Sarahlou

Brendon stared at his phone. It had been 20 minutes since his alarm had gone off, and if he didn’t get up now, he wouldn’t have the time to get in his quick workout before work.

He looked down at his wife, Victoria, leg thrown over his hips, and her arm holding him close by his chest. A smile crept onto his face as he saw her bed hair, dyed red strands. Tattooed skin peeking out from his old Metallica shirt that she had claimed.

He sighed, gently trying to pull her arm off, but only receiving a groan in response as she pressed closer. „Baby,“ Brendon said softly, „I gotta get up.“ She shook her head and locked him further in with her legs, „Just 10 more minutes Bren.“

He cupped her cheek, smoothing over the soft skin there, „I wish Sweetheart, but I'm really going to be late if I don’t get up now. You know I got surgeries scheduled early today.“ Reluctantly she huffed out a 'fine‘ and let go of him.

Brendon, now finally able to, sat up and slid out of the bed, turning back once to place a soft kiss on his wife’s forehead and mutter a quick „I‘ll text you later,“ before pulling the blankets over her again and leaving their bedroom.

He made his way through their Victorian-style house. It wasn’t his choice, he used to live in a nice home, modernish with lots of old woodwork. When they engaged, Victoria started looking into other housing options and found her Victorian house of dreams, and Brendon did not care which house he lived in as long as he could see the smile and glee of joy in her eyes.

An hour later he had finished his workout in their small home gym, showered and changed into his scrubs, and was out the door.

What he forgot to pack was his lunch, or maybe he didn’t actually forget it and actually wanted to see his wife during lunch knowing she had her first appointment later that day. …. A couple of hours later Victoria was woken by two pairs of paws pressing into her chest. A small smile spread onto her lips before she even opened her eyes. Reaching out she pet the soft fur of one of their cats, slowly creaking one eye open she looked into green eyes, that stared right back at her.

“Hey there Callum,” Victoria murmured, scratching under his chin and receiving a loud purr in response. A moment later a second cat jumped onto the bed with a loud meow. “Yeah yeah, I’ll get you your food Salem,” she chuckled patting him on the head twice before getting up.

Putting on the silk rope Brendon had gotten her, she made her way down followed by two cats and joined by a third once downstairs in the kitchen. Going through the morning ritual of feeding the gremlins and opening the door for their back porch that Brendon had made cat-safe.

Once all that was done, she’d finally made it back upstairs and managed to look at her phone.

Bren<3: I accidentally forgot my lunch at home, mind bringing it over and eating lunch with me before you head into the studio?

Victoria huffed a laugh, shaking her head softly. She was well aware that he didn’t forget his lunch,it was on purpose like last time, but who was she to deny him? Seeing her husband in scrubs? Yeah, that was like a reward. Opening the chat she typed out a quick message.

Victoria: Of course you did. Your lunch break at 12 still standing?

Almost immediately the reply came.

Bren<3: kept my schedule clear just for you, sweets.

After that, she started a slow morning. Making breakfast for herself and sitting outside with the cats, watching them play and lazily bathe in the sun.

Eventually, Victoria went back inside to catch up on some of the chores. Well, there weren’t many left, Brendon hired a cleaner who shows up two days a week to clean the house, it definitely had taken some convincing from Brendon for Victoria to agree. Still, once he rationalised how big the house was and that they worked full-time it would be a relief for both of them. And now that she’d get used to it, Victoria didn’t want to miss it.

While folding the laundry Victoria went over the appointments she had planned later that day. And then it was already time to get ready. For tattoo sessions, she always focused on comfort rather than style. So low-rise black sweatpants, a cropped black shirt with a stretched-out neckline, the soft flesh of her stomach was showing, decorated with one of her favourite tattoos. A wolf in sheep's skin and a sheep in a wolf's skin. A couple of necklaces and bracelets and the outfit was complete.

Packing her usual stuff for the studio, and packing an extra bag with Brendon’s forgotten lunch, lunch for herself, and a sweet treat consisting of home-baked cinnamon buns for the both of them.

The drive to the hospital had already memorised itself into Victoria’s brain after all these years. Lucky for Brendon it was actually on her way to the studio.

Parking in the deck it was a home run from there on.

Orthopedics was on the fourth floor of the hospital, so one elevator ride later Victoria was walking towards the nurses' station.

“Hey Jessica,” Victoria greeted the charge nurse. The woman looked up and a smile spread across her face, “Oh hi there dear. Did Park forget his lunch again?” Jessica asked, putting the ‘forgot’ in air quotes.

She chuckled nodding, “Yeah, he did, obviously on the day I have late appointments. How’s your shift?”

“You know, Park’s intimidating the new residents and med students, but otherwise it’s been gracious,” Jessica said, nodding towards the hallway behind her, “Park’s in his office.”

“Thanks, have a wonderful easy shift and I’ll see you,” Victoria smiled and walked towards the breakroom to warm up their food.

Most of the staff had met her over the years in which Victoria and Park had been married, so they didn’t bat an eye when she walked into the breakroom to heat lunch.

With a warm lunch, she knocked on Brendon’s office door hearing his familiar voice through the wood. Stepping inside the office, Brendon had already cleared his desk and stood up to greet her.

“Hey Bren,” Victoria greeted, stepping onto her tiptoes to request a kiss. Brendon oh just so sweetly leaned down to fulfill his wife's wishes, “You got here alright?”

“Yep, no traffic, got my favourite parking spot and now I get to have lunch with my husband,” she said walking over to his desk and settling the dishes down.

“But I fear you're really getting old now, with how often you seem to forget your food,” Victoria said sarcastically, sitting down.

“Oh, you think so? Well blame me then for wanting to see my beautiful wife,” he laughed helping with arranging the leftovers from yesterday's dinner.

“So how’s your shift?” She asked after the first mouthful of his homemade lasagna.

Brendon hummed softly, “Alright, the surgery went well. New residents and med students aren’t too awful. How was your morning, Baby?”

Knowing Brendon that was high praise, he was very particular about his staff, only wanting the best, wanting to give the patients the best care they can get.

Brendon looked at her with all the softness and admiration he had, wondering, as he had done so often, how he got this lucky.

“Oh you know, nice and easy. I coddled the cats, did some laundry, I really missed you, the bed was getting cold,“ Victoria said, earning a full belly laugh from her husband. She leaned over to playfully smack his arm, „Don't you dare laugh at me, Brendon.“

„I'm sorry, Vic. I'll make sure to get you a heated blanket next time,“ he chuckled. „That's not the same, I like your body heat more, cuddling up to you,“ she said in thought, remembering back to countless nights in their shared bed.

Brendon raised his brows, pointing his fork at her, „You just want to warm your cold feet on my body. Mischievous little thing.“

Victoria gasped, pressing her hand to her chest, „My husband? Backstabbing me? I feel betrayed, I would never do such a thing,“ she said with false innocence.

„I‘m not backstabbing, I‘m just telling the truth, I feel it when you warm your feet on my legs,“ he defended himself.

She smirked at him, „And you happily let me.“ He shook his head, but not meaning it, „I‘ll always let you, my love.“

Soon, the lasagna was gone and they moved to the cinnamon buns. „Your baking is heavenly, honey,“ Brendon said, after his first bite.

„Thank you, Bren. I gotta make a patch for the floor again soon and for the ED you know they have hell down there,“ Victoria answered, knowing they always appreciated some home-made goods.

Brendon smiled, „You're way too good for this world.“

„You humble me,“ she laughed.

Once the last of their food was eaten, Victoria got up and walked around his desk. Urging Brendon to scoot back on his chair. „What are you doing?“ he asked, following her lead.

„We got a couple of minutes before I have to leave and your lunch break is over, and I suggest we use it to the fullest,“ she said, taking her place on his lap.

Running her fingers through his slicked-back hair, and down his neck to eventually settle on his shoulder blades. „Careful with the hair,“ Brendon warned playfully with a raised brow.

„Oh you know I hate it when your hair is slicked back like that. I like your curls more,“ she complained, leaning down to steal a kiss.

He happily delivered.

Leaning back a few inches he answered, „You know it's easier with the scrub cap.“

She let their noses brush, whispering, „I know but it doesn't mean I need to like it.“

This time Brendon leaned in to get another kiss, letting his hands wander over her body before settling on her waist and gently pressing into the softness of her flesh.

He could stay like that forever, all his senses consumed by her, smelling her perfume that hauntingly crept up on you, the taste of cinnamon and the gum she always chews on his tongue, the softness of her skin, the weight of her body leaning onto his, seeing the glint of metal and eyeliner when he looked at her face through lidded eyes.

And when he finally relaxed and settled into the embrace his pager went off.

He broke the kiss and groaned in annoyance, „Fuck me.“

Victoria smirked at him, „Don‘t tempt me.“

Reaching for his pager, he took a look at who was disturbing their time, „Fucking ED:“

„Ortho consult?“ Victoria asked, already getting off his lap and starting to pack up their stuff.

„Yeah, they can wait a couple of minutes, I‘m gonna bring you down on my way there,“ he said, helping her pack together.

„Do you mind grabbing groceries on your way home after shift? It's probably gonna be late at the studio today,“ Victoria asked. „Will do. Text me when you're done?“ he asked, holding the door open as they moved out of the office.

She grabbed his hand interlacing their fingers as they walked towards the elevator.

„Of course, you already know what's for dinner?“ she asked. Brendon hummed, „How do you feel about steak, with creamy garlic pasta and asparagus paired with a nice white wine?“

„Oh, you can read my mind, baby,“ she said, smiling up at him.

„Of course I do,“ he replied just as the elevator doors opened.

Stepping into the ED Chaos didn‘t phase Victoria much at this point. „Alright, be safe on your way and then I‘ll see you tonight,“ Brendon said, leaning down to give her one last kiss before parting.

„See you tonight,“ she answered, walking out.

…

Brendon was the first to return home. Just like he had promised, he'd gotten groceries and stopped at the flower shop to pick up a nice bouquet.

By the time Victoria texted that she was wrapping up and on her way home, he'd showered, prepped the steaks, cooked the pasta and the asparagus ready to reheat when they were ready to eat, fed the cats, and was on his way to draw a nice bath for his wife to enjoy when she was home.

Busying himself with laying out her pajamas for later, he heard their front door open.

„Bren, I'm home!“ Victoria's voice boomed through the house.

He heard her bustling around downstairs, greeting the cats. „I'm upstairs,“ he answered.

The bath now finally full he turned off the water and made his way downstairs to find his wife in the kitchen admiring the flowers.

She twirled around, „Aww you got me flowers Bren,“ jumping into his arms and kissing him on the cheek, „Thank you.“

He chuckled, hugging her back, „You are very welcome, Baby.“ Placing a kiss on the top of her head, „For the trouble you had with bringing me my lunch.“

She laughed at his words, „You are the sweetest Brendon.“ He smiled down at her, „Well it gets even better, dinner is nearly done only gotta fry the steaks, but first I got a nice and relaxing bath ready for you.“ He placed his hands on her waist, caressing her gently before turning her towards the stairs, leaning down he murmured, „Why don't you go ahead and I‘ll pour us a glass of wine and join you so you can tell me all about your day.“

Victoria smiled, turned her face to give him a small peck, and then headed upstairs to get into the bath.

Taking the wine from the wine fridge, he poured them both a small glass before dinner and then headed into the master bathroom.

Victoria had just settled into the bath, hair up in a clip so It wouldn‘t get wet.

The bathtub was a custom build. The original was too small to fit Brendon, but Victoria didn't want to go without a Victorian-style tub, so he had one custom built that would accommodate both of them. But tonight he sat down in a similar Victorian-style armchair placed in the corner after handing her, the glass of wine.

It was a familiar ritual at this point, one they did so often. And while Victoria told him about her day, her fellow artists at the studio, the clients, and the designs she had tattooed that day, Brendon once again wondered:

How did he get so lucky?

Goosebumps prickled the skin on your arms as you walked faster towards your car. It felt like someone was watching you.

Just before you reached the safety of your vehicle, you dropped your keys.

“No, no, no,” your paranoia was getting the better of you. You scrambled for your colorful keychains. Sweat was beading on your brow. 

You finally grasped them, standing up straight in preparation to rush to the driver's side door. But you never made it there. Before you could even take another step, a sharp pain radiated out from your neck. A cold sensation spreading through your veins followed the jab.

Immediately, your head started to spin and your eyelids started to flutter. A wave of drowsiness washed over you, alongside dread.

“No…” your consciousness faded. Two strong hands grabbing you before you could hit the pavement were the last things you felt before everything went black.

Titus was having the time of his life. Locked in his playroom, with such a beautiful little toy naked, splayed out, and strapped down on the bed. It was the perfect evening for him.

He especially enjoyed playing with you like this. Your head lolled to the side, mouth slack and unable to contain the small squeaks and whine you let out with every thrust of his hips. 

Your walls strangled his cock every time he bullied his way deep inside. You got especially tight when he pressed the little vibrating wand to your clit. He was sure to take it away every time he felt you getting close to edge. Even in your drug induced slumber, Titus couldn’t help himself when it came to torturing you. It brought him endless pleasure to watch you writhe and whimper when he denied you.

“Ty…?” 

Titus groaned loudly, slamming in when he saw your eyes fluttering and your arms starting to tug against the restraints holding your hands in place against the headboard. You looked so sweet and confused.

“What - oh!”

Your eyes shut again when he brought he vibrator back to your clit.

“Yeah? Feels good, doll?” Titus stopped his thrusting, keeping himself buried balls deep inside you, relishing in the repeated clenching of your walls. Your thighs were shaking where they were held open.

“T-Titus,” your words were slurred and slow. Blinking slowly, you struggled to get your eyes to focus on him. “What happened?”

“I rescued you,” he started slowly grinding against you, keeping the vibrator pressed firmly to your clit. “You looked so vulnerable in that parking lot, and I had to save you.”

“But w-what -” your words were cut off by a loud moan as he upped the speed on the toy.

“I think I deserve a reward for saving you, don’t you?”

Titus picked up his pace, building back up into the brutal tempo he’d been pounding away at before you’d woken up.

“No, please,” you were fighting back now – as much as you could with all four limbs tied to the bed. “Stop - fuck - please!”

“I don’t think I will,” he was grunting now, chasing his own release as he pushed you closer to the edge. “I can feel how wet you are, how tight you are. You want this.”

“No, no!” 

Titus couldn’t stop himself from laughing when your whole body stiffened and your eyes rolled back. He watched you cum, fighting through the rhythmic fluttering of your walls to keep thrusting. Watching your body shake and spasm as you screamed and cried was pushing him right to the edge.

“Oh fuck,” he was panting, frantically rutting into you. “Such a good little doll for me.”

His head fell back, his loud groan echoing through the room as he spilled deep inside you. Emptying his balls into you was his favorite feeling in the world. His cum belonged in you or on you, at all times.

“Titus! Please!” You were crying now, tears falling down your cheeks as the vibrator kept up its merciless buzzing.

“Sorry, sweetie,” he turned it off, tossing it off the side of the bed before he started undoing your bindings. “You ok?”

“Yeah,” you were panting, trying to catch your breath and fight through the fog of the sedative still clouding your mind. “S’just a lot.”

“I know,” Titus pulled out, gathering you up in his arms. “You did so good for me. Let's go get you cleaned up, and then we can decide what fun little ideas you want to try next.”

taglist:

one: late

two: be ready

three: impromptu vacation

four: more than a bit tipsy

five: birthday surprise

bonus: instagram post

liked by tsantos, victoriaj, and others

yns.stills sneak attack 🦈 happy 35th birthday to you, @/brendonparkdr! i love you more than every shark in the sea. thank you for being so easy to celebrate. 🤍

brendonparkdr The only time I've been surprised. Love you, sweet girl. ── yns.stills pls marry meeee 😫🙏 comment liked by brendonparkdr

mel.king Happy birthday @/brendonparkdr 😃

tsantos old ass man ── yns.stills i happen to like that old man 🤤

a.park You're the best. Yay to our successful surprise. Happy birthday, Brendon! ── yns.stills love you to death, mama park 🫶🏻 you raised the best man.

frank.langdon Kinda rude you made Ortho bro a cake and not me?? When my children literally call you their Aunt?? ── yns.stills i like tanner and penny. i just tolerate you 😛 ── brendonparkdr I'm her boyfriend, you're the man she works with and tries not to choke out every day. ── yn.stills i fear brendon is kinda right....

mel.king @/frank.langdon I could get her cake recipe and make one! comment liked by yn.stills and frank.langdon

By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

The parking garage is nearly empty. The late night shadows and overhead fluorescents are doing their usual thing- that sickly amber wash that makes everything look darker and more jaundiced, turns concrete pillars and painted lines into something out of a liminal space photograph. Your shift ended nine minutes ago. You've been sitting in this car for three of those minutes and you're no closer to leaving than you were when you got in.

You try the ignition a third time because you are a person who went to medical school, which means you are clinically incapable of accepting a result without attempting to replicate it, and the result is the same.

Silence.

The dashboard stays dark. The engine stays dead. Your car, the one last reliable thing you have left in your life has chosen today- today- of all days, to stop working.

Something behind your sternum cracks, a seam letting go, a thread that's been holding two pieces of fabric together finally giving up under the accumulated weight of seventeen hours of Park's voice in your ear, Park's corrections on your chart, Park's particular way of standing just inside your peripheral vision so that you could never fully forget he's watching. The sound he makes when you do something wrong, a small exhalation through his nose that somehow communicates more disappointment than a full sentence. The way clicks his tongue when you fumbled the angle of the retractors, not loud enough for the scrub nurse to hear, pitched just for you, intimate in its cruelty.

You get out of the car.

The concrete is gritty under your sneakers. The garage has that particular underground acoustics thing where every sound arrives twice, once directly and once as an echo off the low ceiling, so the slam of your door comes back to you a half second later, duller, like the garage is mocking you. You walk to the front of the car. You pull the hood release. You prop the hood up with the little metal arm and you stare at the engine.

You have no idea what you’re looking at.

You know this. You are aware, in a detached and increasingly unhinged way, that you possess exactly zero mechanical knowledge, that the greasy labyrinth of hoses and reservoirs and metal components in front of you might as well be quantum mechanics for all the good looking at it is going to do. But you’re looking anyway, because the alternative is standing in an empty parking garage at eleven pm and crying, and you are not going to cry. You are not. You’ve made it through seventeen hours without crying and you are not going to let a dead battery or a seized alternator or whatever the fuck is wrong be the thing that-

Your eyes are wet.

You blink. Hard. Twice. You sniff, once, sharp, and press the back of your wrist against your nose and stare at the engine and try to convince yourself that you are absolutely, categorically not falling apart in a parking garage. The fluorescent light catches the moisture on your lashes and turns it amber. A tear escapes down the side of your nose and you swipe it away with your knuckle so hard the skin stings.

Headlights bloom across the concrete behind you.

The light stretches your shadow forward, elongates it across the front of your car, and for a second you’re just annoyed; someone pulling through on their way out, someone who got to have a normal end to their shift and get in their functioning car and leave. The engine behind you is idling, smooth and low, and it doesn’t pass. It slows. It stops.

A door opens.

You don’t turn around because some self preserving corner of your brain already knows. Before the footsteps, before the particular rhythm of that walk-  unhurried, deliberate, the gait of a man who has never once rushed to be anywhere because everywhere he goes adjusts to accommodate his arrival-  you know who it is.

You know the way you know a headache is about to become a migraine. The way you know a patient is about to code before the monitors catch up. A full body premonition, cellular and certain.

Park’s footsteps stop somewhere behind your left shoulder.

You keep staring at the engine. Your vision has gone blurry, half tears, half exhaustion, half the flat refusal of your eyes to focus on anything that isn’t a pillow. You can feel him behind, the shift in pressure and temperature that changes the quality of the air against the back of your neck.

He doesn’t say anything for five seconds. You count them.

Then he leans past you.

His arm enters your field of vision from the left and he reaches into the engine compartment with the casualness of a man who reaches into open body cavities for a living and finds a car engine charmingly simple by comparison. His shoulder is close enough to yours that you can feel the warmth radiating off him through his clothes. 

You catch it then, his cologne, or whatever it is, something clean and warm and slightly woody that cuts through the garage smell of concrete and motor oil and settles into the space between your throat and your chest with an specificity that makes you want to bite down on something.

He smells good. Offensively, inappropriately good. And you hate him for it with a purity that borders on religious, that causes you to jerk back, take several steps away with your arms crossed over your chest and your teeth clenched so tight your jaw is clicking. 

He doesn’t let you get very far before. “Come here.”

He says it without looking up from the engine compartment, one hand braced on the frame, the other buried somewhere in the tangle of hoses and cables, and he says come here like he’s calling a dog that pissed on the carpet. 

You don’t move.

“I said come here. I’m not going to say it again.”

You move and he grabs your wrist, fingers closing around delicate bones, and pulls you forward until you’re standing beside him with your hip against the bumper and your face approximately eighteen inches from an engine block you couldn’t identify at gunpoint.

“Look.” He positions your hand over a cable terminal crusted with greenish white buildup. Presses your fingers down onto the corroded metal and holds them there. “Feel that?”

You feel it. Gritty. Calcified. Wrong.

“That’s neglect.” He says it close to your ear. Not whispering. Just close. “Months of it.”

He lets that sit for a second. His thumb shifts against the inside of your wrist, a small, almost idle adjustment that drags across your pulse point and there’s absolutely no way he doesn’t feel how fast it’s going.

“When did you buy this car?”

“Two years ago.”

“Two years.” He drops your wrist like he lost interest in holding it, and straightens up. Pulls a cloth from somewhere- his back pocket, his jacket, the fucking ether- and wipes his hands with slow, methodical attention, finger by finger, knuckle by knuckle, while you stand there with engine grease on your palm and the residual ghost pressure of his grip still pulsing around your wrist bones. “And you’ve never once popped the hood. Not once. You’re telling me you’ll spend six hours memorizing the branches of the brachial plexus but you can’t spend five minutes making sure the thing that keeps you alive on the highway actually works.”

He’s not looking at you. He’s looking at his own hands as he cleans them, like they’re the only thing worth his tim,  has all the time in the world and you are not a factor in how he spends it.

“I mean, it’s almost impressive.” He glances at you. Just a flick of his eyes, there and gone. “The commitment to not giving a shit. You’re consistent, I’ll give you that.”

“That’s not- ”

“Your positive cable’s loose. Terminals are shot.” He’s still cleaning his hands. Still not looking at you. “The whole system’s been dying for weeks and you just- what? Turned the key every morning and assumed it would keep working because it always had?” He folds the cloth. Tucks it in his pocket. “That’s not optimism. That’s not even denial. That’s just being stupid about the things you depend on.”

The word stupid lands different coming from him. Not like an insult. A fact. Like a lab value being read off the chart, something they can’t be interpreted in any other way, just is, and always will be. 

“You’re smart in the OR. I’ve seen it.” He says flatly, without investment, a concession that costs him nothing. “You’ve got good hands when they’re not shaking. Good instincts when you’re not choking on them. But then you do this- ” He nods at the engine. “And I have to wonder if the OR version of you is the anomaly and this is the baseline.”

He lets that hang.

“Get in the car.”

“What?”

“My car.” He says, an instruction, not an offer, delivered with the expectation of immediate compliance.

“I can call a- “

“It’s eleven at night, you’re not calling a tow from a parking garage, and you’re not sleeping in your car. Get in.”

“But-”

He’s already walking away. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t look back. Just walks to his car- a dark Lexus that looks like it costs more than your annual salary- and gets into the driver’s side and sits there with the engine running and the passenger door unlocked and the absolute unshakeable certainty that you will follow. 

You follow. 

The inside of his car smells like him. That’s the first thing you register as you pull the door shut, the contained, ambient version of whatever you caught leaning over the engine, multiplied and warmed by the closed space. 

You put on your seatbelt. You stare straight ahead. You give him your address in a voice that comes out smaller than you intended and you feel him register that, feel the quality of his silence change as he files it away. 

He pulls out of the garage. 

He doesn’t speak.

You wait for it- braced- shoulders locked, breath held, every nerve ending oriented toward him. You’ve spent enough time in his proximity to know how he operates: silence first, then the observation, then the correction, delivered with the flat, unhurried precision of a man who learned a long time ago that volume is unnecessary when accuracy will do. You know it’s coming. You sit in the passenger seat with your hands in your lap and your spine so straight your lower back is already aching and you wait.

A minute passes.

Two.

The streetlights strobe across the windshield in rhythmic amber intervals. The road noise fills the car, a low, constant hiss of tires on asphalt, the faint vibration of the chassis transmitting through the seat into your femurs, your pelvis, the base of your spine. The heater is on. You can feel it against your shins, a warm current that smells like clean filters and leather conditioner.

Three minutes.

He’s not going to say anything.

The realization doesn’t bring relief. It brings something worse, a vacuum. The silence that Park deploys in the OR when a resident has made an error significant enough that commentary would be redundant. The silence that says I’m not going to dignify this with a response. The silence that forces you to sit inside your own failure without the scaffolding of his criticism to push against, without even the dignity of being yelled at, because yelling would mean he cared enough to raise his voice and Park does not care enough to raise his voice. Park has never cared enough to raise his voice. He saves his volume for the things that matter and you, apparently, do not meet the threshold.

Your throat is doing something. Tightening. The muscles along the anterior triangle contracting in a slow, involuntary squeeze that you recognize as the precursor to crying and you clench your jaw against it so hard you feel your masseter pop. You are not going to cry in this car. You are not going to give him the satisfaction of watching you cry in his car with his cologne in your lungs and his silence pressing against you from every direction like something with weight.

You stare at the dashboard. The blue numbers of the clock. The GPS display showing your route- a clean, illuminated line from the hospital to your house, nineteen minutes, no traffic, as though the journey is simple, as though the distance between where you are and where you’re going can be measured in miles.

“The tibial plateau.”

His voice enters the silence without disturbing it. No change in his posture, no preliminary breath. Just the words, arriving with the same flat, unremarkable cadence he uses to call out hardware sizes mid-procedure.

“You hesitated.”

That’s it. That’s all he says. He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t explain which moment, which hesitation, which specific fraction of a second he’s referring to. He doesn’t need to. You know. He knows you know. The sentence is a key inserted into a lock you’ve been trying not to look at all day, and it turns with a click you can feel in your back teeth.

The silence returns.

It’s worse now. It has a shape. The two words gave it a frame and now the quiet is no longer empty, it’s full- full of every specific thing he could have said and chose not to, every elaboration he’s withholding, every detail of your performance that he catalogued and filed and is currently letting you imagine instead of stating outright. Your brain fills the silence the way fluid fills an enclosed space, expanding into every available cavity until the pressure builds against the walls.

You think about the tibial plateau. You think about the oscillating saw in your hand and the way your fingers tightened on the grip a half second before you made the cut and that half second is what he’s talking about. That imperceptible pause. That flicker of uncertainty between intention and execution. Anyone else would have missed it. The scrub nurse didn’t see it. The anesthesiologist didn’t see it. But Park was standing across the table with his hands resting on the sterile drape and his eyes on your hands and he saw it, he felt the hesitation, stored it, and now he’s taken it out of storage and placed it between you in the car like an exhibit.

Your eyes are burning.

“And the hardware count.”

Four more words. Still no elaboration. 

Flat, observational, a statement of fact that requires no emotional emphasis because the gravity is inherent. He keeps his eyes on the road.

You know what he’s referring to. The post-op notes. Six screws documented instead of eight. A discrepancy in the record that could follow the patient to every subsequent surgery, every future scan. He caught it. He corrected it. He didn’t report it.

He’s telling you now, in this car, in the dark, with nineteen minutes of road between you and your house, and the telling is worse than a formal write up because a formal write up would have structure. A formal write up would have a process: documentation, a meeting, a remediation plan, something to do with the failure. This has nothing. This is Park dropping two facts into the silence and letting you drown in the space around them.

Your left hand is trembling. You flatten it against your thigh and hold it there, pressing the tremor into the muscle, willing the vibration to disperse through the fascia and the quadricep and the femur beneath it. Your dominant hand. Your operating hand. The one that held the saw. The one that miscounted the screws. The one that’s been shaking on and off since hour six of a seventeen hour day and you’ve been hiding it by keeping it busy, keeping it occupied with tasks and tools and the physical business of the job so that nobody- so that he- wouldn’t see.

“You should have asked for a break during the reconstruction.”

You close your eyes.

“Your hand was fatiguing by hour four. You compensated by overtightening your grip on the retractor, which changed the angle.” A pause. “You knew the tremor was developing and you chose to hide it rather than ask for relief because you were more concerned with how it would look than with how it would affect the surgical field.”

That’s the most he’s said at once. Three sentences. They land in your chest like hardware being placed in sequence- tap, tap, tap-  each one seated precisely, each one load bearing, the cumulative construct designed to hold a specific weight.

Silence again.

The thing that’s happening in your chest is not something you can name with language. It’s too large and too formless and it keeps changing shape, contracting into something hot and dense behind your sternum and then expanding outward into your ribs, your clavicles, the soft tissue of your throat where the tightness has progressed from uncomfortable to actively painful. You swallow against it. Your throat clicks. The sound is audible in the quiet car and you hate it, hate the way your body keeps betraying you in small acoustic ways, producing evidence of its own distress for him to collect.

You think: say something back.

You think: defend yourself.

You think: tell him he’s wrong, tell him the hesitation was clinical judgment not fear, tell him the hardware count was a transcription error not negligence, tell him the tremor was fatigue not incompetence, tell him he doesn’t get to sit there in his seventy-two-thousand-dollar car smelling like that and sounding like that and dismantling you with seven sentences spread across ten minutes of silence-

You don’t say any of it.

You don’t say any of it because your throat is closed and your eyes are wet and your hands are shaking and everything he said is true. Not approximately true. Not partially true. Not true-with-caveats-you-could-argue-if-you-had-the-energy. True. Completely, specifically, documentably true, and the fact of its truth is sitting on your chest like a sternum retractor, cranking you open one inch at a time.

A tear escapes. It tracks down the side of your nose and catches at the corner of your mouth and you taste salt and you don’t wipe it away because wiping it away would require moving your hand and moving your hand would require admitting that you’re crying and you are not admitting that you’re crying. You are sitting in this car looking straight ahead and the moisture on your face is condensation, it’s a physiological response to dry air, it’s anything other than what it is.

Park doesn’t look at you.

He knows. You know he knows. The quality of his silence has shifted again- it’s softer now, or not softer, that’s not the right word, it’s attentive. The silence of a man who is aware that something is happening beside him and has decided to let it happen. To let you sit in it. To not offer a tissue or a word or even the small mercy of turning up the radio. He just drives, steady and unhurried, and the road unspools, and you cry without sound in the passenger seat of his car while he navigates the route to your house.

You wait for the rest. The elaboration. The lecture.

It doesn’t come. Instead, after a long moment, he says something worse.

“You know what’s funny?”

You don’t answer.

“You’re actually not bad.”

The sentence lands wrong. It lands wrong because it sounds, for one disorienting half second, like a compliment, and your starved, exhausted brain almost reaches for it before the rest of him catches up- the tone, the timing, the particular way he says not bad. A minimum. A floor. The lowest possible bar of acceptability, offered with the cadence of praise so your body responds to it like praise while your brain is still trying to decode that it isn’t.

“You’ve got a feel for the work. I’ve seen you read a fracture pattern faster than most of my third years. Your spatial reasoning’s above average. Your hands- ” He pauses. You feel the pause in your sternum. “When your hands are right, they’re right.”

He’s building something. You can feel it assembling in real time, each sentence another load bearing element, and you don’t know what the structure is yet but you know it has a weight it hasn’t distributed.

“That’s what makes it hard to watch, actually.”

There it is.

“Watching someone who could be good just… ” He makes a sound. Not a sigh. Something smaller. Something almost like amusement, which is so much worse than disappointment that your vision blurs. “It’s like watching someone with perfect pitch sing off key on purpose. You want to fix it. But you can’t want it more than they do.”

He turns onto your street.

“And I’m starting to think you don’t want it at all. I think you want to want it. I think you like the idea of being good. But when it actually costs you something, when it means admitting the tremor, asking for the break, counting the fucking screws, you’d rather protect your ego than protect your patient. And that’s- ”

He pulls into your driveway.

The engine idles. The blue dashboard light hums. Your house is dark. The porch light is off because you forgot to set the timer this morning, because this morning happened to a different person in a different version of your life.

“That’s not a skill problem. I can fix a skill problem.” He’s looking straight ahead. Blue lit profile. One hand on the wheel. “That’s a you problem. And I can’t fix you.”

I can’t fix you.

Four words that shouldn’t feel like anything. Four words that are, technically, a statement of professional boundaries, an acknowledgment that his role has limits, that your development is ultimately your own responsibility. That’s what they are on paper. That is not what they are in this car at eleven pm with salt drying on your face and his cologne in your lungs.

I can’t fix you means you’re broken. It means I looked, and what I found isn’t worth the effort. It means he assessed you the way he did with the engine and the prognosis is: not salvageable. Not worth the parts.

You should get out. You should open the door and walk inside and lock it behind you and shower and sleep and come back tomorrow and be better, be sharper, be the version of yourself that doesn’t hesitate on the approach and doesn’t miscount hardware and doesn’t sit in a man’s car at eleven pm leaking tears onto her own scrub top.

Your hand is on the seatbelt release.

“The hesitation,” Park says.

You stop.

He’s looking straight ahead. His profile is blue lit, jaw set, one hand resting on the steering wheel at twelve o’clock. His index finger taps the leather once, a single, idle percussion that might mean nothing and might mean everything.

“It’s going to get someone killed.”

Six words. Delivered without emphasis, without cruelty, without any of the sharp edges that have characterized everything else he’s said today. That’s what makes them worse. The previous comments were barbed, they were designed to cut and they cut and the cutting was something you could be angry about, something you could push against, something that gave the pain a direction.

This is different. Neutral. Factual. Almost gentle in its certainty.

It’s going to get someone killed.

Not it might. Not it could. Going to. Future tense. Inevitable. A definitive, not a warning.

You sit there with your hand on the seatbelt and the salt drying on your upper lip and you feel the sentence settle into the shape of your self concept like a fracture propagating, a slow, branching failure that spreads outward from the point of impact into every adjacent structure until the whole system is compromised.

He doesn’t say anything else.

He just sits there. Engine idling. Blue light. One hand on the wheel. And the silence after the sentence is the worst silence of the night because there’s nothing left to wait for. He’s said the thing. The final thing. The thing that all the other things were building toward- the corroded terminals, the loose cable, the tremor, the miscount- all of it was scaffolding for this, the load bearing statement at the center of the construct, and now that it’s in place the scaffolding falls away and you’re left sitting in the bare, terrible clarity of what he actually thinks.

He thinks you’re going to kill someone.

He thinks it with the same certainty that he had when he looked at your engine and found the problem in four seconds. He looked at you the same way. He looked at your hands the same way. He’s been looking at you for months, confirming what he already suspected, and tonight- the car, the drive, the prognosis- tonight was the consultation where he tells you the findings.

Your seatbelt is still buckled. Your hand is still on the release. Your body is doing something that doesn’t align with the plan your brain is trying to execute, which is: unbuckle, open door, leave. Simple. 

Three steps. Motor planning so basic a first year anatomy student could diagram the neural pathway. But the signal is getting lost somewhere between your prefrontal cortex and your extremities, scrambled by the interference of everything else your body is processing- the smell of his cologne in the warm car, the blue light on his hands, the tear track tightening on your cheek, the ache in your trapezius, the tremor in your dominant hand, the sound of his breathing.

His breathing.

You’re listening to him breathe. You’ve been listening to him breathe for the entire drive, you realize, a low, even rhythm that hasn’t changed once, that maintained the same rate and depth through every cruel observation and every silence and every tear you failed to hide. His respiratory rate is probably twelve. Maybe fourteen. Resting. Resting. He’s been resting this entire time. His nervous system has been in parasympathetic mode for the entirety of this drive, calm and regulated, while yours has been in full sympathetic cascade- tachycardic, diaphoretic, pupils dilated, hands trembling- and the asymmetry of it, the sheer physiological unfairness of it, lights something in the back of your skull that isn’t sadness and isn’t defeat.

It’s rage.

Not the sharp, vocal, defensible kind. Not the kind that generates arguments and rebuttals and righteous indignation.

Something lower. Something that lives in the body, not the mind. Something that has nothing to do with what he said and everything to do with the way he’s sitting there, breathing his twelve fucking breaths a minute, resting his hand on his thigh, occupying his leather seat with the boneless ease of a man who has never once lost sleep over the things he’s said to someone while you sit fourteen inches away vibrating at a frequency that might actually be damaging your soft tissue.

You want to hit him.

The thought arrives without preamble. You want to hit him in his calm, blue lit face. You want to put your fist into the hinge of his jaw and feel the impact travel back up your metacarpals and into your wrist and you want him to feel something, anything, any disruption at all in the flat, metronomic equilibrium of his goddamn resting heart rate.

You don’t hit him.

You look at him.

You turn your head and you look at him and he must feel the weight of it because he turns too, slow, unhurried, and his eyes find yours in the blue dark of the car and they’re steady. Completely steady. No tension in his eyes, no furrow in his corrugator, nothing in his expression that suggests he’s experiencing any version of the catastrophic internal event currently leveling every structure in your chest. He’s just looking at you. The way he looks at the surgical field. The way he looks at a fracture pattern on a film. Assessing. Reading. Processing the data without any visible emotional response to the findings.

But there’s something else. Something you almost miss because it’s buried so deep in his face that you’d need to be exactly this close, exactly this wrecked, exactly this far past the boundary of professional distance to catch it.

His gaze drops.

To your mouth.

It’s fast. A quarter second. Maybe less. And then it’s back, steady and clinical and blank, but you saw it and the seeing rewires something in your brain so fast you feel it as a physical lurch, a tilt in the axis of the car, the sudden sickening recalibration of a system that just received information it doesn’t know how to process.

He looked at your mouth.

He has spent the last twenty minutes telling you that you’re negligent and broken and dangerous and going to kill someone and he just looked at your mouth.

And the thing that breaks you isn’t the cruelty. It isn’t the silence, or the criticism, or I can’t fix you, or it’s going to get someone killed. It’s the quarter second glance. It’s the knowledge that somewhere inside of this man who has spent seventeen hours making you feel like the smallest, most incompetent person in the building, there is a circuit that looked at your mouth. That the same eyes that catalogued your hesitation and your tremor and your miscounted screws also, in the same sitting, looked at your mouth. And he thought you wouldn’t catch it. And you did. And now you’re both sitting in the knowledge of it and the air in the car has changed entirely.

And something about the way he can sit here in the aftermath of everything he’s said and look at you with the same detached focus, cracks the last load bearing wall in whatever structure was keeping you upright.

Your body, which has been running on cortisol and adrenaline and seventeen hours of accumulated fight-or-flight with no outlet, moves without conscious thought. Your hand comes off the seatbelt release and goes to the back of his neck and your fingers close in the short hair above his collar and you pull, and your mouth finds his in the dark, and it’s not a kiss so much as a loss of structural integrity. Catastrophic failure at the point of highest stress. The break you saw coming but couldn’t prevent because the forces were already in motion before you understood what they were.

He doesn’t flinch.

That’s the last thing you register before everything goes: he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, doesn’t stiffen. His mouth is warm and the sound he makes against your mouth is quiet and short and so unsurprised it makes your blood run sideways.

He was waiting for this.

The knowledge doesn’t stop you. It should. It should be the thing that makes you pull back, that trips the wire between mistake and trap, but his mouth is already moving against yours and your brain has been demoted to a purely observational role, a bystander taking notes while your body runs the operation.

You kiss him like you’re trying to hurt him. Teeth and pressure and the graceless, artless force of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing and doesn’t care, and for a second- a long, terrible second- he lets you. He sits there and he takes it, your mouth on his, your hand fisted in his collar, your breath coming in sharp little pulls through your nose, and he doesn’t move. Doesn’t reciprocate. Doesn’t push you away. Just absorbs it, and the passivity of it is so much worse than rejection that you feel your eyes sting behind your closed lids.

Then his hand moves.

It goes to the back of your neck, fingers closing around the nape and gripping, thumb pressing into the tendon beside your spine, the rest of his hand spanning the width of your neck, and he holds you there. Holds you mid kiss, mid breath, mid everything, and the grip says stop. Not stop kissing him. Just… stop. Stop thrashing. Stop fighting. Stop moving.

You stop.

He pulls you back. Just enough to break the contact. An inch of cold air between your mouth and his, and you can feel the heat of his breath against your wet lower lip and you can see his eyes, close enough to make out the individual fibers of his iris contracting in the low light, and he’s looking at you with something that makes your animal brain go very, very still.

He doesn’t say anything.

He just looks. And the quality of the looking is- you don’t have language for it. Something pre-verbal, pre-civilized, something that belongs in a context where the lighting is firelight instead of dashboard glow and the power dynamic is measured in muscle mass and jaw strength rather than titles and institutional hierarchy. 

He looks at you like he’s deciding where to bite down.

His grip on your neck tightens. Fractionally. A compression you feel in your molars.

Then he kisses you.

And it’s different. Everything about it is different. Where yours was frantic and desperate and searching, his is slow. His mouth moves against yours with a patience that feels predatory, that feels like the unhurried gait of something that doesn’t need to chase because it already has what it was after, and his hand on your neck isn’t holding you still anymore, it’s steering. 

Tilting your head where he wants it, adjusting the angle, his thumb pressing under your jaw until your chin lifts and your throat is exposed and the sound that comes out of you is something you’ll hear in your own head for weeks.

Your fingers scramble against his shoulders. Your nails catch the fabric of his scrub top and drag and you feel the muscle underneath shift in response, a twitch, a contraction, involuntary and brief, and that one small proof that his body is responding makes you desperate in a way you don’t recognize.

You need to be closer. The thought is incoherent and absolute. There’s a center console between you and fourteen inches of dead space and it’s intolerable, physically intolerable, your body rejecting the distance, urgently, violently, without higher input.

You pull back. Fumble the seatbelt. The buckle snaps free. You get one knee on the console and your hand on the headrest behind him and you’re climbing, graceless, desperate, your shin banging the gear shift, your elbow catching the rearview mirror, and the logistics are terrible and you don’t care. You don’t care because his hands have dropped to his sides and he’s not helping you, he’s just watching, his head tipped back against the headrest, his eyes half lidded, tracking your clumsy, frantic movements in the space with something that isn’t amusement and isn’t patience.

It’s hunger.

Controlled, banked, hunger behind glass.

Your knee finds the seat beside his thigh. Then the other one. You settle into his lap and the steering wheel cuts into your lower back and his thighs are solid beneath yours and you’re breathing too hard, chest heaving, hands shaking where they grip his shoulders, and he’s… still.

Completely still.

Looking up at you. His hands at his sides. His jaw set. The only thing moving is his chest, rising and falling with breaths that are marginally faster than they were ten minutes ago, and you fixate on that the way a drowning person fixates on a piece of floating debris.

You wait for him to touch you.

He doesn’t.

The seconds stretch. Three. Five. Seven. You’re sitting in his lap and his hands are resting on the seat on either side of his thighs and he’s looking up at you with that banked, glass walled hunger and he is not touching you. 

He is making you sit in it, in the wanting, in the desperation, in the raw, humiliating fact that you just climbed into your attending’s lap in a driveway and he’s giving you nothing back.

Your hips shift. You can’t help it. A restless, involuntary roll that presses your cunt into his cock, and you feel his abdomen tighten beneath you, a hard, sudden contraction that he controls almost immediately but not before you feel it, not before you register the proof that his body is doing things his face won’t admit to.

His jaw tightens. You see it. The masseter flexing, the tendon standing out below his ear.

Then finally- finally- his hands move.

They don’t go where you expect. They go to your hips. Both of them. Settling over the bones with a grip that is immediately, unambiguously possessive, not exploratory, not tentative, not the careful hands of a man testing boundaries. He grips you like you’re his. Like you’ve always been his. Like the last four months of corrections and cruelty and silence were just the long, patient process of wearing you down to this, to the moment where you’d put yourself in his hands because you had nowhere else to go.

His thumbs dig into the hollows inside your hip bones. The pressure is just on the edge of pain, right at the threshold where sensation tips from one thing into another, and you gasp and his hands tighten in response and you realize with a full body lurch that the sound you made didn’t concern him. It fed him.

He pulls you forward. Down. A controlled, forceful drag that seats you flush against his him, and the contact makes your vision white out at the edges and one of his hands goes from your hip to your hair and he's gripping it, pulling it, fingers twisted strands at the crown of your head, yanking, exposing your throat, and the sound he makes rewires something fundamental in your nervous system.

His mouth finds your neck, teeth grazing the tendon that runs from your ear to your clavicle, a slow, dragging pressure that leaves a trail of heat in its wake, and then he bites down, hard enough to make you jolt, to make your fingers tighten on his shoulders, to make your hips roll forward again in a motion that is completely involuntary and that he responds to by pulling you into his clothed cock harder, fingers digging into the meat of your hips with a strength that’s going to leave marks. 

You know it’s going to leave marks. You know because his hands are surgeon’s hands, hands that crack bones into alignment and drive hardware through cortical shell, and they are currently clamped onto your body like he’s setting a fracture and the thing he’s reducing is you.

He doesn’t let go of the bite. He holds it. His jaw flexing against your throat, his breath hot against your pulse point, and you can feel your own heartbeat hammering against his teeth and he can feel it too; you know he can feel it, your pulse trapped between his mouth and your skin, and he stays there. Counting it, maybe. Tasting it.

Your hands are moving without thought. Down his chest, pulling at the fabric, trying to find skin and not finding it fast enough. You’re making sounds- small, fractured, desperate things that you’ve lost the ability to be embarrassed about because embarrassment requires a functioning prefrontal cortex and yours left the building sometime around the moment you smelled the cologne on him in the parking garage.

He releases the bite. His tongue passes over the indentation once, flat and slow and then his mouth is at your ear and his breathing is different now. Ragged at the edges. Fraying. The composure that he’s worn like a second skin all day is coming apart in increments you can measure by the roughness of each exhale and the tightening of his grip.

“You should eat more,” he says and his hands slide under your scrub top, palms flat against your bare skin and the heat of them is obscene, radiating a constant steady warmth that seeps into your tissue, spreading outwards from the points of contact and into the muscles beneath. His hands slide up your sides, palms dragging over abdominal muscles, calluses catching against your skin, and his thumbs find the ridges of bone, thumbs tracing your ribs, counting them. “I can feel every one of these.”

It’s not tender. It’s not concern. It’s inventory. He’s cataloguing what’s his and finding it insufficient and the disapproval is so tangled up with the want that you can’t separate them, can’t tell where the criticism ends and the desire begins because in him they’re the same thing. The same impulse. He wants you and he’s angry about the state of what he wants, angry when something he’s claimed isn’t being maintained to his standard.

His hands stop. Bracketing your ribcage, fingers splayed across your back, thumbs resting in the shallow valley between bones. The heat of his palms is sinking through your intercostal now, settling into the spaces between your ribs like something poured, and you can feel your own lungs expanding against his hand with every breath, pushing into the warmth, your body leaning into him without your permission because its been so long since anyone touched you with this much sustained focused heat.

His hands drop to the hem of your scrub top. He pulls it up, bunching the fabric at your ribs, exposing your waist, your stomach, the line of your hip bones above the drawstring of your scrub pants until your shirt is pulled above your head and dropped somewhere to the side. The air in the car hits your bare skin and you shiver and he flattens his palms against your stomach.

“Someone needs to feed you,” he mutters. His thumbs press into the soft tissue below your navel. “Make sure you actually sleep.” His hands drag down, hooking into the waistband pads of his fingers against your lower abdomen, the weight of his grip tilting your pelvis toward him. “You’re a goddamn mess.”

You are. You are a goddamn mess. You are shaking and crying and half undressed in your attending’s lap in a parked car and his hands are on your bare skin and his teeth marks are throbbing on your neck and every word out of his mouth is an insult wrapped in something that sounds, horribly, like a promise.

A promise that he’s going to fix what you can’t fix. That he’s already decided. That this- the car, the drive, the cruelty, the bite, his hands inside your waistband- this is just the intake assessment. The preliminary exam. The first step in a treatment plan that he’s been designing for months, one that ends with you exactly where he wants you, which is right here. Underneath his hands. Dependent on his attention. Unable to function without the particular combination of damage and repair that only he provides.

You should be terrified.

His hands tighten. He pulls you into him again, harder, and your breath leaves your body in a rush and your forehead drops to his shoulder and your teeth find the muscle where his neck meets his trapezius and you bite down because it’s the only language your body has left.

He groans. The sound travels through his chest cavity into yours, a vibration you feel in your sternum, and his hand slides up your spine and fists in your hair again and pulls, arching your neck back, exposing your throat, and he looks at you, looks up at you from below, his lips parted, his breathing finally, irrevocably wrecked, and the expression on his face is the most honest thing you’ve ever seen from him.

It’s not the mask. It’s not the bored superiority. It’s not the carefully metered cruelty he portions out across an operating day.

It’s greed.

Simple, uncut, undisguised. The face of a man who found something he wants and is currently in the process of closing his hand around it and he does not intend to open that hand again.

“Come here,” he says, for the second time tonight, and this time it means something completely different and exactly the same.

You come, your body answering the order the way it answers every order he’s ever given- before thought, before shame, before the part of your brain that still pretends it has dignity can raise an objection, and you lean in, mouth crashing against his.

You hate yourself for it. You hate the speed of it, the automaticity, the way your knees dig harder into the leather on either side of his thighs and your mouth finds his again. You hate that you’re shaking and he’s not. You hate that your hands are fisted into his collar and pulling and desperate and his are still, idle, unbothered, a man being kissed by someone while he decides whether or not to kiss back. 

He tracks you. Every tremor of your lower lip, every frantic slide of your tongue against his, every wet graceless sound you make when his teeth catch your bottom lip and tug. Controlled. Proprietary. Taking this in like he takes in everything, filing it, noting it, adding it to whatever mental inventory he maintains of all the ways you embarrass yourself in front of him. 

You pull back. Your chest is heaving. His isn’t.

“Fuck you,” you say.

It comes out wrecked. Shaking. Nothing close to the strength you want it to be. He looks at you flatly, unimpressed. 

He hooks two fingers into the drawstring of your scrub pants and pulls. One motion. The knot gives. The pants slide down your thighs and you should stop this. You should stop this right now. You should climb off his lap and open the door and walk into your house and lock it behind him and never look at him again. You know this. The knowledge is clean and certain and completely irrelevant to what your body is actually doing, which is lifting one knee, then the other, kicking cotton of your ankles, while your hand stays fisted in his collar like letting go would kill you. 

His hand goes behind your back. One flick of his thumb and the bra releases and the straps slide down your shoulders and you feel the air hit your skin and the humiliation is so acute it tastes metallic, like biting down on foil, like blood from a split lip. 

He doesn’t even look. 

He lets the fabric fall and his palms settle over your breasts and his thumbs brush across nipples already tight from the cold and the adrenaline and he does it with absent focus, like this is a step in a sequence, like your body is a series of tasks to be completed on the way to something else. 

“You’re an asshole,” you whisper. Your voice cracks. “You know that? You’re a completely fucking-”

His hand slides down your stomach. Hooks into the waistband of your underwear. Drags. The fabric catches on your thighs, resists, then gives away with a tear. 

“- asshole.”

“Yeah,” he says. That’s it. Yeah. One syllable. Bored. His eyes haven’t changed. His breathing hasn’t changed. You are sitting in his lap in nothing but the blue dashboard light, stripped and shaking, every flaw and rib and tremor illuminated, and his pulse is resting. 

You want to claw his face off.

You want to rake your nails down his cheeks until he bleeds, until something in his expression breaks, until he shows you one single shred of evidence that this is affecting him even a fraction as much as it’s affecting you. But he’s still dressed beneath you- scrub top, scrub pants- and the obscene imbalance of naked and clothed, wrecked and composed, is doing something to the power dynamic that you feel in the base of your skull like a boot on your neck. 

One hand leaves your hip. You hear the shift of fabric, the elastic drag of a waistband, and then he’s there, cock pressing against the inside of your thigh, hard and hot. He wraps his hand around himself and strokes once, slow, lazy, and you watch the muscle in his jaw flex and that’s it. That’s all he gives you. One flex of one muscle while you’re sitting naked in his lap with tears drying on your face and your whole body vibrating like a plucked string. 

Then he lines the head of his cock up, blunt insistent pressure of him against the entrance to your cunt, and your body- your traitorous, mutinous, shame soaked body- is already wet. Has been wet. Has been wet since the you smelled his cologne in the parking garage, maybe earlier, maybe since the OR, maybe since the moment you were first introduced to him as your attending and the knowledge of that is so humiliating you actually close your eyes against it, squeeze them shut like a child who thinks not seeing makes them invisible. 

“Sit.” A command. Like he’s speaking to a dog, like you’re a dog, like you’re a misbehaving mutt caught doing something you shouldn’t and he’s issuing a command to correct. Sit, heel, lay down, roll over-

Don’t, you think. 

You sink. 

The stretch is immediate. Obscene. A slow, relentless parting that you feel in your cunt, your thighs, your abdomen, your teeth, and you hate every inch of it and the contradiction is going to break you in half. He fills your cunt the way he takes up any space around him- completely, unapologetically, without any interest in whether you were ready to accommodate him or not. 

Your hands fly to his biceps. Nails through fabric into muscle. And for one heartbeat you sit there, trembling, adjusting, feeling the way you body has to restructure around him, and your eyes are open now and burning and you’re looking directly at his face and his expression is…

Calm. 

He looks calm. His dick is buried inside of you to the hilt and his face is the face of a man sitting in traffic. Waiting for the light to change. Reading a notification on his phone. And you want to scream, wrap your hands around his throat and squeeze until something in those steady, half lidded eyes shows you that he’s here, that he’s present, that this is costing him anything at all. 

His hands find your hips again. Thumbs pressing bruises into bone. And then he moves you. 

Up. Down. Controlled. Like you’re nothing more than a doll, an instrument, something he can use and play until he’s had his fill, and that pisses you off.

You start to move on your own and the first roll of your hips without his guidance is yours, angry and hard, grinding down onto him with a force that’s closer to violence than fucking, and you watch his face for the flinch, for the flutter of his eyes, for his lips to part open, for any crack, any goddamn indication that you’re getting to him. 

His eyes lower. Barely. The faintest contraction around the corner of his eyes. 

That’s it. That’s all you get. 

His hands tighten and he takes back control of the rhythm, pulling you down on his cock hard, forcing the depth, and the sound that rips out of you is something between a sob and a moan and you hate it, hate the wet broken sound, hate that he heard it, hate that his expression doesn’t change when he hears it. 

“This is what you’re good at.”

The words are like a slap and you feel them behind your eyes, in your lungs, in the slick slide where your body is betraying you again, again, again.

“Fuck you- “

“Not the tibial plateau.” His hips drive up. “Not the hardware count.” Again. “Not even remembering to get your fucking car serviced.” His hands drag you down so hard onto his cock that your clit grinds against the base of him and your vision whites out and your mouth falls open with a sound you can’t control, high pitched and needy. “This. This is the only thing I’ve never seen you hesitate on.”

“I hate you- “ Your voice splinters with another thrust, that grinds his cock against the spot that has your nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to break skin through fabric. “I hate you, you fucking-”

“I know,” he says. Quiet. Unbothered. Like you just told him the weather. And then he rolls his hips up into you with a hard grind that makes your spine arch and your head fall back and the I hate you dissolves into a whimper you’ll never forgive yourself for. 

“Look at you,” His breathing hasn't changed. Twelve per minute. Resting. While yours comes ragged and sobbing, chest heaving, your whole body shaking on top of his. “Seventeen hours of your hands shaking. Seventeen hours of being unable to hold a retractor steady. But you can ride cock like this. Perfect rhythm. No tremor. No hesitation.” He pulls you into another downstroke, meets you with his hips, punches the breath from your lungs. “Maybe this is what I should have had you doing all along instead of letting you pretend you’re a surgeon.”

You hit him. 

Your palm connects with his face, an open handed strike that lands hard enough to make a sound in the car, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t tense, just absorbs it the way he absorbs everything, and his hands on your hips don’t even stutter. 

He smiles. 

Not wide. Not warm. A thin, asymmetric thing, one corner of his mouth pulling up in the blue dark, and it’s the first genuine expression you’ve seen on his face and it’s the worst thing you’ve ever looked at. Because the smile says he liked that. The smile says do it again. The smile says he has been waiting, patiently, methodically, for the entire duration of the encounter, for you to hit him, and now that you have he can file it alongside every other piece of evidence that you are exactly as out of control as he’s always suspected. 

“There she is.” His thumb slides between your bodies. Finds your clit. Circles it in a way that makes your spine lock and your teeth clench. “There’s the good girl I knew was buried under all that incompetence.”

“Don’t call me- “ Your voice breaks, hips moving faster not, frantic, beyond your control. “Don’t you dare-”

“Come on.” His thumb presses harder. His other hand drags you down into the next thrust. “Show me the one thing you’re actually competent at.”

“I fucking hate you- “

“You keep saying that.” His mouth is close to your ear. His breathing is finally, finally different- rougher, a fraction faster, the composure fraying at the thinnest edges- but his voice is still steady. Still controlled. Still the voice of a man who is winning and knows it. “And yet here you are.”

And yet here you are. 

The truth of those words- the bare, unarguable, catastrophic truth of them- hits harder than anything else he’s said all day. Here you are. In his lap. In his car. In his hands. Naked and shaking and full of him and crying and still moving, still rolling your hips into his, still chasing the orgasm that’s building in your lower abdomen, because he told you to and because you want to and because the wanting and the hate have fused into something singular and molten that you couldn’t separate even if you had the higher brain function to try. 

The car is rocking on its suspension. The windows are opaque. Sweat slides down the valley of your spine. Your breasts move with every thrust and his eyes track them and the shame of being watched makes something tighten in your lower belly and you hate that too, hate the wiring of your own body, hate that humiliation and arousal are using the same neural pathways and you can’t tell where one stops and the other starts. 

“This is what you’re good at,” he says again. Quieter now. Almost fond. And the fondness is worse than the cruelty because the cruelty you can fight but the fondness seeps in and finds the soft tissue and stays. “Not saving lives. Not pretending to be a doctor. Just this. Just taking what I give you until you forget you ever had anything else to fuck up.”

“Shut up.” You’re crying openly now. Tears and sweat and the sounds coming out of your mouth are wet and broken and you can’t stop them and you can’t stop moving. “Shut the fuck up-”

“Make me.”

Two words. And they’re not said like a challenge. They’re said like a dare, and underneath the dare is something that sounds terrifyingly like affection, the way someone would talk to a small animal that keeps trying to bite them, amused and patient and completely unthreatened. 

Your orgasm is building. You feel it in every trembling muscle, the quiver in your inner thighs, the tightening low in your abdomen, the involuntary clenching of your body around his cock that makes his breath hitch for one unguarded second before he smooths it over. 

You’re close. You’re so close it’s blurring the edges of your rage, softening the anger into something needier, something that wants to collapse forward against his chest and be held and the wanting of that- the wanting to be held by the man who’s been destroying you- is the most humiliating thing that’s happened all night and that is a competitive field. 

His grip adjusts. His thumb digs in deeper. His pace doesn’t falter. 

His mouth finds your ear. 

“Don’t you dare come until I tell you you’ve earned it.” His thumb circles your clit and the contradiction- don’t come while his hands do everything to guarantee you will- is so perfectly, characteristically cruel that a laugh rips out of you, unhinged and wet and bordering on hysterical. “You don’t get to be good at anything unless I say so.”

And you keep bouncing, because he told you to. 

Because somewhere between the parking garage and the engine and the drive and the months of him taking you apart and breaking you down like you were a failed construct, you stopped being a person who makes her own decisions and became a person who waits for his. 

You hate him.

You don’t stop. 

***

The hospital smells the same. 

That’s what gets you. The absolute, insulting sameness. You walk through the door at six thirty and the air hits your face with its standard cocktail of antiseptic and recycled ventilation and floor wax and the distant, perpetual ghost of coffee, and it is exactly, precisely, atomically the same as it was yesterday morning when you walked in as a person who had not yet detonated her entire life ion the front seat of a Lexus. 

Your neck hurts. 

Not the muscular ache of a bad night’s sleep, though there’s that too- you slept maybe ninety minutes, in twenty three minute increments, each one interrupted by the sensation of waking up inside a body that still smelled like him despite the shower. The shower that was too hot. The shower where you stood with your forehead against the tile and your hands flat on the wall and mentally assessed the damage- bruise on your left knee, bruises on your hips in the shape of his fingerprints, raw patch on your lower back from the steering wheel, and the bite. The bite on your neck, which you examined in the bathroom mirror, reddish purple, visible above the collar of a scrub top. Visible above the collar of anything you own. 

You’re wearing a turtleneck under your scrubs. In September. 

You keep your head down. Badge clipped. Hair pulled back so tight your scalp aches. You walk with a posture that says normal day, regular morning, nothing to report, and you’re almost to the locker room when another resident steps into the hallway and says, “Admin wants you.”

Every drop of blood in your body goes cold. You stare at him. 

“Underwood’s office.” He says. “Now.”

You don’t ask why. You don’t ask why because your body already knows. Your body already knows before he opened his mouth, maybe before, maybe the moment you walked through the doors and the air tasted the same and the hallway looked the same and nothing was different except everything was different. 

The walk takes ninety seconds. You count your footsteps because counting is something your brain can do while the rest of it shuts down. 

You see him through the open door. 

Park is in the left chair. One ankle crossed over the opposite knee. He’s holding a coffee, steam curling from the lip, which means its fresh, which means he stopped on his way here, which means he budgeted time into his morning for this.

He doesn’t look up when you walk in. 

Gloria Underwood is standing beside her desk. She’s holding a manilla folder. It’s thick. Too thick for something assembled this morning. Too thick for a single incident. The thickness of it does something to the air in your lungs, displaces it, compresses it, makes the next breath feel like trying to inflate against a weight. 

Gloria’s face is arranged in the express you’ve seen administrators use when they’re about to change the trajectory of a person’s life. Controlled. A mask of professional compassion that has been practiced in mirrors and refined in meetings and has nothing to do with whether the person wearing it actually feels anything at all. 

“Please sit down.”

You sit. The chair is identical to his. Your elbow is inches from his elbow and you can smell him, smell the coffee, and the soap, and the cologne, and your body responds with a full system lurch of sense memory so violent you have to press your fingernails into your palms to stay in the chair. 

“A formal complaint has been filed,” Gloria says, opening the folder. Turns to a page that’s already been flagged with a colored tab, pre-marked, pre-organized, the administrative infrastructure of a process that was set in motion before you arrived. “Regarding conduct of sexual nature directed at Dr. Brendon Park by a subordinate member of the surgical team.”

Directed at. 

The preposition enters your ear and detonates. 

Directed at Dr. Park. Not by Dr. Park. Not between you and Dr. Park. At him. By you. 

“Dr. Park has reported that over the course of several months, he has been subjected to escalating patterns of inappropriate attention from an intern under his direct supervision.” Gloria’s eyes move across the page but she’s not reading. She memorized this. “Including persistent attempts to initiate physical proximity, repeated instances of unprofessional fixation during surgical procedures, and recently, an incident of unsolicited sexual contact initiated in his vehicle after he offered professional assistance with a mechanical issue in the hospital parking garage.”

Persistent attempts to initiate physical proximity. 

That’s- standing near him. In the OR. Where he assigned you to stand. 

Unprofessional fixation during surgical procedures. 

That’s- watching him operate. When you were assisting. 

Unsolicited sexual contact.

That’s-

The room is doing something. The walls aren’t moving but the space between them is contracting, the air thickening, the fluorescent light taking on a quality that feels granular, particulate, like you’re trying to see through something that’s settling between you and the rest of the room. 

“The complaint has been supported by documented observations,” Gloria continues. She turns another page. Another colored tab. “Dr. Park has provided a written timeline of concerning behavior, including specific dates and incidents.”

A timeline. 

He kept a timeline. He’s been keeping a timeline. Every shift, every surgery, every moment you stood too close or looked too long or held your breath- he was writing it down. Dating it. Building a file. Constructing a narrative in which every single thing your body did in his presence was evidence of you pursuing him, and the evidence is in Gloria Underwood’s hands right now, and it’s thick, and it has colored tabs, and it’s been here since before you walked in the door. 

“Given the nature of the supervisory relationship and the severity of the allegations, you are being placed on immediate administrative suspension pending investigation, effective as of this meeting.”

You open your mouth.

Nothing comes out. 

You try again and what emerges is a sound that isn’t a word, is a breath, a fragment, the beginning of that’s not what happened that stalls in your larynx before your larynx has done the math that your brain hasn’t finished yet. 

The math is:

He is a senior attending. Board certified orthopedic surgeon. Ten years at this hospital. Published. Respected. The kind of name that appears on department letterheads and in the acknowledgment section of textbook chapters. He has a reputation. He has colleagues. He has a record, spotless and long and documented in the same filing system that is currently absorbing this complaint. 

You are an intern. Four months in. No publications, no tenure, no institutional weight. You have a shaking hand and miscounted screws and a performance record that he has been personally authoring for your entire rotation. 

Who is Gloria going to believe?

Who is anyone going to believe?

The intern who can’t hold a retractor steady? The one who freezes on approaches and forgets to count hardware and cries in parking garages? The one who ended up naked in her attending’s car at midnight? 

Or the attending who has spent months carefully, meticulously, documentably expressing concern about a subordinate’s fixation. 

“During the suspension period,” Gloria is saying. “You are not to enter clinical areas, access patient records, or make contact with Dr. Park directly or through intermediaries.”

You turn your head. 

Park is looking at Gloria. He’s been looking at Gloria the entire time. Sitting in the chair with his coffee and his crossed ankle, and his face arranged in an expression of restrained concern; brows drawn, mouth set, carefully composed like a man navigating a difficult situation with professionalism and grace. He looks like someone this is being done to. He looks like a man who tried his best with a troubled intern and is now dealing with the unfortunate consequences of his own generosity. 

He is sitting in this chair, hours after his teeth were in your neck and his cock inside you and his hands on your hips dragging you down onto him while he told you that riding him was the only thing you were competent at and he looks troubled. 

Something happens behind your face. Not tears. Something past tears, something drier and more dangerous. A sensation like the moment before something snaps, the last frame of structural integrity, the instant where the material is still holding its shape but the forces have already exceeded its capacity and the failure is inevitable, just not yet visible. 

“Do you have anything to add,” Gloria asks you. 

You're still looking at Park. 

He turns his head. Finally. Slowly. Meets your eyes for the first time since you walked in. 

His face is still wearing the mask. The concern, the gravity, the restrained compassion of the Wronged-Mentor. It’s flawless. Every muscle recruited, every micro expression calibrated, the kind of performance that could only be produced by someone who’s been rehearsing it for a very long time. 

But his eyes.

In the space behind the performance, in the deep architecture of his gaze, where the mask doesn’t quite reach, there’s something looking back at you that makes your blood crystallize in your veins. 

It’s not guilt. It’s not satisfaction. It’s not even cruelty.

It’s patience.

The bottomless, immovable patience of a man who built something and is now watching it work. 

He holds your gaze for two seconds. Then he turns back to Gloria and picks up his coffee and drinks and the meeting continues, and the folder stays open, and your badge is collected, and you walk out of the hospital at seven forty one am wearing a turtleneck in September and it’s sunny outside and the sky is very blue and you don’t remember driving home.

(And Park watches you leave, coffee in hand. You look very small. Smaller than you looked in scrubs, which is saying a lot, because you already looked like a stiff breeze would snap you in half-

(And the first part is done. Solved. He doesn’t have to watch you bite your lip when you concentrate anymore, doesn’t have to correct the angle of your hands and pretend the contact is clinical. Doesn’t have to stand behind you during a procedure and smell your shampoo and keep his hands professional while he vividly imagines what he’d do to you if the room was empty- 

(Four months of that. Four months of keeping his hands on the instruments instead of on your waist, of watching your throat move when you swallow and thinking about his teeth there, of memorizing the exact pitch of your voice when you’re nervous because he wanted to know what it would sound like under him, or fucking his fist to the memory of the little punched out breath you made when you startled coming out of the supply closet, imagining you making that sound with his fist in your hair and his cock grinding against your cervix-

(And you’ll spiral. That’s fine. That’s the design. You’ll go home and fall apart and burn through the anger hot and fast the way you burn through everything, and then the anger will run out and what’s left will be the silence. No OR. No corrections. No one watching. No one who knows you hold your breath when you’re nervous or that your left hand shakes first or that you haven’t been eating enough or sleeping enough or taking care of yourself the way someone should be taking care of you. The way he would, if you’d stop being so fucking difficult about it-

(Give it three weeks. Maybe four. You’ll reach for your phone. You won’t call, not yet. But the intervals between looking at his name and putting the phone down will shrink every time until eventually you just stop putting it down. And he’ll answer when he’s ready, and you’ll be crying, and he’ll listen the way he always listens to you you- completely- because that’s the drug and he’s the only supply you’ve got left. 

(Pavlov’s dog with a prettier face. He spent four months ringing the bell- every correction a tap, every silence a withhold, every rare scrape of approval timed to land when you were most desperate for it- and now that the bell is gone and you’re salivating into nothing, confused and aching and reaching for the only hand that ever fed you even though it’s the same hand that kept you starving-

(He’ll feed you. Get your weight back up. Move you into his place once you can’t make rent. He’ll frame it as practical. You’ll be grateful. And in six months you’ll be standing in his kitchen in his T-shirt and you’ll look up when he walks in with that open, searching expression- the same one you used to give him across the operating table- checking his face for what he wants you to do next, his pretty obedient wife, trained so fucking well-

robby’s phone buzzes on the polished wood of his hotel nightstand. he’s post-shower, mid-beard trim, fixing the edges to have a crisper appearance for the arranged dinner later in the evening. he lets out a heavy sigh, already tired from a full day of meetings and shaking hands with donors and all the sweet talking that comes with it.

he glances over at his screen, seeing your name and the thumbnail of a photo you sent him—blurry curls of hair, a hint of that familiar smirk. he’s quick to dry his hands on a towel, thumb unlocking his phone with a smile.

you: [a high angle photo of you outside, white shirt hugging your curves, your chest on full display, lips just a tad pouty and face glowing]

you: miss u. thought u might like this 💋

he just stands there for a beat, shirtless, jaw slack. he blinks like he’s trying to restart his brain. heart fluttering, stomach tightening, like a silly little kid getting a valentine’s day card by a crush.

then another comes through.

you: [photo in a small little boutique mirror, one of his infamous zip ups slouching sweetly off your shoulders, your pout turned a little cocky]

you: picked u up something… if you’re good.

he has to sit down, leaving the small bathroom and walking towards the bed, towel around his waist, an ache beginning to rise in his chest now. god, why can’t you just be here with him by his side. you would make all of this a little less exhausting.

he adores that thing you do where you pretend to be teasing, knowing full well he will drag his ass home, booking an earlier flight and abandoning gloria just to kiss that exact smirk off your face.

and you know it too. that’s the worst part, you know exactly what you’re doing to him.

and you want him to know exactly how you’re feeling, and just how much you want him.

he types back with slow thumbs.

robby: You really want me distracted during this dinner?

robby: That pout’s gonna get you in trouble when I’m home.

you heart both messages instantly.

you: so come home and teach me a lesson 😇

robby can’t help but shake his head with a smile. what a gorgeous handful you are. he goes back and opens the first picture again and time slows.

he can’t help but stare at the soft pink lips that are pushed into a bratty little smile, one that he’s ruined a hundred times. your hair bouncing in the breeze, that white long sleeve hugging your chest so tight he can practically see which bra you’re wearing through the fabric. and your eyes?

fuck.

it may come across as innocent to anyone else, but robby knows that’s the exact way you look up at him when you want to crawl into his lap and make him forget the world exists. and that angle—the slight playful tilt of your head, the little pop of your hips to expose your jeans. his mouth goes dry and heat coils low in his stomach.

then the second photo, inside one of those shops downtown somewhere—one of the ones you’ve gone in with samira, where you’ve used his card to buy nothing but trouble. the golden lights overhead make your pink-glossed lips glow, curled in the way that makes something tick inside of him. the same tick that made the little set you picked out that one night be ripped right off of you.

you’re wrapped in one of his green hoodies, knowing the pittsburgh wind had gotten to you. he didn’t even have to advise you to grab something to cover yourself up with anymore, it was just instinct to grab one of robby’s. and he never minds, how could he?

his eyes keep drifting to the middle of the picture, the strap of your crossbody bag cutting diagonally through the shirt stretched oh-so-sweetly across your chest, and even that looks sexy to him. like something he wants to pull you out of. god, he just wants to pull everything off of you.

and your phone case? a cute little strawberries pattern with a polaroid of you and robby in the middle of it. the one you always put on when he’s not around so you have an excuse to look at him every second of the day—besides your lockscreen and the photo widgets on your homescreen.

he just breathes for a second. staring, not wanting to blink.

then, quietly, to himself, “…jesus fucking christ, she’s killing me.”

his thumb hovers over the screen, his jaw flexed again. he doesn’t even realize how his legs are spread wide, his hand resting on the inside of his thigh like he’s grounding himself. like his crotch isn't aching for your warmth. he saves both, adding them to a little locked album in his phone labeled trouble ♥️.

–

robby’s dressed in his slacks and dress shirt, top button undone, lanyard badge hanging forgotten around his neck. he’s supposed to be networking but instead he’s standing in the corner of his hotel room, staring at your selfies. his other hand fisting the towel he used to dry off with because he doesn’t know what else to fucking do with himself.

and then he hits call.

you answer like nothing happened, with your bubbly voice and soft tone. “hi baby!”

“god, you’re killing me here, kid.”

you bite your lip, trying so hard not to smile. “what, you don’t like them?”

“no, i’m gonna frame them,” robby replies, his voice that gravelly kind that makes your thighs press together. “put ‘em on my nightstand. look at ‘em every night like a goddamn devotional. what do you mean, did i like them?”

you giggle, soft and smug. “you sounded so bummed out in your texts this morning, i just wanted to remind you of something good to look forward to. you know, since im so cute and all.”

robby groans softly, dragging a hand down his face. “so cute,” he repeats. “you’re lucky i’m not there. i’d take that little smirk right off your mouth, sweetheart.”

you shift under your blanket, practically glowing with elation now. “oh yeah?”

“yeah,” he says, voice low and dragging. “you’d be in that hoodie, legs bare, sittin’ pretty on my lap like you always do when you miss me. and i wouldn’t even say anything. just hold your jaw, tilt your head up, and kiss you until you forget how to play bratty.”

you exhale slowly, a fuzzy feeling fluttering inside you. “…mmm cause it's that easy?”

there’s a pause on his end, and a little scoff. “trust me kid, you want me to keep it that easy.”

you shift the phone better against your cheek. “hmm,” lips curling instinctively, “is that a threat, dr. robinavitch?” you remark, all syrupy.

robby makes a sound so deep it borders on a growl. “no sweetheart, it's a promise. and you should know better than to test it.”

you giggle under your breath, but your body cant help but react to his words. feeling the need to adjust the hoodie you’re wearing—robby’s navy blue zip-up now—tugging the sleeves up around your fingers like you’re trying to curl into the feeling of him.

“i was hoping you’d save them.” you mutter quietly.

“oh, i did,” he says instantly. “don’t worry about that.”

there’s a pause. heavy. intimate. you know he’s staring at one of them again. probably the outside one, you know how he loves the way your hair frames your face like that. the glowy natural light and the way your cheeks shine with your liquid blush. and especially the angle, just as if he’s staring down at you like all the times he has.

you don’t say anything. you just wait.

“are you wearing anything under my hoodie?” his voice is tighter now. controlled but slowly slipping.

you smile so slowly it aches. you can hear the agony in his voice already. “might be… but maybe not.”

“might be?” he repeats. “jesus. you’re gonna be the death of me, kiddo.”

“i just miss you,” you whimper softly, lips brushing the edge of the speaker hoping he could feel it. “miss your hands. your voice. your smell.”

robby exhales hard. his voice drops, gravelly and desperate. “you’re not helping.”

“neither are you by calling me when you should be out at your dinner event.” you murmur.

“ill go,” he says, voice low and hot, “if you go take another one.”

you blink. “what?”

“another picture. for me.” he bites his lip and you can practically hear it through the phone. “just need a little more of a push, sweets”

you suck in a little breath, ideas beginning to scroll through your mind.

“you don’t have to show anything,” robby says softly now, “just give me somethin’ that’s mine. like you—lookin’ how you look right now, that sleepy and soft face you make when you miss me bad. wearin’ my clothes. maybe with your thighs peeking out.” he keeps his rambles at a quiet tone.

you hum pleasingly, sliding the covers off, already angling your camera a little high the way he likes—framing the curve of your thighs, a peek of soft skin of your cleavage with the hoodie not fully zipped up, the look in your eyes shameless and dark with want.

click

you send it without a caption, quickly putting the phone back on your ear to hear his reaction.

you hear him shuffle and let out a little sound trapped from his throat. “you’re not gonna walk right for a week when i get home to you.”

you giggle again, breath still a little shaky from the teasing. “i’ll mark it on my calendar,” you say jokingly, like you didn’t just almost make him groan like an idiot in a five-star hotel room, miles away from you.

a small drop of silence comes between you two again before you check the time. he sighs and you sigh too—not wanting to let go of the call but knowing the man has responsibilities to get to. “you should go, robby. you’ve still got networking to do tonight.”

robby groans like you just told him to go chew glass. “fuck networking.”

“you need funding,” you insist, biting your smile. “and i don’t think you want gloria on your ass more than she already is.”

“jack can cover me tonight.”

“robby!” you warn.

“you think i can just waltz back into that ballroom with a hard-on? it’s hard to sweet talk donors when all i can think about is you.”

“that’s not my fault,” you remark, smirking.

“it is, baby. it definitely is.” he sighs again, like it hurts to even think about hanging up. then his voice softens, gravelly but sweet, like a bedtime threat.

“you better be good while i’m gone.”

you smile. “i’m always good”

“not what i meant” you swallow thickly at his warning tone. “i love you, sweetheart.”

your heart jumps. “i love you too, robby.”

–

robby’s phone buzzes in his suit jacket as he speaks to a cardiologist and his wife. he knows it's from you—of course it's from you—however he assumes it might be a goodnight message, in which he can reply to once the man in front of him completes his telling tale. little does he know he might need to keep that cardiologist in close reach when he does end up opening the message.

you had gotten too confident after your flirtatious phone call earlier, and the desire deep in the pitt of your stomach was too much to push away. you wanted to cause another spark. test the waters a bit more. you wanted to make him scramble to call you again.

robby manages to sneak his phone out of his suit pocket.

video message from you. no caption.

“michael!” a kind businessman calls for his attention, one who he had been making small talk with all night.

robby turns around and forces a smile, tucking his phone into his pants. the man pulled him in for another conversation for a couple minutes, one to which robby’s mind was too preoccupied to care about. the idea of a 5 minute video of you, late this night, sitting pretty on his phone was enough to distract him.

eventually, robby slips out of the last bit of crowd that had been filling up the open bar. he makes it into the elevator, socially drained, and already throwing his jacket over one arm, loosening his tie.

he opens his phone, and stares at the notification until the doors close, no one else stepping in. he taps on it and unlocks the phone—the thumbnail already knocking out a deep sigh from the older man.

the camera begins out a little wobbly, being propped up against a stack of pillows at the foot of the bed. angled slightly from below so your thighs are front and center and robby’s hoodie drapes messily over your upper half.

you sit there for just a second, looking at the reflection in front of you through your screen, watching the way your hair is that pretty kind of messy, curls and strands bounced and stacked and sticking out on top of one another. the perfect hairdo that robby loves to get his hands tangled in, tugging to hear a pretty whine come out of your chest.

you lay on your back against the rest of the pillows, cheeks flushed and breathing already heavy as you spread your thighs open. panties curled around one ankle, soaked and abandoned.

you whisper, breathlessly with a shy smile, “thought you’d wanna see what you’re missing, michael.”

he nearly chokes on a breath, knowing damn well how calling him that makes him feel. his eyes narrow, his jaw flexing so hard, “fuckin’ hell…” low, under his breath. his calloused hand tightening around the phone until his knuckles pale.

you drag two fingers down your folds, gathering and playing with your slick as your breath shudders out of your chest at the mere sensation. your middle finger comes into contact with your sensitive bud and you can't help but let a whimper escape you.

“said i couldn’t come without you, i know… but it hurts, robby. i can’t wait that long…”

the camera catches your hips twitch when your fingers continue to brush against your clit. fingers teasing your entrance and hearing the squelch of your juices, your breath catching into a strangled moan.

he drags his bottom lip between his teeth, breath stuck in his chest. the elevator hums, completely oblivious to the raw vexation and desire pooling deep in his gut.

“oh, baby…” his tone in the low dangerous rasp that only someone who knows him would recognize.

you start rubbing slow circles, whining softly under your breath. hips lifting off the mattress whenever you hit a sensitive spot. the hoodie slips higher, exposing some of your lower belly, something robby noticed you're completely oblivious to with your mind focusing on the need burning between your legs.

that is until your free hand scrapes against your chest, pushing the zipper down and allowing yourself to palm at your breast. thumb brushing over your hard nipple, gasping.

“fuck i miss you so much—” voice cracking in your whispered tone, emotion so raw it almost sounds like a sob.

robby’s pulse slams in his throat, a small twitch of his thighs under his suit pants, need crawling up his spine.

“jesus fuckin’ christ” whispered like a prayer into the air of the elevator. he adjusts himself—palming his cock through the slacks, teeth gritted. not to get off, but because it hurts now. you made it hurt.

you get braver, arch your back, tilting your head until your hair spills behind you, lips parted. your moans begin getting higher, needier. thighs trembling, toes curling.

“be mad at me later, baby…” the pressure deep inside of you reaching its peak “fuck i need it so bad”

the video catches your eyes fluttering closed. robby’s vision blacks at the edges. you know exactly what you’re doing.

he warned you. specifically told you not to. urged you to behave.

and now you’re looking right into the lens—into him—and showing him you’ll do it anyway.

“oh, sweetheart, you don’t fuckin’ know what you’ve done” robby’s voice is low, heavy, rough.

your rhythm gets frantic, little squeaks escaping when you press down harder. the hoodie flapping open and flashing the small bounce of your breasts. your voice is softer now, “please, please, robby… just wanna come. need it—need you so bad…”

robby can see the quiver in your thighs and he can't help but grip the phone so hard it creaks. teeth bared, eyes locked on your soaked and trembling fingers. his free hand flexes uselessly at his side—like it wants to be on your throat, your hips, anywhere to remind you who you belong to.

you’re right there, chest heaving, mouth open, eyes glassy, legs restless that the camera picks up the tremor. you keep murmuring his name, fingers moving in quick continuous motions that your wrist begins to feel tight.

you moan, “oh fuck, ‘m so close—”

but then the recording stops.

video ending and phone taking robby back to the message trail between the two of you.

you deliberately left it unfinished when you went back to edit it before you sent it off. not just as a tease, but because deep down inside there was a curl of guilt that ran through you as you watched it back.

you know you weren’t supposed to cross the line.

robby huffs out a little laugh, hand swiping against his beard. “you’re so fuckin’ done, kid” the rasp of pure possession underneath.

the elevator had stopped on his floor for a while now, doors had opened and closed without robby even noticing. he finally reached to press the button, quickly allowing him the view of his hallway as he made his way towards his room for the night.

jacket still draped over his arm, tie hanging around his neck untied. phone still in his palm, thumb hovering over the call icon and his mind is already building your punishment, piece by piece.

the hotel door thuds shut behind him. robby tosses his blazer on the chair without looking. he doesn’t turn on the light, instead letting his room glow faintly from the city’s skyline outside.

he stands there, phone still in his hand, chest still breathing heavy. he runs one of his large hands through his hair, then drags it down his face like he normally does when he’s about to lose it.

“fuck me” he whispers to himself, shaking his head with a snicker, voice rough. finally, he opens your chat and presses down on the mic icon.

“that was real cute, baby. real fuckin’ cute.” he takes a breath, dark amusement twisting into a warning.

“just remember, the only reason you’re breathing easy right now is ‘cause i’m not there to show you what that cost you.” his voice drops an octave, tone undeniably sharp, “if i was? oh sweets, you’d be crying so pretty it’d break your own fuckin’ heart.”

his eyes peer towards the cityscape in front of him, speaking the last of his caution.

“go on, play innocent. keep wearin’ my clothes and makin’ those sounds for the camera. but when i get home, i promise you, you’re not gonna be able to film a damn thing—too fucked-out to even hold the phone steady. you understand me?”

message sent. and then nothing.

he makes you wait after you listen to his voice message. the words start to sink in now, settling heavy and hot in the pit of your stomach, winding tight around your ribs until your breath turns shaky. four minutes ticking into five… long enough that your stomach flips and your pulse drums loud in your ears. leg bouncing as you stare at your phone.

it isn't until a few more minutes, that a ring lights up your screen.

incoming facetime: robby

you answer quickly, breath caught in your throat and hoodie tugged down, comforter covering all the way up to your thighs. the camera captures the way your hair is still tousled and frizzy from earlier, your cheeks a bright pink.

robby appears on the screen, a low warm light from a table lamp illuminating him. his tie sits abandoned somewhere in the hotel room, top buttons of his shirt open, sleeves rolled to his forearms. hair just a tad messy from dragging his hands through it. eyes dark and blown out.

“prop the phone up. hands behind your head. don’t speak till i say.” voice thick and heavy.

your heart jumps, but you do it—propping the phone on the same stack of pillows like you did earlier. settling back, your lower half still covered by the bedsheets.

he tsks, “take the sheets off sweetheart. seems you didn’t mind earlier today, what changed now?”

you waste little time pushing the sheets down, kicking them off once they reach your feet. the hoodie bunched over your hips, your cotton underwear peaking through, arms raised behind your head like you’re caught.

robby’s stare drags over every inch of you. slow. deliberate. possessive.

“look at you,” he murmurs, dark and low. “glowing like you didn’t just send me a video of you breaking the one rule i fuckin’ gave you.”

your breath hitches, but your mouth starts running before you can catch up. “oops,” you dare, syrup-sweet. you tilt your head, “you didn't like what you saw?”

he gives you a small smirk, turning his gaze away in bafflement of your persistent brattiness. “you don’t stop, do you kid?”

you press your thighs together, fighting a smile. “i would’ve called earlier, but thought you’d be too busy flirting with donors. didn’t wanna interrupt your little schmooze.”

his jaw flexes once, the muscle in his cheek jumping. “keep talking…”

“maybe i will,” you purr, rolling your hips just enough for the hoodie to shift higher. “what’re you gonna do, doc? spank me through the screen?”

he doesn’t blink. “you think i won’t have you crying for real over a fuckin call?” that low, velvety rasp skitters heat straight to your core. you swallow, hard.

“you’re awfully confident from two thousand klicks away,” you whisper, teasingly. “what—gonna jerk off while you watch me again? you poor old man.”

robby’s nostrils flare. a slow, cruel smile appears and a small sigh escapes him. then he leans in, camera tilting slightly. voice as steady as it could be. “every second you keep that little mouth runnin’ is another minute i’m gonna spend edging you till you sob.”

your chest stutters but you can’t stop whatever it is that has possessed you today. “…can i touch myself?”

he laughs. genuine, but not too kindly. “not a fuckin’ chance.”

you whine. “please, robby!”

“no.” simple.

your head snaps up slightly. “w-why?”

“i said no.” his voice is calm. final. commanding. “you don’t get what you want just because you ask nicely. especially not after that stunt you pulled.”

you blink, mouth parted in disbelief. your body aches. pulses. you’re soaked. again.

“robby, please—”

“you think you get to disobey and still get off?” he asks, dark eyes narrowing. “you think i’m gonna reward you for acting up like a desperate little attention whore?”

you flinch. not from the words—god no, those go straight to your core—but from how easy his voice stays. how devastating he is without even raising it.

he leans in closer to the camera. hunching down to level with the phone in his lap.

“you don’t get to come, baby. you get to lie there and take it. the ache. the need. the shame. you’re gonna fall asleep tonight with my name in your mouth and your cunt untouched. that’s your punishment.”

you choke on a whine. a real one.

“but if you don’t listen?” he adds, eyebrows raising and those lines you've kissed a million times appear on his forehead. “you won’t cum for days after i get home. i’ll make sure of it, kid.”

you fidget in your place on the bed. reading just how much truth lies behind his words.

“i’ll lay you out, open and dripping and begging, and just watch. just look at you. all just because you wanted to be a little brat.”

you’re breathing fast now, chest rising and falling like you’ve been running. eyes glassy and your core clenching around nothing. your whole body’s practically vibrating.

“for now, your hands stay up.” he denotes, reaching to his side and sliding on his glasses.

god those fucking glasses. you hate him!!!!!!!!!!

your arms shake a little as you obey, hoodie riding up just a tad again. you bite your lip and wait.

watch the way he watches you. body naturally reacting to his gaze, your legs twitching again. heat rising in your face and chest, your nipples hard under the fabric. but he keeps looking like he’s got all night. cause fuck he would.

“you look pretty when you tremble,” he says, voice softer now, but still dangerous. “like you know just how deep you fucked up.” he can’t help but let out a small smile.

“robby” you whimper.

“what sweetheart?”

your breath hitches, lashes suddenly damp. “i… i want you inside me. please, robby… want you so bad…”

his gaze stays locked on you. lips momentarily caught between his teeth, head hung a little low. with a shake of his head he speaks, “you could’ve had it, sweetheart.”

you throw your head back in a sign of protest.

“if you had just behaved. if you had kept those pretty hands to yourself like i told you, darling.”

his voice is quiet, heavy with disappointment but tongue sharp enough to tease. “was gonna come home and let you wrap those legs around me, fuck you full till you couldn’t see straight.”

ohhh fuck

his eyes close as he takes his glasses off. he sighs, like it genuinely pains him. “but now? now you get nothing.”

your breath shudders out, thighs pressing together hard. your chest can’t shake off the tight feeling, your core throbbing so sharp it hurts.

robby tilts his head, eyes still dark, voice a notch softer, sharing you some cruel mercy.

“now go on, sweets. try to get some sleep, think about me. but—don't think about disobeying me twice.”

your body can't suppress the gulp that passes through you.

“you should be scared of what i’m gonna do to you,” he rasps. “and you will be.”

he leaves you there, choked on a whimper, eyes hot, chest heaving. hoodie slouched messingly over your figure, thighs trembling, arms aching from staying up.

your phone turns off, but robby’s dark gaze in the back of your mind keeps you pinned in place. you don’t move. you don’t dare.

even from two thousand kilometers away?

he owns you.

–

you go to the bathroom to finish your nighttime routine. air thick and your skin too hot under his zip up. your pulse doesn’t seem to calm down either, no matter how deep you breathe. you keep glancing at your phone, as if his face is still there—like he’s giving you the rope to tie yourself with.

you opt to put on one of robby’s t-shirts instead, with one of your sleeping shorts as you slip into the empty bed. you have two nights to sleep until you can finally welcome robby’s arrival, trying hard to ignore how slow time feels without him.

but god forbid you listen to his words.

you’re still alone. still no one around. no footsteps outside your door. no noise echoing in the unit. you have… freedom.

somewhat.

but the deep, pulsing ache between your legs hurts. real bad.

its not to say you don’t feel guilty. you know you did something that tested the waters. that pushed robby’s patience—and god is that man a saint for how much he has to put up with, whether he can see it or not. and while you also know his words were supposed to submit you into a sense of remorse for your wanton actions, you know you also can't deny just how hot he sounded over the phone. just how attractive he is. how much you need him in any way he's willing to give it to you.

and maybe at first? you obey.

maybe you stay still, try to sigh, to relax your body and let it succumb to the darkness of sleep. maybe you clench your fists in the blankets and bury your face in robby’s pillow and just breathe through it, like you’ve done so many times before.

you try to sleep. you really try to be good.

but you keep picturing his voice. his brown eyes. the way he sweetly called you kid and sweetheart despite scolding your desperate behaviour. or the tone of his voice when he warned of his incoming punishments.

you last… thirty minutes?

forty?

before you’re dragging robby’s pillow down to the ache between your legs. straddling yourself on top of the bunched up fabric and stuffing, hips twitching, clit pulsing. it’s messy, pathetic really, just chasing enough friction to ease the ache. no real finish, and yet you still couldn’t stay still. couldn’t just go to sleep.

–

the door clicks shut quietly. the small clack of dress shoes on the floorboards walking around measured and unhurried—like he has all the time in the world. robby’s luggage settles on the corner chair in the bedroom, as he stands there for a moment, taking the time to look at you. see you in the flesh even though he was only gone for two days.

he admires your soft sleeping figure and your legs peeking in and out of the sheets. your hair is still a frizzy mess with your cheeks warm with sleep. your lips slightly parted, your lashes laying delicately on the tops of your cheeks as your face scrunched just a little in your dreams.

robby walks over, gently sitting down on the edge and letting his weight dip his side of the bed, close to where your hands rest on his pillow.

and then he sees it.

his fingers pull back the fabric enough to identify the sight plain and clear—a wet patch, barely the size of a palm staining the pillowcase. right where your hips were pressed just a few hours ago. back too early for it to have dried, for you to have covered up your little mistake and pretend nothing happened.

robby lets out a low sigh, lightly shaking his head with wrinkles littering his forehead as he turns to look at your sweet face. thumb brushing against your cheekbone ever so softly. your breathing is still so steady and slow.

but fuck did he miss you.

“picture of an angel but nowhere near a saint.” he whispers to himself.

you begin to stir with the weight of him on the bed. warmth begins to radiate towards your body in a recognizable manner. robby slides his hand from your cheek to your thigh, big and warm and fingers curling possessively. your sleepy gaze finds the familiar blurry silhouette of the man in front of you. your heart begins kicking at the sight.

but his voice, quiet and dangerous, reminds you of your future. “want to tell me why my pillow smells like your pretty cunt, sweetheart?”

your tongue suddenly begins to feel too big for your mouth. “r-robby…? y-you’re back? i thought your flight—”

“don’t do that,” he says, thumb still ghosting over your thigh. “don’t play dumb, baby. you know why i’m here.”

his tone remains low and steady. an older-man calm that's soft enough to scare you more than shouting ever could.

you blink, heart stumbling. your gaze flicks up to the pillow your hand is currently fisting, the damp patch unmistakably present. “tell me what this is,” he says, voice so nonchalant it cuts deep into you.

your breath trembles, “i—i couldn’t sleep. i tried, i really did—”

his hand flexes, big and warm on your leg. “careful,” he warns, low and steady. “don’t make me ask twice.”

your voice breaks. “i…i just…i missed you so much, robby. its so hard, and i—i promise i only rubbed a little, over the pillow, i didn’t—didn’t even really finish—”

he doesn’t interrupt your mumbling. just watches patiently. lets your words trip over themselves and fall into silence.

“so you thought about listening,” he murmurs finally, thumb dragging slowly over the curve of your hip. “and you still didn’t.”

you swallow hard, hand reaching for his resting on your side. your lashes go wet. the acknowledgment of your delinquency beginning to send prickles of shame through your skin.

“you know what that means, don’t you?”

your mouth opens, closes, nothing able to come out. the guilt begins to claw up your chest as your thighs tense under his hand.

“look at me,” he says gently, almost bordering on cooing. but it still makes your pulse hammer in your throat. “c’mon, sweetheart. look at me.”

your eyes lift to his, glassy, throat tight and dry. robby’s expression doesn’t soften. it stays heavy, sad in a way that slices you open.

“you knew what i told you.” he says, voice somehow rough and soft at the same time.

a tear slips out and runs down your hot cheek. you try to move closer, to bury your face against his big warm chest, your lips brushing against his collarbone as if asking for permission. asking for forgiveness and mercy.

for a second—just a second—robby lets you. his hand slides to the back of your head, warm fingers curling around your cool skin, thumb brushing your hairline. and he leans down, catches your mouth in a single, slow kiss—not rough, not greedy. just deep, sad, and deliberate.

rather the kind of kiss that says i missed you too. but that doesn’t save you.

your breath hitches, tears threatening again, heart racing so loud you can hear it. then he pulls back. not far, just enough so his forehead touches yours.

“that’s the part that breaks my fuckin’ heart, sweets.” he murmurs, voice catching just a smidge at the end. “that you knew what it’d cost, and you still did it anyway.”

you let out a frustrated whine as robby stands up and walks over to the foot of the bed. he takes off his jacket, setting it aside as he begins to unbutton the cuffs of his dress shirt.

“i just miss you so much, robby. i-i just can’t think straight”

“you missed me?” he begins rolling up his sleeves, as you sit there staring at his wrists. “you didn’t miss me enough to listen, though.”

your breath shudders out. your chest hurts. your thighs squeeze together helplessly.

“i’m sorry,” you whisper, voice breaking.

his thumb traces your cheek, wiping the tear—but his eyes remain stern. he’s sticking to his plan.

“you don’t get to cry it away, sweetheart,” he says, soft but final. “you made your bed. now i’m going to show you what it feels like to lie in it. understand?”

your mouth trembles. “…yes, sir.”

robby pulls you gently off the mattress by your waist and stands you in front of him. his voice stays low—an older quality, unable to hide the years of experience. every move, every word, every touch showing he knows exactly what to do.

“listen close, baby. ‘cause i’m only gonna say this once.” he states, lips brushing against your ear. “this isn’t about me being mad that you’re needy. i love that you need me.”

you reach for his hand sitting on your hip. he lets you wrap your fingers tight around his, as he squeezes yours in return. “but when i tell you no, and you still do it? that’s not need, kid. that’s you thinking you know better than me.”

you look down, finding it harder and harder to keep eye contact with him.

“that’s you forgetting who this belongs to.” his palm slides between your legs, warm and firm and possessive. cupping your wet core and your breath hitches, body reacting to his hands finally on you.

finally touching you. finally feeling you. finally feeling him.

“and if i let that slide, sweets? next time you’ll cross another line. and then another. so, i’m gonna make sure you remember. i’m gonna make you so fuckin’ sore you feel it every time you sit down.” your eyes can’t help but go wide as you look back up to him.

“so that when you even think about misbehaving,” his free hand reaches to thumb your cheek. “you’ll remember how it felt to have me teach you to listen.”

he steps closer, voice softer but laced with cruel, heavy promise. “and when you’re crying, legs shaking, beggin’ me to stop? you’ll remember that i warned you, and you still did it. because if you break the rules like a brat? then you get fucked like one. isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

you swallow hard, knowing that’s your cue to nod. “m’sorry” you mumble out, instinctively, frantically. he smiles, grabbing your chin as his figure guides you backwards to the foot of the bed. the edge hitting the back of your knees making you fall down and sit.

slowly and calmly robby watches as you sit there, the whole time you squirm and clench and arch just slightly because your body knows what’s coming.

“no fingers tonight,” he announces. “no mouth. no cuddling. no baby talk. you don’t get that, not after how you acted. so, you’ll take it how i give it.”

you try your best to hush down a complain.

“i’m gonna use my hand. and then my belt.”

you nod frantically. “y-yes—okay”

he holds up a finger. one of his long and thick fingers that you so desperately want inside of you.

“and then i’m gonna fuck you—and maybe, just maybe, ill let you cum. but no promises, kid.” he leans down, kissing your cheek softly. “you touched yourself like a spoiled little girl who thinks i’m not serious.”

you swallow thickly, your underwear sitting haphazardly between your legs, soaking wet. god this isn’t going to be easy.

“trust me darling, i was dead serious.”

–

robby drags your panties down slow—painfully slow—thumbs hooked in the sides like he’s unwrapping a gift he already owns. the cotton peels from your cunt, wet and clinging and he pauses when it sticks. smirks. but doesn’t say a word, just taps your thigh twice.

you lift your hips without thinking.

“good girl,” he murmurs, the words low and instinctive. still too quiet to soothe the guilt swimming inside you. it slips out despite the predicament, a reflex carved deep from nights you’ve obeyed him perfectly.

because even now, even with your thighs trembling under punishment and your cheeks burning with shame, you prove to robby that you are in fact good at listening. quick to act when he taps your hips. still spreading like it’s your job, needy and obedient all at once. 

“like a little slut at the doctor’s office,” he adds, voice darker now, one hand wrapping around the soft underside of your knee. “all trained up to spread on command, hm?” 

he leaves your panties bunched around one ankle. just like in the video you sent last night. just like he saw when he replayed it on the hotel bed with his jaw clenched and his hand wrapped around his cock, muttering “what the fuck am i going to do with you, kid” 

but certainly you don’t know that—and you don’t need to anyways. 

he shifts you further up the bed, palms under your thighs, manhandling you into position until you’re sprawled wide in the center. robby kneels between your legs, hands gripping just above your knees and pushing down, to make sure they don’t budge. 

“m’gonna slap the inside of your thighs until they sting.” robby announces. his voice is almost clinical in the way he states his intentions and impending actions. you love how he can’t shake it off sometimes. 

“not too hard. just enough to remind you what happens when you forget who you belong to.”

you whimper, mentally flipping yourself off for being too needy. too desperate. too bratty. 

“you’ll keep them open the whole time,” he says, matter-of-fact, like he’s stating policy. “or i’ll strap them wide with my belt. you understand, sweets?”

you try to nod, try to stay still, but your thighs are trembling already under his firm grip.

SMACK

a sharp one, not too painful like he promised, just under the curve of your thigh. you jolt but robby doesn’t quite wait for you to settle down. 

“one, for deciding your needs matter more than my rules.”

SMACK. the other thigh, slower this time, punishing in its precision. the sting begins to stick, the kind that doesn’t fade away quick. 

“and another, for touching yourself like i’m not the one who’s supposed to take care of that.”

he lets the words sink in. his hands stay fixed on your legs, keeping them from shutting. you nod, mouth trembling, big glassy eyes looking up at him. 

his hand slides between your legs—not to soothe, but to test how wet you’ve gotten. you try so hard not to whimper. try not to squirm at his touch. so deprived for two days and three nights that your eyes begin to roll back. 

you fail at both.

“look at this,” robby mutters, fingers dragging up your folds. “fuckin’ soaked from getting scolded.”

then—SMACK. his palm lands sharp against your pussy.

you jolt. a noise hauled so deep from your chest escaping you at the sudden feeling. 

he does it again.

SMACK

“put on a show in that video, didn’t you?” he grumbles. “thought it was cute? fuckin’ pathetic.”

another slap. your one thigh closes in on his hand by instinct. he clamps them back open, locking your leg under his own.

“don’t even think about it,” he growls. “keep ‘em spread. you wanna play slut, you take your licks like one.”

you’re crying again before the next one lands. tears blurring your vision, eyes better off closed. 

SMACK

“this little cunt doesn’t even know what real discipline feels like.”

he lands one more. cruel. hot. mean. your legs shake, and you breathe in to calm your tears. then robby spits, slow and deliberate, directly onto your pussy. the wet sound of it lands hot, filthy. you let out a moan, his eyes looking up at you at the sound. he lets it drip, heavy and obscene, down the seam of you.

“robby” you whine, head lulling back. a thick-fingered swipe followed right after, spreading it messily over your already soaked folds, rubbing rough over your bud. you’re aching and overstimulated at the same time and it's driving you nuts.

then—and only then—he leans in and presses a single, soft kiss to your clit. it’s barely even pressure, like he’s mocking you. but he sees the way you gasp and your eyes roll back and he can’t help but enjoy your desperation. his breath fans across your folds when he speaks, “that’s the only mercy you get tonight, kid.”

he looks up at you, his stare unwavering. “don’t ask again.”

robby falls back on his heels before getting up from the bed. cold air hitting your core once the warmth and shield of his body leaves you. he grabs your wrists, pulling you up like you’re weightless. like you’re nothing but trouble to be handled.

“up,” robby states, already settling you upright in front of him.

you blink through your tears, waiting for his explanation. he reaches for the hem of your sleep shirt—his shirt—and pulls it over your head. you’re bare underneath, you always are, and now you’re naked in front of him. knees bucking with your shivering figure and shame-faced. you peek up at him, eyes red, nose stuffy, lips in a slight pout. his gaze flickers across your face, lingers.

robby brushes your hair back gently—thumb skating along your temple, down the wet streak on your cheek, to trace along your jaw.

its not an apology and not quite forgiveness. just something wordless and old. a kind of reverence he can’t help.

“you keep looking at me like that,” he murmurs, “and i won’t be able to do this.” 

you sniffle, hands reaching out to rest on his stomach. but he doesn’t stop. 

he undoes a few buttons from the top of shirt before unfastening his belt slowly. he lets it slide through the loops with a warning whip. then he sits down on the edge of the bed, the dark leather beginning to wrap around his hand, “over.”

you hesitate—only a second. but robby isn’t having it. you know the rules and you can't avoid them anymore. he manhandles you over his lap, positioning your thighs on top of his own, face down, ass up, one of his heavy legs caging you in.

your body’s bare, vulnerable and defenseless, laid out for robby to correct and all you can do is try to take deep breaths and take it. he settles you tighter across him. one palm at the back of your neck—holding you, not hurting you.

“gonna keep your head down, okay?”

you nod and reach for the sheets, bracing yourself for impact by holding onto the corner of the bed. but you hear shuffling before robby’s grey tie dangles in front of your face. 

it smells like him. like his woodsy cologne you crave when he’s gone. 

“open your mouth, kid.” 

you follow the order, jaw trembling as your tongue soon tastes the silk and cotton of his tie. he rolls it into a good enough ball to chew down on, a small tail of the material sticking out of your mouth. 

it’s comforting. 

robby leans in close to your ear, “five with the belt.” his hand coasts down your spine—steadying you, grounding you. you make a noise of acceptance through the ball in your mouth, pressing your cheek to the edge of the bed. 

the first crack of leather rings through the room. the belt landing hot across your ass, and you bite down hard, a whimpered jolt escaping you. 

it had been a while since you were last bent over his lap, skin bared to welcome soon-to-form welts. the second slap lands firm, doubling the sting already aching through the layers of your flesh. which only helps you remember why you had chosen to be on your best behaviour prior to yesterday:

being horny always makes you forget how bad it actually hurts to be a brat. 

three more slaps come before your eyes burn red and your drool wets over robby’s tie. his hands rub over your cheek, the skin burning and you flinch at the touch. “now, you’re gonna count, sweets. okay? and i want you to tell me what lesson you’ve learned, and a promise after each.”

robby fishes out the tie from your mouth, allowing you to respond to him. you gasp when he takes it out, swallowing the pool of saliva in your mouth. robby’s thumb rubbing the slick over your puffy lips. you sniffle, throat rough and your face hot. “okay.”

“and you’ll mean it. or we keep going until you do.”

you nod again. his eyes linger on yours more softly than his actions. hand loosening on the belt wrapped around him. “hold still” he warns.

the sound echoes in your ears, one arm braced around robby’s leg, the other hand clutching tightly at the sheets. “one,” you gasp. you try hard not to stutter on your words, “i-i’m yours. a-and i won’t show off again. i s-swear.”

“good start,” he grunts.

WHAP

“two—! i-i’ll be patient next time. i won’t tease ‘n i won’t beg like that again.”

“bullshit,” he grumbles. “but keep going.”

the stinging almost begins to numb your skin. almost. “three! i’ll ask first, robby—i’ll wait for you.”

“you’ll earn it,” he corrects, voice steady, “or you won’t get it at all.”

WHAP

“four” you whine out, chest tight. tears drip down your face, soaking the sheets of the bed. “i’ll be good. i’ll–i’ll do what you tell me. no q-questions, no protests, n-no attitude.”

robby hums like he’s testing the truth of it, “we’ll see,” the belt is still loose in his grip. “i hope so.”

your body jolts on the last whip of the leather. “five—!” a sob finally breaks free, “i’ll remember who i belong to, i-i won’t forget again—ever ‘cause i love you—i love you s’much.”

there’s a pause, just the dingle of the belt buckle being tossed to the chair at the corner. his big hand begins rubbing slow circles over the marked heat of your ass, his palm spread wide and warm and soothing with its movements. when he speaks, he’s soft, “that’s the one i believe, sweetheart.” 

robby sees the belt marks starting to lift. angry little welts that’ll bruise come the morning. he sees the tremble of your thighs, your knees trying hard not to buck. not to mention, the wet mess between them. you’re vibrating with pain and need and robby can't help but shake his head with a smirk.

he exhales, low and controlled, helping you up from his legs and sitting you in his lap. one hand sits on your hip and the other pushes your hair out of your face as he leans down, so close his voice ghosts warm across your cheek.

“you don’t make this easy, kid,” he murmurs. there’s no venom in it. just a rough kind of honesty.

you bite down on your lip so hard you make yourself whine. his thumb drags down your mouth, freeing it from your teeth. he rubs against the skin, soothing the red. 

“i love you too, sweetheart. so fucking much.” he whispers. 

he kisses your forehead as his two hands warm your cheeks, squeezing you tight to his lips. you hover over his mouth once he lets you go, silently begging for permission, for some more mercy. he lets you, enveloping you in a comforting wet kiss and you feel the tension in your body slowly dissolving. 

one second longer and he might have climbed into the sheets with you and called it a day. might undo all of it. pull you against him, press your face to his chest, stroking your hair and say, “it’s alright, baby. i got you. i’m here.”

but he doesn’t.

because he meant what he said. no comfort. no release. not yet.

“you make it hard to be cruel,” he says under his breath, barely loud enough for you to hear. “you’re so fucking sweet when you’re like this.”

he shifts you so you can lay on your back against the bed. slow and careful with the way he lifts you, not wanting to inflict any more discomfort to your bottom. he sheds himself of his shirt, pants unbuttoned and boxers tossed to the chair. he slots himself between your thighs, spreading them apart like he belongs there. his eyes roam down, watching the shine of your slick coat the inside of your legs, your pussy flushed and swollen from the slaps. all frustrated from his negligence.

you whimper, soft and instinctive, at the way he stares down at you and his jaw tightens. something unspoken sparkling in his eyes. 

“still fucking dripping, hm?” he mutters, shaking his head once like you’ve disappointed him and baffled him all at once. “this—” he swipes his fingers through your folds, presses down hard on your clit until you twitch and gasp, “—is why you’re not done being punished.”

you moan. you can’t help it. none of it. 

robby flips you over with a single steady motion. his palms running against the sensitive skin of your ass. his arm snakes around your waist, dragging you up just enough for him to sink into you. 

no warning. no prepping.

just one long, slow thrust to the hilt that punches the air from your lungs, stretching you so full that it makes your toes curl into the sheets. the exact perfect ache that you go mad for. and he doesn’t let you move, doesn’t let you even think about grinding back towards him, forearms brace your hips in place, caging you there. 

his other hand catches both of yours and pins them down to the mattress above your head, his grip ironclad. robby’s voice sounds in your ear, soft and seething, “you don’t get to fuck me tonight, baby.” he states, like its obvious. “you just get used. gotta humble that needy little cunt before she starts thinking she’s in charge.”

then he moves—slow, punishing strokes. every time he withdraws it's so deliberate you swear you feel every possible ridge of him, just to push back in so deep it borders on cruel. your walls can’t help but constrict around him, chasing him, trying to keep him stuffed inside you for as long as possible. 

his hand tightens around your wrists and you hear the last thread of tenderness in his voice break. “all mine” mouthed to the side of your tear-stained cheek before robby lets out a low and ragged groan. his pace remains steady, unhurried, like your frustration is part of his reward. “m’gonna fill you up… and you’re gonna lay here and take it. ‘cause that’s all you get.”

you whine into the sheets. ass pulsing with the way his hips slam against your cheeks. the all too familiar feeling of your wet walls stretching around robby’s thick length driving him crazy. the pressure in your stomach begins to muster up into a storm but you can feel the way robby pulses inside of you and you know he won't wait for you. you still bite the sheets at the feeling of his cock driving into your tight little cunt, eyes squeezing shut as you feel him chasing his own edge, every thrust a reminder that this isn’t about you.

his free hand runs up from your hip to the side of your chest. palm flat as it presses down on your shoulder blades until he grips a handful of your hair. he tugs it when you let out a strangled moan, his pink fat tip hitting a part deep in your cervix that you feel a shiver pass over you. 

“is this what you were pretending your fingers were last night?” he teases into your skin, teeth grazing your sweaty shoulder. he tugs at your hair again, yanking your face up and close to robby’s hot breath. he bites your earlobe, “not even close, sweetheart. not even fucking close.”

you let whiny sounds escape you, any words mumbled into the air with a hoarse voice. your nails dig into the sheets above your head, wrists still locked in robby’s grip, as you fight to keep your hips still. the burn in your ass throbs in time with the ache between your legs, and you slowly realize the worst part of the punishment is knowing how easily he could make you come—and how determined he is not to.

even so, the heat deep in your belly keeps coiling tighter and tighter until it’s an aching pressure that makes your thighs shake and you so desperately want to feed it. you try to breathe through it, try to think of anything other than the way he’s balls deep splitting you open, but every slow drag of his hips follows up with a mean thrust back into you and it just keeps winding you up. you clench around him—once, twice—so hard that you earn a hearty groan from robby. 

a tug to your hair, “mm–don’t.” he warns low, voice as rough as yours it borders on a growl, “don’t you even think about it.”

you bite down on your lip, hard, the taste of iron coating the tip of your tongue but it's useless. you can’t stop the gnawing feeling overcoming you. your body is desperate, greedy, tightening around him like you can lock him there forever and wring every possible drop out of him without having to try hard enough. you can hear how wet you are every time his hips roll forward and the humiliation of it only makes the ache worse. 

“sweetheart” his voice sharpens, grip on your wrists tightening to the point your fingers begin to tingle. his other hand most likely bruises your hip as he drags your ass snug against him. “you come without my say-so and i’ll flip you over and start all over again. make you cry real this time, baby. don’t test me. 

your whole body jerks when he selfishly thrusts in deep, so deep it feels like you can’t breathe. your toes curl, your eyes roll back, your mouth agape and the sound that leaves you is half sob, half moan. “robby—” you choke out, but he cuts you off with a slow drag of his hips that slams back into you hard enough to jolt you forward on the bed. 

a test. mocking you.  

“don’t.” he repeats, voice steady now, in that dangerous calm that makes your stomach twist. “you’re here to be used, baby. not to be pleased. so you hold it.” 

but you can’t. you’re trembling, hairs sticking up, goosebumps tracking your skin. you keep clenching down like your body is making the decision for you. the sensitivity presents itself in sharp, unbearable throbs. you try to reason with him, say you can’t help it, apologize for the fiftieth time, but all that comes out is a muffled, desperate sound into the sheets.

your thighs quake, every nerve in your body begging, yelling, screaming at you to just let go. to give in, and take the blissful release that's dangling just out of reach. but robby’s warnings ring in your head like a threat you know full well he’d make good on. your mind races at the burn, the fullness, the way you can feel his pulsing, his strained huffs of breath he lets out through his nose, and the way he's squeezing your flesh like it's all his, because it is.

oh god it is.

it's all too much. you're starting to see white at the edges of your vision, jaw slack, breath hitching like you’re about to tumble over the edge…

and then you feel it. the hot, insistent pulse inside of you as his hip drives absolutely flush to yours. his groan is low, gutteral, breaking on the inhale as he spills into you. warm, thick, and oh so familiar. comforting, almost. the weight of him leaning against you, cock buried to the hilt with spurts of cum still coating your walls, makes your chest tighten. 

you fall apart—but not the way you wanted.

a sob tears itself from your throat, raw and ugly, as your body embarrassingly clenches around him, chasing a release that never comes. “n-no, robby—please—” you babble, voice cracking, but he’s already holding you there, the head of his cock leaking his seed into the pool of your own juices. all while your own pleasure is ripped right out from under you. 

you can’t stop crying. hot, messy sobs shake your whole frame, your wrists straining uselessly in his grip. “i-i–i was so—so close” you whine, tears soaking into the bed, strands of your hair sticking to your cheeks. 

“yeah i know,” he murmurs in your ear, maddeningly calm as he finally lets your hands go to stroke his palm down your back, soothingly. “that’s the point, kid. you don’t get it tonight.”

the words make you cry harder, shoulders jerking with every cry and hiccup. your pussy throbs around him, aching and swollen, milking him in pathetic aftershocks you can’t help, and robby just keeps you there—stuffed full, pussy oozing of him. denied and quivering. 

“there you go,” he coos, like you’re a child he’s putting to bed. “let it out, sweetheart. cry for me. cry ‘til you remember your place.”

and you do—face buried in the sheets, body uncontrollably shaking, your weeping filling the room while he keeps stroking you, hand petting your hair, the sides of your ribs, your marked ass. his cock softens inside of you, but still pulsing in time with your heartbeat. he lightly kisses your shoulder as he leans down against you, keeping you caged in until your fight is gone. 

only then does he move, slowly pulling out of your bright pink pussy. his hands are gentle as he lifts you, shifting so you can lay on your back, your red, watery eyes meeting his soft, tired brown ones. both of his hands envelope each of yours, fingers interlacing and he squeezes you reassuringly. proud of you, for enduring your consequences like the good girl he knows you are. even when you try to fight against it. 

you smile, small and spent. but a smile he reciprocates nonetheless.

your thighs still quiver when he leaves the room, but he’s back before you can truly miss him. jar of cream in one hand and a warm washcloth in the other, and your heart warms—he would never leave you unattended after something like this. nothing is ever that serious. 

he nudges open your legs first with his hand. squeezing water droplets from the cloth to run down your folds. although you hiss at the feeling, it's tender and easing. he swipes, runs the soft material against your thighs for anything that might’ve spread. gently pats you dry with another corner of the cloth. you sniffle, your nose still runny after all your crying. chest still feeling a bit heavy, body still sore although robby’s comforting touch over you is enough for it all to feel worth it. 

his eyes look up at you, to assess your expressions, to see the small tremble of your muscles that you can’t control. he cleans the dried trail of salt tears from your cheeks with his moist hand, like he's erasing the evidence. you hold his hand to your cheek a few beats longer—eager for his warmth. knowing this, he tugs your head to his lips, planting a kiss on your forehead. 

robby then shifts you to flip back onto your stomach. a pillow dragged down from the top of the bed, so you can lay your head to the side while he opens the jar of cream. he’s quiet as he works. fingers light and easy as he dabs the ointment onto your belt marks, bumps and lines beginning to sink good into your skin. you can’t help the little sounds you make when the cool cream meets your hot spots. each one earning you a soft “i know, baby. i know…” 

he watches the way your skin bubbles with goosebumps at his intimate touch. the way you hold your breath when his hands run against the small of your back. he loves how sensitive you are to him. how reactive. it intrigues him. 

once he's done his fingers brush away the hair that's fallen to your face. hates the idea of not seeing your face, tugging a few strands behind your ear as you close your eyes. he keeps his hand on your back, silently asking you to stay still while he gets up to search for a pair of sweatpants you can wear, and a fresh pair of underwear—one of his boxers for comfort. 

he helps you up off the bed, careful to not smudge the cream onto the sheets. you slip into your new pyjamas for the night, robby handing you an old t-shirt of his—your favourite to be specific—to finish you off. after he gets himself into his own house clothes, he stands before you, as you watch him watching you. his palms run over you gently, like he wants you to feel the difference. he fixes the hem of your shirt, palms your thighs one last time, like he’s double checking that the clothes fit you in that slouchy cozy way you love. 

then he looks at you, eyes running all over your face. thumbs rubbing over your cheeks, eyes making sure they meet yours even if you lower your gaze. “thats it. you’re done now. nothing left hanging over you.”

you nod, leaning up on your tippytoes, testing the waters to see if it's okay. and he kisses you before you can twist your mind up on whether or not he’s still mad at you, or if you’re still in trouble. “you’re okay, sweetness. i promise.”

“im sorry. im sorry. i love you.”

“i love you, more. always have, always will, kid.”

–

it’s late afternoon now, the low lights of the early evening creeping over the sky. robby heads over to the kitchen almost immediately once you two head out of the bedroom. he knows you haven’t eaten anything, and although he’s also standing there stomach pit empty, he’s more determined to cook something up for you. he’ll just eat the leftovers of whatever he musters up. 

you follow him through the apartment, leaning against a wall that corners in the kitchen. watching the way his hands move, grabbing things from the cabinets and fridge. he doesn’t ask what you want, knowing exactly what your comfort food is, warm and filling and nothing too fancy. just a good old meal. and you know exactly that, and you can’t help but smile. 

“sit down, angel. don’t want you standin’ around.” he speaks, eyes watching you as he points to the free space on the counter. you hop up, robby’s hands close by if your legs were too limp. you scrunch your nose at the ache in your skin and he sees. hands on you to sooth, “you okay?”

“i’m okay. i deserve it,” you reply, lips curving into a small smile at the end, “trust me. i know” you add on.

he lets out a quiet chuckle, “took it like a good girl, that’s all i care about.”

he continues to work, pots and pans heating on the stovetop as he cuts and measures what he needs. you watch him, like he’s more interesting than any possible tv program you could sit down and watch instead. and he knows, impossible to not be hyper-aware of your gaze. but he loves it. there's a quiet pride in the way he tosses around the ingredients, or the way he flexes his forearm just a little unconsciously because he adores the sound of a giggle escaping past your lips. 

next thing you know, he's resting the plate in front of you. warm food settling a peace through you, finally quieting the grumble that haunted your stomach while robby cooked. robby was pleased with the way your shoulders loosened and your cheeks heated up at the steam from the plate. it wasn’t until you were a couple of bites in that he finally began to feed himself. something you’ve always pleaded for him to prioritise while he commanded the chaos of the ER. and he would always listen eventually, because he hated when you would worry about him.

you go to bed that night still slick and sore. the consequences still sunk heavy in your bones, every shift of your body reminding you of where his hands held you firm. the ache isn’t just on the surface, it falls deeper, a throbbing low in your core, a hunger that makes your muscles twitch with his figure against you. robby feels it. knows it. but you don't ask. you don’t beg. not after what you’ve done. you only tuck yourself tighter against his chest, face pressed into the cotton of his shirt, body humming with need you won’t voice. not tonight. 

and robby? he doesn’t miss a thing. not the restless way your thighs shift between his before sleep drags you under. not the shallow hitch of your breath when his arm passes over the curve of your hip, hand soothing where the leather struck. he knows exactly what you’re aching for, and exactly why he won’t give it to you. 

not yet. 

and when you finally let your eyes close, he keeps one hand curved at the back of your head, the other at your waist. holding you in place so you won’t curl away in your sleep. he does it on purpose, that weight—his weight—because he knows you’ll be reaching back for his comfort when you accidentally drift away. 

he thinks about that while you twitch in his arms, your body still chasing what he refused. and robby breaths through it, warm air out his nose that falls against your hairline, staying quiet and steady as you sleep. 

it kills him not to fold—always does. loving you the way he does, too much even, more than a man like him should, makes restraint feel damn near impossible. but he holds the line anyway, because that ache, he reminds himself, is part of it.

the punishment is still written in your body, but tomorrow is different. it will be different. 

robby’s trip is still booked for four days. at least that’s where gloria thinks he is, and that’s what jack is covering him for. but robby came home a day early, and he intends to make every hour of it count. no scrubs, no pager, no excuse to rush. 

just you and him. 

–

sunlight spills over your face like it wants you awake, but you don’t stir right away. your body aches—hips sore from how deep he kept himself, thighs still trembling here and there, skin damp with the ghost of his touch. the sheets cling to you messily, robby’s old shirt bunched at your ribs. your hand reaches out for his side, only finding the faint feel of his warmth. 

when your eyes finally blink open, groggy and raw, robby’s already up. forest green t-shirt. grey sweats. showered and dark coffee in hand. he sits in the corner chair like he’s got the whole world under control. his legs crossed and his gaze fixed on you.

and you?

well, you’re a mess. cheeks flushed. hair tangled. eyes sticky with the tears that had cried hours ago. ass still marked. your legs parted just slightly, comforter bunched up and tucked in between—needy even in sleep.

he tilts his head, raising a brow. “is my girl awake?”

you swallow hard, nodding, and your face burns at the way he looks at you, like he can read every thought you’re too ashamed to say. like he can smell the desperation off of you. he can certainly feel it if he touches between your thighs. 

“too sore?” his voice is quiet, a careful test.

your head shakes pathetically too fast. “no. no—please. please, robby.” your voice cracks in your mumbled reply, voice laced with sleep and raw desire.

he crosses the room, setting his mug aside on the night stand, slow, steady. calm where you’re frantic. he leans down, kisses your forehead, then your nose, cheek and then your mouth—gentle, patient. like he has all the time in the world. like he has all of his life to love you. 

“you’re so desperate for me, huh?” he murmurs against your lips. “can’t even open your eyes all the way before you’re begging.”

“please,” you breathe. you don’t care how it sounds and you don’t care if it’s toxic. that when he’s not inside you, you feel sick, hollow, like your chest caves in without him filling it. that when he’s away you don't know how to act or what to do. he occupies every single space in your mind and you wouldn’t want it any other way. “please, robby. i’ll be good. i’ll be so good.”

he smiles, like you’re breaking him apart piece by piece. like he enjoys submitting to your needs when you’re this undone for him. “you are already good, baby. took everything i gave you last night. made me so proud.” his thumb brushes your lower lip. “i’m not mad anymore, sweetheart. you hear me?”

you whine, arms reaching for him as your eyes begin to wet. “i’m your good girl.”

that gets him. his composure cracking just a little, as he huffs out in that old man way that you secretly love. he climbs onto the bed pushing the sheets down and slotting himself between your thighs. he tugs off the boxers he gave you last night and your pants, along with his own.  “yeah, sweets,” he begins, yanking your legs up over his arms to hook onto his shoulders, spreading you wide and bending you in half. you lay helpless beneath him, the position forcing you open, and making you whimper before he’s even touched you. “you are.”

when robby finally presses in, it’s so slow—gentle enough to make your throat tighten but oh so deep you can’t help but gasp. your whole body shudders, breath snagging into sobs. you pulsate around him like your life depends on it. 

after three days and four nights you finally get what you wanted. 

“shhhh,” he soothes, hand cupping the side of your face as he kisses your temple. “i’ve got you. my girl’s okay.”

but you’re not. i mean, not really. tears slip down your cheeks, not from pain but from the relief—relief so intense it borders on spirituality. your arms fly around his shoulders, grasping like he might vanish. like he might leave you alone again with that barbaric need for him, one that eats you from the inside out, it’s honestly disgusting and pathetic. 

“i’m sorry,” you babble, chest heaving. “i missed you—i don’t want to be bad, i just—i needed you so bad, robby—”

he shushes you again, “i know.” his voice is low and cooing. his hips move in slow, grounding thrusts that keep you tethered to him. “i know, baby. you were desperate and lonely. but you’re not anymore. you’re right here. i’m right here.”

it kills him to leave you, he knows how you get. and fuck if he doesn’t feel the same. tight fist around his length in a hotel bedroom or the ED bathroom is nothing compared to you. he craves you all the same. 

your sob turns into a broken moan, your body clenching around him like you want to fuse together. your arms clutching him so tight, you stick to his body like gum on a shoe.

“that’s it,” he whispers, kissing your tears away. “my darling. so sweet. so desperate.” his thrusts angle deeper, enough to make your back arch and your legs quiver in his firm hold. “you’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”

“yes,” you gasp. “anything. anything you want.”

his mouth finds yours, stealing a wet, messy kiss that tastes like salt and forgiveness. when he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours. one hand smoothes over the curve of your stomach, your hips, your bruised thighs. “you don’t have to beg anymore. you took your punishment. took my cock. took it all so pretty.” he mumbles into your lips, hooded brown eyes loving on you. “i forgive you, angel. you’re perfect and you’re mine, always mine.”

the words crack something open in you, and you cum so violently it nearly knocks the breath out of you. a full-body sob breaks from your chest, your nails digging into his back, every nerve and muscle in your anatomy shivering around the bulk of the man above you. as you clamp down like you’ll never let him go.

he holds you through it, like you’re something fragile he needs to protect. he lets you fall apart beneath him, praising every second. his lips meet your cheek as he leaves kisses on your jaw and neck. you let all the whimpers and whines escape your parted lips, your body melting into his figure. robby often joked that your body was made for him specifically, with the way you fit against him so perfectly. “that’s my good girl. my perfect girl. i’ve got you, let it out.”

it's only a few strokes later when he spills inside you, thrusted into the depths of your core, settling a warmth over you—solace, the final seal to his forgiveness.

robby’s body goes heavy on yours, his cock still twitching with his last few drops. it's not crushing, instead the perfect weight to keep you grounded, pinned in the nirvana that you belong to. his lips brush your cheek, your nose, the lashes that sit against your cheeks when your eyes close, your forehead. “i love you, baby,” he whispers, and it feels like the quietest, purest prayer.

when he finally pulls out, he cleans you gently, trembling a little himself if you really pay attention. his big arms wrap around your waist, before tucking you into his chest, naked and snug. robby kisses you until you melt against him again. soon after, you fall asleep for the rest of the morning to the sound of his heartbeat. 

safe. forgiven. his.

and you don’t dare touch yourself again without his permission—not just because you’re afraid of the consequences, but because nothing will ever compare to this.

You couldn't go anywhere without his hands on you. His hand in yours, a palm splayed on the small of your back, his mouth teasing your sensitive skin where he knows it'll make you shiver. It didn't matter where you were. It didn't matter what you were doing. Titus was there, alongside you, finding any excuse he could to get his hands on you. You still weren't sure if it was the desire to show you off or a deep-seated need to keep you in his clutches. He'd perch you in his lap—shameless—squeeze your hip with a heavy hand, and tell you to keep him warm while he bored himself to tears over meaningless conversation with faces you didn't recognize. Other times it was his nose buried in your neck, stubble grazing your soft skin, while he inhaled whatever scent you spritzed behind your ear for the evening. He recognized it every time—wouldn't pull away until he could mutter the fragrance's name hot against your ear.

And when he got you in bed, away from all the propriety and formality? That's when he was at his worst. You'd lost track of how many bites he'd imprinted on your skin, how many times his grip was firm enough to leave little bruises, or how often he wrapped his arms around you because he couldn't stand the thought of not feeling you with every inch of his body. It was like he needed to suffocate your senses with nothing but him.

That was the hardest thing to get used to: just how relentless he was when he wanted to feel you. It certainly wasn't a bad adjustment, just unexpected from a man of his demeanor. The feel of his hands, his mouth, his stare—it was constant.

Which is why it was a bit of a surprise when he didn't slide into bed alongside you once you retired for the night. Titus may not have been the most romantic about it, but he never let you sleep in an empty bed. The thought of you, vulnerable and lost in sleep, all by yourself without his body pressed against yours was nothing short of a nightmare in its own right. But sometimes the High Seat demanded more of him than he wanted to give. Sometimes it meant he had to prioritize responsibilities before desires. And for a man of impulse, that was damning.

It was odd, dozing off without the heat of him next to you. To have nothing but soft, expensive sheets against your skin. The room felt quieter somehow. Stiller. Try as you might to stay up and wait for him to join you, it was a fruitless endeavor. Sleep had pulled you under before you could feel the weight of his body settling on the other side of the mattress. You were long gone, lips parted against the pillow, curled into yourself underneath his sheets, with no clue he'd slipped under the same covers and inched up next to you.

If he were a polite man, he would've let you rest. But 'polite' was never a word used to describe Titus Danforth.

You groggily awake to the feeling of a strong arm, banded across your waist, pulling you back and jostling your body. In the incoherence of exhaustion, you barely register the heavy palm sliding up to cup your chest or the solid weight that crowds your back. It all happens so quickly that you can barely register it. But even through the haze of sleep, you can't mistake the feel of firm, thick heat grinding against your backside. The friction makes you gasp, startled by the suddenly overwhelming pull on your body. Your eyes flutter open only to be met with the near-black darkness of the bedroom. It was impossible to tell what time it was, or how long you'd been asleep, but the moonlight filtering through heavy curtains told you it was some point in the middle of the night.

Your hand flies to the arm slung over your chest, though the movement is clumsy, heart pounding at the force holding you firmly in place. Another insistent grind against the swell of your ass spurs you awake. Panic starts to set in until a groan huffs against your neck—hot, rough, and absolutely desperate. You'd recognize that needy growl anywhere.

"Titus," you mutter sleepily, the word tinged with the humor of the exhausted laugh that follows. "You scared me…"

He seems to pause at that. His grip on your chest slackens, his hips stop their insistent push, and his mouth moves from the curve of your neck up to your ear. "Scared you?" He huffs, the sound husky and almost unbelieving. You were never scared of him. He liked that about you; you weren't some soft and fragile thing that cowered at him, or worse, someone who felt the need to control and change him. He didn't have to hide himself and pretend to be something he wasn't. The thought of scaring you with his need was almost unimaginable—you took everything he gave you with a smile on your face.

"No, just…didn't expect it," you reassure him with a smile, though you know he probably can't see it in the darkness of the room. You turn slightly in his arms until your face meets his. His nose brushes yours, his parted lips breathe hot against your skin. "You surprised me."

A sharp, needy sound rumbles in his chest as he seals his mouth over yours. His grip resumes its firm hold on your chest only after he slips it beneath your clothing. You never quite got used to the feel of his rough and weathered hands on your bare, sensitive skin; his touch still managed to wrench a gasp from your throat when he groped and squeezed you with the same level of greed from the night he first had you. And he reveled in it. His thumb grazes a nipple just to feel you squirm under his hand and whimper into his mouth.

"I should've been up here with you…" Titus mutters against your lips. His hips push forward, grinding the bulge of his cock against your ass. Even through all the layers, you can feel the heat of him, hard and insistent, seeking out the plush of your body.

This time, though, you lean into it. You rock your hips back until you meet his friction, earning another huff against your lips. "S'okay…you were busy—"

"No, no, not okay." He interrupts with a harsh rumble. "Should've been with you…" His hand slides down from your chest, over the soft skin of your stomach, bypassing all fabric until his fingers find you hot, wet, and needy between your legs. "Should've been with my wife…" The word comes out broken as his fingers circle your clit. He follows the jerk of your hips with his hand, sliding his fingers through your slick. "Fuck, should've been here…with this pretty cunt..." His mouth latches onto your neck with a wet kiss and teasing graze of his teeth.

It was just like Titus to focus on whatever his one-track mind had devoted itself to. He wanted you, regardless of the time and the exhaustion weighing both of you down. He was practically bursting through his pants as his hand worked between your legs. Every little sound you made, every twitch of your body, was all the motivation he needed.

"Did you wait for me? Huh?" The words come out wet, muffled against your neck. "This pussy waited for me, didn't it?" His circling fingers slip down through the wet slit of your cunt, stopping just outside of your entrance that flutters under his touch.

All you can manage at first is a pathetic, small nod. He couldn't see it, but he could certainly feel it. But unless your mouth was occupied, he didn't take a nod for an answer. "Yeah…" You pant out before he could insist you use your words.

"Yeah, you need it, don't you, sweetheart?"

"Mm-hmm…"

The press of two thick fingers takes your breath away. You're slick enough to ease the stretch, but not enough to make it entirely effortless. His fingers bury themselves to the knuckle, pushing deep to fill your cunt, earning a keen that he revels in. You know he can feel the flutter of your muscles with each movement, milking his digits as they ease in and out. Not too fast, but certainly not a leisurely pace. The little moans and whines that slip out of your lips overshadow any other sound, but the wet squelch of your cunt is unmistakable, especially to his ears.

"Fuck, Titus…" Your hips rock back only to jerk forward, undecided where to go in the midst of sensation. Lying like this, with your back to his chest, made it awkward to reach for him. Still, with another whimper and twitch of your hips, you manage to slither a hand back and find the meat of his thigh. You fumble in the darkness until your fingertips brush the leather of his belt.

He feels it immediately, responding to your wandering touch with another grind against your ass. "Gonna let me make it up to you? Hm?"

"Yes," you whine, already parting your legs at the thought of fitting him between them. "Yes, please."

Please. That always got him. Reassurance that you really did want him like this; that you saw all the ugly and impulse and depravity and still craved him regardless.

His fingers slip out of you in a movement that's more abrupt than you expect. Another wet, sloppy kiss hits your neck as soon as you moan a pathetic sound just so he can feel the rumble in your throat. His hand finds the curve of your hip and guides you to roll over before the words can even leave his mouth. You were already propping yourself up on your elbows, knees moving to plant on the mattress.

"Yeah, there you go, good..." He splays a hand on your back, between your shoulder blades, gently urging you to arch until your cheek rests against the sheets. The mattress dips where his knees frame yours on either side. "Let me make it up to my wife." His hands squeeze your hips and pull you back with a yank strong enough to bring your hips back to his. Your shaky gasp nearly eclipses the rough groan that comes from behind you. You can feel him, the bulge firm in his pants and pressed against you. Those strong hands slide up to your waist as he leans over your body to press a kiss to your temple. It was softer than expected. Gentleness like that was a rarity with Titus—one you knew to treasure, but still had to grow accustomed to.

Any semblance of grace vanishes almost immediately when he tugs at the clothes on your body. Insistent, annoyed by the fabric's existence, by the audacity it has to shield your skin from him. His hands roam over every inch of you once you're exposed, palming your curves, running his fingers over your skin. Like it's the first time all over again. Just…a little less hasty than back then.

Though it's nothing but haste when he grabs fistfuls of your ass, spreading you open just to ogle. One hand slips inward and slides through the slick coating your skin. You can't help but wriggle when those same thick fingers sink back inside. They reach even deeper from this angle, earning moans that get swallowed by the mattress with each press.

While you fist the sheets and clench around his fingers, you barely hear Titus' own filthy groan from behind you. "Fuck, I know," he coos sweetly, though it sounds more condescending than understanding, "This pussy needs something better, doesn't it?"

You can barely whine the small, high-pitched 'mm-hmm' in agreement before the sound of an unfastened belt buckle hits your ears. He rids himself of his clothing one-handed, shuffling behind you to push his pants down his hips. He doesn't warn you before sliding his fingers out of you; he just pulls back to hear the way you whine at the sudden emptiness. And though you can't see him, the groan that rumbles from behind you tells you he's sucking his fingers dry of your taste.

The commands that follow sound as if they take all of his restraint to say gently: tilt your hips for me, spread a little wider, baby, and a gravelly deep breaths, now. And still, despite all the preparation, the first press of his cock against your cunt takes your breath away. You both clench your fists at the same time—yours in the sheets, his on your hips—as his cock burrows its way deep enough to send a lick of pleasure up your arched spine.

Somewhere beneath the sound of blood pumping in your ears, you hear him curse as his hips settle flush against your ass. Those strong hands currently gripping hard enough to imprint marks onto your hips hold you in place even as your body tries to inch forward. He holds you like that for a moment, though you figure it's out of his desire to feel you flutter around him rather than allowing you to adjust to the fullness.

"Fuck…" The word comes out in a huff that's strangled behind his gritted teeth. His hips rock forward, rutting into you, as if he could bury himself even deeper. "Always so fucking perfect…"

The little whine you let out is muffled against the sheets where your face still rests. He's so deep you can barely breathe; every slight movement only makes you aware how full you are. And still, you push back into him just to hear him choke on his own moan. You have to will yourself to stay put when he pulls back, readjusting to settle more firmly on your knees, as if to prepare yourself for whatever rough and hurried fuck Titus was gearing up for. But he pushes back inside just as slowly as last time, savoring the way you tighten around him when his cock hits deep.

For a foolish moment, you wonder if he'll keep that pace and go easy. You're humbled quickly when, after two or three slow strokes, he pulls your hips back to haul you onto his cock. You yelp at the sudden change in pace, and part of you just knows he's smiling. The bastard always liked surprising you.

"There you go…" You can hear the strain in his voice as he huffs…and that damn smile. "Yeah, that's what she needs, huh?" You aren't entirely sure if he's talking to you or your cunt. Either way, he's right. Between the little ah-ah-ah's forced out of your mouth and the way you drip around his cock, it'd be hard to argue otherwise.

"Fuck… F-feels like you need it…more than me." You purr against the sheets, smiling in the darkness to yourself. "Hah, you're desperate too…"

A rough sound that almost mimics a laugh leaves his throat. As much as he reveled in control, you knew he liked the teasing and the pushback when you gave it. "Mm, hard not to be," his hands squeeze your hips before moving to grope and grab at the rest of your curves, "Fucking look at you..." You can almost feel his stare burning into your skin, watching your ass slap against his hips. "…so good, sweetheart."

Your hands scramble against the sheets as you try to prop yourself up, but with the way he jostles you forward and pushes you into the mattress with each thrust, it's hard to keep your balance. He must notice your attempt to get closer; before you know it, his chest is pressed against your back, pinning you against the mattress with his weight. His hands plant on the bed beside yours, and you can't help but notice he's fisting the sheets tighter than you.

Between his weight pressing down on you and the way he buries his cock, your limbs feel like jelly. His cock hits so deep it wrenches something guttural out of your throat. Pleasure pools quickly in your core, drawing your muscles tight. Titus must notice—if only because your cunt hugs his cock every time he pulls back—because his responding groan rumbles through his chest and into your back.

He huffs against your shoulder, "Gonna cum for me, aren't you?"

You can't even form the words to respond. You hum a sound, something akin to a mhm, maybe an uh-huh, you aren't too sure. It isn't like he needs to hear you say it; you're practically whimpering into the sheets as you drip slick around his cock.

He makes a disapproving sound right into your ear. "Tell me, sweetheart."

Shit, maybe he did need to hear you say it.

"Fuck, m'gonna cum," you slur. You can hardly think straight, your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, and every word is interrupted by your own moans. "M'gonna cum, Titus…fuck-!"

One of his hands had snuck around your hip and slipped down your body, those rough and sure fingertips meeting your clit with insistence. Another surprise. You just know he's reveling in the way you jerk and grind as your cunt flutters around him. He takes that little shocked whimper as a win. That, and the slick drenching his fingers as they swirl over your puffy clit.

Titus nuzzles the crown of your head in a gesture that feels more animalistic than intimate. And still, amidst all the sensations, you swear you feel him plant a gentle kiss there. Soft, fleeting, and unlike anything he offered anyone else. He covers up the softness with a groan and a curse against your skull. You can almost picture the knit of his brows and the tension in his jaw when his pace starts to falter. His strokes turn uneven and unsteady, losing the rhythm he once had. But before you can spit out a quip about his old bones giving up, he huffs a sound that's so pathetically needy it nearly gives you pause.

"Please…"

He's begging. Titus Danforth is begging. All because of you.

"Please, baby. C'mon…" It's so soft you nearly miss it, muttered into the crown of your skull, slurred on his lips. "C'mon, give it to me…"

And after all he'd given you, hearing him ask for it was all it took to tip you over the edge. He wanted it so fucking badly and your body wanted to give it to him. Another swipe of his fingers in time with the punch of his cock and your body clenches tight. Pleasure runs white-hot through your veins, up to your fingers that clench in the sheets and down to your toes. You push your hips into him as you keen, meeting his awkwardly timed thrusts just to ride the high for as long as you can.

Or, rather, for as long as he can stand it. Underneath your own pathetic sounds is Titus, panting into your neck as he ruts into you, chasing the slick hug of your cunt. You think you hear him groan your name somewhere between the curses and moans.

You manage to reach down despite the awkward angle and slip a hand between yours legs. It's there you find his own hand, still working at your clit, those rough fingertips soaked in your slick cum. There's no sense or rhythm to the way his fingers swirl, just a need to keep you on the edge and twitching from the overstimulation. Your fingers wrap around his wrist in a gentle coax that he (to your surprise) actually follows. Then your fingers thread through his, a backwards handhold as his palm rests right at the softness of your stomach.

"Titus," you whine, your cheek wet with the drool slipping past your lips and soaking into the sheet. "Titus, please…"

He spits a curse through gritted teeth that lands hot on your skin. Saying his name always managed to get a rise out of him—it tickled some deep-seated part of him that needed to hear you acknowledge his very being. "Mm, I know…" His voice cracks with restraint, more endearing than pathetic. "I know, she wants it, huh?"

"Mm-hmm…" Your hand squeezes his. Soothing. Encouraging. Wanting. "I want it, Titus. Please, give it to me…"

There you were, folded over in the bed his blood money paid for, tousled in sheets some tasteless designer had picked out, in a room located in the wing of a mansion he wasn't even sure he could fully map out. There you were, his wife—wife to a billionaire who controlled the world from the shadows, whose family held lives and war in their hands. And there you were, taking everything he gave whilst begging for more. Not terrified, not placating, not exaggerating. Just pure, real, want. Titus never really knew what to do with that when the reminders settled in his chest.

But his body surely had a reaction.

The sound he makes is something between a growl and a moan. His hips finally still after he buries himself to the root, burrowing his cock as deep as he can manage. A long, slow breath escapes him as his hips rock forward with every pulse of cock emptying thick inside you. You only know he's coming down from the high when his forehead meets your shoulder and his panting breaths start to even out. Still, he makes no effort to move away.

There's a few beats of silence before Titus mutters something against your shoulder. So good, or something to that effect. A compliment slurred between his heavy breaths. When he finally does move, it seems to take every last bit of his strength. His hips pull back slowly as if he doesn't quite want to leave your snug heat. The pathetic sound he makes when his cock slips out of you proves that to be true.

"C'mere…" You hear that command clear as day. Though his hand lands on your hip far softer than his voice let on.

Instead of pulling you back, his hand guides you to settle next to him as he moves to lay down. His body wraps around you like he had when he first slunk into bed in your sleep—one arm banded around your waist, holding you as close to his frame as possible. Only now, your bare and sweaty skin stuck to his. There's a long stretch of silence, and for a moment, you wonder if he'd already fallen asleep. That was unlike him; Titus always waited for you to drift off before he even thought about closing his eyes.

Then, his hand moves down to your hip. Right where he'd gripped you tight. His thumb brushed over the same spot his fingers had dug into your plush skin, uncharacteristically soft. You could practically hear the apology he couldn't voice.

"Okay?" He breathes into your neck. Never a man for many words, you knew it held the weight of a thousand questions. Did I do good, are you alright, was the whole thing…okay?

"Yeah." The word is heavy with exhaustion, but sincere. "Of course."

"Good." You can sense the tension leave his body. "You should sleep. Not like you to be up this late."

That manages to earn a laugh from you. "And whose fault is that?"

His lips press against your shoulder, a soft kiss that he holds for far longer than necessary. And even in the haze of exhaustion, you swear you can feel him smile.

Pope’s eyes remain alert, scanning for possible threats between families, couples, and groups of men or women. Like a guard dog, he’s ready to attack at a moments notice.

One wrong move, one wrong look—

“Andy, can you do my back?”

The soft rhythm of your voice lulls him back to you, eyes blinking away that darkness he tends to find himself struggling to swim in. It’s one of those things that grabs him and pulls him under before he can register the shift himself.

Pope softens when he looks at you, the corners of his mouth feathering up in a ghost of a motion. Somewhere halfway between the beginnings of a smile and a smirk.

A nod of his head is enough of an answer before he’s reaching for your sun lotion, squeezing a generous dollop onto his rough palms.

Nothing goes unnoticed by Pope. He catches the shudder beneath your skin when his flesh touches yours. He notices the way you relax immediately after, takes note of the sigh that falls from your lips when he begins to knead and massage the lotion into your shoulders.

It sends a wave of warmth straight into his chest, one that he’s still learning not to question or refuse.

You turn your head, resting your cheek on the back of your palm as you face him with a lazy smile. “Why aren’t you in the water?”

He shrugs a shoulder, wipes his hands off on a cloth to rid the excess lotion from his skin. “I like sitting with you.”

“You’re sitting like you’re my bodyguard.” The words come out airy on a laugh, eyes playfully squinted when Andrew's eyes harden slightly, not appreciating the tease.

“Forgive me for wanting to make sure my girlfriend can enjoy the sun in peace.” His words are drawled out lazily, a lilt of unbothered sass woven between each syllable.

A louder chuckle escapes you at that and you find yourself sitting up on your knees beside him, hands pawing at his biceps. Pope's skin is hot beneath your touch, freckled from the sun and tinged slightly pink.

He watches you with an intense, heated gaze. Like you're something he struggles to control himself around.

"No one's going to approach me," you try to gently reassure him.

Andrew cocks a brow, unimpressed.

"Do you want me to cover up—"

"No," he cuts you off quickly before softening his tone and hardening expression. "No, you should be able to wear whatever you want."

You regard him for a moment, head tilting like you're trying to read his mind. You don't need to, though. You know how protective he is over you, how the thought of another mans eyes on your body sets his blood on fire.

You're no better when it comes to ogling women—something that your sweet Andy is a bit too unaware of. Maybe it's a good thing he's not in that wetsuit today...

It's without much more of a thought that you lay back down on your towel, head propped up against another rolled up towel, and spread your legs and pat your stomach.

Andrew watches with pinched brows when you pat your abdomen again.

"If you're not going to go in the water, you might as well get comfy."

He takes the offer immediately, shuffling across the towel to lay between your legs. Not the usual situation for this position, but he'll take whatever closeness he can get.

So, Andrew lays on his back—not his stomach, he still wants to be alert— and rests his head against your thigh. He feels motion at the side of his face, notices the brief movement of you reaching for your book.

"Want me to read to you?"

His heart pulsates at the offer. Part of him wants to refuse, something so tender that's usually only shared in the darkness of the night when he can't sleep.

But he can feel himself growing irritable beneath the scorching sun, can feel his shoulders tensing more and more every time someone so much as walks past you.

If anything can begin to soothe him, it's your voice.