#calebrity

You admit, it’s a mite difficult to juggle between long days at work, little tasks that drag you from point to point throughout Linkon, and your own personal life on top of caring for a hybrid stowed away in your shoebox apartment— but your grandmother was all but sapped of her energy then, turning to you for aid although she seldom ever did, and you’d always lend a hand where you could.

The mutt- Caleb, is his name (and you call it fondly even as he’s pawing at your thighs for attention or drooling on your collar)- has grown on you considerably in the past half year, anyway.

You won’t let him down or leave him at the curb. He’s yours. The red collar you bought him says as much, printed with your number on a silver plate, and he wears it not because you make him but because he’s proud of it.

He’s a good boy, he is. He always has been and for that you’re thankful.

Except, this week he’s… different.

As of a few days ago, it’s like he’s been testing the waters- and your patience- on just how far he can go before you tell him off or say bad dog. He must find them warm because he’s just been diving deeper as the week progresses.

You don’t know what to do. He’s oddly aggressive. It’s not rare at all for him to follow you all around your apartment, but he’s foregone the very last shred of respect for your personal space and nips when you try to push him away. Not hard enough to actually hurt- the yip you make is more surprised than anything when he pulls you back in and licks at the small red patch- but you look wounded at it.

Because Caleb doesn’t bite— he just doesn’t.

He wraps you up in seemingly endless embraces and breathes your smell in until he’s dizzy, laughing into your neck like a giddy child. He does this every time you try to leave for work and he’s made you late for it.

Maybe it’s just because you’re ovulating and a little hormonal, but it makes you quite sour and the mood stays even when you return in the afternoon. He’s never liked when you’re gone, sure, but he’s always been there to see you off at the door with a pout as you scratch behind his ear- more or less tame about it.

Your patience really frays at the odd uptick in his possessiveness, though. It’s hurtful.

You’ve always treated him less like a pet- a hybrid- and more like a friend, and you feel quite indignant for it when he growls and tells you that he hates the smell of other men on you, hearing none of your excuses that it’s ‘just coworkers’, glaring at you like some brainless extension of him. You feel less like a person and more like an object, a streetlamp in which he emerges from the shadows for just to piss on to show it belongs to him.

He’s touchy. Snippy. Glued to your side at all times. It’s concerning and frustrating and confusing all at once.

By the fifth day mark, on Friday night, you’re tuckered out by it and don’t question where he is when you return home early from a shift and he’s, uncharacteristically, not there to greet you.

A red collar however, laid on the floor, its tag glittering under dim hallways lights, strikes you as both curious and unsettling.

He never takes that off. No- says it’s his way of showing you and the whole world that he belongs to you, and— have you been too impatient with him lately? Brusque? Maybe you’re a little hormonal but it’s no cause to get short with him, even when he’s acting up, and what if he no longer wants you as his owner—

A gasp.

You find him in your bedroom, humping your pillow, yowling as he comes undone- unawares- and the walls spin as you nearly faint.

You drop your purse. “Caleb!” You shriek, and a visible shiver rolls down his spine as he turns around.

“Bad dog!”

✦

You sleep on it.

Well, you wash your sheet and your pillowcases- and then you sleep on it.

Maybe you overreacted. If anything, you should be grateful for what you walked in on because otherwise, he wouldn’t have known how to tell you he’s been going through a bit of a hot phase- the first of his you’ve experienced- and doesn’t know how to control himself.

You blush just thinking about it, shame knocking in your chest as your heart beats heavy. You feel awful for walking in on him for a number of reasons. One of them being he came all over your bed- and his tummy- and you had to clean both up through furious tears as you peeled your covers off the mattress and pointed him off in the direction of the bathroom, telling him to run the faucet and quick.

A pass of guilt, the fear of you being angry with him, made its round across his kicked expression but he held off on arguing.

For the first documented time in the whole week, Caleb appeared mellow- not agitated, restless, or tense- and rather crestfallen, and you noted it only vaguely as you irately turned on the washer.

Now, it’s in the forefront of your brain.

Well, if he’s been going through some kind of rut lately, it only makes sense he’d be all kinds of pent up, and that his release (albeit in an inconvenient way and place) would provide some relief.

It’s closer to noon when you finally exit your bedroom and meet him at the sofa- the same one you’d all but banished him to last night. He prefers to spend his nights with you, either curled up at your side or splaying his full weight over your back- a breed-relative habit, you’re sure. You’ve heard of some other kinds who enjoy a room to themselves or do just fine with the couch, on their lonesome— But not Caleb.

He looks tired but perks up when he hears you patter down the hall, violet eyes lighting when you timidly take a seat.

With a bit of hesitation, he inches closer until you sheepishly wave a hand and he barrels into your arms.

“Ah- Caleb-“

Before you can even apologize for your jumping the gun last night, he beats you to the punch. “M’ sorry. You don’t hate me for it, do you?” He sighs into your collar and you shiver, “I wish you could understand what it feels like- I wouldn’t have done it if it was somethin’ I could control, I hope you realize that.”

You swallow, digesting his words as you belatedly place a hand on his head to pet. He positively melts. “Y-Yeah,” you mumble back. “It’s okay. I actually wanted to say sorry too. I- I didn’t understand what was going on…”

A deep groan looses from his throat, his chest swelling with content as you itch that spot behind the furry ears say upright on his head. They give a few twitches as he leans against you and wraps his muscular arms around your middle, resting his chin by your shoulder.

“It’s my fault, though, not yours. I didn’t know how to tell you- I was worried you’d just end up scared’a me, or…”

His pause instills interest in you. Your fingers smooth back his brown locks, mussed from fitful sleep, and he sighs. “Or what?” You press softly.

You pull him back just enough to get a look at him, his cheekbones almost shiny with a dusting of pink. His thick brows furrow together.

“Or that you’d leave,” he whispers.

Your eyes widen. You lasso your arms around his neck and pull him to you, your head slotting above his shoulder as his fingers quickly move to support the position, one hand perched at your thigh and the other braced at your side.

“Nonsense,” you grumble at his ear, a bit angry at the suggestion. “I’d never leave you.”

Something hard, then, prods at your middle- too fleshy to be something in either of your pockets- and you stiffen at the realization as it comes a beat too late.

Caleb’s voice is breathy at your ear, low, his tail thumping on the cushion. “Yeah?” He murmurs, a pang of heat stirring in your belly at the sound. Suddenly aware, you gently go to push at his broad chest but he stops you with an imploring look- although the desire, brewing in dilated pupils, isn’t lost on you- and musters a pout.

It looks out of place, the wholesome gaze marred by hunger as it reshapes his puppyish look.

“Even when I am no better than a bad dog?”

Your brow quirks, “I didn’t mean it,” you whisper, wide-eyed as his eyes bore into yours. Every micro expression you make is being catalogued and noted with utmost care, his pink tongue darting out to wet his chapped lips as they grow dry.

“It’s okay if you did,” he murmurs back. “I’m just glad I have you around to remind me of my place…” Long, slim fingers reach up and you watch, unseeingly, as they stroke your cheek, his other hand creeping dangerously close to the waistband of your sleep shorts.

He chuckles, but the humor wanes quickly.

“Otherwise, I’d always be misbehaving. Do you even know what you do to me?” His voice is meaningful, torrid, as he draws in and the tip of his nose brushes with yours. You can’t find it in you to move as your thighs- the ones he slithers a singleminded hand in between- begin to roil with unexpected warmth.

You plant a hand to his chest, shying away, “C-Caleb-“

“Don’t worry,” he says sweetly, “M’ not gonna hurt you. I just….” He lets out a sigh, long and perhaps just a bit exaggerated- but it has the intended effect on you. You purse your lips and feel a trace of guilt twist in your heart.

“You drive me crazy. Y-Your smell- I don’t know why this is happening, either. Honestly? I haven’t had a rut in a couple years. But this…”

Caleb lets out a soft noise of pleasure, lending his full weight to you when he breathes you in and shakes.

When he speaks next, his words come out raspy and so low you hardly register them as his breaths grow labored- they’re all you can hear as the living room space shrinks down to just him and the knuckles that dare to dip into your panties.

“This is just too unfair. You won’t leave me hangin’, pretty,… w-will you?” Breathy. With an undeniable streak of need. You can’t miss the lust that usurps the softer parts of him and makes him look less puppyish and cheerful and more wolfish, calculating.

And, well, when he puts it like that, how could you?

✦

He doesn’t fuck you on the couch. He takes you to your bed and fucks you there like a lover would.

He fucks you deep and fast- to his credit, he doesn’t hurt you, staying true to his word, but the possibility of bruises becomes a nearer thing when he folds your legs back and his grasp becomes constricting, plunging in and out of your cunt with rapt focus. Indigo eyes glow with something feral, like you’ve given him no choice but to claim his ownership over you through sloppy kisses and clinking teeth as he pounds into you, driven him into a corner- but his touch turns worshipful when he presses his forehead to yours and moans.

“Ah- y-you feel so good, so tight,” he compliments, words almost slurred. His pupils expand and he looks no different than a drunken, babbling man, his cheeks a rosy red.

His murmurs are wet against your lips as they graze and mush with his, Caleb’s face so close to yours that his lashes tickle your brow as he gawks at you, so entranced by whatever it is he’s seeing to look away.

A fluffy tail sways unevenly behind him and touches your leg on occasion, almost like it’s trying to curl around you, prickling and eager. Every part of him gravitates to you. You’re the ground beneath his feet. Fertile land.

“And you’re all mine, okay? Nobody else’s. I want you to wear my scent- to carry me with you no matter where you go. You have to promise me you will- mmph- That sound good-?

“C-Caleb—“

You groan when he stuffs himself deeper inside and you swear you feel his length throb inside your walls, stretching. The veins running along his shaft carve out a new pathway in you, one special and just for him, as his balls- heavy and fat, with a hell of a lot to give- slap against your ass. Slick oozes out from the squelching seam of you, coating his thick cock but you still struggle to accomodate his size despite the lubrication.

He’s made to make you feel as if you’re losing your mind. You snatch your jaw with your own hand to keep the flurry of high-pitched sounds from spilling out lest they embarrass you, but he shoos it away and cuffs your wrists with a hand splayed over them.

“Nah- I wanna hear you, baby. You can’t keep holdin’ out on me like this... I’m giving you my all right now, so it should be pretty obvious that you can do the same, yeah?”

A mewl punches out from your lungs half a second later and he seems quite contented at that. He sighs, closing his eyes, saying,

“I’ve been good all along. Can’t you play the part, too? I just want you to see how much I really love you,” his confession is by no means considered casual what with the passion in which its conveyed, but you can’t help but feel it’s a little sudden, said a little too quickly, and you wonder if he means what he says or if the rut is responsible for all these novel, amorous feelings in him.

I mean, he’s probably too wrapped up in the moment to even contemplate his own admissions as they all spew out—

“Caleb, too big—“ you gasp, cutting him off, and he lets out a strangled kind of noise when your walls clamp around him.

Holyfuck holyfuck holyfuck do it again, he wants to say, suffocate me, but nothing comes out and he realizes after a long second that his vision has whited completely. He can’t see anything; he’s in a fuzzy, dazzling world with the blinders on and all he can smell and feel is you- your scent, sugar sweet and about as inviting as a barstool pulled out, envelopes him and he can’t breathe. Can’t speak.

He fucks into you with reckless abandon, huffs you in like it’s his final breaths, and then lets it all go without care for anything else. Far as he’s concerned, everything he knows is defined by you. This is a give and take relationship: he actually gives a damn about your opinion of him and takes all you have to offer.

He’s in love, puppyish and clumsy but fuck you lead the way and lead him on.

“Shh, I know,” he rasps out, steaming up your neck like a fogged window pane as he insinuates himself there. Your whole body feels like a furnace, burning up for him as he opens you up and tucks himself inside.

“I know it’s big, but you gotta be ready for-“ he clips his sentence short, thinking better of it.

He wants to warn you of his impending knot- the one that’ll no doubt leave you yelping and writhing away from him- you certainly deserve as much of a foreword to it, but part of him is just so terrified you’ll reject him or deny him the priviledge of shoving it inside you and fuck he can’t have that.

Caleb’s nothing if not loyal. He’s also nothing if not selfish. That’s always been a wriggling bug he’s tried to stomp out but it remains in the baser part of him, only amplified by the intense rut that came right out of the blue.

He wants you singing his name and bonded to him (or as much of a bond the two of you can form), and so that’s what he’ll get.

He’ll apologize later, and you will forgive him. So all’s fine.

“Y-You can take it,” is the simpler thing he settles on, and you let it pass, because between the fat cockhead splitting you apart deliciously and the sweet, somewhat perturbing nothings he gushes at your ear, you’re deaf to most of everything.

But when you come- unexpected and sharp, overwhelming your senses as your hips ruck up and he has to pin you down in place and ride it out with you as you cream around him- the scream you let out rings in your ears and so does his ferocious grunt. It’s loud and you’re so numb as seconds pass that feel like eons; pointed teeth teasing at the squishy chunk of your shoulder, invoking a buried sense of alarm.

And then he’s biting down hard- not just nipping- the pleasure thankfully driving off the pain as he ploughs inside, muffling a string of curses as he picks up his pace. Caleb gets sloppier and sloppier and then he’s burning white-hot inside you and moaning like a pornstar, pelvis juddering as he comes.

“Mmh- f-fuck- Good girl!” he rewards with half a brain, fucked out into perfect oblivion, and for a second you wonder why his voice sounds more meant for comfort than praise- until you expect him to pull out but he doesn’t, something big and round forming at the base of his cock that has his eyes fluttering back as it pops in. He goes boneless on top of you as every limb of yours stiffens and coils around his broad back.

You scream his name. He shivers.

It feels enough to shatter your mind- the pain searing you, but the ghost of pleasure that creeps up along your nervous system makes you go like jelly beneath him, helpless to whatever he’s got planned for you.

“C-Caleb, you-!”

“Yeah, a bad dog, a bad dog,” he stammers, whimpering at your earlobe, “I know, baby, I know. Just- don’t shut me out, okay? I- It’ll be over soon, just- ah- loosen up around it, okay? It’ll feel so much better that way. Just… hold on to me.”

“I-It hurts-!”

“Ngh, shhh…” He trembles out, shifting to sample a broken mewl from your lips, cupping your jaw with all the love in the world and staring at you as if you told the sun to rise this morning. “Be a good girl and take it, mm? Your pussy’s squeezing me so tight, I think she wants it too, but she has to relax a little first, yeah? Mm… I could give you a whole litter of pups. Give your Gran a bunch of cute lil granbabies to drive her crazy.”

You choke on your own spit, the brunet letting out a near delirious chuckle at the idea and your reaction to it before his brow gives a wince, your walls instinctively trying to push his swollen knot out.

“Wha- Caleb, is that even-?”

“I don’t know,” he kisses your forehead tenderly, his tail giving a heavy, excited thump behind him on the bed as you grab the sheets for dear life and they wrinkle, pinched like your conflicted expression.

He takes you in when you’re fifteen. Since then- throughout the course of around six years, he’s become softer. Less ambiguous to you. There’s things he keeps under wraps and always will despite the harmless pestering on your end (like questions regarding his work, the silhouettes that trail you both constantly— and the curious glances thrown to the blood on his collar after he returns late in the night). But he’s not longer as obscure to you, his person.

Trust blooms in the parts of you where an impoverished lifestyle of scraping by carved out gaps. And you’re used to hiding- that’s not much different now- but instead of diving for shady alleyways, you find refuge in him.

He’s dangerous. That was established early on; since the first moment you met him, really, knelt before him in fear after grabbing his pant leg for help (an action he mistook for a foolish attempt at pickpocketing), that was obvious.

He’s threatening.

Never to you. Not now.

Sylus is a man of impressive decorum and somehow all the blood coating his hands doesn’t take away from his class— he extends those hands to you, callouses and all, and gives you a patient look as if he’s expecting you to take them.

At sixteen you start calling him dad (more of an accident than anything else- it’s not a conscious thing that compels you to view him as something paternal).

He doesn’t object to it.

Things fall into place in weird ways.

When all the pieces settle, you find yourself looking at a semblance of a home— a safe place that the self-proclaimed beast curated with his own paws through painstaking efforts. (Whether you were fully cognizant of them or not didn’t matter: he tried his damnedest to be what you needed, and could only hope it was enough.)

The two of you are always on the move. He barges into your room panting at night and tells you to hurry and pack a bag, or just outright scoops you up in his arms and tucks you into the car’s backseat seconds before you hear the tires revving off. Your surroundings are perpetually changing around you and yet he remains the same; a citadel, a rock in your life.

Sylus provides an air of safety. Despite it all, the abrupt ‘field trips’ (at least, that’s what he called them when you were a bit younger) taken to ward enemies off your location, the bullets that fling by your periphery on furtive nights out and the red threads that coil behind him like talons- destroying anything before it can so much as harm a hair on your pretty head- you feel safe with him.

Predator or not- he’s good to you, a lighthouse fixed firmly amidst rolling smog and cyclones.

You can’t count a time he’s lost control or been unprepared for a frenzy, and he’s taken the proper precautions to keep you from him whenever he suspects one is coming on. The broken activator just solidifies his vigilance. And he’s instructed you plenty on what to do if he does lose it, God forbid, albeit your agreement to it was utterly uneasy.

He figures he’ll spare you the little horror show, he’d joked just to smooth out the worried crinkle in your brow.

Yet- Figures he’ll spare you your life, is what he doesn’t say, despite it being a shared thought between you both.

He teaches you how to wield a gun early on.

You’d told him you didn’t wanna use it, but something as trivial as guilt had no place in Linkon as it collapsed into decadence and carnal ruin. And something like sympathy, he’d also added, was stupid. An invitation to get yourself killed.

(Silly, that. Silly and hypocritical of the man who takes pity on runts.)

Conversation is kept at a minimum at first, and clipped, but he sprinkles in tips and tricks at self preservation— life hacks in the most literal sense— and he keeps an eye on you. Watching always. He makes sure you’re holding up well and even lets you hold down the fort while he’s gone doing God knows what. It feels like a privilege when he entrusts things to you, no matter how seemingly small.

Sylus is special to you. You love him as a teacher, a protector, a warm chest to snuggle up to on the sofa when you’re restless and can’t sleep but you know he’s downstairs with a cushion waiting—

You love him as a father, too.

Not everything about him is clear to you, though... You learn many things but one you have more difficulty understanding is the way he perceives you.

You don’t know if he loves you as a daughter, or a welcome nuisance, or a stray (because he has a penchant to root for the underdog). At first, you questioned if he even loved you at all.

But you’re older now,… and you see it, the heart he wears on his sleeve to bleed for you. He cares for you. And he’s there for you.

And when he asks you to leave with him- less of a hurried demand now and more of a gentle, imploring breath amidst chittering sounds of crickets and night bugs as he stands as a single shadow against your bed frame—

You take his hand.

✦

Boxes piled in every other corner, the building feels less like a home and more like a warehouse- a very tiny, cozy warehouse, with each of your scents intertwining in the unassuming spaces where you meet.

It’s no feat of architecture- just a small apartment nestled in the innards of the southern district, and it certainly isn’t a product of exorbitant spending (the place is deceptively… humble, for what Sylus can afford), but for what it is, you like it.

You’ve dwelled at several different addresses before, and you expect this arrangement will be more of the same. You stopped mourning over the loss of houses that could’ve been homes some time ago; you bounce between streets and domains like rabbits. However, there’s a strange comfort that builds in your chest as weeks pass and, for this reason or that, your guardian shows no signs of jilting the flat.

One day, he calls you to the living room after you’ve showered, and he sits you down.

You lie in a makeshift cage between his long legs as they hang over the couch, one hand smoothing over your damp hair while the other brushes it through.

He’s never in much of a hurry to speak, so when you reach for the TV remote to fill the silence, and he stops you- you concede to the quiet, knowing whatever he’ll say to break it will be worth some thought.

Still, he seems more contemplative than usual. It warrants pause on your end.

Internally, you consider your belongings- the deliberate choice you made to keep most of them boxed- and find relief in the fact that you’ll have less to pack if Sylus were to inform you right now of another move.

It’s a little sad, but it’s just the way things are. You won’t cry over the hand that you were dealt. If nothing else, you’re just thankful, what with the squeeze this city of sin has on its people, that somewhere along the way, Sylus came to loosen you from it.

You owe him. But he never names his price.

Long, rough fingertips meticulously weaving through your hair, gentle despite the callouses as he twists it into braids, you fall into the belief that he won’t.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but you can’t find much in you to debunk it save for the tiny, deep-rooted fear that one day you’d wake up, and- just like your parents on the day of outbreak- he’d be gone. There was plenty of doubts in your head, but most if not all were born from an old trauma, and Sylus seemed… content, weirdly enough, at your side.

It becomes an easier and easier thing to believe that’s where he’ll remain.

“Sweetie,” he eventually says, “I wanted to… discuss something, with you.”

You perk under his hands, spine straightening. You give him a sidelong glance over your shoulder and find his eyes, a sharp red, surprisingly mellow as they flit across the bridge of your nose, reading your expression carefully.

“What’s wrong?”

That (the instinctive response to believe something’s gone amiss) almost brings a wry smile to his lips, but he wets them a moment later and opens them to speak. “Nothing. Not this time,” he explains smoothly. “You… You’re used to moving around, the both of us are. I’m sure it’s been… tiring, at the best of times.”

“Well,” you start as a reply, but find your speech cropped short because you’ve no real way to deny that: it was exhausting. Of course it was. But wherever he went, you’d follow. That’s just how it’s always been.

Besides, if not fixed firmly at his side- you’d be choosing the hell that is overrun, lawless Linkon; to be tossed back into its maw for the predators or, if you’re more fortunate, a not as brutal death by starvation.

Noting your silence- your agreement- Sylus continues.

He ties off the end of the tuft with a colorful band and moves to work on the other, surprisingly deft. He’s only done your hair a million times- but still, his odd expertise in it was as surprising as it was endearing. The fact that you’re twenty-one now doesn’t change this common arrangement- or the mutual fondness the two of you have for it. You like when Sylus dries or does your hair, and evidently, he does too, for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s just therapeutic for him to feel something soft in his hands. He’s better acquainted with the opposite.

“So what if we were to stay?”

The words take a moment to click.

Because you don’t stay anywhere. You don’t stay, you just run and drive and hide. Live life perpetually on the down low. On the run.

Sylus does not settle.

Still, his voice, thoughtful and velvety, rumbles behind you in a continuous, comforting sound and forces you to take what he’s saying seriously.

“This place- you don’t dislike it, do you? It’s nice. Nothing gaudy or impressive. But it’s… homey,” he muses aloud. “Off the books. You’re safe here. Safer than what the other addresses had to offer, at least.”

You ponder it for all of five seconds before answering. And to be fair it’s not actually hard to; an inner part of you assumed you’d be on the move for all your life, but you’re weirdly pleased at the idea of… not being on the move for all your life.

Some anchorage sounds nice.

You tuck your head to your chest. “I… I think I would like that.”

He perks a bit. You feel it in his hands when they pause, done with their task, and one shifts to rest on your crown.

His knees, flanking either side of you, close in. Without thinking, you latch onto one’s calf and lean into it as you grab the remote. This time he lets you.

“Yeah?” He goes, a little breathless. “Are you sure? You realize it’d be a little more… permanent.”

“Okay.”

Sylus looses a sigh somewhere behind you.

“What I’m getting at is that you’re no longer a little squirt in desperate need of me,” he clarifies in a more pointed tone, and you resist arguing that- you have no time to, really, “so if you want to leave, you can feel free to. Don’t think you’re being shackled here by me.”

For as genuine as his words sound, you quickly cotton onto the expectancy that undercoats them- the mite of something that almost makes you believe he’s waiting for affirmation on your end. A rare thing. Usually it’s the other way around.

It pulls a huff from you, though. Peels of laughter rattle from the screen in front of you (he managed to unpack your TV, but as it stands, most of the house is still pretty bare) but you ignore your favorite show for the moment to turn and frown at him.

You grab his knee while you do, saying, “Of course I don’t think that. If anything, I feel like I’m holding you back.”

Scarlet eyes blink and widen, but just slightly. White hair falls over his brow (his locks loosening from gel after a long day) when he gives his head a tilt. After a beat, he laughs at you, a deep, rumbling sound- and pats your head directly after to fix the flustered knot in your brow.

“Well, I guess we’re both wrong then, hm?

He stoops forward to kiss your cheekbone- a chaste, quick thing- and then he gets up with a grunt to head for the hall.

You watch him with a strange flutter in your chest (one that you label affection; not a wrong guess but it also fails to fully encompass just what he means to you) and stare at the wall even as he disappears behind it.

But he calls over his broad shoulder to you, “Don’t sit too close to the screen, by the way. Someone tends to get headaches when watching cartoons.”

Crossing your arms with a pout, you lean your back into the seat of the couch and splay your legs out on the fluffy rug. You’re glad for that being unpacked, but quickly find yourself planning for the following days and all you’ll have to take out and assemble- which admittedly wasn’t much, but it was still enough to trigger your lazy streak.

Sometimes you just want to lounge around all day and do nothing: a fantasy that feels more possible after your guardian’s suggestion.

You holler back, “Oh, just go to sleep, old man.” Distantly, a door opens, but it doesn’t close.

He’ll be out later.

✦

He doesn’t come out later, contrary to your belief, but his open door does make a little more sense to you when it’s deep into the night and you emerge from your own room, scared, and traipse down the hall.

The remnants of a nightmare that felt too-real grip you. Five fingers on, they don’t let go.

But Sylus- the quasi foreboding man who took you in- knows how to pull you from a pinch.

You seek his warmth as the swath of wooden tiles cooling the balls of your feet blends into carpet- that of his bedroom- navigating in total darkness as you enter.

“Sylus-?” You can’t even get the word out before he startles upright and you hear the clink of something steely and dangerous—

“I-It’s me, daddy!” You assuage quickly, voice a frail, shaken sound that’s made even smaller by the dregs of a bad dream that still hangs fresh over your mind.

Even as the images peter out— claws wrapping around your throat, a dumpster rattling as you and other ragamuffins brawl over veritable trash as food, the roar of a predator as it holds you down, saliva dribbling into your ear— the emotions are harder to shake.

You feel dizzy and a little out of place as he lets out a deep sigh of relief, flicking on the lamplight, and blinks heavily at you.

The fingers that have dipped beneath the mattress retract and return to his lap. You observe it with a relaxing of your shoulders.

Some of the tension fades from him too, but not all of it.

He asks, concern entangled with gravely bits of exhaustion, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

You say nothing, your own voice failing you as you mentally struggle to not only find your thoughts but string them together in a coherent way.

Everything around you was blurry. Felt unstable. A cold, clammy sweat licks up your palms and forehead. The ground beneath you grows a mouth and threatens to swallow you whole- the shadows in the corner ominous and great, watching.

Of course, it was only a nightmare, an unpleasant dream that you’d laugh about and forget easily enough come morning. But right now, it’s not. It’s vivid and horrifying and amalgamating into the atoms of reality to create a special kind of paranoia. It won’t let you sleep tonight.

…Not unless something’s there to hold you, at least.

Sylus’s own voice is groggy, a bit confused. Almost unthinkingly, though, he extends a hand to welcome you.

“C’mere,” he lifts the blanket and you’re instantly drawn to the empty space beside him.

You assume it with eagerness and all but barrel into his chest, punching out a grunt from him before he chuckles faintly, reaching over to pull on the thin, beaded chain. Darkness paints across your surroundings but a small highlight swims in cherry-red eyes as they soften at you.

Strong, lean arms wrap around you, helping you burrow into him without objection.

“Was it a nightmare?” He murmurs just above a whisper, voice warm but rough as the fluffy comforters, the same ones he tucks you both under, hug him back in. “Haven’t had one of those in a while, hm?”

He feels you jerkily nod under the dip of his chin and makes a sighing response. Callous finger pads close around your back and rub little circles there meant to soothe. “S’okay, kitten. It’s over now,” he breathes, languidly pecking your temple with open lips, smearing away the part of your fringe that’s been pasted there by a cold sweat.

He has this weird habit of taking you under his wing despite his serrated edges and the natural intensity of his stone face; right now, you curl up closer to his breast, finding a tenderness he perhaps only reserves for you, and he exhales overhead.

Fears are fast to flee, wrapped up by him. As moments pass, and your erratic heart rate resumes a more normal pace, you sound your gratitude in a low murmur. Vaguely, you wonder if you’d also stirred Sylus from a nightmare of his own upon stumbling into his room, because his own pulse- typically extremely slow- undulates in his sternum.

It thumps against your ear, creating a cadence almost considered fast. A touch uneven and a lot loud.

“…Thank you, daddy,” you mouth against him, nuzzling into his pajamas- a thin, linen shirt that oozes a domesticity you’re hard-pressed to come by.

Beneath your ear— a skip.

“For… for always being there for me.”

It sounds a little sappy, but in the moment, none of that phases you. Evidently- with a low, contented hum emanating from deep within his chest- it doesn’t phase Sylus, either.

You wonder if it’s your imagination or a real, bonafide smile that curves against your head.

“Well, that’s where I belong, isn’t it? At your side,” he murmurs, and after a beat you feel his lips press a kiss to your crown, mild but lingering. “And you belong at mine, if you want it. I’ll always be here for you, sweetie,” he promises, “no matter what.”

Finally, you let your eyes flutter shut.

✦

Weeks pass. They do so pleasantly; slowly, but not in a bad way.

The quiet- mainly the lack of wandering from point A to B all for the sake of anonymity- is a welcome reprieve. Some doubts linger surrounding the agreement you and Sylus came to, but it becomes a more solid idea in your head as days pass without interuption:

This can be home.

So you start acting like it.

When noon hits, you don’t go with Wolfe, Sylus’s most trusted contact, for the usual training session when he swings by- bidding him farewell with a small wave- but instead stay back to work on the house.

Noon comes and goes. The sky turns dusky and your belly howls for food but you pay none of it any mind, too engrossed to care.

Because this is exciting.

You decorate all throughout the day, unwrap furniture from cardboard and feel anticipation swell inside you. You sing and twirl.

Before Sylus returns, you buzz with excitement while picturing his face upon walking in- not to a barren space but to a cozy one- and the rare show of his surprise. It’ll probably be nothing beyond a flare of his eyes or a soft sound of acknowledgement, but you pine for it all the same.

You’d like to make him happy. To make him feel more comfortable, at home. Especially after a long day spent weaseling throughout the blind spots of the city. He’s only allowed so much time to kick off his shoes and relax, and you want to highlight those moments for him.

It’s the least you can do, you think with a small smile, stepping down from a stool to appraise a photo you just hung (one with his hand around your waist, pulling you to his side— a would-be perfect photo if not for the crow that blurs in the corner of the lens).

Focused, you stick your tongue out and square your fingers, closing one eye because that’ll definitely help you make a better judgement on whether or not the frame is straight enough—

It slants sharply when the front door opens and slams.

You jolt, ripped from your small trance as you spin your head towards the entryway, only an iota prepared to run for the hallway and bird dive into the closet- that’s if you even make it in time. Bullets will always be faster than your little legs and if you’re correct in your belief that it’s those shady men who hate Sylus, come to retaliate against him, then there’s no way they’ll deliberate and give you a chance to escape—

Sock-clad feet halt on the floor. The stop in momentum hurls your head inches beyond your axis of balance, but the figure that freezes in the threshold, familiar, tall but hunched over, somehow seems more surprised.

Not at the new touch-ups on the walls and the neat, embellished rooms- no, but at you.

Trudging into the apartment, he looks worse for wear and you take the sight of him in with a different, growing kind of alarm.

Your shoulders ease up, just slightly. It’s not an intruder, a pack of big, unscrupulous men barging in to avenge some grievance related to the assassin who took you in- which is relieving, but the concern is tight in your brow all the same.

When he speaks, his voice is ragged. Half man half animal.

“Sweetie- what are you-?” He cuts himself short to make a sound of displeasure that comes from deep within his throat. Raw, brutal.

“You shouldn’t be here-!” You give a little flinch in response to the ferocity in his tone, phlegm catching in his trachea before he looks down, shakes his head with a hard blink, and stomps into the bulwarks of the apartment.

“Dad, you-?”

Ignoring your startle (perhaps blind to it; you think his mind is on other, more inward matters as something wild glints in his eye- paired with a conflict that worsens with each heaving breath), Sylus grabs your wrist, and he does it tightly.

“There’s no time- I need you to hurry. Help me with my suppressants- now!”

Something clicks in you, then, a distant memory lighting itself from a foggy space of remembrance.

“And kitten, listen to me. If I ever… lose control,” he starts, words a gentle, almost resigned mumble against a backdrop of city sirens and a snarling engine as the car veers into a more secluded road. You stare at his profile with a flicker of unease. But he remains composed, saying as if it’s a topic as simple as the weather, “I need you to handle me,” he glances at you, gaze steady, a brilliant, solid red, even as your mouth opens to bluster out a denial of that possibility.

“But- your suppressants- We can use them—“

“Maybe,” he turns to look out the windshield, at the road ahead. Dust and debris scrape in the wind. Even for the southern district, the place was ratty, but this is where the deal was to be had, and Sylus needed those vials before morning. “But things don’t always go as planned, you know that, sweetie. So… If something ever fails, or I become immune to the dosages— I taught you how to shoot.”

“I- I wouldn’t shoot—!“

He snaps his head over and barks, fingers whiting around the wheel. “You would! You would and you will.”

Startled, your vision blurring despite the hand you close firmly over your breast- as if balling your emotions in your palm, holding them at bay- you swallow. Scarlet eyes ripple, irises dancing around a black orb as it shrinks and becomes frantic. Unease flutters in your chest as his cold instructions turn over in your mind- but for all his hammering of them into you- you don’t bite the hand that feeds. It’s just not in your nature.

You don’t even bite the hand if it asks you to.

Begs.

Noting your shock, the stunned expression that barely masks a confused kind of hurt, your guardian blinks. Sighs and looks away.

Exhaust blows out from the back of the vehicle; you catch it in dark tails from the rear view mirror, in whiffs as the air around you becomes sour and noxious.

“I taught you to shoot,” he says again after a beat. Softer, this time. “When it gets to the point where it really matters,… don’t let your daddy down, okay? Please, sweetie. Just… agree on this one thing.”

For once in a handful of years, not considered easy by any means- but enjoyable at his side- you stare at the man who took you in and find him cruel.

You dip your chin, more out of hurt than anything else, highly uncertain as dread contricts your lungs, and nod.

It does what it was meant for: It placates him. You think it even convinces him.

He’s putting all his faith in it, in that wordless assent you’d given him years ago, for the sake of the present.

Though, Sylus still thinks it’s manageable. That there’s still a shot that this frenzy- triggered by an enhancer after a gloved hand squeezed glass to the point of bleeding, vindictive and bent on getting the last laugh- can be resolved. So you hurry to lay him on the couch as his breathing picks up, scuttling towards his room before coming back with arms full of a briefcase.

You crash to the rug and prop the case on the coffee table, fishing out a syringe before sidling up to him and taking his arm.

With some resistance- and a grunt that sounds more wolfish than man- he lets you, and you line up the needle with his arm. You say a curse under your breath when tears smear across your lids and make fuzzy the room around you.

“Hurry,” he rasps.

Shakily, you dig at the crook of his arm with your thumb to plump up the vein before- with little coordination- you feed the needle in with a sharp breath.

It mingles with Sylus’s as he makes an uncomfortable noise, the glittery fluid disemboguing into his bloodstream.

Split seconds feels like eons.

Time moves slow as molasses and you chew on your lip until something like metal sours your tongue.

Between fingers that tremble wildly just to keep it inside him, steadily injecting him with the suppressant, and a heart that pounds with uncertainty in your ears— given no assurance whatsoever that you’re not too late to pacify him— you don’t realize all the gawking on his part.

The ardency in his gaze, fleetingly tender, as it remains fixed to you. Some unspoken battle happening behind it.

…The darker thing, with a name you can’t assign, is winning out.

He feels it, too; conscious thought lending itself to his baser person— instincts, ugly and primal and overwhelming— all against his will.

“You were supposed to be with Wolfe,” He forces out with great difficulty, sweat beading his temple. He’s hot to the touch, skin like a kiln, baking your fingertips as they hover over him.

Light as feathers, you still feel the burn.

“I would’ve never came.”

Thickly, you swallow, rubbing his forearm soothingly even as the veins there bulge and glow, putting a fright in you that you do well to ignore.

He needs you right now. He needs you and you won’t fail him.

“Shh, shh,” you hush, folding your upper half over the sofa to plant your head against his shoulder.

One hand, between your bodies, gradually plies him with the suppressant; the other slips to the nape of his neck and intwines with his mullet, tugging softly.

He lets out a soft sound at that, temporarily appeased.

“It’s okay, daddy. It’s okay.”

You need it to be true.

For what it’s worth, he does seem just a touch comforted by that.

It’s not lasting.

He’s dangerous, and he knows. He’s losing out to the predator instinct, and he knows and he’s terrified but he remains rigid. Has to.

“I want you to inject all of it into my veins,” a sonorous voice rings at your ear, dry, open lips moving against your head as he smushes a kiss there. You think it’s more subconscious a move than anything as the cognizant trace in him fades out, albeit you still appreciate it.

A large hand, hanging off the couch- shaking not because it’s weak but because it’s trying its best to be- shifts to rest over your back.

He continues, “And then I want you to leave me. If we’re lucky, I’ll pass out and ride it through that way…”

Clenching your jaw, you nod against his neck, under his chin, and bite down on a whimper.

“You’ll be okay, daddy. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be all better. The suppressants w-will make you sleepy, and—“

Something surges in him, then, a growl cutting through your eardrums as you flinch back and he- before the second little vial even reaches the halfway tick- knocks it from your hands.

It collides with the coffee table and shatters.

The rug- the fluffy one you’d happily picked out with him some months back- darkens with a splotch you can’t easily scrub out.

Like an animal in a cage he’s revolted. You’re not naive enough to not see the movement for what it is; no matter how watered down, it’s still a version of it: a beast lunging.

Whatever’s left of his conscience is just barely barring that monster off, but as you fall back on your ass and gape at him, you realize with horror he will not turn out as the victor.

Fear brews in your belly. Butterflies swarm the pit of it, leaving nausea in the wake of their wings as they make quick work of your bravery- or the pretense you held of it.

A drop of blood pricks from the crook of his arm, the syringe made useless as it lay broken on the carpet: you watch it with shock, numbness almost, before looking up to him.

He forces himself to go recumbent, five fingers splayed over his face. The gaps in them, though, reveal grimacing, pearly teeth.

Canines bared no different than a hungry predator, defensive and bold.

Unlike you, very real in their display.

For a number of seconds, you do not breathe. Eyes wide and scared.

“Go,” he croaks out after a moment.

It takes longer than it should to register.

When it does, you gasp as if stirred from a bad dream. It’s precious- the sign he gives that he’s still in control- and you don’t take it for granted. You rise to wobbling knees, frenetically glancing between the dazzling shards and his heaving chest.

You extend a cautionary, worried hand, something in you utterly wrecked at the sight of him- your savior, your shield, your father figure- crumpled in on himself.

“Daddy—“

“Go!”

Silence strobes across the living room, but just for a second. It bites into you where it settles.

Unthinkingly, you turn. His words and their grating tone cut better than any knife ever could. Tears clinging to your lashes, you steel your legs (because they’re gelatinous beneath you), whip around, and start for the front door.

You don’t know where you’ll go apart from Sylus tonight, but that’s all to be figured out later after you calm your nerves down a bit and convince yourself it’ll all be fine—

The couch groans atop its wooden frame.

Suddenly, a hand snatches around your wrist, scorching hot, and when you swirl around, his head is bowed.

A whit of hope strings you along—

“D-Dad?” You breathe, “Are you okay now?”

Scarlet eyes peer up from a silvery curtain of hair, aflame, near glowing, and you let out a gasp.

—And drops you.

“I thought you wanted to help little old me? So…” he muses darkly, “where are you going?”

The reality of your situation takes a second to catch up to you.

Something that can accurately be called fear clamps in your chest— not for what he could be but for what he is now. Some change has happened in him, some sickness taken root, and until it passes, you’ll be victim to the beast that wears your savior’s face.

Stunned, you listen. “Has your father ever left you hanging? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same?”

“Sylus-“

He tuts, a belittling sound. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. C’mere, kitten, sit.” Long fingers entwine around your wrist and you’re reminded of wolf paws trampling over twigs in forests. It’s not unbearably tight a grip, not yet, at least, but he’s certainly applying more pressure than what he generally does.

You wet your dry lip, dread wringing you from the inside out. You feel oddly parched.

“But Sylus- you’re not-“

“Sit,” he suddenly growls, something undeniably dark glittering in his eye.

You’re without opportunity to argue or even try to reason with him, because he yanks you into his lap and loops his arms around your middle.

You liken yourself to a bird in a cage. His limbs your bars and your soft sounds of fear like twittering.

Using the last of your rational thought- your brain losing ground to fight or flight instinct- you try to think back to his instructions (funereal as they were), but find yourself creating other options. Even if you did want to shoot Sylus like he’d made you promise all those years ago, it’s not like you’ve got a gun lying around for it… No, the one he gave you (the one you keep as a token of him, like a locket) is sandwiched between your mattress and its framework.

A-And that’s where it’ll stay. No matter what.

Because you don’t bite the hand that feeds. You don’t bite the hand that feeds even after it pleads to be.

You decide, right then, that it’s better to play dead.

Sat perfectly still in his lap, your plan succeeds for all of half a minute before a hitch appears. To begin with, it was one born out of desperation, with low expectancy- but damn it all you still flinch when you become aware of his teeth and your proximity to them.

Fangs brush against your throat, uncomfortably sharp. It raises alarm in you, but it’s quickly lost in the other warning bells clanging in your skull.

You shiver. To your horror, Sylus chuckles.

“Are you scared I’ll hurt you?” He murmurs, breath searing your neck where it fans against it. It’s labored and fast; the depravity amplified against your earlobe.

Somewhere in you, you find the courage to answer. “A- A little,” you feebly admit. “I couldn’t get all the suppresants in.”

Sylus hums, low and satisfied, but you don’t quite miss the undercurrent of decadence in it- as much as you might want to.

“Good,” he quips. “Frenzies feel so much better without the pushback. You shouldn’t have injected any in me in the first place.”

“But you said-“

“It’s in my DNA to want to bite. It’s a little cruel to keep me from that… don’t you think?”

A debate happens within you, short-lived but tumultuous. You deliberate on answering because really, how can you? What is there to say that can temper him when he’s like this? A predator in the flesh.

And the thing about predators is that, somewhere in the equation, there must be prey—

But no. No- you refuse to believe he’ll succumb to that animalism, not when he’s more or less like blood to you. Your trust for him runs as thick as it, anyway. Blood is thicker than water, and poison, too- so the toxic lilt in his voice means nothing. Nothing at all.

You swallow, unable to offer any real reply. “I- I-“

“No,” he snips, a palm drifting lower. Positively impatient. Ever the obliging, albeit sometimes brusque man, the Sylus you know is nowhere to be found.

“Tell daddy what you really think of him. Think he’s a monster, don’t you?”

Finally, he nips at your neck, cutting himself loose from the self restraint he stubbornly moored himself to, groaning at the softness. Seamlessly, he suckles a hickey into your throat and you mewl.

The single thread of whatever the hell it is that’s keeping him at bay- his buried conscience, perhaps- snaps.

He makes a hot, ferocious sound, pawing at your breast now, drawing a startled yelp from you that his gums throb at. “Should he act accordingly? Hm? Use your words, kitten.”

Words? No. No, you think actions would suit you better- he’s not in his right mind right now and you need to leave like he’d ordered before your image of him, the one you’d put on a precious pedestal, collapses.

Daringly, you get up to try and bolt out again, mind single as your eyes dart to the front door.

If you can just leave the apartment, maybe you can lose him in the weaving, shady paths that are labyrinthine Linkon. Surely, he’ll find someone else, someone deserving (culpable men are not hard to come by here), and make them his glorified plaything instead.

By the time the sun rises, he’ll have woken from this awful, twisted trance—

He lets out a roar, angrily snatching you back onto the couch.

This time, though, there’s no semblance of freedom as he pins you under him, hovering close enough to bump his long nose against yours as he grips your hips tight enough to bruise.

“Nawh, you wound me, sweetie… And here I thought…” he rasps, ruby eyes glossing as the lid droops, blatantly ogling your jostling breast, “You had daddy’s better interest in mind.”

That’s unclear. But yours? Your better interest?

There it is again- blitzing across your frazzled conscience, stark against the dreadful haze: Play dead.

You do.

The blow will come, that’s definite. But if you play your cards right, maybe, a small hope in the back of your head says, you can lessen it.

You go limp beneath him and his hands. Even as they grope your tits through your shirt before he quickly foregoes that charade in favor of ripping open the collar, you remain still. You clamp your eyes shut and bite down on a pathetic sound.

Each and every one of your intentions evade riling him up, and yet your mere presence, pliant but shivering beneath him, does a good enough job at that on its own.

Still, as his energy builds into a devastating force, you’re quietly thankful for the amount you did manage to get in with the syringe. Likely, you realize with a heavy swoop of your heart, the determining factor in your life.

H-How much was it again-? Two vials? Or a vial and a half-?

Briefly, you glance over to the table where the case lay, open but half empty, and contemplate something stupid before the man- beast- above you laughs. Asserts himself in your face.

He’s all you see when he says, “I guess you don’t have your better interest in mind, either. Hm, kitten?”

And you’re all he smells, feels, knows, as he ruts his clothed cock against your thigh and you feel the swollen bulge. You shiver again. He’s really, really hard and is he actually planning to fuck you with that-?

You?

The pleasured, but not close to satisfied, grunt he makes says yes. Yes, absolutely he’s going to fuck you.

Rip off your panties after uncivilly pulling off your shorts and stuff his flushed length inside with a—

—“Fuck, kitty!”

He’s met with resistance.

And you forget your plan completely, terror taking over entirely as you begin to wriggle and plead for him to hold off, to reconsider— you’re a virgin and he’s mean and given your relationship, you two were never supposed to end up parallel to one another on the couch, desire brewing between your naked bodies. Well, you’re naked- or growingly; but Sylus isn’t.

Scraps of leather cling to sturdy, lean muscle, but he’s broiling in them still, skin licked with sweat. Evidently, heat has fried his neurons- his memory of himself- too.

“Please, daddy, I- I’ll—“

Oh, break. You’ll one hundred percent break but you keep from saying it aloud because you suspect it’ll warm his blood all the more. A correct guess, but it’s a little late for taking back what you did say. Sylus cottons onto it and groans.

“Don’t do this, Sylus,” you try to remind him of who he really is, even if your voice is small and untrustworthy. “Y-You don’t have to. J-Just remember who you are- who I am!”

His precious girl.

Once, he’d even said, his treasure.

Your heart stings.

Taking out the engorged, weeping head of him and rubbing it at your mostly-dry entrance (in hopes to prime it after failing to push his way inside), he’s hardly lucid as you babble.

Cute… But unimportant, he decides.

…Yet, he does somehow find it in him to look up, and you do find a trace of… something in him, human-like and guilty, when he does. It’s quicksilver. Gone when you blink.

Your pussy lips try to spit him out but it just works him up further.

The darkness in his gaze returns in tenfold.

He manages a scoff. “Oh, c’mon. Of course I remember~ You’re daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?” He hums meanly, suddenly immune to the wide, kicked look you send him. It’s always done wonders on him before, but you’re met with failure.

“So how come you can’t take his cock? I know you could, if you just tried a little harder. Relaaax. Ease up. From now on, someone’s gonna have to be the calm one between us when I get into my frenzies. You can be that, right?” That sentence instills dismay in you for many reasons, but you have no time to think on them.

He husks, “Now, go on. Help guide me in.”

You don’t reach a hand down between you two like perhaps he wanted, but you do hear a faint squelch right then as he cants his hips forward an inch, and it does make you gasp. Despite yourself, you slick up for him- for God knows what reason, maybe just as self preservation or some deeper, pitiful attempt to please him- and it becomes obvious.

Sylus notes it with a shaky breath that blends with his other labored, ragged ones, and a grin that’d better suit a bastard.

He delves inside, by a small miracle, but you can’t stop from crying when he reaches halfway in and blood rings around the thick base of him. Inwardly, you try to separate the sin from the face, telling yourself between strained breaths that he’s not in control, that this frightening, terribly unfamiliar side isn’t the real him.

You whimper more when you realize you’ll be squinting at him for months to come, losing sleep over the question of, was he helpless to the beast, or hiding it in him all along? Was he a mere victim to the predator instinct forced onto him? or willfully steering it—?

No. No. Because he’s like blood to you. And blood is thicker than water, and poison, and the niggling doubts you feed on until gluttony.

“I-It hurts,” you try when he bottoms out with a resounding groan. Shameless and frenetic. He stoops over you after pressing your legs all the way back to the couch, rough as he purrs in your ear.

“You say it hurts, but your pussy just squeezes tighter around me… So you’d understand why I’d be getting mixed reactions, don’t you?”

He whispers. For the second documented time, you find Sylus cruel. Very, painfully, cruel.

It’s hard to argue with him, even when you know he’s wrong. You think if he was more awake right now, more him, then he’d side with you as well. And yet he’s completely untrustworthy right now, morally black and mean. So, so mean.

That devilish smirk on his blissed-out face might bring on an even sharper sting than his cock as it spears inside you and starts a brutal pace.

Well.

Not quite.

Your eyes flare. So do his, want and pure, unadulterated need zipping between your bodies as his perspiration dribbles onto your collar. He hangs his head into your shoulder and you feel droplets slip between the valley of your breast.

It doesn’t take long for the heat to feel sweltering; sweat running like the Nile between you both.

“Silly little bird. You just- hah, fuck- have no clue, do you? How tempting you are?”

You ignore it all because it’s better to. Maybe ignorance won’t shield you from his hands as they clench around the fat of your hips, but it’ll certainly help you later on down the line when you want to forget and are thankful for the kickstart.

You try to focus on the ceiling, but even that blurs behind him when he leans back some just to stare, moaning at what he sees.

Even beasts can appreciate beauty, he distantly observes.

Those eyes on you, not gentle per usual (albeit sometimes tinged with a harmless tease) but ravenous and sharp- are even harder to ignore. You can’t stop your hands from lifting to push at his face to try to block him out.

All for naught, of course.

With a choked moan, he chuckles. “Ugh- look at you. These little hands keep swatting at me, even though your face is full of pleasure. Fuck,” he curses, his face handsome but a bit unnerving as it dons a more perverted look, eyes half closed, “You feel…. good. I always knew you would.”

No. No. Shut up, shut up—

“You wanna be good for your daddy?”

Yes.

Not like this.

He gathers your unruly hands and cuffs them above your head. “Then lie down and take it. If it hurts as much as you pretend, I’m sure it’ll… feel better that way, if you give in.”

There’s a very small window in between Sylus hovering over you and then Sylus dipping down to bite the fleshy bit between your neck and shoulder: in it, there’s no time to prepare.

Ice tingles in your veins, shock stealing your breath.

It’s the pain, first dull and uncomfortable as his teeth sink in, but then quickly all-consuming, that helps you find the scream.

The scream— a small, broken cry.

It doesn’t make much noise, not enough for any possible neighbors to hear- in Linkon, none would even bat an eye to it, anyway- but he covers your mouth regardless. He eats up the pathetic sounds with rough lips and hungry groans.

You don’t know how much blood he’s drawn, but there’s a little on his teeth that he makes you taste.

“Ngh, you’re delicious,” he heaves after a break. Saliva connects you both in a fleeting strand. “I’m sure your pussy tastes even better- but kitten, I really don’t have the time right now to try it. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” He chuckles in your ear. You know he does not care for the answer. It’s deep and mean-spirited.

This side of Sylus- this rotten caricature of the man who took you in— All the hurt for it turns to loathing.

“For later,” he decides after a beat, resolved as he ignores your sneer.

You’re used to ambition on his end, but not greed: right now, his goals gravitate more towards selfishness than anything else.

All of it nears its end and quickly.

As he ruts into you, though, frenzied thrusts reaching their mark with loud grunts, it feels more gradual for you… Painfully slow. Seconds might as well be minutes, or hours, even.

It’s feral, the glint in his eye as he reshapes your walls to fit the outline of his massive cock, your virgin pussy spasming around him. Responsively, he gives a twitch, and you swear you feel his balls jump when he pauses- just for a moment- and they rest above your ass.

Sylus looks down at you, breathless and wild, and you shake at the lack of familiarity in his gaze. Ruby red eyes survey you almost frantically, with one intent only- to fuck you within an inch of your life, undoubtedly. Full of need. It’s a bottomless gaze. You think right then that you can’t give him what he wants because he’ll always be left wanting for more.

You’re not an ocean— if he reaches his hand in, he’ll inevitably reach the bottom but that clearly doesn’t stop him from trying to pull everything from out of you anyway.

It scares you. You feel small, mouse-like, but when he snatches your jaw into a sultry kiss, all canines and spit, you realize that even amidst the tumult of his predator state, you still mean something to him.

You’re all he sees. Feels. Understands to want for.

He burns inside you, the juncture of your thighs becoming sticky, gross. He ploughs inside without care for it, chasing his end and choking out moans along the way.

He coaxes some out of you, too.

Maybe it’s out of fear but you suckle on his tongue experimentally and he shakes, damp skin shivering under your finger pads as you dig them into his forearm.

Maybe you can’t play dead, but if all else fails, you can still play nice.

That’s in your best interest.

“F-uck, sweet thing, you’re gonna make me-“ a primal noise rips through his chest and rings in your ears. He lowers himself to your neck again and suckles at the orbs of blood that prick at the surface, lapping away at the small mess he made.

You wonder if after all this is over, you’ll be able to pretend it was just a love-bite, a hickey or something minor. Healable. Something able to be forgiven. Even if that would also be hard to reconcile with, considering you’d never thought he do something like this to you, the precious girl he’d flip Linkon upside down for—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He’s classy, but not now. Cursing up a storm at your clavicle and pounding into you without thought, blunt nails embedding into your hips. Aching to brand himself wherever he can.

There’s no ceremony to it all (though there is a build-up, his pelvis quickening but stuttering against the underside of your bent thighs) when he comes.

He shouts and you scream, holding onto him for dear life as a torrent of something hot and thick floods you. Your legs shake, poor cunt desperately trying to push its intruder out but it flutters when he throbs inside you and quivers. A wisp of pleasure paralyzes you- it’s so good.

Warmth trickles between you; all along the seam of you when he withdraws until only the tip remains, his cheeks flushed, eyes unfocused.

You let your head bounce against the cushion when he slides it all out with a wet ‘pop’, squeezing your eyes shut in shame. But relief joins it, too, your jaw (that had went slack only to howl with delight) closing as you catch your breath.

It’s done. It’s over. You went through the hard part and now you just have to wait the aftershocks of it out until morning, when you’ll finally be given the chance to recuperate and forget the monster your daddy was acting the night before—

Something thick, straightening back to life, nudges at your sopping hole again as it clenches around nothing. Your eyes snap open.

A large, callous palm holds you down, bracing you by the collarbone. He tuts, leaning over you with a dazed but wholly vicious grin.

Far from satiated.

“Ah-ah, kitten. It’s a little early to tap out, isn’t it? I’m far from done with you.”

He drives himself back home, slamming into you with a moan you brokenly mirror.

✦

Morning birds tweet outside the window. Bickering back and forth to one another.

The sheer curtains glow with sunlight as the onset of dawn makes its way in. Rays of it slur together in blocks on the floor.

Sylus’s room, you realize groggily. Not the living room with its new sofa stained with sweat and sex or the rug with its shattered, neon vials.

A strong arm holds lazily to your waist. Warm breath at your ear tickles you into slight wakefulness. The body slotted behind yours isn’t scorching hot like your nerve endings remember, though, almost flinching in response, and his sounds aren’t ragged. No, it’s…

Peaceful.

The events of the evening before come back to you in increments.

Your mind, with the natural want to protect you, chalks it all up to a bad dream.

The ache between your sticky legs and the fat cockhead that sits limply above the cleft of your ass- appeased- says otherwise.

You let out a soft gasp. The man behind you grumbles out a low, noncommittal sound before his lashes flutter over the blade of your shoulder.

“…Baby? What’s wrong?”

He untucks himself from there and is given great pause when his nakedness- and yours- clicks. His limbs harden around you— horrified and confused as every fresh memory from last night comes barreling into him as well.

Stunned, he lifts his head from its perch at your shoulder, but his hand remains above your hip, feather light and hesitant.

Wearily, you turn to meet him when his other hand gently steers your chin to look his way.

He looks tired. Fucking exhausted, the fine wrinkles in his face emphasized under the weight of the night prior. He looks—

Devastated.

“You-…” A sharp, shallow breath beats from his chest. His eyes, wide and unsteady, flit between yours, searching desperately for something he can’t quite find or recognize as you wet your lip to speak.

“Yesterday, I… Started decorating the house. I was excited to show you,” you say without really knowing why. Sylus’s shoulders sag ever so slightly at your apparent calmness, but the fear in his eye remains as he surveys the bruises- all the discoloration in your otherwise supple skin- and blinks.

You inhale shakily, looking down to his chest and all its striations, put on full display in the afterglow of what transpired however many hours before.

It feels wrong to call it a night of love-making, or even a term more raw, unfeeling, as sex. No, it was…

He fucked you within an inch of your life and that was all you really knew. He fucked you until you passed out and then sometime afterwards, apparently snapped out of his trance just enough to carry you back to his bed and sleep the remnant of his frenzy through.

But it wasn’t his fault. Couldn’t have been.

(Whose, then?)

You murmur, “I should’ve went with Wolfe.”

“No,” and there it is again, that fucking snarl, searing you through to the core but before panic can settle, he’s cradling your cheeks and pressing his forehead to yours.

His eyes are intense, but not scary. No, they’re tender and beaten and lovely as his chest shudders and he shakes his head. “No, sweetie. What happened…” he starts, just as unsure of how to label it, “had nothing to do with you. Don’t ever blame it on yourself. Do you understand?”

Blearily, you nod.

You see him in double when he sighs and carefully thumbs away a tear you didn’t realize had formed and fell.

…But Sylus appears a mite uncertain with himself when his eyes fall to your breast before quickly averting, self aware to the point of near pain and definite discomfort. “I’ll clean us up,” he ventures, glancing at you again.

For permission, you realize. To scoop your jelly limbs up and carry you to the shower, bridal-style, where he’ll wash the both of you naked, intimate and-

And should-be alarming.

But it’s not. Not now when you’re still dazed and bruised and his dried cum is caked to your thighs in white rivulets- and he’s just as wounded, but ready to fix. Ready to repaint over the peeling bits of you both in the aftermath of it all. Hang a picture over the hole in the wall of your heart.

“…Okay.”

He wastes no time in picking you up, but he’s gentler than ever when he takes you with him to the bathroom adjoined to his room. It’s awkward: you note that even in the bone-deep fatigue. You can tell he’s trying not to look at all the places instinct tells him he should, and you do well to blot out the sight (and memory) of his softened cock as it dangles between his legs.

The shower starts. Sylus keeps you upright so you don’t fall because your joints will literally fail you otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” he laments as the water pours overhead, holding you against him. He means it in more ways than one. And yet, before you can voice your acknowledgement, and an unsure forgiveness, a small hope stirring in your gut that says this can be moved on from—

His lips press to yours. Chaste but searing; somehow even more world-shattering than last night.

It’s different. He’s… awake.

Jaw slack, you blink at him, water clumping your lashes both. He’s as handsome as a wolf is hungry but- for the moment- domesticated. Even his crow’s feet seem to soften.

“I’ll help you unpack the rest today,” is all he says as he reaches behind you for the soap, gaze unwavering even as you latch onto him and your perfect tits jiggle, his hand dipping below to carefully lather at your marks.

“This house can still be a home. I’ll show you.”

One part of you is positively gushing at the scene that unfolds around you, deciding you could die in peace now that you’d finally experienced one of his concerts, especially in such an exclusive way. Still, another part of you, dwelling low in your belly, twisting like a bad gut feeling, quietly thinks, Has Thomas mistaken me for a whore? Perhaps it’s wrong to think that of those girls... But you also don’t believe they’d take any real offense to that if they were to hear your internal back-and-forth, because they seem delighted to put on their shows for him.

They can’t be blamed, right? I mean… It’s him. Rafayel. Everybody and their mom would trip over their own two feet trying to get an audience with him.

Still.

You ball your fists in your lap.

A-Are you even meant to be here?

Rafayel was always bold on camera, yes; flirtatious to a fault. Sure, he was a playboy and you were aware of that, the whole community was. Really, it was integral to his charm.

But this—

One of the girls giggles when she stumbles over her high heels and into Rafayel’s lap. It’s convenient. Too convenient: even if she’s only half aware of her surroundings, in for a bad hangover tomorrow morning, she still manages to go flying right towards him. You know the purple-haired man must be aware of it too, her frolicking stunts.

Nonetheless, he catches her in his arms before she topples, and he laughs, too.

It’s a pretty sound. Then again, everything about him is. With his dyed, lavender curls and the softness to his otherwise coy face, the little moles dusting it and his glossy, pink lips— he’s beautiful. All the more in that outfit. Cheeky but not enough as to be scandalous. His stylist and his designer have your applause. Clearly, they know what they’re doing.

On stage, he’d seemed playful, but was able to keep his gallivanting at bay. With a wink, though, all that sex appeal just oozes out, and—

It’s weird. How you can spend so much weeks and months and years idolizing somebody, and then suddenly have all that worshipful intent collapsing in a breath. Within the span of not even an hour, you’ve become so disillusioned with this celebrity- your all time favorite- that you can hardly bear to look at him and his wanton display.

Sat on the armchair opposite of it all as it takes place, deathly quiet, you begin to feel sick.

Is this really him?

You knew he was a flirt, yes, but- but what the hell is even this? Is this what he demeans himself to after each show? Just some cheap manwhore with his hand-selected throng of groupies, sipping away at an expensive wine just moments after he set the mic aside after a love song you’d thought to be heartfelt—

Your glass, the one a suited man offered on a tray and you took only to mimic the others, remains untouched before you.

This is startling. And far from your preferred scene.

M-Maybe you ought to go home. And soon. Is what you’ve been thinking for closer to thirty minutes now, and yet you’re too nervous to speak on it. I mean, maybe if you just stood up and left, nobody would notice your slipping out— the room is far from bright and everybody’s buzzed on something, anyway—

Marbled, coral-blue eyes stare at you over the rim of his glass, and they glint with something you think is mirth.

Curiosity, alongside it.

It makes you second guess yourself. Taking your leave.

He’s been watching you for a while now. Even when the stunning women gather in a flurry around him, tugging on his hair and teasing with whispering breaths in his ear, his attention doesn’t remain on them for long. It drags back to you and, for all the distractions occuring around you (the stereo playing an all too familiar song, the drunken chatter, the unease in your chest), he’s impressively focused.

It’s unnerving. It’s divine. He’s all you listen to in the car and in the shower and in your bedroom when you’re dancing to his newest album in an oversized sleep shirt and panties. You’ve cried to him and laughed to him and now he’s here, in shocking clarity, and you were so so excited, rambling about it to your girlfriends for months, but now you’re not so sure of what you’re seeing. If you like it.

He seems less god to you, now; oh, still heavenly, still angelic, for sure, but he toes more along the line of something wicked— like a cherub fallen.

And you can’t find it in you to get up and scurry out even when that’s all you can picture yourself doing in your head, escaping.

When you catch his eye again, you dip your chin (not out of reverence, no longer, but rather unease) and bite on your lip until you taste blood.

So when he lifts his hand with a snap then, the girls pouting as they crawl off him, dissipating no different than fog- you’re ever thankful for the opportunity to finally get up and leave, too—

A voice chimes over itself, layering over the familiar song playing in the background.

“Hey- wait up, cutie.”

You pause when you belatedly realize it’s calling for you.

As if your legs are stilts, you turn around hesitantly (strange: because really, shouldn’t you be happy he’s noticed you?) and try to lessen the shock on your face- even though his amused little smile tells you it’s as clear as day.

He laughs pleasantly, playful to a fault.

“What’s that silly face for? Oh, IIIIIII see, you’re feeling a lil left out, is my guess. Here,” he pats the cushion beside him and you actually blanche. For a moment you think your heart has stopped beating and those thumps you hear are the drum beats in his song as it drifts through the now empty room.

Save for you and Rafayel, it’s completely barren; the better part of its energy has left with the dancing girls but whatever remains of it, he holds.

You eye the spot beside him, unmoving.

An excuse, you realize right then— you can still spit out an excuse.

“I-I’m not one of the girls,” you stammer with a wince before clearing your throat, “I- I don’t even think I’m really supposed to be here.”

Another laugh, and a dismissive wave of his hand. You try to make yourself laugh too if only to appease him, your idol- endlessly nervous.

“Oh, well that’s just untrue,” he teases. “C’mon, don’t be shy~! I was just playing around with the others. It’s just you and me now, so no need to feel all nervous,” he assures, the image of harmless as he crosses his leg over the other and waits.

You blink rapidly. “I—“

You’re about to spew out a feeble rejection and that’s when his face drops.

You’re not sure, for all the records and posters and billboards you’ve seen of his face, if he’s ever made that expression. Not on camera, at least.

He lowly murmurs, “Aren’t you a fan?”

“I-…. Well-….”

A fan? For years now! His number one! A stupid girlish voice in the corner of your mind shrieks, and you almost dredge some joy out of this whole thing.

Letting out a shaky sigh, defeated, you creep over to him on equally shaky legs and take the spot beside him— all with great hesitance, though.

His pretty face alights again. Some of the pressure loosens up, even if only by a little, and your shoulders relax by a smidge.

Maybe it’s fine. Maybe you’re crazy and this is how he interacts with all his listeners no, no it’s not. Or maybe this is just a normal, celebrity thing and you’re blowing this way out of proportion here.

Just like he did with that other woman- that other likeminded fan or plaything or- or you don’t know- he loops an arm around the back of the couch behind you.

…What’s different, though, is that, unlike with her, he rests his hand on your shoulder and hugs you closer to his side. Clinging.

Rafayel smiles. Charming. Frivolous. With a glint in his eye, intense and engrossed, that’s weirdly sober when taking the half empty drink he sets down on the table into consideration.

“There. Good girl. So tell me, pretty,” he starts thoughtfully, fingertips twirling your hair as he leans into you. For the popstar that takes very little seriously, you think he appears awfully interested in some no-name girl who happened to score herself a limited-time lanyard to see him sing.

You swallow thickly. In the back of your mind, thoughts race. So does your heart. You might explode.

H-He didn’t act like this with the others— did you somehow present yourself in a way that made him think he could take more than what the others let him? More than what the others practically begged him to, but for some fucking reason he wouldn’t—

“Did you like the show?”

“Y-Yeah.” You don’t mean to whisper, but a certain, resigned silence is what you’ve been reduced to. His other hand stretches across his body to rest on your thigh.

Rafayel hums. But before he can speak, you- rudely, might he add- cut in. “I- I have to go home soon, so-“

Amused, he snorts. “Relax, alright? Tonight, you’re a very important person, aren’t you? Home can wait,” he muses, so close he’s near nuzzling your cheek.

A very important person? Funny. You’re just another fool bouncing around amongst the nosebleeds- a face he’ll be hard-pressed to catch and certain to forget. Honestly? This whole facade of his is as cruel as it is unbelievable.

Gradually, he’s letting you down.

Your throat bobs. Almost a bit bitterly, you remind, “I- I know you’re a popstar, but we’re still strangers. You don’t have to feel like you need to entertain me or be nice to me.”

“Huh. You’re one smart cookie,” he wryly comments before giving his head a tiny shake, almost more to himself than to you. “Um, look, cutie, you’re definitely no stranger to me,” his words leave you dazed because they sound genuine. You snap your head up to look at him, needing to gauge his expression and fish for deceit. You… find none.

He smoothly continues. “But I guess I’m no stranger to you either, huh? And tonight, you’ll be like, extra acquainted with me.”

✦

It’s difficult.

-When he’s hovering over you and gently pushing you onto the plush cushions into a half-lying position, to not only push him off but find the strength to.

Physically, Rafayel’s no hulking display of power, but he’s intimidating all the same. Mentally, he’s more or less your idol and although he may not hold too much weight in stature (still, he’s stronger than you), he still holds enough golden trophies to decorate a shelf— and too much influence for you to really comprehend.

Or try to toy with.

…You should want this. Should want to lie down and offer yourself up to him with eagerness— it should be like a blessing and yet you’re hesitating.

…Why are you hesitating? A voice in the back of your head, the one that had raved endlessly to her friends about the upcoming concert, asks perplexedly. You’ve no answer. But the man atop you seems to wonder much of the same, too; his brow twitching just slightly with what you think to be dejection before he tilts your chin with long, slim fingers to kiss you and it’s gone.

He moans into that first kiss. Prettily and soft.

Heat flutters in the core of you, your body involuntarily responding to him even as your eyes snap open and shift to where the door is- or where you think it is (have the lights gotten dimmer? or is he just all you see?)- his palm tugging at your hair softly to lie you down.

His lips are plump, pink, just as gentle as they look as they meld against yours— definitely aroused, there’s no doubt there, his warm breaths tinged with needy whines- but there’s an odd affection in them, too. Something personal and doting.

When he tries to slip in tongue, you reel away but there’s nowhere to go. Not really. Not when your head finally touches the cushion and he lets out a small, disapproving sound before giving up on that goal- for now- and attacking your neck instead.

It’s good. Delicious; that perfect mouth knows its way around a mic and a lover, you suppose- suckling and kissing and nipping with the barest amount of teeth as if he’s intent on leaving a mark.

You can’t hold back on it anymore— you drop your hands that had been hovering awkwardly on his broad shoulders, mewling in response, and he shivers.

“Yeah, cutie, make some noise,” he chuckles mildly. You think back to the auditorium. The roaring cheers and shrieks, the phone lights waving in the air and the mist rolling beneath his feet as he sang.

His hand descends down your belly, and you’re brought back to now.

It’s more instinct than anything that has you clamping your legs shut as soon as his fingers reach the denim. He tuts at you, and yet the glimmer in his eye is… endeared, almost.

“Nuh-uh. Don’t shut me away now,” Rafayel scolds, thought it lacks any real bite. Still, your lashes flutter and you stare agog at him.

Like this, he’s positively gorgeous as he props himself up mere inches away- albeit his little grin can almost be considered vulpine. “Didn’t I put on a great show for you out there? Don’t tell me I get nothing in return,” he pouts, tone light but what lies under it is a layer of desire. Opaque and thick.

Hesitantly, you mull over his words. I mean, you just really want this to be over- so to hell to with it, maybe you should just submit yourself. The sooner you appease the playboy with what he wants— that is, some nameless girl he perceives as cheap enough to get on her back for him— the sooner you can leave and pretend Thomas never gave you his special ticket.

The popstar’s words turn comforting as he watches you carefully. “If you’re shy, don’t worry. I’ve seen it plenty’a times before, you know.”

Bigheaded, you think then. Bigheaded but he has every right to be.

Maybe if it was any other guy bragging about the chicks he fucked and scrutinized, you’d throw up in your mouth— and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t cringe a little on the inside— but it’s embarrassment for yourself above all that stirs in your stomach. It joins the butterflies as your cheeks warm over.

“Now,” he continues, his familiar lilt flattening into heavy, breathy lust, “All I want is to see yours. I’m sure your pussy is pretty, cutie- really,” he convinces.

A tremble. “So pretty.”

Oh, you’re erupting on the inside— heart snapping like a snare drum in your chest, overpowering the faint music and drowning it out- your hand shaking where it weakly closes over the back of his own, now only half trying to drag it away.

He hammers the last nail into your coffin. With a ragged, but gentle breath and- as he leans in- a surprisingly chaste peck to your lips, appreciative of what he has before him.

“Won’t you show me it?”

But jaw slack, you hesitate. And- Of course you hesitate. The reasons for your deliberation, that weird gut feeling, become clearer and clearer as seconds progress:

Firstly, he’s the image of fame- and if you were to deny him, if he said the smallest word over it, your whole entire social life as you knew it would backfire on you. The possibility of his saying mean things on the internet hangs in your mind. Rumors circulating, as untrue as they are vivid, coming to bite you in the ass. For as many hours as you’ve spent watching and listening to Rafayel, you don’t know his true colors (as evidenced by right now); that includes what a wounded ego would look like if you rejected him.

Secondly, you hesitate because—

Because he’s perfect. Much like an idol on a pedestal, carefully set there with a singular light overhead to define him and him alone.

In a dark room, all look to him.

Once- an hour ago- you did, too.

Maybe you still do. You don’t know. There’s a whole bunch of feelings (confusion, awe, a betrayal that makes you question just how parasocial your relationship with him was) swirling inside you, none able to be grazed or grasped, and it shakes a part within.

“Please?” He breathes, ever headstrong.

…Your rationale is headlong, falling into the abyss with a word.

“O-Okay,” you all but squeak out. It’s the best you can manage. Rafayel’s breath hitches at that, though, your given assent, no matter how feeble, planting satisfaction deep in his chest.

And so with that he’s swiftly undoing your jeans and rucking them down your thighs.

It’s less out of good will that you help him shimmy them off you, to a bunch above your shoes, and more so eagerness to be done with this whole thing.

When he tucks his knuckles beneath the waistband of your panties- cutesy cotton put on full display for him, perched above pretty thighs- he curses under his breath.

His hands are as big as a man’s but as soft as a woman’s. His fingertips are dutiful as they brush along your folds, as singleminded, hungry, as the former.

…But when they nudge between your pussy lips and at your tight hole, his thumb prodding expertly at your clit, it’s like he has all the awareness of the latter.

“Ah, you’re so wet…” he muses aloud. Very pleased with his discovery.

His eyelids, dazzling with some glittery shade his makeup artist applied prior to his show, droop and don’t meet your flustered stare as he focuses on the space between your legs. And he takes it upon himself to rid you of your panties, too: for as adorable as they are, Rafayel knows it’ll be ten times better for you both if he can just-

Finally fucking see for himself what you’ve got goin’ on down there—

Undies midway down your leg, he comments, “you’re really hyped up after the show, huh?” His exhale is a shaky sound. His gaze is utterly fascinated (and perhaps a touch unnerving, what with its intensity) when it bounces back to that soft dip below your belly.

You’ll give him this much credit— for as wild as that glint in his unblinking stare becomes, he’s fortunately gentle with you.

He wets his lip absently. “Yeah… it gets me going, too. All the lights and cheering faces... Feeling the bass vibrate up from the floor. Can I be honest, though, cutie? When Thomas- oh, shit-“ he shivers when he inserts a digit in- his pointer one- and your hole instinctively clamps down around it, juices glistening to the base of his knuckle as you try not to squirm.

Y-You can’t believe this is happening. Your clothes are all in a disarray- the only piece intact, actually, is your tee that just so happens to be merchandise of the popstar that hovers over you now with his hand between your legs—

You blink back to real life when he sharply inhales.

“…When Thomas told me you were comin’, I made absolute sure to know your standing. That way, I could find you easily in the crowd. I was gettin’ so worked up just looking at you. Could you hear it-? My voice began to shake.” he chuckles, voice euphony to your ears. Familiar in its lilt but not in its timber.

His words stun you. They don’t make sense- is this is all some cruel, sick game after all-? Or- Or maybe he’s mistaking you for someone else? or he’s just choosing a really weird, admittedly screwed up way to let off some steam. God knows, what with his recent album built on the back of unrequited love, he needs the stress relief—

But no. He continues on like nothing is amiss, like your heart doesn’t plummet to the tips of your toes at his offhanded admission, and you forget how to breathe.

“When our eyes met- you looked like you were doubting yourself, but I really was staring at you, you silly girl.” Again, he’s fucking laughing, albeit this time, it takes on a more self-deprecating tone. You witness, almost unseeing, as his facade crumbles in increments. More and more he undoes it by the seams- much like he is with you.

“I was… Hm. I was even singing about you. All those stupid pining love songs— who do you think they’re for, princess?”

A gasp punches out from your lungs. You don’t know what it’s for- his nonsensical confessions, or his handling as he stuffs in another finger (you could’ve used some more working up to it, sure, he knows, but he’s a little impatient tonight) and scissors you open.

Wet shlicks ring in between guitar riffs. Your essence flows all over his knuckles and the numerous- horrifically expensive, you realize- jewels lining them. Rafayel doesn’t seem nearly as appalled as you do, though... If anything, aroused.

It feels so good. He’s hitting that spongey spot inside you just right. It’s a surreal experience, so much so you almost feel like you’ll coalesce into a dream at any moment. The melody playing in the background, the opulent couch as it groans beneath you with every piston of his arm, the twinkling, but dim lights and his face. That picturesque, idol face.

“Here, I’ll tell you the answer…” he leans over you to whisper in your ear, subjecting you to all the charm of a siren. You’re helpless to it ‘cause you’re just a girl.

“You. Always you.”

You’re dizzy. Your head is light but your lower half is heavy, the inner portion of your thighs numbed and sticky. Your limbs tingle but all you can feel is his lips tenderly suckling at your neck and your gushing walls as they constrict around their intruder.

Though they, too, ease up on him. He’s good at disarming you. That’s how you were walking in here, anyway, disarmed and beyond yourself with excitement.

Rafayel moans over you, finding a great amount of pleasure in the whole ordeal.

“You gonna cum? yeah?” He’s sweet, purring in your ear, making sounds as pretty as a girl- maybe even more so. His voice has won awards for a reason. You recall binging musical ceremonies on the internet and shrieking as soon as his name was called to stage, his seeming nonchalance as he accepted an accolade…

Yet you saw his ears, too, the tips of them red under the resounding applause, and wondered just what or who it was that had him bowing his head to the camera—

“A-Ah, mmph- Rafayel, please—!” You choke, fingers curling into his shoulder. In response, he lets out a pleasured, breathy sound, all encouragement and delight in his eyes.

“Mhm. Go ahead. Cum. Cum, pretty girl, all over my fingers. Oh- I really wanna taste you- will y’let me taste you afterwards?” He’s moaning unabashed as you come undone at warp speed. It’s shameful and your cheeks toast over but you clamp your eyes shut and choose to bask in the feeling of it all as it overwhelms you.

He’s good. So good. Masterful with it, really. Not like any of the bungling guys who courted you for all of one date (the more patient: two) before ripping your pants off and sticking their fingers inside without prompting or even half the skill to back their confidence.

No- he’s every bit qualified and then some.

Your nails dig into his clavicle. Rafayel doesn’t care- if that pinch of pleasure between his brow is the least bit credible, maybe he even likes the sting.

“Good girl. There, good girl.”

It’s building inside you. He works you up progressively, rapidly, and it shows in the little gasps you make that fall back to back, the L shape you make with either of your legs as they hitch up around his hips and quake, the ball in your gut that suddenly hardens before—

“Ngh— Rafayel-!”

You scream. Louder than the music. Louder than his words of encouragement, sugar-sweet, hungry, susurrating as they spill in your ear. He sensually nibbles on it and wraps his free hand around your head- with a misplaced affection, you think- to anchor you throughout your climax. He manages to keep you grounded there on the couch but only barely.

Your mind does slip off to another place, though, floating in white oblivion for a number of seconds as your limbs offer small trembles.

Rafayal takes close to nothing serious. So the light, but bubbly laugh that draws you back to consciousness with a sigh is fairly appropriate.

What isn’t is his touchiness as he drags you to sit on his lap— boneless; your skin damp with heat, your damned pants still cuffed awkwardly around your ankles— and croons into your neck. Holding you close like a lover would in the after glow. But this isn’t the after glow, this is the after show. But then again, if his earlier words were true- the ones that barrel back into you with clarity, the haze dissipating- then…

But no. No, how could that be? Those songs aren’t about you— and when you met his eye during the opening, and all the times afterward, you were sure it was just your imagination, especially after the fan beside you threw up her arms and cheered as if his stare was for her instead—

You might know Thomas (very vaguely- more of a friend of a friend you’ve seen at a few get-togethers; you follow him on insta), but that doesn’t mean Rafayel, the man he works for, should know you... I mean, you doubt they hang out often, anyway. Especially not since Thomas would more or less be viewed as the king of no-fun in the popstar’s eyes.

His whole job is to assure that Rafayel keeps his lips sealed tight: you can’t imagine that he’d be loose with his own by chatting with him about you, a girl he’s not all too familiar with but knows just enough to throw a spare ticket at.

So there’s just no way any of this is true.

Half of you expects Rafayel to shove you off his lap at any second, snap back to the reality that you’re not the woman he mistook you for, and flusteredly point you to the door. The other half of you is like it’s waiting for him to pull out his cock (it stirs underneath your ass, hard and by the feel of it, very excited) and take all that’s left to.

He moves your hair aside your shoulder and rubs along your back, instead.

And he whispers in your ear (or into your neck, really), his warm breath fanning there as he says like it’s a vow:

“Wanna see you at my next show. Better be there.”

Your throat bobs. As he speaks, you try not to focus too much on the fluid that oozes from your pussy lips and onto his expensive, designer slacks- but that’s no easy task when he seems to want for that, slightly lifting his hips up.

“No. Before that, even—“ he pauses for a moment, seemingly deep in thought before smiling, resolved. “Oh, I know- I’ll have Thomas help get you settled in with the tour bus. That way, you can just be on the road with me.”

You gawk. Whatever he’s saying doesn’t reach you; you’re only receiving that garbled bits of it, like a radio interpolated by static between voices. Your palms lift to his chest and push there softly.

Smoothly, he takes them in his own and kisses the knuckles, peering up at you like you’ve hung the stars in the sky, giggling.

“Doesn’t that sound just great, cutie?”

“I- wait, you-?”

“I’ll name my next song after you- my next album, even!- and then we can go public immediately.” You can recognize it for what it is, even coming from someone as frivolous as him.

A promise.

“The fans will love you,” he says excitedly before leaning in and smushing a kiss to your damp hairline, murmuring there with a fiery tinge of what you think is devotion. “But not as much as I already do.”

He fishes into his pocket, then, one hand still securing your waist.

“Lemme give Thomas a call… I guess he kinda deserves my ‘thank you’, too, huh?”

Ruby-red eyes flit over (and they always do sooner than later, like you’re a beacon in the middle of a dark sea) and crinkle at the edges. You’ve told him before that you don’t like when he throws the babies up in the sky like that, that if they were to suddenly fall, they can’t take flight like Mephisto. He must remember, because he lets out a little, woeful noise and carefully lowers him.

The smile remains, though, kilowatt and wide, a little starry-gazed like he’s inviting you to slip off the sofa and join him on the fluffy rug with your children.

The fatigue natural to post-pregnancy has already claimed you tonight, though. Truth be told, you’d have hesitated even if it didn’t. It’s fine, tending to your children on your own; his long absences leave you with massive windows of alone time with the little ones, and you actually enjoy it (save for the huge toll it takes on your energy, of course, but Luke and Kieran lend a hand where it counts- where they’re allowed).

That sentiment changes a bit, though, when your husband does get home. With his presence comes the cold reminder of how things really are, how you’re still an unwilling counterpart in all this- frilly gowns and jewels and the private chef he hires for fancy dinners (because he has the money for it) be damned.

You want to go home. That wish, hollow as it is, still stands.

…Even if it’s started staggering, in these last few months.

He’s always been more than content with just the two of you, but in the last several weeks, you compare Sylus’s emotional state to a suitcase packed too full, joy spilling out the sides. Evidently, he doesn’t try to close the zipper; he lets it happen with gladness, with his hands open and lifted, but you’re not sure he entirely knows what to do with himself. With these significant developments that are just as new to him (possibly even more, as much as that flummoxes you) as they are to you.

It’s as weird as it is endearing to see what having two children (twin boys, funnily enough) will do to your husband. But if there’s one thing you learned about Onychinus’s illustrious leader in the past couple years of your marriage—

It’s that he does not settle for less.

And when he draws closer, both little ones secured in his lap- dozing off because it’s already thirty minutes past their bedtime- and lifts your hand to place a chaste kiss there, rubbing your knuckles dotingly…

You can tell there’s something more he’s craving.

✿

“A girl,” he moans.

Sometimes- after you’ve just put down the boys for four consecutive nights in a row before collapsing in bed, your lover hardly having the opportunity to show his affections, all but guilted into letting you catch up on your sleep- it’s almost easy to forget how Sylus feels, your brain willing it away. How good he fucks you.

If you’re being more general- how good he takes care of you.

“Give me a girl this time, sweetie, just-“ a gasp, “one more.”

And vaguely, in the haze of sweat and burning hands, his thick, long cock plunging in and out of you deeply- slowly- your juices and his pre slicking between you, sticky as molasses, you wonder to yourself if he’s even convinced of that himself.

Just having one more, you mean.

The twins were unexpected: that right there is an understatement. You were hardly prepared for one rascal- all the countless evenings he spent buttering you up, so attentive, and then cumming into you with whispered vows to knock you up be damned— but when the xray revealed not one misshapen, little form in your womb, but two?

It was a bombshell.

Sylus, beside you (on the leather couch downstairs with your personal doctor he paid God knows how unreasonable a sum to show), had squeezed your hand in his and tried to mask half of his joy. The priority was in comforting you, helping you to realize that this was a good thing- a beautiful thing- that your life was not officially over and- hey, don’t worry, hasn’t he taken good care of you thus far? Surely, adding a couple little ones into the equation wouldn’t suddenly make it impossible.

You’re both very capable people, honey. Even more so together, with him. (Well, he assures you as much, anyway.)

Whether or not he could take care of you was never exactly the worry, though. The worry was that you’d be under his hand forever— and a baby? (two, you strictly correct. Two babies) You could kiss the last hope you had of ever weaseling out from his grip, or luxurious manor, goodbye.

He must know it, buried deep in the back of his head underneath the genuine layers of desire to simply start a family with you, his beloved girl, and flesh out more of a solid, burgeoning life; the silent promise underlying the pregnancy tests and inpromptu housecalls of your poor, overworked doctor.

That a family ties you to him forever.

A tether that’s damn near impossible to cut yourself loose from, even if you stood a punching chance at it to begin with. Glues you together in a way that even marriage doesn’t quite scratch the surface of. Your bond is perpetuated by blood, now. Flesh and bone. Your DNA, warped with his to create—

Monstrosities—

No, a harsh voice in the corner of your skull surprisingly snips back. They’re not monstrosities, far from it. All previous qualms nudged aside (and you had a lot, to be clear; hours spent sobbing and pushing helplessly at his chest as Sylus crooned and wrapped you in his arms proves that), doubts surrounding parenting and your own self preservation- your children are beautiful, that’s true. Healthy. Perfect.

If you’re being honest with yourself, and choose the high road here (the high road means willfully forgetting how involuntary this whole arrangement was in the first place)- they’re positively adorable. With his white hair spiking on their heads but your eyes and lips- and a shared penchant to land themselves into trouble, places they shouldn’t be before either of you stoops over to lift them out. Albeit, you’ll admit that their noses are still up for debate; it’s hard to pinpoint the resemblance when their faces are endearingly round, too chubby to really tell in this stage, but you secretly hope they’ll take after you in that regard.

You… don’t know how you’ll continue to operate if staring at your children is like staring at a mirror image of their father.

But… I mean, they’re fucking innocent in all this—

Your precious boys aren’t like their father. They… won’t be. You’ll make absolute sure of it.

“One more,” he chants, sucking in a long, thin breath through perfect teeth. And damn it all he feels good. So good. Maybe he had more than just one selfish, substratal reason for populating your otherwise fairly quiet home. Because you’re more obedient lately, wanting for it, almost… It gets him riled up in ways he could not begin to articulate. Hesitant still (sometimes he has this awful, basal fear that it’ll never go away, your trepidation towards him)- but sugar-sweet when you lie on the silken bed and present yourself with bashful cheeks that tell Sylus you hate yourself for it but have no real control in the moment.

You moan so prettily for him when he pries your thighs apart and presses them either side of your head, fashioning you like a butterfly, to slide in and out of you with ease. Melodic. Maybe he’s tone deaf to all songs save for you because he knows you, knows you like the back of his hand, pitch and lilt; he could pick out the voice of you in a crowd full of whooping people, he thinks.

Again, you blame your excitement on what he’s done to you. The twins’ pregnancy, the fluctuating hormones that have you bouncing between hysterical sobs and yanking your wide-eyed husband into impulsive, suffocating kisses before his fingers quickly settle around your middle. All the gentle erosion that he’s guided you through across the span of almost two years has left you worn and vulnerable.

But you suppose if something were to ever encourage a deeper bond- strengthen it- what else would it be than to take a man’s seed inside your womb and gift him with a bunch of unruly but cute kids? That’d gnaw away at just about anybody’s inhibitions, even if it grudges you to admit that. It lessens what remnant you held onto of this idea of ‘autonomy’, makes you fully lean onto him.

Sylus takes that news much, much better than you.

It’s… got to be more than physical between you now, you think distantly as he bullies his cockhead against your smooth walls, stroking a spongey spot in the bulwarks of you that makes your head go kaput. Like something spiritual, perhaps. He’s joined his soul with yours and that’s why you’ve been so obedient lately, so needy, clinging onto him and making his back your own personal scratching post as he plays at the idea of impregnating you again.

Oh, fuck, he’s such a bastard you hate him you hate him you—

You suppose your baby girl, inevitable to come somewhere down the line- whether that means during the next pregnancy or the third- won’t be like him, either.

She’ll be a sweetheart, and soft. Perhaps she’ll inherit her daddy’s crimson eyes or his smooth, sharp tongue, his inclination for success, but she’ll carry her mother’s heart with her. She will be kind.

Until someone like her daddy comes along. Flips her world on its head.

(And you know that having Sylus as her daddy would be the simple fact that staves off all potential men intending to prey on her, but still, the thought remains, niggling and bitter.)

“Take daddy’s cock, sweetie,” he goads, breath shot right from his lungs as he traps you beneath him- not that you’ve much the will to resist anymore- and moans over you. “You’ll take what he has to offer, won’t you? Your pretty belly will take all of it in?”

Tears prickle at your eyes when his flit down to your tummy, pupils swelling wildly as his jaw sets tight. He hisses through clenched teeth, cock giving a hot pulse accordingly.

It’s not difficult to imagine the bump there, the mound that’s not yet formed over a for now slim belly and wrinkled skin (stretch marks that you loathe but he worships on most nights, with your heels over his shoulder and his tongue lapping greedily at your pussy, palms kneading the flesh with reverence). It’s hardly been six months since you had the twins (a home birth, he’d insisted, because it was safer that way, more sterile, less stressful for you), but Sylus finds himself pining for your body to adapt to his seed again, for your breasts to plump and your stomach to round, your skin to glow.

(Your hands to reach for him because your emotions have been sat on one long rollercoaster ride and you can’t help whatever the fuck is going on inside you.)

“Sylus—“ You mewl, panting as he knocks his forehead to yours- with a whit more force than you think he’d meant, but he’s a little dazed right now, and your pussy feels so good, so don’t hold it against him, kitten- and grunts back. “Yes?” He breathes, and you liken the sound to a gust of wind, powerful and shaking.

“I- I don’t know,” you all but wail, desperately trying to tamp down your sounds of pleasure before they can escape. You’re failing.

Your reticence is for a number of reasons. First of all, your boys are just down the hall, swaddled in their respective cradles under their rotating airplane fixtures and sleeping soundly. You don’t have any intentions of changing that- especially for something as stupid and pathetic as essentially whoring yourself out to their father (and you’re not a whore, but you can’t help but feel like one when you start to bask in the attention he gives you- your hormones post-pregnancy compelling you to do all sorts of wild things).

And secondly, Luke and Kieran don’t renown you as stubborn for no reason, or your husband, lovingly, as a drama queen— and there’s a defiant part of you that does not want to see the satisfaction on his face when you start to crumble under his ministrations and open your mouth about it.

But all that, for Sylus, is a wonderful work in progress.

And if we’re to be crystal, for as much as the N109 Zone’s number one magnate prioritizes the end goal, he thoroughly enjoys the process.

“You don’t know what, Sweetie?” He whispers. It’s all he can manage right now, you’re squeezing him so tight. In that moment, the fog parts, and he knows with a hundred percent certainty that you do not want him to leave. Yes, your cunt is saying as much, and he rewards it with a carefully angled thrust right against your g-spot, but your face tells no different a story.

You’re beautiful. Perfection embodied. Makes him lose his breath a little.

“I-If I want a girl,” You heave. “If I want one at all.”

Something like dejection passes across his handsome visage then, or maybe it’s uncertainty that weakens the tight knotch in his brow as he inwardly struggles- between his approaching climax and the single mind he’s got to stuff you full of his release- for an appropriate answer. He doesn’t want to anger you. Doesn’t want to make you hate him, no, especially not when you’re finally starting to dip your toes in his waters after all his painstaking efforts to make you comfortable. Oh, God knows Sylus would kick himself for that.

…But this will be good for you. Having another, he means. It’ll be good for the both of you and if you’d just let him show you—

He’s painted the perfect demonstration of that quite well with the boys, hasn’t he? In this past handful of months, you’ve never looked happier and you’re positively glowing and all Sylus has ever wanted was to see your pretty face light with that dazzling, little smile. The twins he’s given you, unbidden as they initially were through your lens, make you so, so happy.

This will be so, so good.

Perfect.

If you’d just give in.

Oh, you’re so maddening sometimes but he adores you, every part and piece. He stoops over so his damp lips brush the lobe of your ear, the perspiration dotting his temple wetting your flushed cheeks. He croons, “You do. You do want it. I’ll show you, kitten, just how bad you need it. The twins need a sister, don’t you think? They won’t know anything other than playing rough, if not.”

Your fingertips squeeze into the lean planes of muscle of his back. He’s burning up, near feverish what with the heat sweltering between your sandwhiched bodies, but he gives a shiver in response like he’s enduring temperatures below freezing.

Panic, beneath the misty veneer of pleasure that makes your face go slack- and the subtle, inexplicable flash of something that almost convinces you Sylus is right, that you do want it- slips into the forefront of your muddled brain. Reaches a hand through the dirt and revives itself, reminding, no, no, you don’t want this, you don’t want him, you don’t want—

You let out a delicious gasp as he spears into you, the flesh of your thighs dimpling as he presses down the undersides of them. Firm, but gentle. It’s true, you’ve become considerably more flexible since meeting him- since having to accommodate him- but he’ll never give you anything more than you can take.

You’d never admit it, but there’s almost a little bit of comfort in knowing that.

“I-I’ll make sure they know how to play nice,” you force out, taking your lower lip in your mouth and suckling as the telltale rush of your climax draws nigh, hardening in your belly as it builds. “I’ll make sure they know how to be gentle, Sy!” Foreign to your own ears. Your voice is horrid as you belatedly register it, all sniveling and gasping- downright pathetic as you cling onto him for dear life and he ruts into you like a dog in heat.

You’re grasping at straws now, you know, but for as feeble as your excuses are, you hope they hit their mark. That they’ll get him to reconsider-

“But sweetie,” he breathes tenderly, “you’re already making sure I’m gentle,” he reminds in a pleasant voice, edged with the remnants of a self control that unravels at a steady pace. “How will you juggle between the three of us? Hm?”

His cockhead, fat and precise, catches on that spot in you that makes you go positively crazy and your eyes flutter back. You let out a strange, choked sound that he marvels at before he capitalizes on the reaction completely, buffetting away at the final walls you’d erected against him tonight.

All are near crumbled.

“I’ll find a way,” you nearly squeak- high-pitched and unconvincing because his mind’s already made- before he’s lolling your jaw back towards him and smashing his lips to yours in a decadent kiss, silencing your protests- for as weak as they are.

It’s close to visceral, the contact, wet lips melding hungrily with yours, trading groans and mewls as he effectively pistons his hips into you and paints colorful stars across the black span of your eyelids. In a word- invasive. Torpefying, all your limbs unfurling and slipping away from him in favor of curling into the sheets as your release approaches at whirlwind speeds, blunt fingernails clinging onto you so tight there’ll be bruises formed tomorrow- as well as an apologetic, rueful sigh on Sylus’s end, because he swears to God he’s trying to hold back—

Fucking mind-numbing.

And isn’t that just what you need? A quiet conscience? A shot of morphine fed through a needle straight into the veins, an emotional kind of tranquilizer or- or something to moderate the snarled mess your heart’s become all because of him—

It seems he’s cognizant then, pupils dilated madly as he finally blinks, of the hands that clench too tight- withdrawing them immediately from your thighs (regrettably, they remain cleaved open in a willing offer for him, shaking and red with his prints) to loop your wrists either side of your head. Holding your hands. Ever the romantic. You almost laugh, seconds off from that white-hot tidal wave of pleasure, at the irony of it all. Onychinus’s formidable, takes-no-bullshit leader, fucking you with all the grace of a big clumsy dog but all the love of one too— loyal and determined, bleeding heart on his sleeve.

He’s still kissing you, sucking on your tongue filthily, and all you can think of is waking the boys sleeping soundly next door how exquisite it feels, his thick member dragging in and out of your walls like it’s his right. Sylus certainly believes as much.

He’s ruined you too good for anyone else; you’re starting to believe it, too.

“There you go, kitten!” He gasps. “Let go. Just- fuck- let go for daddy. Such a good, good girl. Such a good mommy, you are. Our- oh, fuck, that’s it, that’s it, perfect- Our little girl will be so, so lucky to have you.”

It’s not in his nature to roll belly-up, but he’ll meet you halfway somewhere on his side.

It’s not the first time he bent a knee for you, anyway, and certainly won’t be the last. Still, Sylus holds abundant self-awareness and knows this is more than a bad look for him; fortunately, his weak spots only ever reveal themselves in the privacy of his manor’s walls where you hold it down in his absence.

The twins- Luke and Kieran- they won’t enter your bedroom, not tonight, regardless if there’s a mess or not. Onychinus’s leader has plans for you and no intentions of allowing any interuptions. With a watchful eye trampolining between the fragments underfoot and your rounded shoulders as you curl up to the headboard and tremble, Sylus decides he can handle this little issue fine enough himself.

With a set jaw, he trawls through the glittering pieces until his gaze darts to something particularly shiny.

He lets out a breath.

…So you did throw it out; Sylus wondered what you were fidgeting with behind your back moments before your sudden outburst, but it’s with a pang of startle- and hurt- that he unearths the nitid wedding ring buried beneath layers of geometric shards. Discarded no different than trash would be.

It’s not like he needs physical proof to boast your marriage— even strangers can spare one look at the two of you- the arm forever wrapped around your shoulder or middle, the possessive flair in his eyes paired with a doting, bottomless affection- and make the conclusion that some sort of intimacy runs deep there...

So no, some filed-down gemstone, dazzling as it may be, doesn’t determine your relationship. It certainly makes him feel good, though, to see it wrapped around your finger as a perfect match to his- a tangible token of your bond. It’s a beautiful reminder of you that he absently toys with throughout the evenings to the backdrop of a silent stopwatch, mentally counting down the seconds until he can return home to you.

It’s all the more reason to adorn you in pretty things, anyway. Jewelry and twinkling beads that clang loudly together no matter how quietly your feet fall.

And he likes that, to be fair- not to be superficial, but it’s one of his simpler joys, to pamper you like a princess in every sense of the word.

You don’t need to like it, to want for it; Sylus has always stared at you like you were the epitome of royalty. And royalty only deserves the best, doesn’t it?

He dresses you in fine silks that you slip out of as soon as he’ll allow, trading designer brands you can’t even name out in favor of one of his sweaters or shirts. Stood behind you, he’ll insist on threading dainty, flax chains around your neck, smiling softly in the reflection of the full-body mirror.

You never meet him in the eye, then, too put off by the delight that practically oozes off him as he spoils you rotten to look at him right.

Sometime later that night, his hand- large but always careful- will resume that chain’s place around your neck, and thumb over your pulse affectionately.

You never did find much use, or joy, in any of his glitzy expenditures.

If- If you’re being perfectly honest you’d much rather he buy you a ticket home. Maybe that’s the one wish of yours he’ll never bring life to, much less humor in the first place.

But you’re nothing if not persistent. Oh, sweetie, Sylus has been made abundantly aware of that fact. He takes it like water off his back, though: just another little quirk of yours to catalogue to memory and dote over.

His stubborn, precious girl.

Tonight, frustration reaches its zenith in you and you snap. Grow teeth and snarl in his face.

You don’t want to be angry— ugly— God knows you loathe what’s becoming of you, but your captor doesn’t leave many other options on the table.

You shriek when he tries to coax you towards the plush fur draped over the bed and he watches with a resigned sort of sorrow as you throw things off the coffee table and shout.

You scream your throat hoarse. You taste copper on your tongue as if you’ve been running. Maybe, the truth isn’t all that far off. A man like Sylus is something to run from; all sentient beings with a sense of self preservation, no matter how small, would take off on foot immediately.

There’s not many places you can run to, though. Not when there’s constant surveillance on you- iron-wrought gates and a damned bird that soars watchfully overhead if you so much as step into the courtyard.

Your tantrum lasts all of three minutes before you retreat to the nearest corner- Sylus’s lavish bed- and quietly lick your proverbial wounds.

He’s never hit you before, no, not physically, but he’s the kind of man to leave everything within his radius reeling sooner or later. Doesn’t matter where his loyalties lie. It will happen.

And, you know, he’ll treat you like you’re some exception to that rule- to his streak of cruelty and the chaos that he lets unravel around him- but you’re not. You’re really not and you just desperately wish he could see that—

“Talk to me, sweetie,” a low tone draws you from your reverie.

You don’t let your eyelids flutter open right away; you’re re-experiencing a vivid memory in your head- a sunny afternoon in Linkon with a warm hand woven in yours by the shore- and don’t want it to slip away just yet. It’s a comforting piece of your past you want to hold onto.

As pathetic as that may be, despite Sylus having all but birched your hope for rescue to a bloody pulp, you still look back on better days with bittersweet longing and pray someone will come and save you. If not them- your old buddies in the Hunters Association and your closer friends that Sylus has voiced a particular enmity to- then yourself. You want more than anything to save yourself, but it’s not like he gives much opportunity for that.

This is your home, now. It always was. He’s dogged in his attempts to prove it to you, purring in your ear while he fucks you slow and deep that he’ll take as long as it needs to convince you of that simple fact. It’s indisputable: you’re his.

You’ll… come around to it eventually, Sweetie.

Biting your tongue, you hold off on responding to him.

There was nothing to say, really- you’d already just screamed your throat raw and still it wasn’t enough to make him budge or even at least reconsider this awful arrangement he’d launched you into a number of months ago.

If you open your mouth, you tell yourself in a mix of childish bravery and cooling ire, sloped against the headboard defiantly, it’ll be to bite him. Certainly not talk to him. Especially not in any civil manner. You think he’s lost that right ages ago- the priviledge of your softness.

You hear him heave a faint sigh, but for the moment, he leaves it at that. “Okay, then,” he murmurs with a tinge of understanding that you hate, “You cool off, sweetie. Take slow, deep breaths. Lie down if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

You remain sat upright. One half of it is because you don’t quite feel safe going prone right now with adrenaline still buzzing in your veins, and the other half is for the sole purpose of spiting him.

Sometimes it feels like you can’t. Spite him, you mean. His wounded eyes, which resemble a kicked puppy’s to a shocking degree, are as rare as they are effective. You really shouldn’t harbor any capacity of guilt for the man, but you’re human. Glaringly human. And his forlorn little frowns after you’ve winced under his harmless pets or refuse to face him after he’s fucked you within an inch of your life and wants to curl up to you like some overgrown cat- they tug on a vulnerable part of you.

It’s- It’s not Stockholm Syndrome at all, or even the latent stirrings of it. It’s just— It’s just a basic human trait to feel, and…

You suppose that might be the one veritable thing he hasn’t quite ripped from you. Maybe more so for his benefit than yours.

After Sylus is done sweeping up your mess, he approaches the bed and caresses the blade of your shoulder. The movement is just barely hesitant, like he doesn’t want to send you flying five feet in the air with some violent flinch response. It’s happened before on more than one occasion.

You don’t know whether to count his caution as endearing, oddly sweet, or fucking maddening. Perhaps it’s a fair combination of all of that as well as sickening.

Your consolation that came in the form of a now distant memory peters out into heavy, intermittent throbs of your chest. Sadness thumping a gentle song. The smell of sea salt spraying up from the ocean fully wafts away as he brings a hand up to your forehead, gentle as ever, and guides you to turn to face him.

His own scent- a base amber with notes of vanilla underneath, in two words: warm and rich- replaces that. You draw it in in small, shallow breaths and feel it tingle behind the bridge of your nose.

Sometimes it comes like a precursor to his hands- something that’ll have you bracing for impact in fetal position. Other times, when he’e got your thighs pinned either side of your head and his cock delving in and out of your pussy, hitting so deep in your belly you think nothing will sate your appetite for days, it’s a dizzying smell.

Consuming and concentrated, rubbing off on you like a bad influence as he grabs and gropes and nips.

You hate to admit it (and don’t know how it got to this point) but on occasion, Sylus’s scent is even comforting.

You would never tell him that. In fear of it getting to his head, if nothing else.

His warmth tickles the shell of your ear, his lips peppering a chaste kiss to your shoulder as he settles in beside you. Your frenzied heart, just as it began to slow, begins to thump faster, but you remain otherwise composed. When he moves a hand to lift the blanket over you, fuzzy and stupid-expensive, you make a grunting sound and shove his wrist away.

Stubborn, Sylus thinks, and bold.

But his. His and perfect.

Behind you, his chest rumbles. He lets out a laugh, gentle and light, but you wonder if it’s the remnants of exasperation that’s interwoven in it. He nestles up at your back and curls a possessive hand around your middle, his other brushing some hair off your shoulder.

You’re not quite dumb enough to interfere with it this time. Or, for that matter, the glittering ring he puts on your finger- back to its rightful spot- and reverently slips down to the slim base of your knuckle.

“You’re not cold, kitten?” He mumbles at your ear, taking you in through slow, decadent breaths,”I guess you did work yourself up by a few degrees, huh?” The proximity used to raise the little hairs on the back of your neck, but he has dulled your fight-or-flight response considerably over the past handful of months.

Kudos to him, for that.

He’s not entirely wrong, though. Your cheeks still feel toasty with anger, your fingers twitching and unfurling by your lap as if to test your own mood.

“Are you…” he starts, contemplative, “still frustrated?”

…Are you still frustrated? You don’t know. Maybe just sad.

Everything you want you can’t have. Everything you want- your veritable livelihood- he’s plucked you out of no different than a mother would her errant puppy, by the scruff. With possessive teeth that latch on painlessly and say mine.

“I don’t know,” you murmur, before quickly remedying the part of you that grows anxious at admitting your own vulnerabilities to him- “yes. I’m upset.”

Sylus gives a little sigh.

Long fingers skim the column of your arm. He leaves behind small goosebumps and a warmth that somehow feels cold over your human flesh; a brush that tingles like a static shock.

“Don’t be,” he murmurs, voice becoming oddly heavy. Breathy, rugged. And you wryly suppose the solution he offered is just so helpful, isn’t it?

The palm laced around your middle gradually slips downward, his hooked nose pressing into your jugular like he can smell the hot blood beneath and it’s appetizing, before a feeling of dread overtakes you.

Dread, and another feeling you don’t want to name— a thrill of excitement ghosting down your spine.

When he cups the seat of your panties, you shiver and revolt as if you’ve been burned.

“N-No—“

He’s ready for that, your… hesitance. His other arm, the one that doesn’t end nestled between your bare thighs, keeps you lassoed to him, his breath heavy at your collar. Growing more labored by the second.

He hushes you, using his cheek to stroke against your hair since his hands are otherwise occupied. You don’t give any more fight other than that- the violent flinch- but you remain stiff as a board as he notes your trembling with a genuine, deep frown. Furrowed, sad brows and all as if he actually has the fucking capacity to feel sorry for something—

“It’s okay, kitten,” he breathes out, “Hush.” Four fingers deliver a series of slow, tantalizing rubs to your pussy, marking the beginning of his painless assault as his thumb toys with the waistband of your panties, and you shudder against your will.

You scramble to hold onto his thick forearm, straightening against him as he leisurely works you into a writhing, fiery mess. Your veins warm, but not out of anger- not anymore, at least. Traitorous flames sprout in the pit of your belly, fanning heat across your face— hot-blooded and filled with want over just a few of his touches.

Oh, you hate him.

“Just relax, loosen up. I’ll make you come,” he murmurs against your neck, laving the fleshy space there with amorous kisses.

Man with a mission. Man with a promise. If you know him, then you’ll know he keeps them.

He suckles gently at the sensitive skin before breaking off with a soft pop, a hot tongue lolling out to chase away the redness, rendering you speechless. Speechless and on the brink of forgetting just why exactly you loathe him so much— but a vestige of that repulsion remains, melancholic and weak, and you try one last time to push him away, throwing an ineffective elbow.

He glues his front to your back completely, locking your joints in place, and slips his fingers down your panties. His knuckles peek out from the lacy hem.

Sylus lets out a little groan when you call his name, shivering behind you.

He doesn’t care if you say it like it’s a perjorative or an invocation of some reprehensible, filthy spirit— if he had it his way, it’d sound coated in honey, but he’s learned to take what he can get with you. It still makes his cock throb beneath the white folds of his robe. In any case, it’ll sound real sweet soon enough, ringing out from your lips in pretty, gasping moans as you gouge your nails into his back.

Grudge him all you want, honey. He’ll make you shake and scream, tonight. Squash all the enmity you doggedly hold for him within the span of an hour with worshipful hands and concentrated, ardent thrusts that leave you with little choice but to take it and moan.

When your struggling stops altogether, Sylus takes ahold of your little hand and appreciatively thumbs over your ring finger. “What sort of husband would I be if I left you all hot and bothered, hm? A poor one,” he answers for you.

Gently, he maneuvers you onto your back and insinuates himself between your legs. His eyes are aflame. The look in them steals the last of your shivering breath, your heart doing a perfect backflip in your chest.

Ruby eyes flutter with passion, his pupils so big you can hardly spot the red glint as they dilate unevenly, his lashes dewy. He sucks in oxygen with short, winded intakes, his silvery hair- still slightly damp from his shower- falling over his brow. And to be fair that’s bunched together, too; all the little muscles in his face tight and strained as he lets out a clipped sigh.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers on his perusal. His gaze flits all over the place when he hoists shiny silk up your breast (tonight, a royal-blue negligee) and unwraps a stringy pair of panties from your legs.

“You’ll be good for me tonight, won’t you? Or is there any more… frustration you need to let out?”

The invisible apple of your throat bobs. You retain your silence.

He dryly comments, “I guess I owe you that.”

Sylus unties his robe, eyes glossy and intense.

He does so with an affected patience, knuckles moving ridiculously slow as he feigns autonomy over his own rampant emotions. You eye him with a misty desire as he does so, your hips giving an involuntary shimmy as you prepare for what’s to come.

Sylus grasps for the very last of his self-control like a beggar would the lavish tailcoats of passersby, but it’s all for naught. His fingers are shaking when he finally flips open his robe and shucks it from his broad shoulders. Oozing less confidence and more need than anything, the tips of his ears flushed a bright red that you don’t get to see often and nobody else gets to see at all.

He stoops over, then, laying his naked chest flat to your breasts.

“This,” he says, pinning your hand- the one with a flashy wedding band- onto the silky duvet and intwining your fingers with his. “This belongs, with you. So make a mess. Throw your fits and say those cruel things to try to get back at me, sweetie… But don’t ever take this off your ring finger, do you understand?”

He breaks off from your hickey-dotted neck to get a close look at you, pressing his forehead to yours. And right then you’re almost scared to look at him, an instinct existing deep in your gut saying you’ve just been taken into the maw of a big bad wolf— but his nose brushes with yours and he feels… human. Fleshy, warm. Shockingly vulnerable in the moment.

His hands that hold yours greedily are callous and big, sure- and you’ve seen firsthand the destruction they can raise- but they’re not clawed and malicious as they touch you. No, actually, they tremble with unbridled excitement at the opportunity to make you feel good.

And— And you hate him, y-you do.

Sylus cradles you close and nurses a few indulgent kisses from your lips, eating up every precious gasp you can’t stop from slipping in time.

Reluctantly, you return them all with budding desire.

“Do you understand?” He manages to heave out after a breathless moment. There’s no threat masquerading behind his candied words (no, he’s never been one to hold things over your head, surprisingly) but his timber is firm and meaningful. You have the implicit understanding that you must say yes- or, that’s your best option for the moment.

You look up at him and his eyes are wide, unblinking, not exactly the heavy-lidded picture you were expecting and had just witnessed mere moments prior.

And it’s a million things all in one— reverent and intense, enigmatic in its roots, you think, because you never could wrap your head around just what he saw in you and why, but he’s completely besotted. It brightly reflects in his eyes like chopped moonlight over calm waters- and you never once denied that. If you’re being honest, he made denying that- his very real, and unabashed feelings for you- an impossible task.

“Yes,” you mumble. “I understand.”

He seems contented, at that. Sighing and tempered.

He pants and nudges his brow to yours, one hand unloosening from its knot with yours to make a slow descent. Torturous and controlled like he wants you to shrivel up and die from the grudging need for his touch- for him to pivot deep up inside you and erase all conscious thought from your brain.

Sylus captures your lips in another kiss, more heated this time, raunchy and a bit toothy, as he takes his cock and, without any anticapitory strokes or anything, lines it up with your hole.

“M’ sorry, sweetie. I just don’t think I can stay away tonight. You…” His skull throbs with blunt, scalding want. “You’re worth all your trouble, you know that?”

A ripcurrent of fondness, unbidden but strong, gusts through your chest.

There’s just nothing in this world you can do to ward him off you, is there? No way to spook him?

The epiphany, dulled by a lust broiling between your thighs, is as comforting as it is horrifying. You don’t- You don’t know anything more. You just can’t be sure of what Sylus is to you, how he makes you feel— all his disservices done to you a cruel piece of your reality or not.

Tonight, you’ll blame it all on him.

He nudges apart your folds (growingly wet: an unfortunate discovery of yours that makes his chest puff with pride) with the fat head and begins his entrance. It’s grand but gentle; painstaking, almost, as his pelvis draws closer to yours but only at a snail’s rate.

A lewd squelch sounds out. You suppose you’re not entirely beyond the luxury of shame quite yet, because you toss your head to the side and refuse to meet his piercing gaze, embarrassed.

You… suppose you’re also a bit wetter than you’d thought, or wanted, for that matter.

You wince as he feeds inch after inch into you. Sylus is twitching; maybe you’re just hypersensitive or your fresh bout of anger has you experiencing everything in overabundance, but you can feel his long member writhe inside your gooey walls— every ridge and curve as you struggle to make room. On instinct, you clamp down on him and he hisses like he’s been slapped.

“R-Relax, kitten... Let me in. I’ll be gentle with you, I promise. Are… you scared?” He pants.

You swallow hard. Sylus tracks the movement with alarming precision, cardinal eyes watching your throat bob. Sweat beads there. He licks it up without thought, with half the brain to follow up his question with, “Don’t be. I would never hurt you,” he whispers. And to be perfectly honest, you believe him. In his own weird, roundabout way, he wouldn’t hurt you. Not in any physical regard, at least.

(Although, perhaps bullying his thick cock between your plushy, tooth-marked thighs is the exception to that statement.)

“Y-You’re mad at me,” you caterwaul, but it’s really a question in its own, uncertainty blipping past your wet eyes. “You’ll punish me.”

Something like hurt reshapes the hard lines of arousal in his face, tanned skin unfurling with brief sorrow. He looks sweet and puppyish- all momentary, of course, all his slips of vulnerability compiled into these isolated, intimate moments with you.

He frowns, “I won’t punish you, sweetie.”

“I broke the vase. Threw it, and- and my ring.” You reason in a thin voice, your fingers curling thoughtlessly. He takes them in his own. Kisses all the tips of them.

“So?” He dismisses with a breath, “I can buy a million more, honey. You forget who I am. As for your ring,” he pauses, gaze rapidly flipping across the bridge of your nose, as if trying to discern whether or not you’ll do it again somewhere down the line. Of course, it’s an impossible task to tell the future. Sylus wishes that wasn’t the case, though.

“…You wouldn’t do that again, would you? Throw it away, take it off. You’d cherish it, just as I do my own…” he alludes to the own band on his finger, resplendant and with a price tag you’d prefer not to count the zeroes on.

It glitters in the mellow lamp light when you briefly glance to it.

“I want you to look at it,” he decides after a beat, “and think of me. I want it to… make you happy.”

With that, you blink and he’s withdrawing, straightening his back to loom over you again- resuming that position of dominance without issue. He paints the most traditional idea of authority. Tall and muscled, with stoic eyes that glow with the silent dare to challenge him and hands that can make putty of the most rebellious spirit. He molds you like clay on a potter’s wheel. You reel underneath the unexpectedly soft ministrations of his worn palms.

Funnily enough, there was a time where you were convinced he wanted nothing more than to erase your person and rewrite your identity, but now you’re not so sure… It seems if anything, the only thing he wants to strip you of is your fear. Most notably, of him. He’s so violent but… painless. Sylus has always confused you, in that way.

With men like him, you’ve quietly wondered, maybe it’s just better to close your eyes and let your breathing slow.

“You’re doing so good,” he rewards with his words, “Relax your hips… yes, just like that. Maybe I’ve been away too much, mm? I’m sure the twins have been… more than talkative with you. Bothersome. Fuck,” he shudders.

“…You’re all pent up,” he determines out loud. “But don’t worry. I’ll make it better. I’m only asking that you’ll,” you think he gasps faintly, bringing a hand to touch over your belly, “make some room for me here. Could you do that for me, kitten?”

Without fully understanding the possible implications of his words, caught between the sweltering heat of his body and a confusing, inner blend of desire and fading resistance, you give a nod.

Sylus digs a fang in his bottom lip and forces himself to look away. His too-intense eyes settle on the syrupy juncture of your bodies, where he disappears into you and you, for once, eagerly invite him in.

“Sweet kitten.” His praise is cloying. Genuine, sappy. It sticks like frosting to the roof of your mouth— a feeling you can’t quite squirm away from because it’s lodged inside you. He’s smitten, and you think you hate him. You must. You were only screaming your head off about it moments prior and throwing precious, ornate vases to the floor, confessing your repulsion to the whole entire world (more accurately, Luke and Kieran, overhearing it from somewhere down the hall and the damned bird currently perched in his cage).

His words of encouragement, bitten and breathy, keep you from bucking your hips up and away, but only barely.

Your husband keeps you anchored beneath him with a fervid, loving stare and fingers that constantly remind themselves not to dig too deep into the fat of your hip lest they leave bruises. Save for the petal-like hickeys spiraling the pillar of your neck and your thighs- the ones that made you yelp with pleasure as he left them- Sylus doesn’t want to leave anything behind that exists for the sole purpose of hurting.

Right now, everything does. Your pussy lips mouthing around him and desperately trying to receive him, the prominent vein at the base of his cock throbbing under the tight fit.

It doesn’t matter how many times he’s nailed you against the headboard or taken you folded over the marble kitchen counters as the twins hurriedly scuttled out— you’ll never quite get used to the sheer length of him. All thick and pulsating, the upper half of it flushed and curved under its own weight.

Terrifying, the first time you saw it and he pried apart your legs all attentively and soft, tracking each and every expression that passed your face despite the drugs in you making every tiny muscle go almost entirely lax.

And it was terrifying the second and third time, too.

…It’s terrifying even now, but that sense of startle is buried deep down under gritty layers of hopelessness and bitterness and a disloyal arousal- your core throbbing with want as it nudges aside all rational thinking. It says to let him in. Let him inside your panties and heart but you still dream of homeward during every sleepless night, familiar, Linkon paths surrounded in hazy serenity. You dream of the sun, too, the buttery light that waits just outside of the N109 Zone and its boundless darkness—

Outside of him. Your stalker, your captor. With the recent addition of a big sparkling gem on your finger- your apparent husband.

Sylus is neat, down there; fine white hairs tickle above your clit as he bottoms out with a final groan- seconds before he stoops back over you and recoils his hips.

He fucks you good and slow. Expert thrusts that he pairs with tentative, darting looks from your pussy to your eyes to note every zipping emotion.

He coaxes honeyed moans out from you with relative ease. Admittedly, it feels heavenly where his body meets and parts with yours— your head made so dull, devoid of thought, your limbs weighed like bags of sand as he ruts into you like a man possessed.

He makes a pleasured sound, pulled deep from the barrel of his chest. “I love you.” You believe him. He definitely looks the part; in love. He can hardly speak. “Kitten. Tell me how it feels, tell me how you want it,”

“Good,” you cry breathlessly. “Feels good.” He watches you clamp your eyes shut and groans with dissatisfaction, taking your jaw in his whole hand and pressing his nose to yours. If he has one wish right now, it’s that you’ll understand in indisputable clarity that you make up the very atoms of his world, that in a wasteland of slate grey and white— you hold color. Hold it like a fully saturated sponge. With every piston of his hips, he drinks his fill from you.

Bitterly, you think with withering rationale, he drains.

“Then open your eyes. Look at me,” he demands. So close he’s near suffocating- every fibre of your being consumed by five letters and an adoration so heady it feels treacly. It emits from him like radiation, poisonous and insidious.

Sylus puffs out humid, minty breaths, and you take them in, recycling it between each other. Your lungs feel like a hearth. He’s gasping like he’s just concluded a several mile long run, perspiring at his temple.

Belatedly, you flutter open your eyes.

He’s handsome. He’s wolfishly handsome and the way he looks at you is both precious and earth-shattering all at once, crushing you under the sheer weight of it like a flimsy object placed under a hydraulic press: you stood no chance. Not against someone like him.

Obedient, you stare at him and whimper, half-tempted to cup his V-shaped jaw and indulge in the feeling.

Sylus moans and rewards you with a hot tongue pressed flatly to your neck. You slam your head as deep as it can go in the duvet. Your eyes fall back into your skull and you hold him tight- tighter than tight- squeezing his thick forearms like they’re fruit to juice. He doesn’t seem to mind.

Your back makes a crescent-moon. He relishes in the way you cling onto him for dear life, branding him with the tips of your fingers as he imparts mind-numbing pleasure. Euphoria thrums in your veins. It’s hard to breathe, your cheeks bloating before you dazedly remind yourself to breathe.

Your inner voice resembles Sylus’s to an unexpected degree.

“Breathe,” he really says, rasping. “Breathe, kitten.”

Your slick cunt winks around him with satisfaction, a gusty breath pouring down your throat.

Pointed teeth tickle your jugular. For a split second, you experience the very real, but perhaps needless fear that he’ll sink down and tear tendon from bone. That he’ll pull away with red spittle and a predatory smile and say, I’ve won. You’ve given in, sweetie.

It’s all for naught, however; instead, he washes you with sloppy, suckling kisses and you mewl unabashed for each and every one.

Molten pleasure sends a violent jolt through you, his saliva marking you and right then you feel no different than a bone to a dog.

Sylus wonders vaguely if you’ll ever come to the realization that while yes, he is a dog, you are his master— you give him name and purpose and occasional tugs on his leash that tell him where to go and what to do. He’ll trail you endlessly. Follow you to hell even if he smells the char clear ahead.

And you just don’t get that, do you? It’s as humorous as it is exasperating.

“Look me in the eyes, sweetie. Tell me how you feel. I want to know how- far you think I reach.” He shudders.

You whimper, “Far. S-So far, Sylus.”

A visible shiver racks his broad shoulders at the sound. His palm, callous and large, cups your chin tenderly and his damp lips shift against yours with every dull clap of his pelvis to yours. His free hand leaves its perch at your waist in favor of your breast, hovering over the valley of them with splayed fingers.

“And what about here?” He croaks, “Am I reaching this spot here?”

Your neck is straining as you plow it deeper into his fancy, expensive mattress. There’s a small uncertainty in you that raises the silent question of whether or not you’re trying to escape the man looming over you or you’re just overstimulated from his handling. Either way, it goes unanswered, put on the back burner to make room for a rattling pleasure.

Comprehension slips away. It’s taking you several seconds to grasp onto what Sylus is asking of you.

You take ahold of a pillow beside you and grab it so hard you think feathers might erupt from your fingertips. You’re getting close, you can feel it; a foamy wave in the distance growing taller and taller as it nears the shore. He’s not fairing any better, the threads of his composure splitting like dead ends.

Your heart, you finally realize in a blink. Is he reaching your heart? And it’s almost delicate, the response your chest has to it, your lungs drawing in a short breath and keeping it there for a long moment as if you need the extra time to process that morsel of information. That unexpected smidgen of fondness that bowls through you and scrunches your brow as you flit between his eyes. Cherry red and agog, wholly invested in your answer.

Before you can provide a real one— the wave crashes.

Bigger than you’d imagined, more powerful. Tsunami-like in nature: it casts its shadow over you in its entirety and steals the breath from your lungs as it curls and flattens. It rolls over you and sprawls to the crown of your head to the tips of your toes, your whole body convulsing as you’re swept up in its waters.

“Y-Yes,” you gasp without consciousness, fucked into perfect dumbness. “I love you, Sylus- I love you I love you I love you—“

Sylus’s hips stutter and fail.

“Fuck, sweetie!” He growls, “Do you mean it, do you—?” He delivers one last onerous ram into your twitching hole before letting out a roar and stilling completely. Rope after rope of hot cum glutting into you, your spasming walls feeling volcanic as he unloads his fat balls inside them.

You tremble and lose your tether to reality, for one moment. Cut off completely and barred from it.

Eventually, he lets out a deep, sated sigh and collapses over you. Drawing your boneless body to his front, tucking you safely under his muscled wing.

You numbly slant yourself against him and press your cheek to the damp, hard planes of his chest. His heart is hammering wildly beneath your ear and you don’t know whether to feel flattered, startled, or a fair mix of both. Perhaps you’re beyond the point of caring- although, sometimes it’s hard to get over the knowledge that Sylus indeed has a functioning heart capable of sorrow and anger and joy.

It’s… confusing, to say the least.

A long while passes afterward.

In the dewy afterglow, he plants a lingering kiss to the crown of your head and uses his center fingers to move away the hair pasted to your forehead. You can tell he’s holding back on something, just don’t know quite what.

Then, he murmurs, with a vulnerability that will never not look stupefying on him— cocksure, devilishly-handsome face warping into the gentle portrait of doubt—

“Did you?” He blinks, slow as he drifts along your sleepy face and watches your eyes hazily lift to meet his. “Mean what you said? Just now, when you came... Did you mean it, kitten?” He whispers softly.

Your mouth opens and wavers.

A plethora of contradictory feelings make quick work of the last of your common sense: loathing, trading itself out for hesitant affection; deepseated fear ducking out the way for the inexplicable want to unfurl your tight limbs against him and allow yourself just to be held... By him, of all people.

Your captor, who utterly uprooted you from your home and cut off every string connecting you to the people you considered most dear. Your tormentor and kidnapper and husband, whether you liked it or not, the relation only recently scrawled in paper in sloping, flowery letters. You signed yourself to him. (Albeit, you had very little say in the whole ordeal.)

You shut your eyes, hard. Your jaw follows.

You don’t give him an answer. Maybe you don’t truly know it anymore, not for certain. What this man has done to you is all too confusing and he’s made you all too tired, tonight. Nothing can keep its foothold for long in your fogged brain.

With a rapid thump of his heart, devastation falling headlong into the pit of his belly, Sylus thinks your silence, that in itself, is your answer.

…Nonetheless. He’s nothing if not persistent. And you’re warming up to him, he can tell— those fuzzy, latent feelings part of your willing acknowledgement or not.

So he arms you impossibly closer and nuzzles his hooked nose into your hair.

You think it’s a wry little smile that prods your temple. “You’re still playing the long game, hm, kitten? …It’s alright,” he breathes. You note the microscopic hitch in his otherwise even words with an unwanted pang of guilt.

No, the only one present- overarching all other thought, making it physically impossible to function in your day to day life- was if your fiancé was still alive. Or if what all the townsfolk gossiped about in whispering peels during brushes with them on the cobbled path was true—

If the waves got to him. If he was really lost at sea.

Stupid or naive or plain crazy (as one onlooker labeled you without so much as a care to just how worn-out this whole ordeal’s made you)- you don’t care. Truthfully, you think you’re a little beyond the point of it, of self doubt or second guessing.

The only room left is for action: the strong men at the tavern and the local fisherman you clumsily rallied together were helpful in some ways, but their help only lasted so long until exasperation kicked in and they called it quits.

The choice to do something is yours and only yours.

Look, girl. We combed the port front to back. Turned over the barrels and crates and all, found nothin’. And we’ve been hauling out them nets for weeks now— wouldn’t you be surprised-? nothin’ there, either. Your fiancé's gone. I’m sorry, but—

You didn’t stay to hear the rest, embittered by it.

They’d done you a kindness, carving time out of their strict schedules and afternoon, beer-induced naps. And you’ll always be thankful for that, that despite knowing deep in their hearts that you were a lost cause, they stepped up to bat regardless, but—

There’s no returning home for you. Wiping your brow of its sweat then throwing a towel over your shoulder, heading in for the night.

The spot beside you in bed is eerily empty and cold; you wake from nightmares in sheer darkness and swat a hand to feel him but you’re met with wrinkled sheets and a silence that sneers. Without him, this place is empty.

The town is beautiful- small- but beautiful- with its glittering fairy lights strung from shop to shop, worn paths branching off into pebbled ones that lead to the shore and the peer, the more developed side of it farther down the sand— and it used to feel comforting. Like home.

Now, there’s no lantern aglow on the porch banister to point you in the direction of home. You’re aimless and sad. Like a ship without a sail.

The first week afterward (the news that his crew never returned from their trip), you hid away in your room crying all day, the better part of you half expecting his footfalls to echo down the hall. Though, they never did. It’s fine, you’d reasoned with eyes clamped shut, splayed over his half of the mattress, he’ll be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. It went, too.

And he—

He’s still gone—

Worried neighbors flitted by and left steaming pastries by the door. You hardly had an appetite for them, though, delightful as they were sat outside your cracked window, the smell of pecan pie drifting under billowing, sheer curtains.

It’s encroaching on around a month now. A month of loneliness and denial and the cruel, pitying stares the locals level you in the times you seldom leave home.

Your fiancé's absence, as unexpected as it was devastating, has stretched on long enough to kindle a sort of determination in you. You pile your bones off the bed and set out for the shore with a small, leather bag at your waist and sandals that hang off your feet, nervous but hellbent.

That bag, now: floating off in the distance, whisked away by whirling winds and swallowed up by the sea. One valiant flipflop remains hanging off your big toe, but you question, albeit with little concern for it, for just how much longer it will last.

Your fingers shake as they peel hair from your temple. You can’t see, can’t see anything— the boat shakes and croaks as the bottom steadily fills, and you have the dreadful realization that you are slowly sinking and cannot stop it.

Through bleared eyes, you watch several, ringlet-like waves form on the horizon and disappear behind rolling, closer ones. You brace endlessly for impact, but another wave bulges and effortlessly lifts your canoe- a temporary respite from the others that come crashing over.

When it lets you down, you quickly squint to see what’s coming for you next and immediately pale.

It’s massive. Dark, cobalt, scraping the underbelly of the black sky. Another tall wave (but a small fish in comparison) interlopes into it and is swallowed within a blink. It only worsens it, feeds it.

You have no chance. None at all. It’s over. It’s over and despite it all- the pointed meddling of your neighbors and all the chatter meant to maim the stubborn belief you held that your to-be husband was still alive- a small hope flares to life in your chest.

It says maybe dying here wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe, if all of them were right after all, you’d be able to see him again.

As that unbeatable wave draws nigh, seemingly moving at a snail’s pace- casual in its approach but so terrifyingly powerful- it droops at the top and paints you in an opaque shadow.

You can’t see, can’t hear. The deafening roar of thunder and the foamy tide clapping against itself is tuned out. Your eyes see nothing but darting smears of lightning and the hurt of heartbreak and sea salt.

It’s happening. It’s over.

You give your fingers one last twitch to remind yourself that, for the moment, remarkably, you’re still alive. They feel fat with the cold, hardly budging.

Your last flip flop gusts over your shoulder and your ribcage rattles with a chill.

Your teeth chatter out one final prayer and perhaps a choked sob- although you can’t tell if it’s the brine gathering at your feet, rising with a gurgle- And you watch with wide, teary eyes as that tsunami finally descends—

A flash of color, indigo and bright, bobs above the slanted tide.

‘You. You shouldn’t be out here.’

Your eyes widen. Milliseconds before the boat is hit, a slosh from the side tips it and you’re catapulted into the open water.

It feels like an open flame.

Arctic temperatures freeze you to the bone. You’re reminded of hellfire as the cold licks away at your skin, limbs warping around you in violent currents.

You let out a scream of despair and watch as it turns to suds.

You know it was stupid, you know it was stupid, you know it was stupid— But you were hurting. And that life back at town- now devoid of the man you thought to be your veritable soulmate, who you were convinced you’d spend your final breaths with- is not the one you want to continue on with.

(But… you don’t wanna die.)

You dig to the surface with a sputter.

You manage to keep yourself afloat for all of two seconds before the ocean— or something that feels oddly like a fist— latches onto your ankle and pulls.

Consciousness is a slightly longer affair… but that, too, fades.

Teal blips across your spasming eyes. A vivid, long tail flicks along your arm, almost curiously, before curling behind you and disappearing.

Bubbles erupt from your jaw and shoot up, up, up.

Maybe, you think vaguely as the world blackens, quietens, you’ll find your missing fiancé lying at the seabed. The thought, surprisingly, isn’t as comforting as it is disturbing, but you suppose a reunion only in death would be better than none at all.

‘Silly human. Don’t worry, I got you.’

⊹⊹⊹

A voice breaks the quiet of night. Dulcet, lamenting.

The ocean whirs in his ears endlessly, his tail gliding below him in a dull swish. A school of fish passes by, and then another. A curious, blue one swims at his side and he biffs it dismissively.

“Not now, fishie.”

Rafayel isn’t concerned about the life swirling around him in colorful dots of assorted sizes, floating above the seabed, no- that’s all ubiquituous to him. It’s that song— that smooth sound drifting like a dirge from somewhere on the surface— that stirs something deep in his chest.

It was like that last night, too, and then a few nights before.

After over two decades of swimming in unbroken boredom- with each day bringing about the expectation of nothing more than waking up to see another- the siren feels a shift.

Something is breaking the monotony.

An excitement, existing deep in his chest but incipient, is invoked within him like an ancient god brought to wakefulness. Rafayel feels his bones rouse with the phantom aches of a slumber he never fell into- but the feeling is all the same. He rubs the disbelief from his eyes and pushes aside waving reeds before rocketing upwards.

When the waves kiss the morning foam,

From beneath the surface, the crescent moon is lopsided and shakes as Rafayel gets closer to breaching it.

The dainty shadow of a hand cuts in front of the white orb, as if wanting to capture it, before falling back to her side.

A gentle splash.

From up here, he can hear the things of land- the crickets and cicadas of summertime- purr from afar. That’s not what he came here for, though, what’s been stringing him in from the depths like fish in a trawl or moth to a flame.

And still, in the span of the last week, Rafayel has yet to get her name... (Something that definitely has to be remedied sooner or later, he quietly decides- despite the other half of him still holding onto the pride of coasting solo, the embarrassment at being led off by a mere voice. A land creature’s, at that.)

He latches onto the long, thick leg of the peer and props himself just under the overhang of it, laying his nose flat in the water but opening his eyes above it. It’s amplified now, that pretty noise, and the only thing separating the two- him and the human- is the planks of wood overhead.

Her feet rest on it. He hears her sandals squelch before she toes them off, sits down, and loops her legs over the edge.

Rafayel, with fluttering lashes and an interest so unexpected but strong it’s paralyzing- watches her heels make ripples just beside him, his heart thumping wildly. It could be out of the thrill of doing something this unusual, or the silent anticipation of maybe getting caught (although, he doubts he will, for the main reason that his kin don’t lack in cunning).

Maybe it’s just out of delight- the fibers of his being tingling with invisible sparks of… something. It makes him feel a little clumsy, innocent and fumbling like when he was a young merfolk just learning how to evade a rip current.

Similarly, she pulls him under. Drags him far out. Her voice is the tide and he’s all too willing to drown.

It’s… certainly not the first time he’s seen them- human legs- and he’ll be the first to admit that he wasn’t so sure about them initially- but he thinks he likes hers the best. It’s starting to grow on him, but just a little.

She’s soft. Smooth. At least, that’s how she appears- though he can’t say for certain because he’s never tested that theory, yet.

He’s extra careful to keep his hands to himself, intrigued as he is, lest his nails pierce through and break her. It’s a more common notion underwater, shared between much of the fishfolk, that humans are meant to be broken. Pieced apart in hungry hands or brought to the depths for a more extended, decadent death.

To be fair, he’s not a firm denier of that...

But this human, this girl who’s collided into his infinitely bleak life with all the grace of a ship wrecked hours off from shore, and whatever the hell she’s singing about— Rafayel’s not quite stupid enough to break her, no… He’s not quite willing to, either.

When the scent of roses pierces the lungs, The fish stranded at your fingertips…

For the rest of the moonlit evening, Rafayel floats beneath the peer at her (unwitting) side and listens to her languishing until she stands to her feet and retreats down the beach, disappearing into a cluster of warm, tiny lights in the distance.

Blood,

Blood,

Blood covers the sea.

Rafayel, with an inexplicable pang of sorrow- unable to fight the influence of her songs- can’t help but wonder what has made the girl so sad.

It’s not in their baser nature, the sirens, to commiserate, least of all with the humans. It’s a weakness, to cry, an open wound that his kind is all too susceptible to deepening- so they avoid it entirely. Call it preservation. But for as much as Rafayel loves the ocean- and yes, to an extent, his people- he was never all that interested in their society, and if showing a little bit of heart for the landfolk means escaping the bland shadows of the sea, then maybe right now is a good time to start.

…Before she swims away, anyway.

⊹⊹⊹

Silence sours the balmy air of your home, but you swear you hear something singing to you.

It was real.

It had to be, what happened just a number of days ago.

When you’d been retrieved from a bed of seaweed on the shore with little memory of what happened, you had retained just enough to know that something was… off.

That something having to do with the violent storm at sea and your lack of succumbing to it- the darting shadow that appeared by the boat and was there when you went under— wasn’t adding up.

You… shouldn’t be alive.

That thought was present even in the thick mist of early morning as boats began unmooring from the docks— stark epiphany, realer than the concerned hands of the fishermen as they helped you into town, your legs hardly capable of carrying you there on their own. Much less your frazzled mind; you didn’t quite miss the way they’d stared at you during the trek off shore, throwing frantic looks over your shoulder even as the sand gave to the reedy path leading into the village.

The rolling waves got flatter as you drew off from it, but something in you- like some inexplicable base instinct- was telling you to run. Away or back to it, you don’t know, but you feel the frigidity of the sea still in your chest, lapping away at your sanity as days pass.

The burn is surreal. Nothing makes sense.

You should be dead- scraping there at the bottom of the sea, drifting with your supposedly dead fiancé in a place where the light doesn’t dare reach—

But you’re not.

The earth feels shapeless beneath your feet. A perpetual dizziness in your skull that makes you feel like you’re swaying on a dock- but your toes are planted in dry land.

You’re alive. The scale tipped against you but it didn’t matter. The sea spat you out, didn’t want you.

Surprisingly, you take the whole ordeal in stride. The first days after being plucked from the shore are rocky and dreamy, but you find your footing and with it comes an unexpected hope.

If you survived, your fiancé must’ve as well. He’d always been the stronger of you two, anyway, more stout and determined.

The waves did not drag him under. Couldn’t have.

The canoe you took out to sea is gone, not to your surprise. It was more or less reduced to splinters. But you wonder if it was even real to begin with, if the canoe ever existed that day when you unroped it from its notch and embarked on the perilous journey. Down to the very point where you pattered off your porch steps and made the choice to look for your fiancé yourself- the whole sequence of events is wrapped in a forgetful fog.

But deep down, despite the whispers of doubt surrounding you and your own mental haze, you know it happened. All of it.

It was real, and something

Is singing to you—

(Wet hands descend the span of your belly. Sand feels like gravel beneath you, soaked and cold beneath a yellowed moon as night fades. Reverent, curious. Long nails carefully unravel algae from your fingers and thighs. The debris is tossed away, thrown down the shore without thought.

-…. in good shape, cutie. Is there anyone on land who’d sing for you if you disappeared? A gentle laugh- but even in your state of unconsciousness, you pick up on the note of disdain there. I guess if there was, you wouldn’t turn to the sea so much.)

Hands. Curious hands kneading into you like wet clay on a spinning wheel. Reshaping. Admiring. There’s painterly intent in every touch, every brush. Something between the cove of your legs gives a wanting throb and your tongue feels like cotton. Fire licks from your belly to your brain and makes it benumbed, pleasantly heavy as the gentle, rhythmic lull of the tide cools the tips of your toes.

Salt burns your throat.

You wake with it sore.

Rubbing it groggily, you come to before dawn fully does, the horizon flickering with a diluted, white-orange beneath a starry sky.

It gets to be too much. The emptiness of your bed, the suffocating drivel of the townsfolk and the lack of certainty in what happened to you.

Dubbed crazy or not by all around you, you’re past the point of caring. You have to leave. Worried neighbors advised you against it, adamant that you ward off on visiting the peer at least until your mind fog lessened; preferably, you’d wait an extra few months so the wound of heartbreak would seal over, but it seems they know better than to ask that of you.

He’s still out there, your to-be husband. He’s got to be.

You think something else might be, too. The thing that saved you. Although, the reasons it has for doing so are beyond you.

Go back, a lilting voice sings somewhere in the back of your head, a dull throb like a separate, beating heart. It thumps in your skull and sends a thrill through you. It speaks in urgency, like it’s warning you not to disobey— but all the sharpness of it is masked in dulcet chords.

Go back, back to the sea.

Crazy or not, you think it’s calling for you.

The lyrics lead you to the front door. Maybe you ought to think this over more, sleep on it (God knows you’re failing at that seemingly simple task). But something is driving you, picking up and physically moving your limbs for you as if your settings have been switched to autopilot.

You shrug on a thin cardigan to stave off the crisp air of early morning, not bothering to lock your door behind you.

A weird, eerie voice in your subconscious- hardly sounding like yours- says you won’t be coming back anyway.

Thankfully, you have half the mind to shoo it away and steel your nerves. Of course you’ll be coming back home. You’ll find your errant fiancé and burst through the little blue-painted door with celebration. All the village will cough up their sheepish apologies for the things they’d said- the faithless assumptions they made- and raise a mug to his return.

The key to finding him is finding that other thing, first. The thing with a watery fist and roaming nails, the glinting coral-red eyes that blurred beneath coiling waves and the tail that you’re sure swam you back to safety.

The locals can say all they want about you: The ruddy, fading ring of scratches wrapping around the bone of your ankle—

That’s all the proof you need to spur you onward.

Onward is the ocean.

⊹⊹⊹

Water gushes against the rocks at the seaside.

Dark and slate-grey, they dry up under the sun immediately. Seagulls caw overhead. The sand is warm- not cool as it was in your last visit- near scalding as you head towards the shore.

You hiss and don’t make it halfway until you start leaping, bare feet burning. You hurry into the water, standing only ankle-deep, and mentally scold yourself for forgoing shoes— but to your defense, your sandals had been lost to the abyss that was the sea just barely seven days ago.

The horizon is blinding. Sunlight bounces off the plane of the sea and glistens, just as bedazzled as a wealthy woman’s neck. It’s a far cry from what it was last week- all whorling ridges and roaring waters- and for that you’re thankful.

That storm, and being launched into the hellish currents of it, will remain in your dreams for a long time coming.

Even now, just looking at it from far out takes your breath a little.

It’s horrifying. It’s… beautiful.

…And it’s singing to you—

“I know you’re there,” you whisper.

Your voice is just a breath at first, hushed as you toss a squirrely look down the beach- where the fishermen drudge around as little specks- and straighten your spine.

You’re alone here, though. You’re allowed to be as crazy as you want.

You speak louder, forcing down the lump of embarrassment in your throat that says your voice is falling on deaf ears. And you know the ocean doesn’t have ears, or eyes; it hardly had the heart to spit you back out of it.

But that thing that snatched you into its arms and left you boneless on the sand does.

With hands bunched, shaking, you declare, “I know, you’re there.”

Nothing.

A short whitecap curls over the tips of your toes and stretches a few feet behind you before receding.

It melds seamlessly into the blue.

Nothing, and then-

Yards off, a colorful blur warbles. As it swims closer, you hold your ground, squint to assure it’s not a sea turtle or other creature (albeit, no typical marine animal is that shape or size), and let out a little gasp. Its head pops above the surface gracefully, and it’s full of hair, a vibrant shade of indigo that strikes a familiar chord in you instantly.

“It’s you,” you startle, almost out of breath. The fingers clutched tightly at your sides unfurl. Your heart picks up its speed, an abrupt surge of emotions- shock, relief, and confusion- leaving no different an effect than a stungun would.

“You’re real, I- I knew it—!”

“Shhh,” is his first word, coral-blue eyes narrowing with apathy as he palms himself closer, about knee-deep in the water now. And yet you step away, applying some distance as you stagger because for whatever reason, the knowledge that his creature- or fish-man- saved you doesn’t take the cake when it comes to self-preservation.

You don’t even have a name to put to his face (or tail), and up until now, you were certain mermaids and unicorns and fairies only existed between the pages of whimsical books or the imaginations of children.

Right then, you think, they also existed in the sage warnings of the Greeks before they sailed off to sea.

The quiet epiphany plays with your nerves.

“You don’t have to be so loud, you know. I can hear you just fine, thanks.”

Ear-length, wavy hair bobs with the movement as he tilts his head. You can’t help but feel estranged from the idea of caution, though, as he drifts a bit closer and gives you a petulant pout.

He gets as close as the sandbar will allow before pausing, broad shoulders jutting above the ripples.

And he’s childish still, the picture of harmlessness as he looks up at you, squinting in the sun, and murmurs, “buuuut, I admire your enthusiasm, cutie... Were you looking forward to our reunion that bad?”

You blink, lashes fluttering. A breath you’d been holding finally escapes you, a whit of that unease ebbing out just like the cool tide underfoot.

You’re… hardly a sailor, anyway. You’ve no ship to be wrecked; no, the man that served as the anchoring element in your life is missing. The boat in your life has gone AWOL. With it your warmth and love. It’s why you’ve even come out here in the first place, the flights of fancy belonging to a grieving woman or not.

The reminder of your lost fiancé steels you.

You lift a shaky hand to use as a visor against the sun, blotting it out so you can peruse the man-fish without obstruction.

“You saved me,” is all you really know to say. You’d had all sorts of lofty plans coming back out here, but you’d never fully considered what you’d do if your new friend (he is a friend, right?) did show.

He lets out an amused, dry sound. The ghost of a smile curls at his pink lips, though. He can’t quite hide that one from you.

“I did. Have you come to show me your gratitude?” He lowers his gaze then, glancing at your shins momentarily before peering behind you, at the grassland stopped just after the shore and right before the village.

He grumbles, “Or will humans with pitchforks show up any minute, intent on slaughtering me and my kind?”

For some reason, the most you take from that statement is the very end of it, quickly saying, “T-There’s more of you?”

He looks up at you. Makes a scoffing sound but it only holds half its bite.

“Well, of course there is. Silly girl,” he comments, that little grin returning with a vengeance as behind him, something teal shoots up from the water and pelts a small flurry of droplets your way. You close your eyes and turn, the gentle sound of his laughs ringing out.

When you look back at him, a long tail- gorgeous and as pigmented as turquoise paint- flicks under the sun and glitters no different than rhinestones.

“It was only me that was generous enough to save you, though. That’s the most important part.”

⊹⊹⊹

Trust is a big word, it is.

But there is no doubt in your mind that you would’ve succumbed to a watery death if not for the merman- Rafayel, he’d informed with a coy flap of his tail- intervening, and you’re grateful to him for that. His saving you— it means something. And you owe him.

You head for the shore each morning with a silent debt hanging over your head, but he never demands anything of you in return. During lazy afternoons by the cove trading pretty, swirled shells and at first tentatively getting in the water with him to swim at nightfall, you wait for the catch to come, for him to name his price.

You think it’s only fair. Rescuing something as valuable as a life is nothing to scoff at: you’d cough up the change.

He never holds out his hand.

If anything, Rafayel seems wholly uninterested in that.

You’re not entirely sure why you formulated your ideas of merfolk around blood-thirst and thievery (perhaps because of the myths), but the one you’re befriending is nothing like that. He’s playful and sassy and a little bit flirtatious but you suppose- if the legends of sirens luring sailors to the depths are really true- then it adds up. It’s only natural he’d be a whit on the provocative side, right?

Rafayel is friendly, clingy even when you convince him that you have no intentions of alerting the village any time soon of his presence. You tell him with a wry laugh that they’d hardly believe you anyway because everyone thinks you’ve lost it.

You see it in his pleasant face- the blip of interest that passes by- that he wants to ask why, but he holds off on it when you pour him with questions about what goes on in the deep blue and if his kind really eats fishermen.

He huffs, propping his elbow on the half-submerged rock he’d helped you onto, still in sight of the shore but more intimate a setting.

“What kind of question is that? Do you really think I could do something like that? Look at me,” he balloons out his cheeks and puffs. “I’m an innocent little fishie.”

You laugh, and drop the interrogation in favor of a more lighthearted one. You ask Rafayel what life off land is like.

With a mischevious twinkle in his marbled, red-blue eye, he tells you about what lurks in ocean trenches first, painting vivid imagery in your head of glowing bulbs in the dark and rows of jagged teeth that peer out of deep crevices.

You blanche and he can’t help but chuckle softly, a dash of something in his gaze that resembles ardor as it flits appreciatively along the curve of your face.

It’s not all horrifying, though, he eventually concedes.

He scoops shiny things up from the sand lining the ocean floor and gifts them to you in your following meetings. He tells you that the fish- sleek and chromatic- dance around him in schools where everything is crystalline. They sleep on beds of coral under-tail and stick close to the fins of whales, apparently having nothing better to do. Sometimes they get a little clingy, he admits, and he has to shoo them away, but the little creatures are friendly- and his underwater world is nothing short of beautiful.

Rafayel loves the sea. It’s his home.

“And what about you, cutie? What’s your home like?”

That gives you pause, but just for a moment.

You know what home is like; you’d only dwelled there, in the tiny village off the shoal, since you were a little girl.

And home is nice…. Or, it was. Now, it’s a husk of the warmth you once knew. Days drag by in drab monotony and the added, very much unwanted reminder that your fiancé has yet to return. Seagulls squawk outside and tricycle bells ring. Concerned neighbors knock on your door but this place feels dull. No more face to put to this snuggly seaside village.

With a small smile- one that Rafayal thinks is more wistfully sad than anything- you tell the merman about the things you cherish here, deliberately omitting what you desperately miss.

Memories of childhood circle back to you in fuzzy fragments: Despite the present, you can still at least cherish the past, right…?

Listening to you recount gems of your youth with a smile, it’s evident to Rafayel that you love it here.

Just… he understands that maybe it’s not as much as you used to.

His face takes on more of a sober look then, his cheeks, dappled with teal scales that break the surface in some spots, dusting a soft pink. You don’t really understand why- perhaps a mild case of sun burn- but he asks,

“And what about in it? Is there… Someone who’s special to you, who brings it warmth? Even underwater, in order to survive, we merfolk need a suitable temperature, you know.”

Ah. That.

You offer a hum of acknowledgment before glancing off, far out to where the flat whitecaps stretch into nothingness. Lounging around by the coast with your new, unlikely friend, the scenery is idyllic here.

You almost will yourself into forgetting what you’re really here for, what hurled you face-first into this predicament.

Sorrow hangs in your heart. The visage of your fiancé passes in your head rapidly, kaleidoscopic, his smiles and the tender moments spent with him, the sound of his laugh.

You are less and less certain of yourself. You are not sure if the gossipping townsfolk are correct or not to assume the worst, but what you do know is that it’s creeping up on two months and not one shiphand has returned. Not even an errant oar has washed ashore.

“Yes. But…” A pause. You swallow thickly and give your head a belated, uncertain shake. Tears form in the back of your throat and you pile them down, frustrated they’d showed up uninvited.

Perhaps you’re more weak to all the bleak murmurs than you’ve let on.

You laugh, but the sound lacks humor. “Everyone thinks he’s dead, all the people at the village.”

“…You wanna share?”

You shrug and draw one knee to your chest, the other still bent over the rocky ledge, dangling in the cool water. They’re still today, the waters, relatively level— but inwardly, you warn yourself against being so easily deceived by them: they looked more or less the same the day you rowed out.

The storm was nothing short of terrifying, yes, but you think the lack of expecting it somehow made it more devastating.

“Well, there’s not much to,” you respond, tongue in cheek. You don’t mean to sound uninterested in this conversation all of a sudden, but you suppose it’s a defense mechanism. Rafayel props his elbows on the rock and listens intently, giving his brow a little quirk at your tone.

“But my… fiancé,” why the words are suddenly hard to get out, you don’t know, “he went off to sea. Hasn’t come back yet.”

At your knees, Rafayel is noticeably quiet, but you get the inexplicable sense that he’s invested.

“I guess he’ll come back with lots of fish whenever he does,” you sigh. Your attempts to remain lighthearted just barely working.

Quickly, you try to breeze past the topic, but the merman chimes- “A fisherman? You were courting a fisherman?”

Courting. The word sounds a little funny, medieval almost, but you hum.

It’s his turn to make a tongue-in-cheek comment, lifting his scaly fist to support his chin. “He must’ve been a real prize to deserve all that singing... What do I get for saving you?” He says playfully, almost pettily, but you get the weird idea that this is more serious to him than he lets on.

You want to heave a laugh at his pouting words, but confusion stops you. You snap your head to him.

“You-?”

Quickly, Rafayel quips, “Yes, just about the whole sea can hear you at night. Why is that surprising?”

For some reason, a whit of hope warms your chest throughout. If Rafayel is cognizant of something as trivial as songs from above the surface, surely he must’ve been privy to a shipwreck or the hurried shouts of sailors as their boat went down.

Not that you believe it did, just—

You scramble upright, planting your palms on the rock in a kneel as you say- in a voice you’re not keen on sounding as desperate as it comes out-

“Have you ever heard anything else? A- A boat sinking? People drowning or- or—“ You stuff out an anxious breath, all the worries and doubts you’d been housing for weeks now bubbling to the surface. You suppose if anybody has garnered your confidence, though, it’s the merman that saved your veritable life.

Still, a lump of unease burns in your throat. Thick and acidic. It makes your voice shake but you ignore it, leaning over the edge. If you fall in, he’ll save you again anyway. If not a friendship (but you definitely treat it as such), there is still a mutual fondness between you two- a silent trust- and you’re sure, beside the marks on your ankle he left by accident in the heat of the moment, he would not let harm befall you.

“Because they say he’s gone— my lover— they say his crew got hit by something- like a plague or a storm- and succumbed out there. But maybe- maybe you heard something? Rafayel- did you hear or see any group of fishermen out there?” You bluster, before adding on like an afterthought, “two months ago?”

The longer your mouth moves, the wider Rafayel’s eyes get.

And then, you think it’s something like… recognition that skips across multihued eyes.

He’s quiet for a moment, mouth ajar. His bright turquoise tail, the tip jutting out from the tide as it sways idly, stops midway in the air and floats awkwardly.

Your brow furrows. You fear the worst. Your nails dig into the gritty surface, fingerpads whiting as you shake your head.

“Rafayel-? W-What’s wrong?”

Curtly, he shuts his mouth. An easy smile replaces his momentary surprise.

When he speaks, it’s in a familiar, somewhat sarcastic but harmless tone, and his tail sparks to life behind him, albeit quite unsteadily.

“Nothin’, cutie,” he lifts an arm to adjust his perch on the rock but it slips. His face dusts pink, his brows twitching together; all of it, the clearly disturbed signs of his composure, he ignores. Your heart thrums.

“I was just thinking how brave you were to venture off to sea after him. He’s lucky to have someone like you still waiting at home for him.” His compliment is overlooked. You’re too caught up in the rush of unease that sweeps through you- the niggling feeling that says there’s something more to this you’re not seeing- that you can hardly utter a bashful thanks.

“But- did you happen to hear anything, or-?”

Rafayel adds casually, “I’m sure the guy is fine wherever he is, though. And no, cutie. But I’ll let you know if that changes.”

Something like hesitance grips you as you watch, with silence, the friendly merman lose the better part of his mirth. You wonder if you’ve said something wrong as his exterior hardens cooly, if you’ve divulged too much of your emotions and quite possibly lost your final companion. Maybe you’re overthinking it- but if that’s the case, if even a fish-man from the sea has taken the same opinion as the land-living locals, then some drama seems warranted.

You don’t want to be alone again. And Rafayel- Rafayel was starting to really grow on you despite all your differences—

He strums his fingers against his jaw, painting the picture of boredom, and puffs out his lips, eyes drifting away almost flippantly as if he’s dead to the wounded look you send him.

A yawn. He unfolds his lean arms and ducks under the water.

“Wait- Rafayel-?”

“Sorry, princess, the fishies are calling me. They said it’s getting late now, and that I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“But—“

“Hop on my back, let me take you back to shore. Your little legs can only doggy paddle you so far,” he lets out a light laugh but you don’t miss the dash of mockery there, as if you’re some unfortunate soul cursed with four limbs and warm blood. Still, you bite your tongue- and the unbidden pang of unease in your chest- and slip off the rock.

You loop your arms around his middle, his muscles flexing in response, lean and tight, and keep your chin above the tide as he floats towards the sand bar.

“Rafayel, are you okay?”

“Of course, cutie. Why, aren’t you?”

“Y-Yeah. It’s just-“ you poorly stifle a sigh, still a bit taken aback by his sudden desire to truncate your meeting. That, and his odd behavior when you asked about any possible shipwreck.

You eventually settle on, “Please just keep it on your radar. If you hear or see any ships, call me, okay?”

“We don’t have shellphones under the water, you know. How am I supposed to alert you?” You can’t see the face he’s making, saddled on his back as his long tail gusts through the gentle currents, but you realize he’s teasing.

“I- I don’t know,” you admit clumsily. “Maybe I’ll just know if you say my name.”

I mean, it’s not too crazy an idea, is it? You felt a stirring towards the ocean- real and audible- would a creature living in it really be so different?

Perhaps the townsfolk are right in their claims made against you, that you’ve lost it.

There’s nothing left in you that cares, though.

Rafayel lets out a small chuckle but sounds oddly endeared. “How romantic.”

“Rafayel—“

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know if anything’s up. Don’t worry!”

⊹⊹⊹

From the shipdeck, the water is beautiful, even as it takes you down under, swallowing up the thick hull in a lazy gulp.

A white moon pours down. The waves sparkle like sequins. It’s… hypnotizing, in a way. Your fist flies to your collar when the sails tear, the harsh rip of it reminding you of the breath still in your lungs, and you hold the locket there like it’s a lifering.

The crewhands scramble for them- and for the tiny boat hanging off the side. Another powerful slosh to the boat sends slippery hands in a fray; you hear the vague sound of wood cracking, planks you thought to be sturdy splintering. You’re no more than a raft drifting, victim to the elements.

The emergency lifeboat whistles as it drops, freefalling from the ropes and into the coiling sea.

It has no heart for mercy, the sea, but you’ve still one for home, a deep-seated urge within to return that has your nails digging bluntly into your palms, blood drawing in the paths of them.

…H-Home.

Sailors scream around you.

Someone, you realize with a flash of confusion, in the chaos- in the maelstrom of wind and shooting rain- is even singing.

The sound of it chills you to the bone.

Dazedly, you think they must’ve lost it. To be fair, there’s no blame there— men have drowned in waters far flatter: your crew is miles from the nearest chunk of land and the vessel can’t withstand this weather— you’re all gonna die and the crewmate must know. He knows and he’s singing.

Crashing waves silence heavy thunder. The sky glows endless white, one last fissure of lightning darting down before the deck lights bright gold.

Fire surges. It dances in your eyes and you swallow a scream.

She’s waiting at home, still. It can’t be over, it can’t be, it can’t be—

Fiery yellow, and then everything spins, your world going lopsided as the ship groans and you tip.

And then, it’s all blue.

Dark, vast cerulean interpolated only by flotsam that drifts away the moment you reach for it, fingers desperately clawing for the surface.

Up, or down— you’re not sure which way you’re swimming.

You do know, though, that you never find your buoyancy.

Hands. Hands on you and dragging you down, down, down, and then it’s clear the wrecked pieces of the ship are getting further away, not closer. A deepness surrounds you. Cold, quiet. The storm’s effects are mitigated the lower you sink— it’s counterintuitive, you think, because surely you’ll drown regardless, but a strange sense of calm washes over you as the air peters from your lungs. They spasm as you choke.

But you got to get home, you must get home to her—

The tips of your boots touch the sandy floor.

It’s tranquil, under the sea. The reefs are vivid, swaying with bubbling marine life. Navy blue swirls around you and is limned with muted fire light, displacing itself with every wild movement of your limbs. You flail them helplessly but something—

Something is holding you down and it’s singing—

From afar, and through bleared eyes, the coral looks like upright rods of colorful bone, yellow and blushing-orange. An opaque red smears over them— curling and wavering into smoke-like trails. It’s reminiscent of black and white marble. Beautiful, in a way.

A long, glittering tail scrapes across your leg.

You realize it’s blood- your blood- and then in a heartbeat, a pair of talons pierce through the veil and—

A gasp.

You come to wakefulness with a frightened noise.

That dream- you’d been having it for days now, each more fragmented and blurry than the last… But this time, it’s strikingly clear.

Horror frosts your eyes over, glossy and wide as you undo the covers bound tightly around you, standing to shaking feet.

That awful, awful dream— it’s not in your point of view, you realize, it’s in your fiancé’s, and that same claw that had been gracious enough to scoop you up and save you from stormful, roaring swells—

Dragged your lover down to the depths, burying him in liquid oblivion.

As you shrug on a thin cardigan and hurry outside, dashing under moonlit lawns with the single-minded focus to reach the beach, you vaguely wonder if you’re being unreasonable, if all these little dreams and visions and songs you’ve been experiencing are nothing short of delirium. But this is too coincidental— Rafayel had smoothly shirked all your questions days ago, and you realize now that the dull look in his eye wasn’t boredom but jealously, ugly and sudden, masquerading under disinterest.

Knowledge of that- and your naivety- comes to you in piecemeal.

You’ve been stupid. You’d been holding onto the feeble hope that your soon-to-be husband was somewhere out there, scraping together shellfish on an uncharted islet or lost at sea with his crew-mates but alive. Deep down, you always knew it was the dreams of a fool.

But damn it all if you’d just… stopped yourself for one fucking second to nudge aside your denial and take a good look at your marine friend, you’d have seen the lack of common sense in it. Your lover’s met no different and no more painless, as much as it horrifies you- a fate than the sailors depicted in all those whimsical tales of old.

You sing out to the sea. Anger warms your chest like a fleece, cardigan be damned, fists clenched so tight your palms swell as you cry out.

Panic, subtle but niggling, speaks to you from underneath thick layers of hate and pain, but you’re beyond the point of reason. No, you need to hear it from the siren himself just what the fuck happened to your other half— if he can hear your lamenting after dark without issue, surely he would’ve at least caught wind of some devastation off the coast or spotted the debris in his own waters—

But he’s been keeping something from you.

“Rafayel!” You cry again. It’s impossible to swallow the lump in your throat; it seeks to climb to the surface but for now, with a remnant of control that surprises yourself, you manage to keep from spitting it up.

Nausea turns in your belly, but you keep it at bay. Just barely.

Unshed tears burn your cornea. “Rafayel!” You don’t scream, no, your lungs are too wounded and overwhelmed by the simple task of drawing air to, but it’s a near thing.

Furious, beginning to think he’ll conveniently not show or he’s merely ignoring you, your feet splash into the water until you’re shin-deep.

You hiccup. “R-Rafayel! I know you’re there!”

Eventually, a head bobs above the tide, infuriatingly nonchalant, and a turqoise fluke appears not long after it, twinkling just barely under a clouded, night sky.

He doesn’t look as tired as you’re sure you do- and not by a long shot quite as disturbed. If anything, he looks a little pleased with himself.

Wet indigo waves give a little bounce as he lazily approaches, watchful eyes glimmering with something you’re both too enraged and emotional to name. Something like betrayal courses through you— distracting you from the very real fact that the siren is drawing closer.

He says nothing as you shake your hands emphatically, eyeballs practically bulging out your head. They might pop out and roll. “You-! You knew!” You accuse, momentarily stunned at the broken sound of your voice. “You knew all along b-because you did it, didn’t you? You’ve been lying to my face this whole time— You killed him! Y-You ripped him apart I fucking saw it—“

Your tirade is clipped short with a hiccuping gasp as you fully erupt into tears. You don’t bother to wipe them or even hang your head, brows furrowed as Rafayel regards you with a contemplative, almost curious look.

An undercurrent of desire, dark and intense, exists under it, though, and you can’t will yourself for any longer to view him as the same harmless, aquatic humanoid who’d rescued you.

You find yourself for both a lack of coherency and also gratitude; he could’ve left you to decay at the bottom of the ocean for all you care, or thrown you to the hands of Neptune or the feeding pit of sharks— it’s almost preferable to this.

Rafayel’s face, admittedly handsome, in a pretty way (albeit, you’ve no idea why your brain is suddenly forming opinions on his appearance, especially now of all times), is relaxed, devoid of emotion. You recognize the impatience there, though… like there’s been a string that you’ve pulled taut.

The silent truth that has been overarching your life for the past couple months- you don’t want to come to terms with it or you might break otherwise.

For the life of you, you can’t even understand what his goals were in all of this—

You hurl your anger at him and flail your arms and shout until your trachea feels like aggregate when you swallow, and he waits it all out with an ease that gets you impossibly riled up.

You suck in a sharp breath and shudder when you open your eyes again, color seeming to reenter your periphery, and measure the distance Rafayel has bridged.

Gasping, you go to take a step back, knees knocking together like newborn foal as a distinct sense of panic rips through you- not right, it screams, and, you messed up, you messed up, you stupid, stupid—

“Silly girl,”

A loud splash. A resistance.

Rafayel lurches his arm, belly almost brushing against the sandbar, and takes ahold of your ankle.

You let out a yelp, instantly reaching down to try to unlatch him from you, dismay robbing you of oxygen, but it’s too late for that. Each of your clumsy attempts is precluded. Faded scars line the knob of your ankle and Rafayel presses into them with the smooth pads of his fingers- forcefully, but he’s mindful not to use his nails. He’s learned since the last time.

He gives one good tug and you stand no chance, falling with a slosh.

Pulling you towards him, he’s fully confident now that you’re in his liquid domain, slowly dragging you away from the shallow end, from home- or at least, the shriveled, sad remains of it.

Mortified, and still very much resisting him— the merman surprisingly gentle, cognizant of your frailty despite the iron grasp he subdues you with— you throw a frantic glance up and watch as the shore shrinks.

“No!” He’s very careful to keep your head above the tide, but you’re choking still.

This is not the first time he’s helped you into the ocean and swam recreationally with you, usually with the addition of little trinkets and pretty shells you bring to swap, but it’s definitely the first time he’s trapped you in his arms, lean and impossible to swat away, and ignored your asks to return to land.

You remember your front door then, funnily enough, how you left in a tizzy and far too shaken to lock it, and burst into another sob.

You’ll not be returning, will you?

“Please!” You blubber with all the grace of a fish out of water. You squirm like one, too. “Please, don’t kill me, Rafayel, don’t- don’t eat me—!”

A laugh, breathy but humored- cruel in its softness- rings at your ear. Gorgeous tail folded in front of you, brushing against your rear and the underside of your thighs as they fruitlessly kick out, Rafayel uses it to propel you both backwards, treating your kidnapping like a pleasant stroll.

“Of course I won’t eat you, princess,” he coos, placing a painless but clearly posessive- like he’s marking his territory- nip to the juncture of your neck and shoulder. It makes you shiver. “Don’t you understand by now?” He frowns, “You’re mine. The ocean’d sooner dry up then watch me lay a fin on you.”

There’s exactly zero things funny about this situation, so with a pang of wrath, you don’t know why he’s laughing. Maybe at the irony, because in any case, he most certainly has laid a fin on you—

You feel angry at yourself next in the seconds that follow, managing to bite into the flesh of his scale-dotted forearm and slip out of his grip— thrashing away without ceremony before he hisses and curtly regathers you.

“You’re a slippery fishie, huh, cutie? You can’t seriously think I’ll just let you swim away though, right?” His tone darkens then, deepening with a quiet warning you can’t help but feel is incongruous to the generally mild, sassy but otherwise friendly merman you’d grown to know.

When you try to break free again, the exertion summoning a state of near dry-drowning, Rafayel drops all efforts at patience and seizes you by the throat.

His hand curling around your neck, almost playing at the idea of testing just how tragic your power dynamic really is, he lets out a frustrated noise behind you. He knocks his nose into the side of your face, tealy lamella spotting the surface of his cheek and scratching against yours.

Unfamiliarly low, he grumbles out, “You’d better stop fightin’, girl, because if you spin out of control, there’s no guarantee what’ll happen to you. You’re hurting yourself. Stop it, now, I said.”

That fully frightens you. The scream buried within your throat dies, withers into nothing.

Attenuated, pointed nails graze the soft flesh of your jugular, reminding you of all the horrific, brutal ways he could sunder you in two, but they don’t draw so much as a drop of blood.

“P-Please—“ You sputter, desperately digging at his forearms that make an X over your midriff and collarbone, your toes launching out of the water. Your fight, for as valiant as it is, is sapping you of an impressive amount of energy and at an alarmingly fast rate.

But you can’t stop. You refuse to buckle to him- because to bow your head and agree to give in would be like finally surrendering to the cold reality that has, as of a number of weeks ago, completely shrouded your life.

Y-You can’t admit he’s dead— that you’re entirely crazy, widowed, and in the strictest definition alone—

“Ah-ah, princess,” he murmurs as you heave wildly, “don’t you think that’s enough running away? It’s not fair if I can’t come on land at all, you know. Come and swim with me for a while.” Rafayel coaxes, resuming his more mild demeanor within a blink.

He releases a somewhat exasperated, yet thrilled sigh. It shakes as it leaves his damp lips, blue and fuschia-red eyes glittering with barely repressed delight as he lifts his chin from your shoulderblade.

Then, he leans in towards your ear, and he sings.

⊹⊹⊹

Everything is dream-like.

Birds soar overhead in a breezy circle. They offer a few, occasional squawks that help you to the conclusion of seagulls: paired with the rhythmic, wet purr enveloping you- and the warmth flushing your cheeks- you’d wager you’re at the ocean.

Perhaps a relaxing beach day with your fiancé. He’s laid out the cloth (albeit, it feels oddly… hard, smooth as if the sand beneath is without lumps), and you’ve just stirred from a long nap set to the backdrop of light, gusting sand and crashing whitecaps.

Something in your core throbs.

A particularly tall wave in comparison to the other relatively flat ones smacks against the black rock and cools your skin. Sweat beads at your forehead, the center of your thighs offering a sequence of dull aches that have you feeling weak, wanting nothing more than to let your eyes roll back and stay that way.

You make an incoherent noise as the metaphorical fog clears, buttery, white light warming you. Dawn, you realize hazily, lashes fluttering open gradually, it’s dawn.

…But when you’d last blinked, it was late into the night.

Memories pour back in, a potpourri of muddled events tracing back to this moment- uncertainty startling you upright as—

A hand, firm and a little slimy, presses your belly down.

It bars you from most movement, strong but gentle. A tongue- long and flat and fucking mind-numbing as it laps at your pussy- swirls experimentally against your clit and vibrates with a low, satisfied moan.

Not yours; but the next one that rings out, high and aroused and very, very afraid, is.

You can hardly recognize the sound of it. A thick beat of silence passes before you finally do, brain struggling to reconcile with this startling, admittedly idyllic panorama laid out before you.

A disoriented glance tossed down tells you all you need to know to confirm your fears, a sickness churning so deep in your gut you think it’s plausible you could puke up yesterday’s supper. What spills out from your slack jaw is another helpless, pleasured mewl instead.

Rafayel, mostly submerged in the water but with his upper half braced against the flat rock’s ledge, drapes your legs (trembling, you confusedly note, as if they’ve been positioned that way for a while now) over his broad shoulders to better present his prize and feasts on it like a man starved. One large hand serves as like an anchor on your abdomen, keeping you moored as you positively lose your mind, the other carefully thumbing apart your slick folds.

Somewhere between the span of late last night and very early this morning, he’s gotten them puffy and unbelievably wet, your tight hole clenching around absolutely nothing as his lips- just as swollen and needy- suckle on your tiny bump of nerves.

You rest your head back against the smooth surface of the rock, lukewarm but not quite scorching yet- the sun still moseying its way up the sky, clouds parting to reveal a diluted yellow canvas behind them. Resignation weighs you down better than any hand ever could.

You bite down another moan mixed with a sob and leave dents in the tender tissue of your bottom lip.

He parts with your pussy for just a moment, hesitating like he’s sad to step out from its warmth, knuckling over your labia with a reverence you feel is misplaced considering the circumstances.

He’s cruel when he lifts his eyes to yours, heavy-lidded and utterly transfixed.

The sincere, amorous glint in them is like a bucket of ice water dumped over your head, something you couldn’t prepare for or adapt to in time, his head dipping down briefly to pepper a lingering kiss to the gooey seam of you. Mine, everything about the way he gazes up at you says, and, if you don’t believe me then let me prove it.

“You’re gorgeous,” he groans, the dark sphere of his pupils spilling out like ink onto a multicolored canvas. He’s worshipful in nature, but curious- tentative to every little twitch your fatigued face gives, wondering how to push your buttons just right- perhaps above all, just desperate to know if your slick cunt will keep supplying him with that sweet, hot nectar- but it’s been so generous to him thus far, so he figures he’ll just keep on taking.

“It looks just like a seaflower,” he murmurs, breath ragged over the placid lull of the tide as he strokes your flesh, “Like the ones I’d grab from the ocean floor to give you, but so much prettier... Sweeter.”

Rafayel is careful not to hurt you- you can tell, somehow, that he’s fighting tooth and nail with his inner animal, his baser instincts, to keep the last modicum of his control. Hurting you, no matter how accidental or quick, would be detrimental. He knows that. He’s felt it. And to be perfectly honest, he’s quite enjoyed it— but you don’t fall under the category of food or paltry entertainment, no, you’re so much more than that to him.

The pretty, kind girl who kept the brainless town out of your unlikely relationship, who sang her way into his heart and stole it despite himself. His best friend, his sweet little playmate and—

…Mate. Yes, his mate.

“Have you been feeling me?” He asks suddenly. “At home, in bed? I’ve been trying to call out for you,” he relays in an affected pant you wish to unhear as he resumes suckling at your shamefully wet pussy.

You hate this, how worked up he’s managed to get you, how pliant your own body has become as it all but sells itself to him- guilt and confusion swelling in your chest. “I’ve been trying to get you to see how much I like you, princess. B-But it’s like you’ve been shooing me away or something—“

You hardly give any mind to what he’s muttering about, the point of his nose nudging against your sensitive nerves and expediting your release as he licks eagerly at your folds, your whole body trembling with delight. You don’t think you really want to know, anyway.

Sea salt shoots up against the rock, licking your limbs with a cool spritz. He muffles a low breath of amusement into you. “But you’re here now, I guess. Mngh- and you’re so delicious. You’re… fragile though,” he pants, prodding his long, hot tongue against your tiny clenching hole before delving inside it with a violent shudder, his cheeks bright red. “You might have to help me inside, cutie. I don’t exactly wanna break you.”

That stuns you. His words, single-minded and husky, remind you of just how fucked up this all is— and a panic crosses the involuntary fog of your head as you snap it down to get a good look at him.

You were sure merfolk had their own means of reproduction, but it’d never been more than a passing curiosity until now, your heart in your throat as you squint to make out just what he’s working with beneath the water.

Lazily, he looks up to you and smiles when he discovers what you’re doing. It’s a hungered, smitten one, sharp teeth peeking out and all. All your squirming is nothing more than an attempt at self-preservation, unsure of just what he’s endowed with but vaguely knowing- by the size of his tail and difference of species- you sure as hell won’t be compatible with it.

The need to escape is puissant and your limbs begin to move— but they feel oddly leaden, less like flesh and more like stone.

“You wanna see me, pretty girl, yeah? What’re you planning to do?” He coos, swilling away at your watering cunt, nursing from the endless stream of juices like a man possessed. Your fiancé's face flashes before your mind and you make a choked sound.

As if sensing your thoughts, Rafayel lets out a little contented noise and nuzzles against the soft inner portion of your shaking thighs.

“He screamed, just so you know,” a low chuckle rumbles from his chest and warps into a pretty moan. It’s too light and dulcet for comfort, and it feels disproportionate to the general sting of it all. You loathe the unbidden current of arousal that gushes through you at it, wetting his slender fingers as it trickles down the thigh he cuffs.

One final shlick of your throbbing pussy and the merman maneuvers with relative ease onto the rock, his thick tail flopping off at the edge and disappearing into the crystal water. And there’s nothing exactly large about Rafayel’s stature, but he feels heavy as he hovers over you, elbows flanking either side of your head, and the appendage that seems to summon itself between you, drooping with engorged need over your stuttering belly—

You don’t want to look. Too afraid to.

You suppose you don’t have to, anyway: Rafayel grabs your face and cradles your jaw in his smooth palm, hot, labored breaths warming your slack lips. The sun is lifting higher, now, a clementine-gold sky burning like blood low on the horizon. Soon, the temperatures- and his touch as it charts out the most intimate parts of you- will begin to bake your skin.

“He was all bubbly under the water,” he groans with a trace of humor, “but I saw the worry written all over his face. Back then, I’d always wondered why he looked so concerned... not afraid, concerned. But I guess… it was ‘cause he had you to get back home to, huh, cutie?”

Saccharine sweet, he dotes before wrenching your chin up in a desperate, heedless kiss- the action all too cathartic too him but world-stopping for you- and you feel the fat head of something foreign bob between your folds.

“Poor guy,” he moans, voice absolutely ruined as you lurch helplessly beneath him, back arching to accommodate the impossible stretch. You expect it to hurt- to be a searing pain as his massive, inhuman cock spears you apart- but a near blinding delight racks through your body instead as he worms his way inside your walls, wet and primed, your eyes fluttering back.

“But at least his death served a purpose. You’d never have sung for me otherwise. Would never have- went out looking,” he shudders, hanging his head against the sweaty column of your neck, his brilliant-blue tail sloshing in the water on its own accord.

“It’s all thanks to him,” he growls out, tone oozing possession- the innocent little merman you befriended dematerializing before your very eyes. “You’re mine now. Mine.”

And when it’s all said and done, strong, toned arms gathering you up with a low splash as the docks rupture with gradual life, the boots of fisherman croaking over waterlogged wood, and Rafayel takes you under the water- giving you breath with a deep, intimate kiss-

You’ve the feeling that your dreams of reuniting with your lover will fulfill themselves in their own roundabout, warped way.

But you know Rafayel’s not ever letting you go as he undresses your finger of its sparkling ring and tucks you away in his underwater cove— placing you in his nest with reverence before prying apart your numbed legs with rekindled hunger.

Curling across your face, a soaked lock of your hair drifts absently in the still waters and Rafayel thumbs it aside, clipping it back with a little clamshell fashioned as jewelry. He leans over you contentedly, whole body and fluke swallowing you up without difficulty or protest, and happily feeds you oxygen from his lips.

You cling to him helplessly and have no choice— several hundred feet below land level— but to hungrily nurse from him every few hours and pray he won’t make the sudden decision to deprive you of it.

Something in his rippling eyes tells you he won’t, though.

He dips down to paste a lingering peck into your temple, the pad of his thumb roving appreciatively under your eye.

“Don’t you think you’ve seen enough of the land, princess? The brainless humans up there don’t want you anymore, and that’s okay,” he whispers, tiny bubbles floating like balloons before popping. “You belong down here, with me. Who says you need a tail or fins to be one of us?” Mistily, you wonder just what exactly he’s trying to say and who he’s trying to convince of its veracity, a blip of frustration marring his pretty face before it retreats.

“I’ll give you life for as long as I live,” he vows, mouth brushing tenderly against yours as his cheeks puff out and he blows.