♡slime♡

In your own little world, you stand at the long wooden table, fingers moving across the trackpad of a laptop, a pair of too big glasses sliding down your nose. The left lens is smudged, the smear only getting worse every time you push them up with the back of your hand. There’s a whirlwind of stuff around you, bowls and bags and measuring cups, cracked egg shells and sprinkles scattered across the wood, multi colored icing separated into different containers, and you're so into your work you don't even realize he's in the doorway. 

He almost feels bad for scaring you when he clears his throat. Almost. 

“Oh my god,” you whirl, hand pressed to your chest, half ready to bolt. “S-sorry, I didn’t- I didn’t know you were there.” 

Is that anyway to say hi to your daddy sweetheart?

“Good morning.” He eyes the twenty four ounce mason jar to your left. It’s one quarter full, coffee and cream swirling to the bottom. Too much caffeine. 

“Good morning, hi.” You smile, sweet and shy but more emboldened. It’s been a few days since he fed you bites of lemon meringue pie, a few days since he went home and stroked his cock to the memory of your mouth parting for him, eyes half lidded looking up through your lashes. 

Since then, you’ve a bit more brave, encouraged by his careful coaxing, text messages at night and throughout the day to check in, visits in the morning as he heads to base. 

He’s leading his little lamb right into her shepherd’s arms. 

“What’re you working on?” 

“Funfetti birthday cake.” You slide your glasses back up your face. They’re a mess and he can’t resist fixing it, pulling them off, wiping the lenses with bottom of his shirt. You freeze. Little deer in his headlights. 

“Didn’t know you wore glasses.” He places them back where they belong, righting them when they slip, and confirming what he already knew. They’re too big. You need new ones. 

“Th-thank you. I do for reading. And… er, screens. Reading on screens, mostly, though I need them for books too so I guess just… reading in general.” He understands the pause now, the moments when you’ve become self conscious, embarrassed, or you’re looking for the words you need, anxiously trying to piece it all together, step into a skin that doesn't quite fit. 

A rhythm the world doesn't understand. Too cruel, impatient, cold, it has no care for fragile things, too easily reflecting a mirror of his former self. 

He files the bit about you needing to wear glasses when you read, another notation in the long list he’s already memorized, organized, and moves onto his next inquiry. “Who’s the birthday cake for?” 

“Mara. It’s her birthday. They’re…” you make a face like you’ve sniffed spoiled milk, “we’re going out to a pub to celebrate.” He stiffens. On one hand, he’s proud of you. On the other, the idea of you in a pub raises the hair on the back of his neck, has him a bit out of his mind. 

He’s not interested in clipping your wings, but going out to a pub with no one to watch over you? Not bloody likely. “Tonight?” 

“Mhm.” You’re rubbing a stick of butter in a round pan. “Funfetti is the classic birthday cake. You know, the vanilla cake with the sprinkles?” He shakes his head. “Oh. Well, um, it is. It's mostly a kid thing now, but I think it's the ultimate birthday cake. Birthdays are supposed to be fun but you know... they kind of suck when you're an adult. Anyway... funfetti is fun so, that's why...” 

“Maybe you can save me a slice. Where are you going?” 

“Save you…" your brows crease as you try to process what he's said. "Doc’s.” You’ve dropped the stick of butter abruptly, greasy fingers gripping the edge of the pan. Doc’s. It’s a younger crowd, a bit posh, but still a bit dark. Has a bit of an edge. 

It’s been a few weeks since he’s gotten a pint with Kyle and Johnny anyway. 

He smiles, strokes the backs of his knuckles down your cheek, satisfied when you lean in for more, disappointed the few minutes he had to drop in are now over. “I’ve gotta go baby, be good for me.” Your mouth drops open so wide he thinks he might be able to fit his cock in it. 

“Oh, okay. I- I will.” 

What did you forget?

Daddy. I will, daddy.

“That ‘er?” Kyle motions with his beer bottle towards the table where you stand nervously at the edge, floral flecked dress swaying just above your knees. You've looped a white ribbon through your hair, the beacon of a gentle soul that seems to be calling out to every muppet in the building, every wandering eye fueling a fire burning in his blood. 

“Yeah.” His stomach is sour. Even a neat pour of whiskey and pint didn’t settle him. 

You’re trying so hard. Smiling and nodding and listening to everyone, clutching your drink like it’s a lifeline. Mara seems to understand the grace you need, but no one else in the group gets it, and some of them give you weird looks, or worse, look at each other when you’re not paying attention in annoyance. Your only friend at the table catches a few of them and shoots stern glares as she shakes her head, but it doesn’t change much. 

“She looks uncomfortable,” Johnny grunts, his scrupulous eye never missing a thing. Someone asks you a question, and you stumble over your answer, looking away to the wall when a girl to your left blatantly smirks, and then sneers directly in your face. Simon’s blood boils. 

“She’s different from them, it’s hard for her.” It's the easiest way to explain it. You’re one in a million. His one in a million. 

The table laughs at something, and you frantically flick over each person’s face, trying to pick up on a joke you clearly did not understand. Eventually, you just settle for another smile, resigned to watch it all from the outside as conversation flows from person to person, but never towards you. 

Sweet girl. He wants to take you home where you’re safe and happy and carefree, where you can be yourself and not have to worry about trying to keep up or facing everyone’s judgement. Where he can hold your perfect and precious heart in his hand and protect it. Where he can fuck the memory of this night right out of you, bounce you on his cock until the only thing you know how to do is come for him, over and over again. 

He misses the exact moment the cake appears among the stacks of shot glasses. Your anxiety ramps up as everyone starts to eat their slices, shoulders high beneath your ears, fingers knotted together too tight. It’s an eternity before the first person looks at you, mouth half full and thrilled, their enthusiasm alleviating some of the weight that's been sitting on his chest, and yours. Whatever they say seems to lessen the weight because you’re smiling again, excited, and as more people turn your way, the smile turns to a full on beam, your words from the other night echoing in his ears. 

I like feeding people. 

Another hour passes before he decides to call it, the group now spread across the pub, scattered around different tables, at the bar, outside smoking. You’re in a corner with your back to the room talking to Mara, and when he appears in her line of sight, she spots him immediately, grabbing your arm, mouthing something he doesn’t catch. 

You turn- 

And light up like a fucking Christmas tree. 

“Captain Riley!” The alcohol has made you bold, slow synapses firing less rapidly, providing a longer lead time, somewhat preventing you from second guessing or withholding yourself. 

“Hi baby.”

“I’m just gonna…” Mara tries to move away but you reach for her. 

“Happy Birthday Mar. Thanks for inviting,” you hiccup, “me.” She gives you a squeeze. 

“Thanks for coming, and for the cake, it was amazing. Made me feel like I was kid, ya know? When birthdays really mattered.” Sadness flickers in her eyes, and then disappears in a glaze of intoxication. “Anyway, see you Monday?” 

“Yep.” She gives you one more hug before slipping away, and you sigh. 

“She loved her cake.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” You’ve got this dreamy look on your face, sleepy and sweet, a little kitten who’s ready to curl up for a nap. 

Cast a line. See if you’re biting. 

“How’re you gettin’ home?” 

“An uber?” You lick your lips. “Or… uh. A Lyft?” You lurch to the side and he darts forward to steady you, movement too fast for you to track, all of it ending up as a surprise, like you weren’t even in your body for a moment. “Th-thanks.” You study his hand, where it sits on your arm. “You know you’re so big?” His lips twitch to the side of his mouth. 

“Yeah sweetheart. I’m big.” You’re still staring at his hand. “D’you need a ride home?” 

“Huh?” He's held this in the back of his mind all night as a possibility, built a tentative plan for this opportunity too golden to pass up. No fucking way are you going home in a rideshare or with anyone else. 

“I’m taking you home.” You shrug at the declaration with little trepidation and take his hand. 

So sweet and full of trust. 

He never specified which home. 

When the gravel of his driveway crunches under the truck’s tires, you don’t stir, and you don’t wake up when he turns it off or opens the passenger side door, your head lolling against your shoulder. 

“Sweetheart,” He keeps his voice low, reaching across your lap to unbuckle your seatbelt, brushing against your breasts, soft exhales puffing little clouds across his skin. “We’re here.” 

“Hmm?” you crack an eye open and then shake your head, “no ‘m sleeping.” Your cheek is warm in his palm, and he kisses it, trying to rouse you, gauge your reaction. Your awareness. Your nose wrinkles. “Stop.” 

“C’mon, you'll be more comfortable inside.” You whimper when he jostles you, pinning a palm to your temple. 

“My head hurts.” Poor baby. 

“I know,” he pulls you up out of the seat and into his chest, carefully supporting your balance. He’s taking liberties now, wrapping an arm around your waist, curling his fingers along the nape of your neck, brushing his lips across your forehead when you whine, high pitched and crackled, broken under the weight of too much alcohol and need for more sleep. “I know baby, Let’s get you into bed.” You lay your cheek on his chest and sigh. 

“Okay.” 

“Spit.” He holds the cup under your lips and you do as he asks diligently, bubbly white toothpaste getting caught on the corner of your mouth. 

Getting you upstairs and into his room went just as he anticipated. A little anxiety, a little uncertainty, all of it gently soothed until you were sitting on his bed and he was taking off your shoes, reassuring you, promising everything was okay and you were right where you belonged. 

“You’re safe with me sweetheart. I’m going to take care of you.” 

Now, you’re perched on the closed toilet lid in his bathroom as he finishes brushing your teeth, sleepy and serene, naked thighs peeking out from beneath the hem of his t-shirt. 

You’re completely unguarded, vulnerable, another layer peeled back, another piece he lays claim to. 

His sweet little fawn. 

He knew all along this was underneath the weight you carried. That when you finally felt safe and cherished and cared for, you’d bloom, be yourself without the pressure of everything else. Deep down, beneath the expectations of how everyone thinks you should talk, or act, or behave, behind all the coping mechanisms you’ve taught yourself, buried under mountains of complexity, is his precious little girl who needs her hand held and her tears wiped. Who’s brilliant and beautiful and different, and has never had the space to just be. 

Now, you'll be able to do just that while he takes care of the rest. He'll decide. You’ll have boundaries. You’ll have rules. You’ll have daddy and he’ll take away the endless pressure that closes in on you from all sides, he'll ensure you get what you need. There will be less worry, less fear and unlimited opportunities to be. 

“My face.” You tilt your chin back with your eyes closed, and he chuckles. 

“What about it?” 

“My,” hiccup, “makeup.” He turns the tap on warm, testing the temp until he’s satisfied, and soaks a washcloth. 

“Keep your eyes closed.” You sit still as he works, dabbing away everything on your eyelids and lashes, wiping underneath to catch anything he missed. “There we go.” You sway in his grip and slur.

“Bed now?” 

“Last thing.” There’s a glass of water and naproxen on the counter, and you swallow them without question. He hides his grimace. That will need to be addressed in the morning. When you try to put the glass back on the counter, he shakes his head. “All of it,” you manage to get the rest of the water down, and he squeezes your hip. “That’s my girl.” 

“You’re warm.” Your arm is slung over his middle, a cold foot tucked between his knees, mouth half open on his pillow. Completely uninhibited, nearly asleep. 

His cock is hard against his stomach beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, aching with a fullness he can’t relieve. He’s been hard since he undressed you, peeled your bra off and held you to his chest as he unhooked it, felt your perfect, pretty breasts and nipples against him as he tugged his shirt over your head. You were bashful, buried your face into his neck with a trembling giggle, but refused to let go, sunk your fingernails into his biceps as your hands shook. His sweet, shy girl. 

He rubs your back, works his fingers in the knots between your shoulders, watching your lashes flutter as you try to fight sleep.  

“Tomorrow…” There’s a last minute flash of uncertainty, and he presses his lips to your forehead. 

“It’s okay, we’ll talk at breakfast sweetheart. It’s time for bed.” Tomorrow. You'll be fighting a battle tomorrow, a hangover, anxiety, an endless spiral of confusion and doubt, but he'll be here to guide you through it. 

The only way out is through. 

It will be a lot easier on both of you if you're able to get some sleep. 

“Yeah, ’s past my bedtime.” You whisper with a hazy, playful smile on the wisp of a giggle. "We should have pancakes for breakfast." Your easy, peaceful state encourages him to go a step further. Cast a line, see if you’re biting. 

"If you close your eyes and go to sleep, Daddy will make you pancakes in the morning." You nod with a yawn, tucking your face between the pillow and his shoulder. 

"Mmkay then. Night." It's not a protest, it's not a flinch, it's not a moment of disgust, and satisfaction roars, rips through him like bullet, this instinct and desire long honed finally settling in the place where it belongs. In you. 

"Goodnight baby." He stares at the ceiling as you disappear into dreams and plans his mission. Plots his checkpoints, sets his objectives. Lead, decide, control. 

but then you smell them. someone like you. you catch whiffs of them at the building’s entrance. by the post boxes. on warm days when everyone’s windows are open. that’s the kind of day it is when you spot him on his balcony for the first time, and the thick scent of his sweat carries across the gap. there’s a certain doggish undertone to it.

the staring problem begins.

and it is humiliating.

it makes your instincts go haywire. you jot down feverish notes about what it does to you. how you keep finding yourself creeping through the blinds. it isn’t normal. none of it is normal. but you have no idea what to do. you can’t just outright ask, can you? hey, i smelled you from across the building and i really dig your musk.

of course, then you’re caught peeping, and he winds up at your door. you have to open it. what other choice do you have? you get the feeling it will open with or without your permission. you throw the deadbolt but keep the chain hooked out of some remaining shred of self-preservation. then you crack the door open.

it is pungent, to say the least. he didn’t even bother to throw a shirt on. looks like he ran here, too, judging by his heaving, hairy chest. he stares down at you, unblinking, his mouth set in a line. you go tongue-tied. he must be furious.

after a beat, he plants a hand on the door and gives it a push. just a nudge. but it’s enough—the flimsy chain strains, pops out of its track, and snaps into pieces. you don’t look down when it lands on your feet. you’re too busy watching the slow curl of his smile. his nostrils flaring.

but then you smell them. someone like you. you catch whiffs of them at the building’s entrance. by the post boxes. on warm days when everyone’s windows are open. that’s the kind of day it is when you spot him on his balcony for the first time, and the thick scent of his sweat carries across the gap. there’s a certain doggish undertone to it.

the staring problem begins.

and it is humiliating.

it makes your instincts go haywire. you jot down feverish notes about what it does to you. how you keep finding yourself creeping through the blinds. it isn’t normal. none of it is normal. but you have no idea what to do. you can’t just outright ask, can you? hey, i smelled you from across the building and i really dig your musk.

of course, then you’re caught peeping, and he winds up at your door. you have to open it. what other choice do you have? you get the feeling it will open with or without your permission. you throw the deadbolt but keep the chain hooked out of some remaining shred of self-preservation. then you crack the door open.

it is pungent, to say the least. he didn’t even bother to throw a shirt on. looks like he ran here, too, judging by his heaving, hairy chest. he stares down at you, unblinking, his mouth set in a line. you go tongue-tied. he must be furious.

after a beat, he plants a hand on the door and gives it a push. just a nudge. but it’s enough—the flimsy chain strains, pops out of its track, and snaps into pieces. you don’t look down when it lands on your feet. you’re too busy watching the slow curl of his smile. his nostrils flaring.

Your hands go tight around the wheel, eyes so wide that they nearly pop out of your head as you stare at the car directly in front of you. All of the dread in the world pools in your mouth and then down your throat when you swallow, heart galloping in your chest. You almost can’t believe it for a second.

Then the car in front of you—a big, fuck-you SUV that only worsens your anxiety because of all cars to hit, it had to be someone with a fancy, brand new car that probably has a lawyer on speed dial—puts their hazards on and the driver’s side doors opens and reality snaps like a rubberband back into you. With shaky hands, you put your car into park and put your hazards on as well. 

“Oh shit,” you whisper under your breath. An understatement.

A tall man in a brown parka steps out of the car and stares at you through the windshield, a stern expression on his face. He has a beanie pulled down over his head and a full beard, and for a second, the mental image of a bear emerging out of its den flickers in your imagination, all snow-dusted and irritable. 

He’s grizzled and older than you. The only consolation is that he doesn’t match the image of the driver that you had in your head—no seven thousand dollar suit or bluetooth earpiece; instead, he seems like the kind of man who’d drive an old pickup or a schooner, wearing an Aran sweater and a skipper's cap, with a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. He seems out of place in the middle of the road in your small town. 

But he is real, and even though you watch him march over to you, you flinch when he raps on the window with his knuckles. 

“Roll the window down,” he instructs, voice muffled through the glass, and you do because the command cuts through the buzzing in your ear. When you do, he reaches into your car with one hand and pops the lock, then takes a step back to open the door. You’d freak out if the situation were different, but you must be in shock because all you can do is stare at him dumbly as he leans into the car and undoes your seatbelt. “C’mon, sweetheart. Out.”

It doesn’t take much coaxing to get you to step out of the car. All he has to do is step back and you get out, knees nearly buckling, like jelly under you. He holds your elbow to steady you. Your elbow feels delicate and tiny in the width of his palm. 

“You alright, sweetheart?” he asks, looking all over your face.

You want to answer him, but all you can do is whimper, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, none of that. It was an accident. You alright though? Anything hurt?”

“Uh…I don’t…I don’t know.” It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you think. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be sore all over, but right now you feel fine. On the verge of shaking out of your skin, teeth nearly clattering together, but more or less okay. 

“Nothing too bad then. Wanna give me your insurance so we can deal with this, sweetheart?” 

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Let me just—” You move to reach back into your car to fetch your purse, but he stops you, insisting on getting it for you. 

And you let him, docile like a doll, watching as he leans into your car and across the seats to grab your purse, big frame looking comically large in your little car. Looking like he’d barely fit in the front seat if he tried to get in. 

He comes back out with your little purse in hand and opens it, handing you your wallet and purse by its strap. Your fingers are still shaking when you pull out your insurance information and hand it to him. Everything feels surreal and muted, and the tears are going to flow at any minute now if you don’t get a handle on it. 

He must notice because a knuckle fits under your chin and lifts your head up. “Hey, what’s wrong? 

“No, no,” you say, reaching up to swipe your fingers over your eyes. “I’m just—I’m really embarrassed. I’ve never been in an accident before.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His voice is much softer now, pitched low in the way handlers talk to spooked animals. He puts his thumb to your chin, holding you in place. “No one got hurt. Could’ve been worse than it was, and we’ve both got insurance, so what’s done is done. I don’t look mad, do I?”

Trapped between his thumb and knuckle, you can only give a slight shake of your head. “No.” 

“Then let’s just take it one step at a time and no tears. Okay?”

You sniff. “Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to call the insurance, so you get back in the car and sit tight, alright?” 

You nod. 

“Good girl,” he says, a hint of praise in his voice. “Put the heat on too. It’s too cold for that jacket.”

That makes you go warm all over, flustered and tongue-tied. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to expect a response out of you. The only thing he expects you to do is get back in the car and turn the heat back on, the warm air billowing into your face when he leans in to crank it up all the way. 

Though most of the sound is muffled from inside the car, you turn down the heat and crack the window open slightly to hear him give his name to his insurance company. John Price. Even his name evokes the image of him somewhere else in the world, settled into the nooks and crannies of history. 

John handles everything for you while you sit in the car like he told you to, settling everything with the insurance companies and calling for a tow truck right after that. You don’t realize that, of course, until the tow truck pulls up in front of his car and he comes back to usher you out of your car. 

“How am I supposed to get home?” you croak. The tow truck driver hitches your car to the bed of the lift and pulls it up, your little car looking pathetic all alone up there. 

“I’ll drive you home then bring mine in later.”

“Why can’t I drive my car to the garage too?” You’re petulant now that you’ve learned that he won’t bite, and you know it’s petulance because you don’t actually put up much of a fight to get your car taken off the tow truck. 

That petulance trembles when his expression grows stern again. “You’re getting it checked by a mechanic before you get behind the wheel again,” he tells you in no uncertain terms, eyes daring you to contradict him.

You don’t. It’s hard to argue with someone so adamant on your wellbeing. A mechanic in later days will tell John, with you by his side, that your car was mostly fine apart from some slight damage to the bumper, but that you made the right call to bring it in just in case the frame cracked during the accident.

John’s arm will be around your waist at the time and he’ll pull you tighter into his side when the mechanic says that. And what do you do but go with it, curling into his side like it’s natural. You’ll have already fucked him by then anyway. It’ll be no less forward than letting him take you for coffee and then back home, following you up to your apartment and into your bed. 

Now though, you let him usher you into the passenger seat of his car and shut the door behind you, the wind cutting off abruptly. It only comes back when the door opens on his side. 

You rattle off your address and watch bemusedly as he programs it into his GPS and hits save. You don’t have the temerity to question him, to poke a hole in the bubble of familiarity ballooning around the two of you. The real world seems far away in his car, like you’re in limbo, the rules different here somehow. 

“How about a coffee?” he asks at the next light, putting his hand on your thigh and shaking when you don’t respond right away. “Does a hot drink sound good right about now?”

“I guess?” you say. In truth, it sounds great, but you’re losing the thread of this conversation, your old preoccupations getting further and further away from you. 

John gives your thigh a squeeze, lingering for a beat before pulling away. “Good. It’ll be a nice little pick me up before we go home. My treat.”

Single Serving

"You tricked me" prompt for Soap Demon!Price Unexpected Husband John Price Neighbor!Johnny ; part 2 Crappy Alpha BF gets dunked on (1/30/24) Hybrid au (Ragdoll!Reader); Part 2 (3/18/24) Commission: Lifeguard AU (2/26/24) Commission: Guilty by Association (4/24/24) Squeeze Me, I Squeak (AO3 Crosspost) Squeak 'Em If You Got 'Em (AO3 Crosspost) Oh, Witchfinder... (AO3 Crosspost) хозяин (9/6/24) Unfamiliar Nobody (9/9/24) Carrion (11/4/24) Commission: Bastard's Bishop (1/3/25)

Pickling

Childhood Friend Simon (update 12/21/23) Gentle Chokeholds - 1/8/24 From SpecGru With Love - 9/23/24 (Re)organized Crime - 7/31/24 Commandments for Nobody - 2/18/24 Worse Natures, Better Impulses (mean simon)- 8/6/24 Fields of Elation - 5/20/24 Mister(s) Steal Your Girl - 7/17/24 In Love With a Fever - 8/2/24 Men At Work - 11/14/24 Scottish Cabin in the Woods - 4/4/24 Heaven is Here (If You Want It) - 10/5/24 Operator: Saint - 12/6/24

Empty Jars

Woof Woof, Johnny! Keeper/Kept AU Obsessive!Johnny Bodyguard!Gaz Greater Bad (aka: Gov Asset Soap)

You had never felt so stupid in your life. Apparently, the only free day that you and your date had was on Friday. February 14th. Go figure.

The waiter had already come by 3 times to ask if you were ready to order or if you were going to leave. They didn’t say specifically to leave but you got the gist. Another person to take up their time and tips.

Frustrated tears began in the corner of your eyes while you packed your belongings, eager to get out of the humiliation of other couples stares and the cheap paper heart decor lining the restaurant.

This guy your friend set you up with seemed perfect. On paper at least. Kind, funny, flirty, and more is what she promised you.

It wasn’t until you were almost standing out of your booth that a very handsome man in a suit strode over in a huff. Mutton chopped beard and biceps for days, as he looked you in the eyes. God, his eyes were so blue.

“I apologize darling, I came straight from work and traffic was a nightmare.”

He kissed your cheeks quickly like an old friend.

“I wanted to message ya, but I didn’t think the cops would appreciate someone texting and driving on Valentine’s Day.”

Maybe that softened your heart. Just a little.

“You’re almost 45 minutes late.”

“It’ll be the first and last time I’ll ever be late, darling.”

You couldn’t help the grin that spread across your face slowly that time.

John, as he introduced himself, was kinder than you thought he’d be. Flirty at just the right moments and careful with his words, like he wanted to make sure you knew he meant every single word.

The date went amazingly well, he even made you giggle so much that you snorted and immediately felt embarrassed about it. He said he’d take that as a compliment as he pulled your hands away from your mouth.

Just as desert rolled around, you excused yourself to the bathroom and texted your friend, lettering her know you’re having an amazing time with John. Her next text came in just as you finished washing your hands.

who’s john?

Coming back to sit down at the booth, you immediately asked;

“You’re not my actual blind date, are you?”

He stopped mid chew of his chocolate torte, gaze flicking up to yours. Like a kid caught in a cookie jar.

“No, darling. I’m not. I actually had a take out order here but when I saw the prettiest bird in my life alone at a table, I couldn’t leave her.”

Your anger rose just a tad.

“So this was a pity date.”

“No.” He was so firm in his answer.

“I’d have asked you out anywhere if we crossed paths earlier but you were already dressed, sitting here waiting. I couldn’t pass on this golden opportunity, could I?”

You may have never been kidnapped before, but you can’t imagine this is how it’s supposed to go.

The masked man looms in the doorway to the kitchen, shoulders so wide that he can’t stand in the opening properly because he wouldn’t even fit, the very top of his head hidden by the worn frame. He’s a beast of a man, hulking in every sense of the word, and you can’t help but wonder how he managed to sneak up on you in the first place. Surely you’re not that unaware of your surroundings? He’s easily 6’4, probably no less than three hundred pounds.

Not much time had passed since you’d woken in a dark room with a thudding pain between your temples, mouth dry and throat swollen. You were sure you’d been blindfolded at first, eyes dry and heavy, until ice-cold water splashed onto your face and your eyes flew open on instinct.

He’d just… been there. One minute you were walking home, trying to avoid large puddles and squinting through pouring rain, and the next you were shivering and scared, your captor towering over your crumpled and bound form.

You’d lost control of your bladder the moment the sight of him registered. He’d looked down, snorted, and lumbered away to find a hose. 

You’d been inconsolable when he told you to strip, shaking with your sobs and keeping your arms wrapped tight around your chest. Even when he’d grunted ‘m not gonna fuck you when you reek of fuckin’ piss, you hadn’t been able to calm enough to follow his demands. It was only when he’d reached up to run a hand over his face and his shirt lifted just enough for you to get a glimpse of the piece on his hip that you’d been snapped away from your panic.

You can see the shape of it now, tucked in its holster. You’re fucking terrified that at any moment he could pull it out and end your life, like that. It would take hardly any effort at all. Just a twitch of the finger and bam, you go from captive to corpse.

“How long’ll it be?” The man grunts, massive arms crossed over his chest, breaking you out of your fearful stupor. 

You blink at him, wide-eyed and silent. He’d given you clothes – clothes that fit, to your comfort and horror – so you’ve been spared the further indignity of forced nudity, but the extra layer doesn’t make you feel much safer. 

He dips his chin when you don’t answer, dark eyes boring into yours. That only makes you clam up more, joints stiff.

He huffs. “Dinner. When’re you gonna fuckin’ feed me, bird?”

You stare at him, baffled. “What?” It’s the first word you’ve said to him without sobbing, and your voice trembles, shrill and weak.

He steps forward, angling his shoulders to fit into the room, fuck, and you skitter back, pressing yourself to the wooden cabinets. They’re tall, taller than the countertops in any house you’ve ever lived in, and the lip presses into the middle of your back.

“There’s food in the fridge,” he grunts. “Get to work.”

You’re not sure you could move even if you wanted to, your fight-or-flight instinct having settled firmly on freeze. 

He rumbles low in his chest and plants one hand on the island in the center of the kitchen, leaning over it. He’s so tall that his head nearly reaches the other side of the counter, hardly a foot away from yours. The counters are the perfect height for him. 

“What’s not clicking, girl?”

You pinch yourself, a quick twist of skin to make sure that this is all real and you’re not just trapped in the world’s most confusing nightmare.

“I-I don’t… you want me t-to cook? For you?” You manage, voice strangled.

He looks spectacularly unimpressed with your lack of understanding, and a distant part of you recognizes that you should probably be worried about making your captor displeased so quickly. However, the far larger part of you hasn’t had a rational thought since he hosed you down with freezing water and is still almost entirely useless.

He turns to the side to open his fridge, hand dwarfing the handle, and drops a chunk of frozen meat on the counter. It’s wrapped in brown parchment paper, a little string holding it closed. The fridge rattles with how harshly he closes the door and you can’t help but flinch. 

If he weren’t closer to the exit than he is to you, you’d have bolted away the second he turned his back. But he’s close enough that he could reach out and grab you with one hand if you got to the doorway, and you can’t even bring yourself to think about what he might do if you were caught. 

“Cook it.” He nods at the meat, voice bored like this is simple. Like it’s obvious, and your lack of understanding is an inconvenience that he’s rapidly losing patience with.

You listen, because it is obvious. He’s the captor, you’re the captive. At any moment, at the slightest whim, he could shoot you, strangle you, beat you, or a dozen worse things you can’t imagine for fear of ruining his dinner with your bile. 

He has every advantage and you don’t have anything but the shapeless hoodie and sweatpants he gave you. Here, you are nothing and he is everything.

So with shaking hands and tears streaming down your face nearly the entire time, you listen. 

You find a pan – he doesn’t help you and it’s incredibly awkward to try and dig around in unfamiliar cabinets without turning your back to him, but you manage it – and get the burner turned on. He steps out of the doorway again, still watching you from the hallway, and that gives you just enough bravery to inch towards the fridge, snatching the butter from it like he might lurch forward at any minute. 

It’s a good cut of meat. A ribeye, think and with not much fat on it. You’ve worked in the resturaunt business for a long time and it’s obvious to you that this is cut by a local butcher, not some packing plant. This is fresh. 

You have to stand with your back to the counter beside the stove to keep him in your eyeline. He doesn’t seem to mind, though the black balaclava covering him from scalp to neckline keeps almost all of his expressions a mystery to you. 

“How do you want it?” You manage to ask, after what must be five minutes of psyching yourself up internally and darting your eyes between him and the meat. 

“Rare,” he says, and you find that you’re not exactly surprised by his answer.

Basting the meat is the hardest part, but you manage. You’ve watched your father do this since you were born, spent countless nights in the corner of your parent’s restaurant watching line cooks and chefs and dishwashers and paying them all far more attention than you ever did your homework, nodding off in class the next day because the restaurant was open until eleven and your parents never once left early.

You could cook this meat in your sleep. Even with his minimal ingredients (he just shakes his head when you ask where the garlic is, and you quickly realize the only seasonings you have to work with are salt and pepper), you’re confident that the meat has come out tender and juicy, if flavorless. 

There are no sides. No drinks. No dessert. If you’d made this meal for either one of your parents, they’d lecture you for so long that the steak would go stone cold. 

You don’t have a plate to serve it on. When you ask tentatively about the dishes, voice hardly audible to even you, the man doesn’t answer. 

He instead begins to stride towards you, sending you careening around the island to try and keep as far from him as possible, hips crashing into the sharp edges of the counter and socks slipping across the tile. He ignores you completely as he leans over the over, sniffing loudly. 

You’ve thrown yourself, completely unintentionally, to the side of the counter with a large and well-stocked knife block. Before you even really think about it, you’re gripping a carving knife with both hands and holding it straight out in front of you, like you’re hoping he runs into you and impales himself. It’s probably your best bet, considering your knees are nearly knocking and barely holding you up.

He is entirely unconcerned by you. He grabs an oven mitt that was either always black or has been scorched so badly that it’s been darkened, the back of it split with its thin lining peeking out, and grabs the cast-iron by its handle, turning back to the rest of the kitchen. 

He snorts when he sees you, the sound distinctly amused and unafraid. “You think you could hurt me? With that thing?”

You may be shaking in fear, the knife quivering in front of you even with your knuckles clenched so tight they nearly spasm, but you still manage to find yourself almost offended.

“I’ll stab you,” you threaten, voice quiet but the steadiest it’s been since you woke up in that damp basement. “I’ll do it.”

The cheeks of the balaclava pull up, the imprint of his lips clear throught the fabric as he smiles, an indent where his teeth must be. “Don’t think you’ll like what happens if you try, pet.”

He steps around the island again, striding for the door and completely dismissing you. At least, that’s what you think until he calls, “Follow,” over his shoulder, like you’re an animal being called to heel.

The dining room is visible from the kitchen, a section of one wall carved out so you can see into each room from the other. You only lose sight of him for a second before he reappears on the other side of the wall, heading to sit at the table. 

The room has a horrible dark red carpet, the walls the same old-fashioned panneling as the hallway he’d dragged you down hardly an hour earlier. He seats himself at the head of a small rectangular table. It’s the only chair in the room despite the fact that five more could easily fit at the table, one leg shorter than the other. There’s nothing on the walls, no decor anywhere, just one table and one chair for one man.

You linger in the doorway, shifty and nervous, halfway to rushing back to the kitchen if only for some deluded sense of familiarity you’ve already built. 

“Don’t make me chase you,” he warns, eyes narrowing into a brief glare before he drops the pan in front of himself, silverware already set at his place, cast iron still smoking. “Neither of us’ll like it if you ruin my meal, bird.”

Then, he digs in. 

You’ve seen a lot of people eat. More people than you can count, in fact. You’ve seen them eat good food, bad food, life-changingly good and life-changingly bad food. As a child you’d been fascinated by the expressions on customers’ faces when they tried something new for the first time.

A woman with her eyes squeezed shut and eyebrows raised high as she bites into a new chocolate cake recipe your mother spent weeks making you taste test, moaning so loudly her husband had blushed. A man nearly collapsing over his bowl of soup on a cold winter day, just barely keeping his tie from falling into it as he desperately shoveled another bite into his mouth. You’ve seen people cry over your father’s wagyu, pepper your mother’s face with kisses after tasting her dacquoise.

This man eats like none you’ve ever seen before.

He’s like an animal. It takes him just a second to push his mask up to his nose, revealing pale skin decorated with atrophic and keloid scars both, then he’s pulling the pan as close to his chest as he can and hunching over it like a predator guarding its kill. 

He seems entirely unworried about burning his wrists on the edges of the pan, instead focused on tearing his steak into barely bite sized pieces with his fork and messily rubbing it in the extra butter still pooling in the bottom of the pan. 

He doesn’t even pick the first piece up with his fork. He pinches it between two fingers and pushes it between thin, scarred lips, ignoring what must be a burn on his fingertips. He chews twice, then swallows. His digits shine under the low light of his dining room, juice from the meat dripping down his fingers to cover his hand, nails choppy and with a little piece of fat stuck under one until he digs it out with his tooth.

You gape as he does it again and again, pushing two, then three pieces into his mouth at once as he works through the meat. 

It was a massive steak. It took more than half an hour to cook, if the clock on his stove is right. It’s gone in less than five minutes.

He moans as he eats, nearly pornographic in a way that makes you shift in discomfort. The steak is rare enough that the juice dripping from it is pink, the meat itself a brighter color than the man’s thin lips. Juice sluices down his chin as he chews with his mouth open, bits of the meat caught between crooked teeth. 

When he gets to the last piece of the cut, half of it submerged in butter, he holds it in front of himself for just a moment. Then, he turns to you for the first time since he left the kitchen.

His lips are flat, expressionless, as he holds the piece of steak up in front of himself. His elbow is planted firmly on the table to keep his hand in his eyeline, and he looks at you expectantly, silent. 

Your stomach growls, loud enough for him to hear. His lips twitch up in a smirk before he smothers it. You glare. You have no idea how long the drugs knocked you out for, how many days it’s been since your breakfast omlette. Standing over the oven, smelling the steak as it cooked, has made you hungry. 

The two of you are silent as you inch forward, hardly daring to lift your feet from the carpet. It doesn’t take you very long to reach the table, not when the room is as small as it is.

You shift the knife to just your dominant hand, your now free hand reaching forward slowly as you keep your eyes trained on his. The steak is still so hot that steam is still curling from the pink center of it, right between his eyes. He’s still as a statue.

Then, the second your fingertips brush the meat, he snatches it back, slipping it between his lips. 

You flinch back as your mouth drops open, offended and startled by his sudden movement. Your fist tightens around the knife, no longer so limp at your side. 

He chews with his mouth open, smiling meanly at you. His teeth are stained pink from the juices, and you think for a moment that it almost looks like his gums are melting. 

“Forget your manners, pet?’ He asks, only swallowing once he’s finished talking.

You wince at the lack of manners, your p’s and q’s brow beaten into you with a stiff wooden spoon to the back of your hand when you were young, shocked to see someone ignore what you’ve always seen as instinctual and then ask you about manners. “What?”

He leans forward in his seat, greasy hand set on his jean-clad knee. “You didn’t say please.”

You blink at him, caught in some sort of trance that you have no idea how to pull yourself out from. “Oh.”

He sits, still and silent, for several long moments, belly rising and falling beneath his folded fingers, before speaking again. “You’ll call me Ghost while you’re here.”

Your brows furrow a bit but you nod, fingers trembling where they rest limp against your thighs, knife almost entirely forgotten in this almost-hypnosis he’s dragged you into. You can’t quite make your lips move enough to give him a verbal answer, but he seems to accept the nod. 

He snorts, eyes narrowed as he looks at you. He doesn’t even have to tilt his head up even though he’s the one sitting. The realization makes you sweat, something hot igniting low in your belly. 

Before you even register that Ghost is moving, he’s snatched the knife from your now-slackened grip. He drops it into the pan immediately, the handle and blade both becoming drenched in the butter. 

You’d nearly forgotten you even had the knife but the lack of it now drags the fear back up your throat, makes your heartbeat louder and your fingertips colder. 

“Don’t need that,” he grunts, leaning back and folding his hands over his belly, fingers sliding against the fabric and already staining. This close, you can see that it hangs over the hem of his pants just enough to cover the button. You swallow thickly. 

“‘S good,” Ghost says, looking you up and down. Just like in the kitchen, the chair and table here are taller than what you used to, like they were tailor made for your captor instead of bought from a store. You’re only barely taller than him even as he sits, but he somehow still manages to make you feel like he’s looking down on you. 

There’s something in you that keeps you from backing away, even though being hardly a foot away from him makes the backs of your eyes sting with tears. It’s like your feet have sunk through the floor, like you’re up to your knees in shag carpeting and you can’t even try to get yourself out until the behemoth before you looks away.

“Congratulations, girl,” he rumbles, lips quirked up into a mean smile. “You just bought yourself a life, right here with me.”

You can’t stop the tears from falling, shaking hands clapped to your mouth in a fruitless attempt to muffle your sob. 

Ghost leans forward, smile growing when you stumble back until the small of your back meets the half-wall. “What’re you cryin’ about, doll?” He lowers his voice, like he’s sharing a joke with you. “Think I won’t treat my new pet well?”

Your heart feels like it’s going to beat so hard it gives out, its galloping thump felt even in your teeth, gums numbing. Your tears blur your vision, but you can see enough to know when he stands from his set, the chair creaking as he scuffs towards you.

He comes into focus when he crouches in front of you, his knees hovering just above your naked feet, toes curling into the carpet in a futile attempt to get as far from him as you can. 

“I won’t,” he says lowly, hot breath gusting over your face and lighting your nerves on fire. “Not until you earn it. Y’hear me?”

Whimpers eek through your fingers at his words. There’s something in his eyes that still looks hungry, little drops of grease dripping from Ghost’s fingers to your toes, and it makes you feel like prey just inches away from the predator’s jaw. 

His hand darts out, smacking your clothed thigh and making you yelp. 

“Don’t fuckin’ ignore me,” he snarls, sharp and sudden anger upon him like a wave, your thigh stinging from his hit. 

You nod as soon as the chain of words connects in your brain to mean something, head bobbing up and down quickly in desperation to avoid any more physical contact.

His eyes narrow, unimpressed. “Repeat it, then.”

“I have to–” you cut yourself off, breath suddering out of you almost painfully. “I have to earn it.”

“Earn what?”

Exasperation mixes with terror, eyelids straining to stay widened, unwilling to miss another twitch from him.

Think I won’t treat my new pet well? He’d said. You have to earn it.

You can’t think of a way to distill that down into a singular answer, not quick enough for him, at least. 

“I don’t– I don’t know,” you sob.

His movement is slow this time, but it’s no more possible for you to avoid his touch than it was when you hadn’t seen anything coming. His hand drags into your hair, nails catching on scalp, and he tugs your head back, slamming it into the wall. 

“Everything,” he hisses, the fabric covering his nose brushing against yours, snot sliding down your fingers. “You earn everything here. You work for it all. Get it?”

You can hardly nod this time, his fingers tightening around the strands of your hair and pulling at your scalp, but thankfully it’s enough for him.

“Good,” he spits, leaning back and standing, dragging you with him. 

Once you’re standing, half crouched to try your best to ease the pain rippling from your head but pushed up on your toes so his hand isn’t practically lifting you, Ghost grabs you by the elbow instead and drags you out of the room before you can even fully realize what’s happening.

He grabs you in the exact spot he had when he’d dragged you to the kitchen in the first place, each finger laid precisely where there were already bruises emerging. His grip so tight you can’t even think of trying to rip away – you imagine your arm would come off your body before Ghost’s hand came off of you. 

He drags you from the dining room and down a small hallway. From what you’ve seen of the house, and what you can remember that isn’t clouded over by a haze of panic, the floor-plan is closed off, more claustrophobic than anything else. 

Every room seems connected by a new hallway and they're each thin enough that you couldn’t walk by the man’s side – the two of you might not even be able to walk chest to chest without somehow getting wedged between the wood-panneling, considering the bulk of him. 

Your toes drag, catching on the warped wood floor as he pulls you behind him. Your hands are wrapped around his wrist in a wasted but desperate attempt to keep everything below his grip from going numb, leaving your choking whines and sobs and pleas to rush out of you, voice bouncing off the panneled walls. 

Ghost ignores you entirely, doesn’t even seem to notice when you dig your nails into his skin and you try your best to yank. 

You start to grasp at the walls, trying to slow his stride in whatever way you can. You have no idea where he’s taking you, no idea what you’d do even if you did somehow manage to break free from him, but you try nonetheless. 

He doesn’t react, no matter how much you scream and hiss, no matter how much you claw and kick and make your body dead weight, nearly breaking your wrist from the way you yank and twist. 

It’s only when your fingers catch on the edge of something thin that you’re given a tangible thing to wrap your hope around.

You only realize it’s a picture frame once you’ve already yanked it from the wall, the photo itself a complete mystery to you.

It’s the adrenaline that makes you pull back and slam the frame glass-first into the side of his head, reaching up as high as you can to make contact. There’s a horrible crack when glass meets fabric, a screech when you drag it down the side of his face, glass catching on mask and skin and more glass.

Ghost doesn’t let you go but he does stumble into the wall, grunting like a bull and batting your opportune weapon like it’s hardly more than an annoying mosquito, sending it crashing to the ground despite your death grip. 

He falls back into the wall, tugs you with him with enough force to nearly knock you off your feet, your head a mix of fear and victory and adrenaline and pain and more fear, coherent thoughts a far-off dream.

“Little fuckin’ cunt,” you hear him spit, heavy boot smashing fallen glass into further pieces as he turns to press you against the wall with his body, heavy and hot against you.

His eyes are raging, scarred lips curled to bare his teeth and little pieces of glass sticking from his skin and balaclava. 

You only have about four drops of blood to speak of for your desperate attack, and with your kidnapper furious and holding you down all you can manage to think is why the fuck did I do that? What was I thinking? 

There’s no room for anything but shame when you’re staring down the barrel of God only knows what he’ll deicde to do to you. 

“Off to a bad fuckin’ start,” he hisses, spittle landing across your cheeks. “Thought I’d be nice to you. Send you off to sleep with hardly a damn scratch.”

Ghost snarls, shakes his head like a beast shaking off fleas. Glass goes flying around his head. You can hardly breathe.

“Tha’s not good enough for you, is it?” He says, hand coming up to lock around your throat. You’d cry out if he left you enough air, but he’s squeezing so tight you can barely get enough breath to stay conscious. 

“You need a heavy hand, ‘s that it, pet? Need someone to show you what happens when you fuckin’ misbehave?” He pulls your head a few inches away from the wall on the last word, slamming you back enough to rattle your brain in your skull, eyes unfocused and hardly seeing and unable to groan with his hand squeezing your airway shut. 

You try to shake your head, can’t manage to do anything more than shift with the grip on your throat. You think, briefly, about how he could snap your neck with one hand. His palm rests over your vocal chords, fingertips pressing against the nape of your neck. A flick of his wrist and you’d be dead. You think your heart may give out, overwhelmed and unable to keep up with everything Ghost is drawing from you, spitting at you.

Capture myopathy, a friend told you once, sitting beside you in a required biology class only one of you was interested in. When a rabbit is so scared that their heart gives out on them and they die. Just like that. Snap. Easy dinner for a fox. Isn’t that sick?

Sick. She’d said. This, you think, is sicker than anything a fox could do to a rabbit. 

“You’re lucky your meat was good,” he says, tone calming into something less rageful and more frustrated, hand loosening enough to let you breathe more easily but still keeping you from speaking. “Don’t mind trainin’ you up knowin’ you’ll be an investment. Just need some work, huh?”

You try your best to nod, eager to pick training over certain death any day. 

He hums, thumb stroking the crease of your skin between neck and shoulder and you can’t stop your shiver.

“Don’t worry, bird.” His teeth gleam when he flashes them, finally leaving your space. He practically throws you in front of him with the hand on your neck, letting it shift to wrap around your nape so he can guide you forward. “I’ve had pets before. All those tears tell me you’ll at least be easier to break in than the boy was.”

You only have a brief moment to wonder who the fuck the boy is, if he’s in this house, and what that could possible mean for you, before Ghost is nudging open a rickety door and nudging you down the stairs. 

He lets you go once you’re firmly on the narrow staircase and taking slow, tentative steps out of fear you’ll miss one in the dark. Ghost takes his hand from you, looming as you make your leaden-footed way down.

You can’t stop your sniffles or your tears, terrified of the nightmares that must be waiting at the bottom of the staircase and back in the basement you’d woken up in. You know some of what waits for you, what the room will look like and what will be in it – Ghost had been with you since he dragged you to the kitchen, there would’ve been no time for him to change anything – but you’ve got no idea what training means or what Ghost will do to you when your feet hit concrete. 

You don’t move any further into the room when you reach the bottom, Ghost easily stepping around you and choosing to ignore you in favor of looking for whatever he’s decided he needs. The sight of a small carabiner with keys latched to one of his belt loops makes your idea of running back up to the door leave as quick as it comes.

“Over here,” Ghost calls, back turned to you as he crouches down and fiddles with something at the wall.

You don’t move, feet anchored to the floor.

He huffs when he doesn’t hear you following him, shifting one knee to rest on the ground so he can turn over his shoulder and level you with an unimpressed look.

“You really want to make me come get you?” He rumbles, and the threat is enough to get you rushing forward then pulling to just as sudden as stop just out of his arm’s reach. 

It doesn’t matter much, you can’t really do anything to stop him when Ghost’s arm darts back to grab you by the knee, his torso leaning back to get a hand on you and tugging you forward. 

You can’t keep yourself from falling to your knees right at his side, nothing around for you to grab onto other than him and even looking at a face-full of concrete you know not to make any unnecessary contact with Ghost, not if you can help it. 

The weight around your neck is sudden and unexpected, his quick movements around your head even moreso. You don’t even have enough time to decide if it would be worth it to try and fight him off before there’s a resolute click, and he’s pulling back with something thick wrapped around his knuckles.

It’s a chain. Silver, hardly a hint of rust on it, thick and well-kept, and leading right back up to your neck.

You don’t put it together until shaky hands come up to press around the- the collar. Thick leather, two or three inches wide, just tight enough that you can feel it on every exhale. 

A collar. A collar with a chain leash, heavy enough that you can feel the hint of pressure pulling you towards Ghost, the length of the chain that’s not tight in his fist resting in loops by his boot. 

You can’t do anything but stare up at him, wide eyed and trembling, can’t begin to think of what to do before he’s standing and tugging you with him.

“Here now,” he grunts, not bothering to give you any time to get to your feet. You sort of stumble after him, knee scraping the ground as your head is jerked along. You can’t let yourself lag at all, not unless you want to get dragged along by your neck.

You feel like you’re moving through quicksand, every move only making things worse for you. Every forced step forward is another step closer to him, every jerk of your head pulls at the hair stuck in the back of the collar that he hadn’t bothered to move before locking it onto you, every panicked breath only serves to keep your breathing short and hitched.

Ghost drops himself onto the small cot pressed against the wall, it’s metal legs creaking under his weight. You can’t straighten fully with how short he keeps the chain, which leves you in a terribly vulnerable hunched position, eye-level with his stomach and bent at the waist, knee throbbing.

“Over my knee,” he rumbles, voice quiet. “Get this over with.”

You stare up at him with wide eyes, panting open-mouthed, drooling. A panicked animal with its leg caught in a trap, unable to do anything but stare up at the jaws closing around its body.

“Please,” you beg, voice hardly a whisper. “Don’t hurt me.”

His eyes are hard behind the mask, mouth a firm line as he looks down at you. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat beneath the thick leather. 

Ghost doesn’t give you another chance to obey. One quick jerk of his hand and you’re toppeling forward, choking on spit and holding your hands out to catch yourself. 

He manhandles you quickly – one hand on the chain yanking it further down, head forced lower than his knee while his other hand grabs you by the hips and hefts you on top of him, elbow jamming itself between your thighs while blood rushes to your head. 

You yelp, legs kicking out as you push at the bed with one hand, the rough ground with the other, throwing your head back and forth as much as you can with the leash giving you almost no room to move.

“Settle,” Ghost hisses. You don’t listen, can’t listen with the way panic alone rules your mind, and in response he lands a harsh smack on the center of your ass, enough to push you forward a few inches.

Your pleas come to a sudden stop, breath stuck in your throat as you absorb the pain, a noticeable sting even through the sweatpants.

“You’re gettin’ fifty,” he grunts when you’ve gone silent, tucking two fingers in the back of your pants and tugging them down, lifting up one knee to lift your torso so he can yank them to your waist. “Take ‘em, then we’re done.”

“No, no, please, God,” you choke, one hand flying to your mouth and pressing against it. Tears stream down your face, cheeks blazing with heat, a horrible mix of terrified and humiliated that leaves you all but limp over his legs.

Ghost snorts above you and you jump when you feel his cold hand make a pass over the fat of your ass. “Won’t be thinkin’ that much longer.”

You only have a brief moment to think hysterically is he making a joke right now? before there’s a horrible pain on your ass, the smack loud in the otherwise silent room.

It takes a second for the pain to hit you, but when it does you yowl. You push up on his thigh with both hands as another smack rains down, pulling as hard as you can against the chain.

“Stop, stop, stop it!” You screech, toes sliding uselessly against the cement as you writhe, all of your struggles doing absolutely nothing to stop his hand from falling again, this time right on the center of both cheeks. 

“Y-You can’t- you can’t d-do this!” You wail, throat filled with tears and snot as you realize you can’t even get close to standing, not with his grip on the chain as immovable as it is. “Stop!”

His next smack is his hardest, his grip around the chain loosening at just the right time to allow you to be sent sprawling over his lap, sobbing at the pain that lights up your backside. It hurts, and now your forehead is nearly pressed to the floor, leaving you completely off balance.

Ghost grunts as he shifts one of his legs, tucking your flailing limbs between his thighs and forcing you to be bent over just the one thigh, knees hovering inches off the ground.

“Stop your fuckin’ wailin’, Christ,” he hisses, peppering you with more spanks, each of them as hard as the last and forcing all the air out of your lungs. “Damn lucky this is all you’re gettin’. I should make you count ‘em, start over every time you get one wrong.”

You cry out at that, wriggling desperately and only serving to push your ass further into the air, trapped on both ends.

“We’d be here all damn night,” Ghost mutters to himself, hardly audible over your fit. “One picture ain’t worth bruisin’ my hand over.”

Your feet just barely brush against his thighs when you manage to kick up, but you’re embarrassed to find that you don’t have the strength to do much more than hang limply in his hold, one hand reluctantly wrapped around his calf to keep yourself from falling to the floor. 

Your tears and sobs don’t stop as he continues his assault on your ass, but there’s a part of you that almost… settles. Not into the pain, not when he’s smacking you hard enough to jolt your body forward and make you wail at every new touch, but into the steadiness of his smacks.

He doesn’t wait more than a second between hits, each spank no heavier or lighter than the last. It hurts, hurts worse than anytime you’ve burned or cut yourself in the kitchen, but after the first minute or so your body comes to expect what’s coming.

That doesn’t make it any easier to handle. You couldn’t stop your crying if you tried, like his hand is resting on your tearducts instead of your ass, squeezing every bit of moisture out of your eyes. 

He stops at some point, hand resting on your cheeks. He squeezes, nails digging in deep, and pulls your cheeks apart. You sniffle at the indignity, free hand covering your eyes as your face crumples.

“Half way through now,” Ghost says, ignoring the way you cry out. You can’t imagine taking one more hit, let alone twenty five. 

He shifts back on the cot and for a moment you have absolutely no idea what’s happening. It’s not until he not-so-gently readjusts your legs, his own laid out flat in front of him with his feet hanging off the cot, your body readjusted so you’re lying properly over his thighs.

It’s more comfortable, certainly, but you’re not sure you want comfortable right now. It feels impossible to imagine the brute above you as thinking of your comfort, completely analogous to his actions and leaving you a confused and weak mess. 

Ghost shifts his hand along with the rest of him, dropping the chain entirely in favor of resting a heavy palm on the back of your neck, equally as effective at keeping you still. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t comment on your heaving breaths or shaking thighs, just lets you breathe with your hands curled beneath your chest and your forehead pressed to the thin sheet covering the cot.

The next spank catches you completely off guard, your body having gone limp and leaving you unprepared for the sudden pain. It reignites your sobbing, your throat on fire from all the screaming you’ve done. You can hear your voice crack as you absorb the pain, shoulder shaking.

“Christ,” Ghost sighs, hand briefly leaving your ass. 

He’s lifting you by your hair a moment later, thick fingers laced through the tresses as he pulls your head back and stuffs something in your mouth. You whimer at the feeling, tongue working at the frankly disgusting taste, brows furrowed.

“Keep that there,” he orders, and you just barely get a glance of the side of his head before he’s shoving you back down, face-first. You realize, blinking slowly, that he’s shoved his mask in your mouth. “Can’t be bothered to teach you to shut the hell up, gonna hafta work on that once you learn how to behave.”

He spanks you again and this time your sob is muffled as you bite down on the fabric and grind it between your teeth. 

His pace is slower now, hand more thudding than stinging. It feels like he’s putting his weight behind every smack, each one delivered with what you’re sure is bruising force. Though truly you can’t tell much of a difference, not with your whole ass already feeling like it’s on fire. 

It gets harder and harder to differentiate between new and old pain as he lays brutal spanks over spots that are already hot and throbbing, varying the strength of each smack this time. You sink into the pain, limp and unable to do anything but take it.

“Better,” Ghost says, the rough pads of his fingers rubbing your scalp when you jerk at the sound of his voice. His next hit lands on the crease between your thigh and your ass, but your whine is almost silent. “Can hear myself think now, for one.”

Another smack, and your body doesn’t even jerk this time. You’re not even fully present in yourself, mind floating. You don’t quite feel like an outside observer, more like you’re just a few inches removed from the situation. All your sensations feel dulled, and you bear the pain as best you can. 

“Can enjoy the sight too,” you hear him say, and suddenly there are pauses between each smack, a little break Ghost takes to rub your glowing ass and thighs as much as he wants before laying another handprint across your soft skin. 

“‘S too bad I don’t fuck where I eat,” he muses, and you groan into the mask at a particularly rough hit. “You don’t take much fightin’. I like that in a girl. Go down real easy with a firm hand, don’t you?”

You shake your head as best as you can, which really isn’t much at all. He snorts at your effort, tightens his fingers to keep your head still.

You’re sapped of all energy, unable to move even as his punishing spanks linger lower on your ass, and even when he bullies a hand between your thighs and spreads your legs.

“Look at that,” he says, voice low. You can feel it through his stomach, goosebumps racing from your ribs to the rest of you. “Dirty girl, are you?”

You’ve got enough wherewithal to try and squeeze your legs shut when his fingers prod at your center, yanked back into your body at the sharp turn from painful to… something else.

He strokes two fingers over your slit, and you groan at just how much slick you can feel him spreading. You have no idea when it happened, have no idea why it happened, but you’re drenched between your thighs. Your cunt feels as hot as your ass, and the realization yanks a horrible little whine from you.

“Guess that wasn’t much of a punishment,” Ghost muses, spreading your lips and letting cool air ghost over you. You feel him blow a breath across you and struggle more than you have since he’d laid you flat across him, knees coming to tuck up under yourself.

“No,” he says simply, landing a horrible, smarting slap to your pussy. It sends you flat to your tummy again, squirming against him and wailing through the pain. It hurts. “Down, girl. No strugglin’ now.”

He only continues to stroke you, now pushing the steadily dripping wetness from your clit to your asshole, making you tense and writhe where you’re pinned, his order ignored.

“Think I’ll do the last few here,” he says, landing another harsh smack to your center, this time focused on your clit. “Make sure you remember your lesson.”

He doesn’t wait any longer, just begins to lay quick, harsh slaps all across your cunt – your spread lips, your hole itself, your clit. Once, even, on your bottom hole, digging his nails into your stinging cheeks to spread you wide for him.

It hurts more than any of the smacks to your ass did, undeniably, but you’re sapped of all energy and find yourself hardly able to cry, let alone struggle. You’re too busy being swept away in a maelstrom of pain-pleasure you’ve never experienced before to even try defending yourself.

Your only option is to lie still and wait for him to finish with you. So that’s all you do.

It feels like it’s been an eternity when he finally stops. 

The hand near your ass gropes you firmly, pinching what you can already feel are tiny little raised spots from where his palm landed the hardest. 

You don’t have the energy to even think of struggling when he finally moves you off him, letting you flop uselessly to the cot as he moves out from under you. There’s the sound of metal clinking, the tension from the collar finally eased as he lets it go completely.

He doesn’t bother to pull your pants up, but he does nudge your legs closed. It’s a bit of decency you didn’t expect from him. 

You can’t do much more than blink wearily at him as Ghost reaches to tug his mask from your mouth, lip curling in disgust at the drops of saliva that fall from it. Good, you think. That’s just the start of what you deserve, bastard.

He crouches in front of you a moment later, bringing his face into full focus in front of you.

He’s… not traditionally attractive, that’s for sure. Even your defeated and exhausted mind can recognize that you would’ve avoided this man had you seen him on the street. Probably would’ve even risked being seen as rude and crossed to another sidewalk before he walked past you. Seeing as this is where you’ve ended up, your instincts wouldn’t have been wrong about him.

He’s got a square head and blond hair buzzed close to the scalp. The scars you’d seen across his cheeks and jaw extend further up his face, something textured across his temple that you can’t guess the cause of, eyebrows patchy and only half-grown in from burns, little bumps decorating his scalp.

But there’s something captivating about him. In his eyes, maybe, such a dark blue that you can only tell they’re not brown because he’s hardly a foot from you. There’s something about him that says look at me. Don’t forget where I am.

Though maybe, you think deliriously, you’re only thinking that because he’s the captor who just spanked your ass raw and dragged his fingers through your cunt.

“Rule one,” Ghost rumbles quietly, breath gusting over your lips. “You hurt me, I hurt you. Heard?”

It takes all the energy you have left to nod, eyes falling shut even as the little prey voice in the back of your head screams at the danger so near, never mind that you haven’t been able to do anything to keep him from you. You’re too loud to listen to the voice anyways, only a very distant part of you acknowledging it as you slip into a sort of half-sleep.

You don’t hear him leave.

From there you settle, bizarrely, into a routine. 

Every day begins with you waking up in the basement. Always before Ghost comes to get you, some primal instinct buried deep knowing that you need enough time every morning to brace yourself for seeing him.

He locks the chain, the leash, to a hook on the wall a couple feet above your cot every night, the key to the padlock always left on him. The chain is long enough to give you plenty of room to roll and shift in bed at night but it’s too short for you to reach the small bathroom across the basement. There’s no clock for you to keep track of time with but you spend what must be half an hour every morning just sitting on the cot, waiting for Ghost to come get you.

He’s always nearly stumbling when he comes down the basement stairs to fetch you, sleep keeping his bones heavy. It’s only in the mornings when you see him with his shoulders hunched, movements weighted down, any other time he’s perfectly alert. 

You think, at first, that your best shot at trying to hurt him would be in those early mornings when he’s groggy and slow moving, but Ghost never lets you off the chain when he’s like that. It’s always after he’s stiffened up, shoulders rolling back and permanent-scowl firmly back in place.

He’ll unhook the chain from the wall first, rarely saying a word as he half-drags-half-leads you over to the bathroom, doesn’t let you close the door while you do your business and shower.

(There’s a way he looks at you in the morning, when he’s at his rawest. Something animal and hungry in a way you don’t see even when you serve him his meals, pupils blown and lingering on your curves, unabashedly staring at your ass when you glance over your shoulder at him.

It had been terrible, at first, to get naked in front of him. He’d just stare, and most days you could see his hardness tenting his pants. Hell, some days he came down the stairs with his cock making itself plenty known, not a speck of shame in him.

You’d once listened to him jack himself off while you were in the shower. You’d had to step over the puddle of cum on the tile when he’d tugged you out of the room, nearly slipped into it when he’d pulled you just a little more harshly than usual.)

The chain stays in the basement, always unlatched from your throat along with the collar before he shepherds you up the creaky stairs, never much more than a foot or two away from you. 

Then, breakfast. 

It had taken a while for you to really believe him after he’d said you were only there to cook. What kind of person kidnaps a woman just to keep her as a private chef? But days went by where he never once touched you any more than necessary to get the collar on and off, his only reaction to your body a seemingly unintentional erection and usually ignored when you were naked. 

Days, weeks pass where all you do is cook. Three meals a day, snacks when he’s hungry (which seems to be always). 

Ghost’s cabinets were bare the first week of your captivity. He had enough meat in his freezer to last him months, but little else. There was a loaf of bread on the counter, a few condiments in the fridge with crusted lids and misshaped bottles, and some cans of soup in the pantry. Nothing else. He’d drop a cut of meat on the counter and expect you to work with it and seemed plenty content when you served him the blandest roast chicken of your life.

It took you three days until you worked up the nerve to ask him to go grocery shopping. It was the first thing you said to him that wasn’t a plea for your freedom. 

You’d been terrified that you’d end up face down ass up over his thighs again, your ass still bruised from his first punishment and his subsequent much quicker corrections. But he’d hardly reacted, had just given you a piece of paper and a short pencil with bite-marks on the eraser, told you to write what you thought you needed.

He locked you in the basement for hours (you tracked the sun through the sole window as best you could, left behind fear and anger for boredom around what you guessed was the three hour mark) when he left. Briefly, you’d regretted asking in the first place. If the bastard wanted to eat nothing but protein and die of a nutrient deficiency, who were you to stop him? It would serve him right.

But you have nightmares, sometimes, of being stuck in the basement. Your captor dead in his bed, fallen to the bathroom floor with his head cracked open, bleeding out in the forest one of the times he goes off hunting. And you, stuck here, chained to a wall. No key, no way out, no one to find you.

A part of you had breathed a sigh of relief when he came home, letting you up to the kitchen and supervising while you dug through the plastic bags and put everything where you wanted it.

He doesn’t… do much during the days, is the thing.

He goes hunting, sometimes. You find that that seems to be his most consistent outing. He’ll spend hours out there at a time, sometimes coming back with nothing and other times coming back with a twelve-point buck you watch him drain through the kitchen window. He also has to keep his weapons – his many, many weapons – in shape, and you find that it’s not rare to spend an afternoon watching him clean guns or sharpen knives.

You enjoy his hunting moods most. He’ll disappear for hours on end to even find his kill, then spend days skinning and preparing the meat, then doing whatever it is he does in his shed with the bits of the body he doesn’t bring you to cook. Those days spent in the forest or the shed for him guarantee you hours of time alone, which isn’t nearly so miserable when he doesn’t keep you in the basement. 

Sometimes he goes out after dinner. You’ll hear the front door slam shut after he locks you up in the basement, his truck’s old engine loud enough to be obvious when he revs it. You’re never sure where he goes, who he might even go with since he never takes calls, but you also have little interest in asking.

But most nights he watches TV. Almost exclusively old VHS recordings of The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Password, and shows so out-of-date you’re sure you could count the pixels on the screen. He’ll roll himself a blunt and relax into an old recliner with cracked leather, eyes half-lidded and hazy.

(You watched him rest a hand in his pants, once. He hadn’t even been focusing on the TV, eyes far away and breathing heavy as he stroked himself slowly beneath his jeans. You don’t even think he finished, he was just… relaxing. You’d decided to just be glad he wasn’t coming after you for that job.)

Sometimes he’ll watch the same Manchester United games every night for a week straight, grunt approvingly or shout at the TV at the same points no matter how many times you’ve seen him watch it. By the end of your first month in his captivity, you could guess who scored every goal in the team’s 2012 championship game. You have absolutely no idea why he doesn’t just turn on the newest games.

You learn quickly that Ghost mounted a hook to nearly every wall in the house, and that he’s not shy about chaining you in the same place for hours at a time and leaving you to your own non-existent devices while he lumbers off. You spend the most time in the kitchen, undoubtedly, but you find that the horrible plush carpet in his living room isn’t too uncomfortable to sit on either.

It doesn’t take many days for your fear to turn to boredom, is the thing. Absolute, complete, mind-numbing boredom. There’s simply nothing to do but watch Ghost, and for a kidnapper he’s turned out to be spectacularly uninteresting. 

He’d laid out the rules in the first few days. You hurt him, he hurts you. Listen to his orders, don’t make him repeat himself. Don’t try to escape, you won’t find anyone to help anyway and he doesn’t want to chase you down. Don’t try to fuck with the food you make him, he expects good meals consistently.

It had been the third you’d struggled most with, though you could hardly blame yourself. You’d thought he was going to make you bleed when he caught you trying to throw yourself out of a recently-broken window.

He’d taken you over his lap a few more times for smaller infractions too. To make sure the lessons stick, he’d said. They did. Ghost hits hard, and even after just his first punishment you’d been plenty cowed. You don’t give him many reasons to punish you again.

The bright spots in your life are, as they have always seemed to be, food orientated.

There’s a part of you that hates how much time you think of ways to quite literally serve him, but you have nothing else to do. He may enjoy his shows, but after about two weeks you think you may go insane if you have to focus on much more Tom Kennedy in an other-wise silent house. 

You spend long hours staring out his windows at the foggy forest surrounding the cabin, running through the recipes you’d wanted to try before you’d been taken, notes for your parents’ dishes that were never listened to, plans on what you could make for Ghost himself with what he would provide.

And he does. Provide, that is. He provides plenty.

The fifth day of your captivity, he drops a chicken carcass on the wood island. Whole, unplucked, the blood from its neck still drying.

“I can’t…” You start, hesitating at the doorway to the kitchen as he moves further in. “I’m not a butcher. I can’t cook it like that.”

Ghost looks over at you, mask covering his expression. You find that it’s a fifty-fifty chance he doesn’t pull it on in the morning, dependent on some factor you’re not allowed to know.

“I’ll cut it up,” he grunts, turning his back to you and tugging a drawer open, digging around noisily. “Don’t need you to do anythin’ but cook it.”

You shift from foot to foot as he turns back to the bird, empty trash bag at his side and carving knife in his hand. 

For a man who you’ve always assumed to be inept in the kitchen, he handles the bird like a professional. He has it plucked in less than a minute, his mess minimal.

His butchering is less impressive, though no less effective. He’s a bit of a slob with his cuts, reckless with his knife in a way that has you craning your neck to see just how much breast is left on the bone. 

Ghost is slow-moving, careful in a way you’ve never seen him when he pops the thigh from the leg joint. It must’ve been a well-fed bird during its life, there’s plenty of meat for his thumb to dig into as he carefully rotates and pulls, not too much strength but not too little. A balance he seems to struggle to find before the thigh finally pops away from the body easily, and he moves on.

It’s… intimate is the wrong word, but it’s not far off. His hands – damp from being washed, something you’d been glad to see him do without you needing to draw his attention back to you – are shiny with the bird’s juices covering them, his thick fingers brutalizing the delicate, pale meat. The job is done quickly and cleanly enough to leave you plenty of meat.

He doesn’t butcher it completely for you. He leaves the wing connected to the breast, the breast and the tenderloin one large piece of meat when he lays his carving knife on the counter. His most precise cuts are around the oysters, each of them dug out and set to the side quickly. 

It’s not a quiet process, his knife cutting through bone and joint. But it feels particularly loud with the only other sound the soft humming of the fridge, the call of a bird outside the window. 

You feel squirmy for reasons you can’t quite place when he’s finished, bird butchered and glistening under the dim kitchen light. The look he gives you, heavy and stifling, doesn’t help. 

You make him get mason jars next time he goes to the store, mourning all the stock that goes to waste because you’ve got no way to store it. He praises the tenderloins you make for dinner that night, voice rough in a way that makes your cheeks heat.

Most of the food he buys for you to work with is store-bought, but the meat continues to be fresh. He enjoys the food most when he kills it himself – he moans when he bites into a piece of duck in a way that you feel no shame in calling pornographic – but you learn that he’ll settle for anything fresh.

There’s a calendar on the inside of the pantry. 

It’s an old military one, each of the pictures a dramatic shot of a soldier, covered in filth more often than not and staring across some sort of beautiful landscape. It’s from 2014, each of the pages worn and ripped where fingers have pinched and flipped. Each of the days is already marked off with an X in the box, some of them even with little notes written in different colors from over the years.

G birthday in Lancaster

S appointment - needs ride

L retirement on base

You know when he flips it to read June that you’ve been with him a month. You’re not happy, far from it, but you don’t spend everyday shaking in fear. 

You know what to expect from Ghost, he knows what he expects from you, and you’ve settled into an almost-peaceful cohabitation. 

He takes to ordering you prettier clothes about halfway through your second week. Sweatpants get traded in for sundresses and uncomfortably tiny shorts, sweatshirts exchanged for cardigans and low-back tank-tops. 

Some days, watching him feed the chickens through the window in your daisy-print sundress and flour-covered apron, you feel almost like a homesteader’s wife.

If not for the chains hanging from the walls, of course. 

You’re wearing one of those dresses when Ghost comes to visit you in the kitchen, nearly six weeks after he’d taken you.

He’d been letting you wander the house off-leash more and more, in small doses. Whether confident in his ability to catch you or your inability to get far from the cabin, you’re not sure, but you’re thankful nonetheless. You’re still a little sore from your last escape attempt, ass smarting from his belt, and haven’t quite gotten into your head to try again yet.

You’re leaning over the counter, tasting a fresh brownie from the middle of the pan while he smokes with his Wheel of Fortune on, having sent you off with a pat on the ass and a I want somethin’ sweet, doll. 

You’ve never been nearly as good at baking as you have cooking, and you’re not sure you’ve perfected your brownie recipe yet. But you’ve always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and Ghost keeps his house cold. Biting into a still-steaming gooey brownie, the top just enough of a crust to give the bite texture, the chocolate melting into your tongue, is one of the best things you’ve done since you first woke up in that basement. 

You don’t realize you’ve made a noise until there’s an echo behind you, Ghost’s groan so quiet it’s nearly drowned out by the TV in the other room.

You jerk back from the counter, hands braced on the rounded corner as you look over your shoulder, sure that there’s a pipe groaning in the wall.

Instead you see your kidnapper, already hardly a step away and boxing you into the counter, hulking body smothering you with ease.

Your spine goes ramrod straight, brownie abandoned in its pan as he presses himself into you, hard chest pushing against your softer back. You’re silent, stiff, too surprised and scared to do more than wait. 

“‘S got you moanin’ in here?” Ghost rumbles, heavy against you. “Thought I said I wanted a treat.”

“I–” You gasp, arching when he presses his hips into you. His sweatpants don’t do anything to disguise his length and you can feel every inch of him against your back. “I–I made brownies.”

“Hm…” One hand comes to rest on your hip, his head lowering enough that you can see his profile in your peripheral. “Let’s have it then.”

You don’t move at first, fingertips tingling and lips pressed tightly together.

He huffs, smacks your ass once. He pushes the fabric of your dress up just enough to clip your skin, simple granny panties doing little to soften the blow. You gasp and jerk forward, soft stomach pressing into the counter.

“Give me one,” he says, hand rubbing where he’d just spanked, fingertips just dipping under the edge of your underwear. “C’mon, bird, I want a bite.”

Your fingers quiver as you lift the brownie in your hand to his lips, holding it just over his shoulder as he feels you up with both hands, roughly kneading the cheeks of your ass as you try to stay as still as possible.

Ghost gives you more of his weight and bites the brownie, the sharp edges of his teeth scraping your knuckles. You jump at the feeling, unwittingly grinding yourself against him. 

“Fuck, pet,” he moans, face dropping to rest his forehead against your temple. You can do nothing but stare at the cabinet. “That’s fuckin’ delicious. I need another bite.”

You’re reaching towards the pan to cut him another piece when you realize he’s shifting to his knees behind you.

“Ghost,” you whine when he takes your hips in his hands, hefting you up so you’re fully resting on the island with your toes unable to even skim the tile. Your eyes are wide as you stare at the backsplash, unable to quite believe what’s happening.

“Hush,” he scolds, and you get a smack to the thigh for your trouble. “I want my sweet thing.”

Ghost eats your cunt the same way he eats your food: voraciously, messily, and shamelessly.

He gives you no warm up, no time to prepare for something he’s only hinted at wanting to do before. There’s one broad swipe of his tongue across your sex, then his lips wrapping around your clit and your eyes rolling back into your skull.

You’re not sure that he cares about your pleasure, but he’s certainly giving you plenty. He licks from cunt to clit again and again, tongue quick and stiff against where you’re sensitive and drawing breathy moans from you, nails scratching uslessly at the counter.

He focuses mostly on your hole, licking up your slick like it’s the best thing his tongue has ever touched and leaving you pushing back for more unconsciously, wanting more than just the tip of his tongue inside you. 

“Greedy,” he huffs when you nearly slip off the counter. He slips two fingers into your leaking hole and you squeal at the stretch, noticeable even with his mouth working you over. “This is for me, not you, pet. Settle down and let me eat.”

You cry out when he laps at your clit, quick, broad licks over the bud and just enough pressure to make your mouth hang open. He gives you almost too much suction, your brain rattling around between your ears when he crooks his fingers and tugs.

He uses just one hand on your thigh and two fingers in your cunt to shove you up the counter, giving him more space to have you practically sitting on his face. He laps around his own fingers, fucking with you just enough to coax more slick for him to drink, your knees knocking against the cabinet.

Eventually, what feels like it must be hours later, you come. The combination of Ghost’s fingers pressing at just the right spot, the suction on your clit and the sound of his mouth against you making you feel insane and finally pushing you over the edge.

It’s heaven, to have him lick and suck you through your orgasm. Your limbs feel tingly, bright white starbusts flying behind your eyes as you go limp across the counter, head pressing against the backsplash.

It isn’t until he doesn’t pull out his fingers, doesn’t pull his tongue away, that you start to feel truly gone, a puppet dancing to his tune, a piece of fruit squeezing whatever juice he wants into his mouth for as long as he wants.

“Not done with you yet,” you hear him murmur, the rumble of his voice against your cunt making you moan from overstimulation. “Gonna drain you dry, pretty thing. Shouldn’t have made yourself so sweet if you didn’t want me taking it all.”

You want to growl that you can’t make yourself taste like anything, but he slips a third finger into your hold, curls his fingers and rubs his knuckles against your g-spot, and you’re coming too hard to even attempt a protest.

By the time he pulls your dress back down and pets your ass, taking a brownie from the pan without even bothering to use the knife to cut himself a piece, there’s nearly as much drool dripping from your mouth as there is your cunt.

From there, your life centers around two things: food and sex. Both of them exist only because of and with Ghost, him your constant companion as you unwillingly grow more and more comfortable in his house. 

You cook him a stew made from cow leg he’d dropped on your counter that morning. Small russet potatoes float in the broth, popped into his mouth whole and swallowed almost as completely, pieces of carrots he chews to mush and celery he avoids, wine soaked meat leaving grease stains down his shirt. 

Ghost puts you on your knees beneath the table, feeds you his cock while he feeds himself your food. You suck him as well as you can, trace your tongue over the thick vein up the side of his cock, ignore the throbbing in your jaw and try to push his foreskin back to suckle on his head.  He wraps his fingers around the base of his cock, doesn’t let himself come until he’s finished with his meal. You can’t tell if his groaning is for your work on the stew or your work beneath the table.

Fuckin’ heaven, that mouth. Want me to send you off with a full belly, huh? Bet you like your meal as much as I like mine.

Half a dozen eggs, scrambled, served with enough bacon to make you feel sick from the smell alone and half-soaked in maple syrup. 

You, needy and desperate, grinding your cunt across his thigh. You lean back as far as you can with your hands carefully resting on the table at your back, desperate to avoid his syrup-sticky fingers, and end up with a view of his cock lancing you. He scoops your slick up with his clean fingers, picks up another piece of bacon and rips it in half, offers you the bit he doesn’t take.

Please, please, Ghost, I need it so bad, it hurts and it’s supposed to, love, I said I wanted a show with my breakfast, didn’t I?

A rack of lamb, sliding off the bone, bites of it shared between Ghost and you as three of his fingers work slowly in and out of your ass, leisurely and for his viewing pleasure more than your own orgasm. Red juices smeared across your lips and face, dripping down his chin and staining his fingers. A thumb on your clit, meat shoved between your teeth as you come. 

Gonna fuck you here too. Gonna make it hurt, listen to you cry a little when I eat. Oh, hush, you’ll be fine, don’t get yourself worked up. Not yet, at least. My cock’ll spread you out at least twice this much, save your tears for when you’ll need ‘em, pet.

Sticky fruit laid across your stomach, cantaloupe and watermelon and kiwi and banana. His fingers picking them off you piece by piece, savoring them as he fucks you hard. You laid flat to the table, legs spread why and throat sore from your cries, the stark difference between the way he relishes the food and the way he fucks you like an animal making you feel wanted in a way that threatens to drown you.

You need it bad, don’t you? Slut. Pretty, tasty, perfect little slut. Fuckin’ squeezin’ my dick off, goddamm, honey. Gonna fuck you full, gonna fill you up and feed you plenty. 

Stir fry you make with hog maw, a recipe you’d never tried before given to you by a girl in cooking school who was set to inherit her parent’s restaurant. His face moving between your cunt and his meal, your whines about a UTI and cross-contamination go ignored, and he holds his bowl beneath your cunt while he strokes your g-spot with two calloused fingers. 

Tightest fuckin’ cunt in the world. Pretty little thing and her pretty little meals, just made for me, huh? ‘S that right, pet? You’re made just for me and my mouth and my cock, hm? Gonna give me a nice little dressing for my food?

A night spent in his bed, after you make him angel-food cake from scratch. Waking up to a cock pressed against your ass, chain leash and collar heavy around your throat and locked around the headboard but the sheets soft under your skin, pillows thick and his own body warm in a way the basement never gets. 

Ghost isn’t awake yet. He’s snoring like a freight train, completely unaware of the way you stare at him in the blue-dark of the early dawn hours. 

The chain is heavy in your hand, cold against your soft palms. You feel almost like you’re in a trance, the world still hazy around its edges as you shift to kneel over him. 

You don’t know how much strength it takes to strangle a person, but evidentially you don’t use enough. 

You wrap the chain tight around either knuckle, press your hands hard into the mattress on either side of his head, and hold your own breath. His snores quiet, his breathing shudders. He coughs once, twice, you feel his hips and legs begin to shift beneath you and you really put your body weight behind your hold. He goes still.

Then, his eyes fly open. 

There’s hardly time for you to think fuck before he’s flipping you onto your stomach, harsh hand shoving you into the mattress while another rips the chain from your hands and pulls.

You wail a breath as your head is pulled back, scalp nearly touching your spine as Ghost forces your back into a steep arch, ass pushed into the air.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he hisses. You can’t tell if the heat in his words is rage or hunger or some sick mix of both, have even less of an idea which one you should be hoping it is. “You tryin’ to fuckin’ kill me?”

You can barely breathe through the anticipation, the fear that’s been gone for so many days suddenly wrapped around you as tight as the collar, but you find enough breath to shout when he lands a horribly heavy hit across your ass. 

“Ghost!” You shout when he only follows it with several more, eyes squeezed shut as he overwhelms you in pain and discomfort.

“What?” He snarls, fingers clipping your cunt and making your squeal. “What, now you don’t like pain? I watched you cream my cock without a single finger in your cunt last night, girl, but this?” Another spank, harder than you’ve ever taken and burning. “This too much for you?”

You huff, squirming as much as you can in your strained position. 

“You wake me up with a goddamn chain around my neck and bitch when I beat your ass for it?” His voice is nearing a shout now, thick with what you’re sure is anger. “You’re gonna try and kill me in my own fuckin’ bed and pitch a fit when I make you sorry?”

You can’t find it in you to do anything but cry, chest tight and eyes squeezed tighter while he doles out punishment, bruising slaps landing anywhere from your cheeks to your cunt to your thighs to your hole, his hand spreading you wide for him.

“Spread,” he grunts eventually, a harsh hand shoving your knees wide. “Need to get to that hole.”

You don’t get to listen, he makes you do what he wants without giving you a chance to, and then lays a dozen terrible, painful smacks to your asshole.

You’re nearly screaming through them all, feet slamming into the bed as the pain rushes through you. He yanks the chain hard when you try to pull forward and bury your face in the pillow, forcing you to keep the tortuous pose he’s holding you to.

You feel the bed rocking with the force of his hits, spit and tears dripping down your face as you can do nothing but lay there and take it. 

“Naughty, naughty fuckin’ thing,” he spits, two rough fingers pushing into your cunt with little care for your cry. “My own little chef tryin’ to strangle me, I can’t fuckin’ believe it. I bring you here to feed me, give you a load in your stomach anytime you need it, and you wrap your leash ‘round my throat?”

“I’m– I’m sorry!” You wail, inconsolable as he roughly rubs a palm over your clit, your cunt quickly getting slick. You’re still damp from the way he’d bent you over earlier, a mix of his and your cum wet between your thighs.

“Not good enough,” Ghost hisses. He quickly fucks his fingers back inside you, once twice, then pulls them out again.

You go taut as a board when those slick fingers move up, towards your far, far tighter hole.

“No,” you gasp, struggling even pinned as you are, a sense of panic shrouding your mind. “No, no, nonono, you can’t, oh God, please, Ghost, don’t–”

Ghost drops the chain in favor of grabbing you by the throat, tearing you back so violently that you’re staring at his sneer upside down. 

“Shut the fuck up.” His spit is tacky when it lands on your cheek, mixing with your tears, and his smile looks evil as he glares down at you. “Gonna make sure you don’t even think of that shit again. Gotta make it hurt if you’re gonna learn a lesson.”

You sob as he lets you go, head finally falling limp to the bed as you turn your face to the side so you can still breathe. You watch as he reaches for a half-full bottle of lube on his bedside table, the label peeling and stained. 

“Gonna cry for me some more?” He coos, laughing when you jump at the cold feel of the lube on your ass, thighs tense with nerves. “You know I like it when you make yourself look silly, pet. Go on, cry all you want. Still gonna fuck you.”

One finger pushes the lube into your ass, then two, then three. He gives you no time to adjust, only one thrust from each digit before he forces you to stretch further, lands slaps across your ass seemingly whenever he feels like it.

“Ghost, pl-ease,” you cry when you feel the hot head of him press against you, sure that it’ll be excruciating. 

He threads a hand into your hair, pulls you up enough that he can bend to speak into your ear.

“You’ll call me Simon while I fuck your ass,” he says, voice low. “I wanna hear you scream it when I hurt you, pet.”

You listen to him against your will, the scream he wanted tearing from you and echoing the sheer pain of being fucked by someone as massive as Ghost with such little prep.

Your hole feels like it’s on fire, the pain racing through the rest of your body and leaving you limp and panting, only able to close your eyes and endure as he mercilessly pushes forward, uncaring of your pained hiccups and cries.

“Simon,” you whine when he bottoms out, warm balls settling against your neglected cunt. “Hurts…”

His laugh is mean, nasty in your ear. “Good, fuck, say it again, girl. Tell me how much it hurts.”

“So bad…” is all you manage, even just those words warbling off into nothing as he pulls out, fucking himself back in with a harsh thrust that nearly chokes you. 

“Can’t believe you tried it,” he huffs, bracing himself over you as he sets a ruthless pace, no consideration for your comfort. You can see the chain in his right hand, feel the way it just barely tugs at your neck with how viciously you’re moving along the bed. “Been waitin’ for you to give me a chance to do this to you, to fuck you up.”

Your fists clench in the sheets as you do your best to breathe through the pain, the slide of the lube only making his thrusts marginally easier to endure.

“Been waitin’ to get my cock in this hole. Wanted to watch you cry and make you put your tears in the food, gape your little hole and make you ride me while I smoke, shit. Tightest ass I’ve ever felt, love, goddamn. ‘S that feel good?” A slap to the side of your face, rousing you. “You feel good with my cock drilling your little ass?”

“No,” you moan, miserable.

“Good,” he hisses, thrusts quickly becoming uncoordinated as he stares down at your ruined face, his eyes gleaming. “You’re so much sweeter when you’re hurtin’, girl. Wanna keep you like this all the time.”

You sob at the idea, already unable to imagine how excruciating it’ll be to sit tomorrow with your ass covered in welts.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Ghost pants, staring at you ravenously. “Cry a little more for me, attagirl…”

You feel his cum shoot deep inside you before his thrusts slow, the heat spreading as he fucked you through his orgasm, face twisted in pleasure. Your tears haven’t slowed, even as the pain lessened and lessened throughout your fucking.

“Fuck, fuck, that feels good,” he breathes, grinding himself against you as he empties the last of himself inside you.

You feel nearly catatonic as he pulls out, only able to whine when he slips free from your hole and then again when he rearranges you on the bed, limbs sore and neck stiff as he continues to hold you by the leash.

“Took it well,” he grunts, shifting to lay on his back again and tossing the lube to the table beside him. “You gonna pull that shit again?”

You sniffle shaking your head no, only verbally answering when he cocks an eyebrow. “No, Simon.”

He smirks. “I’d love if you did,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “Would love if you gave me another chance to ruin you. Just go ahead, love. I’ll tear into you whenever you want.” He tilts his head, considering for a moment. “Whenever I want too. ‘Cause you’re mine to do whatever I want with, aren’t you?”

You nod, hands tucked beneath your chin as he tugs you closer by the hip, fingers pressing into rapidly developing bruises and making you whimper.

“Yeah, gonna fuck you ‘til you cry as often as I want. And you’ll gimme those tears every time, won’t you?”

All you can do is nod, a part of you calmed and feeling safer as you watch the predator’s teeth pull away from the prey’s neck when he nods.

The plate you balance is larger than your face and still nearly overflowing with food.

It’s filled to the edges with steak, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and rolls. You have a bottle of wine tucked under one arm, a corkscrew held between your lips and one glass in your hand as you saunter towards Simon.

“Smells good,” he grunts. You’ve learned that his compliments are concise but rare, and you greedily take in the praise from him. “Enough for us both?”

You snort. There’s enough food on your plate to feed five people, easily. But Ghost’s stomach is never-ending, and you’d made sure that there would be no way he’d go to bed hungry.

He spreads his thighs as you approach, pats one of them like you’re not already lowering yourself to him. He takes the glasses while you lay the plate, setting his silverware to the side as he opens the bottle and fills the glass nearly to the brim.

You hum as you take in a breath of the food, that familiar sense of pride from a meal well-made settling in your chest.

Ghost cuts the food while you lean back on his chest, watching his thick fingers work. 

He lifts one of the little pieces of steak to your mouth once he’s cut it, swiping it through the potatoes and guiding you to look at him with a finger on your jaw.

He presses the tender, rare meat between your lips and you take it greedily, letting your eyes slip shut as you savor the taste. He kisses you almost immediately after, passes his tongue over the food before you can even swallow, but lets you keep it.

You giggle when he pulls back, swiping a thumb over the potato on your lip. He picks himself up another bite, pinches a bit of carrot with his steak and swallows without chewing, a moan slipping from his lips. You feel yourself dampening against his thigh, breath hitching.

“Happy Valentine’s day,” you say, voice quiet and held just between the two of you.

He snorts, ever unromantic. “Eat up, doll. Wanna have you for dessert after a meal this good.”

Ignoring his half chub to make little comments about what’s on TV, how much you dislike how that person pronounces that word. Playing with the bottom hem of his shirt, letting the backs of your knuckles skim slowly back and forth across his happy trail.

You’re too good of an actor because he genuinely doesn’t know you’re doing it on purpose. He’s too much of a gentleman to ask you to touch him, but it feels too good to ask you to stop, so he just takes it. Stays hard and neglected and riveted on every movement of your hand, every smile and innocent flash of your eyes in his direction.

Burrowing your fingers in those soft hairs covering his belly, mindlessly petting and stroking him like you would a cat. Casual enough that he can convince himself he’s making it up in his own head. Slow enough that it gets his cock twitching and his body restlessly fidgeting.

Finally he realizes he’s let it go on too long. If he says anything about it now, he’ll just look like some gross pervert who’s been taking unwarranted pleasure from this for the last half hour. He has to hold out. There’s nothing he can do but helplessly stay in place under your hand, and hope a random thought about having sex will spontaneously pop into your head if he thinks about it desperately enough.

He practically chokes when you turn to him with soft eyes and ask, “Johnny, do you want to… get us a snack?”

The disappointment. The incredulous, rapid blinks of those feverish eyes. He thought you were going to ask something entirely different, and it’s all you can do to keep your vaguely hopeful smile on your face when your chest wants to erupt with giggles.

“Yeah… sure.”

He clambers stiffly out of bed, and you have to plaster your eyes square onto the TV to have even a hope of missing his obvious erection.

He comes back with some very good snacks, and you simply can’t keep up the charade any longer. As soon as he’s settled in beside you with his poor, half-flagged hard on, you set the snacks aside and silently tug his sweatpants down, put your mouth where he needs it.

unlike you, he doesn’t bother with curtains. either unbothered or proud of his sparsely decorated, meticulously kept space. when he’s home, he spends hours in full view of his windows. sinking into his couch with a controller in hand, headset on. sometimes, not as often, a book. pacing, phone pressed to his ear, wearing a track into the floor.

more often than not, though, he’s maintaining his body. that, he clearly takes pride in. push-ups. crunches. weights. he’s fit. almost always shirtless. almost always in joggers or shorts. a thick pelt of hair across his chest, matching the wild, overgrown mess on his head. whatever cut he once had, it’s grown out strangely—a longer ridge along the top of his skull, like the raised hackles of a dog. it connects to an untrimmed tangle of a beard, hiding what must be a sharp jawline if it matches the body.

you know what it looks like—watching someone like this. if you admitted it to anyone, they’d call you a creep. a pervert.

but you can’t stop.

you don’t even know when your new little habit began. the moment the sun sinks, your lights go off. you sit in the dark, barely moving behind the slats. waiting. watching.

your spine goes rigid, every nerve at attention, when he steps onto the balcony for one of his many smokes of the night. saliva pools on your tongue in anticipation.

a cigarette dangles from his lips, moonlight catching every plane and muscle of his torso. he stretches. his big, broad back flexes as he grips the rail. biceps bulging when he pulls one arm over his chest, then the other, thatches of pit hair poking out.

however, it’s his eyes that draw you in.

bright blue. too bright. a glowing, animalic eyeshine. fresnel lenses, catching and refracting the light. as unnatural as they are alluring. unsettling in a way that itches at the back of your skull—but still, it makes you want to wrench the door open and leap across to him.

the same feeling you get standing at the edge of a cliff or rooftop.

then, he lifts his head. tilts it back until his nose juts into the air and sniffs.

you freeze. glance up at the closed, locked glass door. he can’t.

smoke billows from his lips as his gaze sweeps the courtyard. down at the ground, then scanning the floor beneath you. searching.

a shiver slides down your spine. you will yourself smaller, pressing into the shadows. he can’t possibly know you’re watching, let alone smell you through the walls and windows.

but then, just as you think he’ll go back inside, he turns his head slightly, just a fraction, toward you.

the cigarette burns, momentarily forgotten, between his fingers. his gaze fixes on you, direct and unblinking.

but there’s no way. no way he sees you in the dark.

then he smiles. the barest quirk of his lips. a knowing pull at the corner of his mouth.

he turns, steps inside, and yanks his blinds shut.

your breath catches. the slats slap against each other as you jerk back, heart hammering, blood roaring in your ears. you reach for the cord, fumbling, pulling too hard—yanking the entire thread free with a sharp, splintering snap.

unlike you, he doesn’t bother with curtains. either unbothered or proud of his sparsely decorated, meticulously kept space. when he’s home, he spends hours in full view of his windows. sinking into his couch with a controller in hand, headset on. sometimes, not as often, a book. pacing, phone pressed to his ear, wearing a track into the floor.

more often than not, though, he’s maintaining his body. that, he clearly takes pride in. push-ups. crunches. weights. he’s fit. almost always shirtless. almost always in joggers or shorts. a thick pelt of hair across his chest, matching the wild, overgrown mess on his head. whatever cut he once had, it’s grown out strangely—a longer ridge along the top of his skull, like the raised hackles of a dog. it connects to an untrimmed tangle of a beard, hiding what must be a sharp jawline if it matches the body.

you know what it looks like—watching someone like this. if you admitted it to anyone, they’d call you a creep. a pervert.

but you can’t stop.

you don’t even know when your new little habit began. the moment the sun sinks, your lights go off. you sit in the dark, barely moving behind the slats. waiting. watching.

your spine goes rigid, every nerve at attention, when he steps onto the balcony for one of his many smokes of the night. saliva pools on your tongue in anticipation.

a cigarette dangles from his lips, moonlight catching every plane and muscle of his torso. he stretches. his big, broad back flexes as he grips the rail. biceps bulging when he pulls one arm over his chest, then the other, thatches of pit hair poking out.

however, it’s his eyes that draw you in.

bright blue. too bright. a glowing, animalic eyeshine. fresnel lenses, catching and refracting the light. as unnatural as they are alluring. unsettling in a way that itches at the back of your skull—but still, it makes you want to wrench the door open and leap across to him.

the same feeling you get standing at the edge of a cliff or rooftop.

then, he lifts his head. tilts it back until his nose juts into the air and sniffs.

you freeze. glance up at the closed, locked glass door. he can’t.

smoke billows from his lips as his gaze sweeps the courtyard. down at the ground, then scanning the floor beneath you. searching.

a shiver slides down your spine. you will yourself smaller, pressing into the shadows. he can’t possibly know you’re watching, let alone smell you through the walls and windows.

but then, just as you think he’ll go back inside, he turns his head slightly, just a fraction, toward you.

the cigarette burns, momentarily forgotten, between his fingers. his gaze fixes on you, direct and unblinking.

but there’s no way. no way he sees you in the dark.

then he smiles. the barest quirk of his lips. a knowing pull at the corner of his mouth.

he turns, steps inside, and yanks his blinds shut.

your breath catches. the slats slap against each other as you jerk back, heart hammering, blood roaring in your ears. you reach for the cord, fumbling, pulling too hard—yanking the entire thread free with a sharp, splintering snap.