Fantastical Ramblings!

Sandbox Adventures(One Piece, Zoro x OC | Complete)

Grains Against The Tide(One Piece, Zoro x OC | Discontinued)

The Storm Before The Fall(Wednesday, Isaac Night, Francoise Night & Gomez Addams | Ongoing/On hiatus)

Night Fell With A Lightning Strike(Wednesday, Isaac Night x vampire!OC | Complete)

Third Strike(Wednesday, Isaac Night x vampire!OC | Complete)

Second Hand(Wednesday, Da Vinci Galpin!OC & Pugsley Addams | Complete)

Darkest Part Of The Night(Wednesday, Isaac Night x psychic!reader AU | Complete)

Time Is The Fire(Wednesday, Isaac Night x pyro?reader AU | Ongoing/Active)

Reader Inserts: SFW | NSFW(Wednesday, Isaac Night x fem!reader)

Other POVs(Wednesday, Isaac Night x fem!reader)

"I can't stand children, darling," you sigh. "I'm hardly the one to ask."

Your lover is circling you with a clinical austerity so representative of the essence of his personality, it makes your pulse flutter and boil. He flicks a slight frown in your direction, little more than a shallow dip between his eyebrows and a light purse of his lips. You lower your head in silent apology and try to steady your heartbeat while he continues to record your vitals.

"Well, I'll tell you then," your love goes on. "They freeze. Or maybe throw a fit. They look to their caretaker for guidance, faced with a situation where they are incapable of comprehending the variables around them to the extent required to act of their own will."

"That sounds accurate enough. So you're saying a mortal wouldn't be able to handle all the memories from their past incarnations?" you wonder.

"That's my hypothesis. Such an individual might be rendered catatonic. They might even die. Who's to say?"

Despite the grim fate he describes, your love sounds exhilarated, as full of enthusiasm as a child being led to a candy stall.

"Oh, I don't know, it's not so bad as all that," you mull. "I've never been catatonic. Well, not from an overwhelm of memory, at any rate."

"Well certainly not. The expectation would be that your species is specially suited to withstand such a barrage of information," he tsks, as though you've betrayed some disappointing lack of critical thought by speaking too soon. You bite your lip and let him elucidate you. "Also, if you accrue all those memories gradually and carry them over from one existence to the next, the strain would almost certainly be reduced. But imagine if you forgot between lifetimes and it all came rushing back at once. It would be cranial overload. Catastrophic."

"Well... I'll leave the hypothesizing to you. You've officially waded out of my depth," you sigh, content to know less than he does.

"I need to do far more than hypothesize to get the answers I'm after. If you still want to help me... I can make no guarantees that the process will be painless."

His clipped tone wavers with the barest shadow of hesitation. Touched as you are that he might care for your comfort, you reassure him with a light, careless laugh.

"Make it hurt then, darling," you purr. "If it comes at your hands, I'll adore the pain."

He doesn't know you well enough to be sure you're not joking, not yet, not in this iteration. He affords you a taut smile and sets his stethoscope down to focus on filling out a chart.

"Tell me more about your memories," he requests.

"What, stories from our past lives?"

"No, I meant the mechanics. Are you born remembering everything?"

"Not at all. I never remember anything of my true self before five or six years of age. Even then, it comes back slowly, in little flashes. Sometimes waves. It usually comes back in the order I experienced it. That's why I never really remember you until sometime in my teens. It all depends."

"Do you actually remember all that you've ever experienced? Or are there things you've forgotten as the centuries wear on?"

"Well, there are things that get fuzzy. Faces I can't quite picture. Sometimes the order things happened in is... tricky for me to keep track of. Some memories overlap and that can be confusing."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, imagine you've gone to the same newstand every day for your entire life. If I asked you to tell me, in exact reproduction, the details of one visit in particular, could you do it?"

"I want to say yes to that."

"Answer practically. Not pridefully."

He thinks about it for a moment and when his concession is given, it is with grudging respect for your rationale. His arrogance balks at the idea that his mind could be anything but a faultless steel trap, but he knows he is only muddying his own data by posturing.

"Oh... fine. I suppose I might mix up a few details. I see your point."

"It's a lot like that."

Your love chews over your illustration for a long time. His pencil tapped with mindless, rhythmic habituality against his clipboard.

"You must get déjà vu like nobody's business," he finally says.

You can't help but laugh at him. In every one of his separate lifetimes, your love chooses an obsession to fixate over until he either solves it, or dies trying. In this incarnation, it seems he has chosen to bang his head against the wall of memory. Since you've sauntered into his life, his focus has shifted and sharpened into a fervor that nears the mad intensity of mania. Can a reincarnating mortal ever remember all their lifetimes? Or are they doomed to oblivion with every new death and rebirth?

You're as keenly interested in this latest line of inquiry as he is. Perhaps more so. How magical would it be if your soulmate could recall your existence from one life to the next? How much simpler would that make your recurring search, how much easier the resulting efforts to conquer his fickle affections?

"Are you ready?" he asks abruptly.

"For you? Always," you smile.

"Then lay back. Before we begin... where do you think we should start our search?" he wonders.

"I always thought the spark resided in a phoenix's heart," you tell him as you settle down on his makeshift operating table.

"And you'll... you can survive?" he wonders. "Such an invasive procedure, I mean..."

The current of distress pulling his words is too endearing. You reach for his hand, not yet gloved, not yet so impersonal as to be immune to a comforting touch.

"You've seen me heal from worse, haven't you?" you tell him.

"I don't know, have I?"

Your hesitation is born of the very uncertainty you've just explained to him. Has he seen it, in this lifetime? Or are you forgoing chronology again in favor of wishful thinking? Memories summoned in the wrong order, smiles you treasure that overlap because you've seen them more times than you can count.

"If you don't know now... maybe you will if you can locate my spark and finish your experiments," you reason. "I'll be fine, darling. I can take it for you. And I'll mend after you're finished faster than you can blink. In fact... you'd best work quickly while you're in there. You might have a minute or two before your incisions close again."

"I'm well aware of the complications," he informs you. "I'm prepared."

One last sweep of his eyes across yours. They ask if you're certain that you're prepared as well. The cold grey of his irises in this lifetime is unfamiliar. Piercing, somehow more fitting than the other colors you've seen him don between incarnations. With grey eyes, your love looks like a proper mad scientist, even with concern weighing heavily at their corners. The color matches the dusty streaks overtaking the soft brown of curls that are tamer than you've ever seen them. He's so much older than you in this lifetime, so much wiser, so much more experienced than you're used to him being. You've wasted an absurd amount time in this miserable existence trying to force him to see you as anything more than a naive child, a lunatic waif throwing herself improprietously at someone twice her age.

Your claims of immortality help, certainly, but if the reticence in his gaze is any indication, he still feels some guilt, some sense that he's taking advantage of you. Even after everything you've been through in the handful of years since you found him again.

"So am I," you insist, stubborn as ever. "Let's begin, shall we?"

1990

Isaac took a long time to settle in your grasp. Or was the interminable wait you suffered a product of your own perspective? A view warped beyond rationality by panic and the terror that you might lose him for good?

"Not here! Not now!"

If you lost him because of a mistake wrought of your own impatience and desperation, you knew the eternity that remained to you would be spent in unremitting regret.

Eventually, his shaking did taper down. His fit subsided and the blood streaming down his face stemmed. His grip on your hand slackened enough for you to break free, only to gasp in horror when you saw Cætus' spark all but embedded in the palm of Isaac's hand. It's heat charred the flesh around it, melted matter until boiling blood and tacking viscera effectively soldered it in place.

You reached out with the compulsion to wrest it free again and heal your lover, but you thought better of it. Instead, you pulled him into your lap. Your bashed hand protested the effort even as tendons and skin knit back together at a superhuman pace. Ragged, your breaths filled the air with the same clamor as a storm gale ravaging woodland. As bad as his seizing had been, this stillness was somehow even worse.

"Isaac?"

You gathered your sleeve and dabbed at the blood smearing his face. Was he even breathing? You paused with a finger close to his nose and held your own breath until you felt life stirring faintly, slight as the flutter of a midge's wings against your skin. Your own explosive exhalation wasn't relief, not quite yet. Not with him still so unresponsive, still so stiff in your embrace.

"I wish you wouldn't have gotten so sick way back then," you sighed near his ear. "Do you remember? That time when you were so fixated on finding my spark, on studying the source of my memories. All you were ever able to do was tell me where it wasn't. After you died, I had to figure the rest out for myself. Oh, that was hard, my love. You know I'm not as clever as you are. Not so skilled a surgeon. But I did it anyway. I had to, so that when I found you again, I would know where it was. Just in case you still wanted to know."

You readjusted your hold on him, crossed your legs and pulled him higher until he was cradled in your arms with his blood staining your ruined uniform shirt. Your fingers worked through his hair and you rocked in place without realizing what you were doing.

"But then, when I found you again, of course you didn't remember a thing," you recalled with a wry upward quirk of your lips. The expression was too bitter to be a smile, too wistful to be a grimace. "When I found you again, you were just as focused as ever. On aliens, of all things! You were so convinced you were going to discover proof of life among the stars... I wanted you to cut me open just to see if touching my spark, even just once, would make you remember something, but you developed this- this inane aversion to blood in that life! Of all the things to be intolerant too... oh, but you were just as vicious as ever, despite your shortcomings. You preferred poison to scalpels in that incarnation. Oh, darling, we did have so much fun that time around..."

You dredged your fingers from his curls with some effort to swipe at the blood slowly drying on his lips. His breathing adhered to a steady rhythm now, a deep, slow cadence synced to your own measured inhalations. Encouraged, you held him closer to your chest and kept talking, kept wiping at scarlet flakes that fell away under the duress of your gentle persistence.

"Won't you open your eyes for me? Won't you say something? Can you hear me, darling? Do you know I'm still here, still with you? Please don't let this be the last time I get to hold you. Wake up for me, Isaac. Wake up and say you know who I am."

The very idea was enough to fill you with surging, merciless longing. He never knew you, not truly. Not the way you knew him, with one eye perpetually cast down the long tunnel of reincarnation. You knew the sum of your lover's capricious predilections, the solution to the equation comprised of all the variables of his eclectic eccentricities. You knew him in a way that transcended intimacy and made a mockery of understanding. The fundamental fabric of his being was a weave you memorized centuries ago. You could recognize him by touch alone, no matter how the dye of rebirth changed his appearance.

You cradled his inert face in your palms and dipped to taste the crimson tang decorating his lips like some splotchy, improvised stain applied for vanity's sake. Your mouth nudged his, gently at first, testing to see if he would respond. When he remained unmoving, your tongue slid out to tease him into opening for you. The taste of blood raised bumps of delight along your arms, tingled down your spine with electric warmth that felt wrong because he couldn't register it with you.

You drew back to sigh unhappily. Your breath fanned out across his cheeks, reeking of a false violence derived from the lingering traces of his blood tainting your tongue.

"Isaac... my love... my darling..."

His expression shifted minutely and your heart leapt like a startled deer. Your fingers tightened on his body raptly. Your posture dropped until your forehead tapped his. Then you realized you were robbing yourself of the ability to watch him. You drew back again breathlessly.

"Isaac?! Are you alright?"

His eyelids creaked open like rusty shutters and he blinked up at you like the light hurt. You cocked your head, curiosity raging now that your fears that he might never wake up were allayed.

"Do you... know me?" you wondered.

The suspense of his pause strangled you. You tried to swallow, but your throat was too dry, your tongue too heavy. Isaac's lips rehearsed motion soundlessly, practiced syllables before he put breath behind them.

"Roya," he finally muttered, eyes fixed to yours with an intensity that sliced to your core.

The name sparked no recognition in you. It was his turn to quirk his head aside. A frown tugged at his features that you tried to smooth away with the pads of your thumbs while obliviousness droned down at him from your expression.

"Don't tell me you forgot," he demanded, still lacking vigor.

"I've had far too many names to keep track of them all," you chuckled. Ironic, perhaps, because you could recite every single one of your soulmate's names like sacred text. "Refresh my memory."

"I wanted to live forever," Isaac reminded you.

The cue was all it took to bring a grin to your face, curved in a way that was almost wicked despite the tenderness relief brought to your usually implacable countenance.

"Oh, you mean the very first time we met," you purred. Happiness seized you, flung you high above elation into a state of celebration that you simmered in quietly while you held him. "Of course I didn't forget, darling. How could I ever forget?"

Isaac started to smile, but then his eyes slammed shut again. His brow furrowed and he bared his teeth. A wrecking shudder ripped through his languishing frame and he groaned as if in agony.

"Darling?"

"F-fine, I'm... my head hurts," he complained. "It's all still coming back... too fast, too much, too- it's too much!"

"But you can manage it!" you insisted selfishly. "There can't be much more for you to recall, dearest!"

A process that, for you, crammed millennia into a decade or so, was putting him through decades in a matter of moments. Would it take hours for his centuries to reveal themselves? His fingers found your clothes and fisted there as if he could moor himself against the tide if he held on tight enough.

"Dying... I keep dying!" he gasped. "It hurts!"

Your lips drew taut with displeasure.

"Death never hurts nearly as much as living," you chastised him.

Your sage perspective did nothing to anchor him. He still grasped at you, nails digging brutally into flesh through fabric while his shaking continued intermittently.

"Tell me the last thing you remember," you requested, unfazed by the force of his grasp.

Maybe, you thought hopefully, you could distract him enough to ease the abrupt, unnatural revelations assaulting his psyche.

"A raft," he rasps. "The sea... n-no, a storm!"

"Hm, I must not have been there for that," you frowned. "Keep talking. Does talking make it easier?"

"Please, I can't- just let me-"

"If you don't want to talk, you don't have to," you assured him. "It's alright. I won't leave you, I promise. You're going to be fine."

His tremors wore on, subsiding and then flaring again like the unforgiving lash of the tide. Still, his groans were music to your ears, evidence that he was still alive, still fighting, still suffering.

Suffering was living, after all.

You held him through the tribulation of it all with a grin decorating your features that must have seemed callous given the unabating intensity of your lover's travails. You couldn't help yourself.

He remembered. After all this time, he would remember you, he would know you the same way you knew him. Or at last, to some approximation of the way you knew him. Whatever the precise outcome of your experiment, you basked in this initial success.

It was dark by the time Isaac remembered enough to despise you. The passion that passed for love never lessened, but with one eye cast back over the shoulder of his limited mortal life, it became clear that your affection was a double-edged blade. It cut both ways with malignant glee. He shivered in your arms one last time, because all too often, you'd told him as much.

My love is a curse, darling. Are you sure you want it?

Isaac remembered a boy who wanted immortality, regardless of what it would cost him. He remembered a hunt that ended in failure. He killed a phoenix, only to realize that eternal life could no more be pilfered than salvation. He remembered the alternative offered by a cruel sister of the firebird whose existence he'd cut short. A bargain most likely proposed, he realized with the benefit of hindsight, for her own twisted amusement.

"Did you ever think you would actually care for me?"

Isaac's words were soft, but they commanded the spotlight of your attention the instant he uttered them.

"It was so long ago," you crooned in response. "Who knows what I thought, way back when? Who cares, when it lead us here?"

"Why... why..."

Most of Isaac's questions answered themselves. Your maliciousness was both a means and an end. Had more evil a creature ever existed? More sinister, more vile, more predisposed to chaos and corruption for the sake of your own sick, transient entertainment?

Maybe the fool mated to her, he thought to himself. The irony wrenched an unwilling, wry laugh from him. As bad as you were, he was hardly any better. Simply, perhaps, more clueless. At least, he had been before you saw fit to burn away the veil preserving his ignorance.

"Why would you want me to remember everything?" he mumbled. "Weren't you afraid I would hate you?"

"Of course not!" you gasped. "Why would I fear your hatred, darling?"

Another answer emerged from the seemingly endless haze of the past. It was all there, mercifully hidden somewhere behind the memories of Isaac's current life. Recollection would take intention, perhaps even practice. He had a lot to reflect on, now that it was all within his reach for the first time.

"Right, because hate is just love with teeth," he recited.

Your smile softened to hear a quote of yours fall so easily from his lips. Passion, as far as you were concerned, was passion. Black or red, dark or light, it all amounted to the same chemical high. The same elusive confluence that could lift you from the static mire of boredom and apathy that defined your existence otherwise.

"So, my love," you purred.

You dipped to brush your lips down the bridge of his nose, over the sweep of his cheekbone. You made him tremble when your teeth came out to play, grazing subtly along his jaw on your way lower.

"... how do you love me now?" you wondered. "With tongue? Or with teeth?"

"Blood, or breath?" Isaac countered, calling on another of your favored allegories.

The humor of his retort was almost grudging, but no less admiring for the way he reviled the atrocities you'd subjected him to across your lifespans. For every atrocity of yours that he resented because it was perpetrated against him, he remembered another that he delighted in because your cruelty was a sight to behold.

As long as it was aimed at anyone else.

Your mouth hovered over his, open and waiting. Wide eyes darted up to search for his, blurry for the impediment of proximity. You could taste his injuries on his breath. You inhaled and dragged your tongue over your lips to savor the delicacy. For the first time in this life, Isaac kissed you the way you wanted him to. His fingers on your body were raw possession. His tongue against yours was a persuasion, the bite that followed a reprimand. You responded in kind, as exuberant to receive his vitriol as you were his adoration. He gave you both without restraint and before you broke apart, you ached with the need to suck at air that his passion deprived you of.

Possession curdled into something sour in the space you took to catch your breath. Isaac's fingers found your throat, perusing at first, considering the race of your pulse and the rush of your inhalations. Then they closed decisively, starving you in a heartbeat of the oxygen you needed to fuel your recovery. He rose from your lap with unmistakable vengeance radiating from his sneering expression. Your lips parted with no less relish of his animosity than of his affection.

"I remember everything, you know!" he hissed, high enough now to loom over you menacingly. You rasped patiently in his shadow with one hand on his wrist and the other grasping loosely at the front of his shirt. You would let him kill you before you stopped him from choking you, but you couldn't resist the urge to touch him.

"I could kill you for any one of five dozen evil things you've done to me!" he growled furiously. "I'd say you have a lot of nerve inflicting these memories on me... but knowing you, you're just thrilled to have hurt me!"

Even asphyxiating, you grinned up at him. The lift of your eyebrows sufficed to communicate your disdain, delicate and suggestive even with his fingers preventing you from speaking.

You deserved every one of them, darling.

Isaac wavered. Your gaze undercut the validity of his ire in more ways than one. For every injury you'd castigated him with, every friend killed or driven away, every stolen mercy, he had visited an insult in repayment. Years spent in scornful avoidance, comforts withheld, love denied for the sake of spite. More of your blood stained his hands than the other way around.

Even worse, how many of your sick torments had he secretly enjoyed?

He released you with an exasperated huff. His abrupt resignation was anticlimactic given the heat of his wrath mere seconds earlier. You dragged in a few ragged, desperate breaths. It was your turn to collapse in his lap and his turn to wrap you in a loose embrace, one that contained no trace of the aggression he'd just leveled your way.

"I know. I'm just as bad," he sighed in resentful concession to your unspoken reminder.

"You know you wouldn't want me," you coughed, "... if I were any less than the devil herself."

The words rang true as a commandment. If your love was damnation, Isaac was a sinner who knew where his indiscretions would lead. His cold soul craved the sting of hellfire and you were the only one who could give him the scourges that would sate his queer hunger.

Even so, there were times you went too far.

He dipped low, lips barely moving as he mourned into the shell of your ear.

"I remember what you did to Marie," he informed you. The soft mutter was a condemnation and a lamentation at once.

"You should know that name means nothing to me," you snapped. It was a lie this time. You might not have remembered her name, left to your own callous, narcissistic devices, but you knew exactly who he was talking about.

"She was my wife. You killed her."

Killed was an understatement. The brutality of Marie's murder was something Isaac shuddered to think he had ever forgotten. Disgust coursed through him in waves at the thought of how many times he'd kissed you since, how often you'd taken his love like it was something you were entitled to, as if you'd never wronged him so unforgivably. The only thing that kept him from violence was the realization that he'd loved you first.

Damning as it was, Isaac loved you still. Not the same way he'd loved Marie, that much was certain. Not the same way he loved Sara. His love for them was as close to pure as his tainted heart could come. His love for you was a bramble that could have bled you both dry.

"Hm."

Your hum betrayed your satisfaction, revealed the hideous reality that even now, you were reveling in the damage you'd done. Isaac's hands twitched over your prone form with the urge to tear, to bludgeon, to wring until he forced you to repent your crimes. Or at the very least, regret them.

"Is it even possible for you to feel regret?" he wondered, numb from the remembrance of a grief so crushing it still paralyzed him.

"Of course. Why deny myself such a delicacy?" you countered. "Now... if you need some time to dwell on the past, my love, I can give you time. Just don't ask too much of me. I can never stay away from you for long. You know that well enough, now."

"I don't need time," Isaac insisted. "I need... what I need... I need the same thing from you now as I did before."

You straightened enough to tilt your head in wary inquisition. Isaac's expression was set, resolute with the stubborn arrogance that was so familiar to you. He reached for your throat again. You sucked in a quick, deep breath in preparation, but he didn't choke you this time. His grip closed on your jaw, demanded your gaze as if you could possibly harbor the audacity to cast it elsewhere.

"You're vicious, but you're not stupid," he observed. "You didn't forget the way I hunted you down after you took Marie from me. I know you must still remember how I made you pay for her death."

Your sneer was impeded by the memory he evoked. The expression fell into a piteous facsimile of impudence, weighted incurably by the hurt of what he'd done to you. Of all the painful ways you'd left behind an incarnation, the echoes of your love's blade biting into your flesh again and again was still vivid enough, still terrible enough to top the list. He'd set out to drown you, only for fury to get the better of him. Even you weren't quite sure whether you'd died from blood loss or suffocation first.

Judging by the savage gleam behind his twisted grin, Isaac remembered his revenge as distinctly as you did.

"That's the only reason I'm willing to forgive you for what you did, by the way," he assured you. "Because you've already been punished for it. Even if we both know you'll never be sorry."

"Never be sorry?" you scoffed. "It took me so long to sync our life cycles again after that disaster... I've spent a long time being sorry for my impatience. But can you really hold my jealousy against me, darling? Put yourself in my place. What if you found me in the embrace of another man? Could any pretense of forbearance temper your possessiveness?"

Isaac didn't grace you with an answer. You both knew he would fare no better than you under such strained circumstances. He moved on without batting an eye at your provocations. His grip tightened enough to make your jaw creak under the pressure, though you refused to wince.

"You're not going to hurt Sara that way," he insisted.

"This again-"

"I mean it! In fact, I mean it more now than before I remembered everything!" Isaac spat. "If you lay a finger on her, I'll leave you for good!"

The threat landed between you, heavy as a cannonball dropped from a summit. Deadly, were it to fall a few inches wayward of where it now rested, cracking the ground between you. You surveyed his features and found him serious as death.

"Leave me for- leave me?!" you demanded. "You're mine, Isaac Night! Not hers! You were mine first and I'll be damned if I-"

"You are damned!" Isaac hissed. "And you're wrong, too! You've always been more obsessed with me than I've been with you! Call it love, call it devotion, call it what you want, but you could never leave me! Not in a million years!"

Your lips parted, but the denial they ached to deliver crumbled the minute it hit the charged open air that crackled with the blistering tension of your fight. A lie was only worth anything if it had a chance of being believed. You let the worthless protest die like the useless mutt it was.

"You love me as much as I love you," you mumbled instead.

"I love you," Isaac finally admitted, but he didn't give you time to celebrate the surrender. His next words were a subjugation that belittled your victory into meaningless diminution. "But more importantly, I own you... darling."

The claim was all the more devastating because of your inability to refute it. You drew a breath to speak, but he cut you off with a kiss so punitive, a whip lash would have been gentler. You stayed still beneath his advances while his grasp on your jaw softened until his fingers stroked, soothing over the very skin he had just bruised.

"You've always given me everything I want," he reminded you.

The words were almost sweet, a blatant mockery of what you told him a thousand times. You always meant it in as a means of control. A way of telling him you knew his needs better than he did, that you knew his desires by heart even if he didn't. Isaac must have known this well enough, given the context of the many lifetimes he now had to draw upon.

Despair took you for a few excruciating, exquisite seconds while his gaze burned into yours, uncompromising and inescapable. The indignation of being ordered to share what was yours... it boiled your blood in your veins until his caresses stuttered with the urge to pull away from the building heat. His features drew tighter still, displeasure strung taut by your resistance to his demands.

Then you remembered the subtlety of your plan to rid yourself of Sara Temple, and you brought your flames under control in the next breath. Deception would serve you far better than prideful defiance in this instance.

You catered to his selfish whims with duplicity perfected by aeons of villainy.

"I always give you what you want," you agreed.

You softened your voice until it was smooth as silk, caring as a new mother and sincere as a nun at prayer. Surprise flashed through Isaac's caramel eyes, only to be buried beneath smug satisfaction. He rewarded you with a kiss so gentle, so contented as to be nearly grateful in its acceptance of your lie.

You repressed a wicked smile that it would surely have given you away. You had no intention whatsoever of letting Isaac keep his other woman. You had no intention of losing him.

Above all else, you had absolutely no intention of letting Sara walk away from her ill-fated affair with her life, but Isaac didn't need to know that.

For better or worse, you were too preoccupied to act on the desire.

It was easy enough to dodge the brigade that swarmed Nevermore to put out the fire. The smoke wafting in to fill the secret passageways would have suffocated anyone else, but you were better than immune to its effects. The smoggy aftertaste was to be savored, so much that you were regretful when you had to leave it behind.

Professor Greeves hadn't gone far. You intercepted him before he could confer with any of the authorities descending to investigate the arson and the charred corpse still smoldering in the heart of the history teacher's office. Greeves was already stammering when you cornered him, already trying to talk his way out of a fiery death as flame flickered behind your eyes and coiled at your fingertips.

"Run, and I'll burn you to ash just like I did Cætus," you warned him. "Scream, fight... and I won't hesitate."

"God, I never wanted it to go so far, I-I-I never thought he would- would want to hurt you, I didn't think-"

"Well don't start trying to think now, teach," you drawled, affecting Cætus' pet name for the professor purely to throw him even farther off balance. The flourish of manipulation was unnecessary, but you could never help yourself.

"Please don't hurt me!" he whimpered.

You bore down over him, stoking his terror with every step you took closer.

"Are you afraid of fire, professor?" you wondered, cruelty winking out from beneath the casual affectation of your tone.

Everyone knew well enough to flinch away from an open flame, but the terror shining from Greeves' wide eyes seemed more potent than what you were used to seeing. It was delectable. Then again, he could just as easily have been afraid of you as of the heat you could conjure with a thought.

"I didn't mean for- please, I don't want to die!"

"Hm..."

As fun as it would be to burn him to death one agonizing patch of flesh at a time, you suspected he might be of more use to you alive. No less tormented, you reassured yourself.

"But your ignorant meddling has fostered such a steep price," you tsked performatively.

You seized his arm. He cowered away from the contact and covered his face with his free hand like the gesture could protect him if you decided to immolate.

"And you know my secret. What I really am," you went on. Your grip on him was sweltering, but not yet hot enough to cause harm. The contact was pure intimidation, an extra dose of sinister indulgence that made your mark go from trembling to quaking. "You're a loose end at best. And that's if I can excuse all the trouble you've caused me..."

Greeves was too afflicted to offer anything resembling a coherent response. He shook like a cicada in a monsoon, clinging to the wall like it could save him from the flood.

You released him. He wasn't as much fun to torture as you'd hoped he might be. He was fortunate that fun wasn't your only objective.

"But... luckily for you, someone needs to take the blame for what happened here today," you informed him. "And it was your office, after all. Your friend who flew in, only to die so gruesomely so soon after. It's remarkable, really, how I'm not connected in the slightest if you only look at it on paper."

"B-b-but I- I... I didn't-"

"Didn't kill him? Didn't set the fire? Deny it and you become as useless to me as a pocket lighter," you cackled. "Now's the time to start thinking, professor. Think very, very carefully about what you say next. It'll decide what I do with you."

You crossed your arms over your chest while you waited. With flames decorating your body like lively, flowing jewelry, you cut a fearsome figure. Every shimmering lick and crackle was a threat in its own right, potent reminders of the pain you could inflict if he answered carelessly.

Greeves sucked in a series of ragged, panting breaths while sweat beaded across his face and his eyes darted between imaginary options that he reviewed with a pronounced lack of hope. He met your fierce gaze, opened his mouth like he wanted to speak, then closed it again. He clamped his jaw tight, muscles flexing visibly under the strain of his disallowed rebuttal. His features warped hideously with the realization that dead or alive, he would likely be the assumed culprit of your crimes.

You were giving him the option so you could enjoy the resulting turmoil. There were few things better than killing a man. Watching one choose between two bleak fates was among those rare, treasured tortures.

"C-can I run, or do I have to turn myself in?" he mumbled at last.

"It makes little difference to me," you answered blithely. "But don't forget..."

Your index finger lifted his chin until the column of his throat was stretched taut, uncomfortably so, by your insistence.

"Give me a reason to come find you and there is no prison, no distance, no army that could keep me from exacting my vengeance," you purred.

The promise was a lie. Your powers were far from limitless, but he had no way of knowing that. More to the point, he was too terrified to question your absurd claim. All he could do was nod, eager as though you were slipping a gallows noose from around his neck rather than damning him to an existence on the run or locked away behind bars.

"I still... I still have so many questions," he mourned softly.

You laughed and rolled your eyes. The man's priorities were odd enough to amuse, but you were finished with him. The fact that Greeves would flee without the knowledge he so coveted was a petty layer of irony that you hadn't considered in your calculations of his punishment. You refused to give it more than a second's thought now. You strode away without a backward glance.

You made your way to Iago tower with a curvature to your journey designed to let you avoid the worst of the mess still unfolding throughout Nevermore's faculty wing. You sought the tower on tender impulse, hoping to shroud yourself in the vestiges of Isaac's presence until he returned. For once, you weren't interested in tracking him down. You needed to think.

You had already gone through his things to your satisfaction. Now, you settled down at his improvised desk and kicked your feet up on the surface with a familiarity you hadn't earned. You were still an uninvited guest at best, but you made yourself at home like you owned the place.

You producted Cætus' spark and turned it around and around between your fingers. Triangular, richly faceted, the gem was clear as orange-stained glass and little larger than a nickel. It was hot enough to burn against even your overheated skin and so brilliant you couldn't look at it directly without narrowing your eyes. It seemed to emit a marmalade glow all its own, a light that struck you as softer than it should have been. Was it some remainder of Cætus true nature? He was a truly gentle soul. His disposition was benevolent before you twisted him into a vengeful shell of what he once was.

You smiled again to yourself. You would treasure his downfall for all the time you had left to you. More than his downfall, you intended to treasure his spark as the rare god-sent gift it was. You clenched your fist around it to let the wickedly pointed edges bite into your palm. Outside, dark was falling rapidly, leaving you shrouded in gloom. You allowed it to engulf your statuesque figure while you sat, mired in contemplation with the searing sting of Cætus' excised spark scourging your flesh as though his spirit still resided within the beautiful remnant. As though his ghost still wished you harm from beyond the veil of the grave. As though his lingering resentment could punish you with nothing more than the sheer strength of his venery.

You ignored the specter of your brethren and steered your thoughts in a productive direction.

You'd heard many, many stories about sparks, the little jewel-like hearts that made a phoenix. For all the stories, little was verifiable as fact. You knew they were the source of an immortal's memories. They separated the original reincarnators from the sorry fools with whom rebirth was shared second-hand through kisses and vows. Yours burned in the hollow of your throat while you squeezed your newly pilfered spark harder in your fist. Questions and possibilities twirled and tangled through your nefarious mind.

You opened your fingers to gaze upon your prize once more. The warmth of firelight shone up at you, illuminating your features so gently that for a fleeting moment, you almost looked angelic. Then you smiled with every single one of your teeth and the illusion was dispelled. You rocked slightly from side to side in Isaac's wheeled desk chair, idle as you prepared to settle in to play a waiting game.

"Isaac, oh Isaac," you crooned to yourself. "When are you coming back, Isaac? Don't leave me waiting too long, darling. I have a gift for you, my love."

You dipped to press your lips to the spark in reverent, jubilant ceremony.

Isaac avoided Gomez for the scant remainder of the weekend. To his profound relief, Sara made it easy on him.

"Sorry Gomez, this isn't a boys trip," she tsked him with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.

"She's right, mon cher," Morticia agreed. "Our evil master plan was to get the two of you out here, isolated, helpless... and have our way with you."

"Cara mia! What a splendid plan!" Gomez gasped happily.

Despite apparently condoning individual activities, Gomez's gaze followed Isaac as Sara led him farther from the campsite. Anxiety crept and crawled under Isaac's skin, insidious as a rash. To make matters worse, he actually did develop an itching, burning red rash before the day was out.

"I hate camping," he grumbled, spread out on his stomach with his cheek resting on his folded arms while Sara rubbed ointment over his lower back.

"You just got into some ivy or something, it'll be fine," she assured him. "Come on, swimming was fun, wasn't it?"

"Swimming was fun," Isaac sighed in concession.

"And how about that weird tree?"

"Uh... sure, it was strange looking."

"Isaaaac!" Sara groaned. "Tell you what. You can pick the destination for our next weekend getaway, okay?"

"Hm. Somewhere with indoor plumbing for sure," Isaac griped. "Gomez can foot the bill. He's always happy to throw his family's money around."

"You know, I thought... well, nevermind."

Sara settled down at his side. Isaac quirked an eyebrow, wondering if she had noticed the subtle, simmering tension between him and his best friend. As little time as Isaac had spent near Gomez on this trip, the moments they had endured together had been fraught with awkward silences and eyes that refused to meet.

"I guess I'm not a big fan of sleeping on the ground either," Sara sighed balefully.

"Morticia's trip ideas are always to be second-guessed," Isaac said, callous and careless. "She comes up with some real doozies."

"Oh. Yeah. Real... real doozies, you're right. Isaac, seriously, you didn't like anything about this weekend?" Sara pressed.

What she was too timid to tell him was that camping was her idea. Morticia had to be talked into the adventure. Facing down Isaac's scorn, Sara wondered if he would recant if she told him the truth. Would it matter? After all, she knew how he really felt now. He'd been vocal all day about his hatred of weeds, his loathing of insects, his distaste for the fare available to a teen camping troupe.

Sara was hurt by the thought that Isaac was unimpressed with her idea, but she decided to keep that fact to herself. She clutched the pain tight to her chest like she always did, quietly holding it in a bottomless reservoir that seemed to take endless contributions, never draining, ever festering.

"Well... you were the best part of this weekend, hands down," Isaac replied after a few moments of thoughtfulness.

Despite herself, Sara couldn't help but start to smile. Isaac shuffled closer and clasped hands with her. He nuzzled tenderly into the crook of her neck, carving his way into her embrace like he'd forgotten he belonged there, only to bask in recollection now.

"Oh yeah?" she prompted.

She held him tight and clung to the newer, sweeter words. She always set aside the bitter things he said. She preferred to stuff them into a drawer, out of sight, out of mind. Why dwell on them when she could instead put the light parts, the good parts, the parts of Isaac she loved, on a pedestal?

"Yeah. Although, that's not really a fair redeeming factor," Isaac went on for argument's sake. His shifted to settle comfortably in her arms, sighed his satisfaction and relaxed completely. "Everything's better with you there."

Sara was still sad, but she pressed a kiss to his forehead and kept it to herself.

Sara was always sad. She'd gotten good at keeping it to herself over the years. Isaac had a habit of peeling back the emotional layers that separated her from devastation, but tonight he seemed mercifully too tired to interrogate her. She decided that rather than question his uncharacteristic lapse, she would take it as a mercy.

Isaac closed his eyes as the lively sounds of the night hummed beyond the canvas tent. Frogs and owls, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, the creaking of sturdy boughs, the low ambient hum of crickets and fireflies. Truthfully, he was as inclined to untangle Sara's complicated emotions as ever, but tonight he was busy tiptoeing around what Gomez may or may not have told the girls.

Isaac grit his teeth. For tonight, at least, he was still safe, but inevitably, he would need to deal with Gomez. As eager as he was to leave their late night encounter unspoken, he couldn't do so without subjecting himself to the gnawing grip of paranoia. If he didn't talk it over with his best friend, he would always wonder. What did Gomez assume? What did he discuss with Morticia? What did Morticia pass on to Sara? How close would it be to the truth? Did it really matter, if Sara believed what she was told? Would Sara believe?

Isaac breathed and stopped himself. He could tell he was spiraling. Thinking about it would do him no good, he reasoned. Better to wait until dawn broke, until they were on their way back to Nevermore to close out their long weekend. It was a mercy that classes wouldn't resume until Tuesday. The extra day off would give him all the time he needed to deal with Gomez.

One way or another.

As willing as you were to await Isaac's return without moving from his desk, you were still a creature bound by physical needs. You needed to eat. You needed to sleep. You left your lookout as demanded by natural necessity, only to return once your requirements were met. You were on track to go down in history as the most reclusive student to ever attend Nevermore academy. Or you would have been, had anyone made a note of your absence. Bereft of anything resembling a friendship, you could have been a ghost or a vanisher for the effectiveness with which you slipped the noose of social pantomime.

When Isaac finally returned to Nevermore, his first step was not, of course, to visit his laboratory. You waited patiently for him to appear, vibrating with anticipation by the time he saw fit to caper up the stairs of the tower that, for all intents and purposes, belonged to him. Judging by the way he peeked out of the lift cage, he expected to find you waiting for him. He didn't, you noted with a thrill, seem unhappy to see you occupying his chair.

"So, the history teacher and the other phoenix didn't kill you after all," he said, feigning disinterest even as he betrayed his investment with the accuracy the details he remembered.

He strode up to his desk to deposit a backpack that thunked down like it contained a shelf's worth of books. You paid it little mind.

"Glad to see me alive?" you purred smugly.

"You're in my chair," Isaac huffed, though he made no attempt to remove you.

He gathered notes and tools, moving them between workspaces like the inconvenience of your presence didn't even merit the effort it would take to clear you out. You swiveled in place to track his movements, unabashed as ever to be caught so ardently admiring a boy who offered you nothing but disdain in return. Your hand slipped into your pocket and your fingers closed around Cætus spark. Your heart beat faster with excitement.

"Admit it, you're happy I'm not dead," you cajoled him.

"Hm. My dick might be happy you're not dead," he shot back, coy and evasive. He leafed through a dog-eared notebook with his back to you.

You hopped up and sauntered closer, hands sliding easily over his shoulders as your eagerness got the better of you.

"Well, I missed you, even if you didn't miss me," you sighed at his ear. "And I have something for you. To... celebrate your return, let's say."

"Celebrate? I was only gone for a- you know what, whatever," Isaac scoffed. "Listen, we need to talk."

He turned, capturing your wrists and folding them over your chest like he was laying you out for funerary rites. You were still coasting too high on the ecstatic fumes of seeing him again to question his manner with more than a raised eyebrow.

"Talk about..?" you prompted with patient indulgence.

"Sara. You. Me."

The quick purse of your lips communicated your disinterest clearly enough, but Isaac barreled on before you could get another word in.

"I need to know that you won't hurt her," he told you, rushed, fervent and sincere. "You know that if you ever did, I would never forgive you, right?"

"Isaac-"

"No, listen!"

His grip tightened on your wrists painfully. You gasped delightedly and leaned into the brutality. Isaac ignored your fluttering lashes and parted lips, undeterred by your obvious enjoyment of his roughness.

"I'm not stupid!" he all but spat. "I know you better than you think I do, okay?! I know you're planning something horrible to do to Sara and you're going to knock it the fuck off right now! Are we clear?!"

The adoration shining from your features might have fooled someone of lesser wiles into believing you would do as you were told. As it was, Isaac leaned in closer, unimpressed by the way you didn't back down or flinch from his fury. He bared his teeth, inches from your face and hissed his next words.

"I'm not going to let you hurt her, do you understand me?! She was mine first! Mine!"

"Oh, I know all about your possessive streak," you assured him. "Let go of my wrists, Isaac."

You weren't about to agree to anything. Stubbornly, Isaac's fingers crushed even harder into your skin, promising bruises that perfectly reflected the shape of his grasp. You wouldn't heal them quickly, you decided dreamily while he seethed. You would keep them, cherish them, a reminder of his touch, of the intensity of his passion. Pointed in the wrong direction though it may have been.

"What, you've given up on driving me away?" you murmured, replete with satisfaction. "You're not telling me to leave you alone any more, darling. No, you want us both, is that it?"

"I'd have to be some kind of idiot to ever imagine that could work out," Isaac sneered. "But... you're under my skin now. If I can't cure the infection, I might as well learn to live with the disease."

"So unflattering," you tsked him. "Let my wrists go, Isaac. I have something for you."

"Promise me you won't hurt my girlfriend," he insisted. "That you won't bother her, won't so much as look her way. I want you to steer perfectly clear. Aren't you always saying you'll do anything I want?"

"You don't know what you want!" you all but snarled, snapping in the face of his oblivious, single-minded crusade.

Isaac's insistence was fraying the already thread-thin strand that was your tolerance for the other woman in his life. Despite his assertions, Sara temple was the intruder in this dynamic. She didn't know it, he didn't remember... but he might soon.

"Promise me, or whatever this is that we're doing- it ends here and now," Isaac threatened.

Empty words, you were almost certain, but you were tired of dancing with him around pointless barbs.

"Oh, my love," you sighed, back to sweetness as you let your wrists heat up. Fire boiled your blood in your veins until your skin seared against his. He jerked back, released you with a startled yelp and a skittish withdrawal. "Sorry darling, I know I said I would never burn you. Why must you make a liar of me, hm? When this could all be so much simpler, if you would just... let go of the false bonds you built before I found you."

You dug through your pocket while you spoke, brought Cætus' spark out to hold it up to the waning evening light. The golden cascade of sunset turned the gem into a miniature star, a supernova of brilliance between your thumb and forefinger. Despite himself, Isaac squinted when he saw it. Curiosity got the better of him, even as he rebuffed your advances.

"I'm not interested- it should go without saying that I can't be bought with trinkets!" he scoffed.

"This is no petty bauble," you informed him gravely. "Actually... if I'm being completely honest with you, I'm not entirely sure this will even work. But at this point, I'm willing to try anything. Desperate times, don't you know?"

"What-"

You silenced him swiftly. It was your turn to arrogate one of his wrists so you could smash your palm against his. The spark was trapped between your hands, clasped with unwillingness on his part.

"Hey, you- you cut me!" Isaac cried, shock widening his eyes and dropping his jaw in an expression of disbelief that bordered on comical.

"Oh please, please let this work!" you begged anxiously, ignoring his exclamation for the time being.

Your hands held his captive while blood dripped slowly from between your fingers as his struggled against yours. He pulled back, only to freeze in place a second later. You held your breath while you watched his face fall into something like dumbfounded revelation. He stood still, unmoving as a petrification victim while the slow ooze of his blood steadied into a flowing stream to splatter against the grated metal floor near your feet. The droplets landed with a gentle pattering sound that you disregarded in favor of examining your lover.

"Isaac?" you ventured, almost too on edge to speak while you waited for him to react. "Do you... remember anything?"

"I... I remember..."

Isaac blinked slowly. When his eyes met yours again, his vision was clearer than you'd seen it in any lifetime. His gaze was so sharp that it wrested a shiver from you as it dug deeper with serrated teeth, unforgiving and cold.

Then a line of scarlet traced a quick, jagged path down his quivering upper lip. The abrupt nosebleed spilled over to collect along the edges of his teeth. The clarity in his eyes gave way to something that more closely resembled mania- or outright madness.

Your stomach dropped with dread in the same instant as your love seized in your hold. You surged forward to catch him in your arms as he went ramrod stiff, shaking in the thrall of some terrible, silent fit. Unable to support himself, he toppled without bending a single joint in his body. You guided his descent to the best of your ability, panic spiking through you in nauseating waves as you wondered rabidly whether you'd made an awful mistake.

"Isaac?! Isaac! Can you hear me?! Isaac!"

He shook like an epileptic, your hand the only thing shielding the back of his head from knocking into the metallic floor over and over again. Pain shot through your bones as his skull crushed your hand against the grate hard enough to bruise, perhaps enough to fracture. You withstood it it for his sake. Your other hand was still in his, trapped in a grip that refused to relent. Cætus' spark burned between your palms and the scent of searing flesh, usually a smell you would enjoy, wafted out noxiously. You choked on panic, struggling fruitlessly to pry your hand out of the death grip Isaac held it in. The tremors wracking him only worsened and all you could do was ride them out with him while regret devoured you like a pack of ravening dogs.

<== Previous Chapter

"Yes ma'am," Isaac drawled behind you. He was too smug, overly pleased with himself for pestering you into surrender, into any measure of sexual indulgence. How could he possibly begrudge you the restrictive set of rules ordaining his stillness beneath you? As long as you allowed him to languish beneath you in the first place...

He lay naked on your bed, knees bent and legs hung over the edge, feet firmly planted on your floor. You straddled him easily, upright, facing away from him with your desk hastily pulled close to the bed. The quickly contrived arrangement allowed you to sit on his cock while you worked on your most urgent essay. Wearing only a t-shirt, you typed away dutifully, far less distracted than you should have been with his length stretching you open.

You clamped around him involuntarily, then shifted minutely to relieve some of the maddening pressure from his swollen head slotting wrong against your cervix. The adjustment jostled him deeper, tore a gasp from you as the clatter of keys halted abruptly. His tip brushed something soft and sensitive deep within you, then settled firmly against it when you let your weight fall back over his pelvis. It felt too good. All you wanted to do was rock your body over his to stimulate the spot. Instead, you forced yourself to settle and breathe through the bliss that was so potent it was almost agonizing.

Behind you, you heard Isaac swallow a mischievous chuckle.

"Oh, so you can move, I just can't?" he wondered in blithe condemnation.

A glance back laid bare his insufferably self-pleased disposition. One hand folded neatly behind his head while the other crept in your sheets like he was toying with the idea of touching you.

"Actually, yes," you countered. "Gotta be comfortable while I work, after all..."

Isaac gulped audibly and you hid your smirk by turning back to your laptop. The click and patter of keystrokes resumed. For a few pristine moments, Isaac behaved for you and you made a little progress, finally free of the sweet distractions of his inconsiderate seductions.

Then you felt him flexing inside you, muscles contracting to force the barest excuse for movement while he throbbed. Inclandestine, he started to groan with overstated pleasure at the simple, technically failed attempt at friction. He muffled the sound with the palm of his hand as quickening breaths betrayed his torment.

You were having trouble enduring the lack of movement yourself. His member felt soothing resting inside you, levering your walls apart while you basked in the glory of fullness, but your body craved impact. You craved motion, craved friction, craved the sinuous slide of him past your aching entrance. You wanted to feel him hit that sweet spot on the instroke, wanted to bounce on his rock-hard length until-

You shook your head to clear it and pinched the inside of his thigh hard enough to make him yelp.

"You brat! Pelvic floor exercises count as moving," you chastised him. "Stop it and stay still! This is the last warning you're going to get before I throw you out. This essay is due tomorrow morning. "

"Okay, okay, I just... f-fuck, you just feel so... feel so amazing!"

Isaac sighed and settled beneath you.

"Can I touch you at least?" he wondered, a tremor creeping in to destabilize his voice.

The demand came out closer to a whine. His condescension was hilariously short-lived, already crushed beneath neediness as the slick plush encasing his cock clung and cloyed. You felt his fingertips perusing the vertebrae of your lower back and hummed your contemplation of his request.

"You can give me a massage while you're here," you decided imperiously. You went right back to typing.

Isaac took to the task eagerly, hands creeping under your loose t-shirt before the words left your mouth. His thumbs pressed in generous circles and his fingers kneaded firmly against the tightest muscles he could find. He worked his way higher at a glacial pace, digging in along the column of your spine to unwind knots and comfort soreness. Your slouched posture unfurled and somehow, straightening your torso allowed his cock to settle even deeper inside you. You sighed contentedly, tilted to give him subtle direction that he followed perfectly. It wasn't long before he had to sit up, to support his weight on one elbow and work your shoulders with the other.

"Too hard?" he murmured.

"No, perfect," you praised him.

"How much do you have left to go on that paper?" he asked.

The low, sultry hum of his voice was so seductive as to be nearly irresistible. Still, you gathered your focus, primed your discipline and kept tapping away at your composition.

"About half," you answered.

He groaned unhappily and flopped back down against the mattress. The bounce wiggled him inside you enough to make you gasp with pleasure- and enough to earn him another pinch.

"Isaac, I warned you-"

"No, no that was an accident!" he protested quickly. His palms fluttered over your hips as if to soothe some imaginary wound. "I didn't mean it! I'm sorry! Please don't kick me out!"

Isaac's begging had you biting your lip, grateful that he couldn't see your face. You rubbed over his thigh, comforting in the wake of a punishment that may have been unwarranted.

"Alright, but only because I can tell you're trying to be good for me," you acquiesced.

Isaac's next breath shuddered out with relief.

"I'll be so good for you if you let me," he rasped, persuasion harrowed by raw lust. "Come on, it'll be fast... you know I can make you cum so fast that- ow!"

You pinched him again, aggravating the same patch of reddened skin you had just rubbed to disperse the pain of his last penalty.

"No talking," you ordered. "You're distracting me."

The truth was, you were sorely tempted to tell him he could do whatever he wanted to you, but your looming deadline kept you grounded. You shifted slightly and dragged a piteous whine from him when you drew off his throbbing cock by an inch or two, only to sink back down at a better angle. You hummed your satisfaction with his new placement, ground down once, twice, just to feel him pressing against your most sensitive reaches. Isaac moaned like you were fully fucking him, hands fluttering around your hips in a silent plea for more.

You indulged him with one, two, three more quick grinds and loosed a bated whimper of your own at the sensation of him pushed tight to your back wall, stretching a little further every time you moved. It was an internal battle to resume stillness, to go back to typing like nothing of note had transpired.

Isaac's feet braced hard on the wooden floor and his thighs tensed like he wanted to roll up against the heat that wrapped his straining member so snugly. You felt the sheets pull and glanced under your arm to see his fingers fisting in the bedding. He was breathing deep with every inhalation, carefully metering the rise and fall of his chest while he fought the compulsion to move. His thighs tensed and relaxed over and over again while the steady cadence of his respiration gradually grew less controlled.

You paused your writing in an ill-fated attempt to repress a visceral shiver. It ripped through you despite your best efforts at containment, beginning in your thighs and spiking up past your clenching cunt, straight through your tightening stomach, stealing your breath on its way to dissipate back down your spine. You could feel the obscenity of your arousal, viscous wet pooling in the dark curls around Isaac's base. The moisture tacked hair to his skin and yours in a shining, matted mess, extending into trails that slowly tickled their way down between his tensing thighs. Isaac felt it too, the shiver and the ridiculous extent to which you were dripping for him. He responded with a shudder of his own, a ripple of distress that coiled through his body and knocked all the air out of his lungs. He panted with the need to thrust up, to grind, to push, to nudge you with his hands, anything, anything to break the wave of longing overtaking every muscle in his body.

You resumed your typing, devastating any expectations he might have had that you would translate the crawling urge into merciful motion. You heard his breath hiss out from between his teeth, felt his hands settle shakily over your hips. You stayed stubbornly still, though your lips parted with ecstasy as you felt him start to throb inside you. Not movement, not even a muscular flex, but a pulse of fresh arousal so strong you could feel it engorging him further, pronouncing individual veins until you could almost count them as they burned against your ravenous walls.

His fingers dug in and you thought he was actually holding his breath with the strain of maintaining a posture that should have been relaxed. You licked your parted lips, keystrokes slowing again as your thoughts turned to lascivious mush and heat coursed up from the site of his penetration. Your clit throbbed in response to his unvoiced desperation, tandem heartbeats spacing each pulse of your degeneracy a split-second behind his. After a few minutes, the subtle beats synced and you gasped in unison at the strange sensation.

Your essay stalled and your teeth clamped down over your lip hard enough to hurt. Your legs shook at his sides with the need to move, to ride him, to guide his grasping fingers around to your aching, forlorn clit. The pulsating veins singing his desire into your weeping, clinging cunt felt incredible even in static suspension. You imagined what they would feel like dragging past your entrance and whined at the fantasy that was so, so close to becoming reality. One word and he would be fucking you the way you both wanted...

Beneath you, his hips lifted by a margin so slim you wondered if you were imagining it until pure euphoria fired through your gut as his unyielding tip abused that same sweet spot again.

"Fuck!" you groaned. "Fuck, I told you not to-to move!"

Isaac was burning so hot inside you he felt feverish. He offered no defense for himself, no excuse. You twisted to peer over your shoulder, almost alarmed by the sight of sweat coating his forehead. It glued his raven-dark curls down like folded wings, dipping to obscure eyes so hungry that their coal-black depths rivaled even the obsidian sheen of his hair.

"I think- I think I need a break!" he gasped. "You feel so good, so-squeezing me so tight, babe, I'm gonna... fuck, I can't take it! I'm gonna fucking-"

You pinched his thigh with scowl and he cried out dramatically. His hips pitched up hard enough to send your eyes rolling back in your skull. His too, you realized, because you regained your bearings much faster than he did.

"Calm down!" you scolded him. "You'd better not cum before I finish this stupid paper!"

"Pleeeaase!" he moaned senselessly.

"I'm serious, Isaac! Sit up! Come on, get up here!"

He obeyed, but the tremble wracking his fraught figure made it a rough ascension. You had to reach back to help him up. Perspiration trailed down from his temples past eyes that were glossed over with repressed desire.

"I'm getting hot too," you grumbled, validating at least one fraction of his melodramatic travails.

You yanked the shirt over your head and swiped at his brow with it before you tossed it aside. You tossed his curls back into their usual place and leaned over just enough to press him with a kiss that was meant to be comforting. He steadied a little, the distraction of your tongue invading his mouth pulling his mind just far enough from your misuse of his cock to pull him back from the edge of climax.

"Hold on for me til I'm done," you murmured. "I promise it'll be worth it..."

Isaac sighed and nodded, the wispy denouncement of his concession caressing your parted lips as he dropped onto his back again.

"I can... I can hold on for you," he declared, a distinct current of pride bolstering his words. "I can do that."

"Good... so good for me, Isaac," you purred happily. "Here..."

You let him have a taste of the heaven his patience would earn him. You slid up in a true stroke for the first time, then shimmied down again with a wiggle that tore a deep, wavering moan from him. He watched while you did it twice more, only to settle down solidly with him abducted into the perfect spot to torture you both in equal measure.

"Now be still for three hundred more words. If you can do that, I'll fuck you just the way you want," you promised.

His hands didn't leave your body this time. They massaged your thighs, tickled the bottoms of your feet, slid sensuously up your back, considered the idea of playing with your breasts only to retreat when you threatened to pinch him again.

Two hundred words later, your resolve was obliterated by the frantic, ceaseless pulse of Isaac's lechery. The drumbeat of horniness radiating from his errantly nestled erection into your soaked, helplessly spasming walls was undoing you faster than you cared to admit. You'd forbidden Isaac from finishing before you were ready to take him properly. You figured it was only fair to limit yourself to the same ruleset.

"Fuck it, I can pad a hundred words into what I already have in ten minutes!" you growled.

Isaac rose as if from the grave, mouth open against the curve of your shoulder while he clutched your body to his.

Finally, his eyes screamed, blown wide and black as oil slicks from the duress of his wait.

When you started moving it was slow and halting, but still too much after too long spent mired in a pleasure that spiked and receded, apparently of its own accord. Isaac's teeth, dull against your shoulder, provided a much-needed distraction from the overwhelming stroke of him, thick and hard as shale, against flesh that ached for attention. You couldn't hold back your wanton moans, couldn't stop your nails from marking his thighs with rows of scalloping indentations, couldn't restrain the frenzied, rhythmless grind of your cunt into his lap.

Isaac was no more composed, pride rearing again to taunt you with filth that simmered against the shell of your ear and sparked a fire between your legs.

"Fuck, that's right! That's right, take it! Ugh, such a pretty little fucking cock-tease, got me so-"

You silenced his growling profanities with a kiss that almost hurt as much as the next thrust. Isaac jerked up to meet you and the impact was so potent you couldn't breathe past the pleasure. He abandoned bravado in favor of chasing your heat, hips snapping up wildly to slap against your ass while you kept riding him reverse.

It didn't take much to push you over the edge. You'd already lingered there too long, clenching and dripping around the steel of his cock while he held still for you. Now, he incessantly tapped at that sweet spot where you craved him so badly, hitting it over and over again while you wailed and contorted in his lap. You leaned back hard and let him do all the work for a few dazzling minutes while you wondered if you were going to black out from the sheer ecstasy of finally, finally feeling him drag past your neglected entrance, of finally allowing him to spoil your stroke-starved walls.

You let him keep pumping into you while you came down from your high, grit your teeth against the discomfort of overstimulation. Your own retaliation came in the form of a little hair-pulling, a brisk tug at his curls that forced his head back. He panted, the apple of his throat exposed as it bobbed voraciously while he sucked in air to fuel the manic pace of his thrusts. You knew he couldn't hold such a brutal pace for long, so you decided to wait out his fury rather than attempt to console it.

Sure enough, he slowed after only a few more crazed cants upward. You took over again, legs shaking with fatigue that you battled valiantly to reward your long-suffering boyfriend.

You could tell he was unraveling behind you from the uncontrolled, shameless pitch of his moans. You worked harder in his lap, faster if only to hear him whimper louder for you. One of his hands thrust back at a sharp angle to support his weight while the other sank its fingers into your hip. He couldn't control your motion any more than he could the breathy, fucked-out chorus that warned you how close he was truly getting. His fingers flexed spastically in unison with the graceless upward ruts that were impeding your ability to slide off him far enough to compose a true thrust. Isaac was falling apart in slow motion, frustrating himself with an eagerness he had no hope of leashing, not after so much teasing and waiting.

You slowed to a torturous crawl that left him gasping in futile protest. You leaned back, one hand shooting down to cover his fingers on your hip as they threatened bruises. Your other arched up over your head, back to tangle through the curls you loved to pull. You dragged him closer, demanded his chest flush to your back and his lips brushing yours. With the redistribution of his weight, his other hand rushed forward to caress your body with a desperate hunger. He tried to ravage your mouth, but you weren't having it. Your grip on his hair tightened until he was whining, yearning into a stooped posture that begged for a passionate kiss you withheld. Your tongue snaked out to trace and torment the outlines of his straining lips. His darted out to steal a taste, heavy breaths moistening the air between you until it felt thick enough to drown in.

"Calm, Isaac," you admonished him. "You don't want to hurt me, do you?"

None of the clarity returned to his usually sharp eyes. Usually brown, but unremitting lust elevated them to ebony orbs awash with a saline screen that must have blurred his vision. He nodded clumsily for you through the haze of sexual excess immuring his usually formidable faculties.

"Good," you purred, satisfied.

The motion of your hips faltered. His cock still rested deep in the depraved shelter between your legs. You could feel him throbbing again, heartbeat amplified into agony that pulsed and thrummed out from the veins tracing his length. You let him have the kiss he craved, chased the intoxicating taste of his impatience covetously. His lips overcame yours with a manic energy that clashed harshly with your sluggish, post-orgasmic lassitude. You rubbed your fingertips against his scalp, soothing instead of inciting for once. Your tongue slid over his and you sucked softly. The pressure was just enough to draw a muted string of moans from him. You drank them down like nectar, tainted though they were by the bitterness of his innate impudence. When you had your fill, you broke the kiss while his open mouth still inclined toward yours, still rooting for more.

Your lips didn't stray far. They painted a sweet trail from his chin up his jawline until you caught his earlobe between your teeth. Isaac sat still for you, trembling while you rocked in his lap to afford him the barest excuse for friction that would keep him complacent while you had your way with him. His hands relaxed on your body, one still braced at your hip and the other groping tactlessly at your breasts. Your free hand roamed along his arm to appreciate the flex of tendons and the roll of lean muscle in his bicep as he clutched you tighter.

"Are you close?" you asked, light and lilting, only slightly mocking and quiet as a whisper at his ear.

"Mm- mm-hmm!"

You tucked your insufferable smirk into the straining cushion of his neck, forcing him to arch back farther to accommodate you. Your hips rose and fell again, resuming a rhythm of thrusts specifically intended to finish him. His moans rose in response, lashes fluttering and grip firming while you suckled until a dark spot materialized to marr his pale throat.

His hand fell from your hip to meander down your thigh, undeterred by your now-constant movement. His palm slid down to your knee, then his clipped nails flexed to dig bluntly against your sweat-slicked skin. You were already trembling from the effort of riding him. The quakes wracking your overworked muscles intensified when he dragged his nails up the sensitive span, drawing four distinct paths to the crest of your thigh. You felt him searching, the rough pads of his fingers fumbling through your soaked, parted folds while you rocked against his body.

You slowed to encourage him, mewled when he found your clit. There was no way in hell you could climax again, not so soon after the first time, but his touch still sent flares of unbelievable pleasure shooting along nerves already strummed too thoroughly with bliss.

"Please don't- don't- uhh!" Isaac choked and gasped. He circled the pert, hooded bud erratically while you moaned to let him know how good it felt.

"Fuck, please don't stop!" he begged, one octave away from sobbing. His thighs seized beneath you, hips jerking up in a short, doomed attempt to steal a little more friction. "Don't stop, I'm- god, I'm s-s-so fucking close, p-please!"

His pleas twisted the roiling mass of bliss collecting deep in your gut, set it cresting in lapping waves and preparing to spill over into ecstasy. You lengthened your bobbing thrusts again, pulled him flush so you could drink the cries he let in response to your lavishment of his aching, overused cock.

"Yeah?" you teased, mocking and breathless even as he stroked you higher to match your pleasure to his. "So close, huh? Gonna cum for me, babe?"

"Uh- uhh! Huh! Uh-huh!" he managed, jaw permanently dropped as the rhythm of his fingers deteriorated from messy to pure chaos.

You were no better, sliding and stumbling through the motions of riding him while you fought to keep a steady hand on the wheel of your shared debauchery. Dominance was always a slippery slope for you, though Isaac was making it easy this time.

"You've been so- fuck! So good for me," you sighed, relinquishing your hold on his curls so he could drop low enough to muffle his unhinged moans against the curve of your neck. "Tell me where you want to cum for me, Isaac!"

Your hand fell to cover his, to guide his fingers when his strokes started to fail. He was too far gone to reply, so you went on, still tormenting even at the cusp.

"Wanna pull out and cover me with it?" you chuckled wickedly.

The pitch of the moans vibrating into your skin keened. He was rutting up again, hard impacts abusing a spot inside you that made your vision swim around the edges. You bit back cries of your own that would have put his to shame, doubled down on your slamming thrusts and pulled his hair again to persuade his teeth free of your stinging flesh.

"No? I could swallow it for you instead," you suggested.

A glance back had you grinning at the way Isaac's eyes rolled back in their sockets, teeth clenched against your vulgarity, cock punching mercilessly toward your farthest reaches as you drove him out of his mind.

"Or do you want to leave it in this time?" you wondered, your own pleasure all but forgotten as you turned your complete focus toward ruining the boy striving behind you. "Want me to take it for you while you fill me up? Hm?"

"Oh fuck! Fuck, u-ugh!"

Isaac collapsed fully, hit the mattress hard enough to make the bed frame creak in protest while he shouted his climax thoughtlessly. He gripped your hips to pull you as close to him as possible while he yearned up to find the deepest place within you to deliver his long-awaited orgasm. You let him shake and spill, clenched with high intentionality as you savored the sweet, savage, helpless cries he loosed for you. They tapered down into whimpering, sated groans that you found no less delectable. You kept rocking against his body, pushing futilely as if his spurting cock wasn't already buried in you to the hilt.

By the time you stopped, he was writhing beneath you with sensitivity, hissing protest and wrapping you in an embrace that was only selfish because it was designed to force you off his lap. You wanted to keep grinding, but you let him pull you down anyway. His lips were weak when they found yours, even though his arms didn't seem short of vigor. You let him clutch you, chuckled with fond derision at how needy he still was after such an explosive orgasm. Leaking with the fruits of his labors, you caught your breath much faster than he did.

"I'm gonna make you pad my essay," you informed him shamelessly. "I need a hundred words. You got me?"

"Pad your- I'll, uh... oh, fuck. I'll do it, but only on one condition," he proposed shakily.

You started to get angry, but the next words out of his mouth placated you immediately.

"I need you to climb on top of my face... and let me clean up the mess I just made in that sweet pussy," he murmured, the words slurred as though he were already drunk on the mere idea.

"Oh, done!" you giggled.

Saturday disappeared beneath the shuffle and bustle of campsite setup. Of the four, Gomez was perhaps the most experienced outdoorsman, which was hardly a lofty title to claim among such a staunch selection of city-slickers. The humdrum business of erecting tents and gathering kindling was enough to occupy all the daylight they had left after they selected the site of their misadventures. Isaac was distant the entire time, half or more of his mind devoted to wondering futilely how your showdown had gone. Sara assumed that he was troubled over his sister and the conundrum of her cure. He never corrected her.

By the time darkness fell, the teen couples should have been too worn out to do much more than crawl into the privacy of their temporary shelters. Isaac certainly was. Still, he had to roll his eyes at the stifled giggles and low moans emanating steadily from the tent Morticia was sharing with Gomez. He settled down wearily atop a sleeping bag that he could already tell wasn't going to provide anything approaching a restful night's sleep.

I really despise camping, he thought venomously.

"We should have set up shop farther away from the lovebirds," he grumbled out loud as Sara secured a layer of mesh over the open flap.

"Aw, are they bothering you?" she laughed while he shifted and wriggled in a vain attempt to get comfortable.

"I don't begrudge them their fun, I just... would a little discretion kill them?" he pointed out in exasperation.

"They're not being that loud," Sara countered. She crawled closer until she was bearing down over him in the cramped space. He swallowed hard, watched her approach warily while she radiated sultry intent. "I'll tell you what... I can't make them be quiet, but I bet I could distract you. Bet I could do it so good, you wouldn't even hear those two going at it in the background..."

Her body slid over his with a boldness that was hardly untoward. After all, he was supposed to be hers. Was it purely guilt, Isaac wondered unhappily, that had his stomach turning over and his breath catching dreadfully?

Isaac let Sara kiss him and he thought of you while her lips moved gently over his. She hummed her satisfaction, oblivious while he bit down on a burgeoning discontent that would eagerly ruin the moment if he let it. He leashed his misgivings and pressed forward to meet her sugary offering with dulcet acceptance. Already drained of passion by your earlier visit, already enervated from the crucible of unpacking in the wilderness, he lay docile for Sara while her hands considered the edges of his clothes. There was more than flirtation in her tentative touch. She was waiting for permission, expecting him to rise to her provocations, to stir with arousal in response to her tepid strokes and timid lovebites.

Isaac sighed heavily and decided against forcing himself to meet her in the middle. He slumped back against the sleeping bag, breaking the kiss in the process and giving Sara pause. Her fingertips were teasing below his beltline, but with a helpless pulse of mortification, Isaac realized his libido was completely spent. Your relentless pursuits had beaten his carnal appetites into obliterated submission.

"Still tired?" she wondered, clearly disappointed.

"Just... can't get in the mood with those two out there howling like cats in heat," he muttered disingenuously.

"Oh, for the love of..."

Sara sputtered with something close to indignation and Isaac's heart skipped a beat. Was he caught? Did she know? Had her patience with the charade finally run out? Would she hold him accountable for his duplicity now?

"If they don't shut up soon, I could always set their tent on fire," Sara suggested.

The impish gleam in her eyes startled Isaac. His laugh was too abrupt, so sharp that he clapped a hand over his mouth to dull its edges. Sara chuckled along with him, lips dipping to graze the well-defined twist of his collarbone. Her fingers matched the mischievous lilt of her words. Their playful coaxing remained undeterred by Isaac's dormant physiology as they worked patiently at the buckle of his belt.

"I'm not entirely sure a little arson would be enough to stop those two," Isaac chuckled.

Sara's persuasions, though welcome, weren't enough to inspire him out of flaccidity. Not after the vigors he'd been subjected to earlier at your merciless hands.

And his own, but he was choosing to blame you for that as well.

She had his belt open, but his hand covered hers before it could defeat his zipper as well.

"I hate to disappoint, but I just... it's been such a long day," he plead.

Mournfulness dragged his tone down into a register that made his regret sound authentic. In a way, it was. If Isaac thought he could have both girls, he would have done so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the physical limitations weren't all that convinced him the bubble would burst before long. He knew Sara would never agree to share. She would leave him before she turned a blind eye to his infidelity. As for you...

Isaac shuddered at the thought of what catastrophe awaited if you kept pursuing him while Sara was still in the picture. He knew your violence too well and your possessiveness was potent enough to put Sara's to shame. God forbid you became bored with whatever game you were playing and decided to do something decisive to eliminate your competition...

Competition.

The shudder evolved into something baser, uglier. Isaac was rattled to the core by the realization that, without giving himself permission to do so, he had all but fully acquiesced to your preposterous claim on him. Sara loosed a wistful sigh that seemed to spread out and settle in a defeated smog over her boyfriend, still prone between her and the sleeping bag. Beneath her negligible weight, he reeled at the apparition of an unpleasant reality; In his bones, in his tainted soul, even in the filigreed heart he so prided himself on having constructed from nothing, he felt irrevocably that he belonged more to you than he did to her.

Sara started combing her fingers through his curls and laid her cheek on his chest while he clamped down on the horror threatening to overtake him. Her loose embrace was a comfort, but not enough to disperse the storm clouds brewing in his tormented conscience. It was all he could do to steady his inhalations, beat down the blend of panic and self-loathing fomenting in his gut, and wrap his arms securely around her languid form.

"I love you. You know that, right?" Isaac managed.

His voice was soft, the rhetorical question uttered more for his sake than hers. He didn't anticipate she would actually need convincing, but his plaintive tone seemed to spark some melancholic apprehension in the girl laid out across his chest. The fingers she had playing in his hair slowed their twirling as her expression fell.

"Why, though?" she sighed, sad as a widow burying her husband.

Isaac blinked at her, mind treacherously blank. She met his nonplussed gaze with inquisition that looked innocent enough, albeit doleful.

"What?" he demanded.

"I'm not being a jerk, I promise," she assured him. "I just... I'm genuinely curious, that's all."

"What, do you want, like... I could make a list or something," Isaac offered, nearly dumb with dismay at her instigation.

She knows! She must know, she must-

Isaac clamped down hard on his accelerating heart rate, though the pace of his breathing ran away before he could catch it. He stumbled over his next words, tripped over the compulsion to confess, but resisted. He cleared his throat and forced himself to stammer out an excuse instead.

"You're not asking that because I couldn't- it doesn't mean anything, I promise! I'm just tired, just-"

"No, Isaac, please," Sara shushed him, palms fanning out over his figure soothingly. "Please, I didn't mean it like that. Not at all. You know, I just... sometimes I can't help but wonder what you see in me. You know?"

Her wide eyes searched his with a desperation that allayed his selfish fears. He recognized the dull pain swirling behind her glistening irises, the slumbering reminder of the fragility she harbored. With an agonizing pang, it occurred to Isaac for the first time that Sara might be too delicate to survive a betrayal of this magnitude. Could she withstand the truth of his rampant unfaithfulness, if it ever came out?

Sara quivered above him, frail as a house of cards waiting for a breeze to send its walls tumbling down. Could he live with himself if he became the reason for her collapse?

Isaac swallowed his brimming terror, tightened his embrace on Sara and rearranged their positions to give himself time to think through what he would tell her. He rolled her onto her back, nudged her legs apart and settled between them with his face hidden against her neck and his fingers twining through hers. As much as his actions were designed to placate her, it was a relief to be off the hard ground, still unforgiving even through the tent floor and the layered sleeping bags.

"You know, as a man of science," he mumbled against her skin, "... I always need to know why. Why do things work the way they do, why is the world the way it is. Why do we feel the things we feel, why do we feel them for some people and not others? Why, why why, right? Science is nothing but a bunch of people who don't know anything asking why over and over again until someone comes up with an answer we can all agree on."

"Isaac, I don't-"

"No, let me- I'm working up to something, hear me out?" Isaac plead.

One of his hands left hers to take a turn seeking the bare skin hidden by her night clothes. Her breath slowed and her grip tightened. He felt bumps raise in the wake of his incitements and the thrill of riling her up so easily was almost enough to excite his overused anatomy. Almost, but disappointment crippled his hopefulness when all he could muster was a twitch in response to the sensation of her heat against his palm.

"Oh- okay," she breathed.

Isaac purred satisfaction into the thrum of her pulse, teased between their tight-pressed bodies with fingers that served as sinuous distractions. They slid and stroked, salacious and shameless, pretending hesitation for the sake of allowing his wiles enough time to recoup from where she'd scattered them with her unorthodox question.

"I can't tell you why I feel the way I do about you," he sighed. "Maybe it's because you throw me for a loop sometimes... and I like people who can keep up with my wit... even better if they can make me think twice."

"Isaac! Hey, not fair!" Sara gasped, protesting as his fingers quested deeper through her slick folds. She pushed him playfully, but not hard enough to actually free herself from his weight or displace him as he dipped deeper, more tantalizing with every passing second while his teeth nipped at her skin.

"Maybe it's because you're cute when you get flustered," Isaac went on. He thrust deep with one digit, intentionally wrecking her train of thought and leaving her panting at the shell of his ear. "Or because you're so beautiful that, sometimes, I wonder why too. Why me? What did I do right to deserve you, hm?"

"Sw-sweet-talker!" she managed without the faintest trace of true accusation in her voice.

She was yearning into the palm of his hand, grip closing around his wrist to demand more, lips searching for his while lust whipped her up into a frenzy. This time, their kiss vibrated with desire that diffused from her tensing muscles to his, urging him futilely to join her in hedonistic abandon. Isaac knew better than to think he could match her longing, but he gave her a second finger to bridge the gap and she seemed content enough to accept raw pleasure in place of the answer she had demanded from him.

Past the haze of euphoria Isaac was inflicting on her like a debilitating condition, intentionally meant to throw her off the scent of his transgressions, Sara still clung to enough objections to protest his tactics.

"Dirty trick, getting me all-all wet like this if you're really not planning to make love to me tonight!" she chided him half-heartedly.

The dart of her hand to his crotch bore the same connotation as a medic checking for a pulse. She groaned her disapproval, only for the sound to lengthen and soften back into a moan of surrender when Isaac crooked his fingers inside her firmly, generously. She leaned into the gesture helplessly, let her legs fall open wider for him while his free hand set to the task of displacing her clothes. He hummed and lapped at her neck, determined to manufacture a convincing facsimile of devotion from the crude clay of carnality.

"Come on, you know I would never tease you for nothing," he plied seductively. His mouth dropped lower with every word, tongue wet against her skin in passing on his way down. "Besides... we need to get back at Morticia and Gomez for disturbing us earlier."

Sara laughed breathlessly at his wicked humor, but the sound hiked up into an octave reserved for bliss when he reached his destination.

"But I... I wanna make you feel good too," she pointed out, though she had already given in to him completely.

Isaac didn't humor her with a response this time. He was too busy tickling her clit with the tip of his tongue, lapping around his thrusting fingers as they scissored at her soaked entrance. The most he deigned to afford her was a low hum and that was given mostly in service of encouraging her impassioned, ecstatic cries.

"Taste so good!" he slurred, unflinching in the face of the mess he drew from her with every thrust and suck. The fingers of his left hand pressed dark prints against her delicate skin, grooves that traced deep enough to make her hiss with pain.

"Isaac!"

He moaned at the invocation of his name, quickly losing awareness in the wash of her eagerness and the inept roll of her hips. He clutched her closer, pulled his fingers apart within her and slipped his tongue between them impulsively. Levering her open afforded him the best access, her heat and her slick coating his tastebuds and collecting at the back of his throat. He swallowed and trembled with the effort of holding his crouched posture, the exertion of straining his wrist to keep pumping into her while she writhed away like he was giving her too much.

Then her hands fisted in his hair and her aggression startled him out of the moment with its familiarity. Such savagery didn't typically belong to Sara, but for you... for you, it was natural.

For one perfect, flashing instant, Isaac imagined it was your grasp tangling through his curls, your nails crushing against his scalp cruelly, your thighs trembling with the spastic threat of release. Trembling because he was making you fall apart, driving you out of your mind with rapture, making you clench and drip around his fingers-

Isaac drew back to catch a harsh breath as desire flared and sparked through him like a trail of gasoline drippings igniting spontaneously in the summer sun. Unbelievably, he felt his cock firming, springing to life at the mere suggestion of your presence. Even the illusion of your manner was enough to wake his passions.

Sara's fingers loosened almost immediately and she pushed up onto her elbows with profuse apologies spilling out to interrupt the litany of pleasure Isaac wanted to hear. The crashing return of the present moment devastated him for a single kaleidoscopic heartbeat. He shook his head while he reoriented himself and Sara soothed his scalp in a misplaced attempt to make up for her roughness.

"No, do it again!" he whined brusquely, cutting her off.

"Huh?!"

"Felt so fucking good, do it- do it again!" he growled.

"Isaac, I didn't mean to hurt you, I don't want to-"

He surged up to fasten his lips to hers, hard enough to drag an undignified squeak from her. He tried and failed to guide her fingers back into the wild mess of his curls, only to give up when she went limp in his grasp. Instead, he pulled her hand low between their bodies to let her feel the unexpected resurgence of his arousal. Sara's hesitation suffered under the sensation of him half-hard against her palm. She pulled back to survey him critically, barely coherent from the close call with orgasm Isaac was pushing her toward before his focus broke.

"This isn't the first time you've wanted me to hurt you," she frowned, troubled even past the fog of lust obscuring her finer judgement.

"It doesn't hurt!" Isaac grumbled. "Sara, please, if you just-"

She silenced him with enthusiastic indulgence that crackled through her brittle restraint. Her fingers wove through his hair, tighter than was usual for her. Still not as rough as Isaac wanted, but it was a decent start. His lips abandoned hers while he fumbled to undress himself between her legs.

"Do it harder!" he rasped at her ear.

She moaned out a half-articulated dissent that died when Isaac rubbed his stiffening member against her seeping core. Silk and sluggish, malleable lava, he was still too giving against the plush of her cunt to truly be useful, but he came a little closer to matching her appetite with every passing second.

"Do it harder!" he demanded, the promise of sex breaking his usually smooth voice into a gravelly murmur. "Do it and I'll fuck you so good you'll see stars when you cum for me!"

Your favorite line, but it somehow felt right tumbling from his mouth.

Sara whimpered. Her already assailed composure shattered under his vulgar seductions. Her fingers fisted in his hair until his jaw fell open as wide as possible and his eyes glazed over, sightless with hunger. He forced his way inside of her, still not fully hard, still not aroused enough to carve his way into her properly, but she was so drenched from his sloppy cunnilingus that the botched union somehow succeeded. Her cries escalated too quickly, her nails raking down his back while he struggled to find an angle that would keep him from slipping out at every slight adjustment of her hips beneath his. Her frenzy was directionless, bordering on panic as her grip faltered and tightened on his locks in a haphazard, rhythmless dance that suggested she was forgetting and remembering his newest kink every time his body slammed against hers.

Isaac leaned down to devour her senseless shouts, hiked one of her knees up almost to her shoulder as he panted in the grip his sudden, degenerate lust. She only grew louder the harder he bore down over her, but the closer he nudged her toward climax, the more her grip on him loosened. Sara's nails went from punishing to pacifying faster than Isaac could groan his disappointment. If she noticed that he was dissatisfied, she hid it well. Then again, she was falling apart underneath him with alarming speed while he finally found purchase, finally sank to a depth he could maintain, finally hit the high point of arousal that he was accustomed to mustering with salacious thoughts alone.

Isaac took his own pleasure greedily, heedless of what Sara might have needed from him. He took it brazenly, as if in recompense for her inability to maintain a decent grip on his hair. His hips snapped forward with a violence tempered only by his own persistent fatigue, driving him deep enough to make her scream for him with every harsh thrust. The tent became smothering, moisture clinging in the air as sweat pooled between their heaving bodies.

"Isaac! Isaac! Just like that! Just like-"

His moans almost matched her feral pitch when she clamped around his length, still working feverishly against walls that quivered with the tremors that always reduced his girl to a shaking puddle in his arms. This time, he kept going, kept pushing, kept demanding, kept rutting against her quaking form until the direction of her pleas pivoted sharply.

"ISAAC! Stop, I can't- FUCK! Too much, too- can't take it, s'too good, I can't-"

Isaac could have howled his frustration but he slowed regardless. He refused to pull out, let her shudder through the throes of hyper-sensitivity with his fingers caging her wrists overhead and rabid teeth scraping raw marks thoughtlessly onto her neck. He buried himself deep while she clenched uncontrollably, still thrashing in his hold, all but sobbing from overstimulation. Bitterly, Isaac's thoughts drifted to you while Sara begged for reprieve from the very mania she'd been so eager to incite not so long ago.

You would take it for him. You would let him have his way with your body until he was completely satisfied. It would be your pleasure to bear the brunt of his perversion, to let him plow between your legs no matter how many times he made you unravel before he let go and joined you in release.

The abject yearning to swap Sara out for his other woman mid-coitus was jarring enough to bring him back to some meager semblance of sensibility.

"We can- we can stop, if you want," he managed, but the words were clearly forced, unmistakably grudging.

"No, I can... fuck, I just need a-a minute, babe!" Sara gasped.

Isaac throbbed with the need to keep going, the urge to ravage her until her screams went so hoarse that the words constituting her protests were incomprehensible. With a sickening, feverish jolt, Isaac acknowledged the desire to hurt her, the inexplicable high that came from hearing pain mixed in with the chorus of her bliss. As much as he craved the scourges of a lover who would indulge his subtle masochism, he realized starkly that he possessed a sadism to rival the self-deprecating slant of his impulses. Part of him thirsted for cruelty. For the power of domination, the thrill of subjugation.

"We should stop," Isaac grunted tersely.

If I don’t stop now, I’ll take it too far.

He kept the desolate thought to himself. He rolled off of Sara while she was still catching her breath, fixed his disordered clothes and shuffled to find his shoes. She was too dazed, too busy fighting for breath to ask where he was going, but he muttered a quick excuse as he unzipped the tent flap anyway.

"Air, just need some... gotta breathe, gotta..."

He was still mumbling to no one as he stumbled into the darkness, away from the small campsite until he was satisfied that he was far enough. No one would be able to hear him. He clutched himself again, back braced against a tree with the cool breeze tacking his sweat into a viscous sheen while he jerked off with his eyes squeezed shut and your name bleeding past his lips like a some unstemmed internal hemorrhage. When he came, it was such a let down that he had to bite back a cry of frustration.

"Fuck!" he growled instead, shaking his hand violently to fling his spend toward the brush. "Fuck... ah, fuck."

He settled back against the rough bark and shifted just enough to refasten his pants.

What a mess, he thought derisively.

Twice in one day, and neither climax had truly sated him. He ran his hands through his hair, aggravation dissipating into the softly chirping woodland while he wished he would have stayed by Sara’s side. Whether she would have let him finish inside was an open question, but it was worth asking and he felt acutely that he would have been more satisfied with such a conclusion.

Oh, to ruin his sweet, silly little Sara. The memory of her, panting and harrowed under the duress of his vivacity sent a delighted shiver tearing down his spine. The echo of her pleas, of her begging him to stop, reverberated deliciously in the reprehensible chambers of his mechanical heart. He wanted to hear her pleading with even more desperation. He wanted to bruise her, to mark her, to bleed her, to fill her until she wept for him and flowed over with the evidence of his dissolute affection.

What the fuck is wrong with me…

Dismay crept in when the vision fled. As much as Isaac wanted to blame you for his descent into profligacy, he knew that your presence was even less than a catalyst. He may not have been so openly inclined to indulge his worst impulses before you waltzed into his life and encouraged him to do so, but he hadn't been a saint either. The worst thing he could pin on you was perhaps an awakening of the darker urges that lurked in his subconscious, but even that, he suspected, was a stretch. If they slept before the light of your blaze called them to rise, they had done so fitfully, flailing in their restive repose. Snapping, gnawing and slavering, Isaac's baser proclivities regularly tested the barrier of his discipline for cracks and weak points.

A weak point. That was the best description for you, Isaac mulled. He was malcontent long before you appeared to torment and appease him. He raged against the constraints of civility, tested the boundaries demarcating the imaginary differences between god and man.

If anything, your influence had only accelerated the inevitable, Isaac realized with profound resignation.

A rustling in the bushes interrupted his dour contemplations. Isaac's eyes narrowed. His first thought was that a coyote or a raccoon was responsible for the disturbance. Out of an abundance of caution, or unchecked paranoia, he raised his right hand and swept the entire area with grasping, seeking fingers. His grip closed around something that felt suspiciously human and his stomach dropped with dread. He yanked and hauled Gomez out of the brush by the collar of his shirt.

The spark gaped like a fish, blinked rapidly like he couldn't believe he'd been caught. Isaac was so shocked that he released his friend in favor of clapping his hand over his mouth anxiously. The clinging scent of his own fluids assaulted his senses, overpowering and so irrelevant that he couldn't spare it a second thought.

"I-I didn't hear anything!" Gomez lied terribly. "Honest! And- and even if I did, I would take it to my grave, old boy! You know I would!"

Isaac shook under the duress of discovery. Clearly, Gomez had overheard his moans, recognized the name he couldn't stop himself from whimpering like a shameful secret into the ear of an isolation that promised utmost discretion, only to betray his confidence at the last minute. Isaac let his hand fall slowly, fingers twisting neurotically in his shirt on their way down.

"Old friend, please, please tell me," he began tremulously. "Tell me that Morticia is not in those bushes too."

"She's not! I had to take a leak, she's er... you know, waiting for me to come back," Gomez assured him quickly. "Seriously, Isaac, your secret's safe with me. I wouldn't dream of breathing a word to another soul. You know that!"

"I... yeah, I know," Isaac trembled. "I know, I just..."

Isaac trusted Gomez with his life. So it took him a moment of careful thought to put his finger on the flaw that made this discovery feel so damning.

"Gomez, you don't... you don't think I'm a bad person, just for that, do you?" Isaac pressed. "It was just... I mean, it wasn't even really a fantasy, more like a- a slip of the tongue or temporary insanity, or a fever dream, or-"

"Isaac, Isaac, stop," Gomez sighed. "You're not a bad person. No one's perfect, alright? I'm certainly not going to stand here and judge... especially since I'm sure I don't have the full picture. I mean, knowing you, there's more to the story, isn't there?"

Isaac stood stock still, frozen like a man staring down a firing squad.

"I thought so," Gomez went on, as though Isaac's silence was answer enough. "Look, old boy, my girl's waiting for me. We can talk tomorrow, if that's what you want. Or, if you don't want to talk about it... well, you know how short my memory is. I won't bring this up unless you do."

It was so dark that Isaac struggled to see the wink Gomez shot him as he scampered away.

"No," Isaac murmured to himself, now confident that he was, at last, alone. "No, old friend. You're wrong. I am a bad person."

He stumbled back to his own tent, disturbed in more ways than he cared to count. He found Sara already dozing, though she stirred at the rustle of his return.

"There you are," she sighed.

Grasping, sleepy fingers found his hems and urged him to take his place at her side. If Sara was upset with him for his loss of control, she hid it well. Or maybe she was just too tired to lash him with her scorn. He settled beside her and pressed close enough to lose some of his troubles in the billow of her hair. Her fingertips massaged his scalp languidly, providing a welcome distraction that he leaned into gratefully.

"You're not mad at me?" he mumbled. "I didn't hurt you or piss you off?"

"I just needed a second to recover," she murmured back, still half-asleep as his arms caged her selfishly. "That was amazing."

"Yeah?"

"Mm-hm."

"Did you see stars?" Isaac teased, tone lighter for the ease with which she accepted his cruelty as a game to be forgiven and forgotten.

"So many stars," she sighed.

She slumped in his embrace, back asleep in the span of a few halting breaths while Isaac still coasted on lingering chemical fumes that refused to let him rest. He held her closer and clung to the present with stubborn short-sightedness.

I have her now. Come what may, she's mine for tonight. And I'm not letting her go easily.

Was it practical for Isaac to have both girls? Definitely not. Possible? The odds of him succeeding should he attempt to walk so fine a line laughed in his face. His pride bristled at the ridicule and he reminded himself that he had already done the impossible enough times over to make a mockery of fate. Why should he treat this like anything but another trial to overcome, another choice to be ignored, another set of variables to wrestled until they succumbed to his capricious, arrogant whims?

Isaac Night had never been one to let bad odds stop him from employing a desperate gambit. He wasn't going to cave to trepidation anytime soon. Consequences be damned, he decided with a nefarious rush of giddiness, he was going to have his cake and eat it too.

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