My most indulgent Side Blog yet

It comes along with the commanding presence he brings with his title— lieutenant; doctor; officer ( Combat Vet; Senior Attending; SWAT Medic )— that instinctively draws people in, or has them making way for him, has them deferring to him out of well-earned respect.

Physicality adds to it too, ofcourse. 

Biceps taut on his scrubs sleeves whenever he crosses his freckled arms to think, doing that pensive gaze he does where his chin tucks and he looks up past his lashes; shark-like in the tenebrous weight of his narrow stare, lips pursed and dimpling at his stubbled cheeks. 

Nor do the fatigues offer any help, either; they make him look meaner than he already does, you find. Tough. Militant. Imposing. Just a little more rugged, a little more rough-around-the-edges handsome, a little more grittier to the average eye in that classic, old-fashioned way. 

(The perfect archetype of a natural protector: both the shepherd who tends faithfully to his sheep and the dog that mercilessly defends them.) 

And then there’s that damn roughstone voice of his—

“Look at me,” he’d said, after the damage had been done. 

Ordered, it felt more like, though he was pleading. You’re surprised at how swift you’d paid automatic heed to the gravel-deep tone of his voice, riding that razor edge of unraveling concern and blistering anger. 

Well within reason, ofcourse: Abbot’s SWAT unit had been deployed on a gang-violence case. When the storm of a shootout had passed, and they’d ended up having to wheel in one of their own officers to PTMC’s Emergency Department alongside one of said criminal thugs in tow, you’d been the closest medical staff to get caught in the crossfire.

A tattooed blur reaching up from the gurney. A yelp as your hair is yanked down in a fit of blind rage. 

And then—

And then.

A pistol materialises, barrel pressed right between his eyes. 

“Go ahead,” Abbot snarls, an inch from pulling the trigger. “Give me a fucking reason.”

(He doesn’t open fire, of course. That would’ve been ridiculous. Not to mention a mountain of paperwork.)

And so the jarring chiaroscuro that was Jack Abbot appeared in South-22: Nonchalant then, in the way he’d cradled your face to assess you, in the way his fingers tucked a strand behind your ear as if they hadn’t been the same ones carrying a lethal weapon.

You okay? he’d murmured, voice that gravelly undertone that always makes you shudder. 

M’fine, you’d nodded, unable to stop openly admiring him in that dizzying uniform: all camo and tactical and trim, the muted colours working in his favour to bring out the bright of his eyes.

What is it, sweetheart? he’d frowned, shrewd as always. 

You swallowed. Shook your head. If he’d caught your there-and-away glance to his lips, he didn’t seem to comment. 

I’m gonna get back to work, you’d dismissed. It’s nothing, Jack.  

But—

“It’s not nothing,” he brings up, later that night. “This is very much not nothing, sweetheart.”

Straddled at the living room couch under the warm weight of you, Abbot has to physically slide his hands up from your hips and shackle your wrists away from his face. Done, ofcourse, with an alarmingly easy grip. (You file that thought away for later.)

Abbot looks handsome when frazzled like this, you think privately to yourself. A flush that's blossoming up from his chest, climbing his neck and rosing across the bridge of his nose. Even the tips of his ears have gone a distinct pink from your incessant kisses and constant grinding against his lap.

He hisses; lungs expanding, eyes screwing shut when you deliberately attempt to adjust your hips.

“Baby,” he breathes, pupils blown wide half in yen and in pleasant confusion. “What is up with you tonight?”

You ignore him. Waylay him into another bruising kiss instead. Drive your hips down coyly into his camo pants again, enough it makes him groan gutturally into your mouth at the friction of it all— 

Although it doesn’t appear to work: Abbot’s a disciplined man; he wouldn’t have made a good and dutiful soldier if he wasn’t. 

Instead he dodges the next kiss you give him, where it lands on the corner of his lips, much to your chagrin and his childish amusement, and he levels you with that discerning look.

“Tell me,” he murmurs. (Orders, it still feels like. Gruff and demanding. It makes you giddy. He can order you around to do whatever he wishes and you’d gladly—)

“Nothing,” you finally relent. Thumb at his cheek. Trace the slope of his lips down to his stubbled chin. “It’s just…”

Your hands drop to his chest, then further to the hem of his black shirt, where it’s come untucked at the waistline of his cargo pants.

Not once does he break eye-contact with you, and it’s then he reckons something in them.

“Is it my— Is the uniform doing it for you?” he pieces, laughter threading into his words. “It is, isn’t it? That’s why you were looking at me weird earlier. Why you practically jumped my bones when I walked through our front door—”

Heat floods to your face. You wrinkle your nose at him. “Don’t act like you didn’t know,” you scowl, letting him off the hook with that last statement: You had, in fact, practically gravitated and clung to him like a magnet when he’d come home wearing those lethal half-camo-half-civvies combination that hug him in all the right places. 

“I really didn’t,” he swears, unable to stop dimpling at you. And then: “Wow. You’re so easy.”

You scoff out an affronted Excuse me? Let out a stunned laugh as you swat him on the bicep at the boyish sense of pride blooming across his face. 

“I should’ve realised,” he sing-songs, catching your next smack with ease and pretending to nip at your fingertips in defense. “You like me in fatigues. I can’t believe it. You like a military man, huh?”

“I like you,” you correct, pulling your hands back to lay it on his sternum, feel the humdrum of his heartbeat under the broad of his muscles. “…But me pouncing you isn’t just because of that.”

“Oh?” he says, and like an intrigued bird, preens once again. You groan. Bow your head at the obvious delight in his face.

All he does is laugh and tuck the tresses of hair that’s slid along with your downturned gaze. Try to chase your eyes like he always does. You pick at the seam on his collar, a non-existent piece of lint— Just something to buy yourself time while you string your thoughts into something coherent. 

There’s that palpable sense in the space between— the tension you’d get when you feel somebody about to confess something; show you the chink in their proverbial armour, or offer you a plate of their beating heart. 

You’re… nervous, he realises. Sheepish about— 

His brows shoot to his hairline.

“Oh,” he says. Recognises it now: A yelp. A pistol. A threat. 

He lets out a wheeze. Doesn’t even try to hold it this time.

“Alright. I’m ordering dinner,” you deadpan, already climbing off him, where he instantly chimes in with a grasp on your wrist and a half-hearted series of No, no, no! I’m not laughing at you, honey, I promise. C’mere, baby, please—?

Abbot pulls you back in for a fervent kiss. Deep and meaningful as he breathes the scent of you in. Sorry, it translates, playful. I’m sorry. 

“I just…” His eyes squint after, head doing that endearing, fidgety turn and tilt it always does when he talks. “What is it exactly about what I did that turns you on?”

“Oh, now you’re just fishing for compliments,” you snort, twirling a rowdy curl at his nape when he lets out another weak laugh.

“The safety wasn’t even flipped, honey,” he explains, forming an imaginary pistol with his fingers to demonstrate the mechanism. “Hammer never dropped. The gun wouldn’t’ve went off.”

But you shrug anyway, run your nails down his scalp just the way he likes, carving through the salt-and-pepper of his hair as he hums. 

“It’s the thought that counts?” you offer, inadequate. “I… genuinely don’t know what exactly it was, if I’m being honest. Maybe it’s ’cause you were a total badass,” you muse, ignoring yet another laugh from him. “Maybe it’s the way you spoke to him.”

He breaks into a knowing smile. Voice tinged with amusement and something wry. “Oh, you like me a little mean, hm?” 

You laugh, caught. Pinch at his skin in comic retaliation. He doesn’t budge at all, like the tough-as-nails man he is; just stares at you with that hazy, affectionate gaze.

A slow beat passes as you reckon with your thoughts.

“I guess it’s just nice to be protected,” you say at last, the gentlest he’s ever heard. “Nice to feel invincible, y’know?”

Abbot falls quiet at that, blindsided.

Safe, he realises. He makes you feel safe.

Something abrupt tides over him. An impossible urge. An overwhelming desire to kiss and embrace and surround you. To tuck and fold you past his ribcage and into his weathered heart, forever sheltered in the home that is his arms—

“I love you, you know that?” he says, and he finds his voice is mellowed down now. Low, soft. An ocean-in-a-shell whisper when he says your name.

“Jack,” you exhale, a butterfly-wing breath. Abbot etches the divine sight of your smile into his mind. Thinks he could drown in the affection of your voice alone— Would gladly allow it. “I love you too.”

When you dip down to kiss him it's like lighting a wick aflame. The quickfire spark of a flintwheel. Then he’s nosing down and down, mouthing from the seam of your lips to your jaw, your pulsepoint, your collar, your bare shoulder. He’ll mark you up later, he thinks, right now he just wants to feel every inch of you.

Abbot caresses up your arms, pulls your left hand from his cheek to turn it over. And then he’s pressing his lips upon your palm up to your fingertips— a reverent kiss. Like you’re his holy artifact; a Saint’s relic to worship.

“Chivalrous,” you muse mindlessly, tracing down the dent of his cheek, the stippled line across his jaw. You can feel your heart swell. Feel his hands snaking up your skin beneath your shirt— his shirt, actually— that swallows you whole, loose and already slipping one shoulder.

“I threatened to kill a man,” he points out incredulously, voice dropped in that whispery octave again; smoky, dark.

Exactly, you don’t reply, feeling that excitable buzz through your spine once more at the vivid memory: bright blood and gleaming gunmetal; the predatorial growl in his voice and the dangerous expression on his face. Go ahead. Give me a fucking reason.

“For me,” you add, purring against his lips, breath damp and curling with his. You give him a kiss chaste enough that it has him craning closer for more. “You did it for me.”

Then your hands wander, up neath the cotton of his shirt and down his smoldering skin, slow and steady, until they settle at the flesh of his navel; until your manicured nails catch on the buttons of his camo pants. “So let me do something for you.”

Baby, he chokes back, half-desperate already. You press a bruising, saccharine kiss to lean him back as you work him free, revelling in the shudder of his battleworn body when the zipper sings through the air, and you take your time to reach into his waistband to wrap your fingers around the thick of him. 

It’s hot and heavy when you tug his cock out.

“S’for you,” you murmur, sinking to your knees now, between the gaps of his legs. 

He watches you rapt with attention when you lean a cheek into the camo, goosebumps lining his skin at the sight of you— doe-eyed and looking like you’re right where you want to be as a flash of your wet tongue makes itself known.

The breach of his swollen, leaky head into your mouth is divine. 

It doesn’t take very long before his hand is fisting your hair with barely concealed restraint. It’s messy, this time. Forgoing his usual reflex to bunch it into a ponytail for your own ease. (Oh, you hear his dry, biting sarcasm ring in your head, you like me a little mean, hm?) The other sits splayed on the gap between your shoulder blades, running the pads of his fingers up your nape.

“Ja— mh,” you choke, feeling the tip of him reach the back of your throat already. His hips are shifting up from the sofa to meet your insistent pace. Be a little harsher, you want to say, but you’re intoxicated with the scent and taste of him. Nose buried at his happy trail every time you bottom out and scrape your nails against his tense thighs.

You’re practically salivating over his cock and dampening the fly of his pants. He tastes like skin and something masculine. Smells like heady sweat and gunpowder. 

You’re dizzy with delight everytime he curses; everytime he croons. Watching each ripple of his forearms, sinews of muscles flexing under freckled skin as he braces himself from going too far—

“Eyes on me, honey,” Abbot rasps. Orders. There are jittering phosphenes in your peripherals when you meet his gaze, his eyes shadowed into something dark from the angle of the dim light above him. It sends a buzz through you. Forces a wanton, strangled sound from your throat that has him twitching excitedly in your mouth. “God, yeah. That’s it, baby.” 

It’s a touch condescending. Dangerous. That same, clinical way he gets as a senior mentoring his juniors, or in his gaze whenever he’s observing something in a patient; diagnosing. 

“You wanted mean,” he repeats, carefully. Making sure you’re registering each word. “Sweetheart. Want me to use you?”

(Courteous, still. Ensuring. May I? he seems to ask. A gentleman’s instinct.)

He’s pulling you apart from his cock the next second. Abrupt enough you’re gasping for air with a sickening pop of your lips, reflexively swallowing around the invisible shape he’s molded into your throat. A string of saliva connects; sloppy. It makes a frisson run through Abbot at the lewd sight. Answer me. 

“Yes,” you whisper to his question. Then, before the synapses in your brain could fire upon realisation: “Yes, Sir.”

Abbot slams his eyes shut. “Fuck.” Lets out a strained breath of a laugh. “Jesus, woman,” he exhales, flickering back to where your lithe fingers are mindlessly rolling and flexing over the hard length of him: slow strokes, a squeeze, a shy kitten-lick. 

He’d heard the title before, ofcourse. Sir. In his military days and tactical briefings during his moonlighting with SWAT teams, where rank and hierarchy is commonplace and acknowledged without question. A routine structure that never leaves those walls— 

Until now, at least. And even then formalities have never been a thing between you both, neither in the ED. It’s a collaborative affair when someone’s life is on the line— So hearing it now in the walls of home, so eager and so absentmindedly said, hits him square in the chest more than he’d like to admit. 

(On your knees, you look smaller like this: docile. Submissive; easier to handle, to bend into will or obedience. 

It makes him feel— powerful.)

“Go ahead, then,” he says, with newfound clarity and lust-filled amusement. He rakes his nails down your scalp, sets a demanding palm. “Be good for me.”

In no time, he’s forcing his cock past the seal of your lips. It’s wet and messy as you struggle to take the stiff length of him down in one go once more, muffled tiny sounds escaping you in lewd little hums and Mh, mh, mh— when he bobs you further down; makes you take him just that inch more.

Each rise and fall of your head is controlled by his clutch. He doesn’t let you pull back at times now— a new game— testing how long you can hold it before you’re tapping at his thighs, heart skittering in alarm— and even then he dares to tarry a second or two longer just for his own pleasure.

“Deeper, baby. You can do it,” he’d soothe, thumbing away the drool leaking from your lips. “Yeah? Fuck. You feel so good.”

The praises shoot liquid pleasure down your spine; makes you rub your thighs as you whine. Every grunt he makes is a compliment; every twitch and buck of his hips a trophy; every sharp hiss and muttering curse a jewel to your crown.

“Maybe I’ll fuck you in uniform,” he pants, when he eventually yanks you from his cock for a moment’s reprieve. His hand slides down from your scalp to press at both your cheeks, watching the slick dribble to your chin when he taps his thumb expectantly on your wet lips. “S’that what you want, honey?”

Unbidden, the image of Abbot half-feral as he fucks you brutally from behind flashes in your head. He’d command you strip naked for him, you imagine, and perhaps he’d use you for his own personal pleasure, still decked in that olive quarter-zip and taking, claiming, imposing himself onto you by burying his cock in you.

You imagine the sound of his belt— carrying his sidearms— divested and landing on the floor, his camo pants hurriedly unzipped just enough to pull his cock out while he climbs right into you with no prep; the full weight of his chest pressing down onto you from behind so you couldn’t squirm; couldn’t break free from the bicep he’d curl flush around your neck while he bit marks down the hollow of your throat, groaning into your ear as he c—

You whimper. It’s a pathetic sound; begging to be used. Humiliation burns your cheeks. “Yes.”

Abbot’s brows climb. Grip tightens in rumbling disapproval.

“—Sir,” you tag at the last second, gut seizing in half-fear and half-thrill at how quickly he’s already taken to this powerplay. “Yes, Sir.”

“There we go,” he coos, throbbing at how ready you are to heed. He bites his lip, curled at the edges with something akin to a daze and pure enamourment. He’d never have expected this from you— let alone himself. 

The gunpoint confrontation he’d had today with that patient had barely registered as anything remarkable to him. The dizzying cocktail of power and command over anyone, in fact, has never been something he’d given thought to. Sure, it’s satisfying to be feared, and above all out of respect— but it’d been nothing but a job to him. An instinct to move; to make sure no one in the Pitt is hurt.

But today, with the quiet surge of authority that comes with donning his fatigues— an unconscious, private sense of gratification and pride has him intoxicated at how you seem to defer to his competence, to his demands. Especially now, with how quickly you’d dropped to your knees for him in pure admiration, so eager to deign to his unspoken wishes and serve him just because he threatened a man while in uniform—

“You’ve got a job to do first, sweetheart,” he murmurs, meeting the excited glint in your teary eyes. “Finish what you started.”

He brackets your face with the palms of his hands and puts you back to work. Prespend drips down your chin as he feeds himself back down your throat, feels the slip and curl of your tongue as it slides over the veins of his cock. “Hah, f—uck,” he bites out, “Yeah. Attagirl. Attagirl.”

His pace is self-indulgent and cruel. Demanding; just how you’d pleaded it. Sinful approval tumbles from his mouth at how You take me so well, baby, you can do it. You can take it, can’t you? You wanted this, so I’ll give it. Just be a good girl and fuck, take it— a jumbled concoction of praises and condescending quips that has your mind spinning with both embarrassment and appetite.

His grasp turns into a vice as the minutes pass. Coiling around the sides of your face as he anchors you. He smothers and sinks you lower at each hard pump of your mouth around him, thumbing at a stray tear with a huff of a laugh. Spoiling himself with this fantasy of yours; with every gagging whine you make.

“C’mon now,” he husks, sounding breathless. “Almost there, pretty girl. Doing so good.”

You’re carving crescents into his thighs. Lungs searing at the mild hypoxia. An aching heat pooling south beneath you. His brows are pinched into an irritated divot when he allows you up for an obligated sliver of a breath, before fitting himself back into your mouth to fuck your throat into completion. 

Greedy, you think, completely delirious and candidly blissed out from the flattery and the sight of Abbot this way: eyes struggling not to roll as his head lulls from the utter euphoria coursing through his veins. You like him greedy and selfish and mean. 

That innate soldier that he can never shake from the doctor in him, appearing sporadically in flashes over days with combative patients or browbeating visitors. That effortlessly commands a room by sheer militant presence, that doesn’t take no for an answer, that can still be as deadly weaponless and with his own bare hands.

“Baby,” he warns coarsely, memorising the delicious glide of your tongue around his cock. He bites his lip and fights the urge to throw his head back onto the couch. “M’close. So close, sweetheart.”

It’s flattering to hear; to feel. Seeing Abbot looming above you like an eclipse, in complete control over your breathing, yet visibly struggling with effort as you slide your hands up from his thighs to his navel and to his hips; using it as grip to sink yourself deeper and deeper— Fuck, baby, he slurs. You’re so good to me. So fucking good—

“I’m gonna come,” he pants, breath hitching. It’s a primal sound, and for a moment you think he’ll finish in your mouth, paint you thick with him. “Yeah, fuck. M’gonna come—”

But he loosens his grip instead, lets you gasp for air as he pulls out and rests his cock on the tip of your tongue. It’s swollen; An angry, aching red. Fit to burst.

What was it you’d called this earlier? A gentleman’s instinct. Your own Prince Charming. That despite the ironclad hold avarice has over his self, he still courteously thinks of and puts you first; Still can rein in his wild desire and dial in the discipline, prioritise graciousness: 

“Where d’you want me, honey?” he whispers.

Abbot, before he is a deadly man, is a good man.

“I wanna, I—” you fluster, throat raw from overuse as your tunnel vision attempts to re-widen with the burst of oxygen. “Inside. Wanna swallow you. Please.”

Jesus fucking Christ, he doesn’t say, but it’s written in his face. “Yeah?” he assents, twitching in anticipation as he pets at the crown of your head. “Yeah. Don’t have to beg, baby. I’ll give it.”

“I’ll take it,” you nod feverishly, canting your head back into his grip again. His hands ease to your nape, and you let out a moan at the slow tightening curl of his fingers. “I’ll take all of it, Sir.”

His gaze is treacherous as he guides your mouth to his cock again. “Damn right you will.”

The approval makes your head swim. A decree. No room for mistakes or failure. You’ll take what he gives and ten more should he demand it. 

The strangled noises you make in your attempt to appeal to him— gags, mewls, coughs— makes him throb. Stifled moans that vibrate down his cock and knots in his groin. Deriving a depraved pleasure from your troubles to take him to the hilt. (Too big, you’d complained to him once, when he’d stuffed your cunt full of him. You’re so fucking big, Jack—)

The head of his cock grinds the back of your throat. He’s pulsing like a heartbeat. Ready to pump you to the brim. It’s driving Abbot mad how close he is, yet how much longer he wants to prolong this perpetual ecstasy.

“Oh, fuck,” he curses, rutting harder into you. Your name sounds like gospel as he chants it. Borderline a snarl. “I’m gonna come, honey,” he warns. “Y’gonna take it all, hm? Be a good— hah, fuck— be a good girl.”

Please, you keen. Letting him use your mouth recklessly to chase his high, hand at the back of your skull as he shoves you down to meet his thrusts: In. Out. In. Out. It’s delicious. It’s delicious, and you’re just as starved for his cum as he is for the wet, hot seal of your mouth to milk him clean.

“Yeah, I’m—” he stumbles, senseless. Too occupied with keeping you firmly suffocated around him. With the echoing squeak of the couch and the sickly-sweet sounds he’s pulling from your taut lips. “Fuck, sweetheart— Ah—”

It’s white-hot when he comes. Hips flexing. A flood of pure, unadulterated bliss. Suckling him down to the root, cheeks hollowed and nose nestled to the bed of curls led by his happy trail. 

Ropes of his thick cum streak your tongue and throat in rapid bursts, sudden enough it makes you lurch from your gag reflex, makes your back jump and arch instinctively under his domineering grip. Stay still, he means to say, coming out as a grunt. Quit fussing.

Abbot can imagine it as well as you can taste the molten spill of him. Feels the muscles in your throat twitching violently as you work him through it. Picturing the pearlescent mixture dripping down, down, down your pharynx like sin; a mark that brands you as his from the inside out. 

Your chokes are precious. Has him growling out incoherently as he continues to drain all of himself into you in spurts. “Ohh, good girl,” he sighs, looking down at the heavenly sight:

Fanned lashes fluttering. Maintaining that erotic eye-contact the way he likes. Dazed with halcyon and eros at the way he’s filled your mouth impossibly to the brim. He ought to burn this image of you into his brain forever.

Mmph, you hum, jaw aching from the sheer size of him; from the absolute work out he’d just dragged you through. When you pull away with a lingering kiss on his cock, he watches you, captivated; Unhinging just enough to show him the pool of white cum in your mouth, and then, as if coveting it— 

You swallow. Sticky. Tangy. Clicks as it goes down your throat.

“Attagirl,” Abbot drawls, brushing his knuckles at your cheek with tender affection. Collecting the tears rolling down them as a slow minute passes. “Did as I asked. So good. You’re so good, you know that?”

The blatant adoration sits fuzzy in your heart. Warmth settling in your ribcage and comfortably making a home there. You’re suddenly longing to be held— to feel what you felt when he’d propped that gun to the man’s forehead. Safe, you recall. You’ve done the job, after all, haven’t you?

Abbot reads your mind just as intuitively. Knows you better than anyone. 

“C’mon, pretty girl. Up,” he orders, without the bite now; without the rough tone and the manhandling. “C’mere, sweetheart.”

It’s soft. The fantastical image of him being some beastly, unforgiving thing— slows to a crawl and fades away at his behest. He slides his palms to your shoulders and gently helps you up onto his lap, folds you into his arms where he devours you into a doting, winsome kiss, before he lays your head to rest on his collar.

He presses his lips to the crown of your head. Let’s you square your breathing back into reality as his own tachy heart begins to slow in tandem with yours.

“Alright?” he soothes, when the moment passes. He’s tucked you into a cradle-like embrace— shelter, you feel, surrounded by nothing but him and only him— his one hand still busy with smoothing out the uneven tangles he’s made in your hair. 

“Mhm,” is all you muster for now. Unduly spent and satisfied to speak. Basking in the aftermath of sex; melting in his delicate aftercare.

“Too rough?” Abbot asks, the concern he’d tamped down earlier now beginning to surface. He cranes to meet your sleepy gaze; the only way he’d truly be able to discern whether you’re telling him the truth. “You listening, honey?”

That’s impossible, you could never hurt me, you want to say, but settle on a less-taxing: “No, I enjoyed it,” and shake your head, giving him a content smile as you nudge your forehead at his chin. “Just give me a minute before the next round.”

He lets out an exasperated laugh. Bumps his nose to yours. “You’re crazy,” he teases, meeting your lips in another fond kiss: chaste but deep, meaningful. Sits in his marrows like candied honey. “Can we at least have dinner first, sweetheart?”

“Old man needs his sustenance?” you jest, letting out a yelp when he pokes at your waist and burrows his face into your neck to nip playfully. “Okay! Okay. Dinner first, Jack.”

“Then you can have me any way you want,” he agrees, thumbing a stray strand from your face. Painfully domestic, he muses, for what’s just occurred between you two.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” you narrow. But he lets out an amused snort in reply.

“You like when I threaten people, baby. You just proved that about five minutes ago with the most intense blowjob I’ve ev—”

“Dinner!” you override, face aflame once more as you smack a hand over his mouth. “Hungry. Let’s?”

You must have done something evil in a past life because your landlord had decided to sell his place with no notice, which left you and other roommates with two weeks to find a new place to live before he evicted all of you. You remember spending countless sleepless nights scouring the internet, meeting random people, seeing random apartments. 

That’s how you met Jack and Michael.

It was another roommate interview; they seemed nice, both in med school or something so they wouldn’t be home much, they said. Their apartment was scarily clean for two guys, but Jack assured you that he was a self proclaimed clean freak and it was always like this. Michael just said not to go into his room and you would be fine, which you didn’t really want to think about further. 

They used to have a third roommate, they explained, but he wasn’t really taking to residency all that well and moved back home. Although the way Michael told the story seemed casual, the implication was glaring. You could read between the lines. They needed someone to take over his lease, and fast.

Considering the fact that the last two girls you met said your chakras were misaligned and that they could fix that if you paid them, coupled with the fact that you were about three days out from being homeless, you decided to take a chance on Jack and Michael. How bad could living with two guys be? 

That was months ago. Now?

You wish you paid those girls to realign your chakras and moved into their apartment. Sure, the boys’ apartment was nice. It wasn’t living with boys that was the issue. They were telling the truth; Jack really always kept it clean and the pair of them were always at the hospital, so they were barely around.

It’s when they were around that was the issue. 

Or, more specifically, when Jack was around. Robby, as he told you to call him a few weeks into you living there, was nice enough. He was polite and funny, humor just dry enough to be endearing. He always had a few girls coming in and out when he wasn’t working or knocked out from his shift, but that was neither here nor there for you.

Jack, on the other hand, was driving you up the wall. Your niceties had fizzled out in exactly two weeks, ending when you got into an argument about something so small, you can’t even remember it now. 

And that was that. After that fight, you were always butting heads whenever you were together, always about the dumbest things. It’s reached the point where you two can barely be in a room together without getting into it. You know Robby had been trying to mediate over the past few months, but to no avail. Nowadays, he just tries his best to not pull his hair out.

Like today.

“How many times have I asked you to stop slamming doors?” Jack snaps as you exit your room. He’s seated next to Robby at the bar, who’s tucking into his bowl of cereal and looking like he's praying that no one drags him into this conversation. They're both still in their pyjamas, Jack’s curls still mussed from sleep. 

“Well, good morning to you too, Jack,” You sigh, not even looking in his direction as you make your way into the kitchen on the opposite side of the bar. Pulling open the fridge, you ponder making a smoothie just to see if it’ll piss him off some more. “Glad to see a full night of rest hasn't removed the stick from your ass.”

You can see Robby white knuckling his spoon out of the corner of your eye, but he remains silent. Jack scoffs, using his fork to angrily gesture in the direction of your bedroom.

“Last I remembered, there was only one of us here not working twelve hour shifts at a hospital. I’d like a little sleep before I have to listen to you talk all day.” He looks to his right, presumably to have Robby to back him up, but he’s already left his bowl in the sink and is slinking away from the conversation.

“Tsk, tsk, Doctor Abbot. Someone needs to work on their bedside manner,” Shaking your head at him, you can tell that he’s already annoyed, face twisted up as your words. You decide, yeah, the blender probably will piss Jack off, and start pulling out some fruit. “Don’t they teach you that in medical school?”

“I’ve got one of the highest patient satisfaction ratings of the department,” He shoots back, a barely concealed brag. Not that it mattered that much to you, but he was clearly proud of the fact anyways. “I just save it for people that actually listen to the words that come out of my mouth. You-”

It seems comical, the timing, really. You toss the last of the fruit into the blender and switch it on, effectively cutting him off and punctuating his point. You watch his eyes furrow and you were totally right, the blender absolutely does piss him off. You mime something about not being able to hear him, sorry! and he rolls his eyes, conceding. Jack always did, if it was before eleven in the morning. Still too tired from his shift to get under your skin properly, you assumed. He grabs his plate and his coffee mug in a huff, heading into Robby’s room, no doubt to complain about you behind your back.

You shut the blender off once he leaves, the loud whirring slowing to a stop. You remember a time that you imagined yourself getting along with both of them, falling into your place at the apartment like their missing puzzle piece. But there was just something about Jack that just pushed all your buttons. He was just a pain in the ass.

A really handsome, really annoying, cherub-faced pain in the ass.

—

Robby likes to think of himself as a patient man.

The emergency room teaches you that. Taking a step back. Pausing, being objective. Being able to make the decisions that need to be made.

And right now, a decision definitely needed to be made. Robby was living in a psychological warzone.

He remembers when he and Jack were deliberating on who to choose to take over their spare room. It was between you and some guy who looked like he ate cigarettes for every meal; Robby can’t even remember his name now. Jack had said that they should pick you — even said you were cute.

This was one of the few instances in the time that he had known Jack that he had regretted listening to him.

“And she just-” Jack’s got his plate teetering on his knee, coffee mug still in his hand as he gestures angrily for no reason in particular. You’ve really worked him up this morning and now Robby is dealing with the consequences.

“Geez, man,” Robby can’t help but snap, cutting him off. Lately it’s been endless, Jack’s complaining. It feels like he starts and ends every day listening to Jack bitch and moan about their roommate, and it’s driving him up the wall. “You ever think about cooling it a little? Maybe extending an olive branch or something?”

“An olive branch? For what? I didn’t do anything.” His comment has clearly caught Jack off guard, eyes falling to his plate as he pushes the remaining remnants of his breakfast around. 

“It’s not about you doing something. It’s about you two getting along,” Robby explains with a sigh. He knows that Jack knows better than this, but there was just something about the situation that made him see red. Something about you. “A little peace around here would be nice, you know?”

“You should tell her that.” Jack gives up pretending to eat and sets his plate aside. Robby can feel the anxious energy radiating off of him; his leg shaking the bed, the angry tap, tap, tap of his nails against the ceramic of his coffee mug. He reaches out and places a hand on his thigh to steady him. The shaking stops instantly.

“You gotta figure this shit out,” Robby says, attempting to toe the line between stern and empathetic. He thinks it might just be coming off as tired, though. “Whatever issue you guys have, you guys need to solve that shit.”

Jack stiffens under his touch when the words leave his mouth and Robby kicks himself. For some reason, he keeps forgetting just how stubborn his best friend is.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Jack replies flatly. That kills the conversation and he collects his things and leaves Robby’s room, leaving him alone in some well needed silence.

Robby decides needs a new approach.

He tries his best to stick it out for the next few days, waiting until his next off day rolls around. Jack, on the other hand, is working that day which presents the perfect opportunity for Robby to appeal to your better nature instead.

He’s leaning on the counter, watching you put your groceries in the fridge. Over the time that you’ve been living together, you and Robby have learned to grow comfortable in the silence in the apartment. You’ll sit together on the couch, reading a book while he studies without saying a word. It’s grounding for him, like a familiar blanket. At least, that’s when Jack isn’t around.

Robby is finally pulled out of his thoughts when he notices you staring at him, hand on your hip. You’ve got an eyebrow raised, like you just asked him a question that he took far too long to reply to.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Robby shakes his head, trying to focus on you once more. “I was, uh, zoned out.”

“I just said you’ve been looking at me all weird,” You reply, hand dropping from your hip. You approach him slowly, laying a hand on his arm. You seemed concerned, which was sweet. He’s always wondered where the part of you that got Jack all riled up went when he wasn’t around. “Are you okay?”

“No, not really,” He says with a sigh, taking a step back out of your space. He takes a deep breath, wondering how exactly to explain this to you. He doesn’t want to misstep like he did with Jack; then he’d really be screwed. “It’s about you and Jack.”

“What about us?” Your curiosity is piqued but Robby can see that you’ve stiffened just at the mention of his name.

“Look, I get that you and Jack hate each other or whatever,” He runs a hand through his hair, deciding that the best course of action was to just be honest. Whatever happens after that is out of his hands. “But the arguing is driving me insane. Would you be able to maybe take it down a notch when I’m around? And when I’m not, you can kill him for all I care.”

“I think you would definitely care if I murdered Jack,” You say with a scoff, crossing your arms over your chest. You two stand in silence for a moment. Tense, not the comfortable kind that Robby is used to. He can see your eyes flicking around as you think, taking in his words. And then your posture softens. “But you’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Oh great,” He heaves a sigh of relief, taking a seat at the bar. You watch him, the curious look in your eye replaced with something that might even resemble sympathy. “I asked Jack the same thing and he nearly bit my head off.”

“You thought I would react worse than Jack?” You look at him sadly, hand splayed over your heart in mock hurt. “I’m wounded, Michael.”

He rolls his eyes and you’re back in the kitchen, bent over and rustling through the fridge. He watches you gather ingredients, pushing around and looking for the things that you need. He taps his finger on the counter, suspicious. 

“Is that really it?” He asks and you turn around, arms full. You shrug as you start placing things on the counter, gesturing for Robby to help you with a nod of your head. He quickly stands up, setting down whatever remained.

“I could make more of a scene, if you like,” You pull out the cutting board and knife from below the counter, shooting him a look from the corner of your eye. “But I thought I’d make you an ‘I’m-sorry-I-get-into-fights-with-your-best-friend’ dinner instead.”

Robby lights up at that. He and Jack always cook for themselves, but your food always looks a million times better than theirs. Probably because once they get home from their shifts they only have the energy to make boxed mac and cheese before falling asleep on the couch, bowls still in their laps. 

So yes, Robby will jump at the chance to eat some food that doesn’t come out of a box and doesn’t involve any powdered cheese.

You’re standing side by side when Jack walks in; Robby is chopping vegetables and you’re throwing everything together in a pot. Your shoulders are brushing —the kitchen you share is too small not to, especially at Robby’s size.

Robby glances up from the cutting board, ready to greet Jack, when he sees the look on his face. It’s twisted up in something… something Robby can’t really place. He’s frowning, eyes scanning the scene in front of him. Before he can open his mouth to say hello, Jack stomps off to his room, hand clutching the strap of his go-bag tightly. The door slams behind him and Robby finally looks in your direction. You’re looking equally as confused as he feels.

“What the hell is up with him?” You ask, going back to what you were doing before Jack’s abrupt arrival. He guesses that you were used to this kind of behaviour; Jack being all prickly towards you. Robby however, was not. He sneaks another glance at Jack’s closed door, brows furrowed.

“Bad shift, maybe?” He tries to supply. You just shrug in response.

He knows that it’s something else.

—

After that dinner the fighting only gets worse.

You’ve been making Robby a lot of I’m sorry dinners, which is a plus. But the hostile living situation is definitely a negative. 

He knows you’ve been trying to keep it down but it seems like you can’t even enter a room without Jack getting irritated with you these days. He’s tried to talk to him about it a grand total of once, and Jack snarls at him to ‘just leave it’ in a tone he’s never heard before, so he has.

But it’s driving Robby insane. He wants to eat a meal, sit on the couch, and study in peace. It’s reaching the point where he’s wondering if he’s going to have to physically separate you. The fights have been escalating; you two have been crowding each other’s space, all gnashing teeth and pointed jabs to the chest. 

Right now he’s laying in bed, listening to you two argue through the wall. He doesn’t even know what it’s about. In fact, he never really knows what they’re about. They always start off about something insignificant and then escalate into the grudges that you two are holding against each other. It seems like the fights never end, one of you always storming out before you ever come to a resolution.

Robby is sure that you could probably talk out your differences if you bothered to actually have a conversation about it without one of you stomping away. In fact, he’d put money on it.

He listens to a few more shouts and a particularly loud door slam and something in him finally breaks. 

He decides to put his money where his mouth is.

—

You’re enjoying a rare moment to yourself, curled up on the couch under a blanket with a book in hand when Robby’s voice rings through the living room. 

“The sink in the bathroom is doing that weird thing again.”

Motherfucker.

You tilt your head back with a groan, slamming your book shut. The sink in the bathroom had been crapping out on you guys for as long as you remember and for some reason, you were the only person who could jiggle the handle just right to get it working again.

“Can’t a girl get a moment to herself here?” You sigh, pulling off the blanket dramatically. Robby just shrugs, eyeing you as you put your book down. There’s something in his gaze you can’t place, a bit distant. It’s easy to assume it’s all the fighting with Jack. 

You promised to try to be nicer to him, but he just keeps goading you into petty arguments. It’s not hard to tell that it’s driving a wedge between the three of you. Tensions have been high in the apartment lately and you’ve noticed that Robby has elected to spend more time away, presumably with one of his many girlfriends.

Robby turns around wordlessly, not even checking to see if you’re following. It unnerves you a bit; he’s usually always down to rib with you and he never ignores you. Worrying your lip, you drop the nonchalant act and trail behind him in the direction of your bathroom. He pauses at the doorframe, waiting for you to catch up.

You approach him, wanting to ask if everything is okay, when he grabs you by the arm. It’s not rough and you wouldn’t expect it to be; Robby would never hurt you. However, his grip and the element of surprise are enough to allow him to haul you into the bathroom. You barely get a word out before the door shuts behind you.

You blink in shock, taking a moment to realize what exactly is happening to you.

Jack is standing in front of you, the same look of shock mirrored on his face. The sight of him has you whirling on your heels, grabbing the door handle. It doesn’t give —something is jamming the handle, effectively locking you in the bathroom. The bathroom you share, that’s about the size of a closet. Locked in with the guy that makes your blood boil.

For more reason than one.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” You hear Jack’s gruff voice from behind you but you deign to ignore it, choosing to bang against the door instead.

“Robby!” You shout, still rapping your fist against the door. You know that he can hear you; the walls and doors in this place are paper thin. Jack’s gaze is hot on your back and you can imagine his arms are crossed, ready to see what you’ll do next. “Let us out!”

“No,” You can hear his voice loud and clear through the wood. He must be standing right in front of the door on the other side, staring at the chipped white paint. His voice is serious, flat in a way you’ve never heard before. “You guys aren’t coming out until you’re best friends. I can’t deal with the bickering anymore. Either figure it out, or enjoy living in the bathroom together. Forever.”

Then you hear his footsteps, the sound of them peetering away. Which means you really are stuck in here for the time being.

You turn to face Jack with a deep sigh. You were right; his arms are crossed over his chest, looking as cool and collected as he always does before he starts pushing all your buttons. You two just look at each other for a moment, soaking everything in. He breaks the silence first. “How did he lure you in here?”

“He told me the sink was broken again.” You mutter, shifting uncomfortably in place and leaning your back against the door. The two of you stand at opposite ends of the bathroom, but the distance doesn’t feel nearly far enough.

You know that Robby is right. The two of you are constantly at each other’s throats for no reason. You run a hand over your face, annoyed that you’ve found yourself in a situation as dumb as this. As tragic as it is, you realize that this is probably the longest the two of you have gone without arguing in a long time.

“Robby is right. We need to stop.” Jack says, as if he can read your mind. You scoff at that, rolling your eyes. That’s rich coming from him. He’s the one constantly provoking you, pushing you until you’re the one who’s fuming when he walks into the room.

“You’re one to talk,” You reply, deciding to confront him. It’s what Robby wanted, right? For you to talk it out? You weren’t sure it would lead anywhere but it didn’t really seem like your third roommate was letting you out anytime soon. “Robby told me that he already asked you to stop and you chewed him out for it.”

“I did not chew him out,” Jack denies, shaking his head in disbelief. You can already feel anger bubbling up just from his dismissive tone. “You and Robby are best friends now, huh?”

“Yeah, that's kind of what happens when your third roommate is a gigantic asshole.” You spit back. So much for not arguing. It's getting hard to keep your annoyance under wraps, especially with the wounds of your last million fights still raw.

“Oh, please. I was his friend first, way before you came along,” Jack takes a step forward like he wants to pace but quickly realizes he doesn't have enough room without getting closer to you and pauses. He opts for rocking back on his heels instead. “It’s your fault we’re even in this situation in the first place.”

“My fault? Are you listening to yourself?” You laugh incredulously, dropping all pretenses that this could even be a normal conversation anymore. “You sound like a child. I’ve tried my best to be nice to you! How is this my fault?”

“Yeah, it’s your fucking fault!” This time he’s brave enough to take a step forward, probably more out of frustration than anything else. “You call that being nice? Getting into fights with me? Getting all friendly with Robby?”

“Is this what this is about?” You’ve caught him in a weird spot and he knows it, running a hand through his auburn curls. His brow furrows but you cut him off before he can shoot back a response. “Robby? Is that why you’ve been acting extra annoying since that night you saw us making dinner a few weeks ago?”

“It's not about him,” He grunts, jaw tensing. You can see that he’s holding back whatever he wants to say by his taut shoulders as he speaks. “It's about you.”

“About me? I don't understand what your problem with me is, or why you think this is my fault-”

“Oh my god, do you ever shut up?” Jack cuts you off, and the room goes dead silent. You two are close now, like both of you were taking subconscious steps towards each other as you fought. It was always like that —when you had these fights it always ended up with you crowding each other's spaces. This time was no exception. 

But the size of the bathroom makes it feel different. You can almost feel his breath from the quick rise and fall of his chest, pulse racing from the argument. Your breath matches his, coming out in short huffs. You’ve got each other all riled up and you can see something flash in his eyes.

Then it clicks.

“You want to fuck me, don't you?” You can see from his reaction that you’ve got it right on the nose. He takes a step back, the bluntness of your statement pulling him out of the stupor of anger he was in.

“What?” He recoils like the thought of it is physically repulsive. You try not to take too much offense from that, especially because you know that it’s all for show. The heat of the tension between you two has shattered and you give a smug smirk, teeth almost bared.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” You’re taunting him now, but after everything that he put you through it only seems fair. You can’t help but laugh out loud as you continue. “Little Jackie’s got a crush on me? That’s why he’s pushing me on the playground?” 

“Don’t call me that.” The timbre of his voice is low, egging you along. “You wish. I hate you.”

“Oh, yeah? How much?” You press. Jack’s gained more confidence and he’s back in your space. Even though you’re holding the cards, taunting him with a crush, you still feel like prey. He’s circling you like a shark without even moving. His eyes are on you as he backs you up against the door.

He still hasn’t answered your empty threat. You can feel his body heat even through your clothes and it makes your breath catch. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Jack, and you see a whisper of a smile on his lips. Any proverbial cards you had in your hands just moments before have fluttered to the ground. Jack has caught you and you both notice, and the idea of that has Jack looking at you like the cat who got the cream.

You’re fully pressed against the door now, almost forehead to forehead. His hands hover between the two of you, like he’s unsure of if he’s actually allowed to touch you or not. You finally grow the courage to look up at him and meet his eyes, your noses brushing as you do. He takes that as permission and moves his hands towards you, resting loose at your waist.

It’s hard to breathe, much less think. You can smell Jack’s body wash from this distance and it has your brain short circuiting. He’s close enough to see every reaction and he drags a hand up your side slowly, fingertips skimming. 

It travels up the expanse of your body and pauses at your neck, his fingers tightening for a moment. His grip isn’t firm but it’s enough to make your eyes flutter. Jack rumbles from somewhere deep in his chest and his hand continues it’s journey upwards, thumb settling on your bottom lip. He swipes across it slowly and it makes your heart stutter.

Fuck it.

Your mouth parts slowly and you take his digit into your mouth, lips closing around it. Jack presses even closer to you, chest to chest. His eyes have been locked on yours the entire time and they stay that way, even as his other hand moves to slip into your sleep shorts.

He’s got his hand cupped over your panties but you know he can feel how wet you are, even through the fabric. He finally lets the smirk take over his face, pressing his thumb into your mouth further. His fingers trail across the dampness of your underwear, sickly slow.

“This all for me?” He asks, cocky, and it’s pretty annoying when the shoe is on the other foot. “You get wet when I tell you I hate you? When we fight?”

His fingers are still moving slowly, making your mind foggy. Or maybe that’s just your excuse for when you look up at him dumbly, nodding. He seems satisfied with that answer, dipping in past the lacy waistband of your panties. His breath hitches when gets a finger between your folds and feels that you’re absolutely dripping in anticipation. You’ve got half a mind to tease him about it, but he pushes a finger in and the thought suddenly vanishes from your mind. 

The finger on your lips moves down again, landing on your throat once more. He’s only a knuckle deep when he pauses, cocking his head. The hand around your neck gives a small squeeze, and your pussy flutters around nothing at the sensation. You let out a small moan, heat rushing up to your face in both arousal and embarrassment. “Think I didn’t notice, huh? How much you liked it?” 

Before you can answer he slides in the rest of the way, leaving you speechless. The pace he sets is slow and deep, making your knees buckle. You’re gripping onto his annoyingly thick arms and his breath is ghosting your face. You can tell he’s holding back, eyes flickering from your lips to the hand down your shorts.

You don’t wait for him to make up his mind. Surging upwards, you catch his lips in yours, pulling him close by his shirt. The moment breaks the dam —all the months of pent up frustration and fights seared into a bruising kiss. He wastes no time, licking desperately into your mouth as he works you open with his hand. You’re mewling, sliding your lips against his as you whimper, slick with spit.

He’s got his leg slotted between your thighs and you can feel how hard he is, even through the layer of his denim jeans. He groans quietly under his breath, grinding against you as he fucks you with his fingers. The noise is obscene —you’re so wet that the sound of it reverberates through the bathroom every time his digits enter you.

It’s embarrassing, really, the way that you’re basically riding his fingers. Your hips are chasing the sensation and he gives another groan at the sight. He’s still got his hand wrapped around your throat and his brow is furrowed with pleasure, obsessed with the way he has you just falling apart for him.

The look on his face is getting you close, like he’s pissed that he gave into you but he wants to take you apart so damn bad he just can’t resist. He tightens his grip and hits that spot inside you just right and you can’t help the strangled whine that leaves your mouth as you tighten around him, cumming on his hand way too loudly for you two to keep what you’re doing a secret.

He’a got his hand out of your shorts now and he’s moved them both to pull your tank top down, exposing your chest. His breathing picks up and runs his hands up your body, rough skin on your sensitive nipples as he grabs at you, rough. Jack leans in for another bruising kiss, but you only get a short moment to savour it before he's got you by the hair, twisting you around and bending you over the counter.

The force of it has everything on the counter rattle, the tall bottle of lotion you keep in the bathroom toppling over. You recover and stumble to push yourself to your elbows, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. You look absolutely fucked out, hair disheveled, lips pink and swollen, looking at yourself all glassy eyed. Then your eyes flick back to take a look at Jack, who’s rutting his bulge into the clothed heat of your cunt.

The sight almost makes you cum again on the spot. His lids are hooded, mouth hanging half open in pleasure as he moves against you. He’s still got a hand woven into your hair and his eyes flutter open in a way you can only describe as pretty as he takes in your state through the mirror. His grip disappears and he pulls off his shirt, the piece of clothing landing on the ridge of the bathtub behind you as he tosses it. You can’t even get out a quip before he’s yanking your shorts down, taking your panties down with them.

Even though he just had his fingers in you moments ago, you still feel embarrassed with how exposed you are for him. If he notices the way you get shy, he doesn’t comment, hands drifting to undo his belt buckle instead. You mewl as he steps out of his jeans, hard cock slapping against his stomach. You’re almost drooling to get your mouth around it and he laughs at the look on your face.

“Yeah? Are you sure you’re not the one that wants to fuck me? ‘Cause it seems like you’re a minute away from begging for it.” He pumps his length loosely with one hand, lips curled into a smirk as his fingertips of the other skid up the side of your thigh. The touch has your pussy fluttering, and you’re hoping that he can’t see the way your legs are shaking. You can see the glimmer of precome gathered at his tip and you lick your lips.

“Fuck you.” You say through gritted teeth, although it comes off much less intimidating as you would like since you’re bent over and at his mercy. He lets out another laugh at your expense, not bothering to say anything else while he lines himself up at your entrance. 

“Well, since you asked so nicely…” You’re already slick from his fingers, so he pushes in rough and fast, both of you groaning as he sheathes himself fully inside of you. It pushes you to your toes, punching a breath from your chest. You can tell that this is going to be quick and dirty, and you brace your hands on the counter in anticipation. 

You were right. He pulls out slowly and you shiver at the sensation, then he slams back into you so hard that you can’t help but yelp. You spare a glance up at his face and you can tell that he fucking loved that, so he keeps that pace, rough and slow.

“Fuck, Jack…” You sound strung out as you moan his name, hips bucking as you try to get him to speed up, go deeper, anything. You’ve already come to terms with the fact that you’ve definitely lost this argument but then one of his big hands presses into your back, pressing you against the counter and you can’t really bring yourself to care. The other grips your shoulder and it’s like he can read your mind.

Jack starts fucking into you without abandon, chasing his high. It’s rough and the slap of skin on skin bounces off the tile, which only serves to make you even more wet. You’re pretty sure you’re just mumbling nonsense now, too focused on how deep Jack is inside of you to put together a coherent sentence. Jack’s getting loud too, the hand on your back snaking down to grab at your hip, pulling you back into him as he thrusts.

“Would’ve done this a lot earlier if I knew how easily I could shut you up.” He manages to get out, in between low groans and short breaths. You want to defend yourself, you really do, but he pulls you back on him and plunges in particularly deep, making your eyes cross, and your voice dies in your throat. Jack’s fucking you brainless, that much you can’t deny. You’re whining as the heat in your stomach spreads, cunt tightening as Jack fucks into you even rougher.

You know he feels it when he lets out a strangled noise that sounds suspiciously close to your name, hips stuttering. Then you feel a tight yank on your scalp, forcing your head upwards. You can barely keep still as Jack continues to move, head bobbing even with his grip on your hair. 

“Look at me.” He says, gruff and deep, and you clench around him at the sound. It takes way too much effort to open your eyes, motions slow like molasses. You clearly take far too long for Jack’s liking, pulling harder on your hair as he repeats himself. Finally, your eyes flutter open, and you’re so close to the mirror that your breath fogs the glass. Your mouth is wide open in a silent moan, eyes almost crossed. Another rough tug reminds you what he asked for, and you drag your gaze up to meet Jack’s.

His hazel eyes are dark with lust, hair stamped to his forehead in sweat. A smirk spreads across his face when he notices that you’ve obeyed, finally looking at him. The way he has your hair in an iron grip has your back arching and his cock is hitting spots inside of you that you didn’t even know existed. You can tell that he’s approaching his high just as fast as you are; his thrusts are growing sloppy and you almost can’t hear your small mewls over all the noise he’s making.

“Look at me when you cum.” He growls as he notices your eyes drifting as your orgasm approaches. It’s not a question. It’s a demand. Your eyes snap back to his and he’s already looking at you, eyes watching your face contort in pleasure. Locking eyes, he slides a hand in between your legs to work your clit, already slick from just how turned on you are by the whole ordeal. He’s rubbing tight circles around it and everything comes crashing down.

You cum so hard around his cock that you can’t even tell if you kept the eye contact he asked for, your vision going white. You’re also pretty sure your knees give out, but Jack keeps you steady with a hand around your waist as he keeps his pace going. You whimper as he fucks you through your orgasm, nerves alight, when he pulls out with a loud groan. He gives a few rough pumps, made easy with your cum practically dripping off of his dick, and you have the pleasure of watching him come undone, coating your ass with ropes of cum.

Jack braces his hand on the counter, knuckles tightening with one last shudder of his body. You two stay that way for a moment, catching your breath. The silence is deafening as you try to think through the synchronised pants that you two share. You’re not sure how many minutes pass until he straightens up, grabbing a towel hanging off the back of the door. He begins to clean you off, gentle in a way that you didn’t expect from him, and you decide that this probably isn’t the best time to tell him that he’s using Robby’s towel.

Once he’s done, he tosses it into the laundry bin in the corner and pulls up his briefs and jeans. You turn around as he approaches you once more, worrying your lip. You’re trying to think of something to say when Jack bends down, pulling your shorts and panties back up to your waist. He fiddles with the waistband of your shorts for a second before moving onto your tank, tugging the straps back up your shoulders and covering your chest once more.

You two are close again, but this time it lacks any of the anger and heat that it did before. Jack’s still got a finger tangled in your tank top strap, leaning closer into your space, noses brushing once more. You think he opens his mouth to say something, but the door swings open and interrupts him before he can start.

You're happy with your sex life, but there's something about when he submits fully to you that you can't get enough of.

Andrew's bigger than you, in terms of muscle mass. Taller. Stronger. Imposing in his quiet, intense gazing way.

You'd struggled with your self esteem before him. But there's something deeply empowering about having him begging and pleading for you.

He's laying sideways on your big, comfortable bed, head in your lap as you play idly with his auburn curls.

His moans and whimpers are muffled by your nipple in his mouth, the soft skin of your breast as he sucks and licks at you.

The slight stubble he's growing feels nice against your sensitive skin, but you don't focus on your own arousal.

You've been edging him for the better part of an hour, the hand that isn't knitted into his curls wrapped around his thick, throbbing cock.

More than once, you've gotten him right there, right to the edge, and then stopped, lightly squeezing his shaft to prevent him from being able to cum.

Some men - most men - would take advantage of the sort of strength he has, flip you over and stuff you full of cock.

Not Andrew. Not even when you think you wouldn't mind if he did. Instead he lays there for you, sprawled out, freckled cheeks and equally freckled chest a little flushed as he whines, pulls away from your breast to look up at you with pleading eyes.

You look down at him; at the way he's left your nipples puffy and reddened from the way he's been desperately suckling on them.

"Aww, you're being so good for me, Andrew. Do you wanna cum?"

You coo at him; watch the way his hazel eyes darken with need.

"Please, I'll finish fast-" he begs you, raspy voice strained slightly with arousal.

You pout and hum, make a cute little show out of pretending to think about it, slowly, torturously, sliding your hand down the thick shaft of his cock, until you reach his balls, gently massaging them and making him whimper again.

God, he sounds so cute when he's all pent up like this. So desperate. You think that maybe letting go like this is good for him. Heals some part of him that wants to be kind and gentle and soft, instead of the razor sharp weapon that his family has honed him into.

Your hand glides back up the underside of his cock, fingertips tracing the thick vein that you can feel pulsing.

"Okay," you concede, as if you were actually considering anything but giving in. Whilst it's fun to edge him, to make him whimper and beg and try to buck his hips up, you love him too much to actually torment him for too long.

"Y-yeah?" He breathes, as if surprised by your agreement.

You wrap your fingers around him again; fuck, you love his cock, love the length and girth and the way he uses it. The thought has your pussy drooling, but you refuse to lose focus.

Once you've made him cum all over your hand and his toned abdomen, then you can ask him to eat you out. But in the meantime, you're in control.

"'s okay, honey," you tell him, give him long, languid strokes, building up to it, "I'm gonna let you cum this time. Gonna let you cum properly."

His cockhead is dripping precum, fat beads of it dripping down his shaft and coating your fingers, making it easier for you to stroke him.

"Mmmffff-" he whines, turns his head and tucks the closest nipple to his mouth back between his lips, dragging his teeth lightly over it before sucking gently, making you inhale softly.

Andrew knows you love this, knows how fucking sensitive your tits are, could spend hours just lying here in your lap, alternating between which nipple he laves attention over.

He flicks his tongue over the pebbled peak as you speed up the pace of your hand around his cock, making him react with a sound that's almost akin to a mewl.

"Oh, fuck, that's it," you gasp as he drags his teeth over your nipple again, pulls off with a lewd, wet pop as he ruts his hips up against your hand, "you've been so good for me, honey, go ahead, go ahead and cum for me-"

The moan Andrew gives you is obscene. Drawn out, desperate, his hips bucking wildly, thigh twitching as he cums, coats your hand and his abdomen in ropes and ropes of his spend.

He comes down slowly, shaking slightly from the intense high you've given him, the rush of adrenaline and endorphins.

"Holy shit," he breathes, sits up and runs his hand through his curls, then eyes you, sitting back on your knees with your thighs slightly spread.

Even in his dazed state, he can see how dripping wet you are.

"Mm, you did so good for me," you praise, "now, you gonna be kind to me and clean up the mess you made?"

Andrew doesn't need to be told twice. Gently, he pushes you backwards, settles himself between your thighs, uncaring for now about the mess he's made of himself, too eager to devour your soaked cunt.

After all. He likes being good for you.

“Oh, wow,” she drew out slowly, head tilting as her gaze dragged over him, amused and a little too pleased with herself. “Look at you.”

Dennis didn’t look up. “What.”

She took a slow sip of her coffee,“Nothing, nothing… just you actually made an effort today.”

That made him, slightly confused and smartly wary, glance at her and for her her grin to widened.

“God, you even put cologne on,” she added, like she’d just uncovered something incriminating. “Can smell it from here.”

Dennis frowned faintly, like he hadn’t even realized. “I always use it”

Trinity gave him a look so disbelieving it was almost theatrical.

“No, you wear whatever deodorant survived the week and call it a day. This…” she waved vaguely in his direction. “is effort.”

He looked down at himself like maybe his clothes had betrayed him somehow. “It’s not effort.”

“Right,” she said dryly. “And I’m the patron saint of minding my own business.”

Dennis let out a quiet breathy laugh through his nose and reached for the coffee mug he’d left on the counter, taking a swallow mostly so he wouldn’t say anything stupid.

Unfortunately for him, Trinity Santos loved silence for the reason being, that it gave her room.

She pushed off the counter and went to pour herself more coffee,“So what exactly is broken over there?”

He shrugged and set the mug down. “Her sink, I think, she said the water’s not coming out right.”

“And of course,” she said, voice laced with mock admiration, “you became Katniss Everdeen.”

Dennis rolled his eyes, catching the reference. “Don’t start.”

“‘Don’t start,’” she mocked, “You mean the super hot rad tech who just happened to need help and you just happened to volunteer?”

“It’s just a broken thing.” he waved a hand, already wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

“A thing,” Trinity echoed, nodding like that explained everything. “Got it.”

“Yeah, her sink.” He turned away from her, moving to rinse out his mug with a little more focus than necessary.

Her expression softened into something far too sweet, dangerously sweet. “And tell me, Huckleberry, you heading over there to fix her plumbing… or are you planning to service her pipes?”

He grimaced, a faint flush creeping up his neck despite himself, at the thought. “Seriously?”

“What?” Trinity let out a quiet laugh,“You practically set that one up yourself, and don’t act like the thought hasn’t crossed your mind. Because it definitely would’ve crossed mine.”

Dennis didn’t reply, mostly because he couldn’t, there wasn’t much he could say without giving himself away. The truth was, it had crossed his mind, more than once, different scenarios, different angles… more than he’d ever admit out loud, but he shut it down just as quickly every time.

For one, he’d been raised better than that and for another… it wasn’t something that would ever, in this god green earth, actually happen.

You were friends, that was what mattered.

Sure, maybe he had an itty bitty crush on you, small enough that he could almost lie to himself about it, but then again, who didn’t? Half the people in the Pitt would’ve lined up for a chance, and with the amount of options you had, with the way you could pretty much take your pick of anyone there, there was no world where it’d be him.

He just turned away, opening the cupboard to put his mug back while behind him, Santos kept going, because of course she did.

“You know, I’ve gotta say… I’m a little surprised.”

He nudged the cupboard shut, the wood clicking softly. “Yeah? About what?”

“I just figured if you weren’t on shift, you’d be back at that widow’s farm.” She gave a small shrug as she reached for the loaf of bread.

That made him slightly pause.

“I go out there to help Amy,” he said, turning toward her, the explanation coming out smooth, rehearsed from overuse. “You know that.”

“Mm,” Trinity hummed, like she wasn’t entirely convinced. “And now you’re helping Y/N. At her place, on your day off. Bright and early.”

Dennis exhaled quietly through his nose, like he could already see where this was going.

“It’s just a favor.”

“Just nice to see you branching out beyond farmerettes, Huckleberry.” Trinity said easily, not even looking up as she dragged a knifefull of butter across her toast

He shot her a look. “What does that even mean?”

She kept spreading the butter, a small, knowing smirk tugging at her mouth. “Means you’re diversifying your… charitable efforts.”

Dennis huffed, shaking his head as he reached for his jacket, tugging it on like he could physically remove himself from the conversation faster.

“I’ll be there, like, twenty minutes.”

“Right, right…” Trinity nodded, finally glancing up at him. “So should I expect you back before lunch, or are you planning to vanish into some kind of rendezvous bliss?”

“…you’re disgusting. Goodbye.” He grabbed his keys, already backing toward the door.

“Drive safe!” she called after him, completely ignoring that. “And take your time, no need to rush quality work.”

The door shut a second later.

Trinity chuckled and took another bite of her toast, pleased as anything.

“Oh, that boy is so not coming back soon.”

And for once, it wasn’t just her running her mouth for the sake of it.

She knew you well enough to remember the way you’d sit next to her as she wrote up some charts, a few weeks back, arms crossed, trying to sound casual while bringing him up.

“He’s just… nice,” you’d gone on, almost against your own will now at where Whitaker was with a patient, eyes narrowing slightly in thought. “Bit quiet, doesn’t get in your business, and he’s got that whole… farm boy thing going on and, I mean have you seen his hands? Gawd almighty, Santos, they’re rough, but not in a bad way, like he could fix anything, or...” you cut yourself off, but not before your mouth curved just slightly, “yknow, hold you down without even trying.”

All Trinity could do was stare at you as if you’ve grown a third head and started speaking in tongues “Ew”

“Doesn’t talk too much, but he listens, like he’s actually paying attention to you, doesn’t need to be loud about anything.” You’d tilted your head slightly then, like you were studying something only you could see. “…and there’s something about that whole rural thing.”

You were circling an idea, turning it over, testing it, considering it, a predator deciding if something was worth the chase.

“Right,” Trinity said slowly. “So what I’m hearing is you want to climb him like a tree.”

Boy, did you.

And now he was in your house, which somehow made all of it worse or better, mostly worse but definitely better.

Dennis had shown up not with your coffee order already in hand, your coffee order, exactly right, because months back you’d mentioned it once in passing and apparently he was the sort of man who just… remembered things like that.

He’d stood there at your door looking unfairly good in a plain shirt and jeans, holding the cup tray, all casual like this was no big deal.

As though he hadn’t just arrived armed with caffeine, competence, and that quietly helpful thing he did that made you want to see him shirtless and pantless.

You had insisted, no, flat-out refused to let him touch anything, until he ate something first.

“Sit,” you’d told him, already pushing a plate toward him.

“I’m here to fix your—”

“And you will,” you cut in, already halfway to the counter, “after you eat. I didn’t wake up early and bake for it to just sit there looking pretty.”

He’d tried to protest again, of course, a quiet, half-hearted “I’m fine, really—” that didn’t stand a chance against the look you gave him.

So he sat, and when he took that first bite of the jam spread croissant, and the sound he made, something almost like a groan slipping out before he could stop it, hit you straight to your core.

“Jesus,” he’d muttered, more to himself than to you, glancing down at it like he didn’t quite trust it. “That’s—”

“Good?” you’d offered.

He looked up at you then, with those big, sad, oh so tempting blue eyes.

“Yeah, really good.”

You had to physically turn away under the excuse of grabbing a napkin because otherwise you might’ve jump him right there.

Now, he was on his back under your sink, which in hindsight, that had been the easy part, because now, he was on his back under your sink.

You leaned against the counter, arms loosely crossed, trying to look like you weren’t actively losing your mind.

He shifted slightly beneath the cabinet, one arm braced, the other working at something you couldn’t see.

“You’ve definitely got a clog in here,” he said, voice a little muffled. “Probably buildup.”

“Makes sense,” you replied automatically but had no idea what he was talking about because your attention was… elsewhere.

His shirt had ridden up to show a strip of skin at his stomach, the light dusting of hair, the way his jeans sat low on his hips as he shifted to reach further in, by the time you noticed the veins, you were shamelessly wet.

Your gaze traced details you absolutely had no business cataloguing, like the flex in his arm, the quiet strength in the way he worked.

Sooner rather than later, much to your disappointment, he was done.

There was a final twist of something under the sink, and then he shifted, sliding out from beneath the cabinet and pushing himself up in one smooth motion.

You had exactly half a second to compose yourself.

He turned the faucet on, letting the water run and watching it drain properly, then he glanced at you, a small, satisfied smile tugging at his mouth as he stepped back and gestured toward it.

“All good. You’re set, my lady.”

You couldn’t help it, you smiled back, a soft little laugh slipping out of you. What a geek.

“Thank you, Dennis…”

He shrugged it off like it was nothing, wiping his hands on a rag. “Yeah, no problem.” after a beat, he added, a little more earnest, “I mean it—if you need anything else, just let me know.”

That was the opening you needed.

You hesitated for half a second, just enough to make it seem natural and said, glancing toward the living room like the idea had just occurred to you. “Well… since you’re already here…”

He followed your gaze, brows lifting slightly. “Yeah?”

“Do you think you could help me set up my TV stand? I’ve been trying, but—” you let out a small breath, gesturing vaguely, “—it’s just not happening.”

Dennis huffed out a quiet laugh, shaking his head a little like he’d expected something like this.

“Yeah, I can take a look.”

“Thank you,” you said, already stepping back to give him space, gesturing for him to follow. “It’s in here.”

You led him into the living room, where the box and scattered parts sat waiting.

“Okay, I got… this far.”you said, pointing at the half-assembled stand.

Dennis took one look at it and huffed a quiet laugh under his breath.

“Yeah,” he said, setting his toolbox down, already crouching beside it. “I can see the problem.”

You crossed your arms, mock-offended, though there was a hint of embarrassment tucked into it. “Hey, I followed the instructions.”

“I’m sure you did,” he said, glancing up at you, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “They just didn’t do you any favors, huh?”

You huffed a small laugh despite yourself. “Not even a little.”

He shook his head, reaching for a piece, turning it over in his hands with that same easy focus he’d had in the kitchen.

“Alright, let’s fix it.” he said easy, looking over at you with a grin.

And God, you had to physically stop yourself from biting your lip.

It should not have been this attractive, the whole capable-man-putting-things-together thing, and yet here you were, standing in your own living room trying not to stare at his hands again.

He worked with this quiet, steady focus, the same one he has at the hospital, like everything else fell away when he was doing something with purpose.

You were faintly aware he was talking, something about which piece went where, or why you thought the instructions were “backwards” but it all blurred into background noise.

“Yeah,” you murmured at one point.

“Mhm,” at another.

Not a single coherent thought behind it because all you could really register was;

I'm going to fuck his brains out.

You gazed as he leaned forward slightly, muscles in his forearms tightening as he adjusted something into place, voice dropping as he muttered under his breath, focused.

There was a faint sheen of sweat starting to gather at his temples, just enough to darken the edges of his hair where it curled slightly at the nape of his nec—

“Alright,” he said, giving the stand a small test push to make sure it was steady. “That should do it.”

You blinked, having been snapped out of your sightseeing.

“Oh—already?” you said, a little too quick.

He glanced at you, faintly amused. “Yeah. Wasn’t too bad.”

Course he made it look easy.

Then he stepped over toward the TV without hesitation, hands settling at either side like he’d done this a hundred times before and with one smooth motion, he lifted it and turned, placing it carefully onto the stand.

Your attention shifted to his back.

The stretch of his shirt across his shoulders, the way the fabric pulled just slightly with the movement, the subtle shift of muscle underneath as he adjusted the TV into place, making sure it sat just right.

You exhaled slowly, trying very hard to act like you were not noticing any of that.

“Good?” he asked, stepping back slightly, eyes flicking toward you.

You blinked again, dragging your gaze up to his face like you hadn’t just been staring.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s perfect,” you said, a small grin slipping through despite yourself as you gestured beside you. “Come take a look yourself.”

Dennis stepped closer, brushing past you just enough that you caught the faint scent of his cologne again. He leaned in slightly, eyes scanning the TV, checking the alignment, one hand coming up to adjust it just a fraction.

He nodded after a second, satisfied. “That should hold just fine.”

“Yeah… looks so good,” you nodded, though your attention wasn’t really on the TV anymore.

Neither of you moved right away, until he stepped back first, putting just enough space between you to make it noticeable. He cleared his throat lightly, like he was shaking something off.

“Well,” he said, glancing around, “sink’s fixed, TV’s up… think that’s everything.”

You frowned a little, tilting your head as you looked up at him, something softer slipping into your expression. “Thank you, Dennis. Really, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

He chuckled under his breath, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, the other resting on his hip, just a little awkward now in a way he hadn’t been before.

“You would’ve figured it out,” he said easily, though there was a hint of something warmer in his tone. “Or called someone who charges way too much for it.”

You huffed a small laugh, but kept your eyes on him . “Yeah, well… I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Anytime." He nodded once, almost to himself.

You shifted your weight, turning to face him properly, a small smile playing on your lips. “I’ll have to repay you somehow.”

His brows lifted slightly, the corner of his mouth tugging just enough to make you wetter than ever. He still looked a little unaware of the full effect he was having on you, which, honestly, only made him more delicious.

“You already fed me,” he said with a grin, like that should settle it.

You shook your head slowly and took a small step toward him.“That doesn’t count.”

Dennis blinked, grin slowly fading, a little thrown now, like he hadn’t expected you to push back. “No?”

“No,” you repeated, holding his gaze now, a bit more seductively than before. “That was just me being a good host.”

For a second, he didn’t say anything and just looked at you.

It was subtle, but you saw the moment he processed what you were trying to do, the shift in his expression, the way his attention sharpened and he straightened, like he was finally catching up to something that had been there for a while now.

“Oh,” he said after a beat, quiet.

You smirked lightly at that and took another step, now in his personal space.

“How about dinner?” you said, voice easy but edged with something a little more deliberate now. “We can start with dessert, if you want.”

Dennis flushed and let out a soft breath through his nose, one hand settling at his hip while the other flexed once at his side, like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.

“You— er you don’t gotta repay me,” he said, though his voice had gone lower now, less certain than before. “Wasn’t a big deal.”

You stepped in closer, up onto your tiptoes, just enough to close the space between you, your voice dropping to something lustful and meant only for him.

“Maybe not to you.”

He stilled and you shifted just slightly, your hand lifting, a single finger brushing under his chin, guiding his gaze back to yours, lips hovered just a breath away from his.

“So? Do you want dessert?” you murmured, barely above a whisper.

Dennis’s blue eyes dropped to your lips for a second, then back to your eyes. He swallowed, visibly, and when he answered it came out low and a little rougher than before.

“Yeah.”

A small, satisfied grin tugged at your mouth.

“Good,” you whispered, letting your lips barely brush his, enough to feel the warmth of him, enough to make him tremble. “I’d have felt terrible if I couldn’t show you just how appreciative I am.”

Your lips where on his.

A shudder ran through Dennis's entire body, a full-body tremor of pure shock and want. He was holding his breath, you realized, his whole body coiled with a tension that was equal parts nerves and raw arousal.

You took control instantly, your mouth moving against his with practiced ease, tongue tracing the seam of his lips, coaxing him to open up, to relax. He followed your lead blindly, a soft, choked sound escaping his throat as you deepened the kiss, teaching him with your tongue, showing him how to move, how to breathe and boy was he a fast learner, perhaps a bit too fast and eager.

It was like a desperate, clumsy energy took over, making him kiss you back with a force that was more enthusiasm than skill, his mouth moving against yours with an almost frantic need.

It was all tongue and teeth and pressure, a messy, hungry kiss that sent a thrill straight through you.

One hand flew up to cup the back of your head, pressing you to him, and the other hand, after a moment of awkward hovering, landed flat and awkward against your ribs.

You grinned against his lips, a silent, wicked acknowledgment of his fumbling earnestness.

Your own hand, which had been resting at the nape of his neck, slid down to find his, were they were still stiff against your ribs, radiating a nervous heat. You wrapped your fingers around his wrist, feeling the frantic pulse beating just beneath his skin.

He let out a sharp, shaky breath against your mouth as you began to move his hand slowly and deliberately, guiding his palm down the curve of your side, over the dip of your waist.

His touch was light, hesitant, but he didn't resist, and you pressed his hand lower, over the swell of your hip, until his fingers were splayed across the flesh of your ass.

A choked sound, half-gasp, half-groan, rumbled in his chest.

His fingers, which had been so uncertain moments before, suddenly dug in, gripping you with a desperate, possessive force that sent a jolt of electricity straight through you.

He pulled you even harder against him, and you could feel the thick, hard ridge of his cock straining against his jeans. The awkwardness was gone, replaced by a pure, instinctual need to claim.

You broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to see his face.

His eyes were blown wide, dark and glassy with lust, his mouth slightly pink and parted as he stared down at you. He looked utterly wrecked, and you'd barely even started.

"Breathe, Dennis," you murmured, a small, satisfied smirk playing on your mouth.

"Right," he breathed, the word barely audible. "Sorry."

"Don't be," you purred, nipping at his lower lip.

Your hand moved with a slow, deliberate confidence, sliding down the firm plane of his stomach and your fingers pressing directly against the hard ridge straining against the denim of his jeans.

Dennis's entire body went rigid, and a sharp, choked gasp was torn from his throat, his eyes squeezing shut, his mouth falling open in a silent 'o' of pure shock.

You smirked, your thumb pressing down, rubbing a slow, firm circle right over the head of his cock through the fabric, but this is not what you want to do now.

You gave him a chaste kiss before gently pushing against his chest making him stumbled back a step, eyes widening slightly in surprise before he caught himself, his legs hitting the edge of the couch.

He sat down heavily, his gaze locked on you, looking up with an expression that was a mixture of awe and pure, unadulterated hunger.

You stood looking at him like a predator admiring its prey, a slow, deliberate smirk spread across your hands moved as you slipped the dress off your shoulders.

The same dress you had absolutely not chosen with this exact outcome in mind. Not at all.

It fell away easily, pooling at your feet, and for a second you just stood there, letting him look.

His mouth fell slightly agape as he took you in, standing before him in nothing but your pretty lace panties. The flush on his neck and cheeks deepened to a dark red, his gaze roaming over your body like he was trying to memorize every single inch.

He shifted on the couch, his hands gripping his own thighs, knuckles white.

You took a step forward until you were standing directly between his spread knees and looked down at him.

"Comfortable?" you asked, your voice a low purr.

He could only manage a shaky nod, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.

"Good," you murmured, placing your hands on his shoulders and leaning down, bringing your face close to his, your breath ghosting over his lips. "Because the real dessert is about to be served."

In one fluid, graceful motion, you sank to your knees on the floor between his legs, which made his breath catch in his throat. He stared down at you, his eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and raw, unfiltered lust.

With your eyes on him, your hands moved to his belt, the buckle clinking softly in the charged silence, you made quick work of it, then popped the button of his jeans.

His hips lifted instinctively, a desperate, needy motion, and you hooked your fingers into the waistband of his jeans and his boxers, pulling them both down in one smooth tug.

His cock sprang free, thick and hard and already leaking at the tip.

It was a beautiful thing, and the low, guttural groan that escaped Dennis's lips as the cool air hit him was music to your ears.

You looked up at him again, holding his gaze as you wrapped your hand around his hard, leaking cock. His eyes widened, his breath hitching in his throat as you began to stroke him slowly, your thumb smearing the bead of pre-come over the sensitive head. His hips jerked, a helpless, needy motion, and a low groan rumbled in his chest.

"This okay?" you asked, your voice a low, husky murmur.

He stared down at you with his mouth slightly parted and for a moment he seemed incapable of forming words, his mind completely consumed by the slow, deliberate movements of your hand.

He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"Y-yeah," he finally managed to choke out, the word a strangled, breathless sound. "Fuck, yes, more than okay."

A small, satisfied smirk tugged at your lips, your hand never ceasing its slow, torturous movements as you purred, "I'm just getting started."

You then leaned in, your breath ghosting over the head of his cock, and his entire body tensed, one of his hands gripping the edge of the couch so tightly his knuckles turned white, and the other was in your hair. You held his gaze, your eyes dark and full of promise, as you slowly, deliberately, swirled your tongue around the tip.

A choked sob of pleasure escaped his lips, his head falling back against the couch, his eyes squeezing shut. He was completely at your mercy.

"Fuck!" The word was torn from Dennis's throat, his entire body arching off the couch.

You set a punishing rhythm, your head bobbing, your tongue swirling around the sensitive underside of his shaft. You took him deep, the head of his cock hitting the back of your throat, and you swallowed around him.

The sound he made was pure, unadulterated ecstasy, a choked sob of pleasure that vibrated through his entire body.

He was completely at your mercy, his experience no match for your expertise. You were in control, and you were going to make sure he never forgot this.

You gave him a few pumps with your hand while you suck on the tip, could feel him getting closer, the frantic twitching of his hips, the way his fingers tightened in your hair, his breaths were coming in short, sharp pants, and then he started begging, his voice a ragged, desperate mess.

"Wait— fuck... I need... I need—" he gasped, his hips bucking wildly. "Please..."

You pulled back, just enough to let him breathe, but your hand never stopped its firm, rhythmic stroking. You looked up at him, a wicked smirk on your face, a thin string of saliva connecting your swollen lips to the head of his cock.

"Yeah, baby? What do you need?" you purred, your voice husky.

He groaned, his head thrown back against the couch as he fought for coherence. His eyes, dark and wild, found yours, and he gritted out the one word he could manage. "You."

Your smirk widened because that was the answer you wanted.

You leaned in and gave him one last, hard suck, a final, teasing taste that made his whole body jolt, before you rose gracefully to your feet.

You stood over him like a goddess of sex and satisfaction, and looked down at the disheveled, beautiful man you had just unraveled.

"Pull them down for me," you commanded softly, your gaze dropping to the scrap of lace covering your pussy.

He nodded, his movements clumsy with renewed urgency. He leaned forward, his hands shaking slightly as they hooked into the waistband of your panties, but instead of just pulling them down, he surprised you as he pressed his lips to your stomach, then lower, trailing open-mouthed kisses down your hipbone, down your thigh, as he slowly, reverently, peeled the lace from your body.

Once they were down around your ankles, you expected to take control again, to push him back and show him what came next, but you didn't get the chance because to your utter shock, Dennis took charge.

A raw, primal instinct seemed to take over.

He grabbed one of your legs, his grip firm and swung it over his shoulder, and before you could even process the sudden shift in power, he dipped his head and buried his face between your thighs.

The first swipe of his tongue was clumsy, but it was electric. A sharp gasp escaped your lips, your hands flying to his shoulders to steady yourself.

Dennis was a man possessed, licking and sucking with a desperate, hungry enthusiasm that was both messy and utterly divine. He was plainly inexperienced, yes, but he was an eager participant, his movements becoming more confident, more targeted, as he listened to the sounds you made, as he felt the way your body responded.

Your fingers tangled in the messy strands of his hair to hold him closer, nails scraping lightly against his scalp as a soft, breathless whimper slipped past your lips when he found a spot that made your knees shake. 

His grip on your hips tightened, knuckles white with the effort of keeping you steady as he lost himself in the taste of you, his low moans vibrating against your skin in a way that sent shivers down your spine made your head fall back. 

Dennis pulled back for a split second, lips glistening, eyes dark with hunger and a flicker of uncertainty. 

"Am doing this right… right?" He panted, voice rough with need as he turned his face to kiss your leg.

You nodded quickly, thumb brushing over his flushed cheek. 

"Yes, just keep going, baby," you whispered, voice thick with desire.

That was all he needed to hear. Dennis dove back in, his movements got bolder, he licked a slow stripe up your slit, then pushed his tongue inside you, making you cry out and for your free leg to wobble beneath you.

You could feel the heat coiling in your lower stomach, building faster now. 

Your free leg started to shake again as his fingers dug into the meat of your thigh draped over his shoulder and his other hand splayed across your lower back to yank you closer, holding you firmly in place as he worked you toward the edge.

When you finally tipped over the edge, right after another deep, rumbling moan of his vibrated up through your core, spurred on by your desperate whimpers and the way you fisted his hair to yank him closer, your body seized tight. 

A ragged, broken cry tore from your throat, but he didn’t let up, no, Dennis kept licking and sucking, relentless, until you were weakly pushing at his shoulders, overstimulated to the point of trembling but still aching for more of him.

Only when you finally pleaded his name did he pull back. His lips were slick, his breath hot, and when he looked up at you his eyes were dark, and still hungry.

“You taste so good,” Dennis murmured, voice rough. He pressed a kiss to the inside of your thigh, then nipped gently, making you shiver. “Can I do that again?”

You let out a weak, breathless laugh and shifted forward to straddle him, his hard dick was grazing your slick folds as you leaned down to kiss him, tasting yourself on his mouth while your fingers threaded into his hair.

After a beat, his hands found your ass again, gripping like he couldn’t help himself. 

You pulled back just enough to meet his gaze and whispered, “Maybe on round two. Right now, I need you inside me.”

You rose a few inches, guided him to your entrance, and then dropped down on him in one smooth motion. Dennis hands tightening on your hips as the stretch made you both brake at once, his guttural groan mixing with your breathless moan as pleasure lit up your whole body. 

"Fuck, Dennis," you breathed, rolling your hips experimentally, feeling him throb inside you. "You feel so good, so… fucking… big."

His eyes fluttered shut for a second, his grip on your ass tightening almost painfully.

 "God, you're perfect," he groaned, his voice wrecked.

You leaned forward, lips brushing his ear as you started to move, slow, deliberate grinds that had him panting beneath you. 

"You like that, baby?" you whispered, nipping at his earlobe. "You like feeling how wet I am for you? How perfectly you fill me up?”

He nodded frantically, his hips bucking up to meet yours. "Yes—fuck, yes," 

You picked up the pace, riding him harder now,

"I've been thinking about this all day," you moaned, head falling back as pleasure coiled tight in your belly. "Thinking about how good your cock would feel inside me, how you'd stretch me open and make me scream your name."

"Please," he whimpered, and the sound of him begging made you clench around him. "Please don't stop."

"I'm not stopping until you fill me up, Dennis," you purred, grinding down hard. "Not until I feel you come inside me."

Dennis moaned loudly, his head falling back against the couch, and the sight of him, completely undone beneath you, drove you absolutely crazy.

"Look at you," you gasped, rolling your hips harder, chasing that delicious friction. "Bet you’ve never… you’ve never been with a girl like me, huh?”

His fingers dug into your hips, his breathing ragged, and you could feel him twitching inside you, close, but not quite there yet. 

Then, to your surprise, he suddenly shifted. 

His hands gripped your waist and he hoisted you up as if you weighed nothing, making you yelp as he maneuvered you both. In one smooth motion he had you on your back on the couch, your legs falling open as he settled between them.

He pulled back just long enough to yank his shirt over his head and toss it aside, and the sight of him, chest heaving, muscles taut, eyes dark with need, made your mouth go dry.

"My turn," he growled, and then he was pushing back inside you, deeper this time, the new angle making you cry out.

"Oh fuck—Dennis!" you moaned, your hands flying to his shoulders, nails digging in as he started to move. "Yes, just like that! don't stop, please don't stop."

He set a relentless pace, each thrust hitting that perfect spot inside you as he panted against your neck. "You feel so fuck-ing good, honey… S-so perfect."

You moaned, your legs wrapping tight around his waist, pulling him deeper. 

"God, yes, fuck me harder, Dennis, I want to feel you for days." Your back was arching off the couch. 

He groaned at your words, and you felt his rhythm falter for just a second before he found it again, harder this time, more desperate. His grip on your hips tightened like he was holding on for dear life, and the intensity in his eyes was almost overwhelming.

"You're so—fuck," he panted, the words breaking apart as he thrust into you. 

He wasn't smooth about it, but god, the raw need in every movement made it even hotter.

"You feel so good inside me," you whimpered, nails dragging down his back. "So fucking good, Dennis, please don't stop, baby.”

His breath hitched and he buried his face in your neck, his hips snapping forward again and again. You could feel him trembling slightly, like he was barely holding himself together.

Your hand slipped between your bodies to touch yourself, and the moment your fingers found your clit, you clenched hard around him.

"Oh—oh fuck," he gasped against your skin, his whole body shuddering. "You're—I can feel—"

"I'm so close, keep going, just like that—" you moaned which only intensified when he bit you. 

It took three more thrusts for you to come, and when you did, it hit you like a tidal wave. 

You went silent but your whole body was seizing up as pleasure crashed through you, your walls clenching tight around him.

The second you did, you felt his teeth sink into your shoulder, not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to make you gasp, as he came with a muffled, desperate groan against your skin. His hips stuttered, grinding deep as he spilled inside you, his whole body shaking with the force of it.

"Oh shii—oh fuck," he panted against your neck, his grip on you bruising as he rode out the last waves of his orgasm.

You were both trembling, breathless, tangled together on the couch. Your legs were still wrapped around him, holding him close as the aftershocks rolled through you both.

"Holy shit," you breathed, your fingers threading through his hair, still trying to catch your breath. 

He lifted his head just enough to look at you, his face flushed and his eyes still glazed with pleasure. 

"Yeah, that was... fucking incredible," he breathed.

He leaned down to kiss you, soft at first, then deeper, and you returned it eagerly, a breathless laugh escaping against his lips as you pulled him closer, letting his weight settle onto you. 

"Damn right," you murmured, fingers tracing lazy patterns down his spine. "How am I supposed to go to work tomorrow and face everyone when I know exactly how you feel inside me?"

His eyes widened slightly, a flush creeping up his neck that had nothing to do with the exertion.

Dennis groaned, half-laughing as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. "Oh, don't—I'm never going to be able to focus during rounds now."

"Wonderful," you teased, nipping at his earlobe. "Every time you see me at work, I want you to think about this. About how good you felt buried inside me."

He shuddered against you, his arms tightening around your waist. "You're going to kill me, I'll be trying to read X-rays, and all I'll be able to think about is—"

"Me riding you on my couch?" you finished with a wicked grin.

"Exactly that," he admitted, lifting his head to meet your eyes. The flush on his cheeks deepened. "I'm so screwed."

You laughed, reaching up to kiss the tip of his nose. "Yeah well, at least you'll be able to walk normally tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be feeling this for the next week."

Dennis's eyes widened slightly, a mix of pride and concern flickering across his face. "Is that—I mean, are you okay? I didn't—"

"I'm okay," you assured him, brushing your thumb along his jaw.

"I.. uh, I might've... left a mark," he mumbled, glancing at your shoulder. 

You turned your head to look, catching a glimpse of the reddened impression of his teeth on your skin and a slow smile spread across your face. 

"I don’t mind," you said, meeting his gaze again. "Now I'll really have something to remember this by."

His breath caught, and you watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard. "You're not mad?"

"Mad?" You laughed softly, tracing your fingers down his back. "Dennis, that was hot as hell. Who would've thought you're a biter?"

He huffed a laugh and buried his face against your neck again, carefully avoiding the bite mark this time. "I can't believe we just did that."

You shrugged, a satisfied smirk playing on your lips. "I didn't see today ending any other way. I knew I was going to fuck you since you gave me your last Reese’s pieces."

Dennis lifted his head to stare at you, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Seriously? But that was months ago!"

"Yep," you grinned, running your hands through his hair. "You gave me your last piece of candy without even hesitating. I knew right then I was going to end up in bed with you eventually.

He laughed, shaking his head in amazement. "All this time... over chocolate?"

"Believe it," you said, stretching slightly beneath him and wincing at the pleasant ache. "Now, I don't know about you, but I could really use a shower. Want to join me? Maybe after, I can actually make us some lunch.”

"That sounds perfect actually," he murmured, pressing a kiss to your palm.

"Good," you smiled at him before reluctantly starting to shift. "But fair warning, I might need help standing up."

Extra:

By the time Dennis walked into the apartment, it was pushing 9pm.

He tried to be quiet about it, keys set down gently, door eased shut instead of slammed, but he really should’ve known better.

Trinity was in the living room, curled up on the couch with takeout spread out in front of her, TV flickering lazily in the background. Her eyes slid over to him the second he stepped in.

She didn’t say anything at first, just looked at him, taking in the slightly rumpled clothes, the faint flush still clinging to his neck, the general vibe of a man who had not, in fact, spent “twenty minutes fixing a sink.”

She hummed, deeply smug. “Must’ve been one hell of a sink.”

“Oh, shut up.”

A/N:

By the time Titus Danforth slid the wedding ring onto your finger, it was already too late to run.

You’d understand that later—hours later, with candlelight shivering over diamond and platinum, with his hand wrapped around yours like the last quiet step in a ritual already underway, with the whole grotesque machine of his family already grinding forward around you too smoothly to stop.

But that night, at the start of it, you still thought there was time.

You still believed, in some stubborn, furious part of yourself, that there had to be a line somewhere. Some point at which even people like them—people with too much money, too much blood behind their names, too much rot hidden under the veneer of polished manners—would finally hear the word no and be forced to reckon with it.

Time to refuse.

Time to humiliate your parents into calling the whole thing off.

Time to make enough of a scene that even the Danforths would decide you were more trouble than you were worth.

That illusion lasted exactly as long as the drive up to Danforth mansion.

The estate rose out of the dark like a stronghold, not a home—severe lines, old stone, and the kind of wealth that had long ago stopped caring whether anyone found it welcoming. Warm light glowed low behind the windows, but nothing about the place felt soft. It was beautiful in the way old money always was: shadowed, expensive, and built to make everyone entering it feel smaller than the family that owned it.

Rain had fallen earlier, and the world still smelled of it. Wet earth. soaked box hedges. iron-rich soil. The cold that slipped in through the cracked car window had bite, but it did nothing to clear the weight pressing behind your ribs. The closer the family car rolled toward the house, the more the estate seemed less like a home and more like a mouth opening, ready to swallow anyone who approached whole.

You sat back against the leather seat and watched it loom larger through the glass.

Beside you, your mother kept both hands folded in her lap so tightly the tendons stood out.

She hadn’t said much on the drive over. Neither had you. There hadn’t been anything worth saying after the call that afternoon. Not after the clipped, bloodless way your father had informed you there would be a dinner at the Danforth estate, that attendance wasn’t optional, and that you were expected to be on your best behavior.

As if that hadn’t been enough to curdle your stomach on instinct.

As if anyone in this city ever got summoned to a Danforth table unless the family meant to take something.

The car rolled to a stop beneath the portico. One of the doors opened before the driver had fully climbed out, a servant already waiting beneath the spill of amber light. Efficient. Silent. Trained to move around wealth the same way one moved around lit matches and open gasoline—carefully, without drawing attention.

You stepped onto the wet stone and tipped your chin up, taking in the house one last time.

The front doors were open.

That, somehow, felt worse than if they’d been shut.

Inside, warmth hit you first. Not comfort—just heat gathered in old walls, thick with beeswax, smoke, old perfume, and polished wood. The house didn’t open up so much as close around you. Low golden light burned from wall sconces, catching on dark paneling, antique tables, and the carved edges of chairs that looked more ceremonial than comfortable. Portraits watched from the walls in heavy frames, generations of Danforth faces rendered in oil and shadow. Every room felt arranged rather than lived in, as if comfort had never ranked very high among Danforth priorities.

Dead Danforths, all of them.

Or soon-to-be, if there was any justice in the world.

A servant took your coat. Another offered a tray of drinks. Somewhere deeper in the house, a string quartet was playing low enough to be mistaken at first for the hum of the building itself.

You didn’t take a drink.

Your mother did. Fast.

You glanced at her. “Comforting.”

“Don’t start.”

“I haven’t started anything.”

Her mouth tightened. “Please.”

You almost laughed at that. Please. As though this were one of those evenings that could still be guided into civility if only everyone used the right cutlery and kept their voices down.

As though you hadn’t spent the entire drive here feeling like livestock on the way to a very expensive slaughterhouse.

A third servant appeared, older than the others, spine straight as a blade.

“They’re waiting in the council room.”

Of course they were.

Not the dining room. Not the conservatory. Not any space with warmth or softness in its name. The council room.

You followed the servant through corridors that seemed designed to remind guests exactly whose house they were in—dark wood, arched thresholds, muted rugs softening every footstep, and pools of amber light that never quite reached the ceiling. The place had the hush of a church and the intimidation of a courtroom. Nothing garish. Nothing modern. Just old money and older control pressing in from every side.

By the time you reached the double doors at the end of the hall, your pulse was a hard, steady thing.

The servant opened them.

Conversation died.

The room beyond was formal without being grand, the sort of space built for family decisions no one else was meant to question. Dark walls drank the light. Amber sconces and shaded lamps threw a low glow across polished wood, heavy chairs, and a patterned rug worn soft beneath generations of expensive shoes. Nothing in it looked accidental. Every object seemed placed to frame authority. Several faces turned toward you and your family with the flat attentiveness of people already halfway through deciding what your life was worth.

You knew most of them by sight. You’d grown up in orbit around these people, at galas and funerals and charity auctions and whispered afterparties your parents thought you were too young to understand.

Danforths at the far end. A few representatives from other old families arranged like chess pieces around them. Lawyers. Advisors. Men who’d spent their whole lives confusing cruelty for refinement.

And there—

He sat to the left of the head chair, one elbow hooked over the armrest, looking as if the room had been designed around him rather than the other way around.

Titus Danforth.

You’d seen him before, of course. At distance. Across rooms. Once, years ago, on the courthouse steps with blood drying in a neat crescent along one cuff while reporters shouted questions no one had the spine to repeat once he’d looked their way.

But proximity was different.

Proximity made it clear why people lost their nerve around him.

He wasn’t the loudest person in the room. Wasn’t even pretending to be. He sat in dark formalwear cut so sharply it made everyone else look rumpled, one hand curved around the stem of a glass, the fire gilding the planes of his face. There was no impatience in him. No restless movement. Just a kind of waiting stillness that was somehow more threatening than temper ever could’ve been. The kind a predator had when it already knew the outcome and was merely letting the moment arrive in its own time.

His gaze touched your face and stayed there.

Not appreciative. Not exactly.

Assessing.

As if he’d been expecting you.

Your father cleared his throat beside you. The sound landed weak.

“Thank you for receiving us.”

One of the older Danforths smiled without showing teeth. “Please. Sit.”

You didn’t move.

“Before I do,” you said, “I’d like to know why I’m here.”

Your mother made a tiny, horrified sound under her breath.

No one else seemed especially surprised.

At the head of the table sat Chester Danforth, old and dry and ghastly elegant in black. He folded his hands and regarded you the way some men regarded racehorses before purchase.

“Direct,” he said.

“I come by it honestly.”

That earned the faintest flicker at the corner of Titus’s mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the thought of one.

You hated that you noticed.

Chester gestured to the empty chair opposite Titus. “Sit, and we’ll spare ourselves theatrics.”

“I’m not the one staging an ambush in a room called the council chamber.”

Your father hissed your name. You ignored him.

For three long seconds no one moved.

Then Titus set his glass down with a soft click.

The sound was quiet. It still cut through the room like piano wire.

“Let her stand,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Every other voice in the room simply vanished around it.

You looked at him.

He was still watching you with that unnerving steadiness, one hand resting loose on the arm of his chair, expression impossible to read in full. Calm, yes. Mild, even. But there was something underneath the mildness that felt sharpened and deliberate, like velvet laid over a blade.

Chester inclined his head as though the matter had been settled by a higher authority.

Of course it had.

“Very well,” he said. “You’re here because the Danforth family requires an alliance. Your family requires protection. In light of recent events, both interests are best served by unity.”

You stared at him. “That could mean anything.”

“It means,” said your father, not looking at you, “an engagement has been arranged.”

The room went perfectly still.

For a split second, all you heard was the fire.

Then you laughed.

It came out once, sharp and unbelieving, and then stopped dead when you realized no one else was joining you.

Your eyes went to your father. Then your mother. Then back to Chester.

Then finally, unwillingly, to Titus.

He hadn’t moved.

He looked exactly the same as he had a moment ago. Same posture. Same terrifying calm. Same gaze on your face, unreadable and fixed. As if he were watching the first inevitable crack spread through glass.

“No,” you said.

No one answered.

Your pulse kicked harder. “No.”

Chester folded his hands tighter. “This benefits everyone at the table.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Mind your tongue,” your father snapped.

You turned on him. “You don’t get to sell me to these people and then talk to me about my tongue.”

“Enough.”

That came from your mother, but it landed with none of the force she probably meant it to. Fear had already thinned her voice.

You looked back at the table. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re entirely serious,” Chester said.

“You think I’m going to agree to this?”

At that, Titus finally rose.

It was almost nothing, just the smooth shift of a man unfolding from a chair, but every eye in the room tracked it. He set one hand lightly on the table and regarded you across the candlelight.

He moved like someone who’d never been hurried in his life.

“You misunderstand,” he said.

His voice was low, polished, almost gentle. It should’ve sounded civilized. Instead it slid over your nerves like something expensive and lethal.

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

Silence.

Your throat went hot with fury.

He came around the table without urgency, passing the candelabra, the gleam of silver, the motionless figures seated on either side. Everyone made room for him instinctively, their bodies yielding before he even reached them.

He stopped a few feet away.

Closer now, he was worse.

There was nothing overt in his expression. No vulgar leer. No obvious satisfaction. If anything, he looked maddeningly composed, his dark tie immaculate, his cufflinks catching firelight, his face set in the kind of attentiveness most men only pretended to possess. The menace was in the precision of him. In the way he looked at you as though the rest of the room had ceased to matter.

You lifted your chin. “Then you can marry someone else.”

“I could,” he said.

The words were smooth as poured whiskey.

“I won’t.”

A silence opened between you, dense and ugly and charged.

You felt everyone in the room listening.

You also felt, with a sudden and vicious clarity, that Titus knew exactly what he was doing to you by answering this way. Not pushing. Not raising his voice. Not giving you anything easy to fight. He was refusing the argument by acting as if it had already ended.

You hated how effective it was.

“I’d rather die,” you said.

At that, finally, his mouth curved.

Not kindly.

Not much.

But enough.

“I know,” he said softly.

The words settled in your chest like a verdict.

Chester cleared his throat, too loudly this time, as if even he felt the room tipping out of his control and disliked it.

“The engagement will be announced within the week,” he said. “Preparations are already underway.”

You rounded on him. “You can go to hell.”

“Likely,” he said. “But you’ll still be married before we get there.”

Your father stood. “That’s enough.”

“No,” you sneered, not taking your eyes off the Danforths. “I think we’re all done pretending there’s a respectable version of this.”

Your hand was shaking. You curled it into your palm before anyone could see.

Titus noticed anyway. Of course he did.

He stepped aside at last, giving you a clear path to the door with the kind of grace that was more insulting than restraint.

“You’ve had a long evening,” he said. “You should rest.”

The dismissal in it lit something white-hot behind your ribs.

“Don’t speak to me like I belong here.”

He tilted his head just slightly. “Not yet.”

You left before you did something reckless enough to get your family buried in the gardens.

The door shut hard behind you. The corridor outside seemed colder than before, though the house was warm. You stood there for one sharp breath, then another, fighting the humiliating urge to pace like an ensnared animal.

Footsteps sounded behind you.

You turned, already furious.

Titus had come out alone, closing the council room doors with one hand. The sound of voices inside dimmed to a muffled murmur. He was nearer now than he’d been across the table, and the effect of that closeness was immediate and deeply inconvenient. His cologne was faint, expensive, something dark and resinous threaded with smoke. Beneath it clung the cleaner scent of starched cotton and cold night air, as if he’d come in not long before you had.

You hated that you could pick any of it out.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“No?”

“No.”

He regarded you for a beat. “You seem upset.”

That nearly did it.

A laugh broke out of you, sharp as cut glass. “Upset?”

“I’m trying to be charitable.”

“Try harder.”

For the first time, he looked almost entertained.

It made him worse.

He leaned one shoulder against the wall opposite you, casual in a way that felt studied enough to be its own kind of violence. The corridor light turned the edge of his face gold and left the rest in shadow.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“I’m furious.”

“Good.”

You blinked. “What?”

“I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.”

His gaze dropped, briefly, to your hand at your side—as if he could still see the tremor you’d hidden in the room—then rose again.

“I have no use for timid women,” he said.

The words should’ve sounded like flattery. Somehow they didn’t. Somehow they sounded like he was selecting a weapon.

“You don’t have any use for women at all,” you snapped. “You have uses.”

Another tiny curve at his mouth.

“Sharp,” he murmured. “That’s one of the reasons.”

You stared at him. “Reasons for what?”

Now he pushed away from the wall and closed the distance between you in two measured steps.

Not enough to touch.

Enough to make the corridor feel suddenly, suffocatingly smaller.

“For choosing you.”

Your breath caught despite yourself, more from disgust than anything else, and he saw that too. Saw everything. His attention was surgical. There was nowhere to put your face that didn’t feel noticed.

“You’re insane.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You think that makes this sound romantic?”

At that, something shifted in his expression—subtle, but real. Amusement thinning into something cooler.

“Romance,” he said, “is for people with the luxury of illusion.”

You opened your mouth. He kept going.

“This is better.”

His voice had gone quieter. Not softer. Quieter. A difference you felt in your blood.

“This is honest.”

You wanted to slap him.

You wanted, with equal intensity, to force him to lose that impossible composure just once, just long enough to prove he was made of the same ugly nerves and blood and temper as everyone else.

Instead you said, “I’m not some jewel you can buy and put in a case because the room looks empty without it.”

“No,” he said.

Then, before you could decide whether he meant to mock you, his hand lifted.

He touched the inside of your wrist.

Just that.

Two fingers over the pulse point, light enough that he could’ve pretended it was accidental if he’d been anyone else. It wasn’t. The contact was deliberate down to the last fraction of pressure. Warm. Gloveless. Intimate in a way a grope never could’ve been.

Your whole body went rigid.

He looked down at where he was touching you, not hungrily, not greedily, but with the awful, proprietary interest of a man appraising workmanship.

Then he lifted his gaze back to your face.

“You’re something much rarer,” he said.

You jerked your hand away so hard your bracelet bit your skin.

His expression didn’t change.

“Don’t touch me.”

A beat.

“As you wish.”

He stepped back.

That should’ve made you feel victorious. Somehow it didn’t. Somehow it felt as though he’d only let go because he’d wanted you to feel what he could do with almost nothing.

“I'm not gonna marry you,” you said.

He studied you in the silence that followed, eyes dark and steady, the corners of his mouth gone neutral again.

Then he said, “Get some sleep.”

You stared at him.

“You’ll look better rested in the ring.”

You might have hit him if a servant hadn’t turned the corner just then, carrying folded linens and immediately freezing at the sight of the two of you in the corridor.

Titus stepped away from you at once, immaculate again, every trace of intimacy wiped clean so thoroughly it made you feel briefly insane for sensing it in the first place.

He nodded once to the servant, then to you.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll have the heirlooms brought out.”

And just like that he was gone, walking back toward the council room as though he hadn’t just upended the axis of your life with all the emotional investment of a man confirming dinner plans.

The heirlooms came out the next afternoon.

Of course they did.

No miracle intervened overnight. No late-breaking scandal. No sudden attack of conscience among your parents. By morning the engagement had already taken on the slick, polished inevitability of something handled by people with too much money to imagine failure. Your mother wept in private and avoided your eyes in public. Your father busied himself with logistics. Flowers appeared. Fabric swatches. Guest lists. Security arrangements.

By noon you wanted to burn down half the city.

Instead you were brought to another formal room at Danforth mansion, quieter than the rest and no less oppressive for it. Low light slid across burnished wood, old upholstery, and display cabinets crowded with the sort of antiques families like this mistook for legacy. The air carried old linen, polished wood, and the dry velvet hush of jewelry kept shut away more often than worn.

At the center of the room waited three attendants and an open lacquered case lined in dark blue silk.

Jewels lay inside.

Diamonds. Emeralds. Pearls yellowed faintly with age. Rings in settings so old they looked less designed than inherited by force.

You stopped in the doorway. “No.”

One of the attendants offered a brittle smile. “Just the fitting, miss.”

“I said no.”

“Titus said yes.”

You turned.

He was already in the room.

You hadn’t heard him enter.

He stood by the windows in shirtsleeves and dark trousers, suit jacket draped over the back of a chair, hands loose in his pockets. The stripped-back look should’ve made him seem more human. It didn’t. It just made him look less ceremonial and somehow more dangerous for it, as if this was what he was underneath the polish and the cufflinks and the family theater—something patient, expensive, and impossible to shame.

“You dismissed my answer yesterday,” you said. “Don’t expect a different one today.”

“No,” he said. “I expect consistency. It’s one of your better qualities.”

The attendants looked studiously at the floor.

You hated this room. Hated the sun in it. Hated the flowers on the sideboard. Hated the neat arrangement of rings waiting to be tried on your hand like shackles dressed as heritage.

Most of all, you hated that Titus looked entirely at ease in your fury.

He crossed the room and stopped before the open case.

“Leave us.”

The attendants vanished with near comic speed.

The door clicked shut.

For a few seconds, all you heard was the tick of the mantel clock.

“You enjoy this,” you said.

“I enjoy certainty.”

“You enjoy watching people realize they’re trapped.”

He glanced over the jewels, then chose a ring without hesitation. Platinum, old-cut diamond, severe and devastatingly beautiful.

“No,” you said again.

He turned, ring held between two fingers.

“Come here.”

You laughed once, flat and incredulous. “Have you mistaken me for someone obedient?”

“No.” His gaze swept over you, unhurried. “That would bore me.”

The heat that rose in you then was almost worse for being useless. Anger, yes, but threaded through with something rawer—the fury of being seen too clearly by someone you wanted to despise in simple terms.

You didn’t move.

Titus did.

He closed the distance without any visible tension, as if walking toward you in a locked room was the least dramatic thing in the world. When he reached you, he took your hand before you could snatch it away, not rough, not hesitant, fingers closing around yours with a confidence so complete it felt like the roughness had been moved somewhere subtler and more humiliating.

Your breath caught.

“Let go.”

“In a moment.”

His thumb pressed once against your knuckles, angling your hand toward the light. Then he slid the ring down your finger.

It fit.

Perfectly.

Too perfectly.

For one hideous second neither of you spoke.

The diamond flashed cold fire.

You looked at it and felt something cavernous open beneath your ribs.

Titus didn’t release your hand right away. He turned it slightly, studying the ring where it sat on your finger, his expression unreadable except for the terrible concentration of it.

“There,” he said at last, voice low. “That’s better.”

You yanked your hand back.

The ring stayed where it was.

Panic flared mean and hot and stupidly physical.

“It’s too tight.”

“It isn’t.”

“I want it off.”

He lifted his eyes to your face.

“No,” he said.

A silence stretched. The clock ticked on. Somewhere outside the window, crows were making ugly sounds in the bare trees.

You curled your fingers into your palm, as if hiding the ring might somehow lessen it.

Titus watched the movement.

Then his gaze went to your mouth.

When he spoke again, it was quieter than before.

“You wear my name beautifully.”

The words hit like a slap.

You stared at him, pulse suddenly loud in your ears.

“Go fuck yourself.”

He smiled then—really smiled, though only with his mouth, and the sight of it was so unexpectedly handsome and so deeply wrong on his face that your stomach dropped.

“There she is,” he murmured.

He reached past you, only to lift the veil draped over the nearby chair—ivory lace, antique and absurdly delicate. For one surreal second he held it between his hands as though testing weight, texture, history.

Then, without asking, he raised it and let the fabric fall over your hair.

The world turned cream and shadow.

You froze.

Through the sheer lace, his face blurred and sharpened with your breathing.

He stepped in just close enough that if you leaned even a fraction you’d hit him.

“This,” he said, almost conversationally, “is what they’ll remember.”

Your mouth had gone dry. “Take it off.”

“One day,” he said, “you’ll stop mistaking resistance for power.”

Then he lifted the veil again, careful as a priest with a relic, and laid it back over the chair.

He walked past you toward the door, collected his jacket from the chair, and shrugged it on with neat, effortless movements.

At the entryway, he paused.

You hadn’t moved.

You weren’t sure you could.

Without turning fully back, he said, “Dinner at eight. Wear the ring.”

Then he left you standing in the middle of the dim room, hand curled around a diamond that felt like a brand, staring at the closed door and listening to the old house settle around you.

That night, when the servants finally left you alone in the dressing room and the last pin came out of your hair, you stood in front of the mirror and looked at yourself for a very long time.

The ring caught the candlelight.

The silk of your evening gown whispered when you breathed.

Somewhere downstairs, laughter floated up through the vents—soft, cultured, inhuman.

You touched the diamond once with your thumb.

Then you lifted your eyes to your own reflection and understood, with a sickening clarity that settled all the way into your bones, that this was happening.

Not as threat. Not as theory. Not as one more grotesque performance among powerful people.

As fact.

And worse than that—worse than the ring, worse than the veil, worse even than the way Titus looked at you like the ending had already been written—was the unbearable knowledge that he’d barely touched you at all.

A wrist.

A hand.

A veil lowered over your hair.

And still he was everywhere.

In the room. In your pulse. In the hard little silence that followed you even when no one was speaking.

You should’ve felt only rage.

You did feel rage.

But beneath it, humiliating and hot and impossible to deny, was the raw edge of anticipation.

As if some part of you had looked into the mouth of the trap and, for one terrible heartbeat, admired the craftsmanship.

You shut your eyes.

When you opened them again, your reflection was still there—dressed in silk, ringed in candlelight, already half transformed into something you didn’t recognize.

A bride in all but vows.

And somewhere in the house, calm as ever, Titus Danforth was waiting for the moment it became irreversible.

By the time they came for you, the house had already dressed itself for the ceremony.

That was the first thing you noticed when the door to your room opened and the morning’s hush gave way to movement—servants carrying white boxes and tissue paper, polished shoes whispering over the rugs, the faint drift of incense winding in from somewhere deeper in the estate. Danforth mansion had worn darkness well the night before. In daylight, it looked no less sinister. If anything, the low gold burn of lamplight against old wood and stone felt stranger with morning pressing at the windows, as though the house had refused the sun on principle and built its own atmosphere in defiance of it.

No one spoke above a murmur.

No one asked how you’d slept.

No one asked whether you still intended to go through with it.

By now, apparently, even the illusion of choice had been set aside.

The dress waited on a stand near the hearth.

White silk. Old lace. Long sleeves that narrowed at the wrist. A high collar fastened with tiny pearl buttons. Not soft. Not romantic. It was too severe for that, too deliberate in every line. It looked less like something chosen for a bride and more like something selected for an offering.

You stared at it until one of the women gently asked you to raise your arms.

You did.

Not because you’d surrendered. Not because you’d accepted a single goddamn thing about this day.

Because refusal had become useless in increments so precise you’d barely felt them happening.

First the dinner. Then the announcement. Then the ring. Then the veil lowered over your hair by the same hand that would, by nightfall, claim you before a room full of witnesses and call it sanctified because rich families had always known how to dress violence in ceremony and get away with it.

Layer by layer, the dress closed around you.

Silk sliding over skin. Lace hugging your throat. The snug draw of the fitted bodice. Fingers at the back fastening button after button until you could feel the weight of yourself altered by craft alone. Someone arranged your hair. Someone else fitted earrings at your ears—diamonds old enough to have belonged to women who’d probably smiled through their own ruin with better posture than yours.

You stood still through all of it, hands loose at your sides, face turned slightly toward the mirror without truly looking into it.

Only when one of the women reached for your left hand did your attention sharpen.

She paused when she saw the ring already there.

Of course she did.

A servant behind you lowered her voice. “Mr. Danforth said it wasn’t to be removed.”

A strange silence followed that.

No one looked directly at you after that.

When they were finished, the room emptied in stages until only one woman remained to settle the veil over your hair. The lace spilled cool and weightless down your back, brushing your shoulders, your spine, the backs of your arms.

She stepped away.

The door shut behind her.

At last, you were alone.

You lifted your eyes to the mirror.

For a long moment, you didn’t breathe.

The woman staring back at you looked composed. Expensive. Untouchable in the way statues were untouchable—seen, admired, paraded, and entirely at the mercy of the hands that placed them where they stood. The silk gave you an elegance you hadn’t asked for. The veil softened nothing. The ring flashed like a hard little fact.

You looked like you belonged to the house already.

Your mouth tightened.

A knock sounded once at the door. Not tentative. Not loud. Just enough.

Before you could answer, it opened.

Titus entered alone.

He shut the door behind him without taking his eyes off you.

For a second neither of you spoke.

He was dressed in black.

The sight of him in it did something ugly to your pulse.

Not because black was novel. Men wore black every day in houses like this and called it timeless. But on Titus it looked less like formality and more like a decision. The cut of the suit was ruthless. The white at his throat only made the rest of him darker by contrast. Every line of him was composed down to the smallest detail—cufflinks, watch, the fall of the jacket, the gleam of his dress shoes. Not a hair out of place. Not a flicker of nerves visible anywhere.

As if weddings were nothing.

As if forcing a woman to the altar were only monstrous when poorer men did it badly.

His gaze moved over you once, slowly.

Not leering.

Worse.

Appraising.

And, beneath that, unmistakably pleased.

“You look right in it,” he said.

Your fingers curled at your sides. “That’s a disgusting thing to say to someone on their wedding day.”

“If you were interested in pretty lies, I’d have chosen someone else.”

“You keep saying things like that as if I’m supposed to be flattered.”

“No,” he said.

He crossed the room at the same maddening, measured pace he brought to everything, then stopped behind you rather than in front of you. In the mirror, you saw him lift one hand toward the veil where it fell from your hair.

He didn’t touch it yet.

“Flattery is cheap,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Your throat went dry with anger.

“And the truth is what, exactly?”

His eyes met yours in the glass.

“That you were made for this room better than most of the people born into it.”

Silence rang between you.

The words should’ve sounded manipulative. They were manipulative. That didn’t stop them from landing with a sharpness that made your stomach knot.

You hated him for knowing how to speak to pride instead of fear.

You hated yourself a little for listening.

His fingers finally closed over a fold of lace, adjusting the fall of the veil with careful precision.

“I’m not walking willingly into this,” you said.

“No,” he answered. “Willingness was never the part I required from you.”

You turned then, fast enough that the veil stirred around your shoulders.

His hand fell away.

“Do you hear yourself?” you demanded. “Do you ever once hear the things that come out of your mouth and think 'maybe I sound like a fucking monster?'”

His expression didn’t change.

“No.”

The bluntness of it nearly made you laugh.

Instead you said, “You should.”

“Would it help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would make you less unbearable.”

He considered that as if you’d offered him a practical question rather than an insult.

Then, with the faintest ghost of amusement: “I doubt it.”

A noise escaped you—somewhere between a scoff and a disbelieving breath.

He studied you for another second, then reached up and rested two fingers beneath your chin.

The contact was light.

Still, your body went taut at once.

He tilted your face slightly, not enough to be rough, just enough to make the gesture impossible to mistake for anything other than control.

“You can glare at me all the way to the altar if it eases you,” he said. “I won’t object.”

Your gaze locked on his.

“And after?”

His eyes were very dark at this distance. Steady. Inhumanly patient.

“After,” he said, “you’ll have the courtesy to stop acting surprised.”

He let go.

A knock sounded again—this time from outside, followed by a servant’s careful voice letting Titus know the family was assembled.

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at you one last time, gaze dropping briefly to the ring, then returning to your face.

“Come along, then,” he said softly. “You’ve kept them waiting long enough.”

The room they’d chosen for the ceremony wasn’t a church.

That would’ve been almost comforting in its hypocrisy.

No, this was worse.

It was one of the larger formal chambers at the heart of the estate, transformed not into something holy but into something that wanted to be mistaken for holiness by people who’d spent generations believing money, blood, and repetition could manufacture sacred things where none existed naturally. Rows of chairs had been arranged in exact lines beneath amber sconces and shaded lamps. Candles burned in clusters on tables and ledges, their light wavering against dark wood and old stone. White flowers had been brought in, but even they couldn’t soften the room. They only sharpened the hush of it, their perfume drifting too sweet through air that still carried incense and polished furniture and the cold mineral smell of old walls.

At the front of the room stood a narrow dais.

On it, beneath the low gold burn of the lights, waited Titus.

For one traitorous moment, you forgot how to breathe.

He looked as though the whole room had been built for the sole purpose of framing him here—black suit, white shirt, hands loosely clasped in front of him, face composed into something calm enough to pass for reverence if a person were stupid enough to want to believe in it. He didn’t shift when you entered. Didn’t smile. Didn’t do anything theatrical to mark the moment. He simply watched you begin the walk toward him with the same certainty he’d brought to every other stage of this from the start.

The aisle felt longer than it should have.

The veil softened the edges of the room but sharpened everything that mattered. The drum of your own pulse. The whisper of silk around your ankles. The flicker of candlelight on brass and crystal. Faces turning to look. Families gathered in ordered silence, all of them dressed in mourning colors and jewels as if they’d come not to bless a union but to witness a sealing.

Your father escorted you only halfway.

That had been decided without your input too.

At the midpoint he stopped, his fingers pressing once at your arm before withdrawing. He didn’t look at you when he let go. He looked at Titus.

Like a man delivering something expensive and breakable into the hands of its new owner.

You wanted to scream.

Instead you kept walking.

Titus stepped down from the dais to meet you before the final few feet had been crossed.

Again, not showy. Just controlled. Precise in his timing. He offered his hand.

You looked at it.

The last time he’d taken your hand, a ring had gone onto your finger and stayed there.

Every instinct in you recoiled.

Every eye in the room waited.

At last, you placed your hand in his.

His fingers closed around yours at once, steady and cool, not squeezing, not stroking—just holding, as if the contact itself were enough to announce the rest.

Then he led you up to stand beside him beneath the candles.

The officiant—one of the council men, grey-haired and grave in a dark suit—began to speak.

You barely heard the first part.

Something about alliance. About continuity. About two houses joined in mutual strength and common purpose. About the preservation of legacy and the solemn duty of those called to steward it. The usual poison dressed as tradition.

Your attention kept snagging on smaller things instead. The warmth of Titus at your side. The line of his shoulder just inside your vision. The weight of the ring on your finger. The scent of wax and flowers and the faint resinous cologne that clung to him whenever he leaned the slightest bit nearer.

Then came the vows.

The officiant prompted Titus first.

Of course he’d go first.

Titus turned toward you fully, and the room seemed to recede in a single slow pulse.

You braced yourself for prettiness.

He gave you none.

“I take you before these witnesses,” he said, voice low and even, carrying cleanly through the chamber without ever needing to rise, “to stand at my side, to bear my name, and to be kept under my protection as long as I draw breath.”

Your heartbeat stuttered.

The officiant should’ve interrupted. No one did.

Titus went on, eyes fixed on yours.

“What is mine, I keep. What I keep, I defend. Before family, law, and God, I bind myself to that duty.”

A murmur, almost too soft to be called one, moved through the guests and died.

You stared at him.

He had not improvised those words in the moment. You knew that instantly. He had chosen them. Considered them. Brought them here intact.

Protection.

Keeping.

Duty.

Not love. Never love. Something older and harder and far more dangerous in a man like him because it asked for nothing tender in return.

When it was your turn, the officiant prompted you too quickly, as if fearful of giving anyone more time than necessary to think about what had just been said aloud.

Your own repeated words tasted strange in your mouth. Ancient. Formal. Sanded smooth by a hundred dead brides before you, none of whom had likely been allowed the comfort of saying what they meant either.

You spoke them anyway.

What else was left?

By the time the ring exchange came, your hand was colder than the diamonds.

Titus took it again.

His thumb brushed once across your knuckles before he adjusted the ring already there, turning the stone minutely until it caught the light. The gesture was so small that no one but you could’ve understood it for what it was.

Not placement.

Possession.

The officiant said the last words. The room held its breath.

Then, with solemn satisfaction: “It is done.”

Done.

Not blessed. Not celebrated. Done.

Titus lifted the veil from your face.

The lace slid back in a whisper.

For one suspended second, with the room silent and the candles throwing gold around both of you, his hand stayed at the edge of your jaw.

Then he leaned in and kissed you.

It was brief.

Formal.

It should’ve been nothing.

Instead it landed with devastating accuracy—mouth firm against yours, measured enough to be publicly appropriate and intimate enough to feel like a warning. No fumbling hunger. No softness. Just the terrible confidence of a man sealing a contract in front of Mr. Le Bail and witnesses.

When he drew back, the room returned all at once.

People rose.

Applause began, muted but insistent.

And you stood there in white silk with Titus Danforth’s hand at the small of your back, feeling the whole world slide one inch further off its axis.

The reception took place in an adjoining room that had been rearranged for dinner.

Long table. Candlelight. Crystal. Flowers in low arrangements pale as bone. More guests than before, though still not enough to pretend this was anything other than a tightly controlled family affair. The house had shifted its posture for the occasion, but it hadn’t softened. Laughter never rose very high. Music from the quartet stayed low and bloodless. Even the servants moved differently now—quicker, quieter, as if aware that some threshold had been crossed and the air itself required more caution.

You were seated beside Titus at the center of the table.

Of course you were.

Your chair had barely been pushed in before the procession of toasts began. Chester first, speaking about continuity and the strength of old alliances. Another council member after him, congratulating both families on their wisdom. Someone from your side talking about endurance in terms so neutral they might as well have been discussing architecture.

Through all of it, Titus remained maddeningly composed.

He didn’t drink much. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t lean into the performance the way lesser men would have. He listened when required, inclined his head when politeness demanded it, and kept one hand resting lightly against the back of your chair as if the gesture cost him no thought at all.

It cost you plenty.

Every time his fingers shifted against the carved wood behind you, you felt it.

Every time someone addressed you both as if this were a union freely entered, your jaw tightened a little further.

At one point Chester lifted his glass and toasted “to the new Mrs. Danforth.”

Your stomach turned.

Without looking at Titus, you reached for your wine and drank.

Next to you, he said very quietly, “You’ll make your teeth ache if you grind them any harder.”

You set the glass down. “I hope that’s what ruins the evening for you.”

“My evening is going extremely well.”

You turned your head a fraction. “I hate you.”

His expression didn’t shift. He lifted his own glass, took one measured sip, and set it back down.

“I know.”

The calm with which he said it made you want to stab him with the dessert fork.

Instead you faced forward again, eyes on the flowers, on the crystal, on the slow moving reflections in your wineglass.

A beat later, you felt his thumb brush once along the back edge of your chair, impossibly close to the bare stretch of skin at your neck where the veil no longer covered you.

Not quite touching.

Worse than touching.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured.

“I’m restraining myself.”

“So am I.”

The words dropped into your lap like lit coals.

You went very still.

To anyone watching, nothing had changed. The new husband and wife sat side by side beneath candlelight and public approval, speaking quietly as refined people did at refined tables. No one would’ve guessed that your pulse had gone ragged or that Titus, without so much as lifting his voice, had just made it brutally clear how thin his own leash was running.

You looked at him then.

He was already watching the room again, not you.

The side of his face gave away nothing.

And somehow that was the worst part. That he could put words like that into your blood and then look away as though the act required nothing of him.

Dinner stretched.

Courses came and went barely tasted. Congratulations arrived in tidy lines, most of them spoken to Titus first and you second. He accepted them with cool ease. You endured them. The ring on your finger felt heavier with every passing minute.

At last, after coffee was poured and the last formal toast had died, Titus rose.

The room quieted.

He offered no speech.

No grand gratitude.

He simply placed one hand over the back of your chair, and the collected company seemed to understand all at once what that meant.

The evening’s public portion had ended.

Your chair scraped softly as you stood.

No one tried to stop you. No one looked shocked. Not one face in the room betrayed even a flicker of discomfort. Why would it? This, after all, was what the entire day had been arranged to culminate in. The silk. The flowers. The vows. The blessing. The dinner. All of it had been a polished corridor leading neatly toward one private room and the man waiting to take you there.

Titus settled his hand at your back.

The gesture was light.

It might as well have been a brand.

“Goodnight,” Chester said, in the tone of a man concluding excellent business.

You looked at him and thought, very clearly, that if there were a hell deep enough for families like this, it ought to have separate wings.

Then Titus guided you out.

The corridor beyond the reception room was quiet enough to hear the house settling around you.

No quartet here. No voices. Just the soft drag of your skirt over the rugs and the measured tread of Titus’s shoes beside your own, the low amber light along the walls, the old wood and stone holding the evening’s warmth close.

He didn’t hurry.

That, more than anything, began to fray your composure.

If he’d dragged you off in triumph, if he’d shown one crude crack of appetite, you could have despised him cleanly for it. But he moved through the corridor with the same composure he’d brought to the altar and the dinner table, as if what waited at the end of this walk were not a wife he’d cornered by increments but merely the next solemn duty in a day of solemn duties.

You hated how much more frightening that made him.

At the first turn in the hall, you stopped walking.

His hand fell from your back.

He turned to look at you.

“No.”

The word came out low, hard, breathless with everything you’d held in all night.

For the first time since leaving the reception, his attention sharpened fully onto you.

“No?” he repeated.

“You don’t get to act like this is just another room.” Your voice shook once and steadied. “You don’t get to walk me through your house like I’m already trained to it.”

He watched you in silence.

The amber sconces lit one side of his face and left the other in shadow. His collar was still neat. His expression still controlled. Only his eyes had changed, going darker somehow, more focused.

“Have I given you the impression I think tonight is unimportant?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Interesting.”

You laughed once, ugly and tired. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I mean it.” You stepped closer before you could stop yourself, rage making you reckless. “You stand there acting like the most monstrous thing about you is your honesty, when really it’s the calm. It’s the way you do all of this”—you gestured between him, the house, the dress, the ring, the whole suffocating architecture of the night—“like you’ve already forgiven yourself for it.”

His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.

“I haven’t forgiven myself for anything.”

The quiet certainty in that landed harder than denial would have.

You stared at him.

“Then what exactly do you call this?” you asked.

His answer came without hesitation.

“An inevitability.”

Something about that word, spoken there in the hush of the corridor with the whole house closing around it, made your anger slip briefly into something more dangerous. Not fear exactly. Not surrender. Something sharper. The vertigo of standing too near the edge of a decision already made by someone else.

You should’ve stepped back.

Instead you stayed where you were.

Titus took in the fact of that and said, very softly, “Ask me what you’ve been asking yourself all day.”

You frowned. “What?”

His eyes never left yours.

“Why you.”

The breath left you in a quiet rush.

For a second the only sound was the low hiss of one of the wall sconces.

Then, because the question had been clawing at you in one form or another since the council room, you said it.

“Why me?”

No smile touched his face this time.

No indulgence either.

When he answered, it was with a steadiness so complete it almost felt cruel.

“Because you’re the only person in either family who looked at me and saw the cost before the reward.”

Your throat tightened.

He took one step nearer.

“Because you know what rooms like these are made for, and you walk into them anyway with your head high.”

Another step.

“Because you’re not soft enough to bore me, not foolish enough to flatter, and not weak enough to break usefully.”

The words should have insulted. Somehow they didn’t. Not entirely.

His gaze dipped to the ring on your hand, then returned to your face.

“And because when I thought of the seat beside mine,” he said, “I found I had no interest in seeing anyone else there.”

Silence.

It hit deeper than any prettier answer could have. Not because it was tender. God, it wasn’t tender. But because it sounded horribly true.

You swallowed.

“That isn’t a reason,” you said, though your voice no longer had the strength it had a minute ago.

“It is to me.”

Then he reached for your hand.

You let him.

Maybe because the fight had shifted. Maybe because the entire day had stripped choice down so thin that this no longer felt like the battlefield to spend it on. Maybe because some ruined part of you wanted to see what his face would look like if he touched the ring now, here, with no witnesses left to perform for.

His fingers closed over yours and lifted your hand between you.

He turned the ring once more in the light.

Then, without breaking eye contact, he pressed his mouth to the stone.

Not your knuckles.

Not your skin.

The ring.

The gesture was so restrained it nearly undid you.

When he lowered your hand again, his thumb moved once along the inside of your wrist.

“Come with me,” he said.

Not a command barked out for effect. Not a plea.

Something worse.

Something spoken like fact.

You went.

The room at the end of the corridor was not the sentimental bridal chamber of old stories.

Nothing in Danforth mansion would ever allow itself that kind of softness.

It was large, yes, and beautifully appointed in the cold, curated way every room in the estate seemed to be—dark wood, old stone, low lamps, a bed hung with pale fabric, an antique wardrobe, a fire banked low in the hearth. Candles glowed on the mantel and bedside tables, their light turning the silk coverlet and the lace at your sleeves to shifting gold and cream. Somewhere incense had been burned earlier. The air still held the fading trace of it under the cleaner scents of linen and polished furniture.

The door shut behind you.

The click of the latch ran through your body like a second pulse.

You stood just inside the room, veil trailing behind you, hands at your sides.

Titus remained by the door for one measured second, watching you.

Then he crossed to you and stopped close enough that you could feel the warmth of him through layers of fabric.

Neither of you spoke.

The room had gone intensely quiet.

At last he lifted a hand and touched the edge of the veil where it fell over your shoulder.

“This first,” he said.

He drew it back slowly, letting the lace slide free from your hair and shoulders in a long soft waterfall. When it was clear of you, he laid it aside with a care that felt almost obscene in its contrast to the violence of the day.

Then his hands returned to you.

One at either wrist.

Not pinning. Not rough.

Only holding for a moment, as if acquainting himself with the fact of you in this room, under his name, in the clothes chosen for this exact hour.

Your breathing was no longer steady.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You’re angry,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

It almost made you laugh.

“Is that still your favorite thing about me?”

“No,” he said.

His thumbs shifted once against your pulse points.

“That changed when you walked toward me.”

The room tipped very slightly around the edges.

You looked up at him. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Say things like that now.”

A flicker—not amusement, not quite, but close—moved at the corner of his mouth.

“Now,” he said, “is exactly when I mean them.”

His right hand released your wrist and rose to the pearl buttons at your throat.

He paused there.

Waited.

You could have stepped back.

You didn’t.

One by one, he opened the collar o f the gown.

Each button slipped free with a tiny sound that seemed to echo. Cool air touched your skin where the dress loosened. His knuckles brushed your throat once, then the line beneath it. No haste. No fumbling. Just that same devastating patience he brought to everything, as if he intended to prove that he had all the time in the world to watch every last defense come apart.

When the last button at the collar was undone, he let his hand rest briefly at the base of your throat.

“Still surprised?” he asked.

You hated how breathless your answer sounded. “No.”

“Liar.”

The word was almost gentle.

You stared at him.

Then, because pride was the one thing still reliably yours, you said, “I’m not afraid of you.”

His gaze held yours for a long beat.

“Not in the way you expected,” he said.

And because that was true—because that was the worst truth of the night, that fear had been joined by something hotter and more humiliating and infinitely more complicated—you said nothing at all.

He looked at you for another second.

Then he angled his head toward yours, mouth near your temple, your hair, your ear.

When he spoke, his voice was so low it seemed to belong to the room itself.

“That’s enough pretending.”

And then his mouth was on yours. It’s nothing like the chaste, public kiss at the altar. This was wet and sloppy, his tongue pushing past your lips before you could even think to deny him. You taste the expensive whiskey he drank at the reception, the sharpness of it, and something else—something just him. Your head spun. Your hands came up, flat against the hard wall of his chest in his tailored jacket, but you don’t push. You can’t. The fight has bled out of you, leaving a hollow, accepting ache.

One of his hands leaves your face, slides down your spine, over the intricate beading of the wedding gown. It finds the curve of your ass and grips, hard, fingers digging into the silk and the flesh beneath. He groans into your mouth, the sound vibrating through you. He pulls your hips flush against his, and you feel the thick, hard length of him straining against his dress pants, pressed against your belly. A shudder runs through you, involuntary. Your body betrays you, a flush of heat spreading low in your stomach.

He breaks the kiss, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his. His breathing is ragged. “Look at you,” he says, his voice a rough, velvet baritone. “My wife.”

His fingers find the hidden zipper at the side of your dress. The sound of it parting is the sound of your last defense falling. The heavy silk gown slumps, and he pushes it from your shoulders. It pools at your feet, a puddle of white and silver on the dark patterned rug. You stand before him in only your lace-trimmed stockings, garter belt, and a pair of delicate silk panties. The air in the chamber is cool on your bare skin, raising goosebumps. His gaze is a physical weight, traveling over your breasts, your stomach, the juncture of your thighs.

“Perfect,” he breathes. It’s not a compliment. It’s an assessment.

He shrugs out of his own jacket, lets it fall carelessly. His fingers make quick work of his cufflinks, his shirt buttons. He strips to the waist, revealing defined muscle underneath. You’ve never seen him like this—not a politician, not a strategist. Just a man. A predator in his den. He steps forward, closing the distance, and his bare chest brushes against your nipples. You gasp. They’re already tight, sensitive.

He doesn’t kiss you again. He lowers his head, his mouth finding the slope of your breast. His tongue flicks over one nipple, once, twice, through the lace of your bra. Then his teeth graze it. You cry out, a short, sharp sound. Your hands fly to his hair, the greying strands surprisingly soft between your fingers. You don’t know if you’re pulling him away or holding him there.

He answers by unhooking the front clasp of your bra. It falls open. His mouth is on you instantly, hot and wet, sucking your bare nipple deep. The pull is exquisite, a sharp pleasure that arrows straight to your cunt. You feel yourself getting wet, a slick, embarrassing heat. You’re panting. Your head falls back.

“So responsive,” he murmurs against your skin, switching to the other breast. His hand comes up to knead the one his mouth left, pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “This belongs to me now. This body. This sweet gasp.” He sucks harder, and your knees buckle. His arm bands around your waist, holding you up. “Say it.”

You can’t. The words won’t form. You just moan, a broken, needy sound.

He straightens, his lips glistening. His hands go to the fastening of his trousers. “On the bed, darling. On your back. Legs spread for your husband.”

The command brooks no argument. The formality of ‘Eleanor’ in the midst of this filth makes your stomach clench. You move to the massive four-poster bed, the dark velvet coverlet cool under your back. You look up at the canopy, the Danforth crest embroidered there. You spread your legs. The cool air touches your wetness through the silk of your panties. You’re exposed. You’re his.

He pushed his pantsand briefs down, his cock springing free. It’s thick, flushed an angry red, the head slick with pre-cum. He’s fully erect, veins standing out along the length. He strokes himself once, his eyes locked on where you’re laid out for him. “Look at you waiting for it.”

He climbs onto the bed, kneeling between your thighs. He hooks his fingers in the waistband of your panties and pulls them down, slowly, dragging the damp silk over your hips, your thighs. He tosses them aside. Then he just looks. At your bare cunt, glistening and already swollen for him. His jaw tightens. “Beautiful. So fucking wet for me already.”

He doesn’t use his fingers first. He lowers his head. His breath ghosts over you, hot. Then his tongue, flat and broad, licks a slow, firm stripe from your entrance to your clit. You jolt, a full-body spasm, a choked sob escaping your throat. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

He eats you like a man starved. His tongue circles your clit, flicks it, then pushes inside you, fucking you with it. The wet, obscene sounds fill the silent chamber. Your hips lift off the bed, seeking more pressure, more of that devastating friction. One of his hands pins your hip to the mattress. The other slides up your body, his thumb finding your mouth. “Suck,” he orders.

You open your mouth, take his thumb inside. You suck on it, the salt of his skin on your tongue, as his tongue fucks you deeper. The dual sensations unravel you. The coil in your belly tightens, a terrifying, inevitable pull.

“That’s it,” he growls against your cunt, his voice muffled by your flesh. “Come on my tongue, wife. Let me taste it.”

His words are the final trigger. Your orgasm crashes over you, a silent, seizing wave. Your back arches, your cunt clenching around nothing, around his tongue, pulses of pure, mindless pleasure wracking you. You cry out around his thumb, the sound swallowed by the room.

He doesn’t let you come down. As the last tremors shake your thighs, he rises over you. The broad head of his cock presses against your soaked entrance. He’s not asking. He’s positioning. You’re still spasming, oversensitive, when he pushes inside.

The stretch is breathtaking. He’s so thick, filling you in a way that borders on pain. You gasp, your nails digging into the velvet coverlet. He sinks in slowly, relentlessly, until his hips are flush with yours, until he’s buried to the hilt. You feel him throbbing inside you, a deep, insistent pulse. He’s so deep. You’re so full.

“Mine,” he grunts, the word punched out of him. He pulls back almost all the way, then drives back in. The pace he sets is brutal, possessive. Each thrust is a claiming. The wet slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed, his ragged breaths—it’s the only music. He watches your face, his eyes burning. “Take it. Take your husband’s cock. This cunt was made for this. For me.”

You can’t speak. You can only feel. The drag of him inside you, the delicious friction, the building pressure again, already, so soon after your first peak. Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. You surrender to it. To him. This is your fate. This is your marriage bed.

His thrusts become erratic, harder, deeper. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Gonna fill you,” he pants. “Gonna put my heir in you. Right now.”

He slams into you one final time, burying himself as deep as he can go. You feel him pulse, then the hot, sudden flood of his release filling you. It’s thick, so much of it, spilling inside you, marking you. A low, guttural groan tears from his chest, and he collapses his weight onto you, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

You lie there, joined, his cock still lodged inside you, his cum leaking out around where you’re stretched around him. The smell of sex, of sweat, of him, is overwhelming. Your body is humming, spent. The defiance is gone. In its place is a hollow, terrifying acceptance. You are his wife. You are carrying his seed.

He shifts, pulling out of you slowly. A gush of his release follows, warm on your inner thigh. He rolls onto his back beside you, one arm thrown over his eyes. His chest rises and falls steadily. After a moment, his hand finds yours on the bed between you. His fingers lace through yours, holding tight. He doesn’t speak.

Afterward, the room looked altered.

Not destroyed. Titus wouldn’t have allowed destruction in the vulgar sense. But changed. The veil half fallen from where he’d placed it aside. Candlelight guttering lower. Silk drawn into new creases. One earring missing from where it had once sat at your ear, now glinting faintly near the edge of the coverlet. The air warmer than before, touched through with the fading incense, the spent sweetness of candles, the sharper living heat of skin.

You lay against the pillows, breathing slower by degrees.

Titus sat beside you, one forearm braced along the mattress as he looked down at you with that same impossible composure he’d worn all evening—except now there was something else in it too. Not softness. He did not become soft. But satisfaction, yes. A terrible, settled kind of satisfaction, like a lock finally turned all the way home.

His hand closed lightly around your left hand where it rested atop the coverlet.

He turned the ring once beneath his thumb.

The diamond caught the candlelight.

“There,” he said quietly.

Your eyes lifted to his face.

“There what?”

He looked at the ring, then at you.

“Now it looks earned.”

You should have told him to go to hell.

The words didn’t come.

He raised your hand and pressed his mouth, this time, to your knuckles. A brief touch. Almost formal. Worse somehow for that.

Then he lowered your hand again and settled it back against the coverlet, leaving his own over it.

“My wife,” he said.

The title moved through you differently now.

Not easier. Not cleaner. But deeper.

You stared at the canopy above the bed for a long moment, listening to the fire settle in the hearth, to the quiet breath of the old house around you, to Titus’s silence at your side. Somewhere under the ache in your body and the rage still glowing stubbornly in the corners of you, something else had begun to take root. Not peace. Never that.

Recognition, maybe.

Of what he was.

Of what this was.

Of the fact that the cage had shut, yes—but also that he had never lied to you about the bars.

At length, you turned your head to look at him.

He was already watching.

Of course he was.

That dark, unreadable gaze met yours, and for the first time since the council room, you didn’t look away.

Whatever he saw in your face then made something shift, almost imperceptibly, in his expression.

Approval.

Not because you were meek. Not because you were broken.

Because you were still there.

Still proud. Still furious. Still looking back.

His thumb moved once over your ring.

“You understand now,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

You should have denied it.

You should have laughed in his face, turned away, spit the title back at him like poison.

Instead you lay in his bed with his name on your hand and his scent in the sheets and met his eyes long enough for the silence itself to become an answer.

Outside the closed door, the house remained what it had always been—old, watchful, merciless.

Inside, candlelight trembled against the walls, and Titus Danforth looked at you like the long wait had finally ended.

Somewhere in the distance, far below the room you now occupied, the estate settled deeper into its foundations.

And beside him, still wearing white gone warm in the dark, you understood with sudden, terrible clarity that the most frightening thing about the night was no longer that it had become irreversible.

The wedding was nice. The tall windows in the Danforth estate ballroom illuminated a room decorated with white dahlias and yellow alstroemerias. Silk ribbons and twinkling fairylights wound around the columns and rows of oak chairs faced a glorious altar, with the Danforth ram’s head sculpted into the marble arch. An air of sophistication permeated the room, as it tended to do when the world’s most influential people were gathered together. You were seated in the third row, behind the immediate families and friends. Titus sat to your left, thigh pressing against yours. He held your hand in his, rubbing small circles with his thumb and playing with your wedding ring. The act made you smile. 

To the world, Titus Danforth was a brute- and that wasn’t untrue. He had a complex, you knew that, but he had never once done anything to purposefully hurt or scare you. One time after a hunt, he had that wild look in his eyes. And you’d be lying if it didn’t scare you a little. But the moment that his fingers touched your skin, he relaxed. Titus was like your guard dog, a position he wore like a badge of fucking honor. Sometimes he bit, but never the hand that fed him. You loved him. And maybe it wasn’t in a completely healthy way, but who gave a shit? Titus loved you in his own way. You fought occasionally, but damn if he didn’t bring you a bouquet of your favorite flowers the next day and spend the night on his knees making it up to you. He was your Titus. And he knew it, which is why he could be himself around you. He didn’t need to put on the mask around you like he did with his family. Titus was a complex man. Blood-thirsty during the games, and yet so very gentle to you in everyday life. In the early phases of your relationship, you had spent hours in the soft light of early morning talking, curled up in the luxury bamboo sheets of his bedroom with the fireplace coals still smoldering. He had spilled his heart to you, eyes wet and breathing uneven. How he had been trained as a killer since he was a kid, how he never felt like he was his own man, how his sister was the real ‘heir’ of the family name, how he was scared to have children (especially a son) because he might fuck them up like his father did to him. You had listened with open ears and kind eyes. You had pressed his head to his chest and covered him in kisses saying that you weren’t going anywhere, and thanking him for being so vulnerable. And when you survived your wedding night, he had proposed to you again, promising to never let any harm come to you as long as you both shall live. And you had accepted, the pendant he had gotten you resting gently against your blood-splattered skin. You soothed him, brought him down from edges that would result in casualties. Some might have said you made him soft. And to those people, Titus would nod and beat the shit out of them.

You had a distant look in your eye and Titus noticed. He stopped fiddling with your ring, the ring that made you cry tears of joy when you first saw it, and intertwined his fingers with yours. Titus leaned over slightly in your direction. 

“She can do so much better,” he murmured, only loud enough for you to hear. You gave a small huff of amusement.

“Be nice.” You scolded softly, eyes still locked on the couple exchanging vows. But he was right. The wedding was for a Danforth cousin, one you hadn’t been introduced to until that morning. Even though you and Titus had been married for the better part of five years. The acting heads of the Danforth family tried to keep the outer edges of the family away. Something about keeping secrets closely guarded. You supposed it was a wise idea, given the nature of the family’s pastimes. But every Danforth, no matter how far removed, was required to be married at the estate. The ancestral home. And, of course, required to participate in the matrimonial hunt. You knew every family did their hunts a little differently- some prioritizing certain aspects over others. But the Danforths were focused on their bloodline. Hunting down a new member of the family wasn’t done out of necessity or the fact that the entire family would combust if they didn’t (because that wasn’t part of the Danforth contract). No. Instead, the purpose of the hunt was to prove that the new member belonged. That they were cunning and a survivalist, willing to do whatever it took to live as a Danforth. If they survived, great! If they didn’t…well, then they didn’t deserve to be a part of such a prestigious family in the first place. And, if you were being honest, the man standing at the altar likely would not survive the night. But hey, he could surprise everyone. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. 

“I just want them out of our fucking house.” You heard Titus sigh heavily beside you. His knee began to bounce. He was getting bored and impatient. You were sitting in the third row behind the friends and family of this unknown cousin. They had been exchanging vows for what seemed like forever. You moved your hand from where it was intertwined with Titus, an action that made him furrow his brow and pout slightly. But the look disappeared when you placed your palm on his knee, giving a reassuring squeeze. You shifted in your seat and fully tilted your head so that your lips were brushing against his ear.

“You’re doing so well, baby,” You whispered breathily. A sinister grin formed on your lips as you felt him go still beneath you. “Just think of all the excitement waiting for you tonight.” Titus’ gaze flicked to the groom and his breath started to grow uneven. He gave a nod and squeezed your hand with his. “Just a little longer, ‘kay sweetie?” You pulled back and captured Titus’ gaze. His eyes were growing dark, the way they always did before a hunt. The muscle in his jaw ticked and he nodded before returning his attention to the ceremony.

ˋ°•*⁀➷

Finally, the new couple was married. The room erupted into cheers and congratulations, though certain members of the family were notably more reserved, no doubt thinking about what was next on the agenda. The congregation rose from their seats as the bride and groom walked down the aisle together and through the large dark oak double doors into the reception area. You stretched as the people began to follow, rolling your shoulders and rubbing your neck. Titus noticed immediately, as he tended to do, even though you were facing away from him. 

“Is it bothering you again?” He said softly. His hand came to your neck and began massaging the muscle there with his thumb. You gave a small nod. During your hunt, you had been pushed down the stairs. The tumble had resulted in a herniated disc and a compressed nerve in your neck. Treatable, but pain still haunted you when you were forced to be in a single position for too long, like sitting at a wedding that felt like it would never end. Titus hummed behind you. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Anything I can do to help?” You turned to face him. He looked heavenly with the light from the window illuminating his silhouette. It caught on his grey curls and perfectly punctuated his broad shoulders. Titus’ hands rose to your hips, pressing you against him. Your hand rested on his chest, smoothing out the coat of his suit and readjusting the tie. He felt so warm and sturdy under your palms. It made you smile. You leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. But before you pulled away, you murmured in his ear:

“You can win the hunt. And come back safely. For me.” The hands on your hips tightened. A promise.

“Anything for you, sweetheart.” 

ˋ°•*⁀➷

Ursula had been disappointed to learn that you wouldn’t be participating in the festivities. Your relationship at first had been rocky. She was unsure if it was wise for Titus to take a wife, given his track record with violence. But after you had won your hunt by bashing someone’s head in with a bat and hiding in the woods until dawn, you had proved yourself capable of holding your own against Titus in her eyes. As the years passed and Titus began to mellow a bit, Ursula had started to act truly as a sister to you. You went shopping together, she taught you the unspoken rules of living as a Danforth in high society, you gave her book and movie recommendations, and most of your afternoons were spent lounging by the pool or playing tennis together. You didn’t have much family, and you would forever be grateful that Ursula filled in as a sister. She had been disappointed at your absence for the evening, but mainly because she had to spend a night dealing with Titus without you. Ursula had urged you to watch from the monitoring room, but you had a hot date with a bubble bath and a mug of herbal tea to ease the pain in your neck and the migraine it was bringing on. 

You sighed in contentment as you sunk into the tub, warm water and scented bubbles immediately putting your mind at ease. You got nervous during hunts. Most of the family believed that they were invincible simply because they were Danforths, the prime stock of the world. That they would succeed in their hunts and kill their target in time to catch the evening news. But you were a testament that they thought too highly of themselves. When someone is fighting for their life and weapons are involved, things can get very ugly very fast. Usually, these anxieties were calmed (at least slightly) by the fact that Titus was by your side every step of the way. You were basically just along for the ride. A tether to the real world so he didn’t get so lost in himself that he put himself in danger. But that wasn’t the case tonight. He would go without you and that made you nervous. If there was one thing that would never be quelled by you, it was Titus’ desire to prove himself. Prove himself as a man and as a Danforth and sometimes he pushed himself too far. You chewed on the inside of your cheek as you looked out the window of your bathroom. The sun was dipping low in the sky. The horn would sound soon. The door to the bathroom creaked open, drawing your attention from the horizon. You smiled at Titus as he came into the door holding a steaming mug of your tea. He was already dressed for the hunt, the black fabric of his pants and vest contouring his body in a way that made your mouth water. In the dying light of the day, his eyes took on a more golden hue. A color that you memorized as he looked at you and held out the mug. 

“Here you go, honey,” Titus said, sighing as he lowered himself to sit on the edge of the tub. You shimmied to sit up in the tub and took the mug graciously, careful not to get any bubbles in the tea. “Did you get a new shampoo?” Titus asked, pressing his lips to the crown of your head and inhaling deeply. You nodded as you took a sip of the tea.

“They came out with a new one. It’s called ‘Field of Dreams’ but I think that’s just a pretentious way of saying it has chamomile in it.” You swirled one of your hands through the water. Titus furrowed his brow and grabbed your wrist, pulling it out of the water. You knew what he was about to ask before the question could leave his mouth. You had taken off your bracelet. A thin leather strap that crossed over your wrist and clasped in a way that resembled a tiny horse’s bridle. Titus had given it to you during your six month anniversary when you were dating. You had been walking down the street window shopping when it caught your eye. You had immediately gushed over it, saying how sleek it looked. You preferred leather jewelry to metal, especially when it came to bracelets. Metal pinched at your skin and leather felt much nicer. You had only mentioned it once. And yet, three months later, Titus had pushed a small box across the table during dinner. He had remembered. You had thrown your arms around him, kissing him on the cheek as he put it on you, promising to never take it off. And you hadn’t. You had worn it every day. But you weren’t wearing it now, and Titus noticed. “It’s on the counter. I don’t want it to get wet, it’ll rust the clasp.” Another thought crossed his eyes. “I don’t care if you’d buy me another one. I’m sentimental.” 

With a small chuckle, he pressed a kiss to your wrist before placing your arm gently back into the water. He took a deep breath and stood from the tub, walking to the mirror and fiddling with his curls. You took the chance to sip your tea and rake your eyes over your husband’s form. A crisp black vest wrapped around his torso, silver fleur-de-lis checkering the silky fabric on his back. Beneath the vest was one of his favorite shirts, a deep navy blue that hugged his biceps but were easily unbuttoned at the wrists when he needed to roll up his sleeves and get dirty. The shirt was tucked into plain black slacks that were held up with a dark leather belt. God how you loved him in this outfit. He wore it for every hunt, his own ceremonial robes.

“Are you done ogling me?” Titus asked, catching your gaze in the mirror. Heat rose to your cheeks, embarrassed for being caught. But there was a playfulness in Titus’ eyes, a shit-eating grin on his lips. Damn him. He knew what he did to you.

“Never. It's not my fault you look so good.” You hummed, taking another sip of your tea. He chuckled and smoothed out his vest before turning. He paused for a moment, and you knew that he saw it. Your night dress hanging on the back of the door. 

“What’s this for?” He said slyly, running the silk between his fingers. 

“Hm?” You hummed, feigning innocence. “Oh, that’s for later.” He held up the fabric to his arm, comparing the shades of blue. Titus looked to you for confirmation and you nodded, taking another sip of tea. The color was deep blue, exactly matching the color of his shirt. You had ordered it specially for tonight, somehow eluding Titus and pulling his tailor aside and asking for a sample of the fabric during his last visit. You’d taken the color swatch to your favorite lingerie store and they had created the slip perfectly. The top edge was laced, a floral pattern perfectly accenting the curve of your breasts. Titus let out a low groan. Approval. 

“For later,” You emphasized, holding out your hand. Titus crossed the room and held it gently. The sun was almost below the treeline now and it wouldn’t be long before he had to leave. You took a deep breath and looked into your husband’s eyes. He seemed to pick up on your uneasiness and lowered himself to kneel beside the tub. You interlaced your fingers with his and took a steadying breath. “Please be safe,” you begged, voice barely above a whisper “And come back to me.” Titus lost the edge in his gaze and lifted your hand to his mouth. His lips pressed a kiss to your knuckles and brought your palm to his cheek. You caressed him, swiping your thumb over his cheekbones and the stubble that had grown in the past week of him not shaving. Titus pressed his own hand over yours, keeping it against his face until the very last moment.

“Nothing could keep me away from you,” Your husband’s voice was soft but also held a bit of a threat in it. A threat against the universe, perhaps, a promise that he would do whatever it takes to get back home to you.

“That’s what worries me,” You were only half joking. “Titus. I’m serious. Please.” Titus lowered your hand from his face and held it tightly.

“I promise.” A beat passed and you could tell an idea popped into his mind. “If he…You remember how to use the crossbow above the dresser, right?” You tilted your head in curiosity. 

“Yea,” you confirmed, brows knit in confusion “Why?” Titus shook his head and got to his feet, placing another kiss on your forehead. He lingers a bit longer than he would normally. Not weirdly abnormal, just enough for you to take note of it.

“Just in case. Just…maybe keep it near you, alright? I’ll be back in a few hours.” He captured your lips in a chaste kiss, like he was about to leave for a business meeting. Titus opened the door partially. You shared another look before he exited. 

By the time you were slipping into your laced night gown, the sun was down. You were applying your lotion to your legs when the horn sounded. A deep, whining noise that permeated the entire estate. Every time you heard it, you were transported back to your wedding night. An instinctual shudder ran through you and you paused. For a few moments, the world stood still. When you didn’t hear an immediate gunshot, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. You sighed and went back to your lotioning. Guess tonight would be a party after all. 

ˋ°•*⁀➷

Three hours had passed. You had heard a few screams and shattering of glass, but it had been pretty quiet. You were laying in bed, plush comforter pulled up around your waist as you rested against pillows and the headboard. Your headache was subsiding now, the faint wisps of discomfort the only sign that it was there to begin with. The night was well underway, but the fact that you hadn’t heard anything definitive yet made you nervous. You had tried reading, but your fingers mindlessly flicked the edge of the page you were staring at for the past twenty minutes. You spared a glance over to the dresser where the crossbow sat. You had taken it down from its mount and loaded an arrow, but didn’t bother holding it with you. You began to second guess yourself. Maybe you should’ve suffered through the pain and gone on the hunt. You shook your head at the thought. Titus never would’ve allowed it. Your heart ached for him. Your Titus. You prayed to all that was unholy that he was alright. A small flicker in the back of your brain taunted you. Of course he was alright. You had seen what he was capable of, and heard stories of him doing even worse. He told you stories of his birthday hunt when he turned eighteen. His coming of age ritual. Titus had chosen the challenge of being completely unarmed and instead giving his Prey a knife. His whole family had thought he was crazy. But when Titus dragged the dead man back to the manor, face beaten so badly that pieces of skull had been left behind in the mud, they had stopped laughing. And he had only become more experienced since then. Titus had it down to a science, really, and you thoroughly enjoyed watching the master at work. But there had been a few times where he had almost gone too far. In fact, during the last hunt, he had tried jumping off the roof to capture the Prey. Only when you physically tackled him to the ground did he give up pursuit. It wasn’t really the groom you were worried about, but rather Titus himself. 

You threw down the book in exasperation. You swung your legs over the bed and walked over to the opposite wall, pulling back the drapes to look at the shadowed forest. To your surprise, you didn’t see any flashlights or golf carts out on the grounds. Perhaps the groom didn’t escape as well as you thought. Maybe he-

Creak.

You froze immediately. There was someone in the hallway. You could hear heavy breathing on the other side of the oak door. The door to your bedroom was shut, but not locked. Because there were no locks in this god forsaken house, they considered it cheating. You were afraid to move, to give your position away. Thankfully, you were wearing socks and you shuffled slightly backwards toward the dresser. But you didn’t get far. Because of course, out of all the doors in the hallway, the door to your bedroom opened and the bloodied groom crashed into the room, falling to the floor. You stood still, looking down at him. You tried to keep your breathing under control. Titus had taught you to never give another person the upper hand by appearing flustered. It was at that moment when you realized you didn’t even remember the groom's name. And here he was, panting on your floor, trying to get up but slipping on his own blood. He rose to his knees and seemed to notice you for the first time.

“Oh my god,” he gasped, throwing himself forward and grabbing the windowsill to pull himself up “Thank God you’re here! You’ve gotta help me! My in-laws are trying to kill me!” You did a quick inventory of the situation before responding. His leg was bleeding (all over your rug, by the way. Quite rude), but he seemed otherwise okay. Physically, anyway. He clutched a crowbar in his one hand, like it was his only way of survival, and his eyes were wild. Blood was splattered across his cheek, signaling that someone had been on the receiving end of a crowbar blow. He swallowed hard, not realizing that you weren’t reacting like a normal person in this situation. “What time is it?” 

“About midnight.” You stated calmly, hands bunched at your sides and shoulders tensed. His body was blocking the door. And he was in a position where, if you made a bolt for the crossbow, he would be able to stop you. A dull sense of fear began to settle at the base of your spine. You were trapped. Then he looked at you. Really looked at you and seemed to remember who you were. “Did they do this to you too?” You shrugged and nodded.

“It wasn’t really that bad,” you said honestly. “I made it out of the house and hid in the woods until dawn.” “Fuck, that’s smart.” It was. And he was quite honestly an idiot for not trying to escape the house. The house that belonged to the family who was trying to kill him. The house that the Danforths were raised in and knew like the back of their hand. The groom was still trying to catch his breath and you took the chance to take a few steps toward the dresser. He dropped the crowbar on the floor and reached into his waistband. He had a gun. Shit. You failed to hide your grimace at the new piece of information. That complicated things. It didn’t matter if you made it to the crossbow first, he could just shoot you. You didn’t recognize the gun, but it had the Danforth ram’s head engraved in the handle. Ah. It likely belonged to the same person whose blood was smeared on his cheek. 

“Listen,” you said, wetting your lips and taking another hesitant step toward the crossbow. “I get you’re trying to hide, but you can’t stay here. This room’s off limits.” The groom scoffed and pushed himself off the bedpost.

“Oh yea?” He scoffed, “Says who?” Irritation prickled in your chest. You opened your mouth to say that you were, in fact, the lady of the house, and he needed to leave you the fuck alone before your husband got back, but you caught yourself. Labelling yourself as important is a great way to get taken as a hostage. When you didn’t answer, the groom laughed. “Yea, I think I’m gonna stay here for a while.” He took your phone off the nightstand and tucked it into his pocket. “Just so you don’t go snitching on me.” He explained. He lifted the gun and pointed it at you. “I don’t want to hurt you, for the record, but if being in here gets me to survive until the morning, you’re fucking insane if you think I’m leaving.” You pursed your lips. Running some quick calculations in your head, you figured that if you could kick his bad leg out from under him, you could probably get to the crossbow before he had time to line up a shot. You took a deep breath, chest rising, and you caught the groom’s eyes flick to your chest. You remembered what you were wearing, a slip that was only meant for Titus’ eyes, and heat flooded your face. Self consciousness settled in your chest and you crossed your arms across your breast, earning a scoff from the groom.

“Y’know,” he mused, shaking his head “this is more what I thought my wedding night would be like. A pretty lady and I sharing a bedroom together.” Your brows furrowed.

“Ew.” your lip curled in disgust. “I wonder if your new wife would enjoy you speaking to another woman like that.” 

“Yea, I’m probably gonna ask for a divorce tomorrow.” He shrugged, “I’m not a big fan of marrying into a family who tries to kill me-” You took the chance to lunge at him, sliding across the wooden floor and kicking his ankle out from under him. As he fell, a shot rang out from his gun. The bullet was lodged in the crown molding, but he still had the gun in his hand. You used the chance to climb on top of him and slam his hand against the floor. His hand relaxed and you shoved the gun away. It skittered across the floor before being swallowed by the fabric of the floor-length drapes. The groom, while disarmed, wasn’t caught off guard for long. He brought the palm of his hand up and jammed it into your nose. Stars erupted into your vision and you instinctively brought your hands to your face, feeling the blood start to seep between your fingers. The groom used his hip to flip you over, pinning your arms against the side of your head. You snarled in his face, spitting blood in his eyes and jerking your knee into his crotch. He fell to the side and you scrambled to your feet, reaching the dresser and grabbing the crossbow. You heard the groom get to his feet as you set the arrow. You whirled around and before the groom could plead his case, you pulled the trigger, releasing the arrow from the bow and straight through his eye socket. Blood bubbled from the wound and he fell to his knees, falling face first onto the gorgeous persian rug underneath your bed. Gently, you lowered the crossbow to your side, finger still on the trigger. Stepping over the groom’s legs, you examined the scene before you. You stood for a moment, gulping large and frightened breaths into your lungs. It had been years since you killed someone by yourself. Tears clouded your vision and rolled onto your cheeks, mixing with the blood coming from your nose. You let a sob tear from your chest and all you wanted in that moment was Titus. 

As if the universe heard you, your door flew open again, crashing against the wall with a bang. And standing there, rumpled and panting and eyes blown wide with urgency, was Titus. Your dear husband. He was wielding a bolt-action rifle, pointed into the room. Without thinking, your hands flew up, telling him not to shoot. The only sound for several moments was his ragged breath. Titus’ eyes flicked from you, wearing the navy blue lingerie that was now covered in your blood, to the crossbow, to the man slumped on the ground with an arrow through the head. You were slightly unnerved at the way that Titus stared at you. You locked eyes with your husband and you could see the fear there. The fear that he was too late, that he had expected a very different scene in your bedroom. Perhaps he expected the roles to be reversed. For you to be on the floor, blood pooling around your head. His hazel eyes were shining with an emotion you couldn’t quite figure out. And without tearing his gaze from you, Titus cocked the rifle and unloaded round into the head of the already dead groom, splattering his brains across your floor. You let out a disappointed noise.

“You stained the carpet.” You murmured. Titus let out an incredulous laugh, tossing the rifle to the ground and crossing the room in large strides to get to you.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Titus growled, pushing you with his hips until your back thudded against the wall. He pressed himself into you and you could feel the hard bulge beneath his trousers. You were about to ask if he was okay, but his lips plunged into yours before you could speak. The kiss was rough and messy. His teeth nipped at your lips, and his mouth wandered all over the lower half of your face. You could feel your lips begin to swell from the force and your hand flew to his hair, tugging lightly on his curls. You felt a strange wetness on your cheeks and lips, but it wasn’t blood, it was tears. You opened your eyes and saw tears streaming from Titus’ eyes. He was gasping for breath in frequent sobs, bordering on hyperventilating. He continued to kiss between his pulls of breath, and you had to tug his head away from you.

“Titus,” You said softly, putting your hands on both his cheeks. Titus’ short inhales were high pitched and unfulfilling and you could tell that he was holding back true wailing. “Hey,” You led him to the bed and sat on the edge, bringing him down and wiping the tears from his cheeks. “What’s wrong, honey? I’m alright.”

“I thought…I thought I lost you,” He choked out, sobs ripping from his chest as he threw himself at you, pulling you close and resting his head on your shoulder. Snot and tears smeared his face but you didn’t care, you held him just as tightly. “W-When I heard the gunshot…when I realized what part of the house it came from…” he trailed off. You pressed a kiss to his forehead and petted his head as he sobbed into your chest. You shifted so that you were facing him, taking both his hands in yours and making him hold eye contact.

“Titus, breathe with me,” You placed one of his hands on your chest and took a deep breath. He mimicked the action, drawing in a deep breath, only hiccuping a few times, and holding the air in his lungs before breathing shakily out. You repeated the action several times, only stopping when Titus was breathing normally again. His shoulders relaxed and he closed his eyes, dropping his head slightly. You brought your hand to his cheek and lifted his face. 

“I love you so much,” Titus whispered, “I couldn’t imagine living in a world without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, my love,” You assured him, pressing a small kiss to his lips. “You are, unfortunately, stuck with me.” Titus let out a breath of laughter and you gave him a small smile. He returned it with a nod, lip quivering slightly and eyes still wet and raw from crying. Titus took a deep breath and looked around the room. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he assessed the damage. “I’m sorry I took your kill,” you said, gesturing to the body “How was the hunt otherwise?” That earned a genuine smile from him, and you felt your heart soar in your chest. 

“It’s alright, sweetheart, you deserved it after your hard day.” Titus kissed your knuckles. “It was fine. I’m not hurt.” His brow furrowed and he brought his hands to your thighs, pinching the edge of your slip between his fingers. “I’m sorry your relaxing night was ruined. I can beat him up a little more if it would make you feel better.” You laughed and slung your arms around his shoulders. 

“I don’t think it would make him any more dead than he already is.” “That’s not the point.”

“I know,” you assented. “I appreciate it, but I’d rather just keep you here.”

“You want to keep me in bed, Mrs. Danforth?” Titus raised his eyebrow, putting his hands on your hips. You hummed and twirled a piece of his hair with a finger. He knew that using your honorific always sparked arousal.

“Guilty.” His face was closer to yours now and you captured his lips in a gentle kiss, a juxtaposition of the kiss from only a few minutes ago and a true testament to Titus’ complexity. One of his hands slid up from your waist and gently squeezed the sides of your neck. You broke the kiss and Titus let out a little whine of disappointment. “We don’t have to.” You didn’t want to push him after he had just been extremely vulnerable with you. After you had talked him down from an edge. But Titus just shook his head.

“I need you,” He whispered, nipping at your lower lip and using his weight to push you onto your back, caging in your head with his elbows “need to prove how much you mean to me. Wanna worship you.” Titus’ kisses moved down your neck and onto your chest. He paused at the edge of the lace. “When I saw you standing over him, covered in blood, I’ve never been so fucking hard in my life.” His pupils were blown with lust, chest rising and falling with strangled breaths. Titus usually had no problem ripping your lingerie off you, but as he kissed down your stomach and settled between your legs, he left the slip on. He even paused for a moment to suckle the splotch of blood on your ribs, moaning slightly when it caused you to squirm beneath him. “Think I wanna see you wearing this every hunt. Remind me how fucking killer my wife can be.” You moaned his name softly and watched as his head disappeared under the edge of the dress. You yelped when he yanked your thighs over the edge of the bed, resting upon his shoulders. Titus laughed against your core and it sent a pleasant vibration that turned you into liquid. 

When he licked the first stripe between your folds, your hands bunched the bedding between your fists. The first swipe of his tongue was always criminal and your favorite part of sex with Titus. It was always his top priority, preparing you for him in the best, most pleasurable way possible. Once you had told him that he didn’t have to eat you out, that you wanted him to enjoy it too. He had been genuinely offended and made you cum six times on his tongue as punishment. And then he went to bed with a straining cock, stating that your release was what gave him the most pleasure and that it was enough for him just to taste you. 

Titus’ tongue plunged into your core, swishing from side to side to stretch you out before you took him fully. He removed his tongue and licked up to your clit, the pointed edge of his tongue catching on the small nub as he licked circles around you. He gave a slap to the outside of your thigh, a chastation that you weren’t being loud enough for him. So you let the next moan rip from your throat, a degenerate sound that made Titus whine against you. 

“Fuck, Titus, you eat me out so good,” you babbled, pleasure making the edge of your brain fuzzy and clouded the edges of your vision “You’re doing so well for me. Making me feel so good.” You noticed that his hips bucked up into the air at your words, trying to find friction where there wasn’t any. A smirk formed on your lips, but it was quickly replaced by a slackened jaw when Titus inserted two of his fingers into your heat.

“Don’t play games with me,” Titus growled, flexing his digits against your velvety walls. You nodded, even though he couldn’t quite see it over the navy fabric bunched at your hips. The combination of his tongue and his fingers was overwhelming. 

It wasn’t long before you felt the familiar tingling at the apex of your thighs and the base of your spine. Your fingers pried one of his hands off your thigh and entwined your fingers with his. Titus squeezed your hand to remind you that he was there with you. You clenched your thighs together, squeezing Titus’ head. He knew that it meant you were close and he locked in on his administrations, continuing the lapping and fingerfucking that had gotten you to the peak. You came with a shuttered moan, drawing a deep breath and squeezing your thighs tighter as you bucked against his face, drawing out the pleasure of your orgasm for as long as you could. Titus continued to lick you until your thighs fell wide, your belly heaving with stabilizing breaths. 

Titus sat back on his heels and wiped a hand across his mouth before climbing over you. His belt was already undone to give himself some relief and he tugged on his zipper and shimmied his pants off until his cock was freed. Titus swiped his head through your folds until he collected enough of your juices where he could push in without resistance. He lined himself up and locked eyes with you before pushing his length into you. This was his favorite part of sex with you- watching your expression change as he slowly split you open on his dick. You threw your head back in pleasure, but Titus wouldn’t have that. He gripped your chin with the hand not holding himself up and jerked your face back to him. Your eyelids fluttered as he bottomed out completely. Titus pressed his lips to yours, tongue swiping at the seam. You allowed him access and he stuck his tongue in your mouth, messily making out with you as he bucked his hips up into you for the first time. You whined needily. You could taste yourself on him and it made your walls clench harder on him. Titus set a harsh but not merciless pace, fucking you hard into the mattress while making the thrusts smooth. He never fully left your cunt, sliding in and out with ease as each thrust of his hips bumped against your clit in the most delicious way. You brought your hands to his cheeks and pressed your foreheads together. 

“I’m here, Titus, fuck, I’m here.” You moaned, kissing his cheekbones. Titus responded with a ragged whimper, breaths coming out in short pants and making all the noises he knew you loved. 

“I. Fucking. Love you. So much.” He moaned, punctuating each word with a thrust. You maintained eye contact with him as you pressed your heels into his ass, urging him to go harder, faster, deeper. He obliged. How could he not? You were everything to him and he would give everything to you. His hazel eyes were a rim around blown pupils, but his eyes were filled with so much care and love it made your chest hurt. 

“I love you too, Titus. I’m yours.” Your voice was small and breathy, all the air being fucked from your lungs by the force of Titus’ thrusts “I’m always yours. I’ll never leave you.” This earned a high-pitched moan from your husband and he tucked his face into your neck, kissing along the sensitive spot beneath your ear. You grabbed fists of his hair as he faltered slightly, knowing he was close. “Cum in me, please. Mark me.” Titus growled at your words, sucking a hickey onto your neck and readjusting his position so he could get a better angle for his cock. He lifted his head and you saw his face contort into an expression of pure pleasure, puffs of air leaving his lips as he chased his orgasm. He came with another whine, bucking and stilling deep into you as thick ropes of cum painted your insides. Titus gave one final thrust, to make sure his cum stayed inside of you. He gasped and huffed and fell to his elbows, brushing the hair from your forehead and peppering your face in gentle kisses. His dick pulsed and twitched as you squeezed him. The two of you stayed there for a while, neither one of you wanting to pull away. 

“I love you,” you said softly, wiping some sweat from his brow. “I got so lucky.” Titus shook his head fervently.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” The two of you shared another, gentler kiss, as his dick softened inside you. One that was filled with devotion and appreciation. Titus cupped your breast and ran a finger along the lace line of your lingerie. 

“I was serious, you know,” he mused, kissing the skin of your chest. “I want you to keep this. I don’t care that it has some asshole’s blood on it.” You exhaled through your nose. 

“If that’s what you want,” You give “but I want another one. A clean one.” Titus nodded. “And you’re gonna pay for it. For letting him get even close to me. One that he’s never touched.” A flash of possessiveness crossed his eyes.

“Of course,” he gritted, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He gave you one more kiss to the forehead and pulled out. You whined at the sensation, feeling the mixture of your juices and his cum run down your leg. Titus stepped into and pulled his boxers over his hips. He disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a washcloth soaked in warm water. Your husband cleaned you reverently, using a single finger to wash away the stickiness between every fold of your skin. He gave you a kiss on your thigh before walking over to the body still laying on your floor. He ran a hand over his face.

“I should probably deal with this.” Titus sighed. He put on his pants and kicked the body over onto his back. Titus’ brow furrowed in a frustratingly attractive way as he calculated the best mode of transport of his now dead cousin in-law. He glanced over to you, searching your face for something. You realized he was waiting for your permission. You waved your hand. 

“Please,” you agreed, “get him out of here.” Titus nodded. You had given him a task. A priority. He grabbed the man and hoisted him over his shoulder. It helped that the groom was a twig of a man, but the show of strength reignited the flame in your lower belly. You licked your lips and gave your husband the best bedroom eyes you could muster. “Hurry back.” Titus snickered and shook his head.

Titus was itchy. Not physically, of course, but mentally. A pseudo-itch that lived in the bottom right part of his brain. One that could only be scratched by a very very specific set of circumstances. As a child, the itch was scratched by wrestling with his cousins out in the yard, pinning them down just enough where they had to genuinely struggle to get him off them. He wouldn’t move until they bit him, kicked him, scratched him. Anything that was actually painful and not just play. The shot of adrenaline made him feel woozy in the best way. As a teen, it was scratched by hunting. Animals, people, it didn’t really matter. Watching the light drain out of something’s eyes, feeling the fight leave their body, soothed the restlessness. He was satiated even more when they put up a fight. It got to the point that he never used weapons while hunting, except on the rare occasions it was necessary due to the bylaws. Titus enjoyed the primal feeling of grappling with an opponent. And in the morning when he stepped out of the shower to see the purple and yellow watercolors of his bruised body, he was soothed again.  His family made fun of him for it. Kip, especially. He’d always ball-tap him as a greeting, knowing that deep-down, in some sick way, Titus enjoyed the pain of it. Ursula said he was a glutton for punishment. And when he reached adulthood, it morphed into something else entirely. Titus still enjoyed killing and exerting himself. But he soon found that the itch was no longer scratched by it. He tried everything, every possible combination of things that used to work for him until one day he gave up. Titus had simply assumed that he would always feel this way, a little on edge, a little uncomfortable.

When Titus first met you, he knew you were different. Usually people shied away from him. But you looked at him differently. With desire and with hunger. It had taken him aback at first, no one had looked at him like that before. But as you grew to know each other, he learned to accept it. The first time you had sex was so different to anything he had experienced. You had pushed him down on the bed, clawing at him like a rabid animal. Like if you didn’t use him to get off, you would combust. So he let you. Titus could still feel the itch when you rode him, but it was lessened. When you slapped him across the face, hard, telling him to focus up and fuck you like he meant it, he came on the spot. And as his mind refocused after his orgasm, he realised the itch was gone. After that, he went to you whenever he felt the itch. And you were always happy to oblige.

The itch had returned in full force. He needed you. Unfortunately for Titus, you had grown fond of him. And he of you. Being together for several years did that to people, apparently. But that meant that you were less keen on actually hurting him. Sure, you’d slap him whenever he asked, and you always marked him up no matter who was in charge that time, but you didn’t hurt him like you used to. Unless, of course, he did something bad. Something wicked. Ursula was right. Titus was a glutton for punishment. And he wanted to be punished.

Titus found one of the waitstaff. Some guy who wouldn’t be missed. As the guy rounded a corner, Titus put him in a headlock and dragged him into one of the Danforth mansion’s many uninhabited bedrooms. To the guy’s credit, he put up a good fight, clawing at Titus’ face and elbowing him in his ribs. But he didn’t do any damage. And soon Titus’ hands were around his throat, gently easing him to the ground as he suffocated. Titus made eye contact with him, unblinking, until the man’s eyes fluttered closed. He shuttered when the light dulled in his eyes and his cock swelled against the fabric of his boxers. Titus stood up and the man slumped over onto the expensive carpet. He shook himself off and practically skipped down the hallway to show you the very bad thing he had done.

You were putting your socks away when the door opened. You threw a curious look over your shoulder and saw Titus standing there, a stupidly large grin on his face and hands folded behind his back. You sighed and rolled your eyes, returning your focus to the task. 

“What did you do now?” You asked, not with cruelty, but with faint annoyance. Just the way he liked. Titus let out a small giggle. A giggle. The fuck was wrong with him?

“Follow me.” He grinned, voice dropping to the gravely one he used when he was coaxing your third orgasm. You inhaled deeply and closed your eyes. You closed the dresser drawer and followed Titus out of the room and down the hall. He had a bounce in his step and his chest was puffed out, chin held high. You tried to mentally prepare yourself for what you were about to see. Titus had done many things in the years you had been together. Nothing would really shock you. But you really didn’t feel like cleaning up one of his messes. Too bad. 

You gasped a little when Titus led you into one of the vacant bedrooms. He walked into the room and stood over the corpse of one of the staff, grinning and eyes sparkling like a cat who had brought you a dead bird. 

“Titus!” You hissed, glaring at him and slamming the door to the room shut, clicking the lock. “What is the matter with you?” He shrugged, taking your scolding with pride. You hurried over to where he was standing and gave a grumble.

“I killed him.” Titus said simply.

“I can see that.” You seethed. “Any particular reason why?” Titus opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes. 

“I did something bad.” He elaborated, looking at you like you should know what that meant. You did. You sighed, running your hand over your face.

“You could’ve just asked.” You told him softly, bringing a thumb up to settle on his lower lip. 

“It’s not as good when you don’t mean it.” He sighed, eyes already closing at your touch.

“What?” You bit out sharply. Titus’ eyes flashed open and panic widened them. Shit. Did he say that out loud?

“I-I didn’t mean-” You cut him off by roughly grabbing his crotch. You squeezed and felt his semi pressing back into your palm. Titus doubled over with a gasp and a little pained noise. At first, you thought you had misplayed it. Hurt him when he wasn’t ready. But he looked up with you with a slackened jaw and an open smile. His eyes were half-lidded and you felt his cock harden fully. That settled your worries.

“On the bed.” You ordered, practically dragging him by the balls to the edge of the made, unused bed. He took off his shoes but left the rest of his clothes on and climbed onto the mattress, settling against the headboard. You straddled him, running your hands up and down his chest as you kissed him. Your teeth sunk into his lip and he moaned in your mouth. Your fingers caught the fabric of his shirt and you ripped it open, buttons clattering to the floor and exposing his bare chest. A pink flush was already starting to splotch his freckled skin. 

You pulled away from the kiss and dug your fingernails into his chest, dragging them down his pecs and leaving red angry marks in their wake. Titus jerked his hips up into you and you gave him a stern look. A few of your scratches had blood beading along them, little pearls of red. You leaned down and licked at them with your tongue. The metallic taste bit at your taste buds, but Titus’ whines of pleasure overrode any distaste you might have had. After the wounds were cleaned, you wrapped your lips around his nipple, licking and nipping at the bud until it was pebbled. Then you did the same to the other. You sucked hickeys into his skin, not being gentle. They wouldn’t show up as little cute pink love bites, but as full-bruised welts. Titus had made it clear he wouldn’t have it any other way. Titus threw his head back and panted into the room, dropping moans as your core dragged across his clothed erection. You raised your head and roughly gripped his chin, pulling him to look at you. You brought your palm across his face in an open-handed slap. The force from it made his curled hair shake. “Shut the fuck up.” You hissed. “I don’t want anyone to hear what a pathetic man I’m fucking. God, can’t even control yourself.”  You ground down onto him and his hips helped guide you. 

“F-fuck, m’sorry.” He whined softly, leaning in to kiss you. You let his tongue explore your mouth and your fingers tugged on his hair, just hard enough to send shivers of arousal down his spine. 

“No you’re not.” You whispered into the kiss. He hummed in agreement. He was humping up into you, desperate from friction and you pinched one of his nipples. Titus panted against your mouth, letting out a deep groan. And then he stilled beneath you. His entire body went rigid and you felt his cheeks heat against yours. Not from the slap, but from embarrassment. You gently pulled back and looked at him with confusion. His jaw was tense and his eyes were wide, hoping, begging even, for you to not connect the dots of what just happened. Your eyes traveled downward to where you were nestled against his cock. The front of his pants had a dark splotch that was slowly spreading. Small white globs began to seep through the fabric. 

“D-did you just?” You said it softly and without malice. Titus swallowed hard. He looked at you with deep shame. He had cum in his pants.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t…I don’t know why…” His voice was cracking.

you began to touch yourself, interchanging between using your fingers to stretch yourself open and circling your clit. you were already so wet just from playing around with your sweet boyfriend like this. you bit your lip as you looked at sammy who was watching your movements so intently, his mouth slightly open with drool pooling at the corner, cock jumping as he humped the air, desperate for some stimulation.

“ohh, look at that. my poor puppy doesn’t even have anything to rub his cock against,” you cooed, putting down one of your feet to rest against the floor, “since i’m such a benevolent owner i’ll offer you my leg. do you wanna get yourself off by humping my calf like the desperate dog you are?”

“y-yes, please.” sammy crawled towards your leg, looking up at you expectantly as he waited for your permission. “go ahead.” you allowed, watching as he began to pathetically rut his cock against your calf, gripping onto the couch cushions for stability. you started touching yourself again, and sammy’s eyes were constantly flickering up and down between your pussy and your face, letting out shaky breaths as he rocked his hips.

your leg didn’t feel particularly great against him, but it didn’t really matter. sammy was so turned on by being degraded like this that he probably could’ve come from continuing to hump the air if you didn’t so kindly offer him a part of your beautiful body. that’s why it didn’t take long before he was whining that he was coming, spilling his seed all over your smooth skin.

“tsk, such a needy puppy, couldn’t even wait for me to come before you blew your load, huh?” you tutted, “make your mouth useful then, clean up your mess and then finish me off.”

You and Andrew had grown up in each other’s orbit. Since you were kids he’d been a constant in your life, an ever steady presence in your life. It had always been Pope and you, attached at the hip. 

In a way you seemed to balance each other out. He was quiet, a bit awkward (which you’d always found endearing) while you were outgoing, playful even. 

When you had gotten older and he’d been thoroughly sweet-talked into leaving the nest he’d agreed. He’d put a shiny rock on your finger too. His wife. He loved being able to call you that. His.

Three years away from you had been hell for him. 

All he seemed to do was think about you. Talk about you. Wait for your visits, for your letters. You had plagued his thoughts even when he had been at home, sharing a bed with you, spending nearly every moment you could together. It was even worse now. 

You had just gotten home, car pulling into the driveway of your beach front home. You trudged up to the front door. Ever since he’d been gone the place had been off. Just something that wasn’t quite right (but this time it felt wrong for a different reason). 

The first red flag was when you stepped into the front room. You dropped your keys into the bowl and hung your purse up. You hadn’t even noticed that the shoe rack had been organized, something you never bothered to do. You just toed off your sandals and left them in the middle of the walkway. 

What you had noticed was the change in the rest of your house. The kitchen counter, which had once held your mug of leftover morning coffee, was empty. And all the dirty dishes in the sink were clean. The place was practically spotless. The living room blankets had been folded neatly. Even the coffee table books were straightened out. 

You just assumed it had been Smurf. Your mother-in-law had always been the overbearing sort, showing up unannounced and letting herself in even if she didn’t have a key. But every time she did, she tidied up. A habit, you figured. Her boys were a bit helpless when it came to taking care of themselves. The only one who was neat was Andrew. 

Living with him, he had always been the one to clean up the house. He always grumbled about how messy you were but even if you did attempt to help him, it never met his standards. So the place hadn’t been spotless since he’d gone to prison. 

That should’ve set the alarm bells off in your head, but it didn’t. Smurf had never been so thorough. 

Blissfully unaware of the surprise waiting for you, you made your way through the house to your bedroom. 

You froze in the doorway. Your heart pounded in your chest as you saw him sitting, on a crisply made bed. Your first instinct had been to panic, seeing a man in your bedroom. But you had quickly realized the ‘him’ in question was your husband. 

“Andrew?” you breathed out. 

He stood. It was like he stole the breath from your lungs. He didn’t have to do anything. He was just there. 

His movements seemed hesitant as he stood up, shifting his weight from side to side as he waited. His hands were curled into first, hanging awkwardly by his sides. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing. He felt out of place in his own bedroom after three years. But it wasn’t like anything had really changed (except for him). You still left your coffee on the counter and dirty dishes in the sink without rinsing them. His side of the bathroom was untouched, closet too. And you still looked at him like that – like he was worth looking at.

When you closed the distance, arms wrapped around him, he finally knew what to do. His eyes closed as he buried his face against your neck. He inhaled deeply. 

For a moment all that’s all you did. But soon enough, you pulled back. His fingers instinctively tightened around your hips to keep you close. You hadn’t planned on going far, just enough so that you could see his face. 

“When did you get out?” There were a thousand questions on the tip of your tongue. “I-I mean, you didn’t even tell me you were up for parole. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

He frowned. “Didn’t wanna disappoint you,” he mumbled. 

Oh. 

Of course he was worried about you. He’d always been thoughtful when it came to you, always prioritizing your feelings (even when you told him he was important to). 

“I would’ve been fine.” 

Lie. You both knew you would’ve been heartbroken if he got denied parole again. You couldn’t help but get your hopes up every time he was eligible, like maybe he’d get to come home. And he couldn’t bear to see those hopes get crushed again. So he didn’t tell you.

He just shrugged, tucking his face in the crook of your neck once more. All he wanted was to be close to you. He’d been craving you for three years now – your touch, your scent. Your visits, letters sprayed with perfume, had tided him over. But he needed his hands on you. Needed to drown in you. 

He slipped his hands under your shirt, skimming up the bare skin of your back. 

You wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, nails scratching as the base of his scalp. Internally, you mourned the loss of his curls. You’d always adored raking your fingers through them, scratching his scalp as he laid his head in your lap. Or tugging at them just to hear what noise you could get out of him.

He pulled his hands from your shirt, only to begin pulling the material over your head. You lifted your arms up to let him. He tossed it to the side and moved on to your jeans. He fumbled with the buttons in his haste to get them off of you. 

“Relax, ‘m not going anywhere,” you crooned.

You covered his hands with your own, assisting him in getting your jeans off your body. You stepped out of them before gently pushing him backwards. The back of his knees hit the bed and he immediately sat, letting you crawl into his lap. 

His sharp inhale as you settled over the growing bulge in his pants, sent a pang of satisfaction through you. You leaned in to finally capture his lips in a long awaited kiss. His hands pawed at you, hands cupping your ass, as you pushed your tongue past the seam of his lips and he gladly let you. 

You couldn’t resist rolling your hips against his. That only pulled a ragged moan from his lips. You pulled back from the kiss, admiring the way his eyes had screwed shut, teeth digging into his bottom lip. 

You repeated the motion. His fingers dug into the plush skin of your ass. 

“D-don’t tease,” he finally managed to grit out. 

“Why?” you drawled, not stopping the movement of your hips. “Don’t you like it, honey?” 

“Yes,” he said, choking on a moan. He was panting, his chest heaving as he tried to hold onto his semblance of self control. But you were making it difficult. 

You smiled. If it were any other time, you might keep teasing him, just to see how far you could push him. But right now – even if you were acting like he didn’t affect you – you needed him just as much as he needed you. 

“Okay, okay.” You finally stalled as his own hips jerked helplessly chasing more frictions. You tugged at his belt loop. “Let’s get you outta these, yeah?” 

He nodded vigorously, lifting his hips to help. You tugged them down as far as you could in your current position. But before you couldn’t even process what he was doing, he had you on your back on the bed. He quickly took his shirt off and shoved his pants all the way down. 

He settled between your parted legs, tugging your panties harshly to the side. He was practically in awe as he looked down at your glistening cunt. He groaned softly. He had missed this. 

Normally, he’d have taken his sweet time with you, worshipped your pretty pussy thoroughly before ever worrying about his own pleasure. But fuck, it had been so long. Three years since he’d gotten the chance to get off. He hadn’t been able to even get it up in prison, too aware of his surroundings to relax enough. Yet the moment he saw you, his cock was stirring back to life. 

With one smooth motion he was filling you up. You winced at the stretch. It had been too long since you’d taken something as big as him and you hadn’t been prepared. 

He whimpered at the feeling, dropping his head against your shoulder. “Can I-I move?”

Your nails grazed his shoulder. “Yeah, honey, you can. Take what you need..” 

It didn’t take any more encouragement for him to rut his hips against you. His movements were sloppy, fueled by pure want. And it didn’t take long for the burn of the stretch to give way to something toe-curling. 

Your head fell back against the pillow. Your fingers dug into the muscle of his shoulder, digging into the flesh. “Andrew,” you let out a soft moan of his name. 

“Fuck, feels so good. Y’feel so good,” he babbled out a string of praise. So perfect. Missed you. Needed this. The words continued to tumble from his lips, the movement of his hips stuttering as you clenched around him. “C-can’t, ‘m gonna cum.” 

His tears were hot, wet against your shoulder. He trembled as he spilled his load inside you. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t meant to cum so fast. He hadn’t finished so quickly since you guys were teenagers. But after so long of waiting, the feeling of your warm, wet, tight, cunt was just too much for him. And he hadn’t meant to start crying but the emotions had just overwhelmed him. 

“Shh,” you hushed him gently, rubbing his shoulder.

He sniffled. “Didn’t make you feel good.”

“It’s okay,” you assured him. 

You didn’t stop rubbing his back until he’d calmed down. As he did, he finally pulled out of you, shifting his weight so he wasn’t crushing you any longer. 

“Wanna make you feel good.” 

You nodded, giving him permission. He settled between your thighs.