#matingmarch2026

A new week begins with a kind of light you'd forgotten to expect. Winter's been pushed back just enough to invite you outside for your morning routine for the first time in months. The pale boards of your porch have been drinking in sunlight since early morning, leaving them warm beneath your bare feet.

You sit on the edge of the wooden engawa, your feet dangling over the dirt as you watch the mist cling to the cedar trees, the edge of the forest pressing in close to the deck. It is a quiet morning, the kind that usually precedes a long day of waiting for a traveller with enough grain or coin to justify opening your sliding doors.

You drink what passes for tea. It gives your hands something to do. The bowl—still chipped where your father used to hold it—reminds you of him, his thumb worrying the same spot every morning. Now the bowl is yours, and the house is much too quiet to pretend otherwise.

You've been alone since your father's heart gave out two years ago, leaving only his battered fishing knife and a debt you can't afford. You had to learn quickly how to keep yourself alive, how to trade what little you had. Keep your eyes lowered without looking broken, talk as though you've done this forever, even when your stomach is growling with hunger.

Smoke seeps from the chimney, drifting and curling into the pale blue of the sky. If you hold perfectly still, you can hear the world breathing; wind weaving through bamboo, a magpie chirping somewhere past the garden, your own heart knocking softly behind your ribs.

You swallow the last mouthful of tea and set the bowl down beside you. The forest beyond the deck shivers with movement. Your fingers close instinctively around the knife at your hip.

Men often stumble out of those trees. Hungry men, violent men, drunk men with their belts already loose, soldiers with a lot of coin and as much contempt to match. The life of a woman alone in these woods is nothing but a series of transactions, and nowadays you have grown far too used to the weight of calloused hands and the smell of cheap sake on the breath of men who do not know your name. It's a humiliation you swallow like medicine.

But the figure that emerges isn't a soldier or a drunken lech. That's why you notice him right away—not because he's a man in the woods, but because he moves wrong.

He isn't trying to sneak. He carries no arrogant swagger. He sways, catching himself on a sapling that bends under his weight. His cloak is torn and darkened in places where it's been wet. When he turns his head, it doesn't track the way people do when they see a house. It turns as if he's listening for it.

He comes closer in short, halting adjustments, bare toes finding the edge of the clearing by accident rather than aim. He's younger than the soldiers who've shoved your shoji open, younger than the men who've thrown rice at your feet as payment, but he carries himself like someone who's been old for years.

He is not very tall; he's wiry, pale, and made of hard angles beneath the rags, with jet-black hair that's tied back in a messy ponytail. Bandages cover too much of him. And his arms—your breath catches at those—are not arms at all. Wood, shaped like flesh, jointed, the colour too warm to match his face.

You jump up from the engawa, heart racing in your chest. "You there, are you hurt?"

His face turns toward your voice. His eyes are wrong, a dull brown glass that doesn't quite settle, yet his attention lands with unnerving accuracy, as if whatever he uses in place of sight has already found your shape. He is covered in grime and dried blood, his skin marred by fresh scrapes.

"Dororo?" He asks. The name is small and breathless, heavy with a longing that makes your chest ache.

"There's no Dororo here," you say. You see the way he sags, the determination in his shoulders wilting. "Come. I have broth. It's not much, but it's hot."

He blinks. Now that he's closer, you notice the dark stain spreading across the front of his kimono.

"You're bleeding," you tell him. You step back and slide your shoji door open wider. "Come, come. Slowly. There's a step."

He nods once, abruptly, then pitches forward. You catch his weight as best you can, staggering beneath him as you cross the threshold into your home. His skin is burning, fever-hot. He smells of rain and blood.

You lead him inside. The shoji doors creak as you slide them shut, sealing out the damp forest air. The tatami gives under his feet, and his body tenses at the sound, at the change in texture. His wooden forearms lift slightly, bracing on instinct—and as you steady him, you see the truth of it: only one limb looks like it's truly his. His left leg is also carved from wood, fitted and finished with a care you could never afford if such a thing ever happened to you. Even so, there's something naturally sure about the way he carries himself, like steadiness is his default, and it's only the blood loss and the long hours on the road that have stolen it from him.

"Alone?" He says.

"Yes," you answer, because lying feels useless. "I'll fetch you some food. Sit."

He makes no sound, only turns his clouded gaze in your direction as you work, kindling the fire, filling a pot. You heat what little you have: broth thin enough to show the bottom of the pot, a fistful of greens, a crust of bread you baked yesterday and have been saving for yourself. When you set it in front of him, he leans in, his nostrils flaring over the steam. He doesn't lift the bowl right away. His hands hover uncertainly over it.

"It's for you. Eat." You say, and guide his hands to the rim.

Then his head dips, and something like relief loosens his shoulders. "Eat," he echoes, and the sound of it is almost boyish.

He eats like someone who has forgotten that food can be warm and offered without a price. When he's done, he sits very still, bowl empty, mouth slightly open as if waiting for the next instruction.

You fetch a basin and a cloth without turning your back for long. When you kneel back down in front of him, he stiffens again.

"Let me see," you say.

You move to peel back the fabric of his torn kimono. The sight steals your breath. His chest is crisscrossed with half-healed wounds, his stomach marked by old scars and fresh bruises which bloom beneath the bandages. His muscles are as hard and pale as river stone. A line of red slices across his chest, not deep enough to be dangerous, but raw enough to make him flinch when the air hits it. His prosthetic arm swings out—not meaning to strike, but as a reflex. You catch the wooden wrist gently. It is cold and hard, and smells of old lacquer.

"I have water," you explain, softly. "For your wounds."

You dip the cloth, wring it out, and begin to clean. When you dab at the cut over his pectoral, he gasps. It doesn't sound like he's in pain. Surprise, maybe, at being touched gently instead of grabbed. He leans into the sensation, his eyes rolling back slightly.

"Warm," he mutters. It's barely a word, more of a discovery.

"Fighting?" you ask, as you close the cloth over his wound.

He nods. "Demons." Each of his words come jagged, not quite right, as if his tongue is still new to the shape of them.

His throat moves. "I... smell... you."

You pause, feeling an unwanted heat crawl up your neck. "It's soap. I can give you some, if you want?"

You work in silence for a while, cleaning blood from his skin. A shudder runs through him every time the warm cloth touches him, then—unexpectedly—he reaches for you. One of his wooden hands comes up and rests against your cheek.

The prosthetic is clumsy, the hard wood cold against your skin, but his touch is feather-light. He presses his forehead against yours with a sudden, bruising intensity. It's overwhelmingly intimate, like he is searching for something—seeing the heat of you, feeling the life of you.

"You," he says, his voice a low vibration. "Soft."

Your breath shivers out of you. He is so close you can count each one of his eyelashes, the damp black fall of his hair, a pale seam where his lip was once split. You've been touched by many men, but never with this kind of unfiltered wonder. Although his eyes don't see your face, his soul seems to be drinking you in.

He stays like that, silent and unmoving, as your hand moves from his chest down to his stomach, trailing the water over the ridges of his muscles. You move in the same way you always do—efficient, gentle where you can be. You don't linger. You don't make it something it isn't. But his body makes it something.

His breath changes. You feel it under your palm as you wipe across his skin, the quickening rhythm, the small tremor that runs through him. When you move lower, his hips jerk.

His head tilts back from your forehead. When you glance up, you see his lips have parted, his cheeks have flushed pink. His hand slides down your neck, his wooden fingers catching in the collar of your robe. He doesn't know how to ask, so he simply pulls.

"More," he demands, tongue pressing to his teeth as if coaxing words into shape. "Touch. There."

Something twists inside you. You search his face, trying to understand the hunger in him. It doesn't feel like lust; you've had plenty of men pay you for this. You've had men demand it. No one has ever sounded like they're just asking for water. It isn't entitlement. It's discovery.

He's half-undressed, kimono pooled around his hips, hakama loose and binding low on his waist. You hesitate, eyes tracing the lines of him without meaning to: the hollow beneath his collarbones, the faint shadow of muscle where his ribs descend, the pale sprawl of his stomach rising and falling.

Too beautiful for this world, you think dimly. Or maybe just too unfinished.

His head tilts as if he senses your pause. His hand lifts again, that odd, careful prosthetic brushing your wrist. He guides it down, not rough, but urgent, as if he's terrified you'll stop.

His brows draw together. Confusion flickers across his face, then frustration—not at you, at his own lack of language. "Feels good," he says. "…here."

He places your hand over his groin. He's hard, pulsing and twitching with a need he clearly doesn't quite understand. You could pull away. You should. Instead, you cover his hand with yours and ask him his name.

"Hyakkimaru."

"Hyakkimaru," you repeat, testing it. It fits in your mouth like something sharp. "That's… that's not cleaning."

He swallows. His voice comes out rough, stripped down. "Touch. Please."

It's so clumsy and sincere you can't pretend it means nothing. His face has gone taut with sensation—brows drawn, mouth parted like he doesn't have words for any of it. You've seen this a hundred times, in a hundred different shapes. But never like this—never so unguarded, so honestly undone. He watches with his body instead of his eyes, leaning toward sensation like a starving man offered bread.

So you slip your fingers beneath his fundoshi.

When your palm closes around the length of him, he loses all composure. He is a storm. He thrusts upward into your hand, his prosthetic arms thudding against the mats, his teeth gritted. His forehead drops forward, hair brushing your shoulder, and his next breath shudders violently through him.

"Oh—" He stops. Starts again. "Good. So… good."

You move as slowly and as carefully as you can, watching his face, reading his tells: the tightening around his mouth, the way his throat works, letting him learn the feeling instead of overwhelming him. His cock is hot, weeping, impossibly sensitive. His hips begin to move on their own, chasing your touch, grinding desperately. You murmur soft things—nonsense, really, meant to soothe—and guide him gently, but he's already unravelling.

He doesn't last long. It's almost as though his body has been waiting years for permission to do this. Within seconds, his body jolts, and he spills over your hand and his own stomach. The sound he makes is strangled, loud, embarrassed by nothing. He goes rigid, then collapses forward, breathing hard.

You hold still until he settles. Then reach for the cloth to clean him, but he grabs your wrist. His head turns, mouth brushing your hair.

"Again," he says hoarsely.

You blink. "Again?"

He nods. "Again. More."

You laugh before you can stop yourself. It slips out, startled and breathless. "You don't waste time, do you?"

He doesn't seem embarrassed—not even a little. If anything, there's a growing intensity in him now, like something fundamental has been woken and refuses to lie back down.

You realise he won't let you go. You stand to move the basin, and he follows at once, pushing himself upright without reaching for you, without wobbling, even on the tatami. That suspicion from earlier settles into certainty: he can walk just fine. It's the injuries that brought him down, not his body.

"Need," he says, trailing after you. His hand brushes your hip—accidental, then not. "Need you."

Your mouth goes dry.

You turn slowly, studying him. He's flushed now, colour blooming high across his cheekbones, his body alive in a way it hadn't been before. Desire sits on him awkwardly, uneven, like a child trying on armour that's too big—but the hunger beneath it is sharp and real.

"You've never…" You hesitate, then ask softly. "No one's done this for you. Have they?"

He shakes his head once. "Didn't know," he admits. Then quieter: "Only felt... pain."

You glance down at your own clothes; simple, patched, tied and retied so many times they've learned your shape. You've undressed for strangers with dead eyes and rough hands. Undressing for someone who seems to worship the idea of skin feels far more dangerous.

You loosen the ties anyway.

"Alright," you whisper, your heart softening at the sheer desperation in him. "Alright."

Your clothes fall away in quiet layers. Air kisses places that have been touched for money and never for gentleness. You feel exposed in a way you haven't in years, even though he can't see you.

You move closer and guide his hands to you. To your hips, then up to your breasts. He drags his wooden fingertips across the swell of your curves, then pauses, listening to your breath. When he leans forward instinctively and takes your nipple into his mouth, the sound he makes borders on a sob.

He's awkward at first, licking at your skin, learning the same way he learned his way around your house—by trial, by listening. When you guide him with your hand at his jaw, your fingers in his hair, he follows like he's been waiting for instruction his whole life.

His body resets, heat gathering again with alarming speed. His hands slide to your waist, not fumbling now. The first taste has made him greedy, and his body doesn't seem interested in learning patience.

He shifts his hips forward, searching, and when he finds what he's looking for, he makes a sound like relief. His cock nudges insistently between your thighs, a blunt, untrained certainty; some buried part of him that recognises where he belongs.

Your body responds despite you. You make a sound you haven't made in front of anyone in a long time: not a practised sigh meant to please, but something honest, startled out of you.

"Here," he breathes, broken and urgent.

He hauls you with him before you can think better of it, backing you out of the room in quick, blind steps that never miss their mark. The basin sloshes as you brush past it. The wooden floor is colder than the tatami when your knees hit, but he doesn't hesitate—pulling you close, angling you the way a body does when it already knows the answer.

You fit together clumsily at first, until sensation hits him again and he ruts deep inside you, gasping. He loses himself in the warmth, in the softness, and goes wide-eyed in the most human way.

When he starts to move, it's with a frantic, uncoordinated power. He isn't trying to please you; he is trying to consume the feeling of being inside you. Every time his hips hit yours, the wooden joints of his arms creak, and he lets out a series of broken, guttural sounds.

"Tight... Feels—good. So good. Inside." He babbles, his speech fracturing under the weight of the pleasure. You pull him up to kiss you because you want to feel his mouth on yours, because you want to decide this for yourself. He whines and clings, forehead bumping your cheek as if he's trying to fit his whole face into the comfort you're giving.

The way he moves is driven by need, by instinct, by that animal urgency born from first taste. He breaks again too soon, breath tearing, body shaking with the force of it, and you can't stop your laugh this time—quiet and incredulous. "Already?" you whisper.

He turns his face toward your voice, cheeks flushed, hair stuck to his brow with sweat. "Again," he says immediately, as if that's the only word he has left.

You stare at him, and then you laugh harder, the sound bubbling up despite the ache building between your thighs. It's absurd. It's almost sweet. It's almost tragic.

You shouldn't. Your body is already tender, already edging into sore. But you're the one who knows how to make the world bearable for someone, if only for a little while. You've done it for cruel men who left you nothing but bruises. Doing it for someone who looks at kindness like it's a miracle feels like stealing something back.

So you do it again.

The second time is longer, slower, only because his body is forced to catch up to his mind. You hold his face, speak into his ear, anchor him with your voice. When he starts to buck harder and faster into you, you tap your finger against his cheek and say, "Gentle," and he slows down at once, obedient as a dog that wants to be good.

You wrap your legs around his waist, feeling the strange contrast of his warm, fleshy thigh and the cold, unyielding wood of the other. He is worshipful in his greed. He tastes every inch of your neck, his tongue searching for the salt on your skin.

When he comes again, his face screws tight with the ache, his body finally learning its limits. He collapses against you afterwards, panting, face pressed to your shoulder.

The second time bleeds messily into the third. Your thighs are shaking, your body humming with a dull ache that is both pleasant and exhausting. He is still on top of you, his weight heavy, his prosthetic arm pinned beside your head. You're breathless, overstimulated, laughing helplessly when he begins to stir again, his hips giving a small, hopeful nudge against yours.

You push at his shoulder gently. "No."

His head snaps up. Confusion flashes. "Hurt?" he asks immediately.

"I'm not hurt," you reassure him, giggling softly. "Just... too much of a good thing."

You reach up and brush a lock of black hair from his sightless eyes. "You need to rest. You have a friend to find, remember? Dororo?"

The name acts like a cold splash of water. His shoulders tense. "Dororo," he repeats. The name comes out like regret.

You exhale slowly. "You're still thinking about them."

He nods, the movement small. "Lost..."

"Then you'll go find them," you tell him. "After you've rested..."

His mouth tightens. He turns his face toward you, forehead brushing yours the way he did when he first walked into your house, like that's the only language he's certain of. "You… good," he says, clumsily. "Kind."

You swallow past the sudden ache in your throat. "Don't go calling me good," you murmur. "You don't know anything about me."

He shakes his head. "I know."

You guide him back down onto the tatami, feeling the way his body is still trembling beneath your touch, and pull a blanket over him. For a moment, he lies rigid, as if rest is just another kind of trap, his shoulders held too high, breath caught shallow in his chest.

Then your hand finds his hair.

You smooth it back from his forehead, and the tension begins to leak out of him in small, reluctant increments. His one real leg slides beneath the blanket, searching. It hooks around yours at the calf, then higher—an unthinking hold, possessive without meaning to be. When you don't pull away, when you let him keep you there, his exhale comes out longer, heavier.

After a while, his breathing slows. And when his lashes finally lower, it's not surrender so much as a pause, a brief, fragile allowance. You keep stroking his hair anyway, even after his face softens, even after the line of his mouth unclenches, watching over him while he drifts for a little while, as though you can teach him what safety feels like simply by staying.

You stay like that for a few hours, until his concern for his friend finally wins out.

"Dororo," he says again, rough with sleep.

You feel him gather himself, whatever is scraped and aching in him not enough to stop him anymore. Worry doesn't leave room for it.

He untangles his leg from yours with obvious reluctance, but the decision has already been made; his body turning toward duty even while his hand hovers, searching for you one last time.

You help him tie his clothes back on. He lets you, head angled toward you the whole time. When you press the cleaned cloth against his chest and retie the bandage, he flinches less than before.

At the door, he hesitates. His hand cups your face again, familiar now.

"You go," you say gently. "Find your friend."

His throat works. "I come back."

It's not a promise dressed up in pretty words. It's simple. Dangerous. True.

He slides the door open and vanishes into the mist of the cedars, leaving you alone in the silence of the woods, the scent of him still clinging to your skin.

You slide the shoji closed behind him and lean your forehead to the paper, feeling the thinness of it between you and the world. Your body aches in a way that is not unpleasant, and that alone feels like a small betrayal of the life you've lived.

In the woods, his footfalls fade.

The bowl on the hearth is still chipped where your father once held it.

The car is right there. You can see the glossy black door waiting beyond the barricades, the suited driver standing by it with the kind of stiff posture that says he has been told not to react to anything short of a missile. It is maybe twenty feet away. Twenty feet and an entire wall of people.

Camera flashes keep firing in your face. Somebody on your left is calling your hero name in a voice that turns shrill on the last syllable. Another fan has shoved a programme booklet over the barrier and is pleading for an autograph. There is perfume in the air, hairspray, somebody’s takeout coffee, the expensive powdery smell still clinging to your gala clothes after three straight hours of smiles and handshakes inside the ballroom.

You sign the booklet. You smile for a selfie. You tell yourself you can do ten more seconds of this, then five, then just enough to reach the car.

It would almost be easier if it were hostility. Easier if anyone here were actually trying to hurt you. But they are thrilled, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, leaning over the barriers to get a little closer to No. 6. They are only excited. They are only loud. They are only grabbing for your attention because they think it costs nothing for you to keep giving it.

Being the No. 6 Hero means you don’t get to belong to yourself in public anymore. You belong to the lenses, to the fans screaming your name, and to the reporters shoving recorders toward your face like bayonets. You are far newer to this part than Bakugo is. He was famous before he even settled into the Top Ten. People have been fawning over him since he was a teenager with a temper problem and a habit of destroying training grounds. You are still trying to get used to what it means when your face starts showing up on giant screens outside train stations, when magazines write two-page articles about why you were smiling at a restaurant, when strangers speak to you as though they know you just because they once saw you bleeding on the evening news.

"Don’t stop moving," he mutters. His words aren’t for the crowd. They’re for you, vibration-low and edged with a warning he hasn’t vocalised yet.

A hand brushes your bare shoulder. Another catches the edge of your sleeve.

You keep that smile going. Until your cheeks hurt.

Somebody asks if the dress is custom, and you laugh politely, even though you barely hear yourself over the noise. The gown had seemed a good idea under the hotel lights: sleek, fitted, dark enough to flatter, slit high enough that your stylist declared it bold without being slutty. Out here, right now, it feels like borrowed skin. Your heels are biting. Your earrings feel too heavy. Every inch of you still needs to stay available for photographs.

You keep stepping sideways. The driver catches the movement and opens the rear door another few inches.

You’re so close.

"Please, just one more!" A girl squeals, holding up a phone with a case covered in tiny glitter stars. "You and Dynamight are seriously my favourite hero duo."

You pose again because saying no to that face would make you feel monstrous. The photo takes too long. She squeaks so hard you think it might crack glass.

A second phone appears. Then a third.

Security is trying to keep the line from collapsing, but the crowd is swelling now that more people have spilled out from the gala exit. Somebody shouts Bakugo’s hero name from somewhere behind you, and the whole pack jolts like a flock changing direction at once.

You turn your head on instinct, and that is when it happens.

A man in a suit leans over the barrier, grinning so hard it pushes his cheeks flat. "Hey, wait—just sign this—" His fingers close around your forearm before you can step away, not painful at first, just abrupt, a stranger’s hand hot on your skin. "Please, my daughter’s a huge fan."

Your breath catches.

There is no room to move. Bodies press in from both sides, close enough that the air itself grows hotter. More voices pile on top of each other. A biro nudges against your wrist. Someone else shouts your hero name right near your ear and it scrapes over your nerves like sandpaper.

You should say something. You should pull your arm back and tell him not to touch you. You should.

Instead, you get stuck there with that sweaty grip on you and every instinct you have splitting a thousand different ways: hero training telling you not to escalate, public image telling you not to make a face, your own body quietly screaming at you to get out.

The noise goes thin and sharp.

You hear yourself say, "Sorry—just a second—"

The hand tightens. He’s not being cruel, just insistent, as though he assumes you’ll understand.

A shadow cuts across the flashes.

Then there is a shoulder in front of you, broad and black-suited and familiar, forcing a wedge of space where there wasn’t any before. Bakugo moves like somebody kicking through a door. One second, you are trapped behind a line of eager faces, and the next, he’s there, driving the crowd back with the sheer violence of his presence.

"Back off," he snaps.

He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to.

Some people start to recoil on reflex. A woman with a camera stumbles back into somebody else. Security finally gets their heads out of their asses and starts pushing the front row behind the flimsy barrier again.

Bakugo’s eyes drop to your arm. The man is still holding you.

Bakugo goes very still.

The sound that leaves him doesn’t qualify as a word. It sits lower than that, a rough vibration torn straight from his chest that travels up through his teeth, ugly enough that the people nearest him flinch before their brains catch up. Even the guy gripping you finally seems to register that he has made some catastrophic mistake. His smile vanishes.

Bakugo steps in close enough that the man has to crane his neck to keep eye contact.

"Take your damn hand off her," he says.

There is nothing theatrical in it. Bakugo doesn’t bother with polished hero optics or that fixed public smile. He just delivers it flat, jaw locked tight enough for the muscle near his ear to twitch.

The man lets go immediately, his face draining of colour. "I—I was just asking for—"

"The hell do you think this is?" Bakugo cuts in, every word crisp as broken glass. "A petting zoo?"

Nobody laughs.

The man recoils, mutters an apology to absolutely no one in particular, and vanishes into the crowd with the rest of them backing off in a messy wave. Fans who were still holding out posters lower them. A teenager who had been shouting your name now looks as if she wants to melt through the pavement.

You are free.

Bakugo turns to you so sharply the tails of his black jacket swing. He looks expensive tonight against his will: fitted dark suit, shirt collar open because there is no force on earth that could keep him in a tie, blond hair combed into something that had probably looked presentable half an hour ago and now sits wild again from how often he has shoved his hand through it.

His gaze races over your face, your arm, your stance.

"You okay?" It comes out harsher than the question deserves, but you know him well enough to hear what sits underneath it.

You nod too quickly. "Yeah. Just—crowded."

His mouth flattens.

He plants a hand at the small of your back, firm and hot even through your dress, and steers you toward the waiting car. There are still people calling your names, still flashes popping from the curb, and security are trying to recover whatever professional dignity they had five minutes ago. Bakugo ignores all of it. He keeps himself half a step behind you and to the side, all hostility and threat display, making it obvious to anyone with a functioning set of eyes that they are not getting near you again tonight.

The driver shuts the door the second you duck inside, and silence drops like a curtain.

The city is still out there, camera clicks and engines and distant shouts muffled by the thick glass, but compared to the pavement outside it feels unreal. Cold air from the AC brushes your overheated skin. The leather seat beneath you is cool and smells clean, expensive, faintly sweet in a way you can’t place. Your own reflection looks back at you from the tinted window: lipstick smudged at one corner, hair coming loose, eyes wider than you expected.

Bakugo gets in after you and slams the opposite door with enough force to rattle the frame.

"Drive," he tells the driver.

Then he reaches up and drags the privacy partition closed with a hard shove. The panel slides into place, turning the front half of the car into another world.

For a second, all he does is sit there, knees spread, chest rising too fast, one hand braced on the seat. The city lights slip over the scar on his cheek and the line of his throat. You have seen him angry more times than you can count. This isn’t that. Anger is usually louder. Easier. This feels like he swallowed a live wire, and it’s still sparking inside him.

You lean your head back against the seat and let the cold air hit your face. "Katsuki—they didn’t know."

His eyes snap to yours. "What?"

"We haven’t gone public, remember? That was your call." Your voice sounds rougher than you wanted. "He wasn’t trying to be an asshole. None of them were."

Bakugo stares at you as though that’s the dumbest thing he has ever heard in his life.

"I don’t care if they knew."

He scrubs a hand over his mouth, then points at your arm. Faint pink fingerprints still bloom where the man grabbed you.

"That bastard had his hands on you."

"I’m fine."

"Quit saying that."

The words crack across the little space between you. You blink.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees now, glaring at the floor for half a second before looking back up. "Don’t give me that crap. You were standin’ there with that fake-ass smile like I wouldn’t notice something was off."

Embarrassment stings hot behind your ribs because the worst part is that he’s right. You kept playing nice because that is what a rising hero is supposed to do when cameras are rolling, and nobody has technically done anything wrong.

"I was handling it." You mutter.

"Like hell you were."

His voice drops lower on the last word. His fingers drum once against his thigh, then stop. He notices you noticing. Annoyance flashes across his face at the betrayal of his own body.

You shift closer across the seat before you can think better of it. "Katsuki—"

He catches your wrist and hauls you the rest of the way.

The kiss lands hard enough to jar your teeth. Not messy or careless, but hungry in a way that feels halfway to violence. His hand slides around the back of your neck, holding you there while his mouth works over yours like he’s starving and furious about it. You open for him with a sound you don’t mean to make. He takes the invitation instantly, tongue pushing deep past your teeth, breath hot, as if kissing you is finally letting something out.

Your hand fists in his jacket.

He breaks the kiss just enough to get words out. "The hell were you doing, just standing there while they grabbed at you?"

Your pulse is still uneven from the crowd, from him, from the way he saw straight through you. "I didn’t let—"

He kisses you again before you finish, shorter this time, biting your bottom lip hard on the way out.

"They cornered you." Another kiss at the edge of your mouth. "And you were still playing the nice hero." His nose brushes yours as he speaks, voice frayed with restraint. "The hell did you expect me to do? Stop being a dumbass."

Something hot and shaky moves through you. The air-conditioning, the leather, the sealed dark of the car, the city sliding by outside while he crowds into your space smelling of expensive cologne and sweat and the faint bite of his nitroglycerin under the surface—it all tips together until you feel almost drunk on it.

You touch his face. "Well, I’m here now. Safe."

His expression changes in a way that would be easy to miss if you didn’t know him so well. The anger doesn’t vanish, but it shifts. Gets swallowed by something more naked.

"Yeah," he says. "You are."

Then his hand is on your thigh, pushing the slit of your dress open until cool air hits the skin high above your knee. His thumb digs in once, hard enough to make your breath jump.

"You’re still shaking," he mutters. "C’mere."

You almost laugh because you are already practically in his lap, but he means something else. He guides you down across the back seat, one big hand at your waist, the other lifting your leg over his thigh. The leather gives a little under your shoulders, the hem of your dress rides up. The ceiling of the car suddenly feels low and intimate, the dark glass throwing back fractured glimpses of your gold earrings, pale skin, his broad frame bending over you.

"Katsuki—"

"Quiet."

It’s not impatience. It’s certainty.

His mouth finds your throat, then the underside of your jaw, rough but careful where it matters. One hand slips between your thighs and his thumb presses right against your underwear. Heat zips through you so fast it almost hurts. You jerk into him on instinct.

"Yeah, thought that might shut you up," he says against your skin, as if he’s been waiting for your body to stop lying on your behalf.

His fingers hook the fabric aside. The first stroke over your clit has you biting back a cry so sharp it turns into a gasp. You are already wet. More than wet. Embarrassingly, desperately ready, your body caught between the residue of panic and the relief of having him here and the filthy thrill of being handled like this in the back of a moving car while the whole city outside has no idea.

He knows exactly how to use his hands. Katsuki Bakugo does not do anything badly, and you have benefited from that fact more than once. Two fingers slide through your slick, gathering it, then circling back to rub slow and firm where you need it most until your knees twitch.

"Couldn’t focus on a damn thing out there," he says, watching your face now instead of what his hand is doing. "Just wanted you in here."

You swallow. "I thought—ah—you were gonna kill someone."

"I was real damn close."

That would be funny if he were not pushing a finger inside you at the same time. Your head knocks back against the seat. He works you open steadily, thumb still grinding tight patterns over your clit, never giving you enough space to think. Your hips start chasing the pressure. The cool leather under your back and the cold air blowing across your overheated skin make every touch feel brighter, sharper.

"You do that crap every damn time, y’know that?" He says. Another finger. A slight curl that finds the spot that makes your whole body seize. "Pisses me off."

A broken sound slips out of you.

"That’s it." His forehead dips briefly to yours, voice dropping. "Drop the act. I’ve got you."

The words punch straight through whatever composure you had left. Your orgasm catches fast, built on too many things at once. Humiliation, relief, how closely he watches you, how good his hand feels, how the night has left you rubbed raw in all the places nobody else can see. It hits with your legs shaking and your mouth open against his shoulder, a helpless little rhythm jerking through you while his fingers keep going just long enough to drag every last pulse out.

You come down in pieces, thighs wet, breath snagging.

"Fuck," you whisper.

"Yeah."

He sits back just enough to yank his belt open. The metal clicks loud in the enclosed car. He shoves his trousers down far enough, fists himself once with a strained look crossing his face, then nudges your knees wider.

You’re still oversensitive, still damp and trembling, dripping onto the black leather seat, and something about the way he looks at the mess of you—pleased, possessive, a little stunned by it—sends another rush of heat straight through your stomach.

He lines himself up and pushes in.

The stretch makes you gasp again. You’re used to his size by now, but sinking back around him while you’re still soft from your release feels overwhelming anyway. A warning growl, quieter this time but no less mean, rumbles out of him as he holds there for half a beat, eyes shut, one hand planted by your head.

Then he moves.

The car is long enough that the ride stays mostly smooth, but every turn and every brake sends a different kind of sway through the seat beneath you. Bakugo uses it. He keeps one hand under your thigh, holding you open, and drives into you with deep, controlled thrusts that still feel edged with the same temper he carried in from the street.

"Look at this," he says, and the words come out focused. "Knew all that nice-girl crap would drop the second I got my cock in you."

You laugh weakly, and it breaks into a moan when he hits deeper. His mouth curves without mercy.

He leans down and kisses you again, shorter, dirtier, his hips never stopping. Your head is full of static now, body bouncing lightly against the seat, every push of him making your thoughts blur at the edges. He’s slick with sweat, and every so often, one of those little blasts kisses hot against the curve of your breasts.

"You know what pisses me off most?" He says against your mouth.

You can barely string words together. "What?"

"None of those extras out there know you’re mine." He thrusts harder, enough to drag a cry out of you. "Stand there screaming your name like they know a damn thing about you." Another snap of his hips. "None of ’em know who gets you spread out and whining like this."

His words hit you somewhere deep and strange. You clench around him, and he curses, dropping his forehead to your shoulder for one second before lifting it again.

"You hear me?" His grip tightens at your thigh, enough to bruise. "They can look all they want. They can jerk off over interviews for all I care." Another hard slam of his hips. "But this?" He forces deep, pressing at your cervix, his voice low and vicious in your ear. "This is fucking mine."

Heat rolls through you in another wave. You are too wrung out to keep up with him, too full of him and the night and the lingering buzz of having almost gone under in that crowd, only for him to drag you back by force. Your eyes sting for a stupid second.

"Katsuki—"

He reaches between you and puts his thumb back on your clit. The sound you make is wrecked enough to earn a dark, satisfied look from him.

"Fuck," he growls. "You gonna make a mess again? Come on my cock."

You come again with less warning this time. So hard your heel slips on the seat. Bakugo catches your leg, drives in deep, and loses whatever control he had left. His rhythm goes feral. You can feel the exact moment he tips over—his jaw clenching, the breath tearing out of him. He buries himself and stays there while he comes hard inside you, one hand clutching at your waist as if the force of it surprises even him.

He’s still shaking as a red light washes through the tinted glass and disappears. The air-conditioning hums on. Then he does something that would make half the country faint if they saw it: he carefully shifts your dress back over your hips and presses a kiss to the side of your knee before pulling away.

You stare at him.

"Don’t start." He grunts.

He fixes himself one-handed, then reaches into the console for the little folded packet of wipes the driver keeps stocked, because he has been briefed on exactly what sort of disasters occur in this car. Bakugo clicks his tongue at the sight of them but uses them anyway, cleaning between your thighs with brisk efficiency that turns gentle whenever you twitch. He wipes his own hands, then yours, for some reason that makes no practical sense and still nearly undoes you.

When he is finished, he gathers you up with surprising ease and shifts until your head is tucked under his chin and your legs are draped across his lap. The suit jacket comes off and lands over your shoulders.

You let yourself sink into him. His shirt is warm. His heartbeat has finally started slowing under your ear.

The aftermath in him is always strange to witness. The rage burns off and leaves this concentrated attentiveness behind. He smooths your hair back from your face, thumb brushing once across your lower lip.

"You okay?" he asks again. This time it sounds less of a demand and more something he has to know.

You nod. "Better."

"Hn."

A pause. Not awkward. Just him deciding how much he is willing to say.

"You scared me," he mutters at last, looking out at the dark glass. "Not because I thought you couldn’t take care of yourself. I know damn well you can. I just saw you getting stuck out there and knew what it was doing to you."

You go still.

His arm tightens around you. "I hate that shit."

"I know."

"No, you don’t." He clicks his tongue and looks down at you, his expression still fierce even now. "You matter too much for me to stand there while idiots act like buying a ticket means they get a piece of you."

The car turns. Light slides over the scar on his cheek again, the line of his mouth, the stubborn set of him. He is still holding your gaze like it owes him something.

Then he says, "Screw this. I’m done keeping us quiet."

You blink. "What?"

"Us." The word seems to annoy him on principle. "I’m done acting like you’re just my partner when every idiot with internet access already treats us like a package deal anyway."

You push up on one elbow. "Katsuki, the ratings—"

"The ratings can choke."

You laugh before you mean to. He scowls like you have offended him and then, because he is who he is, keeps going.

"I know what’ll happen. I know dumbasses’ll whine about professionalism and favouritism and whatever dumb garbage they can dig up." His hand settles flat on your back. Steady and certain. "I don’t care."

You search his face. "You really mean that?"

He gives you a look that clearly screams don’t insult me.

"I’m not letting a bunch of extras decide what I do with my life." His thumb presses once into your side, grounding both of you. "And I’m sure as hell not standing next to you in public anymore not getting to touch you."

Heat rises in your chest all over again, softer this time and somehow worse for it.

You tuck yourself back against him. "I like that idea..."

In return, you get the tiniest shift in his mouth. Not a smile. Something meaner—more him and all private.

"Good." He looks smug about it for half a second. "Too bad if you didn’t."

By the time the car slows outside the private garage entrance to his building, you are drowsy from the comedown and the low thrum of the engine and the way his fingers keep combing through your hair without him seeming to realise he is doing it. The city can have its rankings and its flashbulbs and its screaming crowds for one more night.

In the dark back seat, held close under his jacket, you let yourself enjoy the first quiet moment you have had all evening.

The itch starts hours before you leave the house.

It makes you short with your mother when she asks you to mend a sleeve, turns the ordinary work of splitting kindling into something you do too hard, too fast, just to burn off the pressure under your skin. Your body has been turning all week—cramps and a mood like sour milk—and right before your cycle comes, you always get this way: restless, hot in places you shouldn’t be thinking about while you’re kneading dough or hauling water.

You think about the blacksmith’s boy’s hands. The way he leaned over the fence yesterday to talk to your brother, forearms tense and veined as they braced on the rough wood, shirt riding up a finger’s width to reveal a golden line of muscle beneath. You went to bed with your thighs pressed together and your breath coming hot and heavy.

You know what you’re supposed to do with these feelings, at least according to your parents. Swallow it down, pray it away, wash it out with cold water and get on with your chores. You’re supposed to wait until a man comes properly to your father, until there’s talk of marriage and dowry, everyone sensible and nodding.

By late afternoon, you can’t stand your own clothes. The hem of your skirt brushes your calves, and you want to rip it off. Every time you bend, the seam between your legs rubs and sends your nerves sparking. You keep your face steady while you ladle stew, while you scrub the bowl, while you say goodnight. Eyes down, voice sweet.

Then you wait until the house settles.

The moment you slip outside, the air has teeth; cold enough to sting your ears. You wrap your shawl tight and move quickly across the yard, past the stacked logs and the chicken coop, toward the tree line where the dark starts to thicken.

You tell yourself you’re only going for a walk. Just to clear your head. You also tuck your hand under your skirt before you’re even properly in the woods, fingers pressing hard between your thighs.

The path is familiar. You’ve been out here a hundred times or more, gathering fallen branches, picking mushrooms, checking snares. It’s not wild country. It’s your village’s woods. The ground smells of damp bark and old leaves that have gone soft. You go deeper anyway, because the shame makes you greedy for as much distance as possible.

You find the little hollow you prefer—behind a large, gnarled oak, where the ground dips and the shrubs tangle thick enough to hide you from the path. There’s a stone there that you can sit on without soaking your skirt. Your heart is thumping as though you’ve done something criminal just by being here by the time you settle on it.

Your hands shake when you lift your skirt. Not because you don’t know what you’re doing. You do. You’ve done it before and hated yourself after, yet you still come back when your body starts making demands you can’t answer in daylight.

You slide your fingers beneath the fabric and find yourself already wet. The relief is immediate. You bite your lip hard enough to taste iron. You keep your eyes fixed on the shrubs in front of you, because if you close them, you see the blacksmith boy’s mouth, and you can’t afford that kind of softness right now.

Your fingers move faster. Your breath fogs. The woods around you fall away until it’s only the pulse inside your skull and the intense, rising line of pleasure that makes you tense as if bracing for a blow.

You’re already close. Too close, too quickly.

The first sound is small—just the faintest crush of something stepping on damp leaf litter.

You freeze with your hand still between your thighs, skirts bunched at your waist, your heart jumping into your throat.

Someone is there.

A picture flashes through your mind so fast you almost laugh from sheer panic: your father’s silhouette, your mother’s lantern, their faces when they find you. The disgust. The shame. Being dragged home by the ear like a naughty child.

Your fingers go numb. You can’t even breathe.

The second sound is heavier. Something weighty shifting, a body sliding through brush that isn’t bothering to be careful.

You lift your head as the shrubs in front of you part.

It isn’t your father. Nor anyone you know.

At first, your mind tries to make him into something human because that’s what minds do when they’re cornered—tries to turn the impossible into a man in strange clothes, a traveller with a helmet, some soldier from a distant place.

Then he steps fully into view, and your stomach drops through the ground.

He is built like a man and not like a man. Too clean in his movements. Too wrong in his skin—dark plates and green sheen that catch what little light there is. A shell crowns his head; a piece of living armour. His eyes are violet, almost glowing, and set in a face that looks more carved than born.

Dark streaks of red stain the obsidian plates of his chest and his forearms. Fresh. Wet enough to shine. His mouth is relaxed, not smiling or grimacing. As though your obvious fear is not even worth reacting to.

Your body finally remembers how to function.

You snatch your skirts down with a jerk that tangles your shawl. You scramble back, palms hitting damp soil, spine slamming against the nearest trunk. A long, jointed tail rises behind him, the dark rings of it visible only when the starlight hits right. It ends in a needle—a stinger—that looks too sharp to belong in the same world as your soft village life. The way he watches makes your skin crawl.

His nostrils flare once, subtly, and his head turns a fraction as if he’s tracking something you can’t see. You realise, with a sick twist in your gut, that he isn’t here by chance.

He’s been following you.

His gaze drops to your hands. To the way your fingers are still curled and slick, as if your body didn’t get the message that you need to stay pure and safe and untouched in the dark. Something in his focus tightens; his attention clamps down. On you.

He takes a step closer, and the air fills with him: the metallic stink of the blood on his skin and something clean and hot, like sun-baked stone. You try to speak. Nothing comes out.

The tail shifts behind him. You flinch. This is it.

But it doesn’t pierce you. It presses into the bark beside your head with a thunk, pinning the sleeve of your shawl against the tree. The tail coils, tightens, and suddenly you are held there without him even having to touch you with his hands.

You gasp. Your shoulders jerk and twist, but there’s nowhere to go. The forest floor is uneven under your feet, the bark rough at your back, the tail a cold line across your body.

You are trembling so hard your teeth chatter. "Please don’t kill me," you whisper, the words pathetic and small. He watches your throat work as you swallow.

Then he leans in.

His face dips to your neck and inhales. The heat of it ghosts across the hollow of your neck. It’s the kind of breath an animal takes when it’s deciding if you’re food.

A sound catches in your chest. Fear floods you all at once, turning your mouth dry.

His head lifts slightly, and for the first time, you see irritation flicker across his face—small and contained, but undeniable. He moves his head lower, his nose skimming the valley of your breasts. When he inhales again, his eyes narrow.

You understand now, with awful clarity: he smelled something on you a moment ago. He followed it. Now your fear is smearing over it like mud, ruining the trail.

His hand comes up. You notice the tiny notches and ridges above his knuckles, the places where something harder than human skin overlaps. His forearms are covered with plates and smooth dark pigment. His hands are functional, but he is not gentle. He grips your jaw and turns your face toward him, positioning you for study.

"Human," he says. He can speak. Though his voice is calm and alien. Stranger than anything you’ve heard before. You flinch at his voice, but he doesn’t seem to care. His gaze sweeps over you—your hair coming loose, your skirts rumpled, your mouth parted and inhaling fast.

His nose dips again, this time to the curve of your ribs, then lower along the line where your shawl gapes open. He is smelling you like you’re a bowl of stew. Your cheeks burn. Shame and terror twist together until you can’t separate them.

The tip of his nose keeps tracing the smell, crouching until he reaches the hollow of your thighs. He hesitates there, nostrils flaring wider now, trying to catalogue the exact architecture of your scent. He hooks a finger under the hem of your skirt and jerks it upward, exposing your damp thighs, the messy proof of your indiscretions.

You jerk, knees knocking. "No. Don’t—" But the sentence dies when his fingertips brush the inside of your thigh. His skin is hot. Human. It shocks you.

He pauses. Not out of consideration for your pleas, but out of attention. He’s noting your reaction.

His eyes stay on your face while his hand moves higher. Your stomach lurches with humiliation. You want to clamp your legs shut, but his tail shifts and spreads you with infuriating ease.

His fingers find what you were doing to yourself.

Your body, still primed for release, reacts with a traitorous throb. You make a sound you hate—thin, breathy, nothing like the strong voice you use in daylight.

His nostrils flare again as he inhales the scent of your arousal, the musk of your upcoming cycle, the sweat of your exertion, and a low, guttural sound rumbles in his chest. Then, the irritation you saw on his face finally eases. Something worse takes its place: curiosity.

"Ah, here," he murmurs, as though he’s confirming a location on a map.

Your eyes sting. You shake your head, frantic. "I—please—"

He doesn’t understand please, not in the way you mean it.

His fingers find the hot wetness of your centre and slide inside you. Do not let him. Run, you tell yourself. But his touch maps something inside you you’ve only ever seen in the private dark: where you like pressure, the angle that makes your breath hitch. He finds the exact rhythm you were using, his fingers expert and precise. He doesn’t touch you with the clumsiness of a village boy. He touches you with the precision of a creature that masters everything he comes across in the space of minutes. Your hand finds his wrist because your whole body is shouting instructions your brain can’t translate.

The terror is still there, screaming in the back of your mind, but the physical sensation is overwhelming. Your hips jerk upward, an instinctive invitation that makes his eyes flash dark with interest. You were already balanced on that edge you’d been chasing in secret, and now the pressure inside your belly cracks and spills and you come faster than you thought possible, a small, searing release that leaves your legs trembling.

Your mouth opens. No sound comes. Your breath turns uneven, ugly, a rhythm you can’t control.

His gaze never leaves you. He is watching the way your lashes tremble, the way your stomach tightens. He makes a noise under his breath that you cannot place.

He stands and leans in close enough that his breath brushes your cheek. His eyes, violet and bright in the dark, hold that same calm confidence you’ve heard about in the priest’s stories when he talks about kings—about men who believe the world belongs to them by right.

"You were producing a strange odour," he says, almost to himself, and then his eyes sharpen. "You attempted to conceal it from me."

You squeeze your eyes shut, cheeks burning. "I didn’t— I wasn’t—"

His fingers press into you again, and your words fracture into a gasp.

Then he pauses abruptly. The contact stops. Something strange happens, something you would never have imagined: your body lurches, startled by the sudden absence.

He observes that like a new datum. For a moment, his face softens into a look that is almost private study—the breadth of a thought moving across a strange mind. He’s learning; teaching himself what your body wants by trial and error. For him, this new variable is something to be tested, measured, and replicated if useful. For you, it is ruinous.

"I understand now," he says, his voice thick with a new edge. "The purpose of this scent."

The tail eases back from the bark. Not fully freeing you, but loosening its claim enough that you could—if you were brave enough—duck away.

He watches you in that sliver of freedom. You expect him to take advantage now that the balance has shifted, but instead he speaks clearly and without flourish: "I intend to enter you." There is no cruelty in the phrasing, only the statement of a plan.

You stare at him. Your mind scrambles. It should make you run. But your legs don’t obey. Your hands shake uselessly at your sides. Your body is still humming, needy and furious, the edge you were on returns, intense and aching. Your body clenches at the image of his alien length sliding inside you, though it’s hard to picture exactly what that would look like. You find yourself glancing down at the space between his legs; it’s flat, plated like the rest of his body. Perhaps he has misunderstood.

He waits. Not long. He has no patience for human hesitation, but he is still testing something, reading you.

You swallow. Your throat feels too tight. It would be lying to say you are not afraid. You are terrified that the act will erase whatever you were before and leave only something else. You are also aware—painfully, shamefully—that your body remembers the shape of his fingers and your hips lift, wanting more.

"I… I want you to stop," you whisper, and it is true, and then, because you are ruined and honest in the dark, you force the next words out through trembling teeth. "And I want you to keep going."

The darkness in his pupils swells as you stare, eating into the violet until it’s only a faint edge. He steps in again. His tail coils around your waist this time, not pinning you to the tree but holding you steady, a belt made of muscle and authority.

His fingers return between your thighs. You sob once, quietly, because relief hits so hard it hurts. Because it’s wrong. Because your body is grateful. He moves with an efficiency that feels obscene—he’s not thinking about his own pleasure yet. He’s thinking about what will make your scent swell the strongest.

Your head knocks back against the bark. Your teeth bite into your lower lip. Your hands scrabble at his forearms, at his shoulders, feeling the solidity of his unusual body. The forest around you is too loud now; your breathing, the rustle of leaves as you jerk, the soft wet sounds you’re desperately trying not to hear.

You are so close you can’t keep your eyes open. Your whole body tightens, trying to pull away and pull closer at the same time. He feels it. His grip changes. His thumb presses in a new place, and your vision blanks, white at the edges.

You cry out this time, and the woods swallow the sound. You come hard enough that your knees nearly fold, but his tail keeps you upright. The rush makes you lightheaded. Your body pulses around his fingers, still desperate to keep the sensation going.

He inhales, deep. The shift in him is immediate. Not tenderness. Not softness. Instinct.

His eyes fix on your face as if you’ve just proven something very important. His hand leaves you again, and you feel cold without it, exposed and shaking.

He shifts his stance, and a seam in the plates at his groin slides open, letting something unfurl. It is not like a man’s body; it is a velvet-green organ, sleek and banded. It looks designed to fit; it looks inevitable. Your stomach drops again, your body reacting even as your mind screams that you should be horrified.

He hauls you down from the tree with the tail around your waist. Your feet skid on damp soil. You land on your knees among damp mulch and broken twigs, skirts bunched, shawl crooked. His tail coils tighter around your waist to hold you in place.

Then, he crouches over you, shadowing you completely, and pins your wrists above your head with one hand. You look up at him, and you see something that makes your blood run colder than the night: not lust the way a human gets it, not romance, not even cruelty.

Possession. Assessment. Decision.

Your lips part, and his gaze flicks to your mouth. He registers it.

Then he moves.

It isn’t a lover’s careful joining. There is a logic to it; to the way his chitin anchors and his tail wraps, to the motion when he enters you in a single, unhesitating thrust. He has decided you’re useful, pressing you into the earth with your skirts shoved up and your legs trembling open, his body fitting to yours with inhuman certainty. Heat and pressure fill you, and your breath breaks on whines you can’t swallow.

The woods spin. It’s pain that knocks you into focus first. He is too large, too warm, impossibly precise. The friction is relentless and somehow arcing into a kind of awful rightness. The bark above your head is rough against your shoulder. The ground is damp and cold under your palms. He is burning where he meets you, an impossible contrast to everything else.

He drives into you with the same ruthlessness he had with his fingers; learning the angle that makes your body jolt, adjusting without asking, holding you steady with his tail so you can’t squirm away from what your nerves are hungry for. There are times when you cannot breathe around the shape of him, and you feel the instinct to rip free and to press closer at once. Your mind catches on a single image: the market, the way you will look at the blacksmith’s boy now, the way the men who used to tilt their hats will stare.

Shame floods you even as desire reclaims the space in your gut. The pleasure is worse because it’s bigger than you’ve ever felt. Your body was built for simple village life, and he is forcing it to hold something it was never meant to.

He watches your face the whole time, violet eyes unblinking, and every time you flinch or moan, he changes something—pace, depth, pressure—until your reactions become predictable. Until your body starts responding before your mind can catch up.

When he quickens, it is a matter of escalation, not violence. You grab at his arm. The plates are smooth and hard under your fingers. You dig your nails in anyway, desperate for something to bite into. By the time you come a third time, your throat is raw from holding back noise. Your body goes liquid.

His jaw tightens. Another tell. He is not indifferent.

His breathing changes, heavier now, a low, rough exhale through his nose as if your scent is pulling something out of him that he didn’t know he carried. He grows louder in a way that is not language; a vibration through his chest that you feel against the curve of your spine. He drives until something inside him tightens and then loosens, and the sensation of him spilling inside you is a pressure that extends from your bones to your teeth.

He does not collapse onto you or soften. Instead, he withdraws, and the chitin plates shift back into place with a neat finality, as if the seam was never there at all. His tail stays cinched at your waist, keeping you close, keeping you where he wants you. The stinger hovers near your thigh, and you cling to the roots, terrified it will pierce you.

It doesn’t. It only reminds you what he is.

Then he rises.

You stare at the forest floor, dazed. Your thighs tremble. Your skirt is a mess. Your hands are dirty with soil and leaves, and you feel turned inside out. The cold bites again now that his heat is gone, and you shiver.

He looks down at you the way you might look down at a calf that surprised you by surviving a hard birth.

"You will come with me," he says.

It isn’t an invitation.

Your stomach twists. Your mind catches up in a rush: your mother’s kitchen, your father’s stern face, the village, the life you were meant to live. You picture yourself vanishing into the woods and never coming back, and the fear finally lands properly.

"No," you whisper, and your voice sounds small even to you. "I can’t. I—I have to go back."

His tail coils around your waist again and lifts you upright with humiliating ease. Your feet leave the ground. Your skirts fall back into place, but there’s no dignity in it; you’re hanging there like a rabbit in a snare.

You gasp, hands grabbing at the tail instinctively. It’s strong. It doesn’t yield.

He leans close. His face is inches from yours, expression unreadable, but his nostrils flare again as he inhales you. He smells the fear, yes. He also smells what’s still clinging to you underneath it, stubborn and bright, and something in his gaze sharpens with satisfaction.

"You are unusual," he says, settling the matter. "You will be observed."

You swallow hard. Tears prick your eyes, half from panic and half from the sick, aching afterglow still pulsing in your body.

You don’t want to go.

You also don’t want him to stop touching you ever again.

The thought makes you feel ill. It makes you feel warm.

He turns away from the hollow, carrying you with him as if you weigh nothing. The woods slide past in dark shapes—ferns, trunks, wet stone—your village somewhere behind you, fading away like a lantern going out.

As the trees thin and the ground begins to slope, he pauses. His head tilts, listening to something far off that you can’t hear; maybe a shout from the village, maybe nothing at all.

Then he looks at you.

Your face is streaked with dirt and tears. Your lips are swollen from biting them. As his gaze takes you in, your skin prickles. You feel naked again.

"Do not attempt to conceal your scent from me again," he says. A command, simple and absolute. "If you do, I will correct you."

Your throat works. You manage a nod because you don’t know what else to do.

You hang in his grip, trembling, heart hammering, the cold air cutting into your lungs—and underneath all of it, deep in your belly, your body still desperately holds onto the memory of him inside you.