering over the screen, fighting the urge to delete half of them, to take them back somehow.

But you cant.

So you just sit there, rereading them over and over, trying to figure out where it went wrong.

Where you went wrong.

You check the time again. Thirty-nine hours now. The throb in your chest keeps growing, pressing harder with every lap around the room.

Finally you grab your phone again and hit his name one last time before you force yourself to go to bed.

It rings.

And rings.

Straight to voicemail like all the others.

You decide to wait for the beep this time. Maybe if he hears your voice—

The beep interrupts your thought.

You clear your throat and loop another strand of hair around your finger.

“Joel...?” you hum. “Is everything okay?” Your voice is barely above a whisper, though you’re not sure why; you just can’t bring yourself to make it go any higher. “You haven’t answered any of my texts or calls and I’m—” Your voice cracks on the last word, but you clear it again and keep going.

“I’m just startin’ to get a little worried. I know you’re probably just busy with more important things,” you add quickly. “Or at work or... whatever. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just—”

You loop another strand around your finger.

“I haven’t heard from you and it’s just... I miss you.” You sniffle a little through your nose, not because you're crying, though you feel like it. “That’s all... and I just don’t know what to do. I feel like—”

The voicemail beep cuts you off mid-sentence.

You drop the phone from your ear and just stare at it for a long second, heart hammering. You hadn’t even finished your thought – the one about how empty you feel without him here, how you don’t know what you’d do if this is really it.

You sit there for a while after the call ends, phone still in your hand, staring at the screen like it might light up if you wait long enough. Your thumb hovers over his name again, tempted to call back, to finish what you were trying to say. You think about texting instead, something simple, something a little more casual. You type out a few words and stare at them, but you delete them just as quickly. Nothing feels right. Nothing sounds like you’re not asking for too much.

And you hate that.

Hate how this sits in your chest, refusing to go away no matter how many times you tell yourself to calm down or that you’ll be alright.

You press your lips together, exhale through your nose, and force yourself to set the phone down. You’ve done enough. More than enough. If he wanted to answer, he would have by now.

There’s nothing else you can do.

That thought doesn’t bring you any comfort, but it’s the only one that sticks.

Eventually, you drag yourself into your room and crawl into bed, still in your tank top and pink panties, your braids falling over your shoulders as you tug the covers to your chin. You turn onto your side, facing away from the door, one hand tucked under your pillow, the other resting loosely in front of you.

You toss and turn for a while, secretly hoping you’ll hear that familiar ring and find Joel on the other end of it. But it never comes, and eventually your body gets tired of waiting, sleep pulling you under despite your mind wanting something else entirely

───────

Your phone is face down on the nightstand, silenced. You don’t hear the first call come through. Or the second.

Joel hears your voicemail while he’s driving home from a late job. The crack in your voice hits him square in the chest, especially the way you cut off “I feel like—” He plays it again. Then once more. The unfinished sentence loops in his head the whole drive, making his grip tighten on the steering wheel.

He calls you back immediately. Once. Twice. Nothing.

That silence is what does it.

It’s a little after one in the morning when his truck pulls up outside your building.

When he makes it to your door, he knocks a little harder than he means to, three sharp taps against it.

 “Baby girl?” His voice barely carries through the wood, thick with worry. “Open the door.”

You don’t stir right away. You’re fast asleep when you think you hear a knock.

“C’mon,” his voice follows. “Open up.”

Your eyes stay shut as sleep keeps you under.

He waits maybe ten seconds, then pulls out his key – the one you gave him months ago. He fits it into the lock, already turning it, but it doesn’t catch.

The doors already unlocked.

A flicker of unease and something else hits him hard. Not relief—far from it—if anything, it puts him more on edge, his grip tightening just slightly before he pushes the door open and lets himself in as quietly as a man his size can manage.

The apartment is dark except for the faint glow from your bedroom. He locks the door behind him and heads straight to you.

When he makes it to your room, all he can do is stare, just taking you in—curled up small under the blankets in nothing but your tank top and underwear he bought you—he frowns a little at that. The pigtails you did yourself are a little crooked now, one strand loose across the back of your neck. Your phone still sits on the nightstand, screen still half lit with his missed calls. The whole scene – the way you clearly spent your entire night wrapped up in thoughts of him—wrecks something deep in his chest.

He swallows hard and steps just inside the doorframe.

“Hey...” His voice comes out a little rough and low, gentler than the knocking. “You awake, baby?”

Your lashes flutter, but your eyes barely open. Your mind is too far behind, still caught somewhere between sleep and everything you’d been thinking about before you drifted off. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like your brain filling in the silence, giving you what it’s been stuck on for days just so you can finally rest.

The bed dips as Joel finds his way to the edge. His hand settles on your blanket-covered hip as he gives it a gentle squeeze. “Wanna talk to you, c’mon.”

His touch sends your eyes fluttering all the way open as everything comes into focus. He’s really here. Your eyes open wider as you turn on your side toward him, blinking hard, still half-lost in a sleepy haze. “Joel…?”

“There she is,” he whispers. He reaches out and brushes one of your messy pigtails behind your shoulder, his fingers lingering on your neck for a second.

You blink up at him for a while; the sight of him sitting there starts to flood you with so much relief you almost launch yourself at him. You want nothing more than to wrap your arms around his neck and bury your face there. But you stay put, tucked tightly under the covers. You’re happy to see him, but still a little upset. Still hurt from all those days of silence. You want answers first.

And Joel notices.

He watches you closely. Sees the hesitation in your face, the way your thoughts are racing behind your sleepy eyes. His hand stays on your neck, his thumb stroking slow lines across it.

“You scared me half to death with that voicemail,” he sighs. “Heard you cut off and couldn’t get you back on the phone.”

Your face falls a little. “I didn’t mean to,” you mumble, your voice still sleepy and small.

“I know, baby,” he nods, his thumb moving under your jaw, eyes still fixed on you. “I know you didn’t.”

And for a second, he just looks at you, his jaw working, worry still written all over his face. Then his eyes drift toward the hallway, toward the front door of your apartment.

“And you left your door unlocked,” he says, firmer now. “You can’t do that. Not when you’re here by yourself. Not ever.”

You rub at your eyes with the heel of your hand, guilt curling in your stomach.

“M’sorry,” you hum. “I was just waiting on you…”

Joel’s face drops at that, the firmness in his voice cracking the second he hears that sleepy little confession. His hand stays at your neck, thumb caught against your skin, but his shoulders drop as his eyes move across your face.

He shakes his head, dropping it a little.

“No,” he sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, voice thick with guilt. “This week got away from me. Had a bunch of jobs stacked up one after the other, days runnin’ into nights,” he shakes his head a little. “I know it ain’t an excuse. Shoulda made time.”

You watch him for a second before you sit up, your back hitting the headboard. The covers fall a little in the process, revealing the tops of your panties and thighs.

“It’s okay,” you murmur.

You tuck your bottom lip between your teeth, chewing on the loose skin there. “It’s just… you could have texted,” you say finally, voice still sleepy. “Or called? Just to say you were busy… I was worried.” Your fingers twist together in your lap, fidgeting.

His eyes drop to your twiddling fingers in your lap, and he reaches forward in response, gently catching both of your hands in one of his, stilling them. His palm is warm and rough—just what you’ve been shamelessly missing.

“I know,” he says, voice low. “Works just been busy, baby. Long days on sites, back to back. Barely even had a second to sit down. By the time I got home, I was wiped. I didn’t wanna wake you callin’ so late.”

The weight of everything that’s been pressing down on you these past few days suddenly feels much lighter – so much lighter you swear you can feel it leaving your body.

Because it was all in your head. He didn’t forget about you. He wasn’t pulling away because he got tired of how much you needed him. He didn’t meet someone else who was easier, quieter, less… you.

The ugly thoughts that had been gnawing at you for almost two full days start to loosen their grip, but they don’t disappear completely. Your brain is still trying to catch up from the thought of being abandoned. Your chest feels lighter, but the ache is still there.

You stay quiet, staring down at your hands in his.

Joel notices—of course.

He scoots a little closer on the bed, his thigh pressing against yours now, and squeezes your hands a little tighter in his.

“I know that ain’t good enough,” he says, voice low. “Should’ve checked in anyway. I’m sorry.”

You look up at him through your lashes, bottom lip poked out a little, searching his face.

He looks genuinely sorry. Sorry that he made you feel abandoned. Sorry that he made you feel like you were so much that he had to pull away. And he looks so tired. Tired in a way that makes your chest hurt. Eyes heavy, little dark circles under his eyes, shoulders carrying more than just a day’s work.

And you hate it.

Hate that you’re the reason he looks like this right now, even if a part of you still feels a little raw from the silence.

“I hate seein’ you like this,” you mumble.

 You reach up with your free hand and brush away the gray strand that’s fallen in his face. “You look like you haven’t slept at all.”

He lets out a sigh, his thumb brushing against your wrist. “Long week, baby girl. Ain’t your fault.”

“I know,” you say, but it comes out a little wobbly. “But it feels like it is.”

You glance down at your hand still caught in his, fingers fidgeting. “You’ve been running yourself ragged with work... and then I go and dump all this on you.

You bite the inside of your cheek, still feeling a little embarrassed, but you keep going.

“I just hate needing you this bad. It makes me feel so pathetic,” you add. “I tried to keep busy – cleaned stuff that didn’t need it, braided my hair the way you like, put on the clothes you got me just to feel a little bit of you... nothin’ worked.”

Joel keeps your hand firmly in his, thumb stroking slow circles over your wrist, his other hand comes up to gently cup the side of your face, tilting your chin so you meet his eyes.

“Darlin’... listen to me,” he pleads. “You ain’t pathetic. Not even a little. I love how much you miss me. Makes me feel wanted in a way I ain’t felt in a long damn time. Hell, it makes me feel good knowin’ you’re sittin’ here thinkin’ about me when I’m gone.”

He leans in and presses a slow kiss to your forehead, then another to the tip of your nose. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to sit in that all alone. Should’ve checked in. S’on me.”

You feel the knot in your chest loosen a little more. Not all the way – the ache is still there, raw and nagging – but it loosens enough that you can breathe again. You smile and lean in, whispering that you forgive him, already leaning into his touch.

After a second, his hand slides from your cheek and into your hair, his fingers tugging gently at the ends of one of your messy pigtails.

“These look a lot better than the crooked ones I usually do.”

You huff out a small, embarrassed laugh and reach up to grab the other pigtail, giving it a little shake. “Yeah... they’re okay, I guess. But it’s not the same when I do ‘em.”

He lets out a chuckle, still toying with the end of one braid. “I think they look fine. Real pretty.”

You hum softly, eyes dropping as you keep fiddling with the end of the pigtail between your fingers. A small stretch of silence passes, the strands twisting slowly in your hand. Joel shifts a little, like he’s about to speak, probably to tell you it’s getting late and you both should sleep, when you finally look back up at him.

“Will you fix ‘em for me?”

He laughs a little at that. He shakes his head and lets go of the braid. “Those look just fine,” he says, a hint of sleep in his voice. “Ain’t like you’re goin’ anywhere but to sleep.”

You tilt your head, blinking up at him through your lashes, your fingers still occupied. “I know...” you say softly, almost like you’re agreeing with him. “I just... like it better when you do it.”

He stares at you for a second, eyes narrow and slightly curved at the corner of his mouth, like he’s trying to decide if you’re just being cute or if you actually mean it.

You try again, raising your voice an octave. “Please?”

There’s a small pause, but it’s not long. He exhales through his nose and runs a hand through his scruff as he shakes his head.

“You ever hear the word ‘no’?”

You shake your head, your lips twitching into a small smile.

He shakes his head again. “Right. ‘Course you ain’t.’

He huffs something close to a laugh, his head tipping back for a second like he’s already given up the fight.

“Alright then,” he says, more to himself than you.

His hand comes down, giving your thigh a light pat, just enough to get your attention. He tips his chin toward the end of the bed.

“C’mon,” he adds, eyes flicking back to yours. “On the floor.”

You press your lips together, fighting back a smile, cheeks warming at the way he gives in.

You push the covers off you the rest of the way and lean forward onto your hands, crawling toward him. Halfway there, you pause just long enough to press a quick kiss to his cheek.

“You’re the best,” you murmur against his cheek.

He leans into it, a low hum leaving him, his mouth tugging at the corner like he’s trying not to smile too much.

You don’t wait around after that. You keep moving, crawling the rest of the way to the end of the bed while he gets up and steps around to sit behind you. By the time you slide off the mattress, your braids are brushing your shoulders, swaying with the movement as you drop down and sit back on your legs.

He comes back down behind you, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed with a groan, hands bracing on either side of him for a second.

You scoot back into him, fitting yourself right between his knees.

His hands find your hair right away, gathering the ends of your pigtails, undoing them one at a time, fingers working through the strands as he pulls them apart.

 “Don’t know why you like this so much,” he mutters, more to himself than you.

You laugh a little at that, tipping your head back an inch to look at him. “I like anything you do.”

That earns a quiet chuckle from him as he keeps going, his fingers dragging through your hair again as he works through a small knot.

His fingers catch on it for a second, sending your head back a little with an accidental tug.

“Sorry, darlin’,” he mutters, his hand smoothing over that same spot.

There’s a gentleness to it that doesn’t match how big his hands are—how big he is—the way he takes his time working through your hair, careful even with the simplest of tasks.

He parts it down the middle, a little off the first time, then fixes it with his thumb before starting in on one side. His fingers work through the strands, crossing them over each other in a way thats not quite even—still too tight in one section, looser in the next. He finishes it off with a small tug, then moves to the other, working through it the same way before tossing them over your shoulders.

“All done.”

You reach up right away, catching the ends of them in your fingers, twirling each one absentmindedly as you glance down at them. A small smile pulls at your mouth before you turn on your knees toward him.

Your eyes flick up to his as you lean in just enough to press your lips against his cheek again. “You always do ‘em better,” you hum, not quite a thank you but close.

His hand comes up to your cheek. “Mm.”

You scoot closer on your knees, rising up just a little so you’re level with his legs as your elbows come up to rest on his knees. Your fingers fidget together for a second before you glance up at him again.

“Are you gonna stay?”

He nods in response, his thumb dragging across your cheek. “I can,” he says casually. “If that’s what you want.”

You nod right away. “’ Course it is.”

That earns you another pass of his hand along your cheek, slower this time. “Then that’s what you got, baby.”

You smile at that, a small one at first, then a little bigger as you lean further into his hand, your cheek pressing into his palm. Your fingers come up and wrap around his wrist, keeping his hands on you.

“Good,” you murmur, your thumb brushing over his skin. “’Cause I missed you. Missed you a lot.”

“I know,” he says, looking down at you. “Missed you too, darlin’.”

That makes you perk up a little.

Your eyes lift to his right away, wider now, a spark there as your lips part just slightly. “Yeah?” you ask, a little brighter. “How much?”

Joel lets out a quiet breath that turns into a laugh, shaking his head just a little. “C’mon,” he mutters, not really answering, his hand sliding from your cheek to the side of your neck—probably just trying to get you off your knees and into bed. “You ask too many questions.”

You tilt your head and furrow your brows a little, not satisfied.

“Probably not as much as me,” you say, a little teasing now.

His eyes flick back to yours, clearly amused. “S’that right?”

“Mhm,” you hum, your grip on his wrist tightening a little. Bet I could prove it to you too.”

That earns another quiet laugh from him, softer this time, his head dipping slightly. “Can you now?”

You nod, eyes locked to his as you lift his hand from your neck and press a kiss to the center of his palm. Then another. You dot kisses from there down to his wrist before you duck your head and start pressing more along the top of his thigh, mouth warm through the denim.

Joel drops his head and his brows start to crinkle in the middle.

“Woah—” he starts. He shakes his head a little, his hand coming down to your shoulder, not rough, just enough to slow you. “What’re you— what’re you doin’, baby?”

You glance up at him through your lashes, your hands still resting on his thighs, fingers curling a little into the denim.

“Provin’ it to you,” you murmur like it’s obvious, already leaning back down for another kiss.

Joel exhales, a little louder this time, his hand dropping to catch your wrist. “That ain’t what I thought you meant,” he sighs again, shaking his head. “You ain’t gotta—”

“But I want to,” you cut in, looking up at him with wide, needy eyes. Your hands leave his grip, fingers moving to his belt, working at it clumsily but determined. “I missed you so much. I just... I wanna make you feel good. Please?”

He watches you work at his belt for a second before he stops you again, his hand coming back to grip your wrist. “Darlin’, it’s late. You’ve been upset all night. You don’t have to—”

Typical Joel. Always cautious. Always so damn careful with you, like if he doesn’t watch himself, he might do too much, take too much, even though you’re on your knees, literally begging for it.

You shake your head, bottom lip pushing out as you stare up at him, eyes glassy and pleading. “I do have to,” you whine. “I’ve been missing you for days, Joel. Please let me? I want this. Wanna taste you... wanna feel you in my mouth,” you murmur, reaching for his belt again. “Please?”

Joel stares at you for a second after that, and for one tiny, dangerous moment, you think he might actually give in.

His eyes drop to your mouth, then to your hands at his belt, then back to your face. Your knees are pressed into the rug between his boots, your fingers still curled around the leather, your eyes big and wet and pleading.

You know he wants to.

You can see it in the way his chest keeps pulling under his shirt, in the way his jaw keeps flexing under his scruff,  in the way his hand stays wrapped around your wrist but doesn’t pull you away fast enough.

But then he exhales, long and tired, and shakes his head.

“Baby,” he sighs again. “We can’t.”

Your face falls and you feel the disappointment hit you square in the chest. Your shoulders drop a little as you look down at your hands still hovering near his belt.

You know he’s right – he looks worn out, and you’ve been an emotional wreck for the last two days – but it still stings. You wanted to show him how much you missed him. You wanted to make him feel good.

And Joel sees the look on your face. Of course he does.

“Hey.” His hand leaves your wrist and cups your cheek instead, tilting your face back up before you can look down. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doin’ anything,” you mutter, even though your voice gives you away immediately.

“Yeah, you are.” His thumb drags under your eye, catching the moisture gathered there. “You’re poutin’.”

“I’m not.”

He cocks his head to the side and raises a brow.

You shrink a little under that.

“Well,” you swallow, trying not to sound as pathetic as you feel. “You said no.”

“I did,” he says kindly, his face softening in that tire Joel way, all furrowed brow and guilt he doesn’t need to carry. “Because I’m beat, and you are too, even if you’re tryin’ real hard to pretend you ain’t.”

His thumb presses to the space under your eyes.

“Can see it in your face, darlin’.”

You open your mouth, ready to argue, but he gives you a look.

A very Joel look.

So you close it again.

He sighs through his nose, his hand sliding from your cheek to the side of your neck. “You been cryin’ tonight. Been upset for days. Ain’t want you on your knees for me when you’re like this.”

“But I want to,” you say, smaller now.

“I know you do.” His thumb moves once along your neck, and his voice drops a little lower. “And I want you too. Don’t think I don’t.”

Your eyes flick up.

He gives you that look again, the one that makes your stomach dip even when you’re trying to be hurt.

“Another time,” he says finally. “When you ain’t all vulnerable and tryin’ to prove anything.”

“I’m not tryin’ to prove anything.”

He cocks his head again.

You huff, looking away—caught.

That gets the smallest laugh out of him, not enough to make you forget the rejection, but enough to dull it a little.

He stands then, and holds his hand out to you.

“C’mere.”

You glance at his hand first, then up at him. You’re still a little hurt. Still a little embarrassed too, which is worse, because you know he means well and that makes it harder to be upset with him. But you take his hand anyway, letting his fingers close around yours.

He nods toward the bed. “Go head.”

You go where he tells you, crawling onto the mattress on your hands and knees, your braids slipping forward over your shoulders as you make your way toward the pillows.

You can feel him behind you. Not touching you, not saying anything, just watching.

Trying not to, maybe.

Joel is decent enough to tear his eyes away when you glance back at him, but not fast enough. You catch the quick dip of his gaze, the way his attention catches on the hem of your tank top and the lace on the pink panties he bought you. It makes your face hot, even after he just told you no.

You don’t make a show of it. Not really. But you don’t rush either.

“Bed,” he says again, his voice a little gruffer now.

You bite the inside of your cheek and finally slip under the covers, turning onto your side.

You hear him start to undress behind you, the flannel rustling and sliding off his shoulders before he tosses it over the chair. Then his shirt comes next, probably pulled up and over his head and it makes you want to turn around.

You don’t though.

Even though you’re picturing it anyway, his bare skin, the messy hair from pulling his shirt over his head in the dark, the way his shoulders must look in the dark little glow from the lamp.

His belt comes next, the buckle giving that sharp metal click, then the drag of denim as he pushes his jeans down and steps out of them.

The lamp clicks off a second later and the room goes dark except for the thin wash of light coming in through the window. Another second later, the mattress dips as Joel climbs in beside you, his hand drawing you back against his bare chest.

Your hand finds his wrist under the covers, fingers closing around them to keep him there.

And even though you didn’t get what you wanted—didn’t get what you’ve been wanting—this was always your favorite part.

The part where he came to bed with you, the part where he pulls you in without a word, where his arm finds your waist like it belongs there, where you can feel his chest rising and falling against your back.

You loved the sex –of course you do – you loved his mouth and his hands and his cock and the way he takes care of you after it. But this part always got you in a different way the sex couldn’t.

He presses a kiss to your shoulder.

“Mad at me?”

“No,” you mumble.

“You’re lyin’,” he sighs.

You press your cheek into the pillow a little more. “A little.”

He kisses your shoulder again. “I can live with a little.”

You sink a little deeper into him, pulling his arm closer around your waist. “You promise another time though?”

His fingers flex against your stomach. “Promise.”

“Soon?”

He presses another kiss to you, this one lower, where your shoulder meets your neck. “G’to sleep.”

“Joel,” you whine.

“I said soon,” he says finally, his mouth still close to your skin.

You nod, believing him, even though he’s probably not telling the full truth, because the way he says it gives you just enough to hold onto.

At first you think you’ll stay away from wanting him. You think you’ll lie there staring into the dark, replaying the almost of it all, the way his face changed when he admitted he wanted it too. But his body is so solid behind yours, his breath brushing your neck, and your hurt starts to loosen a little, your fingers going slack against his.

───────────────────────────────

The first thing you notice when you wake is the scrape of his beard.

It drifts across the side of your neck in an absent-minded kiss, enough to pull a sleepy sigh from somewhere deep in your chest without opening your eyes.

For a second, you think you’re still dreaming. Your body feels impossibly heavy, tucked beneath blankets that have twisted around your calves sometime during the night, your thoughts moving through syrup.

Then his hand slips beneath the hem of your tank top.

His palm glides over the bare skin of your stomach with maddening patience, still warm from being tucked against you, calluses catching just enough to make your breath falter.

“Joel?”

A sleepy rumble comes from behind you.

“Mhm.” His mouth finds your shoulder again, lingering. “I’m here.”

Your eyes flutter open to a room washed in blue-gray dawn. The curtains glow faintly, everything else is shadow.

Joel hasn’t moved far at all. If anything, he’s closer than he was when you fell asleep, his legs tangled with yours, his chest fitted against your back like he’d spent the night trying to erase every inch of space between you.

You shift just a little, trying to adjust your body, when you feel how hard he is.

You suck in a quick breath, your body going still under his arm.

For a second, you’re confused, still half asleep and trying to figure out if you’re feeling him right, if that hard press against your ass is what you think it is.

His thumb keeps moving in absent circles against your ribs as he pulls you in more, the hard line of him becoming even clearer now.

And your body answers for you – even half asleep – you press back into him with a tiny sound you don’t even mean to make.

“You awake, baby?”

Your lips part, but it takes a second for the answer to find its way out. Your brain is still half buried in sleep, but your body is wide awake, every place he touches wired and alive.

“Mm,” you moan.

His hand slips higher under your tank top, his palm spreading wider over your ribs. The fabric bunches over his wrist, trapping his arm against your skin, and the calluses on his finger catch when he cups one of your breasts.

Another tiny little sound slips from your throat – barely audible – but Joel hears it. Of course he does. He always notices the little betrayals your body gives him first.

He presses another kiss to the back of your shoulder. “Tell me yes.”

That wakes you the rest of the way.

Your thighs press together on instinct, already trying to keep the ache contained, but Joel’s hand is already leaving your chest, traveling down the slope of your stomach. His fingers dip under the waistband of your panties and pause there, not moving yet, just waiting.

The room feels so still around you. The pale light at the window, the twisted sheet between your knees, the damp heat of his breath at your neck, his cock hard against the curve of your ass, patient only because he’s forcing himself to be.

“Y-yes,” you breathe. Then, because it doesn’t feel enough, because one word could never hold how badly you want him, you push your ass back into him and say it again. “Yes, Joel.”

His teeth scrape your shoulder, a barely there bite that sends a jolt straight through you again. “S’my girl.”

His fingers slide lower, only to find the mess you’ve made of yourself.

He groans against your neck, low in his chest, and it does something awful to you. You squeeze your eyes shut, embarrassed by how wet you already are, the slick mess he finds with barely any effort, by the way your body has clearly been waiting for him, even while you slept.

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t tease you. His fingers just start moving, moving through you with a kind of sleepy hunger, dragging through the stickiness between your thighs, learning what the night did to you.

He circles your clit once, just enough to make your knees draw up, then he dips lower, spreading your folds open until you hear the obscene little sounds your body makes for him.

He presses another kiss to your neck. “You been dreamin’ about me?”

You could lie... if your hips weren’t already chasing his hand.

“M-maybe.”

His mouth curves against your neck. You feel the almost-smile there, tucked into the scratch of his beard and the press of his lips. “Maybe,” he repeats, his voice still a little hoarse from sleep. “That all I get?”

Your answer breaks into a gasp when his fingers rub you again, firmer this time, exactly where you need him. Your hand flies down over his wrist, not stopping him, just needing something to hold onto. The tendon beneath your palm moves each time his fingers work over you.

“J-Joel, please...”

“I know, baby girl.” He presses a kiss behind your ear. “I know, baby.” Then another one, lower, to the place where your neck meets your shoulder. “Been thinkin’ about you all night.”

“But you said, n-no,” you whine.

“I did.” His arm pulls you closer against him till you can feel every breath he takes against your back. “Changed my mind.”

You turn your head, trying to catch a glimpse of him over your shoulder, but he meets you halfway and catches your mouth before you can. The angle makes it clumsy in the best way, his lips dragging against the corner of yours before he finds you fully, his beard scrapes your cheek, his breath spills hot over your tongue, and when you moan, his mouth opens wider, taking the sound right out of you.

He keeps finger-fucking you, lazy and deep, curling his fingers inside you, the heel of his wrist working your clit in messy circles while he kisses you, making your jaw go slack, making it hard to kiss him back with any kind of sense.

Spit starts to gather between your parted lips, slicking the corner of your mouth when he pulls back just enough to breathe, then he comes right back in, stronger, hungrier, licking into you as if he cant decide whether he wants to kiss you or swallow you whole.

“Need you,” he mutters against your damp lips. When he pulls back fully, a string of spit connects your lips before it breaks, and he presses another wet kiss to the side of your mouth while his fingers drag more broken sounds out of you. “Can I have you?”

The question tears through you worse than if he’d just taken what you were clearly already offering. You nod too quickly, your cheek rubbing against the pillow.

“Mhm,” you moan. “P-please, Joel.”

His hand leaves your panties the second you answer.

You make a tiny protesting sound as he huffs against your shoulder, half amused, half gone over you, then he hooks his fingers in the waistband of your panties and drags them down your thighs. The cotton peels away from you, damp enough that you feel it cling before it gives. You help him, clumsy under the sheets, kicking them off with one foot until they disappear near the foot of the bed.

Joel lifts your top leg and draws it towards your tummy, opening you for him from behind without ever letting the covers fully leave you. They stay tangled around your calves, caught between both of your bodies, half-covering your thighs while leaving just enough of you exposed for him to touch.

The cotton drags against your skin when he moves you, brushing over the wetness there and making you shiver. He feels that too. His hand splaying farther across your tummy to keep you close, while the other moves behind you.

You hear the rough push of his boxers down his thighs, then the wet sound of him spitting into his palm.

“Jesus,” he breathes into your neck, stroking himself behind you. The sound of his own arousal and spit is slick and awful in the blue-gray dark, his hand moving over himself with no patience left. “You hear what you do to me?”

You push back into him instead of using your words—searching for him, impatient now, sleep completely gone, want sitting heavy in your stomach, between your legs, in the back of your throat…

“Mmm, Joel... I—”

He interrupts you with the slide of his cock between your thighs, dragging the fat head through you once, and your hips jerk at the first brush over your swollen clit.

He does it again, lower this time, rubbing through the mess he worked out of you until the head of him catches at your entrance and slips away.

You gasp, frustrated enough to push back harder, but his arm locks across your waist and holds you there.

“Been all wound up for me,” he says, mouth at your ear. “Couldn’t sleep it off, could you?”

“No,” you breathe.

“I know,” he coos, his thumb stroking your tummy still. “I know, baby. Gonna take care of it for you.”

He rubs himself through you again, making himself slick with you, with his spit, with the wetness already leaking down your thigh and onto the sheets. You feel him coating himself in it, feel the blunt head of him drag over you until your hips twitch and your fingers curl into the sheets.

Then he eases in.

The angle makes you cry out right away. He fills you from behind, thick and heavy, your body still too tender from days of wanting him, from the ache from a few hours ago, from being held by him while he made you wait.

The first press of him steals the air out of your chest, the swollen head of his cock sinking in, and even though you’re soaked, the sheer size of him is undeniable, that sharp little burn blooming between your thighs as he works himself in.

The stretch burns almost immediately – a deep, almost painful pressure as your walls have to yield around his girth. It’s not unbearable, but it’s intense, intense enough that your eyes start to prickle with tears. Your walls flutter and resist against him, struggling to take the sheer width of him, like your body still hasn’t learned how to handle all of him even after all the times he’s fucked you.

Your mouth falls open against your pillow in a silent gasp, caught between wanting him deeper and needing one more second to take him.

And he gives you that second.

Then another.

His hips stay behind you, his cock pulsing where your body is wrapped around him, the pressure so intense you feel a tear run down the side of your face and bleed into the pillow.

“Joel,” you whimper.

“I got you,” he whispers as he presses another kiss to your shoulder. “Gonna make room for me, yeah?”

You try to answer, but the only thing that comes out is his name again, so you nod, the fabric damp against your cheek from the few tears that slipped out.

Only then does he give you more, inch by little inch, rocking forward in tiny movements, giving you just a little more each time, letting your pussy slowly open around him.

“Atta girl,” he hums into your neck. “Doin’ so good for me. Gonna fuck you nice and deep once you let me all the way in.”

The burn lingers, raw and pulsing, but little by little it starts to melt, melt into that heavy, overwhelming fullness you absolutely crave. Every shallow rock of his hips pushes him deeper until he finally sinks all the way in, his hips barely flushed against your ass, almost buried to the hilt.

You let out a broken moan, your fingers twisting in the sheets again. He feels impossibly big like this – stretching you, splitting you open, pressing against every inch inside you, so deep you swear you can feel him in your stomach.

For a second, he just stays there, twitching inside you while he kisses the side of your neck, letting you adjust to the way your pussy is stretched around him.

Then he starts to move.

Slow, deep rolls of his hips at first, dragging the line of his thick cock in and out of you in long, lazy strokes. The wet, filthy sound of him sliding through your soaked pussy fills the quiet room with every thrust. He keeps one arm locked around your waist, holding you tight against his chest while he moves.

“Fuck,” he groans into your ear. “You feel so damn good.”

You moan helplessly, pushing back to meet his thrusts, the slight sting from his size fading into pure, aching pleasure, your body taking him easier now. He leans in closer, turning your head just enough so he can kiss you – deep and messy, tongues sliding together while he keeps fucking you with those long, unhurried strokes.

Every time he bottoms out, you let out a little whimper into his mouth, your body rocking with the motion. He swallows every sound, his beard scraping your cheek as his tongue licks into your mouth while he keeps that same, slow rhythm, grinding into you on every thrust so you can feel him pressing against that same spot inside you over and over.

You moan louder against his lips, trying to get him to move faster, but he stays patient, fucking you sluggishly, savoring every wet slide of you around his cock.

“Joel,” you whimper, breaking the kiss with a shaky plea. “C-can you go faster?” you moan, grinding up into him again. “Need it f-faster.”

“You sure?” he murmurs, still pressed close to your mouth. His hips barely move, just enough to keep himself buried inside you, enough to make you feel every vein inside you. “You want me harder?”

You nod frantically, pushing your ass back against him, but he doesn’t give in from that alone. His fingers stay at your jaw, holding you where he can see part of your face over your shoulder, where he can hear the answer when it comes out of you.

“Need you to say it.”

“Please,” you breathe, your voice shaking. “P-please, Joel. I need more.”

His eyes drop to your mouth for half a second, dark and blown, the he kisses the corner of it again, rougher this time, spit sticking to your lip before he pulls back. “I got you pretty girl.”

He gives you one deeper thrust, testing it.

And your body jolts around him, a sharp cry breaking out of you as your fingers clutch at the sheets. He does it again, a little harder, then pauses when his hips finally press flush to your ass, letting you feel how deep he is before pulling back.

He doesn’t go fast. Not yet. He makes you take the change inch by inch, giving you time to feel the pressure build, time to hear the wet drag of him leaving you and the louder sound when he pushes back in.

Your mouth falls open against the pillow.

“S’my girl,” he grits out, giving you another thrust. “Knew you could take more. Just needed me to give it to you right, huh?”

The sound you make is small and embarrassing, more cry than an actual sound. Your back arches under his arm, your body flinching first, then asking for it again without a single word.

He starts working into it, each thrust heavier than the last, the mattress dipping under both of you. Your body rocks forward, then back when his arm drags you onto him again. The sheets are twisted under your knees and the cotton of your tank top keeps riding up, your breast shifting with every push of his hips while his hand stays locked around your waist.

And It gets louder before it gets faster.

The slick sound of him inside you, the slap of his hips meeting your ass, your breath breaking into little cries you physically can’t hold back. His balls brush against you with each thrust, a little cold and damp from the mess between your thighs, from the spit he used on himself, from how much your body keeps giving him.

You press your face into the pillow, still embarrassed by the sound of it, but Joel’s hand comes to your jaw again.

“Don’t hide from me, darlin’. Wanna see that pretty face while I fuck you.”

You whimper, turning your face, just enough for him to see you. He slips two fingers past your lips before you can respond, pressing them right onto your tongue. They taste a little of you and the skin and salt and slick he dragged through you. And all you can do is yelp at the taste of it.

Joel groans, his hips stuttering once against your ass.

“Good, baby,” he coos, pressing another kiss to your neck. “That’s it. Let me hear you with my fingers in your mouth.”

Your answer comes out muffled, barely more than a needy noise against his knuckles. Your eyes water a little, not from the pain, but from the fullness of it all. Him finally inside you, the taste of him on your tongue, his chest moving heavy against your back, his voice in your ear, rough and pleased because he can hear exactly what this does to you.

You suck on his fingers without being told, lips closing around them for one greedy second before your mouth falls open again on a moan. It comes out wet and ruined, caught around his hand, vibrating against his skin.

His hips hit harder.

“There,” he rasps, breath breaking near your ear. “That sound right there. Keep makin’ that sound for me.”

He pulls his fingers from your mouth, wet and shining, thin slides, that same hand down your body, past your throat, past your chest, and over your stomach, leaving a wet trail across it all. Your skin jumps beneath his palm when he reaches between your legs, using that same spit from your mouth to rub over your clit.

The first touch nearly sends your knee out from under you.

“Joel,” you cry, your hand flying to his wrist.

“I know.” His mouth presses to your cheek, his beard scraping there while he keeps rubbing you. “I know. Keep that leg up for me.”

He keeps driving into you, his finger circling that same swollen spot when he changes his hold.

The hand on your stomach slides down to take over, his palm pressing low, his fingers finding your puffy clit again. His other hand leaves you just long enough to hook under your thigh, dragging your leg higher against your body and keeping you open for him.

The new angle leaves you helpless beneath him, your body split open around his cock, your clit trapped under his wet fingers. Every thrust goes deeper in this way, punching up into a place that makes your vision blur at the corners of your eyes.

You try to push back. Try to meet him halfway. Try to take it the way he asked.

But this angle ruins you.

Your nails rake down his forearm, your back arches against his chest, your mouth opens, but for a second nothing comes out, only a broken breath as the pleasure gathers low, too much pressure in too many places at once.

“Oh, baby.” His voice breaks against your ear, rough enough that it almost sounds clawed out of him. “You’re close.”

You nod your head, brushing it up and down against the pillow, because that’s the only sound you can manage.

His fingers move faster over your clit, slick from your mouth and from you, rubbing in short, firm circles, while his hips keep that deep, grinding rhythm. He’s not pounding; it’s worse than that, he’s keeping you pinned open, making every thrust count, dragging himself almost all the way out before filling you again, making your body hear it, feel it, answer it.

A broken ground leaves his mouth when you start moving around him.

“Fuck,” he mutters, his breath hitting the back of your neck. “That’s—That’s it...”

You keep moving, chasing his hand, the feeling of him inside you—

And then it starts in your thighs.

A tremor you can’t hide. Your stomach pulling taut, your hips bucking into his hand, your body pulsing around him in quick, helpless waves. Your moan breaks into his name once, twice, then disappears into a cry that gets trapped against the pillow.

And Joel feels every bit of it.

Your thighs shaking around his arm, your back arching as much as his hold will allow. More wetness spills around him with each pulse, making the sounds between you louder, slicker, impossible to ignore. Joel swears into your neck, his thrust turning uneven, his voice cracking on your name when your body squeezes him tighter.

“Mm,” he moans, his hips stumbling. “Do that again. God baby, do it again.”

You do. Your hips keep jerking into his hand, little aftershocks, making you flutter around him, even as he keeps moving. Tears start to prickle out your eyes from how hard it hits, from the weight, from the pleasure that keeps breaking up every time he rubs your clit and drives right back into you.

Your fingers lose their grip on his wrist, then tighten again because you need somewhere to put it, need something to hold onto while your body starts to give.

Joel’s forehead presses hard to your shoulder as his rhythm finally snaps.

“I can’t—” he drags out, his breath hot on your shoulder. “You’re gonna me me—”

He grips your hips and gives you exactly what you asked for now, harder, heavier, each thrust, shoving the air out of you while you’re still pulsing around him. The bed knocks against the wall, and his breath turns harsh at your ear, breaking into sounds he can’t swallow back. His hand flies to your stomach, pressing it closer so he can bury himself deeper.

“Inside,” you plead, tears brimming in your eyes. “P-please… wanna feel it inside me.”

Behind you, Joel grips your leg higher against your stomach. His palm flattens low over your belly, fingers spread there, holding you in place while his cock throbs inside you. For one single breath, he doesn’t move. You feel him fighting it in every part of him, the strain in his chest, the shake in his grip, the shaky drag of air through his teeth.

“Say it again,” he groans.

Your lips barely work against the pillow. “Want it. Want you to finish in me,” you cry out.

The sound he makes is half curse, half surrender.

After that, he stops trying to keep himself pretty for you. He pulls out just enough to make your body chase after him, then drives back in so deep you feel it in your stomach.

The next thrust punches your hips into his hand. The one after that makes the bed knock hard enough that the pillow jumps beneath your cheek. He’s not moving quick; he’s moving heavy, buried, greedy with it, using the angle of your bent leg to push into the deepest part of you over and over until you can’t take any more.

“Joel,” you choke out. “I can’t take it— I’m—”

“You can,” he drives in again. “You’re takin’ it so damn good right now.”

His mouth opens on your skin, not a kiss anymore, just breath and teeth and the sound of him losing the last of his control. His hand slips from your stomach to your hip; his fingers digging into the damp crease there, hauling you back onto him with each stroke. You can feel yourself leaking around him, feel the slick drag where your bodies meet, feel the mess smear against your inner thighs every time his hips grind in.

You tried to say his name, but it comes out as nothing more than broken little noises. Blindly, you reach back and catch the back of his head, fingers sinking into his hair, pulling him closer until his mouth is harder against your neck.

“P-please,” you whine, louder now. “I’m gonna—”

Joel’s whole body jerks into you.

The sound that tears out of him is loud and helpless, his teeth catching at the damp skin on your neck as his hips falter once, then drive in deeper.

He buries his face against you, his breath breaking over your shoulder, and the hand on your hip grips hard enough to keep you locked against him.

And that does it.

Joel buries himself all the way and stops there, his hips pressed tight to your ass, chest locking against your back. His groan breaks low into your shoulder as his cock kicks inside you, once, then again, thick ropes of cum spilling inside you. He holds you through it with a grip that almost hurts, breathing hard through his teeth while his body gives in behind yours; the mess of both of you leaking around him, slipping down your thigh in a sticky trail.

For a few seconds, neither of you move.

You can’t.

He still has you pinned close, one hand spread over your stomach, his mouth open against the back of your neck as he tries to breathe. Every tiny pulse inside you makes him twitch, and every twitch makes more of him spill out around where he’s still buried.

It’s too much. You’re too full. Too sensitive. Your fingers curl weakly in the sheets, but you don’t want him to move yet.

He presses a slow, wet kiss to the back of your neck, then another, gentler this time. His hand slides back up your body until he cups your jaw, turning your head just enough to reach your mouth.

This angle is awkward, and you can barely move your head with it, but he doesn’t seem to care, and neither do you. He kisses you long and sweet, his tongue sliding lazily against yours while he’s still inside you, while the mess between your thighs keeps spreading into the sheets

“Tell me you’re okay,” he murmurs into your mouth.

You can barely talk right now.

Your body still hasn’t come back to itself, your thighs trembling, your chest pressed too hard into the mattress, your breath catching every time he moves even a little.

All you can do is make small, sad excuses for a sound.

He pulls back a fraction. “Baby.”

You drop your hands and reach behind you, your fingers wrapping carefully around the base of him to keep him from slipping out as you turn in his arms.

It takes nearly everything in you. Your body protests at the movement, sore and overly sensitive, but you need to see him. Need his face. Need his mouth without twisting for it.

Joel catches on fast. His hand slides under your thigh, helping lift your leg over his hips so you can roll toward him without losing him, and the movement makes both of you gasp.

But once you’re facing him, you wrap an arm around his waist and pull him in, keeping him there as your chest presses to his.

“I’m...” you breathe into his mouth, fighting for the words. “M’perfect...”

He groans into the kiss, broken and relieved, one big hand, copying the back of your messy pigtails while the other moves over your lower back in careful circles. He kisses you again, deeper this time, like he believes you, but still needs to feel it for himself.

He stays inside you the whole time, heavy and intimate, the mess between you only growing as your thighs press together around him.

When he finally pulls back, it’s only enough to look at you. His eyes move over your face, searching for any trace of pain, regret, anything you might try to hide from him.

You blink up at him, dazed, mouth swollen, still holding him inside you with one hand at his waist.

“M’perfect,” you whisper before he can ask again. “Swear.”

He presses a kiss to the top of your sticky forehead.

pairing: soft dom!joel x f!reader wc: 12k (i am so sorry)

summary: using tommy to make joel jealous seemed harmless enough- but joel had other plans...

warnings: 18+ mdni, jackson au, big age gap (mid 50s and mid 20s), soft dom!joel, protective!joel, pervy!tommy, clingy/needy reader, possessiveness, jealousy as foreplay, praise kink, daddy kink (nickname only used once), rough sex, oral sex (m receiving), food play, oral fixation, deepthroating, gagging, spit, tears during oral, hair pulling, throat holding, spanking mention, semi-public risk, unprotected p-in-v sex

a/n: i had a dream ab going down on joel so this is what transpired... i swear after this i'm limiting myself to fics under 6k words- bc its physically impossible for me to write something under 11k words... o.O anyway, i hope yall enjoy! i'll be going through my requests soon so feel free to ask/submit any ideas or whatever while they're open! i love to hear from you guys!!! ♡♡ also: i only proofread this like once...:/

now playing... the giver - chappell roan

Joel Miller tells you no at least ten times a day. Though you can’t remember the last time he actually meant it.

 No, you can’t follow him to the stables when he has work to finish. No, you don’t need help fastening every little button on your dress. No, he isn’t carrying you upstairs simply because your feet hurt.

Then you look at him long enough, or curl both your hands around his wrist, or let your lip poke out the way he claims stopped working months ago.

And that usually ends with you perched nearby while he works, his hands working at the front of your dress, or one thick arm hooked under your knees while he mutters something about how spoiled you’ve gotten.

As if he isn’t directly responsible for it.

Joel has catered to every clingy little impulse you possess and kept the reason perfectly hidden from the rest of Jackson.

Nobody knows why you’re always the first person he searches for when he returns through the gates. They don’t know that the key in his pocket belongs to the house you practically live in now, or that half the clothes folded inside his dresser are yours.

And they certainly don’t know what happens after you slip through his backdoor each night.

You tried to hide your clinginess at first.

Because people in Jackson are nosy, and the difference between you and Joel was already impossible to miss. You figured sitting in his lap or hanging from his arm would have the whole town whispering before you even made it through dinner.

Instead, everyone came to the same wrong conclusion.

They thought Joel was taking care of you.

Not fucking you. Not keeping your underwear beneath his pillow because you had a habit of leaving without them.

They thought he was taking care of you in the respectable, almost parental way an older man might look after a younger girl who had become too attached to him. They thought you’d attached yourself to Joel because he was older and dependable and that he indulged in you because refusing a pretty girl young enough to be his daughter was just one of the few survival skills he never learned.

And once they decided that, they stopped examining any of it.

So you stopped caring who saw you cling to him.

Joel, however, remained careful enough for the both of you.

He won’t kiss you in public, and he’d probably drag you home by the back of your dress if you ever tried. But that doesn’t stop you from winding both your arms around his bicep while he talks to someone about patrol duties or resting your head in his shoulder during dinner. You press your face into his chest whenever patrol keeps him gone too long. You stand between his spread knees at community meetings, close enough to feel his breath against your neck while his hand remains respectably above your waist.

Everyone just thinks you’re seeking comfort from him.

They don’t know that same hand held your face against the mattress the night before.

People smile whenever they catch you tucked under Joel’s arm—they think it’s cute. Tommy rolls his eyes and calls you his brother’s spoiled little girl, usually earning a glare from Joel and an embarrassing thrill between your legs.

Women old enough to remember life before the outbreak tell you how lucky you are to have a man like Joel watching over you, a father figure — unaware that he had you crying into his pillow before breakfast for reasons you absolutely cannot divulge to them.

The worst part is how easily you’ve begun taking advantage of it.

You can sit pressed against Joel’s side at the Tipsy Bison with your thighs fitted between his and nobody gives you a second glance. You can play with his fingers under the table, tracing the thick knuckles that were inside you that morning, while everyone just assumes you needed another bit of reassurance. Once, you even fell asleep with your head in his lap. Joel stroked your hair the entire time, scowling down at you because he knew exactly what you were doing.

Nobody noticed the way his fingers closed around a handful of it when you smiled up at him.

They just saw an older man indulging in the poor girl who followed him everywhere like a lost puppy. They didn’t see the erection you could feel beneath your cheek or the warning in his eyes when you rubbed against it.

Yet, those warnings were rarely empty.

He liked making you pay for taking advantage of everyone’s assumptions about the two of you.

If your hand wandered too high beneath the table at the community dinner, he’d wait until he got you home to bend you across his lap and redden your ass. If you accidentally mentioned waking up in his bed within Tommy’s hearing, he made you stand against the bedroom wall with your dress gathered around your waist while he decided what to do with you. And if you managed to sleepily call him daddy in front of half the Tipsy Bison, he’d make you repeat it into his pillow until it was the only word you could manage.

But It was hardly a punishment when both of you knew you misbehaved because you wanted exactly that.

You loved the change in him once you were behind a locked door. He could pin both your wrists above your head with one hand, then use the other to sweep your hair away from your face when it stuck to your lips. His knees forced your legs apart whenever they tried to close around him, but he kissed the tears from under your eyes and told you what a good girl you were for  taking him so well.

Sometimes he fucked you hard enough to drive the bedframe against the wall, his palm covering your mouth while he reminded you that the neighbors already paid too much attention to who came and went from his house. Even then, his thumb passed over your cheek, his forehead rested against yours, and every filthy command ended with baby or sweetheart.

But his roughness just came naturally to him.

 Joel was a big man with hands that could circle both your wrists and a cock that made your body ache the next morning, even on the nights the sex was slow and gentle. He left fingerprints around your thighs when he held them open. His bread scraped the sensitive skin between your legs raw. Sometimes his hips would strike hard enough to bruise, especially when you clenched around him and his restraint slipped for a few strokes.

But he never took more than he believed you could handle, and he never took anything purely because he wanted it.

You loved that in the beginning. You still do. You love how thoroughly Joel cares for you, how naturally his body closes around yours afterward, how he cleans you up and pulls the blankets beneath your chin. You love falling asleep sore between your legs with his hands spread across your belly.

You don’t have to do anything besides lie beneath him and accept it.

But that’s exactly the problem.

You wanted to make Joel feel good for once.

You wanted to learn his body as thoroughly as he had learned yours—to know what touch made his hips jerk, which drag of your tongue made him lose his train of thought, which gag would finally send him over the edge.

But he’d never even let you taste him.

The closest you ever got was a kiss from his after he’d finished in you then went down on you after.

Joel has never allowed you to kneel between his leg and take him into your mouth. He’d never stood over you with his hand fisted in your hair and taught you how to take him without choking. You’d spent countless nights imagining him using your mouth until tears ran down your cheeks, imagined what he’d look like when you’d glance up to find every trace of patience gone from his face.

He refused to let the fantasy get any further than that.

He always claimed he didn’t need it.

That was the word he always used. Need. Like it was air or water.

And you’d tried often enough to know his refusal had nothing to do with him disliking the idea. His entire body would betray him the few times you managed to get on your knees for him. His thighs would go rigid, his cock would thicken behind the seam of his jeans, and his fingers would flex at the sides of his thighs like he was already imagining a handful of your hair.

Once, you’d actually managed to get to your knees and open his belt before he stopped you. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching you with his jaw clenched while you rubbed your cheek helplessly over the bulge in his pants. The dark patch at the tip grew against your lips as you pressed a kiss to it through the fabric, and the sound that tore from his chest kept you awake thinking about it for days.

“Teach me, Joel,” you whined, rubbing your cheek over the length trapped inside his jeans again. “I promise I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

His refusal was already there, but it looked painfully close to breaking.

A muscle jumped beside his mouth. His lips parted each time yours brushed the damp patch slowly spreading over his zipper, then they’d press together again before any sound could escape. One of his hands gripped the edge of the mattress hard enough to bleach his knuckles. The other hung beside your head, fingers opening and closing as his eyes followed every pass of your mouth across his cock.

You tipped your face toward him without lifting your chin from his crotch. Your eyes were enormous and pleading from where you were, your lashes fluttering with every blink. And he watched every single one of them. You could almost see him imagining those lashes wet and clumped together while he held you down on him.

“Please, Joel. Just let me try,” you begged. “Let me show you how bad I want it.”

His fist gripped at the edge of the bed again when you turned your head and pressed another open-mouthed kiss to the tip. His cock jerked against your lips, and a broken grunt left his throat, followed by your name bitten out between his teeth.

You could see how badly he wanted to give in. His thighs spread another inch around your body, his heel scrapped across the floor as his hips pushed involuntarily toward your mouth. The hand hanging between your head lifted; his thick fingers passing through your hair, gathering it away from your face until his fist closed near your scalp as he stared at your mouth.

He used his free hand to drag his thumb across your lower lip, pulling it down until your mouth parted slightly. When his cock twitched again under your chin, you could’ve sworn that was is it. He was going to free himself, guide you forward, and finally let you give him everything you’d been begging to.

You leaned into his grip, already opening wider.

You watched his eyes close, and another curse leave him through clenched teeth before the fist in your hair loosened.

“No, darlin’.” His thumb passed once against your cheek again. “Get up for me.”

He slid both his hands beneath your arms and lifted you from your knees, making sure not to let them scrape against the floor. By the time he sat you on the mattress, every trace of that near-surrender had been locked away again—except for the erection still straining against his jeans.

He never let it get that far again.

After that night, Joel got better at recognizing your intentions before you could even think about dropping to the floor. You could barely kiss his belly before his hands were catching your waist and hauling you back up. If your fingers even hesitated near his belt, he laced them through his and pinned them beside your head. You never got another chance to feel his cock jerk against your lips or see how close he could come to losing himself over your mouth.

Naturally, that only made you want it more.

Usually, Joel gave you enough attention to keep frustration from consuming you. It was difficult to remain upset with him when his hands or mouth were on you, and most nights ended with you too exhausted to remember what he’d even refused.

But even that distraction had been taken from you.

Joel had barely been home. Between patrol, repairs near the gate, and whatever someone kept dragging him away to handle, you received whichever parts of him Jackson hadn’t exhausted. A kiss against your forehead while he ate supper standing at the counter. His hand squeezing your waist when he passed behind you. He barely lasted ten minutes tucked beside you in bed before his breathing evened out against your hair.

You loved those parts of him too, though.

Some of your favorite nights spent with Joel had nothing to do with sex. You were perfectly happy sitting beside him while he repaired the torn strap of his gun or sharpened the knife he kept at his hip, your legs across his lap and his thumb passing over your ankle whenever he paused. You loved watching him wash the day from his face at the bathroom sink, sleeves shoved to his elbows and gray curls wet and flattened at his temples. You even liked listening to him complain about his patrol assignments you barely understood, especially when he stopped halfway through to ask whether you were paying attention and found you staring at his hands instead.

You didn’t need him inside you every time the two of you were alone.

You did, however, need more than a sleepy kiss and the back of his shirt clutched in your fist while he passed out beside you.

By that evening, you were itching to see him. Joel had left shortly after sunrise, promising he would be home before supper, and that occupied nearly every thought you had for the rest of the day. You wondered where he was while you finished your morning chores, whether he had remembered to eat when you passed the dining hall, and how much longer he would be gone each time boots sounded against the porch.

He was due back any minute, so you had already made yourself comfortable on his couch to wait for him.

The little blue bowl that rested in your lap, filled with strawberries Joel had hulled and cut for you this morning. Sugar clung to their wet surfaces and collected with the juice at the bottom. Joel always sprinkled more over the top than necessary because he knew you liked scooping up the sweet syrup with your spoon afterward. A tall glass of milk sat within reach on the table next to you, beads of condensation running down the outside and gathering on the coaster under it.

You were lifting another sugar-covered strawberry to your mouth when boots struck the porch.

Excitement had you sitting upright before the latch even lifted. You placed the bowl beside your milk and wiped your sticky fingertips against the napkin you brought with you, already preparing to launch yourself at him the moment he came through the door.

The familiar weight of Joel’s boots crossed the threshold into the house, each step heavy enough to carry through the floorboards under your feet.

You were already pushing up from the couch when another set followed behind his. Louder. Uneven. One heel scraped across the wood before a shoulder struck the side of the door with a dull thud.

You barely had time to process the second pair of footsteps when you heard a drunken, slurred Tommy and a tired, very irritated Joel.

“Tommy, quit draggin’ your feet. Your scrapin’ up my damn floor,” Joel groaned from the entryway.

Tommy lifted one boot and brung it down against the floorboards with a deliberate thud. Then the other. The sound traveling through the house while he laughed at his own joke, one arm still hanging across Joel’s shoulder.

“Calm down, big brother. House survived all this time without you fussin’ over it.”

“House ain’t what I’m worried about. Keep that up, you’re gonna bust your damn teeth.”

All you could hear was a distant laugh from Tommy and another groan from Joel.

You sink back against the couch, plucking the bowl from beside you and placing it back in your lap.

All afternoon, you had pictured Joel coming through that door alone.

You’d imagined wrapping yourself around him before he could even take off his boots, following him into the kitchen while he ate, and stealing back every bit of attention Jackson had kept from you that week.

Instead, one of his arms is occupied by Tommy, and the other is carrying both their coats.

The strawberry between your fingers drips pink juice onto your palm.

You return it to the bowl without finishing it.

Joel looks toward the couch as he walks in. His eyes find you immediately, passing over the half-drunken milk, the bowl in your lap, and the disappointment you haven’t managed to hide from your face. His mouth presses into a line.

“I’m sorry, dar—”

Joel pauses mid-sentence, catching the pet name before it can fully leave his mouth.

Tommy’s head turns toward him, his brows pulling together as he tries to follow an apology that wasn’t meant for him. “Sorry for what? I’m havin’ a wonderful fuckin’ time.”

Joel pays him no attention. His eyes remain fixed on you, taking in the frown at your mouth.

Tommy follows his stare.

To you—curled into the corner of the couch with your legs crossed under you, a white cotton nightgown spilling across your thighs. The hem has ridden up while you waited, leaving most of your legs bare, and dull pink juice shines across your fingertips resting against the rim of your bowl.

Tommy looks at you for what feels like ever.

“Well, hell.” His unfocused eyes travel from your bare legs to the thin straps on your shoulders before his grin spreads. “Would’ve cleaned myself up if I knew Joel had pretty company waitin’ at home.”

“Eyes up,” Joel mutters.

Tommy’s grin only widens. “They are.”

You manage a smile, wiping the strawberry juice from your fingertips.

“Hi, Tommy.”

You like Tommy. He’s funny, easy to talk to, and far more willing than Joel to entertain whatever nonsense comes into your head sometimes.

He also gets shamelessly perverted after a few drinks.

His eyes linger where they shouldn’t, innocent compliments become filthy, and he has a habit of letting his hand remain on your knee long after the joke has ended.

But you’ve never felt threatened by it. Tommy flirts with half of Jackson, and you know he’d pull away the second you genuinely asked him to—even drunk. Usually though, you just roll your eyes and enjoy him anyway.

Tonight, though, is an unfortunate night to be trapped with the drunk, handsy version of him.

Because after spending all day waiting for Joel, the sight of Tommy hanging from the man you wanted makes your chest ache with an embarrassingly childish resentment.

You don’t want to share Joel’s attention with anyone—especially his brother, who seems to be determined to require every bit of it.

“Just for tonight, kid,” he adds, giving Tommy a shove toward the nearest chair. “Ain’t in no shape to make it home.”

“Okay,” you mumble, pulling the bowl closer in your lap.

You know he wasn’t eally asking for permission. Even if he were, you could hardly insist he throw his drunken brother into the street because you’d spent the day planning to monopolize him.

Kid is what Joel calls you when other people are listening.

The word helps everyone keep believing exactly what they already believe—that you’re just the girl Joel feels responsible for, and his attention carries no desire behind it. in public, you’re kid. Occasionally, you’re sweetheart, if nobody is paying enough attention to question it. Never baby, though.. Never his pretty girl. And definitely never the filthy names he presses against your ear while his cock is buried inside you.

Usually, you enjoy the deceit. There’s a private thrill in hearing Joel call you kid while his hand rests innocently on your shoulder, knowing that same hand would close around your throat once he got you alone.

Tonight, it only reminds him that you won’t be getting him alone.

Joel deposits Tommy in the chair and disappears into the kitchen for water. The moment his back is turned, Tommy is pushing himself upright and dropping onto the couch next to you.

He lands hard enough to jostle the bowl in your lap. The wet strawberries slosh against the side, and you catch it with both hands before it spills across your nightgown.

“Tommy,” Joel warns from the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sittin’ down,” he slurs.

“Put you in a chair for a reason.”

“Yeah, and I left it for a better one.”

You can tell Joel wants to argue back, but stops when he realizes it’s not worth the fight with a drunken Tommy Miller.

Tommy stretches one arm across the back of the couch behind you, taking up far more room than he needs to—typical. His thigh presses against your folded legs, so you draw them closer to you, but the couch is small and he doesn’t seem to notice—or care—that he’s crowded you farther into the corner.

He looks down at your bowl. “What’ve you got there?”

Your eyes bounce between him and the bowl, one eyebrow slightly raised but not enough for him to notice.

“Just a snack,” you reply, plainly. “Strawberries and some milk.”

“I can see that.” He lifts his eyes back to yours as he nods toward the bowl. “You mind?”

Your eyebrows draw together, lips parting as you search for an answer. “Uh, I—”

You barely get out the first sound out before his hands are moving.

His fingers dip into the bowl, plucking one of the largest berries from the sugar collecting at the bottom. He pops it into his mouth whole, then licks the juice from his thumb.

“Tommy,” Joel calls more sternly from the kitchen.

He glances around his shoulder; his cheek rounded around the berry. “What? She ain’t complainin’.”

You nearly do.

The berry was yours, Tommy is a little too close for comfort, and the whiskey on his breath makes your eyes water whenever he speaks.

But your eyes drift past him. To Joel standing in the kitchen doorway.

His eyes are bouncing between Tommy’s fingers in your bowl, and you curled into the corner of the couch.

For the first time all night, Joel’s attention was on you.

He’d spent the entire week giving you distracted kisses and whatever parts of him Jackson hadn’t exhausted. Tonight, after waiting all day to finally have him alone, he arrived with his drunken brother hanging from his arm.

Now all it takes is one stolen strawberry for him to watch every movement on his couch.

The complaint dies on your tongue.

Because you like Tommy. You do. He’s generous, knows how to make you laugh, and is usually harmless beneath all the drunken flirting. Letting him steal a strawberry isn’t betrayal.

If it irritates Joel, that’s merely an added benefit.

So when Tommy asks what you’ve done all day, you answer. When he tells you your nightgown is too pretty for sitting around in Joel’s house, you laugh and glance toward the kitchen to see whether Joel heard him. You even let him steal two more strawberries, leaving the bowl in reaching distance despite having plenty of time to move it.

You aren’t flirting with him.

You’re simply not making any effort to discourage him.

There’s a difference.

Probably.

Joel returns a few minutes later with a glass of water and a damp cloth. He gives Tommy the water first, then tosses the cloth into his lap.

“Drink. Clean yourself up.”

Tommy wipes it once across his mouth before dropping it onto his knee. “She’s been keepin’ me company.”

Joel answers with half grunt, half laugh as his eyes travel over the arm stretched behind you, Tommy’s leg pressing into yours, and the half empty bowl resting between the two of you. The muscles beside his mouth draw taut, but all he does is nod toward the water.

Tommy drinks half before becoming distracted again.

“You always dress like this for him?” he asks you.

Your fingers pause against the rim of your bowl.

“Quit it,” Joel says firmly.

“What?” Tommy turns toward Joel, attempting an innocence his grin immediately ruins. “Just tellin’ her she looks nice.”

“You said it. Now move on.”

Tommy gives you a conspiratorial grin, treating Joel’s irritation as another private joke between the two of you. “He always this bossy with you?”

Your eyes lift to Joel before you answer, making sure he’s watching.

 “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Tommy repeats with a laugh. His hand drops onto your knee as if you’ve shared a joke at Joel’s expense. “Poor thing.”

Joel does not find the joke nearly as funny.

Tommy’s palm remains there, and this time, you don’t pull your leg away.

Your fingertips continue circling the rim of the sticky bowl while you watch Joel take Tommy’s abandoned glass from him.  The base strikes the wood hard, sending a ring through the room.

“Hands to you damn self, Tommy.”

Tommy glances down as if he’s only just discovered where his hand ended up. “Jesus, Joel. It’s her knee.”

“And it don’t belong to you.”

The words leave him too quickly.

No one speak after that.  Tommy’s eyes narrow as he looks between the two of you, his drunken mind trying to catch hold of whatever slipped beneath Joel’s answer.

But Joel recovers first.

“You’re twice her size, drunk off your ass, and crowdin’ her into the damn wall,” he adds. “Move.”

“It’s okay,” you tell him.

Joel’s head snaps to yours.

You try to look innocent, although the thrill running through you probably shows. Joel stares long enough to make you wonder whether he already knows what game you’re playing.

Tommy gives your knee a tiny squeeze. “See? She’s fine.”

“Move,” Joel repeats.

Tommy lift his hands in surrender then scoots several inches away. Joel watches until a respectable amount of couch appears between you. Then he collects their coats and heads upstairs, probably to prepare whatever space he’s going to throw Tommy in.

You immediately wish he hadn’t left.

Tommy’s attention holds very little appeal without Joel there to witness it. The fun came from watching Joel notice every inch his brother took—the space beside you, the strawberries from your bowl, your knee beneath his clammy palm.

Without Joel in the room, you’re merely sitting beside a trunk man who doesn’t seem to remember what personal space is.

Tommy is filling the empty space before Joel’s even made it halfway up the stairs.

He asks whether you have anyone waiting for you at home, then tells you a girl who looks the way you do shouldn’t spend her night alone. You answer him with enough sweetness to keep him talking, but your attention remains on the stars.

You could tell him to move. You know that.

The trouble is that you’ve spent the last ten minutes smiling at him.

You laughed at his drunken compliments, let him stick his fingers in your bowl and eat from it, and left your leg beneath his hand after Joel told him to remove it. Pushing him away the instant Joel left would make it embarrassingly clear that none of this had ever been about Tommy.

So you let him continue. Only until Joel comes back.

Then Tommy steals his fourth strawberry.

And this time, instead of reaching into the bowl, he takes it directly from your sticky fingers. His fingertips drag across yours, collecting the sugar and juice left behind.

“You gonna eat all these yourself, sweetheart?” he asks, dangling it between your fingers.

You manage a laugh. “I was planning to.”

He sucks his teeth, popping it into his mouth. “Thought Joel taught you to share.”

The words send an uncomfortable pulse through you. Tommy couldn’t possibly know what Joel has taught you, yet your heart still skips a beat at the thought.

Tommy laughs when he sees your reaction. “Aw, don’t get shy now.”

“I’m not shy,” you insist.

“You are,” he teases as he leans closer. “Face gives you away.”

Joel’s boots cross the floor above you.

You lift the bowl out of Tommy’s reach when he tries to take another strawberry, but your smile ruins the refusal. He follows the bowl across your body, his hand pressing into your thigh as he reaches farther.

“Tommy,” Joel shouts. “What the hell did I just tell your ass?”

His words crack across the room.

Joel appears at the foot of the stairs, a folded blanket crushed beneath one arm. His eyes are fixed on Tommy’s palm against your thigh, and the tendons along the back of his free hand stand out where his fingers have curled into a fist.

Tommy sits back, more startled by Joel’s tone than ashamed. “Christ, Joel. We’re just talkin’.”

“Then you can do it from over there.” Joel points toward the opposite end of the couch. “Move your ass.”

Tommy lets out a loud laugh and looks at you for support. “She ain’t asked me to stop.”

“She shouldn’t have to,” he sneers. Joel strides farther into the room and drops the blanket onto the chair.

“You’re drunk, you’ve got her crowded into a corner, and I’ve already told you to leave her alone. What part’re you havin’ trouble understandin’?”

“Joel, it’s okay,” you say, smoothing your nightgown over your knees.

Tommy lifts his eyebrows at him, smug. “See? She said it’s—”

“No, it ain’t.” Joel cuts him off so quickly that the words nearly overlap. Then he catches himself, his jaw working before he looks back at Tommy and continues. “You’re makin’ an ass of yourself. Sit over there, drink your water, and keep your damn hands to yourself.”

Tommy stares at him for a second, then lifts both his hands with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “All right. Jesus. Didn’t realize she needed a damn guard dog.”

“She don’t,” Joel replies. “You just need somebody remindin’ you how to behave.”

Tommy mutters something under his breath as he scoots across the couch angrily, sloshing the remaining water across his knuckles in the process.

The relief you feel when his thigh leaves yours is almost immediate.

You had enjoyed Joel’s reaction for more than you enjoyed the hand that caused it. Tommy’s touch left behind a little more than the fading pressure of his palm. But Joel’s jealousy has your underwear clinging to you under your nightgown. And Joel looks about ready to break Tommy’s hand.

The sight sends another embarrassing throb between your legs.

You’ve spent days desperate for his attention, and now every bit of it is fixed on you—the fist at his side, the anger spread across his face, the possessiveness he has no respectable way to explain. Tommy’s palm has already left your thigh, but Joel’s reaction makes you press them together beneath your nightgown.

 You hadn’t meant to cause an argument between them.

But you can’t pretend you’re sorry to discover how easily another man’s interest strips away Joel’s restraint.

Joel glances at you once more before returning to the kitchen. His eyes pause on the fabric gathered over your thigh.

You hold his stare while you smooth the nightgown back over your legs.

His eyes narrow at you.

The difference is minor enough that Tommy misses it. But you don’t. You can tell Joel is beginning to suspect you aren’t quite as uncomfortable as he assumed.

Someone sensible would stop there.

But you spent all week being sensible.

Tommy behaves for less than a minute.

He finishes off his water, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and watches Joel disappear around the kitchen doorway then his attention is back on you.

“Still allowed to talk to you, sweetheart?”

You glance toward the kitchen. Joel has his back to the room, but the rigid line of his shoulders tells you he’s definitely listening.

“Depends,” you say, fighting the smile pulling at your lips. “You wanna get yelled at again?”

Tommy laughs and leans closer despite Joel’s warning. “Might be worth it.”

You should end the game. You’ve already gotten what you wanted: Joel is angry, attentive, and painfully aware of every inch between you and his brother.

Then Joel looks over his shoulder.

The directness of his stare nearly wipes the smile clean from your face. You immediately reach for the glass next to you, hoping it’ll hide whatever guilt he might read in your expression. It gives your hands an innocent place to go too—like you’re only sitting there finishing your snack, completely unaware of the game you’ve been playing.

The glass is still cold against your sticky fingers, wet enough with condensation that it nearly slips from your grip. You bring it to your lips and drink much faster than you need to, swallowing mouthful after mouthful while Joe’s eyes lay into you from across the room.

The milk catches at the corner of your lips when you tip the glass too far. One drop slips over your chin and trails down the front of your throat. Another follows, reaching the neckline of your nightgown before disappearing beneath the white cotton. A small splash darkens the fabric over your chest, leaving it damp enough to cling to your skin.

By the time you lower it, the cold has begun to ache behind your teeth.

And Tommy’s attention is no longer on your face.

His eyes have followed the wet path down your throat and stopped on the darkened patch across your chest. The playful grin disappears for a second, replaced by an intent stare that makes your fingers close harder around the glass.

“Spilled a little,” he says.

His tongue passes across his bottom lip before he looks back at your mouth. Another drop remains in the corner.

He leans across the space he’d been ordered to leave between you. “Here. Lemme help you, sweetheart.”

You start lifting your hand, mainly because your first instinct is to wipe it away yourself. Then your eyes drift toward the kitchen doorway.

Joel’s watching again, one hand planted against the counter and his entire body turned toward the couch.

Your hand pauses halfway to your face.

That single moment of hesitation is all Tommy needs. His thumb passes across the corner of your lips, collecting the milk. And instead of pulling back, he drags the pad of it along your lower lip, his eyes following the motion.

Joel is out of the kitchen before Tommy’s hand can leave your face.

His fingers lock around Tommy’s wrist and wrench his hand from your mouth so quickly that the couch jolts beneath you. The milk on Tommy’s thumb smears across his knuckle as Joel twists it away from your face.

“Goddamnit, Tommy.” Each word forces its way through his teeth. “What the hell’d I’d tell your ass?”

Tommy rocks sideways, his free hand catching on the couch. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Joel drags him upright, Tommy’s knee striking the table on the way up, rattling your glass and sending milk over its rim, but Joel doesn’t even glance in its direction.

“I’ve told you three goddamn times to keep your hands off her.”

“I wiped her damn mouth, Joel,” Tommy curses back.

“You put your hands on her mouth.” Joel gives his wrist another yank when Tommy tries to pull free. “After I told you to leave her alone.”

Tommy’s face pinches. “You’re gonna break my fuckin’ arm.”

“The quit fightin’ me,” Joel scolds, giving his wrist another wrench.

Joel releases his wrist only to shove him back by the chest. Tommy stumbles into the table, and Joel follows, keeping his body planted between the two of you. His hands curl into fists, and the veins stand out along his forearms because of it, and each breath pushes hard through his nose as he stares his brother down.

You’ve seen Joel angry before. You’ve watched him handle men outside the gates and silence entire rooms with a look. He usually keeps that part of himself buried around you.

It’s overflowing at the surface now.

Tommy rubs the inside of his wrist. “She ain’t even tell me to stop.”

“Don’t care. I did.”

“Since when do you get to decide who puts their hands on her?”

Joel steps into him again. “Since your drunk ass forgot how to listen.”

Tommy turns toward you now. “She ain’t looked too bothered all night.”

Joel’s head turns.

You’re still sitting on the couch with the bowl clutched against your stomach and milk drying across the front of your nightgown. His eyes move from the damp fabric to your lips, then rise to meet yours.

He knows.

You see the exact second every polite laugh, every strawberry you let Tommy steal, and every glance you sent towards the kitchen arranges itself inside his head.

You should feel guilty now that he’s caught you. Instead, the knowledge that Joel understood exactly how bad you wanted his jealousy, sends another heartbeat between your legs.

“I’m okay, Joel,” you tell him, attempting the same innocent expression that usually earns you whatever you want.

His eyes narrow fast.

“Yeah,” he replies, turning back toward Tommy. “I can see that.”

You suck in your lip to keep from smirking.

Tommy’s eyes move between you. The alcohol no longer clouds all of his attention as he looks between Joel standing in front of you and the guilt threatening to betray your performance.

“Why do you care so damn much?” Tommy asks.

Joel goes rigid.

For half a second, you think he might answer honestly. His lips pull back from his teeth, and his chest expands under his shirt as every ugly, possessive word he can’t say collects behind them.

Then his hand closes around the back of Tommy’s neck.

“Because you’re embarassin’ yourself, pawnin’ at a girl half your age.” He turns Tommy toward the stairs with his hand still locked around the back of his neck. “You’re done. Get upstairs.”

“Get your hands off me,” Tommy hisses.

Joel shoves him onto the first step. “Start walkin’ then.”

Tommy turns as though he intends to argue again. But Joel catches a fistful of his shirt and slams him against the staircase railing, bracing his forearm across his chest. The impact knocks the remaining fight from Tommy’s face.

“You’re gonna go upstairs,” Joel tells him, each word pressed through his clenched jaw. “You’re gonna get in bed, and you’re gonna stay there until you’re sober enough to remember how a grown man keeps his hands to himself. You understand me?”

Tommy just stares at him.

Joel drives his forearm harder against his chest. “Asked you a question.”

“Yeah. Fine,” Tommy replies reluctantly.

“Upstairs then.”

Joel releases him with a shove that nearly sends him to his knees on the stairs. Tommy grabs the railing, curses, and begins his ascent. His boots strike every step unevenly, but Joel remains directly behind him, one hand fisted in the back of his shirt whenever he moves too slowly.

Before they disappear, Joel glances over his shoulder at you.

His eyes drop to the milk staining your nightgown, then return to your face.

The warning there promises he hasn’t forgotten your part in this.

A small knot of guilt forms under your ribs as you listen to Joel force Tommy up the remaining stairs. You hadn’t intended for the game to end with his wrist nearly twisted behind his back. You only wanted Joel to notice. To look at you with the same hunger he kept denying whenever you tried to please him.

Judging by the anger he carried upstairs, you definitely accomplished that.

Maybe tonight wouldn’t be another night spent curled against Joel’s back while he slept. Maybe he’d finally give you more than a distracted kiss and ten exhausted minutes under him. The possibility of that makes it difficult to regret much of anything.

A bedroom door slams overhead. Joel’s boots cross the floor once, followed by the scrape of furniture being dragged in front of the door. Tommy protests, but Joel just tells him to sleep it off, and then the house goes silent.

You remain on the couch with your bowl pressed against your stomach while milk dries against your throat and makes the front of your nightgown stay clinging to your chest. Your lips still carry the strange phantom of Tommy’s thumb, but the sensation disappears when Joel begins descending the stairs.

He looks furious when he reaches the bottom.

His sleeves are shoved past his elbows, exposing the veins raised along his forearms. His gray curls lie disordered across his forehead, and the first buttons of his shirt have been pulled open during the struggle. His eyes find you immediately.

“Kitchen.” He nods toward the bowl in your lap and the glass on the table. “Bring your dishes.”

Your guilt returns. But still, you collect both and follow him.

When you enter, Joel doesn’t look at you. He only takes the dishes from your hands and places them beside the sink. The strawberries slide through their pink syrup when the bowl meets the counter, filling the room with their sugary scent.

Then he catches you around the waist.

Your feet leave the floor in one easy motion. He sits you on the counter and steps between your dangling knees, already reaching for your face.

“Lemme see.”

His fingers cup your jaw and turn your head toward the light. He wets his thumb with his tongue before passing it over the corner of your mouth where Tommy touched you. Then down the line of the dried milk beneath your chin and down your throat. His eyes travel over every inch of skin he uncovers.

“He touch you anywhere else?”

You shake your head. “Just my leg.”

He pushes your nightgown above your knee and spreads his hand across the place Tommy’s palm had rested. There’s no mark for him to find—of course—but after one final pass of his thumb over your thigh, the concern leaves his face.

And the anger stays.

His jaw clenches under his beard. “You like him touchin’ you?”

Your eyebrows lift in confusion, and all you can do is stare at him. You thought Joel had already understood the game; surely, he hadn’t watched you glance toward him after every stolen strawberry and mistaken any of that for genuine interest in Tommy.

“No.” Your answer comes out breathless with a surprise. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Sure as hell looked like you did.”

“Well, I didn’t.” You reach for him, combing your fingers into the gray hair near his temple. “I only let him keep flirting because you were watching. I just wanted your attention.”

His head tips into your hand despite the accusation in his eyes. His cheek brushes your wrist as your fingernail passes through his curls.

“Could’ve just asked me, baby girl.”

“I have been asking.” Your lips push into a pout, but then you notice how firmly his jaw remains set. The possibility that you genuinely hurt him drains the satisfaction from your face.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you this upset,” you plead. “I just missed you, and then you came home with Tommy, and I thought you weren’t going to want me tonight either.”

His head rises under your grasp. He draws your face toward his, forcing your eyes back to him while his other palm closes around the inside of your thigh.

“Well, you got my attention, didn’t you, darlin’?” His thumb presses into your lower lip. “Had me watchin’ every time he looked at you. Every time he put his hands where they didn’t belong.”

Your knees part farther as he moves between them.

“Seems to me you need a lesson in how to ask for my attention,” he scolds, the anger in his face and voice tempered by the hand caressing your thigh. “Hm?”

Your eyebrows draw together as you search his face. A lesson could mean a number of things with Joel, and the fingers moving higher under your nightgown gives you very little indication of which one he has in mind. Still, you nod uncertaintly.

He catches your bottom lip beneath his thumb and pulls it down. “Use your words.”

“Mhm,” you whisper, your eyes dropping to his mouth. “Y-yeah.”

“S’right.” His grip eases under your chin, his thumb soothing the place he just pressed into.

“Been beggin’ me to teach you somethin’,” he hums. “Figure we’ll start with that mouth you used to get yourself in trouble.”

The promise hidden beneath his words, sends a thrill through you. Your lips part around a hopeful, little breath and both your hands close around his wrist.

“Really?” You can’t stop the smile beginning to spread. “You’re really gonna let me—”

Joel pulls away before you can finish.

The loss of his body between your thighs leaves you leaning forward on the counter. He takes one step back, gives you enough room to move, and nods towards the floor between his boots.

“Get on your knees.”

Your smile disappears beneath a startled blink.

You had begged to hear those exact words for forever. Still, their abruptness catches you unprepared. Joel has always lifted you from the floor whenever you tried kneeling for him. Now he stands over you expecting obedience, his shirt partly open in his eyes fixed on your face.

And Tommy is directly upstairs. If the floorboards carry even half as much sound upward as they carried his drunken cursing down, he’d be able to hear everything.

But somehow that risk only makes him more eager.

“Now?” you ask.

A hint of affection finally breaks through his stern expression. He reaches for you again, brushing your hair behind your ear before his fingertips trail under your jaw.

“Now, baby.” His thumb passes over your cheek. “C’mon. Been waitin’ so patiently for me, haven’t you?”

You nod eagerly.

He takes your hands as you slide from the counter. He keeps hold of them while you lower yourself, supporting your weight until both of your knees hit the tile. The floor is cold under your skin, but the small discomfort barely lasts once he’s standing above you.

“There.” He smooths your nightgown over your shoulders where the straps have fallen around your arms. His palm remains on the crown of your head afterward, stroking across your hair. “So pretty, darlin’.”

His praise pulls a small smile across your face. You lean into his palm, your cheek brushing the inside of his wrist as your knees inch closer to his boots.

You curl your hands around his calves, as you look up at him, unable to stop touching him now that he’s finally put you where you spent weeks waiting to be. The worn denim under your palms carries the heat of his body; your fingers climb toward his knees until he catches one hand and presses a kiss into its sticky center.

“Eager little thing.” His lips brush your fingertips as he speaks. “Haven’t even told you what to do yet.”

“I know.” You tuck your bottom lip in between your teeth. “Just wanna be good for you.”

“You will be.” He places your hand against your thigh, then gathers your hair behind your head. He twists the length around his fist without pulling, keeping it away from your face. “Gonna teach you. All you gotta do it listen.”

“I’ll listen.”

“I know you will.”

His faith in you makes your chest ache.

Joel brushes his knuckles over your temple, then lets his hand travel down to cup your cheek. The touch carries none of the anger from moments earlier. He holds you as carefully as he does after sex, his thumb moving beneath your eye while he studies your excitement.

“Still got a lesson to learn, baby doll.” His thumb caresses your cheek, while the rest of his hand holds your jaw firmly, keeping your face tipped toward him. “You asked me to teach you, so you listen and take exactly what I give you. Understand?”

You nod, your lashes fluttering faster now.

“Good girl,” he draws out.

Only then does he reach for his belt.

The buckle opens with a muted click above you. Your eyes follow his hands as he pulls the leather free and lets it hang open on either side of his jeans. He takes his time with the button, watching your expression while he lowers the zipper.

Your fingers curl into the denim covering his thigh as he works open the front of his jeans. His eyes drop to your hand, watching it and grip him harder while the zipper begins traveling down.

“Both hands behind your back.”

His command catches you by surprise. You’d assumed he would teach you how to touch him first—guide your hand around the length of him and show you what pressure he liked. Instead, he intends to leave you with nothing except your mouth and whatever he decides to give it.

You hesitate for barely a second before releasing his thigh. Both arms fold obediently behind you, your fingers clasping together against your spine.

He watches you arrange yourself before pushing his jeans lower on his hips.

“Perfect,” he praises, reaching down to sweep more hair away from your face. “You stay just like that for me.”

Your eyes follow his free hand as he finishes popping open the last button on his jeans. The loosened denim has barely begun to separate when a floorboard creeks above the kitchen.

Both of your heads snap upward.

Another groan travels through the wood followed by the muffled scrap of Tommy moving around in the bedroom.

Your face immediately flushes hot.

It was thrilling when he was only a distant threat upstairs. But now, hearing exactly how little separated him from the kitchen reminds you exactly what would happen if he came down here.

There would be no innocent explanation for finding you on your knees with your hands tucked behind your back while his brother stood over you with his pants open.

Tommy would know.

And by morning, he might not be the only one.

You tip your face toward Joel, your eyes wide and searching. “What if he hears us?” you ask nervously. “What if he comes—”

Joel’s palm curved around your cheek, covering nearly half your face as his thumb passes under your lashes. He listens until the floorboards stop creaking above and then returns his attention back to you.

“Then you better not give him a reason to come lookin’.” His pale caresses your cheek again. “Keep that pretty little mouth quiet.”

Your eyes widen a little, suddenly suspecting he intends to test exactly how quiet you can be.

You nod beneath his hand regardless, pressing your lips together around the breath threatening to escape. The danger upstairs now only makes you more eager to prove you can listen.

A small smirk crosses his lip.

His hand lingers against your head while the other finally pushes his jeans and underwear down far enough to free himself.

His cock springs from the waistband and juts rigidly upward, bobbing once before the thick shaft angles toward his stomach. The head is swollen and flushed, a clear bead of precum already shining at the slit under the kitchen light.

Your eyes widen again.

From your knees, all of him seems bigger. His thighs frame your body on either side, blocking anything else beside him. His shirt hangs open above you, exposing his belly and the dark hair interrupted by thin streaks of gray. Even his hands look bigger from down here—one tangled at the back of your head, the other wrapping around the base of his cock.

You stare without attempting to hide it.

And from down here, his cock looks even bigger than it feels inside you. His thick shaft extends past his fist, veined and flushed, with a slight curve toward his stomach. The pale scar crosses one side near the base—the same one you’ve blindly traced with your fingertips in bed—and a few silver strands break through the dark hair surrounding it. His hand can’t even fully close around himself. His swollen head shines only mere inches from your face, and the thought of fitting all of him in your mouth makes your jaw ache, but still, your tongue presses forward inside your mouth at the thought of finally tasting him.

You lean forward on instinct.

The hand he has fisted in your hair tightens and closes near the roots, stopping you several inches away.

“Be patient.”

“I know,” you whine, your body still leaning forward, despite the fist in your hair pulling you back. “But I’ve waited so long,” you add, your eyes still fixed on the shiny tip.

“I know you have.” Joel strokes your hair once, his affection tempering the restraint of his fist. “And you’ve been such a good girl about it, haven’t you?”

You nod, though both of you know tonight has proven otherwise.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Mostly good.”

His free hand reaches past you for the bowl next to the sink. He plucks a strawberry coated in sugar and brings it toward your mouth.

“Open for me.”

Skeptical, you still obey, expecting him to feed it to you. Instead, he presses the berry against your lower lip and drags the wet fruit from one corner to the other. Sugar sticks against your skin, and red juice runs toward your chin, but his thumb follows and wipes it away before it can fall.

“Better use for that mouth.” His thumb smears the juice across your lip. “Should’ve kept it busy with me instead of flirtin’.”

Your brows furrow together again. You’re already forming another protest—ready to remind him that you hadn’t truly been flirting—when he sees it gathering on your face.

“Ah-ah.” He taps the berry against your parted lips, cutting you off before the first word escapes. “No talkin’. Thought you said you were gonna listen.”

Your mouth closes again, though the small crease remains between your brows.

Joel smooths it away with his thumb. “S’my girl. Now bite.”

You sink your teeth into the strawberry. The juice of it bursts all over your tongue and across Joel’s fingers as he holds the rest against your mouth. He waits until you finish chewing before pushing the remaining half between your lips.

“All of it,” he instructs, his fingers still at your lips.

You do as you're told.

You chew and swallow all of it before closing your mouth around his fingers, sucking the sugar from them before he can remove them.

His pupils widen down at you as he scoffs.

“Gonna make this hard for me, aren’t you?”

You release his fingers with an innocent smile. “I’m only listening.”

“Yeah?” he hums, rubbing his thumb over your lip while he strokes himself.

You nod slowly, rejecting the urge to lean forward.

His hand leaves your lip to caress your cheek again, pride and hunger crossing his face equally.

“Let’s see how well you listen with your mouth stuffed full of me.” His thumb collects a final grain of sugar from the corner of your mouth before he brings it to his lips and swipes it clean. “Don’t disappoint me, baby.”

He wraps his fist around the base of his cock and brings the swollen, pink head toward your strawberry-stained lips. He doesn’t let you take him yet. Instead, he drags the tip from one corner of your mouth to the other, smearing the clear bead of precum through the red juice already shining there.

Your lips part beneath the contact, but he pulls back before you can catch him.

“Lick your lips for me, baby girl.”

Your tongue slips out immediately. You trace the path he left across your mouth, gathering strawberry sugar and the first salty taste of him. The mixture coats your tongue—sweet at first, followed by a trace of bitterness that makes you lean forward again.

“Taste good?” he asks, stroking his knuckles over your cheek.

You nod, almost too eagerly.

The hand in your hair holds you in place. “Good. Open wide.”

You part your lips, eager, despite the nerves running through you.

A breath of laughter leaves his nose. “Wider, baby. Ain’t gonna fit in there if you’re shy about it.”

Your cheeks will burn, but you open until the side of your jaw start to ache.

“S’exactly what I needed.” His thumb strokes behind your ear, easing the pull of his fist in your hair. “Knew that greedy little mouth could make room for me.”

He presses the head onto the center of your tongue. His skin is hot against the lingering chill of the fruit in your mouth. He watches your eyes widen as his taste reaches you without the sugar hiding it this time—salt, skin, and the precum slowly leaking from the slit.

“Don’t move yet.” His thumb caresses the base of his cock while it rests heavily on your tongue. “Let yourself get used to me.”

You remain obediently still, your hands still clasped behind your back as your knees start to sting against the tile. You feel the saliva gathering beneath him and starting to slip over your lower lip.

Instinctively, you start to free one your hands to wipe the saliva gathering under your lip, but you don’t get very far. Joel is already drawing the head outward, spreading the wetness across your tongue with it before pressing it in again.

“Close.”

You do.

Your lips seal around the swollen tip, straining at the corners to accommodate the girth. He lets it rest there for a moment, letting you feel the weight of him on your tongue.

“Suck.”

Your cheeks hollow around him at the command.

Pleasure passes openly across his face when you suck for the first time. His sucks in a quick breath, and the fist holding your hair closes until a pleasant pull spreads across your scalp.

“That’s my good girl,” he praises. “Mouth was made for me, wasn’t it?”

His approval makes you suck harder.

He draws himself out until your lips catch beneath the ridge of his head, then guide you forward again, another inch filling your mouth. The thick vein under his shaft drags across your tongue, and you press upward against it, eager to discover what earns another reaction from him.

When his hips jerk toward you, you glance up. Delighted.

“Don’t look so proud.” The corner of his mouth lifts despite the scolding. “Keep your tongue right there.”

You do, tracing the vein each time he moves between your lips. He feeds you more with every pass, guiding your head through the hand wrapped around your hair. He leaves you enough time to adjust before it reaches the back of your tongue.

And your throat immediately resists.

A gag contracts around him, and your shoulders jerk. He withdraws before panic can follow, leaving only the tip resting between your lips while his palm moves in your hair.

“Easy, baby.” His thumb strokes beneath your eye, collecting the first tear before it can travel down your cheek. “Ain’t gotta take all of me yet. You’re learnin’.”

You whine around the head, frustrated with your own body.

“I know.” Joel taps the tip against your tongue. “Want it all right away, don’t you?”

You nod as much as his grip permits.

“Greedy girl.” His affection softens the tease as his hands leave his cock to pass over your cheek again. “Take what I give you. We’ll get you there.”

He presses forward again.

 You concentrate on keeping your jaw loose, and your tongue flattened under him. When the head reaches the back of your mouth again, your eyes water, but he holds you there for a second, forcing it, before drawing it out.

“Good.” His thumb catches another tear. “Again.”

He wraps his hand back around the base and guides the length of him farther into the back of your mouth.

You get farther this time.

Saliva spills over your lower lip and runs onto your chin. Your hands twitch behind your back, desperate to wipe it away or reach for his thighs, but he watches closely enough to notice.

“Hands stay where I put ‘em.”

Your fingers clasp tighter against your spine and the smirk on his face dampens your thighs.

He continues guiding you. Each pass pushes another fraction of him beyond your lips until your nose nearly reaches the dark hair at his base. Your jaw burns, and the tile is biting even harder into your knees now.

But none of it matters when Joel’s composure is starting to come apart above you.

His chest is rising fast up and down under his open shirt, the muscles across his stomach squeeze whenever you suck, and his hand has started to grip tighter into your hair, a small sting forming at the base of your scalp.

And now you finally understand why he kept refusing you.

He hadn’t been worried you would enjoy this. He’d been worried about how much he would.

That makes you moan loudly around him.

His eyes flick toward the ceiling and his grip tightens again in your scalp.

“Gotta keep those pretty noises down, baby,” he reminds you, his thumb passing across your wet cheek. “Don’t wanna get in trouble now do we?”

You shake your head at the warning, but it sends another pulse through your underwear, and you have to press your thighs together, but the position offers no release.

Joel’s eyes drop to your legs pressing together under him.

“Gettin’ off on this, aren’t you?” He eases his cock from your mouth, leaving you gasping under him. “Kneelin’ there with your hands behind your back while I use this sweet little mouth.”

You nod fast, trying to swallow whatever he left on your tongue.

He smirks. “Can see it all over that pretty face.”

He reaches past you and toward the glass of milk sweating on the counter. The condensation wets his fingers as he lifts it in front of you.

Your eyes follow the glass until it’s right between you. “What—” You choke a little on your next swallow. “What’re you—”

“Thought I said no talkin’?”

You swallow, closing your parted lips.

He caresses your cheek with the back of his finger. “Open.”

You hesitate for just one second before your lips part on their own, your tongue slipping out in the process.

The hand in your hair loosens to come to the base of his cock. He tips the glass and pours a small amount on him. The milk strikes his swollen head and runs along his shaft in little pale streams, carrying traces of your spit with it. Drop after drop falls onto your waiting tongue, and the rest travels across his knuckles and drips from his fist onto the front of your nightgown.

Cold milk splashes against your chest and the white cotton darkens and clings to your nipples as they tighten under your nightgown.

Joel watches one drop travel beneath your neckline before his thumb presses at the bottom of your lip, dragging it down and directing your attention back to the milk running down the length of him.

“Clean me up.”

You hesitate again, but it barely lasts a second before you’re leaning forward, licking the milk from the underside of his cock. Your tongue follows it from the base toward the head, gathering every drop along with the salt on his skin. He allows you to reach the tip before he takes hold of your hair again.

“Open wider.”

You obey, and he presses into your mouth.

Milk spills around the sides of his shaft when your lips close. It runs over your chin and down your throat, joining the damp patches across your chest.

The first taste is mostly milk, a little cold and creamy on your tongue. Then you suck harder and find the familiar taste of Joel under it, salty and a little musky, and that bitter little trace that’s waiting at the tip.

You suck until there’s nothing left except the taste of him and the slightest trace of milk and strawberry on your tongue.

“Such a good, fuckin’ girl,” He groans.

His thumb sweeps through the mess beneath your lip, but instead of wiping it away, he smears it across your cheek. “Finally got what you wanted, and you’re already covered in it.”

He drives into your mouth again.

“Should’ve put you on your knees weeks ago.”

You gag around him again, closing your eyes, trying to fight the gag—the pain of it every time it hits the sensitive part at the back of your throat—but Joel’s hand is already lifting under your chin, stroking the underside of it.

“Keep those pretty eyes open for me, baby.”

Your lashes lift reluctantly, wet and clumped together. Tears blur him at first, turning his face into hazy mess above you, but you blink until he comes back into focus and holds his stare, despite the reflex still fluttering through your throat.

And you watch his face change.

The tenderness remains in his hand, cradling your jaw, but hunger takes over the last of his restraint. He guides you forward, pushing past the depth that made you gag earlier.

Your throat fully contracts around the head this time.

He pulls back, then presses in again before you can fully recover. The movement becomes faster now, driven more by his hips and the hand holding your hair. Every thrust fills your mouth with the taste left on his skin and forces another wet sound from your lips.

“Wanted me to use you,” he says, clearly fighting to whisper but losing. “This what you were beggin’ for?”

You nod around him, another gag slipping out.

“Could’ve had this instead of lettin’ that drunk flirt with you.”

The mention of Tommy makes you whine.

He drives his hips forward again and pushes his cock to the back of your throat, and keeps it there, holding you full while your eyes spill over. His thumb caresses your temple, reassuring you even as his fist prevents you from escaping the pressure.

“S’mouth belongs to me, baby girl.” He withdraws enough to let air pass through your nose without obstruction. “You remember that next time you think about usin’ it to make me jealous.”

You nod eagerly.

The second your head stops moving, Joel begins fucking your mouth in earnest.

His hips meet your lips with each thrust. Saliva strings between your chin and his shaft whenever he pulls back, broken only when he pushes into you again. Your throat opens for him more easily now, though every third or fourth thrust still makes you gag.

At each time, Joel watches.

He eases when your body needs him to and pushes farther when he sees your fingers remain obediently folded behind your back. His control never disappears entirely, though. One hand uses your hair to guide you; the other pets your face, wipes tears from your cheeks, and checks the muscles working beneath your jaw.

“Take a little more for me,” he breathes.

Your jaw is already stretched as far as it’ll go, the tendons on both sides starting to ache, but you listen and force your mouth wider.

He presses in until your nose meets the damp hair at his base. His cock fills your throat, leaving no room for even a little sound, let alone air. Tears slip freely while he holds you there— not from the pain, but from the reflex your body can’t suppress and the overwhelming satisfaction of finally taking him this far.

A trimmer runs through the thigh beside your cheek, his grip stutters in your hair, then closes again as his hips twitch against your face.

“Jesus, fuckin’ Christ,” he drags out, his head tipping back.

The sounds scraped out of him make the ache worthwhile by itself.

When he finally pulls out, you drag air through your swollen lips as fast as you can. Saliva and leftover milk coat your chin, and strawberry juice stains the corners of your mouth pink. He gives you only a few seconds before tapping the heavy head against your tongue again.

“Still my eager girl?”

You try to speak—to tell him yes. That you can take more—but all you can manage is another eager nod.

“Exactly where you wanna be, huh?”

You nod again, already parting your lips.

He swipes his thumb along your bottom lip and brings it to his mouth. “Greedy girl.”

He feeds himself back into your mouth slowly, and you take him with renewed enthusiasm. You work your tongue under the head and suck hard whenever he withdraws.

You start to feel his cock pulsing more frequently, each throb kicking against your lips. His movements start losing their rhythm, and the hand in your hair trembles. A broken sound catches behind his teeth when you swallow around the tip on the next thrust.

You already know what’s coming before he even has to tell you.

Excitement makes you suck harder.

Joel curses loudly under his breath, and the fist in your hair pulls so tight your scalp starts to throb. He pulls you back until only the head rests against your lower lip while his fists move over the slick shaft, spreading saliva with every pass.

“Gonna come, baby.” His free hand cups your cheek, his thumb wiping a tear from under your lashes. “Want it in your mouth. Tell me you can take it.”

Your head bobs up and down, your sore knees dragging across the floor as you try to scoot closer.

“Y-yes,” you swallow, your lips trembling around the words. “I can take it. P-please.”

This is the part you’ve replayed in your head for months now. The thought of finally getting to taste Joel’s release on your tongue has your fingernails digging into the palms of your hands behind you.

The muscles across his cock jump at your answer. And his thumb moves from your cheek to your lower lip and draws it down.

“So proud of you darlin’,” he coos. His fist starts pumping against his shaft, firmer now. “Gonna keep those pretty eyes up for me and keep that mouth open, yeah?”

You nod eagerly, a breathless “Yes” slipping out before you open wide and extend your tongue beneath him.

He positions the swollen tip in the center, his hand gripping back into your hair firmly enough to keep it exactly where he wants it.

“Stay just like that,” he hums, his fist working faster now. “Gonna give that perfect mouth everything It’s been askin’ for.”

You stay open under him, your tongue shaky, and your eyes glued to his face. His hand moves over his shaft in quick strokes, carrying the mixture of sweat and saliva from the base to the head. Each pass forces another little clear bead from the slit and leaves his cock shining under the kitchen light.

You watch as his expression begins to break apart above you.

The muscles in his forearms are straining, and his lips try to separate around a breath, but it stops halfway out. The fingers threaded through your hair flex hard enough to send another sting across your scalp while you fight the urge to close your mouth around him.

He told you to stay open, and you want to prove that you can follow every instruction he gives you.

“Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he hums, tapping the tip against your tongue.

The last of whatever restraint Joel was fighting, breaks through him on the first pulse against your tongue.

The first release spills into the center of your mouth, hot and thick enough to startle you. Salt spreads across your tongue and cuts through the strawberry sugar that was still lingering there.

Then his hip jerk again.

The second spurt reaches farther back, striking near the roof of your mouth before sliding toward your throat. Your tongue dips under the sudden weight of it, and your lips twitch with the instinct to close.

“Keep it open, baby,” he groans, his fist continuing to work over himself. “Doin’ so good.”

You force your jaw wider, blinking up at him.

Another thick release coats your tongue, joining the first two until there’s enough to pool beneath it. The taste is stronger now—salty, musky, and slightly bitter beneath the milk still sticking to the insides of your cheeks. The strawberry barely clings to your lips now, making every part of him taste stronger.

His eyes remain fixed on the pearly streaks, coating your tongue as his fist drags over his swollen head again. A final hard pulse sends another spurt toward the back of your mouth before you can prepare for it, and your throat contracts around it.

A loud gag jerks through you, sharp enough to make tears spill from your eyes. Your fingers tear apart behind your back, but you manage to keep them there while you fight the reflex to swallow.

Joe immediately angles his cock away from your throat. The hand in your hair loosens, his fingertips caressing your scalp instead of holding you in place.

“Easy, sweetheart.” His thumb reaches down to wipe the tear traveling over your cheek. “Got a lot in that little mouth of yours, don’t you?”

You nod carefully, terrified of spilling any.

Pride softens his face as he traces the swollen corners of your lips, catching the thin white line threatening to escape. His thumb pushes it back onto your tongue.

“Kept every drop,” he says, his chest rising and falling. His knuckles stroke your cheek. “Made for me aren’t you?”

Your jaw aches from remaining open, and that thick mixture is starting to slide towards the back of your throat again. Joel lets you hold it only long enough to admire the sight.

You can only imagine what he sees.

Your swollen mouth held wide, your tongue cupped and shaking beneath the pearly white pool he left there, another thin streak slipping free and trailing down the corner of your mouth.

The half empty glass of milk enters your peripheral, streams of it coating the sides, and your certain the two look obscenely similar.

“Go head and close, baby,” he hums, passing his thumb over your swollen bottom lip.

You seal your lips.

The taste is stronger now without the air between you. His release coats the inside of your cheeks and clings to the roof of your mouth, mixing with the last traces of milk and strawberry until you can just barely taste all three with every swirl of your tongue.

His palm cups beneath your chin.

“Swallow.”

Your throat works beneath his hand.

The first swallow clears only part of it. The thickness sticks near the back of your throat and forces you to swallow again, your eyes watering as it travels down. A small amount remains across your tongue, salty enough to make your lips purse.

Joel watches every movement in a trance.

He grips your chin between his thumb and pointer finger. “One more.”

You obey, swallowing until your mouth is empty, except for the taste he left behind.

You drag your tongue across your bottom lip, savoring the saltines of him, and wishing he had given you just a little more.

“Open,” Joel demands.

You part your lips and stick out your tongue for him.

A thin pearly trace remains near the corner, and Joel wipes it forward with his thumb, pressing it into the center, and waits until you close your lips around him.

You wrap your swollen lips around his thumb and suck it clean.

“S’my perfect, perfect girl.” His other hand strokes across your hair, repairing the strands his fists disturbed. “Took everything I gave you and more.”

The approval makes you smile weakly around his thumb.

He withdraws it and caresses your sticky cheek. His cock stands hard enough to hang heavily from his open jeans, damp with saliva, and the release you hadn’t managed to catch.

His hand slides from your cheek to your throat. His fingers close around it and draw you upward while his other arm catches your waist, hauling you from the floor until your body presses tight against him. Your knees are sore and weak; you barely have time to straighten before his mouth is on yours.

He kisses you with none of his earlier patience. His lips force yours apart and his tongue sweeps inside as though he intends to taste every trace of himself you swallowed. The force of it tips your head back against his palm and leaves you clinging to his open shirt.

His grip remains firm around your throat, pressing beneath your jaw while you cling to him.

“Taste so good,” he mutters against your mouth.

You try to kiss him again, but his hand keeps your head tipped back.

“Mouth took me so well,” he whispers into your mouth, his grip still firm on your throat. “Wanna see how well the rest of you does.

You moan against the hand around your throat and the length of him dancing between your sticky thighs.

“P-Please,” Joel,” you whine, trying to inch closer to him.

“Please what?” he asks, his hand gripping tighter around your waist.

“Please, f-fuck me,” you whisper.

He presses a kiss under your chin and onto your mouth, swallowing the desperate sound that follows when he turns you around.

“Anythin’ you want, darlin’.”

He pushes your front against the counter and gathers your nightgown above your hips. Cool air reaches the damp fabric between your legs as he hooks his hand behind one knee and lifts it onto the counter, leaving you exposed with your other foot barely touching the floor.

The bowl, now holding nothing but strawberry syrup, rattles beside your elbow, pink juice lapping against the porcelain while Joel pulls your underwear aside.

His fingers swipe through your folds, gathering the slickness there before chasing it back toward your clit. The brief contact pulls a helpless moan from you, your hips bucking into his hand and searching for more.

“I know, baby. I know,” he coos, pressing a kiss beneath your ear as his fingers caress you again. “Gonna let me fuck that ache away?”

You whimper at his touch, your head nodding helplessly as your cheek rubs against his. “Y-yes. Please, Joel.”

“Don’t worry baby.” He pulls your hips firmly against his. “Gonna take such good care of you.”

He wraps one arm around your waist and positions his swollen head at your entrance. Then he drives inside, filling you in one firm thrust that forces your hands against the counter and sends the bowl rattling toward the wall.

The sudden fullness forces a full-on cry from your chest. His palm rises from between you and wraps around your mouth before the sound can carry upstairs.

“Keep it down, he warns into your ear. “Can’t let him hear us.”

You nod against his hand, tears threatening your eyes.

He releases his it from around your mouth and wraps it back around your throat. He drives into you again, hard enough to push your hip into the counter—hard enough to bruise probably. He doesn’t fuck you with the same patience he usually does. Each drive of his cock forces you onto your toes, your lifted leg trembling beside the bowl while his fingers dig into the flesh at your hips.

It’s exactly what you wanted from him.

His pleasure without apology. His body using your instead of arranging every touch around your comfort. Still though, his care survives inside the roughness—his arm braces your chest when your elbow threatens to buckle, and his palm muffles each cry without stealing your air.

“Takin’ me so well,” he praises into your hair. “Knew I’d fuck that little game right outta you.”

His words send you over faster than either of you expects.

Your body clamps around him, puling hard enough to interrupt his rhythm. His hand leaves your mouth and curls around your throat again, holding you upright while your orgasm tears through you.

“Joel—” you whine.

“I know, baby.” His lips press against your temple. “Ride it out.”

He fucks you through the final contractions, his strokes turning uneven as your body keeps gripping him.

“Missed you so damn much,” he whispers into your ear.

Then his hips drive flush against you and remain there while his cock pulses inside you.

Hot release fills you in several thick spurts, each one accompanied by Joel’s fingers in your mouth to muffle your whimpers. His face buries against your hair as he holds you against his chest until the last twitch passes.

For several seconds, neither of you moves. It’s just the sound of his breathing in your ear and the sound of you gasping for air.

Then Joel lowers your leg and turns you carefully in his arms. Your knees nearly give out, but he catches you and wraps both his arm around your waist before you can fall.

His hand caresses the throat he was just gripping, and he presses a wet kiss to the side of your mouth.

“Learn your lesson?”

You nod, exhausted and pleased, because that’s all you can manage.

Joel raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” you correct yourself, still breathing heavy. “I’ll come to you next time. P-promise.”

“S’right.” He kisses your forehead and draws your nightgown back over your thighs with his free hand. “My good girl.”

You curl against his chest, smiling into his shirt.

“It worked, though.”

His palm comes down quick against your sore ass, loud enough to make a noise that he doesn’t seem to care about.

pairing: soft dom!joel x f!reader wc: 12k (i am so sorry)

summary: using tommy to make joel jealous seemed harmless enough- but joel had other plans...

warnings: 18+ mdni, jackson au, big age gap (mid 50s and mid 20s), soft dom!joel, protective!joel, pervy!tommy, clingy/needy reader, possessiveness, jealousy as foreplay, praise kink, daddy kink (nickname only used once), rough sex, oral sex (m receiving), food play, oral fixation, deepthroating, gagging, spit, tears during oral, hair pulling, throat holding, spanking mention, semi-public risk, unprotected p-in-v sex

a/n: i had a dream ab going down on joel so this is what transpired... i swear after this i'm limiting myself to fics under 6k words- bc its physically impossible for me to write something under 11k words... o.O anyway, i hope yall enjoy! i'll be going through my requests soon so feel free to ask/submit any ideas or whatever while they're open! i love to hear from you guys!!! ♡♡ also: i only proofread this like once...:/

now playing... the giver - chappell roan

Joel Miller tells you no at least ten times a day. Though you can’t remember the last time he actually meant it.

 No, you can’t follow him to the stables when he has work to finish. No, you don’t need help fastening every little button on your dress. No, he isn’t carrying you upstairs simply because your feet hurt.

Then you look at him long enough, or curl both your hands around his wrist, or let your lip poke out the way he claims stopped working months ago.

And that usually ends with you perched nearby while he works, his hands working at the front of your dress, or one thick arm hooked under your knees while he mutters something about how spoiled you’ve gotten.

As if he isn’t directly responsible for it.

Joel has catered to every clingy little impulse you possess and kept the reason perfectly hidden from the rest of Jackson.

Nobody knows why you’re always the first person he searches for when he returns through the gates. They don’t know that the key in his pocket belongs to the house you practically live in now, or that half the clothes folded inside his dresser are yours.

And they certainly don’t know what happens after you slip through his backdoor each night.

You tried to hide your clinginess at first.

Because people in Jackson are nosy, and the difference between you and Joel was already impossible to miss. You figured sitting in his lap or hanging from his arm would have the whole town whispering before you even made it through dinner.

Instead, everyone came to the same wrong conclusion.

They thought Joel was taking care of you.

Not fucking you. Not keeping your underwear beneath his pillow because you had a habit of leaving without them.

They thought he was taking care of you in the respectable, almost parental way an older man might look after a younger girl who had become too attached to him. They thought you’d attached yourself to Joel because he was older and dependable and that he indulged in you because refusing a pretty girl young enough to be his daughter was just one of the few survival skills he never learned.

And once they decided that, they stopped examining any of it.

So you stopped caring who saw you cling to him.

Joel, however, remained careful enough for the both of you.

He won’t kiss you in public, and he’d probably drag you home by the back of your dress if you ever tried. But that doesn’t stop you from winding both your arms around his bicep while he talks to someone about patrol duties or resting your head in his shoulder during dinner. You press your face into his chest whenever patrol keeps him gone too long. You stand between his spread knees at community meetings, close enough to feel his breath against your neck while his hand remains respectably above your waist.

Everyone just thinks you’re seeking comfort from him.

They don’t know that same hand held your face against the mattress the night before.

People smile whenever they catch you tucked under Joel’s arm—they think it’s cute. Tommy rolls his eyes and calls you his brother’s spoiled little girl, usually earning a glare from Joel and an embarrassing thrill between your legs.

Women old enough to remember life before the outbreak tell you how lucky you are to have a man like Joel watching over you, a father figure — unaware that he had you crying into his pillow before breakfast for reasons you absolutely cannot divulge to them.

The worst part is how easily you’ve begun taking advantage of it.

You can sit pressed against Joel’s side at the Tipsy Bison with your thighs fitted between his and nobody gives you a second glance. You can play with his fingers under the table, tracing the thick knuckles that were inside you that morning, while everyone just assumes you needed another bit of reassurance. Once, you even fell asleep with your head in his lap. Joel stroked your hair the entire time, scowling down at you because he knew exactly what you were doing.

Nobody noticed the way his fingers closed around a handful of it when you smiled up at him.

They just saw an older man indulging in the poor girl who followed him everywhere like a lost puppy. They didn’t see the erection you could feel beneath your cheek or the warning in his eyes when you rubbed against it.

Yet, those warnings were rarely empty.

He liked making you pay for taking advantage of everyone’s assumptions about the two of you.

If your hand wandered too high beneath the table at the community dinner, he’d wait until he got you home to bend you across his lap and redden your ass. If you accidentally mentioned waking up in his bed within Tommy’s hearing, he made you stand against the bedroom wall with your dress gathered around your waist while he decided what to do with you. And if you managed to sleepily call him daddy in front of half the Tipsy Bison, he’d make you repeat it into his pillow until it was the only word you could manage.

But It was hardly a punishment when both of you knew you misbehaved because you wanted exactly that.

You loved the change in him once you were behind a locked door. He could pin both your wrists above your head with one hand, then use the other to sweep your hair away from your face when it stuck to your lips. His knees forced your legs apart whenever they tried to close around him, but he kissed the tears from under your eyes and told you what a good girl you were for  taking him so well.

Sometimes he fucked you hard enough to drive the bedframe against the wall, his palm covering your mouth while he reminded you that the neighbors already paid too much attention to who came and went from his house. Even then, his thumb passed over your cheek, his forehead rested against yours, and every filthy command ended with baby or sweetheart.

But his roughness just came naturally to him.

 Joel was a big man with hands that could circle both your wrists and a cock that made your body ache the next morning, even on the nights the sex was slow and gentle. He left fingerprints around your thighs when he held them open. His bread scraped the sensitive skin between your legs raw. Sometimes his hips would strike hard enough to bruise, especially when you clenched around him and his restraint slipped for a few strokes.

But he never took more than he believed you could handle, and he never took anything purely because he wanted it.

You loved that in the beginning. You still do. You love how thoroughly Joel cares for you, how naturally his body closes around yours afterward, how he cleans you up and pulls the blankets beneath your chin. You love falling asleep sore between your legs with his hands spread across your belly.

You don’t have to do anything besides lie beneath him and accept it.

But that’s exactly the problem.

You wanted to make Joel feel good for once.

You wanted to learn his body as thoroughly as he had learned yours—to know what touch made his hips jerk, which drag of your tongue made him lose his train of thought, which gag would finally send him over the edge.

But he’d never even let you taste him.

The closest you ever got was a kiss from his after he’d finished in you then went down on you after.

Joel has never allowed you to kneel between his leg and take him into your mouth. He’d never stood over you with his hand fisted in your hair and taught you how to take him without choking. You’d spent countless nights imagining him using your mouth until tears ran down your cheeks, imagined what he’d look like when you’d glance up to find every trace of patience gone from his face.

He refused to let the fantasy get any further than that.

He always claimed he didn’t need it.

That was the word he always used. Need. Like it was air or water.

And you’d tried often enough to know his refusal had nothing to do with him disliking the idea. His entire body would betray him the few times you managed to get on your knees for him. His thighs would go rigid, his cock would thicken behind the seam of his jeans, and his fingers would flex at the sides of his thighs like he was already imagining a handful of your hair.

Once, you’d actually managed to get to your knees and open his belt before he stopped you. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching you with his jaw clenched while you rubbed your cheek helplessly over the bulge in his pants. The dark patch at the tip grew against your lips as you pressed a kiss to it through the fabric, and the sound that tore from his chest kept you awake thinking about it for days.

“Teach me, Joel,” you whined, rubbing your cheek over the length trapped inside his jeans again. “I promise I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

His refusal was already there, but it looked painfully close to breaking.

A muscle jumped beside his mouth. His lips parted each time yours brushed the damp patch slowly spreading over his zipper, then they’d press together again before any sound could escape. One of his hands gripped the edge of the mattress hard enough to bleach his knuckles. The other hung beside your head, fingers opening and closing as his eyes followed every pass of your mouth across his cock.

You tipped your face toward him without lifting your chin from his crotch. Your eyes were enormous and pleading from where you were, your lashes fluttering with every blink. And he watched every single one of them. You could almost see him imagining those lashes wet and clumped together while he held you down on him.

“Please, Joel. Just let me try,” you begged. “Let me show you how bad I want it.”

His fist gripped at the edge of the bed again when you turned your head and pressed another open-mouthed kiss to the tip. His cock jerked against your lips, and a broken grunt left his throat, followed by your name bitten out between his teeth.

You could see how badly he wanted to give in. His thighs spread another inch around your body, his heel scrapped across the floor as his hips pushed involuntarily toward your mouth. The hand hanging between your head lifted; his thick fingers passing through your hair, gathering it away from your face until his fist closed near your scalp as he stared at your mouth.

He used his free hand to drag his thumb across your lower lip, pulling it down until your mouth parted slightly. When his cock twitched again under your chin, you could’ve sworn that was is it. He was going to free himself, guide you forward, and finally let you give him everything you’d been begging to.

You leaned into his grip, already opening wider.

You watched his eyes close, and another curse leave him through clenched teeth before the fist in your hair loosened.

“No, darlin’.” His thumb passed once against your cheek again. “Get up for me.”

He slid both his hands beneath your arms and lifted you from your knees, making sure not to let them scrape against the floor. By the time he sat you on the mattress, every trace of that near-surrender had been locked away again—except for the erection still straining against his jeans.

He never let it get that far again.

After that night, Joel got better at recognizing your intentions before you could even think about dropping to the floor. You could barely kiss his belly before his hands were catching your waist and hauling you back up. If your fingers even hesitated near his belt, he laced them through his and pinned them beside your head. You never got another chance to feel his cock jerk against your lips or see how close he could come to losing himself over your mouth.

Naturally, that only made you want it more.

Usually, Joel gave you enough attention to keep frustration from consuming you. It was difficult to remain upset with him when his hands or mouth were on you, and most nights ended with you too exhausted to remember what he’d even refused.

But even that distraction had been taken from you.

Joel had barely been home. Between patrol, repairs near the gate, and whatever someone kept dragging him away to handle, you received whichever parts of him Jackson hadn’t exhausted. A kiss against your forehead while he ate supper standing at the counter. His hand squeezing your waist when he passed behind you. He barely lasted ten minutes tucked beside you in bed before his breathing evened out against your hair.

You loved those parts of him too, though.

Some of your favorite nights spent with Joel had nothing to do with sex. You were perfectly happy sitting beside him while he repaired the torn strap of his gun or sharpened the knife he kept at his hip, your legs across his lap and his thumb passing over your ankle whenever he paused. You loved watching him wash the day from his face at the bathroom sink, sleeves shoved to his elbows and gray curls wet and flattened at his temples. You even liked listening to him complain about his patrol assignments you barely understood, especially when he stopped halfway through to ask whether you were paying attention and found you staring at his hands instead.

You didn’t need him inside you every time the two of you were alone.

You did, however, need more than a sleepy kiss and the back of his shirt clutched in your fist while he passed out beside you.

By that evening, you were itching to see him. Joel had left shortly after sunrise, promising he would be home before supper, and that occupied nearly every thought you had for the rest of the day. You wondered where he was while you finished your morning chores, whether he had remembered to eat when you passed the dining hall, and how much longer he would be gone each time boots sounded against the porch.

He was due back any minute, so you had already made yourself comfortable on his couch to wait for him.

The little blue bowl that rested in your lap, filled with strawberries Joel had hulled and cut for you this morning. Sugar clung to their wet surfaces and collected with the juice at the bottom. Joel always sprinkled more over the top than necessary because he knew you liked scooping up the sweet syrup with your spoon afterward. A tall glass of milk sat within reach on the table next to you, beads of condensation running down the outside and gathering on the coaster under it.

You were lifting another sugar-covered strawberry to your mouth when boots struck the porch.

Excitement had you sitting upright before the latch even lifted. You placed the bowl beside your milk and wiped your sticky fingertips against the napkin you brought with you, already preparing to launch yourself at him the moment he came through the door.

The familiar weight of Joel’s boots crossed the threshold into the house, each step heavy enough to carry through the floorboards under your feet.

You were already pushing up from the couch when another set followed behind his. Louder. Uneven. One heel scraped across the wood before a shoulder struck the side of the door with a dull thud.

You barely had time to process the second pair of footsteps when you heard a drunken, slurred Tommy and a tired, very irritated Joel.

“Tommy, quit draggin’ your feet. Your scrapin’ up my damn floor,” Joel groaned from the entryway.

Tommy lifted one boot and brung it down against the floorboards with a deliberate thud. Then the other. The sound traveling through the house while he laughed at his own joke, one arm still hanging across Joel’s shoulder.

“Calm down, big brother. House survived all this time without you fussin’ over it.”

“House ain’t what I’m worried about. Keep that up, you’re gonna bust your damn teeth.”

All you could hear was a distant laugh from Tommy and another groan from Joel.

You sink back against the couch, plucking the bowl from beside you and placing it back in your lap.

All afternoon, you had pictured Joel coming through that door alone.

You’d imagined wrapping yourself around him before he could even take off his boots, following him into the kitchen while he ate, and stealing back every bit of attention Jackson had kept from you that week.

Instead, one of his arms is occupied by Tommy, and the other is carrying both their coats.

The strawberry between your fingers drips pink juice onto your palm.

You return it to the bowl without finishing it.

Joel looks toward the couch as he walks in. His eyes find you immediately, passing over the half-drunken milk, the bowl in your lap, and the disappointment you haven’t managed to hide from your face. His mouth presses into a line.

“I’m sorry, dar—”

Joel pauses mid-sentence, catching the pet name before it can fully leave his mouth.

Tommy’s head turns toward him, his brows pulling together as he tries to follow an apology that wasn’t meant for him. “Sorry for what? I’m havin’ a wonderful fuckin’ time.”

Joel pays him no attention. His eyes remain fixed on you, taking in the frown at your mouth.

Tommy follows his stare.

To you—curled into the corner of the couch with your legs crossed under you, a white cotton nightgown spilling across your thighs. The hem has ridden up while you waited, leaving most of your legs bare, and dull pink juice shines across your fingertips resting against the rim of your bowl.

Tommy looks at you for what feels like ever.

“Well, hell.” His unfocused eyes travel from your bare legs to the thin straps on your shoulders before his grin spreads. “Would’ve cleaned myself up if I knew Joel had pretty company waitin’ at home.”

“Eyes up,” Joel mutters.

Tommy’s grin only widens. “They are.”

You manage a smile, wiping the strawberry juice from your fingertips.

“Hi, Tommy.”

You like Tommy. He’s funny, easy to talk to, and far more willing than Joel to entertain whatever nonsense comes into your head sometimes.

He also gets shamelessly perverted after a few drinks.

His eyes linger where they shouldn’t, innocent compliments become filthy, and he has a habit of letting his hand remain on your knee long after the joke has ended.

But you’ve never felt threatened by it. Tommy flirts with half of Jackson, and you know he’d pull away the second you genuinely asked him to—even drunk. Usually though, you just roll your eyes and enjoy him anyway.

Tonight, though, is an unfortunate night to be trapped with the drunk, handsy version of him.

Because after spending all day waiting for Joel, the sight of Tommy hanging from the man you wanted makes your chest ache with an embarrassingly childish resentment.

You don’t want to share Joel’s attention with anyone—especially his brother, who seems to be determined to require every bit of it.

“Just for tonight, kid,” he adds, giving Tommy a shove toward the nearest chair. “Ain’t in no shape to make it home.”

“Okay,” you mumble, pulling the bowl closer in your lap.

You know he wasn’t eally asking for permission. Even if he were, you could hardly insist he throw his drunken brother into the street because you’d spent the day planning to monopolize him.

Kid is what Joel calls you when other people are listening.

The word helps everyone keep believing exactly what they already believe—that you’re just the girl Joel feels responsible for, and his attention carries no desire behind it. in public, you’re kid. Occasionally, you’re sweetheart, if nobody is paying enough attention to question it. Never baby, though.. Never his pretty girl. And definitely never the filthy names he presses against your ear while his cock is buried inside you.

Usually, you enjoy the deceit. There’s a private thrill in hearing Joel call you kid while his hand rests innocently on your shoulder, knowing that same hand would close around your throat once he got you alone.

Tonight, it only reminds him that you won’t be getting him alone.

Joel deposits Tommy in the chair and disappears into the kitchen for water. The moment his back is turned, Tommy is pushing himself upright and dropping onto the couch next to you.

He lands hard enough to jostle the bowl in your lap. The wet strawberries slosh against the side, and you catch it with both hands before it spills across your nightgown.

“Tommy,” Joel warns from the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sittin’ down,” he slurs.

“Put you in a chair for a reason.”

“Yeah, and I left it for a better one.”

You can tell Joel wants to argue back, but stops when he realizes it’s not worth the fight with a drunken Tommy Miller.

Tommy stretches one arm across the back of the couch behind you, taking up far more room than he needs to—typical. His thigh presses against your folded legs, so you draw them closer to you, but the couch is small and he doesn’t seem to notice—or care—that he’s crowded you farther into the corner.

He looks down at your bowl. “What’ve you got there?”

Your eyes bounce between him and the bowl, one eyebrow slightly raised but not enough for him to notice.

“Just a snack,” you reply, plainly. “Strawberries and some milk.”

“I can see that.” He lifts his eyes back to yours as he nods toward the bowl. “You mind?”

Your eyebrows draw together, lips parting as you search for an answer. “Uh, I—”

You barely get out the first sound out before his hands are moving.

His fingers dip into the bowl, plucking one of the largest berries from the sugar collecting at the bottom. He pops it into his mouth whole, then licks the juice from his thumb.

“Tommy,” Joel calls more sternly from the kitchen.

He glances around his shoulder; his cheek rounded around the berry. “What? She ain’t complainin’.”

You nearly do.

The berry was yours, Tommy is a little too close for comfort, and the whiskey on his breath makes your eyes water whenever he speaks.

But your eyes drift past him. To Joel standing in the kitchen doorway.

His eyes are bouncing between Tommy’s fingers in your bowl, and you curled into the corner of the couch.

For the first time all night, Joel’s attention was on you.

He’d spent the entire week giving you distracted kisses and whatever parts of him Jackson hadn’t exhausted. Tonight, after waiting all day to finally have him alone, he arrived with his drunken brother hanging from his arm.

Now all it takes is one stolen strawberry for him to watch every movement on his couch.

The complaint dies on your tongue.

Because you like Tommy. You do. He’s generous, knows how to make you laugh, and is usually harmless beneath all the drunken flirting. Letting him steal a strawberry isn’t betrayal.

If it irritates Joel, that’s merely an added benefit.

So when Tommy asks what you’ve done all day, you answer. When he tells you your nightgown is too pretty for sitting around in Joel’s house, you laugh and glance toward the kitchen to see whether Joel heard him. You even let him steal two more strawberries, leaving the bowl in reaching distance despite having plenty of time to move it.

You aren’t flirting with him.

You’re simply not making any effort to discourage him.

There’s a difference.

Probably.

Joel returns a few minutes later with a glass of water and a damp cloth. He gives Tommy the water first, then tosses the cloth into his lap.

“Drink. Clean yourself up.”

Tommy wipes it once across his mouth before dropping it onto his knee. “She’s been keepin’ me company.”

Joel answers with half grunt, half laugh as his eyes travel over the arm stretched behind you, Tommy’s leg pressing into yours, and the half empty bowl resting between the two of you. The muscles beside his mouth draw taut, but all he does is nod toward the water.

Tommy drinks half before becoming distracted again.

“You always dress like this for him?” he asks you.

Your fingers pause against the rim of your bowl.

“Quit it,” Joel says firmly.

“What?” Tommy turns toward Joel, attempting an innocence his grin immediately ruins. “Just tellin’ her she looks nice.”

“You said it. Now move on.”

Tommy gives you a conspiratorial grin, treating Joel’s irritation as another private joke between the two of you. “He always this bossy with you?”

Your eyes lift to Joel before you answer, making sure he’s watching.

 “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Tommy repeats with a laugh. His hand drops onto your knee as if you’ve shared a joke at Joel’s expense. “Poor thing.”

Joel does not find the joke nearly as funny.

Tommy’s palm remains there, and this time, you don’t pull your leg away.

Your fingertips continue circling the rim of the sticky bowl while you watch Joel take Tommy’s abandoned glass from him.  The base strikes the wood hard, sending a ring through the room.

“Hands to you damn self, Tommy.”

Tommy glances down as if he’s only just discovered where his hand ended up. “Jesus, Joel. It’s her knee.”

“And it don’t belong to you.”

The words leave him too quickly.

No one speak after that.  Tommy’s eyes narrow as he looks between the two of you, his drunken mind trying to catch hold of whatever slipped beneath Joel’s answer.

But Joel recovers first.

“You’re twice her size, drunk off your ass, and crowdin’ her into the damn wall,” he adds. “Move.”

“It’s okay,” you tell him.

Joel’s head snaps to yours.

You try to look innocent, although the thrill running through you probably shows. Joel stares long enough to make you wonder whether he already knows what game you’re playing.

Tommy gives your knee a tiny squeeze. “See? She’s fine.”

“Move,” Joel repeats.

Tommy lift his hands in surrender then scoots several inches away. Joel watches until a respectable amount of couch appears between you. Then he collects their coats and heads upstairs, probably to prepare whatever space he’s going to throw Tommy in.

You immediately wish he hadn’t left.

Tommy’s attention holds very little appeal without Joel there to witness it. The fun came from watching Joel notice every inch his brother took—the space beside you, the strawberries from your bowl, your knee beneath his clammy palm.

Without Joel in the room, you’re merely sitting beside a trunk man who doesn’t seem to remember what personal space is.

Tommy is filling the empty space before Joel’s even made it halfway up the stairs.

He asks whether you have anyone waiting for you at home, then tells you a girl who looks the way you do shouldn’t spend her night alone. You answer him with enough sweetness to keep him talking, but your attention remains on the stars.

You could tell him to move. You know that.

The trouble is that you’ve spent the last ten minutes smiling at him.

You laughed at his drunken compliments, let him stick his fingers in your bowl and eat from it, and left your leg beneath his hand after Joel told him to remove it. Pushing him away the instant Joel left would make it embarrassingly clear that none of this had ever been about Tommy.

So you let him continue. Only until Joel comes back.

Then Tommy steals his fourth strawberry.

And this time, instead of reaching into the bowl, he takes it directly from your sticky fingers. His fingertips drag across yours, collecting the sugar and juice left behind.

“You gonna eat all these yourself, sweetheart?” he asks, dangling it between your fingers.

You manage a laugh. “I was planning to.”

He sucks his teeth, popping it into his mouth. “Thought Joel taught you to share.”

The words send an uncomfortable pulse through you. Tommy couldn’t possibly know what Joel has taught you, yet your heart still skips a beat at the thought.

Tommy laughs when he sees your reaction. “Aw, don’t get shy now.”

“I’m not shy,” you insist.

“You are,” he teases as he leans closer. “Face gives you away.”

Joel’s boots cross the floor above you.

You lift the bowl out of Tommy’s reach when he tries to take another strawberry, but your smile ruins the refusal. He follows the bowl across your body, his hand pressing into your thigh as he reaches farther.

“Tommy,” Joel shouts. “What the hell did I just tell your ass?”

His words crack across the room.

Joel appears at the foot of the stairs, a folded blanket crushed beneath one arm. His eyes are fixed on Tommy’s palm against your thigh, and the tendons along the back of his free hand stand out where his fingers have curled into a fist.

Tommy sits back, more startled by Joel’s tone than ashamed. “Christ, Joel. We’re just talkin’.”

“Then you can do it from over there.” Joel points toward the opposite end of the couch. “Move your ass.”

Tommy lets out a loud laugh and looks at you for support. “She ain’t asked me to stop.”

“She shouldn’t have to,” he sneers. Joel strides farther into the room and drops the blanket onto the chair.

“You’re drunk, you’ve got her crowded into a corner, and I’ve already told you to leave her alone. What part’re you havin’ trouble understandin’?”

“Joel, it’s okay,” you say, smoothing your nightgown over your knees.

Tommy lifts his eyebrows at him, smug. “See? She said it’s—”

“No, it ain’t.” Joel cuts him off so quickly that the words nearly overlap. Then he catches himself, his jaw working before he looks back at Tommy and continues. “You’re makin’ an ass of yourself. Sit over there, drink your water, and keep your damn hands to yourself.”

Tommy stares at him for a second, then lifts both his hands with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “All right. Jesus. Didn’t realize she needed a damn guard dog.”

“She don’t,” Joel replies. “You just need somebody remindin’ you how to behave.”

Tommy mutters something under his breath as he scoots across the couch angrily, sloshing the remaining water across his knuckles in the process.

The relief you feel when his thigh leaves yours is almost immediate.

You had enjoyed Joel’s reaction for more than you enjoyed the hand that caused it. Tommy’s touch left behind a little more than the fading pressure of his palm. But Joel’s jealousy has your underwear clinging to you under your nightgown. And Joel looks about ready to break Tommy’s hand.

The sight sends another embarrassing throb between your legs.

You’ve spent days desperate for his attention, and now every bit of it is fixed on you—the fist at his side, the anger spread across his face, the possessiveness he has no respectable way to explain. Tommy’s palm has already left your thigh, but Joel’s reaction makes you press them together beneath your nightgown.

 You hadn’t meant to cause an argument between them.

But you can’t pretend you’re sorry to discover how easily another man’s interest strips away Joel’s restraint.

Joel glances at you once more before returning to the kitchen. His eyes pause on the fabric gathered over your thigh.

You hold his stare while you smooth the nightgown back over your legs.

His eyes narrow at you.

The difference is minor enough that Tommy misses it. But you don’t. You can tell Joel is beginning to suspect you aren’t quite as uncomfortable as he assumed.

Someone sensible would stop there.

But you spent all week being sensible.

Tommy behaves for less than a minute.

He finishes off his water, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and watches Joel disappear around the kitchen doorway then his attention is back on you.

“Still allowed to talk to you, sweetheart?”

You glance toward the kitchen. Joel has his back to the room, but the rigid line of his shoulders tells you he’s definitely listening.

“Depends,” you say, fighting the smile pulling at your lips. “You wanna get yelled at again?”

Tommy laughs and leans closer despite Joel’s warning. “Might be worth it.”

You should end the game. You’ve already gotten what you wanted: Joel is angry, attentive, and painfully aware of every inch between you and his brother.

Then Joel looks over his shoulder.

The directness of his stare nearly wipes the smile clean from your face. You immediately reach for the glass next to you, hoping it’ll hide whatever guilt he might read in your expression. It gives your hands an innocent place to go too—like you’re only sitting there finishing your snack, completely unaware of the game you’ve been playing.

The glass is still cold against your sticky fingers, wet enough with condensation that it nearly slips from your grip. You bring it to your lips and drink much faster than you need to, swallowing mouthful after mouthful while Joe’s eyes lay into you from across the room.

The milk catches at the corner of your lips when you tip the glass too far. One drop slips over your chin and trails down the front of your throat. Another follows, reaching the neckline of your nightgown before disappearing beneath the white cotton. A small splash darkens the fabric over your chest, leaving it damp enough to cling to your skin.

By the time you lower it, the cold has begun to ache behind your teeth.

And Tommy’s attention is no longer on your face.

His eyes have followed the wet path down your throat and stopped on the darkened patch across your chest. The playful grin disappears for a second, replaced by an intent stare that makes your fingers close harder around the glass.

“Spilled a little,” he says.

His tongue passes across his bottom lip before he looks back at your mouth. Another drop remains in the corner.

He leans across the space he’d been ordered to leave between you. “Here. Lemme help you, sweetheart.”

You start lifting your hand, mainly because your first instinct is to wipe it away yourself. Then your eyes drift toward the kitchen doorway.

Joel’s watching again, one hand planted against the counter and his entire body turned toward the couch.

Your hand pauses halfway to your face.

That single moment of hesitation is all Tommy needs. His thumb passes across the corner of your lips, collecting the milk. And instead of pulling back, he drags the pad of it along your lower lip, his eyes following the motion.

Joel is out of the kitchen before Tommy’s hand can leave your face.

His fingers lock around Tommy’s wrist and wrench his hand from your mouth so quickly that the couch jolts beneath you. The milk on Tommy’s thumb smears across his knuckle as Joel twists it away from your face.

“Goddamnit, Tommy.” Each word forces its way through his teeth. “What the hell’d I’d tell your ass?”

Tommy rocks sideways, his free hand catching on the couch. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Joel drags him upright, Tommy’s knee striking the table on the way up, rattling your glass and sending milk over its rim, but Joel doesn’t even glance in its direction.

“I’ve told you three goddamn times to keep your hands off her.”

“I wiped her damn mouth, Joel,” Tommy curses back.

“You put your hands on her mouth.” Joel gives his wrist another yank when Tommy tries to pull free. “After I told you to leave her alone.”

Tommy’s face pinches. “You’re gonna break my fuckin’ arm.”

“The quit fightin’ me,” Joel scolds, giving his wrist another wrench.

Joel releases his wrist only to shove him back by the chest. Tommy stumbles into the table, and Joel follows, keeping his body planted between the two of you. His hands curl into fists, and the veins stand out along his forearms because of it, and each breath pushes hard through his nose as he stares his brother down.

You’ve seen Joel angry before. You’ve watched him handle men outside the gates and silence entire rooms with a look. He usually keeps that part of himself buried around you.

It’s overflowing at the surface now.

Tommy rubs the inside of his wrist. “She ain’t even tell me to stop.”

“Don’t care. I did.”

“Since when do you get to decide who puts their hands on her?”

Joel steps into him again. “Since your drunk ass forgot how to listen.”

Tommy turns toward you now. “She ain’t looked too bothered all night.”

Joel’s head turns.

You’re still sitting on the couch with the bowl clutched against your stomach and milk drying across the front of your nightgown. His eyes move from the damp fabric to your lips, then rise to meet yours.

He knows.

You see the exact second every polite laugh, every strawberry you let Tommy steal, and every glance you sent towards the kitchen arranges itself inside his head.

You should feel guilty now that he’s caught you. Instead, the knowledge that Joel understood exactly how bad you wanted his jealousy, sends another heartbeat between your legs.

“I’m okay, Joel,” you tell him, attempting the same innocent expression that usually earns you whatever you want.

His eyes narrow fast.

“Yeah,” he replies, turning back toward Tommy. “I can see that.”

You suck in your lip to keep from smirking.

Tommy’s eyes move between you. The alcohol no longer clouds all of his attention as he looks between Joel standing in front of you and the guilt threatening to betray your performance.

“Why do you care so damn much?” Tommy asks.

Joel goes rigid.

For half a second, you think he might answer honestly. His lips pull back from his teeth, and his chest expands under his shirt as every ugly, possessive word he can’t say collects behind them.

Then his hand closes around the back of Tommy’s neck.

“Because you’re embarassin’ yourself, pawnin’ at a girl half your age.” He turns Tommy toward the stairs with his hand still locked around the back of his neck. “You’re done. Get upstairs.”

“Get your hands off me,” Tommy hisses.

Joel shoves him onto the first step. “Start walkin’ then.”

Tommy turns as though he intends to argue again. But Joel catches a fistful of his shirt and slams him against the staircase railing, bracing his forearm across his chest. The impact knocks the remaining fight from Tommy’s face.

“You’re gonna go upstairs,” Joel tells him, each word pressed through his clenched jaw. “You’re gonna get in bed, and you’re gonna stay there until you’re sober enough to remember how a grown man keeps his hands to himself. You understand me?”

Tommy just stares at him.

Joel drives his forearm harder against his chest. “Asked you a question.”

“Yeah. Fine,” Tommy replies reluctantly.

“Upstairs then.”

Joel releases him with a shove that nearly sends him to his knees on the stairs. Tommy grabs the railing, curses, and begins his ascent. His boots strike every step unevenly, but Joel remains directly behind him, one hand fisted in the back of his shirt whenever he moves too slowly.

Before they disappear, Joel glances over his shoulder at you.

His eyes drop to the milk staining your nightgown, then return to your face.

The warning there promises he hasn’t forgotten your part in this.

A small knot of guilt forms under your ribs as you listen to Joel force Tommy up the remaining stairs. You hadn’t intended for the game to end with his wrist nearly twisted behind his back. You only wanted Joel to notice. To look at you with the same hunger he kept denying whenever you tried to please him.

Judging by the anger he carried upstairs, you definitely accomplished that.

Maybe tonight wouldn’t be another night spent curled against Joel’s back while he slept. Maybe he’d finally give you more than a distracted kiss and ten exhausted minutes under him. The possibility of that makes it difficult to regret much of anything.

A bedroom door slams overhead. Joel’s boots cross the floor once, followed by the scrape of furniture being dragged in front of the door. Tommy protests, but Joel just tells him to sleep it off, and then the house goes silent.

You remain on the couch with your bowl pressed against your stomach while milk dries against your throat and makes the front of your nightgown stay clinging to your chest. Your lips still carry the strange phantom of Tommy’s thumb, but the sensation disappears when Joel begins descending the stairs.

He looks furious when he reaches the bottom.

His sleeves are shoved past his elbows, exposing the veins raised along his forearms. His gray curls lie disordered across his forehead, and the first buttons of his shirt have been pulled open during the struggle. His eyes find you immediately.

“Kitchen.” He nods toward the bowl in your lap and the glass on the table. “Bring your dishes.”

Your guilt returns. But still, you collect both and follow him.

When you enter, Joel doesn’t look at you. He only takes the dishes from your hands and places them beside the sink. The strawberries slide through their pink syrup when the bowl meets the counter, filling the room with their sugary scent.

Then he catches you around the waist.

Your feet leave the floor in one easy motion. He sits you on the counter and steps between your dangling knees, already reaching for your face.

“Lemme see.”

His fingers cup your jaw and turn your head toward the light. He wets his thumb with his tongue before passing it over the corner of your mouth where Tommy touched you. Then down the line of the dried milk beneath your chin and down your throat. His eyes travel over every inch of skin he uncovers.

“He touch you anywhere else?”

You shake your head. “Just my leg.”

He pushes your nightgown above your knee and spreads his hand across the place Tommy’s palm had rested. There’s no mark for him to find—of course—but after one final pass of his thumb over your thigh, the concern leaves his face.

And the anger stays.

His jaw clenches under his beard. “You like him touchin’ you?”

Your eyebrows lift in confusion, and all you can do is stare at him. You thought Joel had already understood the game; surely, he hadn’t watched you glance toward him after every stolen strawberry and mistaken any of that for genuine interest in Tommy.

“No.” Your answer comes out breathless with a surprise. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Sure as hell looked like you did.”

“Well, I didn’t.” You reach for him, combing your fingers into the gray hair near his temple. “I only let him keep flirting because you were watching. I just wanted your attention.”

His head tips into your hand despite the accusation in his eyes. His cheek brushes your wrist as your fingernail passes through his curls.

“Could’ve just asked me, baby girl.”

“I have been asking.” Your lips push into a pout, but then you notice how firmly his jaw remains set. The possibility that you genuinely hurt him drains the satisfaction from your face.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you this upset,” you plead. “I just missed you, and then you came home with Tommy, and I thought you weren’t going to want me tonight either.”

His head rises under your grasp. He draws your face toward his, forcing your eyes back to him while his other palm closes around the inside of your thigh.

“Well, you got my attention, didn’t you, darlin’?” His thumb presses into your lower lip. “Had me watchin’ every time he looked at you. Every time he put his hands where they didn’t belong.”

Your knees part farther as he moves between them.

“Seems to me you need a lesson in how to ask for my attention,” he scolds, the anger in his face and voice tempered by the hand caressing your thigh. “Hm?”

Your eyebrows draw together as you search his face. A lesson could mean a number of things with Joel, and the fingers moving higher under your nightgown gives you very little indication of which one he has in mind. Still, you nod uncertaintly.

He catches your bottom lip beneath his thumb and pulls it down. “Use your words.”

“Mhm,” you whisper, your eyes dropping to his mouth. “Y-yeah.”

“S’right.” His grip eases under your chin, his thumb soothing the place he just pressed into.

“Been beggin’ me to teach you somethin’,” he hums. “Figure we’ll start with that mouth you used to get yourself in trouble.”

The promise hidden beneath his words, sends a thrill through you. Your lips part around a hopeful, little breath and both your hands close around his wrist.

“Really?” You can’t stop the smile beginning to spread. “You’re really gonna let me—”

Joel pulls away before you can finish.

The loss of his body between your thighs leaves you leaning forward on the counter. He takes one step back, gives you enough room to move, and nods towards the floor between his boots.

“Get on your knees.”

Your smile disappears beneath a startled blink.

You had begged to hear those exact words for forever. Still, their abruptness catches you unprepared. Joel has always lifted you from the floor whenever you tried kneeling for him. Now he stands over you expecting obedience, his shirt partly open in his eyes fixed on your face.

And Tommy is directly upstairs. If the floorboards carry even half as much sound upward as they carried his drunken cursing down, he’d be able to hear everything.

But somehow that risk only makes him more eager.

“Now?” you ask.

A hint of affection finally breaks through his stern expression. He reaches for you again, brushing your hair behind your ear before his fingertips trail under your jaw.

“Now, baby.” His thumb passes over your cheek. “C’mon. Been waitin’ so patiently for me, haven’t you?”

You nod eagerly.

He takes your hands as you slide from the counter. He keeps hold of them while you lower yourself, supporting your weight until both of your knees hit the tile. The floor is cold under your skin, but the small discomfort barely lasts once he’s standing above you.

“There.” He smooths your nightgown over your shoulders where the straps have fallen around your arms. His palm remains on the crown of your head afterward, stroking across your hair. “So pretty, darlin’.”

His praise pulls a small smile across your face. You lean into his palm, your cheek brushing the inside of his wrist as your knees inch closer to his boots.

You curl your hands around his calves, as you look up at him, unable to stop touching him now that he’s finally put you where you spent weeks waiting to be. The worn denim under your palms carries the heat of his body; your fingers climb toward his knees until he catches one hand and presses a kiss into its sticky center.

“Eager little thing.” His lips brush your fingertips as he speaks. “Haven’t even told you what to do yet.”

“I know.” You tuck your bottom lip in between your teeth. “Just wanna be good for you.”

“You will be.” He places your hand against your thigh, then gathers your hair behind your head. He twists the length around his fist without pulling, keeping it away from your face. “Gonna teach you. All you gotta do it listen.”

“I’ll listen.”

“I know you will.”

His faith in you makes your chest ache.

Joel brushes his knuckles over your temple, then lets his hand travel down to cup your cheek. The touch carries none of the anger from moments earlier. He holds you as carefully as he does after sex, his thumb moving beneath your eye while he studies your excitement.

“Still got a lesson to learn, baby doll.” His thumb caresses your cheek, while the rest of his hand holds your jaw firmly, keeping your face tipped toward him. “You asked me to teach you, so you listen and take exactly what I give you. Understand?”

You nod, your lashes fluttering faster now.

“Good girl,” he draws out.

Only then does he reach for his belt.

The buckle opens with a muted click above you. Your eyes follow his hands as he pulls the leather free and lets it hang open on either side of his jeans. He takes his time with the button, watching your expression while he lowers the zipper.

Your fingers curl into the denim covering his thigh as he works open the front of his jeans. His eyes drop to your hand, watching it and grip him harder while the zipper begins traveling down.

“Both hands behind your back.”

His command catches you by surprise. You’d assumed he would teach you how to touch him first—guide your hand around the length of him and show you what pressure he liked. Instead, he intends to leave you with nothing except your mouth and whatever he decides to give it.

You hesitate for barely a second before releasing his thigh. Both arms fold obediently behind you, your fingers clasping together against your spine.

He watches you arrange yourself before pushing his jeans lower on his hips.

“Perfect,” he praises, reaching down to sweep more hair away from your face. “You stay just like that for me.”

Your eyes follow his free hand as he finishes popping open the last button on his jeans. The loosened denim has barely begun to separate when a floorboard creeks above the kitchen.

Both of your heads snap upward.

Another groan travels through the wood followed by the muffled scrap of Tommy moving around in the bedroom.

Your face immediately flushes hot.

It was thrilling when he was only a distant threat upstairs. But now, hearing exactly how little separated him from the kitchen reminds you exactly what would happen if he came down here.

There would be no innocent explanation for finding you on your knees with your hands tucked behind your back while his brother stood over you with his pants open.

Tommy would know.

And by morning, he might not be the only one.

You tip your face toward Joel, your eyes wide and searching. “What if he hears us?” you ask nervously. “What if he comes—”

Joel’s palm curved around your cheek, covering nearly half your face as his thumb passes under your lashes. He listens until the floorboards stop creaking above and then returns his attention back to you.

“Then you better not give him a reason to come lookin’.” His pale caresses your cheek again. “Keep that pretty little mouth quiet.”

Your eyes widen a little, suddenly suspecting he intends to test exactly how quiet you can be.

You nod beneath his hand regardless, pressing your lips together around the breath threatening to escape. The danger upstairs now only makes you more eager to prove you can listen.

A small smirk crosses his lip.

His hand lingers against your head while the other finally pushes his jeans and underwear down far enough to free himself.

His cock springs from the waistband and juts rigidly upward, bobbing once before the thick shaft angles toward his stomach. The head is swollen and flushed, a clear bead of precum already shining at the slit under the kitchen light.

Your eyes widen again.

From your knees, all of him seems bigger. His thighs frame your body on either side, blocking anything else beside him. His shirt hangs open above you, exposing his belly and the dark hair interrupted by thin streaks of gray. Even his hands look bigger from down here—one tangled at the back of your head, the other wrapping around the base of his cock.

You stare without attempting to hide it.

And from down here, his cock looks even bigger than it feels inside you. His thick shaft extends past his fist, veined and flushed, with a slight curve toward his stomach. The pale scar crosses one side near the base—the same one you’ve blindly traced with your fingertips in bed—and a few silver strands break through the dark hair surrounding it. His hand can’t even fully close around himself. His swollen head shines only mere inches from your face, and the thought of fitting all of him in your mouth makes your jaw ache, but still, your tongue presses forward inside your mouth at the thought of finally tasting him.

You lean forward on instinct.

The hand he has fisted in your hair tightens and closes near the roots, stopping you several inches away.

“Be patient.”

“I know,” you whine, your body still leaning forward, despite the fist in your hair pulling you back. “But I’ve waited so long,” you add, your eyes still fixed on the shiny tip.

“I know you have.” Joel strokes your hair once, his affection tempering the restraint of his fist. “And you’ve been such a good girl about it, haven’t you?”

You nod, though both of you know tonight has proven otherwise.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Mostly good.”

His free hand reaches past you for the bowl next to the sink. He plucks a strawberry coated in sugar and brings it toward your mouth.

“Open for me.”

Skeptical, you still obey, expecting him to feed it to you. Instead, he presses the berry against your lower lip and drags the wet fruit from one corner to the other. Sugar sticks against your skin, and red juice runs toward your chin, but his thumb follows and wipes it away before it can fall.

“Better use for that mouth.” His thumb smears the juice across your lip. “Should’ve kept it busy with me instead of flirtin’.”

Your brows furrow together again. You’re already forming another protest—ready to remind him that you hadn’t truly been flirting—when he sees it gathering on your face.

“Ah-ah.” He taps the berry against your parted lips, cutting you off before the first word escapes. “No talkin’. Thought you said you were gonna listen.”

Your mouth closes again, though the small crease remains between your brows.

Joel smooths it away with his thumb. “S’my girl. Now bite.”

You sink your teeth into the strawberry. The juice of it bursts all over your tongue and across Joel’s fingers as he holds the rest against your mouth. He waits until you finish chewing before pushing the remaining half between your lips.

“All of it,” he instructs, his fingers still at your lips.

You do as you're told.

You chew and swallow all of it before closing your mouth around his fingers, sucking the sugar from them before he can remove them.

His pupils widen down at you as he scoffs.

“Gonna make this hard for me, aren’t you?”

You release his fingers with an innocent smile. “I’m only listening.”

“Yeah?” he hums, rubbing his thumb over your lip while he strokes himself.

You nod slowly, rejecting the urge to lean forward.

His hand leaves your lip to caress your cheek again, pride and hunger crossing his face equally.

“Let’s see how well you listen with your mouth stuffed full of me.” His thumb collects a final grain of sugar from the corner of your mouth before he brings it to his lips and swipes it clean. “Don’t disappoint me, baby.”

He wraps his fist around the base of his cock and brings the swollen, pink head toward your strawberry-stained lips. He doesn’t let you take him yet. Instead, he drags the tip from one corner of your mouth to the other, smearing the clear bead of precum through the red juice already shining there.

Your lips part beneath the contact, but he pulls back before you can catch him.

“Lick your lips for me, baby girl.”

Your tongue slips out immediately. You trace the path he left across your mouth, gathering strawberry sugar and the first salty taste of him. The mixture coats your tongue—sweet at first, followed by a trace of bitterness that makes you lean forward again.

“Taste good?” he asks, stroking his knuckles over your cheek.

You nod, almost too eagerly.

The hand in your hair holds you in place. “Good. Open wide.”

You part your lips, eager, despite the nerves running through you.

A breath of laughter leaves his nose. “Wider, baby. Ain’t gonna fit in there if you’re shy about it.”

Your cheeks will burn, but you open until the side of your jaw start to ache.

“S’exactly what I needed.” His thumb strokes behind your ear, easing the pull of his fist in your hair. “Knew that greedy little mouth could make room for me.”

He presses the head onto the center of your tongue. His skin is hot against the lingering chill of the fruit in your mouth. He watches your eyes widen as his taste reaches you without the sugar hiding it this time—salt, skin, and the precum slowly leaking from the slit.

“Don’t move yet.” His thumb caresses the base of his cock while it rests heavily on your tongue. “Let yourself get used to me.”

You remain obediently still, your hands still clasped behind your back as your knees start to sting against the tile. You feel the saliva gathering beneath him and starting to slip over your lower lip.

Instinctively, you start to free one your hands to wipe the saliva gathering under your lip, but you don’t get very far. Joel is already drawing the head outward, spreading the wetness across your tongue with it before pressing it in again.

“Close.”

You do.

Your lips seal around the swollen tip, straining at the corners to accommodate the girth. He lets it rest there for a moment, letting you feel the weight of him on your tongue.

“Suck.”

Your cheeks hollow around him at the command.

Pleasure passes openly across his face when you suck for the first time. His sucks in a quick breath, and the fist holding your hair closes until a pleasant pull spreads across your scalp.

“That’s my good girl,” he praises. “Mouth was made for me, wasn’t it?”

His approval makes you suck harder.

He draws himself out until your lips catch beneath the ridge of his head, then guide you forward again, another inch filling your mouth. The thick vein under his shaft drags across your tongue, and you press upward against it, eager to discover what earns another reaction from him.

When his hips jerk toward you, you glance up. Delighted.

“Don’t look so proud.” The corner of his mouth lifts despite the scolding. “Keep your tongue right there.”

You do, tracing the vein each time he moves between your lips. He feeds you more with every pass, guiding your head through the hand wrapped around your hair. He leaves you enough time to adjust before it reaches the back of your tongue.

And your throat immediately resists.

A gag contracts around him, and your shoulders jerk. He withdraws before panic can follow, leaving only the tip resting between your lips while his palm moves in your hair.

“Easy, baby.” His thumb strokes beneath your eye, collecting the first tear before it can travel down your cheek. “Ain’t gotta take all of me yet. You’re learnin’.”

You whine around the head, frustrated with your own body.

“I know.” Joel taps the tip against your tongue. “Want it all right away, don’t you?”

You nod as much as his grip permits.

“Greedy girl.” His affection softens the tease as his hands leave his cock to pass over your cheek again. “Take what I give you. We’ll get you there.”

He presses forward again.

 You concentrate on keeping your jaw loose, and your tongue flattened under him. When the head reaches the back of your mouth again, your eyes water, but he holds you there for a second, forcing it, before drawing it out.

“Good.” His thumb catches another tear. “Again.”

He wraps his hand back around the base and guides the length of him farther into the back of your mouth.

You get farther this time.

Saliva spills over your lower lip and runs onto your chin. Your hands twitch behind your back, desperate to wipe it away or reach for his thighs, but he watches closely enough to notice.

“Hands stay where I put ‘em.”

Your fingers clasp tighter against your spine and the smirk on his face dampens your thighs.

He continues guiding you. Each pass pushes another fraction of him beyond your lips until your nose nearly reaches the dark hair at his base. Your jaw burns, and the tile is biting even harder into your knees now.

But none of it matters when Joel’s composure is starting to come apart above you.

His chest is rising fast up and down under his open shirt, the muscles across his stomach squeeze whenever you suck, and his hand has started to grip tighter into your hair, a small sting forming at the base of your scalp.

And now you finally understand why he kept refusing you.

He hadn’t been worried you would enjoy this. He’d been worried about how much he would.

That makes you moan loudly around him.

His eyes flick toward the ceiling and his grip tightens again in your scalp.

“Gotta keep those pretty noises down, baby,” he reminds you, his thumb passing across your wet cheek. “Don’t wanna get in trouble now do we?”

You shake your head at the warning, but it sends another pulse through your underwear, and you have to press your thighs together, but the position offers no release.

Joel’s eyes drop to your legs pressing together under him.

“Gettin’ off on this, aren’t you?” He eases his cock from your mouth, leaving you gasping under him. “Kneelin’ there with your hands behind your back while I use this sweet little mouth.”

You nod fast, trying to swallow whatever he left on your tongue.

He smirks. “Can see it all over that pretty face.”

He reaches past you and toward the glass of milk sweating on the counter. The condensation wets his fingers as he lifts it in front of you.

Your eyes follow the glass until it’s right between you. “What—” You choke a little on your next swallow. “What’re you—”

“Thought I said no talkin’?”

You swallow, closing your parted lips.

He caresses your cheek with the back of his finger. “Open.”

You hesitate for just one second before your lips part on their own, your tongue slipping out in the process.

The hand in your hair loosens to come to the base of his cock. He tips the glass and pours a small amount on him. The milk strikes his swollen head and runs along his shaft in little pale streams, carrying traces of your spit with it. Drop after drop falls onto your waiting tongue, and the rest travels across his knuckles and drips from his fist onto the front of your nightgown.

Cold milk splashes against your chest and the white cotton darkens and clings to your nipples as they tighten under your nightgown.

Joel watches one drop travel beneath your neckline before his thumb presses at the bottom of your lip, dragging it down and directing your attention back to the milk running down the length of him.

“Clean me up.”

You hesitate again, but it barely lasts a second before you’re leaning forward, licking the milk from the underside of his cock. Your tongue follows it from the base toward the head, gathering every drop along with the salt on his skin. He allows you to reach the tip before he takes hold of your hair again.

“Open wider.”

You obey, and he presses into your mouth.

Milk spills around the sides of his shaft when your lips close. It runs over your chin and down your throat, joining the damp patches across your chest.

The first taste is mostly milk, a little cold and creamy on your tongue. Then you suck harder and find the familiar taste of Joel under it, salty and a little musky, and that bitter little trace that’s waiting at the tip.

You suck until there’s nothing left except the taste of him and the slightest trace of milk and strawberry on your tongue.

“Such a good, fuckin’ girl,” He groans.

His thumb sweeps through the mess beneath your lip, but instead of wiping it away, he smears it across your cheek. “Finally got what you wanted, and you’re already covered in it.”

He drives into your mouth again.

“Should’ve put you on your knees weeks ago.”

You gag around him again, closing your eyes, trying to fight the gag—the pain of it every time it hits the sensitive part at the back of your throat—but Joel’s hand is already lifting under your chin, stroking the underside of it.

“Keep those pretty eyes open for me, baby.”

Your lashes lift reluctantly, wet and clumped together. Tears blur him at first, turning his face into hazy mess above you, but you blink until he comes back into focus and holds his stare, despite the reflex still fluttering through your throat.

And you watch his face change.

The tenderness remains in his hand, cradling your jaw, but hunger takes over the last of his restraint. He guides you forward, pushing past the depth that made you gag earlier.

Your throat fully contracts around the head this time.

He pulls back, then presses in again before you can fully recover. The movement becomes faster now, driven more by his hips and the hand holding your hair. Every thrust fills your mouth with the taste left on his skin and forces another wet sound from your lips.

“Wanted me to use you,” he says, clearly fighting to whisper but losing. “This what you were beggin’ for?”

You nod around him, another gag slipping out.

“Could’ve had this instead of lettin’ that drunk flirt with you.”

The mention of Tommy makes you whine.

He drives his hips forward again and pushes his cock to the back of your throat, and keeps it there, holding you full while your eyes spill over. His thumb caresses your temple, reassuring you even as his fist prevents you from escaping the pressure.

“S’mouth belongs to me, baby girl.” He withdraws enough to let air pass through your nose without obstruction. “You remember that next time you think about usin’ it to make me jealous.”

You nod eagerly.

The second your head stops moving, Joel begins fucking your mouth in earnest.

His hips meet your lips with each thrust. Saliva strings between your chin and his shaft whenever he pulls back, broken only when he pushes into you again. Your throat opens for him more easily now, though every third or fourth thrust still makes you gag.

At each time, Joel watches.

He eases when your body needs him to and pushes farther when he sees your fingers remain obediently folded behind your back. His control never disappears entirely, though. One hand uses your hair to guide you; the other pets your face, wipes tears from your cheeks, and checks the muscles working beneath your jaw.

“Take a little more for me,” he breathes.

Your jaw is already stretched as far as it’ll go, the tendons on both sides starting to ache, but you listen and force your mouth wider.

He presses in until your nose meets the damp hair at his base. His cock fills your throat, leaving no room for even a little sound, let alone air. Tears slip freely while he holds you there— not from the pain, but from the reflex your body can’t suppress and the overwhelming satisfaction of finally taking him this far.

A trimmer runs through the thigh beside your cheek, his grip stutters in your hair, then closes again as his hips twitch against your face.

“Jesus, fuckin’ Christ,” he drags out, his head tipping back.

The sounds scraped out of him make the ache worthwhile by itself.

When he finally pulls out, you drag air through your swollen lips as fast as you can. Saliva and leftover milk coat your chin, and strawberry juice stains the corners of your mouth pink. He gives you only a few seconds before tapping the heavy head against your tongue again.

“Still my eager girl?”

You try to speak—to tell him yes. That you can take more—but all you can manage is another eager nod.

“Exactly where you wanna be, huh?”

You nod again, already parting your lips.

He swipes his thumb along your bottom lip and brings it to his mouth. “Greedy girl.”

He feeds himself back into your mouth slowly, and you take him with renewed enthusiasm. You work your tongue under the head and suck hard whenever he withdraws.

You start to feel his cock pulsing more frequently, each throb kicking against your lips. His movements start losing their rhythm, and the hand in your hair trembles. A broken sound catches behind his teeth when you swallow around the tip on the next thrust.

You already know what’s coming before he even has to tell you.

Excitement makes you suck harder.

Joel curses loudly under his breath, and the fist in your hair pulls so tight your scalp starts to throb. He pulls you back until only the head rests against your lower lip while his fists move over the slick shaft, spreading saliva with every pass.

“Gonna come, baby.” His free hand cups your cheek, his thumb wiping a tear from under your lashes. “Want it in your mouth. Tell me you can take it.”

Your head bobs up and down, your sore knees dragging across the floor as you try to scoot closer.

“Y-yes,” you swallow, your lips trembling around the words. “I can take it. P-please.”

This is the part you’ve replayed in your head for months now. The thought of finally getting to taste Joel’s release on your tongue has your fingernails digging into the palms of your hands behind you.

The muscles across his cock jump at your answer. And his thumb moves from your cheek to your lower lip and draws it down.

“So proud of you darlin’,” he coos. His fist starts pumping against his shaft, firmer now. “Gonna keep those pretty eyes up for me and keep that mouth open, yeah?”

You nod eagerly, a breathless “Yes” slipping out before you open wide and extend your tongue beneath him.

He positions the swollen tip in the center, his hand gripping back into your hair firmly enough to keep it exactly where he wants it.

“Stay just like that,” he hums, his fist working faster now. “Gonna give that perfect mouth everything It’s been askin’ for.”

You stay open under him, your tongue shaky, and your eyes glued to his face. His hand moves over his shaft in quick strokes, carrying the mixture of sweat and saliva from the base to the head. Each pass forces another little clear bead from the slit and leaves his cock shining under the kitchen light.

You watch as his expression begins to break apart above you.

The muscles in his forearms are straining, and his lips try to separate around a breath, but it stops halfway out. The fingers threaded through your hair flex hard enough to send another sting across your scalp while you fight the urge to close your mouth around him.

He told you to stay open, and you want to prove that you can follow every instruction he gives you.

“Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he hums, tapping the tip against your tongue.

The last of whatever restraint Joel was fighting, breaks through him on the first pulse against your tongue.

The first release spills into the center of your mouth, hot and thick enough to startle you. Salt spreads across your tongue and cuts through the strawberry sugar that was still lingering there.

Then his hip jerk again.

The second spurt reaches farther back, striking near the roof of your mouth before sliding toward your throat. Your tongue dips under the sudden weight of it, and your lips twitch with the instinct to close.

“Keep it open, baby,” he groans, his fist continuing to work over himself. “Doin’ so good.”

You force your jaw wider, blinking up at him.

Another thick release coats your tongue, joining the first two until there’s enough to pool beneath it. The taste is stronger now—salty, musky, and slightly bitter beneath the milk still sticking to the insides of your cheeks. The strawberry barely clings to your lips now, making every part of him taste stronger.

His eyes remain fixed on the pearly streaks, coating your tongue as his fist drags over his swollen head again. A final hard pulse sends another spurt toward the back of your mouth before you can prepare for it, and your throat contracts around it.

A loud gag jerks through you, sharp enough to make tears spill from your eyes. Your fingers tear apart behind your back, but you manage to keep them there while you fight the reflex to swallow.

Joe immediately angles his cock away from your throat. The hand in your hair loosens, his fingertips caressing your scalp instead of holding you in place.

“Easy, sweetheart.” His thumb reaches down to wipe the tear traveling over your cheek. “Got a lot in that little mouth of yours, don’t you?”

You nod carefully, terrified of spilling any.

Pride softens his face as he traces the swollen corners of your lips, catching the thin white line threatening to escape. His thumb pushes it back onto your tongue.

“Kept every drop,” he says, his chest rising and falling. His knuckles stroke your cheek. “Made for me aren’t you?”

Your jaw aches from remaining open, and that thick mixture is starting to slide towards the back of your throat again. Joel lets you hold it only long enough to admire the sight.

You can only imagine what he sees.

Your swollen mouth held wide, your tongue cupped and shaking beneath the pearly white pool he left there, another thin streak slipping free and trailing down the corner of your mouth.

The half empty glass of milk enters your peripheral, streams of it coating the sides, and your certain the two look obscenely similar.

“Go head and close, baby,” he hums, passing his thumb over your swollen bottom lip.

You seal your lips.

The taste is stronger now without the air between you. His release coats the inside of your cheeks and clings to the roof of your mouth, mixing with the last traces of milk and strawberry until you can just barely taste all three with every swirl of your tongue.

His palm cups beneath your chin.

“Swallow.”

Your throat works beneath his hand.

The first swallow clears only part of it. The thickness sticks near the back of your throat and forces you to swallow again, your eyes watering as it travels down. A small amount remains across your tongue, salty enough to make your lips purse.

Joel watches every movement in a trance.

He grips your chin between his thumb and pointer finger. “One more.”

You obey, swallowing until your mouth is empty, except for the taste he left behind.

You drag your tongue across your bottom lip, savoring the saltines of him, and wishing he had given you just a little more.

“Open,” Joel demands.

You part your lips and stick out your tongue for him.

A thin pearly trace remains near the corner, and Joel wipes it forward with his thumb, pressing it into the center, and waits until you close your lips around him.

You wrap your swollen lips around his thumb and suck it clean.

“S’my perfect, perfect girl.” His other hand strokes across your hair, repairing the strands his fists disturbed. “Took everything I gave you and more.”

The approval makes you smile weakly around his thumb.

He withdraws it and caresses your sticky cheek. His cock stands hard enough to hang heavily from his open jeans, damp with saliva, and the release you hadn’t managed to catch.

His hand slides from your cheek to your throat. His fingers close around it and draw you upward while his other arm catches your waist, hauling you from the floor until your body presses tight against him. Your knees are sore and weak; you barely have time to straighten before his mouth is on yours.

He kisses you with none of his earlier patience. His lips force yours apart and his tongue sweeps inside as though he intends to taste every trace of himself you swallowed. The force of it tips your head back against his palm and leaves you clinging to his open shirt.

His grip remains firm around your throat, pressing beneath your jaw while you cling to him.

“Taste so good,” he mutters against your mouth.

You try to kiss him again, but his hand keeps your head tipped back.

“Mouth took me so well,” he whispers into your mouth, his grip still firm on your throat. “Wanna see how well the rest of you does.

You moan against the hand around your throat and the length of him dancing between your sticky thighs.

“P-Please,” Joel,” you whine, trying to inch closer to him.

“Please what?” he asks, his hand gripping tighter around your waist.

“Please, f-fuck me,” you whisper.

He presses a kiss under your chin and onto your mouth, swallowing the desperate sound that follows when he turns you around.

“Anythin’ you want, darlin’.”

He pushes your front against the counter and gathers your nightgown above your hips. Cool air reaches the damp fabric between your legs as he hooks his hand behind one knee and lifts it onto the counter, leaving you exposed with your other foot barely touching the floor.

The bowl, now holding nothing but strawberry syrup, rattles beside your elbow, pink juice lapping against the porcelain while Joel pulls your underwear aside.

His fingers swipe through your folds, gathering the slickness there before chasing it back toward your clit. The brief contact pulls a helpless moan from you, your hips bucking into his hand and searching for more.

“I know, baby. I know,” he coos, pressing a kiss beneath your ear as his fingers caress you again. “Gonna let me fuck that ache away?”

You whimper at his touch, your head nodding helplessly as your cheek rubs against his. “Y-yes. Please, Joel.”

“Don’t worry baby.” He pulls your hips firmly against his. “Gonna take such good care of you.”

He wraps one arm around your waist and positions his swollen head at your entrance. Then he drives inside, filling you in one firm thrust that forces your hands against the counter and sends the bowl rattling toward the wall.

The sudden fullness forces a full-on cry from your chest. His palm rises from between you and wraps around your mouth before the sound can carry upstairs.

“Keep it down, he warns into your ear. “Can’t let him hear us.”

You nod against his hand, tears threatening your eyes.

He releases his it from around your mouth and wraps it back around your throat. He drives into you again, hard enough to push your hip into the counter—hard enough to bruise probably. He doesn’t fuck you with the same patience he usually does. Each drive of his cock forces you onto your toes, your lifted leg trembling beside the bowl while his fingers dig into the flesh at your hips.

It’s exactly what you wanted from him.

His pleasure without apology. His body using your instead of arranging every touch around your comfort. Still though, his care survives inside the roughness—his arm braces your chest when your elbow threatens to buckle, and his palm muffles each cry without stealing your air.

“Takin’ me so well,” he praises into your hair. “Knew I’d fuck that little game right outta you.”

His words send you over faster than either of you expects.

Your body clamps around him, puling hard enough to interrupt his rhythm. His hand leaves your mouth and curls around your throat again, holding you upright while your orgasm tears through you.

“Joel—” you whine.

“I know, baby.” His lips press against your temple. “Ride it out.”

He fucks you through the final contractions, his strokes turning uneven as your body keeps gripping him.

“Missed you so damn much,” he whispers into your ear.

Then his hips drive flush against you and remain there while his cock pulses inside you.

Hot release fills you in several thick spurts, each one accompanied by Joel’s fingers in your mouth to muffle your whimpers. His face buries against your hair as he holds you against his chest until the last twitch passes.

For several seconds, neither of you moves. It’s just the sound of his breathing in your ear and the sound of you gasping for air.

Then Joel lowers your leg and turns you carefully in his arms. Your knees nearly give out, but he catches you and wraps both his arm around your waist before you can fall.

His hand caresses the throat he was just gripping, and he presses a wet kiss to the side of your mouth.

“Learn your lesson?”

You nod, exhausted and pleased, because that’s all you can manage.

Joel raises an eyebrow.

“Yes,” you correct yourself, still breathing heavy. “I’ll come to you next time. P-promise.”

“S’right.” He kisses your forehead and draws your nightgown back over your thighs with his free hand. “My good girl.”

You curl against his chest, smiling into his shirt.

“It worked, though.”

His palm comes down quick against your sore ass, loud enough to make a noise that he doesn’t seem to care about.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader

Summary: Joel's exhausted by the time he makes it to bed. But when a pretty little thing crawls in beside him, he finds the time for you, just like he always does.

Warnings: +18 MDNI, post outbreak, jackson!joel, unspecified age difference, joel pov, porn no plot, dry humping, slow and soft sex, smut with feelings, internalized shame, intimacy, unprotected piv, clit stimulation, kissing

Note: i haven't written for joel in monthsss but i hope you enjoy!!

WC: 2k

[masterlist] [AO3]

Joel’s the kind of exhausted that only comes with age. 

Weary bones, heavy limbs, tired eyes. 

He’s falling into bed as soon as he gets home, often forfeiting dinner in favor of blissful rest. Sometimes even before the sun’s fully set. 

Kento Nanami x wife!reader

cw: fluff and more fluff

Life in Malaysia was bliss for you and Nanami. There wasn’t a second thought to move there after the Shibuya incident. Nanami made it out alive and that was enough reason to pack your bags and move.

A year or so later, you got pregnant and gave birth to a little girl— whom was the light of your life.

She was adventurous from the moment she could walk. You and Nanami owned a home on the beach, so trips there were frequent.

Turning four, she really found a hobby in walking around the streets of the country and finding cool things or eating new foods. You and your husband always chaperoned her happily, introducing her to new foods or buying her new clothes and toys.

Be my Baby

Warnings: 18+, Smut, MDNI, huge age gap (20s and 50s) mean!joel, teasing, bratty!reader, spanking, pinv, unprotected sex, finger sucking, rough sex, degradation, daddy kink, cumming in mouth, no outbreak/alternate universe

A/N: im so sorry for the long wait anon!! I absolutely love this idea, it has the perfect Ldr vibe which is why i chose that title hehe. I hope you enjoy this anon, and my pookies too <333

You'd been scheming for weeks.

Every time you saw him out front—sweaty from working on his old truck, grey shirt clinging to his broad chest, salt-pepper stubble darkening on his jaw, those big hands handling things so easily—you felt that oh so familiar coil of heat low in your belly. 

Joel Miller was fifty-something, weathered and worn, with a mean streak you could practically taste. 

And you wanted him like a god damn fever. 

“Where’s mom?” Was the first thing Megumi upon arriving home from school and seeing only his father Toji.

“Your ma’s working tonight. It’s just you and me, kid.”

Megumi wasn’t the tantrum throwing type, but this situation definitely called for a pout. Homework with his dad was never a good time.

Toji stood up from the couch and approached his mini me, sliding his backpack off his shoulder and beginning to look through it. “Don’t look so sad. I’ll go easy on you with the homework, if that’s what you’re so worried about.”

“And food. You can’t cook, pa.” The spiky haired boy complained. Toji scoffed, his ego a tad wounded at his son’s harsh words.

“Yeah, yeah, you brat. Take your homework and go sit at the table. I’ll be there soon.”

———

You sighed in relief the second you got home, by a miracle, your boss let you go home early. That millisecond of bliss was immediately gone when you heard your boys bickering in the kitchen.

“SEVEN PLUS EIGHT IS SIXTEEN!” Megumi screeched, his little fists slamming on the table frustratedly. Toji, being nothing if not a child in an adult’s body, argued back.

“The hell it is, brat! Put fifteen down!” Megumi was ready to shoot back until he saw you. He jumped out of his chair at the speed of light, ready to snitch on his father.

“Mom! He’s bullying me!” You were biting back a laugh as you picked Megumi up, planting a kiss in his hair.

“Is he?” You pointed a look at Toji who was already walking over to get his loving in.

“Brat doesn’t know simple math,” he muttered before wrapping his arm around the both of you and planting kisses in the crook of your neck. “Glad you’re back early. I’ll still make dinner.” You smiled, setting Megumi down so Toji could help you take off your jacket.

You grimaced. As sweet he was for offering, your husband could not cook if his life depended on it.

“Hard pass, baby. Last night’s food is fine.” You chuckled, grabbing hold of your son’s hand. “How about we go finish that homework, hm?” You suggested.

“Actually, we already finished. Can we play instead?” You looked up at Toji who cosigned the boy’s words.

tw: age gap (reader is early 20s, toji is early 40s)

mdni! 🔞

“such a good girl, baby. fuck..” toji murmured, his hands on your hips as you straddled his waist. “way too good for an old man like me…”

you’re currently naked in your boyfriends lap, your arms loosely wrapped around his neck as you took his length inside of you.

he’s so big, pulsing and making your walls burn in the best way possible. you’re whining, clenching tight around his dick as you slide up and sink back down.

he’s leaning back against the headboard, looking up at you with half lidded, lazy eyes.

you’re so close to him that you can see the grey hair in his stubble that he tries so hard to keep out of your sight. he doesn’t want you to see him aging like this while you stay young and lively and fun.

you’re growing more and more exhausted, but his big, calloused hands on your hips are helping to guide you up and down.

“mngh… t-toji.. m’tired.” you whine, your movements slowing. you both were on the cusp of your orgasms, but your thighs were aching and burning, and every time he pushed in fully, it practically knocked the wind out of you.

“i know, sweetheart.” he whispered lowly, his voice rough. one of his hands snaked up your spine, cradling the back of your head and pulling you down into a deep kiss. “keep going f’me. i know you can.” he whispered against your lips.

his hand that had been on your hip moved down to your ass, smacking it gently before squeezing at the soft flesh.

you yelped from the mixture of pain and pleasure, the feeling giving you enough energy to move your hips again with his guidance.

“too much…” you whine, but you continue to move at a steady pace, your head dropping to rest in his neck. the stubble on his jaw scratched against your temple as you moved.

“just like that baby.. you’re doing so good. just a little more.” he muttered, his voice becoming rougher as his orgasm grew closer.

you felt a warmth tingling in your lower stomach, making your toes curl. toji could practically sense that, his fingers moving down to slowly, yet firmly, play with your clit, making you jolt.

“m’gonna cum.. mmf- toji, k-keep doing that…” you whimpered, rocking your hips faster, pulling suppressed groans from his lips.

“cum for me, baby. you worked so hard my sweet girl.” his free hand gently held the back of your head, still buried in his neck.

his words tipped you over, and you came with a loud cry, squeezing impossibly tight around him.

he followed right after you (always making sure you finish first, of course), his sticky release filling you up.

the two of you just sat there for a few minutes, his hand rubbing soothing circles on your bare back, whispering to you about how good you were while you hid your face in his neck.

even though your boyfriend was getting older, and his stamina might not be what it used to be, all he could do was hope that you wouldn’t grow tired of him.

he knows someone like you, young, sweet, and gorgeous, could have anyone you’d like. he didn’t deserve you, and sometimes he questioned why you even loved him.

but moments like this, when he was holding you and making you feel good, toji fushiguro, a man who never felt deserving of anything, really felt like he could just be with someone for once.

||a/n: this got kinda sad at the end soz lol

anyway i’m replaying silent hill 2 rn and i just luv james so much poor baby

COWBOY TOJIII

AITA FOR SABOTAGING MY EX-GF’S NEW RELATIONSHIP ?

18+. sum 𓏲 you and fratkuna are the kind of couple who break up & make up every other week. but when you swear you’re done with him and go off to date his rival, the new football team captain, can his frat brothers help him get you back ?

cast: nerdjo (‘toru’ gojo) + frat! jjk men (‘sigma chi’) : fratjo (‘sato’ gojo) ◞ geto ◞ toji ◞ sukuna ◞ nanami 𓏲 gallery here !

EX-BOYFRIEND TACTICS #1: GET YOUR GIRL BACK !

taught by: toru gojo

‘sabotaging your ex girlfriend’s new relationship to get her back? this can’t be a good idea.’

ΣΧ “‘high value woman’ but your new man’s a misogynist?!”

ryomen sukuna’s time of irritation is approximately 9:17 PM.

toru gojo’s bedroom floor is velvet carpet with half-empty beer bottles rotting on the rug. his center table is littered with poker cards & sato’s candy wrappers, and geto suguru & sato gojo are avoiding eye contact so they don’t burst out in laughter as sukuna glares daggers at toru’s screen.

toru’s hands shake under sukuna’s glare but he holds the phone steady. the instagram post on screen is a slap to sukuna’s face.

HOT NEW CAMPUS COUPLE : FOOTBALL CAPTAIN NAOYA ZENIN & Y/N L/N !

and the photo is you. swollen lips & pretty gaze & a dress so short it makes sukuna’s jaw ache—but not as much as naoya’s arm around you does. beside you toji’s cousin naoya zenin is there, grin cocky, eyes glinting in the camera light and arm around your waist because his fugly ass doesn’t know you like to be held around the hips instead. sukuna’s jaw ticks.

LOVE SHACK

Stepdad Joel Miller x fem!reader

Summary: You confess to your stepdad about having a crush and he gets angry and horny about it.

Tw: 18+ mdni, smut, step-cest thus infidelity, big legal age gap, mean!Joel, switching POV, reader has a crush on a girl, Joel is disgusting but accepting of it, reader is afraid of spiders (no spiders in the story), f/m!oral, throat fucking, light pussy spanking, one face slap, unprotected piv, creampie, multiple orgasms, hyperspermia, degradation, slutshaming, manhandling, praise kink, daddy kink, mention of alcohol, swearing.

Word count: 3 k

A/n: the story was inspired by this anon ask, thank you for the idea, love! Kisses to @milla-frenchy for beta-ing and inspiration behind ‘the spider shed’ lol♥️ Dividers by @cafekitsune ty<3 Hope you all will enjoy! Muah💋

Stepdad Joel Masterlist || MASTERLIST

warnings ⁀➷ semi-public sex, age gap (rafe is in his 40’s, reader is early twenties), cheating, unprotected piv, baby trapping, boob play, oral. 𝐌𝐃𝐍𝐈 𝟏𝟖+

author’s note ⁀➷ fuckkk i wanna lick his bald ass head.

older bf!rafe who would never even think about saying no to you. It doesn’t matter how many of his cards you’ve maxed out, he would never make you unhappy. You never notice it, but his dick twitches at the sight of your happiness. He knows for a fact that no man will ever take care of you like he does, and that’s what makes him sleep better at night.

older bf!rafe who spoils you more than his own wife. Who never fails to pay all of your bills on time and gives you even more money on the side. Who takes you shopping to buy all of the clothes and jewelry that you could ever want.

older bf!rafe who wants to taste you at every chance he gets. If y’all are stuck in traffic, he’ll quickly pull your panties aside to get a good taste of you. He always has a need to dive his head in between your legs and take his sweet time with your pussy.

older bf!rafe who brings you to his yacht to finally get some alone time with you. Whose wife and colleagues stress him out so much that he needs you in order to get some release. Who finally feels a sense of peace whenever you are around him.

older bf!rafe being on an important work call as you’re down on your knees. He puts his fist over his mouth trying not to moan as you shove his dick even deeper in your throat.

His legs shivering and twitching as he’s seconds away from cumming down your throat. Who jerks violently as he reaches his orgasm and tries to push you off of him. Who throws his head back in agony as you have no intention of stopping until you make him cum again.

older bf!rafe who brings you into his house whenever his wife is away at work. Who fucks you hard as he stares at their wedding photos with a wicked grin on his face. Who makes sure that he fucks you on her side of the bed, letting you know that you should be his wife and not her.

older bf!rafe who’s heart swells at the nudes you send him while he’s at work. Who excuses himself from the conference room to jerk off to your pretty pictures. His grip gets tighter around his dick at the reminiscence of your tits in his mouth. Imagining how your tits would squeeze around his length as he fucks them. He cums hard at the thought of your tits in his face.

older bf!rafe who makes sure to breed you each and every single time. Whose thick arms pin you down to stay absolutely still as he cums inside of you. Who makes sure that you will certainly get pregnant so that he will forever be in your life. You will finally be Mrs. Cameron after all.