#cod smut

And the man can talk. You swear he could sell snow to an Eskimo, but he saves that silver tongue for you. He’ll whisper sweet, filthy promises in your ear in a thick Scottish burr that leaves your knees weak. He’ll tell you you’re beautiful when you first wake up, hair a mess and face puffy with sleep, and he’ll say it with such conviction you actually believe it. He calls you his “wee hen” or his “bonnie lass”, and it should sound ridiculous coming from a man his size, but it just melts you into a goddamn puddle.

There was this one time, after a particularly rough few weeks, when you were feeling small and insignificant. You didn’t say anything, but he knew. He always knows. He didn't push. Instead, he took you to the roof of your apartment building, spread a blanket out under the stars, and held you while he pointed out constellations, tracing the wild, dramatic myths behind them. He didn't try to fix your sadness; he just sat with you in it, his presence a warm, steady weight reminding you that you weren't alone in the vast, dark universe. He kissed your temple and murmured, "Stars are just like us, bonnie. They burn bright, even when no one's watchin'."

Naturally, you cried.

Your Johnny’s not perfect. He’s gone for long stretches, and the worry can eat you alive. There are days when the silence is too loud and the bed is too cold. But then he comes back, and he’s all sunlight, noise, and energy, filling up every empty space he left behind. He’ll scoop you up, spin you around, and press his forehead to yours, eyes closed as he breathes you in, as if trying to absorb your very soul.

When he makes love to you… God, when he makes love to you, it's as though he's trying to pour every fractured piece of himself into your willing body, to remake himself within your warmth until you are both indivisible.

Some nights, it unfolds with the slowness of honey, his hands tracing the landscape of your body. His calloused fingertips, which have known the cold steel of weapons and the brutal force of combat, now worship your skin with a reverence that catches the breath in your throat. He kisses you with tenderness, his thumbs stroking the delicate skin beneath your eyes as he moves inside you with a rhythm that speaks of timelessness, of a patience born of waiting through too many lonely nights. His blue eyes, normally alight with mischief and fire, burn with an intensity that sears through you, and in their depths, you see everything he cannot shape into words; the bone-deep relief, the desperate gratitude, the absolute certainty that you are his sanctuary.

Other times, making love is frantic and raw, a desperate reclamation after close calls and near misses. He'll take you against the wall of your entryway, still half-dressed in his tactical gear, the rough fabric scraping against your oversensitive skin as his mouth claims yours with a hunger bordering on violence. You taste the lingering bitterness of adrenaline on his tongue, drinking him in like he's the only thing that can quench a thirst you never knew you had. His hands grip your hips hard enough to bloom purple across your skin tomorrow, and you welcome the marks, welcome the beautiful pain that proves he's real, that he survived another day to come back to you. In those moments, there's nothing gentle about the way he drives into you, just the need to feel alive, to feel connected after staring death in the face and walking away.

But it's in the aftermath, when you're both breathless and tangled in the damp sheets, that your emotions finally overflow. Not from pain or sadness, but from the love that threatens to burst from your chest like a supernova. You'll press your face against the skin of his shoulder, inhaling the scent of him as your body shakes with sobs. Johnny will just hold you tighter, his strong arms wrapping around you like armor, his large hand rubbing soothing circles on your back to ground you in the reality of his presence.

"Shhh, bonnie," he'll whisper, his voice thick with emotion as he presses soft kisses into your hair. "I've got ye. Always."

And in those moments, you know you're not just loved, you're cherished. You're the anchor that keeps this wild, wonderful Scottish bastard grounded in a world that's tried its damnedest to break him. You are his homecoming, his peace, his everything.

It didn’t matter if John was in the middle of paperwork, you would go into his office and sit on his lap. Better yet, you’d have him sit on your lap, it didnt matter if you were smaller than him, he’d comply with it. You could reach into his pants and palm at his slowly hardening cock, listen to his grunts as he tried to focus on his work. He could complain about needing them done, but you wouldn’t stop. Not until he would come on your hands and lick the mess clean.

With Gaz, it didnt take much to have him moaning under you. Whether he decided to work out, or enjoy the tea he just made, your lips would be on him. Sucking into his neck and toying with his nipples through his shirt. He’d lean his head back, resting against you as he let you take control.

“You’re so pretty for me,” You’d praise and he’d whine even more, lifting his hips closer to your hand. Begging for your touch, waiting for you to satisfy his growing erection. You could, or it’d be even better to edge him under the table and not let him cum in the end.

Your lips around his cock and your hand working on the rest, he’d cover his mouth with his hand and buck into your mouth. You’d have to hold his hips down, keeping him from moving too much.

“Please let me cum,” he’d whine and his cock twitched in your mouth, yet you’d pull off of him and listen to his complaints. Leaving him hard and aching, ready to cum only to give him nothing.

Only to find Johnny in return, fresh out of a shower and mowhawk drenched. The water droplets still attached to his muscles is enough to set you off, slinking up to his side and pulling him off into his room.

“What do ye want, bonnie?” He’d ask only to be pushed to his bed, your legs straddling his hips and keeping him pinned against his bed. “I want you,” was all you had to say for him to reach under your body and remove the towel covering his waist.

His cock was soft, but with due time it’d become hard. You caressed his face, slipping your fingers into his mouth, savoring the feeling of him sucking on them. He wrapped his tongue around the tips, treating it as though it were a cock in his mouth. Though that wouldn’t be a bad idea, only fueling your thoughts.

Johnny would moan against your fingers, hands coming down against your hips and grinding his growing cock into your clothed body. You moved your own hips against his, enjoying the stimulation against your clit, while hole clenching around nothing.

You peel your hands from him, wet fingers slipping from his lips, and remove your pants to leave you in your underwear atop of him. He groans at the sight, going to move his hands to your body. Your own hands captured his wrists, pinning them down beside his head and keeping them there. He bucked his hips up into your touch, eager for more.

“Naughty boy,” he whined at your voice, rolling his hips into you. “Please give me more, please I’ve been good.” He tried to reason with you, beg for your touch. How could you reward such behavior if he wanted to act impatient?

“You don’t deserve it,” was all you said as you gathered both of his hands in your single grip, reaching beneath you with your now freed hand and pulled your underwear aside. He wouldn’t get the full thing, you decided. Your unclothed lips ground against him, letting his cock slide in between them with ease.

Johnny hissed at the sensation, eyes closed shut as he whimpered at the contact. Your slick coated him, making it easier to slide against his cock. It felt even better when your clit got to grind against him, tracing along the veins of his cock nicely.

“Please hen, yer killin’ me,” Johnny pleaded, eyes akin to that of a dog’s.

You didn’t say anything in return, only working to your own orgasm and enjoying the waves that rushed over you with due time. Of course, you weren’t going to leave him all hard and lonely. He had been good after all, and rewarding good behavior would encourage it.

“So good for me,” you praised, slipping your underwear back into place yet maintaining your position atop of him. He whined at your praises, eyes eager and tempting as he awaited for what you’d give him.

With your hand wrapped around him, he groaned into your touch. It didn’t take long for him to reach his own orgasm, white strips of cum landing on his stomach and your hand. You gathered it on your fingers, bringing it to his mouth to lick you clean.

Johnny always appreciated when you used him, making him one of your favorites to play with during those moments.

Simon had his moments, though not as often as Gaz or Johnny, you still enjoyed using him when you could.

Whether that meant making him drop to his knees, and crawl to where you were sat. Your hands would remove his mask gently, allowing him to grace you with his toned features. Little scars would chip at his face, yet you still loved him the same no matter what he looked like.

“There you are,” you whispered to him, his dark eyes awaiting for your command.

You pulled his head close to your thighs, letting his hands work against your body to strip you of your garments. Sliding one pant leg down and then the next, leaving you with your underwear still on.

Scarred lips pressed kisses into your legs, traveling to your knees and then to your thighs. He never left any skin untouched, moving your legs to rest over his shoulders and letting his hands rest on your hips.

Your hands would eventually find their way to his hair, tugging him closer against you as he worked his tongue on you. Circling your clit, then licking down to your labia and only slightly pressing into your hole. He would trace his tongue back up just to suck against your clit and let you grind on his face.

Your praises and tugs into his hair were more than enough motivation to keep him going. Even when your thighs clenched around him, even when he was starting to struggle with breathing, he never stopped giving you pleasure until you were satisfied.

Then, and only then, would you debate on helping him. Some days you’d leave him to deal with his growing hard on, and other days you’d press your foot into the bulge forming in his pants. He’d grunt and hump against your leg like the mutt he was, eyebrows knitted together as he worked up to his own release.

He always came in his pants, and never on you.

There were occasions where you wanted to try something new or just had an itch to scratch.

You’ve pulled John out of his office more than once for moments like these, and other times you just laid him on top of his desk without a care in the world for the paperwork beneath him. His shirt was already removed, chest and abdomen exposed for you to touch however much you wanted to.

Your fingers tease at his nipples, rolling them and pinching them. The growing tent in his pants proved you right in assuming he’d like it.

It didn’t take long before you dipped your head to suck on them. John hissed at the contact, almost moving his hand to your head before thinking twice of his actions. “Bloody hell, luv,” he groaned as you suckled away.

Your desire was ever growing and insatiable.

You’ve made Gaz cum from just humping against your leg, or Johnny from rutting against your shoe. Any moment you thought of something new, you’d go to one of them, or multiple of them.

There were moments where you’ve had Ghost and Gaz rub their cocks against one another all while you sat in between them, watching with eager eyes as you instructed them to continue. Days where you instructed Johnny to take John’s cock and make him cum.

Days where you wanted them both to pleasure each other, or yourself. Satisfied with Ghost’s heavy weight laying on top of your back while you were chest to chest with John. Both of their cocks were inside you, and your arousal wasn’t dying down any sooner.

They both tried to rut into you, trying their best to make you cum before they would. Their grunts and groans only fueled the fire inside you, butterflies flying in your stomach at their unbridled lust.

Expanding more with puppy play, they weren't opposed to the idea. Johnny loves when you snap his collar on, attaching a leash and letting you walk him wherever you want him to go. If you go as far as getting a cage for them, Johnny behaves immediately when you threaten to put him in there.

He promises he'll be good! He'll stop humping your leg and act like your good pup. Simon will act however he wishes, he can take what punishment you think you can dish out to him. He'll keen at any praise you give him for being a good boy.

Gaz mostly acts gentle and sweet, he's the one you praise the most. However, with Johnny's influence he can act out at times. He'll work together with Johnny and paw at your underwear, or steal any panties you have for later use.

John is a good mutt too, however it's more rare he plays into being your dog. He only uses it as an escape when he truly needs it, when memories he'd rather not dwell on come to his mind.

He'll whine and behave as well as he can, groaning when your foot comes onto his cock and pressing it into the ground. He'll take what you give him, even if it means having to use your rough combat boots.

There's days where your pups want a turn with each other, Johnny's leash tight in your grip while he licks at your cunt, Ghost rutting into him from behind. Gaz will lay beside you, on his back and exposing his hardened cock for you to stroke at your own pace.

You've caught Gaz and John sucking on each other like good pups beforehand. Your hands worked John's head up and down Gaz's cock, making him gag on it and choke when his sergeant came down his throat.

They all have their respective collars, though there was a few moments when Simon let you use a shock collar for him.

They're all your good boys though, and you love them all the same. Always ending the night or day with aftercare, making sure to pamper them all and praise them for being so good to you. You run them baths and press kisses to their faces, whispering sweet words of adoration.

The studio is warmer than you expect. Old brick. Tall windows dripping with rain. Canvases stacked against every wall, most of them turned backward, their painted faces hidden from you. It smells of linseed oil and damp wood and (- the sharp stench of a cave where things lie nestled in the dark with sharp teeth and sharper claws, maw dripping with hunger for every unsuspecting little thing that crosses in front of it’s eyes, too close too see the danger until its dragging them across stone floor- )

(And you’ll think about those canvases later. About how each one had been carefully turned toward the wall before you arrived, how easy it had been to assume this was modesty instead of concealment. Artists are strange, you’d thought. Private about unfinished things. You hadn’t yet considered that there might be things Johnny didn’t want looking back at you.)

Johnny puts you in an oversized white shirt (‘s mine, Bonnie, but ye can borrow it- ), says the fabric catches shadow better. Leaves your own clothes folded on a chair near the door (- farther away than they need to be- ) and settles you on a low platform beneath the windows, your knees drawn loosely beneath you, one hand resting against your throat.

The first few minutes pass in silence.

Charcoal scratching.

Rain needling softly against the glass.

Johnny looking at you, baby blue traveling slowly, steadily, returning to the same places over and over- the soft inside of your wrist, the hollow beneath your throat, the place where the shirt slips away from one shoulder whenever you breathe too deeply.

You try to hold still, but your back starts to ache. Your fingers curl against your collarbone. Each time Johnny looks up, you remember you’re being watched and flinch, shoulders rising, knees pressing closer together, chin sinking protectively toward your chest, too stiff.

His charcoal stills.

You apologize.

Ach, dinnae apologize. He smiles when he says it, but something in his expression stays still. His mouth curves. The rest of him doesn’t.

Ye keep foldin’ in on yourself every time I look at ye. Ahm not goin’ tae eat ye.

It’s too perceptive and your laugh comes out smaller than you meant it to. Johnny’s gaze sharpens at the sound, charcoal held motionless between fingers stained black nearly to the knuckle. He sets the charcoal on the easel tray and walks toward you, wiping blackened fingertips against his trousers.

His hands settle on your shoulders and press them down, thumbs sweeping slowly along the tight muscles beside your neck, working circles into the ache until your head tips forward despite yourself.

(That should’ve frightened you too, perhaps, the ease with which he found the softest part of you and pressed his thumb into it. But cruelty rarely introduces itself as cruelty.)

Can feel ye fightin’ me, he murmurs.

You tell him you’re only nervous.

I know, hen.

His mouth brushes close to your ear when he says it- That’s the problem-

You’ve never done anything like this before. Never sat beneath someone’s attention and been expected to let them take whatever they saw.

Johnny hums.

- Got somethin’ that might help-

He leaves you there and crosses to a cabinet near the sink. The bottle he brings back is already open. Red wine, dark enough to look black where it gathers in the bottom of the glass.

He pours while you watch, the glass filling nearly to the widest part before he seems to remember himself and stops.

You tell him that’s more than a little.

Is it?

The dimples appear.

Scottish measure.

You laugh despite yourself, and that seems to please him. He passes you the glass, waits until your fingers close around the stem, then returns to the easel as though the matter is settled.

It’s sweeter than you expect.

Dark fruit and spice, something thick and jammy that clings to your tongue after you swallow. It warms your stomach on the way down and then sits there, a small red coal beneath your ribs, heavy in your stomach, spreading outward in a slow bloom that reaches your fingertips first.

Johnny starts drawing again once you drink, charcoal moving with renewed purpose, and each time you begin to tense beneath his gaze, he tips his chin toward the glass.

You obey because you don’t want to be difficult (- not after he told you that you were the first beautiful thing he’d wanted to draw in months. Pride and vanity always did come before the fall-)

The first glass disappears without you noticing.

Johnny refills it.

You watch the wine climb the crystal, a dark red tide swallowing the clean sides. He pours generously this time, his wrist turning until the glass is almost full.

Johnny-

Ye’re still wound tight.

He presses the glass back into your hand, cups the base and tips it toward your mouth, red wine spilling over your lower lip, a thin ribbon escaping the corner of your mouth to trail down your chin- Swallow, hen, that’s it, good girl- thumb catching the crimson streak on your chin, smearing it gently across your swollen mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and dragging his tongue slowly over the wine stained pad, his gaze still fixed on your (- tasting one thing and thinking of another entirely- )

The room softens, hard corners of the platform blurring, rain beyond the glass stretches into silver threads. Johnny’s face becomes something painted in oils- dark lashes, blue eyes, the warm cut of his mouth- each feature bleeding gently into the next whenever you look too quickly.

(You’ll try to remember how many times he filled the glass after that. You’ll count backward later and find nothing solid enough to hold. One glass becomes two only because you remember him pouring. Two becomes three because the bottle was lower when you finally noticed it again. Memory is unreliable even when sober; drunk, it becomes something else entirely)

Your thoughts begin losing their edges.

That’s the strangest part.

Not the warmth or the heaviness gathering behind your eyes, but the way one thought stops connecting cleanly to the next. You think you should check the time, but the idea floats away before you remember where you left your phone. You think you’re thirsty, although there’s still wine in your hand. You think Johnny has been staring too long, but then he smiles and the concern dissolves before it can settle into fear.

Your brain turns liquid. Loose.

Everything inside your skull has melted into something warm and buoyant, thoughts drifting past one another like pale shapes beneath dark water. You can see them. Almost touch them. But each time you reach for one, the motion sends it farther away.

The warmth moves deeper with each glass. Into your thighs. Your cheeks. The soft tissue behind your eyes.

Nothing has edges anymore. Johnny’s charcoal scratches from very far away, scraping down the back of your mind.

You take another sip.

Your tongue feels too large for your mouth.

The wine sits syrup thick in your veins, turning your body slow and porous. You can feel yourself dissolving from the inside, bones losing their hard white calcifications, thoughts melting down into something warm and red and viscous. Your mind becomes a glass overturned on its side, everything inside it pouring lazily toward the lowest point.

Johnny tells you to lift your chin and it takes you a moment to understand him.

Your head feels full of warm red water. Too heavy for your neck, too light to belong to your body. When you turn toward him, the studio follows a moment later, swaying gently around its fixed point. Your stomach seems to remain behind while the rest of you drifts forward.

Johnny smiles. Feelin’ better?

Mmm. Floaty.

The word leaves your mouth thick and childish. You hear yourself say it from somewhere above the platform and start laughing, embarrassed by the way your tongue seems to have grown too large for your teeth.

Floaty, he repeats. Aye, I can see that.

The glass slips sideways in your hand when you try to lift it again, wine cresting the rim, pouring over your fingers in a slow, dark sheet, slipping between your knuckles and tracing along the inside of your wrist. You make a startled little sound at the coldness that breaks apart into a thousand shards against the brick of the walls.

Johnny catches the stem before it can tumble from your loose fingers- careful, hen- and you try to straighten it but some how make it worse. Another red thread spills across your palm, and your laughter returns, thick and breathless, your head bowing beneath the weight of it.

Can’t hold it, you confess.

Johnny looks at your hand.

His smile doesn’t disappear, the warmth staying arranged across his face, but everything behind it grows watchful and still, his gaze following the wine as it crawls toward the soft bend of your elbow.

Aye, he murmurs. I can see that.

He takes the glass from you and places it beyond your reach.

Then he closes his hand around your wrist.

(There are moments when the body understands before the mind does. A pulse quickening beneath someone’s thumb. Fingers curling uselessly toward the palm. Some small animal instinct lifting its head inside you and finding every door already underwater. Yours tries to warn you now, but the wine has made a soft, red grave of your thoughts, and whatever is screaming has sunk too deep to be heard.)

Johnny raises your hand slowly, turns your wrist upward and studies the dark streaks shining there as though you’ve offered him something.

His tongue touches the center of your palm.

Tickles, you mumble, trying weakly to pull your hand back.

Johnny doesn’t let you, fingers tighten around your wrist, dragging his tongue between two of your fingers, gathering the wine with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes lifted to your face the entire time, stubble scraping your skin, your head tipping drunkenly toward one shoulder while he follows the spill downward. His mouth moves over the heel of your hand, then the tender inside of your wrist, tongue tracing the dark path until it reaches the quick beat of your pulse.

Johnny, you breathe, his name breaking apart around another shy (nervous) giggle.

Shh.

His lips close over the fluttering place beneath your skin, sucking gently at the flesh, and the laughter catches strangely in your throat.

For a second, the floating stops.

Your eyes find his. There’s no boyish embarrassment there now. No artist’s wonder. Only concentration, calm and proprietary, as if he’s discovered the precise place where you’re weakest and is committing it to memory.

Then the room tips again.

The fear slips away before you can name it.

Johnny lifts his mouth from your wrist. A faint red stain shines across his lower lip, though you can’t tell whether it’s wine or the shape of his teeth pressed too hard against your skin.

Couldnae leave ye all messy, he murmurs.

You smile at him, heavy eyed and grateful.

(That smile will return to you later. Not his. Yours. The soft, trusting curve of your own mouth while he held your pulse between his teeth, already learning how much he could take, could take, could take before you’d realize something was missing- )

His hand slides behind your neck when your head lists toward one shoulder, catching you with a palm spanning the base of your skull, fingers sinking into the soft place beneath your hair, and the strength of him feels like a pillar rising from the black water at the exact moment your feet stop finding the bottom.

You lean into him, body pouring toward the nearest solid thing with the blind obedience of water finding a crack.

(That’s the part you’ll hate most afterward. Not the touch itself, but the relief. The soft, grateful sound your throat makes when he holds your head up for you. The way your body, stupid animal that it is, mistakes restraint for shelter because the room has become a dark and gently turning sea, and Johnny- Johnny, who tipped the bottle into your mouth, who stood on the shore and watched the red water climb over your face- feels like the only thing left that won’t move beneath your hands.)

Can barely hold yourself up, can ye?

There’s laughter curled inside his voice. Warmth too. Enough warmth to blunt the edge of it, enough tenderness painted over the words that you don’t see the teeth beneath until much later, when you’re sober enough to pick each moment apart and find where the sweetness spoiled.

You mumble that you’re fine, word coming loose and swollen, a soft little shape that collapses against his chest before it properly leaves your mouth.

Course ye are.

His thumb moves behind your ear, slow enough to feel fond, presses into the tender hollow there and draws a circle, then another, while your thoughts slosh heavily from one side of your skull to the other.

Jus’ need a wee bit of help holdin’ the pose.

He reaches past you.

Something drags from the shelves, whisper of fibres over unfinished wood, dry and soft, the sound stretching strangely inside your head, unspooling through the wine until it becomes the scrape of something moving beneath a bed, the hush of grass parting around a body.

When Johnny settles back into view, there’s a pale coil resting in one charcoal stained hand.

You stare at it.

The meaning is there- somewhere- can feel it beneath the surface, pressing upward through the wine. But your thoughts are no longer thoughts, drifting pieces of them, each one separating when you reach, each one slipping wetly through your fingers before you can force it into words.

What’s that for?

The question sounds very far away.

Johnny looks at the rope, then at you.

You.

He says it so easily that you blink up at him, chin hooked against the hard planes of his abdomen.

Then his grin breaks wide, dimples cutting deep enough to make the answer harmless again.

The pose, hen. It’s for the pose.

He kneels beside you and takes your wrist, winding the rope around your skin once, then twice, explaining tension and composition and the body’s instinct to protect itself when it tires.

Always curls inward, he murmurs, thumb smoothing the inside of your wrist. Always tries tae hide the soft parts.

You watch his fingers move.

Over.

Under.

Through.

Cream colored rope, the shade of old lace or clean bone, pretty where it crosses your skin, fibres blurring at the edges when your eyes lose focus, becoming something delicate, ornamental. A bracelet. A ribbon. (Gift-wrapped and hand delivered-)

Johnny-

Too tight?

You don’t know.

You should know. The answer ought to exist inside your own head, but your body has gone dim and distant, a house seen through fogged glass. There’s pressure around your wrist. Heat beneath it. A pulse knocking weakly against the rope like someone trapped behind a wall.

Johnny slides one finger under the knot, fingertip stroking over your pulse while he looks up at you, eyes bright and attentive.

Wouldnae hurt ye.

You nod because he sounds so certain and rational thought is a stone tied to your ankle asking you to climb through red waters.

He binds the other wrist before you understand that the first one is finished. Lifts both arms above your head, and your body follows with a slow, boneless obedience that makes him smile. The stretch pulls through your shoulders, arches your back, tits pushing at the fabric of his shirt, body bent sharp enough to split the soft haze for half a second, and a whimper escapes before you can swallow it.

Shh. Easy, bonnie.

His hand slides down your arms, your sides, soothing the hurt he created, and the wine rushes back into the space pain briefly cleared. Warm. Heavy. Merciful.

He secures the rope to an iron ring sunk into the studio floor.

You hadn’t noticed the rings before.

There’s one near either side of the platform, black metal half hidden beneath old paint and dust. More beside the mattress in the shadowed corner, arranged at careful distances from one another.

The pattern should mean something.

(It does mean something.)

Your gaze catches on them and then drifts helplessly away.

(Fear needs a body that answers when called, and yours has become warm wax beneath his hands, softening wherever he presses, cooling around whatever shape he leaves behind.)

Your legs are next.

He cups one ankle and draws it outward. Then the other. Your heels drag over the platform with a soft rasp, your knees falling apart beneath the loose white shirt. The fabric slips higher along your thighs, and the first clean spark of alarm pierces the drunken fog when you try to close them again.

Johnny feels the resistance and his hands stop on your thighs, heat from his palms sinking into you until you can feel his fingerprints burning their marks into your bones.

Easy.

The word is quiet. Almost kind.

You shake your head, but the motion tips the ceiling sideways. The windows pour rain upward. Johnny’s face splits into two softened versions of itself, then swims back together as nausea rolls lazily beneath your ribs.

I don’t-

The sentence knots behind your teeth.

Don’t what?

The words are all there, drifting separately through the dark, but you can’t gather them into the same mouthful.

Johnny leans closer- what was that, doe- gives you every appearance of listening, eyebrows drawn with concern, mouth softened at the corners.

You try again.

Your tongue feels soaked through. Heavy as nebula, the sounds smearing against one another until even you can’t tell what you meant to say.

Johnny waits, watches the effort drain out of your face and only then strokes both hands down your thighs.

Thought so.

The ropes tighten around your wrists. Your ankles. A careful loop above your knee when your leg keeps listing inward, another where the position pleases him but your body won’t hold it on its own.

His hands guide the white shirt higher whenever it catches beneath you.

It’ll wrinkle, hen-

A little farther-

Hold still-

The fabric gathers in pale folds until it rests beneath the curve of your breasts, baring the plane of your stomach, the flare of your hips, your soft, silky cunt he has spread open for himself. His thumbs stroke once along the crease where thigh meets hip, pressing into the give of flesh (- as though he is already imagining how it will feel when he is between them- )

He looks at what he has done and the boyish grin is gone. What remains is quieter. Hungrier. His eyes move over you like he is deciding which part to taste first.

There we are, he murmurs. Much better.

You drift.

Fear is still there, but it has risen above you now, trapped on the other side of the wine. You can see its shadow crossing the surface while you float beneath it, black and frantic and distorted by the red water between you. Your shoulders ache. Your wrists burn dully where the rope takes your weight. Your legs are held apart by pale fibres and Johnny’s careful arrangement, but the body enduring it feels impossibly far away.

A figure at the bottom of a lake.

A pale thing laid open in the silt.

You’re near the ceiling. You’re inside the rain crawling down the glass. You’re suspended somewhere behind your own eyes, watching a woman in a white shirt test the ropes with small, weak movements she won’t remember making.

She looks frightened.

You wonder why she doesn’t leave.

(Drunkenness makes a cruelty of distance. It lets you watch yourself suffer without understanding that you’re the one inside the body. Lets the mind climb out through a crack in the skull and hover somewhere clean while the flesh remains below, warm and obedient and available. It feels almost like escape until you realize Johnny can still touch what you’ve left behind.)

Christ.

The reverence in his voice draws your gaze back to him.

He’s looking at you, eyes moving slowly over your arms lifted and secured, your knees drawn apart, the shirt bunched high where his hands kept moving it, pausing at each point of strain as if pain is another line he’s finally managed to place correctly.

Something in his face has gone still, colder than lust. The deep and emptied devotion of a man standing before an altar built for a god that cannot refuse him now.

There ye are, he whispers, as if you’d been hidden from him, as if the rope has finally uncovered something true.

Then he crosses to the studio door and you follow him with your eyes slowly, the room dragging several seconds behind his body.

Johnny turns the lock and the click enters your head like a stone dropped into deep water. He slides the bolt into place and the sound travels down through the wine and settles somewhere beneath your heart, where the part of you that still understands begins, very quietly, to drown.

Then his hip catches the corner of a canvas on the way back.

It happens slowly from where you’re floating. The frame tips away from the wall, knocks against the one beside it, and then the whole uneven stack begins to slide. Wood scraping brick. Canvas whispering against canvas. Johnny swears beneath his breath and reaches for them, but they have already fallen face up across the floor.

And…

There you are.

Your face.

You blink at it, wondering for a syrupy moment whether it’s the sketch he’s just made, though the woman in the painting is wearing your green coat from last autumn. Her hair is damp, cheek tucked into the collar against the rain. She’s standing beneath the yellow shelter at the bus stop near your work, eyes lowered toward the phone cupped between her hands.

Another canvas has you carrying groceries against your chest. The paper bag splitting at the bottom, oranges bright through the tear, your mouth caught open in a laugh you don’t remember giving him.

Another-

you behind the steamed glass of the little cafe on Bell Street, both hands curled around a mug. There are Christmas lights reflected over your face. Red and gold smears threaded through your hair like something festive and burning.

That’s me, you say.

Or think you say.

(There’s a truth arranged across the floor in front of you, patient and chronological. Months of it. Seasons of it. Proof painted in oils and hidden with its face toward the wall, waiting for the moment when you could no longer count backward clearly enough to understand what you were seeing. But your brain has become a red tide inside your skull, and recognition is a small animal trying to swim through it. You watch its paws break the surface once. Then it sinks.)

When did you- ?

The question dissolves halfway out.

Johnny crouches and turns the first canvas over, handles them gently. (More gently than he’s handled you.) Checks the corners for damage, thumb brushing dust from your painted cheek before he hides it against the wall again.

Clumsy bastard, he mutters.

You stare at the remaining portrait. The one at the corner shop. Washed out lights. Coins scattered across your palm. Your face turned slightly to the side as if someone has just called your name.

- The moment he told you about-

- The first time he saw you-

Except the painting of you at the summer festival last year is underneath it.

Your eyebrows pull together and the thought almost forms.

Johnny looks over his shoulder and sees you struggling there and his expression softens.

Dinnae hurt yourself, hen.

He rises, steps over the paintings and comes back to you. One blackened fingertip presses between your brows, smoothing the crease away as though confusion is another flaw in the pose.

Ye’re thinkin’ too hard.

You try to tell him there are paintings of you. You try to ask how long.

You try to but the words leave your mouth sodden and misshapen, each syllable dragging another behind it until the sentence reaches him as little more than a murmur, the beginning falling away before you reach the end.

Johnny understands anyway. (He always seems to understand you when it suits him.)

He watches your mouth with that same fond concentration he wore while sketching (the patient attention of a man waiting for something soft to finish struggling) then glances toward the canvases he hasn’t managed to turn over.

Did tell ye I’d been stuck for months.

The dimples sink deep.

Never said how long I’ve been working since then.

You look back at the paintings.

The woman beneath the bus shelter has your green coat buttoned neatly with a button that broke last September. The woman at the cafe is holding the chipped blue mug they stopped using sometime around Christmas. Another version of you is walking beneath trees still fat with summer leaves, bare legs flashing beneath a dress buried now at the bottom of your wardrobe.

Your mind touches the sequence and recoils, but there’s nowhere for the thought to go. The wine has flooded every corridor inside your skull, filled every room up to the ceiling. Understanding swims toward you through it- slow, pale, terrible- but each time it comes close enough to recognize, the current rolls you gently away.

Something cold opens inside you, but the wine pours into it before it can become fear. It fills every clean edge, rounds everything off, turns horror into a distant pressure beneath the sternum. Johnny strokes your cheek and waits until your eyes lose focus again.

(He hadn’t found you beneath the lights of the corner shop tonight. Not in the way he’d made it sound, not like lightning or providence or some dead part of him suddenly shocked back into motion. He’d already known which bus carried you home. Which cafe you preferred. What store you used. He’d watched summer soften into autumn around you, watched autumn die into winter, and called it inspiration because obsession sounds beautiful when an artist says it.)

Johnny collects the last canvas and turns it toward the wall and your painted face disappears.

There, he murmurs. Nothin’ tae worry about.

He comes back to you slowly, hands settling on your thighs, hot enough to feel like brands through the wine heavy numbness, heat sinking in around the breadth of his palms and the effortless weight keeping you where he put you.

You shake your head.

Or perhaps it only falls weakly to one side.

Johnny’s mouth brushes your trembling knee, almost gentle, while his thumbs draw slow circles against your skin.

Easy, hen.

You try to tell him you want to go home but all that emerges is a broken little breath.

He lifts his head and watches you struggle to assemble the words, patient until the last of them dissolves behind your teeth. Then he smiles tender enough to make it seem as though he’s forgiving you for being afraid.

(And somewhere above the wine, the small surviving part of you finally understands why the paintings were turned toward the wall.)

Johnny reaches back without looking and the amber lamp beside the platform clicks off.

Darkness folds over the studio, warm and absolute, and his hands tighten around your thighs when the ropes instinctively draw taut.

Price who’s really beat after a long day at work. Just wants to relax in bed and let the stress of the day melt off him. Until you look up at him, your eyes wide with eagerness, legs rubbing against his under the comforter, hands caressing his arms. All frowns and pouts when he scratches at his beard and lets you down with a pet at your hair and kiss to your forehead.

You say it’s okay with a huff and roll over but when Price clicks the light off and turns to his side, after a few minutes you shift, scoot back a little. Again and again until you’re pressed to his front, head on his arm, and Price figures you just want to cuddle, pouting too much to admit it, so he wraps a heavy arm around your waist, nose nuzzling into your neck. Shiver with the scrape of his beard along your shoulder.

Sleep slowly building behind Prices eyes when your hips shift slightly, grind into his. Doesn’t think anything of it other than you’re getting comfortable. Until the movement of your hips becomes constant, knocking and rubbing against his cock. Can feel your back arch into him and he grunts into your ear, huffs a breath onto your neck that makes your need so much worse.

“Stop that.” He grumbles into your ear, knows that you’re trying to rile him up, so he tightens his arm around you in hopes it keeps you still. A little annoyed now because he’s all chubbed up in his boxers and knows it’ll take a minute before he’s calmed down enough to fall asleep.

You stop, thankfully. Until you don’t. Hips moving just subtly, slowly enough the need clogs your throat and it takes everything in you not to move faster. But Price can feel you moving even though you think you’re being sneaky, sucks in a deep breath before slapping at your thigh with the hand securing your waist.

“Cut it out. Don’t make me tell you again.” You shudder, eyes fluttering shut at the hoarseness in his throat. It only eggs you on, makes you throb at the threat behind his words.

You smash your hips back into his cock, grind without subtleness because he’s all worked up now even though he wouldn’t want to admit it. Angry and so hard against you that his arm under your head curls around your front, forearm under your jaw and hand clenching at your shoulder to keep you secure against his chest.

“Want it? Here it comes, baby.” He croaks in your ear. Annoyance and anger rolling off of him in waves as his other hand shoots down to lift your leg, yanks your soaked panties to the side. Makes you whine because he doesn’t bother touching your achy clit just huffs in your ear, rough with his grip that has tingles running over your body shuddering with anticipation.

Your breaths get heavier, body drumming when his hand darts back to wrestle his cock out. Feel it hot and heavy against your ass that you whine, need so heavy in your mind that just the feel of it against your pussy has you gushing.

Price grins when he lines himself up, soaks in the loud cry you let out when he thrusts in because you’re going to regret riling him up.

The airs punched from your lungs when he bottoms out. Pussy stinging at the quick stretch around him, whimper at the pleasure it shoots up your spine. Moan at the throb of him stretching you wide and filling you to the brim.

Bitterness in the way he handles you exactly what you were throbbing for when he pet your head and said maybe another night.

Price grunts and groans into your neck, hooks his arm under your knee and pins it to your chest so you can feel him deep inside you. Starts his thrust all of a sudden, pace so quick and harsh the air is knocked from your lungs. Have to gasp and huff to force air in from the grip he has around your front and pressure from his thrusts.

Makes sure he stuffs you to the hilt as he pounds away at your cervix, has you clawing at his arms, loud keens and moans drowning out the squelching of your pussy.

“What you wanted, huh? Desperate slut. Always needs Daddy’s cock fillin’ you up.” He spits into your ear, jerks when you flutter around him. Mind feasting at how pliable you are. How he can bully his cock into you and all you do is swallow him up and moan. How if he goes at it long enough you’ll blabber thank yous until Price has to fill your mouth so you shut up.

Price groans at the thought, cock slamming into you roughly as the imagine flashes in his mind. You mewl, words clogged in your throat, forced down by the pleasureful cries you can’t hold back. His beard scratches at your neck and shoulder, has tingles shooting down your back and making you push your ass into him.

The bed squeaks and rocks, Prices hips pounding forward and slapping into your ass. You bounce off his hips with each thrust, eyes fluttering closed because you can feel the head of his cock dragging against your walls and knocking at your cervix.

When you clench around him he shifts his hips, pummels his cock into your sweet spot so he can really feel you convulse around him. Has you squealing and toes curling, mind going fuzzy and soft with the pleasure coursing through you. Nails digging into the thick forearm around your throat, mouth falling open in silent cries when the feeling makes your body burn, heat blazing in your stomach.

Can feel drool dribble down your chin onto his forearm. Hand flying back when it feels like you might pass out, mind humming so violently you can’t think straight. “Slow, Daddy.” You whimper. “Too fast.”

Price tuts, grunting as he growls into your neck. “Take what I fuckin’ give you, baby. Wouldn’t let Daddy sleep because of your greedy cunt. Gonna pump ‘er full of cum so she sleeps real good tonight.” He purrs, drops his arm from your shoulder to hold your knee up so he can squeeze at your tits.

You squeal and grip at his arm when he pinches at your nipple through your shirt, rough material making lightening shoot through you.

“‘M sorry, Daddy.” You pant when his hand darts under your shirt. “I’ll be good. Just- slow down!”

Price palms at your chest, squeezing and tugging as his hips pummel into you, dips his mouth to nip at your neck when he sees you swallow thickly. Beard scraping your shoulder raw as he kisses and sucks harshly to leave purple marks for later.

“Too late for sorrys, baby. This is what you were begging me for. Can’t back out now.”

Tears spring to your eyes at the overwhelming amount of pleasure coursing through you. Think you’re getting a break when Price takes his plucking fingers away from your chest but lurch when you feel them at your clit.

Cry out when his rough fingers rub quickly at you, spasm and clench so hard you hear his low moans muffled against your neck, covered in sweat which he licks up, sends shivers down your spine and zips to your cunt.

His groans get lower, thrusts turning sloppy and short, feel every inch of him pull out and thrust back in more clearly. You can feel the veins of his cock grind against your walls, not a blur of feeling anymore, but they drag and tease you, have tingles shooting up your neck.

The pace of his fingers stay the same though, quick and sharp that an orgasm is quick to form. Have you squirming and whimpering, digging your nails into his arm as your ears ring.

Price curses, clench’s his jaw at the tight convulses around his cock, draws his balls tighter until the need to cum is clawing at his brain. Fingers still working against your clit for a second orgasm so he can have you cumming with him.

“Too much, Daddy.” You squeal with overstimulation, claw and tug at his hand until he coos, drops your leg and snatches your jaw in his paw to smash your lips together, beard nuzzling into your face so he can swallow your soft whimpers until you can’t breathe. Legs clenching and kicking around his hand, but never stopping his movements until another orgasm claws its way though your overstimulation.

Snatches his lips away, hand tight on your jaw to watch your face contort as you cum, picks up the pace of his hips when he gets closer. His groans and your soft mewls mixing together until you squeal and Price grunts lowly, your toes curling as you come together. Fingers and cock moving so quick your whole body tenses as your orgasm runs through you. Flutter so tightly around his cock you can feel the pulses that shoot his cum deep in your cunt. Ears ringing as you tremble until the waves of pleasure are soft throbs.

Price curses into your lips, groans when he gives a lazy thrust to make sure the last bits of his cum make it inside you. Pulls out slowly and watches you whimper at the noise and feel. Tugs your panties back over your spent pussy, before cupping your cunt with his palm.

Satisfaction coiling in his chest when you squeal, head slumped against his arm, jerk your hips away from the pressure at your clit, but you’re attempts are futile when there’s no where to run, and he follows you until his palm is nestled against you.

“Settle down, whiny girl.” He rasps, shakes his palm against you until you clutch at his wrist to stop the vibrations from moving your clit. “Ain’t nothing to cry over now you’re nice and full. Or does she want more?” He squeezes.

You gasp and hold his wrist down as much as you could. “No more, Daddy. She’s too full.” You whine, squirm at the feel of him leaking onto your panties. Too impossibly tired to care about how dirty you are.

“You sure, baby? I could stop now or be greedy and keep going like you did.” He taunts.

You suck in a deep breath, eyes heavy with sleep. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I won’t do it again, I’ll be good.”

Prices pecks your temple with a soft chuckle. “I’ll let you sleep for now, baby. Fuck your little cunt through the night. Daddy’s gonna teach you a thing or two about messing with him while he’s trying to sleep.”