#orm marius

You wake up slowly, as though the morning itself is coaxing you back into the world.

At first, there is only warmth. Soft sheets gathered loosely around your body, the faint lingering heat of sleep, and the quiet hush that belongs only to early hours. 

Then, slowly, awareness seeps in. A pale gold light presses against your closed eyelids, insistent yet tender.

When you open your eyes, the room is bathed in colour.

Sunrise has spilt itself generously through the curtains, painting the bedroom in hues of amber and rose, the kind that seem almost too vivid to belong to winter. The shadows are long and delicate, stretched thin across the floor and the rumpled bed.

For a moment, you simply lie there before you stretch.  It is an instinctive thing, almost unthinking, your body arching slightly as sleep loosens its final hold. Your arm drifts across the mattress beside you, seeking without question the familiar solidity that should be there.

Instead - cold.

Your fingers meet only the faintly chilled sheets, the fabric already losing the memory of his warmth.

You frown, not sharp but rather confused. The absence feels louder than it should, as though the room itself has shifted subtly in his absence.

“Ed?” you murmur, your voice still thick with sleep, barely more than a breath in the quiet.

No answer.

You push yourself upright, the blankets slipping from your shoulders as the morning air greets your skin with a coolness that makes you shiver faintly. 

A small smile tugs at your lips despite yourself. He is an early riser - always has been. There is something steady, almost comforting, in that predictability. And yet, this morning, you feel the absence more keenly.

Perhaps because it is Christmas.

The thought settles softly in your mind, bringing with it a quiet warmth that has little to do with the room. 

And suddenly, you find yourself craving something simple and immediate. Coffee. And him. The rich, bitter scent curling through the house, of his arms warm and solid around you, grounding in a way nothing else quite manages. It pulls you fully from the remnants of sleep.

You swing your legs over the side of the bed, your feet meeting the cool floor with a small, involuntary intake of breath.

Wrapping a robe loosely around yourself, you cast one last glance at the sunlit bed before you step out into the quiet house.

You step into the hallway.

Fairy lights have been strung along the railing, their glow soft and unwavering, little constellations brought down to earth. They do not flicker, but hum gently with a steady warmth, casting delicate reflections against polished wood and glass. 

A few ornaments that you insisted on hanging, despite Ed’s mild amusement, catch the light and scatter it in quiet, prismatic fragments across the walls.

You remember decorating them together.

It had not been a hurried task, nor a particularly efficient one. He had handed you things instead of placing them himself, watching more than working, as though the act mattered less to him than the way you smiled while doing it.

The Christmas tree stands in the middle of the living room.

It may be a bit too large for the space, although neither of you was willing to admit that when you brought it home. It reaches almost to the ceiling, its branches full and unapologetically alive. The deep green is now softened by a careful layer of lights. Not the garish kind, but warm ones - golden, almost candle-like in their glow

They wind through the branches in patient spirals, illuminating the ornaments you had chosen together. Some are delicate glass, catching the firelight and the morning sun alike; others are older, more worn, carrying the quiet weight of years. A few hang slightly crooked, placed with more enthusiasm than precision, and left that way because neither of you had thought it worth correcting.

There is a small wooden angel near the top, slightly off-centre. You had gently argued about before deciding together that its imperfection suited it.

Tinsel, used sparingly, drapes here and there like frost caught mid-fall. And at the very tips of some branches, a dusting of artificial snow clings.

You find yourself smiling.

It is your first Christmas as a married couple.

The fireplace crackles softly to one side, its flames steady and low.

Above the fireplace, the mantle is decorated with a garland of evergreen that stretches across its length, threaded with warm lights. It features small, thoughtful touches: candles, a few ornaments, and a pair of stockings hanging side by side.

Yours and his. They gently brush against each other where they hang.

Outside the window, the world is hushed beneath falling snow.

It drifts steadily, thick enough now to soften the edges of everything outside, turning the world into something quieter, gentler. The glass has begun to fog faintly at the corners, the warmth inside pushing gently against the cold beyond.

And beneath the tree lay presents. Not an overwhelming number, but enough.

Each one wrapped with a kind of deliberate care, paper smoothed neatly, ribbons tied with quiet precision. A few bear small imperfections, creases where the paper had folded awkwardly, corners not quite as sharp as intended, but those only make them feel more real, more yours.

For a moment, you simply stand there, taking it in: the light, the warmth, the quiet evidence of shared effort and shared life.

Ed sits on the couch as though he has been there for some time, not restless, but waiting in that patient, grounded way that seems so entirely his. 

The firelight catches him first, tracing warm gold along the edges of his figure before the morning light from the windows finds him too, softening everything it touches.

He is still in his pyjamas.

A plain white shirt, slightly rumpled from sleep, clings just enough to hint at the warmth beneath it - simple, unassuming, and yet somehow unfairly distracting in its simplicity. The sleeves are short, the fabric is worn soft with time, and it deliciously highlights those big arms of his.

His checkered pants sit low and comfortable, as though he had dressed without thinking, more concerned with the moment than appearance.

And his hair is still unruly.

Not styled, not tamed, but left as sleep had made it, falling slightly out of place in a way that feels so quietly intimate it makes your chest tighten, just a little.

For a moment, you simply stand there in the doorway, watching him.

There is a box in his lap.

Wrapped.

Carefully, though not perfectly - one corner folded just slightly off, the ribbon tied with more determination than precision. His hands rest lightly on either side of it, not fidgeting, but not entirely still either, as though he has been aware of your absence and the anticipation of your return in equal measure.

He looks up then.

“Good morning,” you say softly, your voice carrying a warmth now that had been missing moments before.

His face changes. Ed’s eyes soften, something bright and unmistakably fond settling into them, and then he smiles.

Open, warm and immediate. The kind of smile that feels as though it belongs entirely to you in that moment.

“Good morning,” he replies, his voice low, still roughened faintly by sleep.

There is a small pause, just long enough to take you in properly, as though he is making sure you are really there, standing in the doorway with the morning wrapped around you.

Then, softer: “Merry Christmas.”

The words are simple, but they settle into the room with a kind of quiet significance, threading themselves through the light, the fire, the scent of pine and coffee.

His gaze lingers on you for a moment longer, something unspoken passing through it - something warm, something certain - before one hand lifts slightly from the gift in his lap.

An unspoken invitation to come closer.

You hesitate only a second before crossing the room, drawn in by him in a way that feels both natural and inevitable.

The floor is warm beneath your feet here, kissed by the fire, and as you move closer, the details of him sharpen. The faint crease in his shirt, the way his fingers rest against the edge of the box, the quiet steadiness in the way he watches you approach.

You lower yourself onto the couch beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushes his and your gaze drops to the box in his lap.

Your brow furrows slightly.

“…Ed,” you begin, a small note of confusion threading through your voice as you glance back up at him, “isn’t this… a little early for this?”

There’s something almost amused in the way you say it, but it’s genuine too. Habit lingers: Christmas mornings filled with noise, with family, with the slow, shared ritual of waiting until everyone is gathered.

A slow, knowing smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, subtle at first, then deepening just enough to betray that he has been expecting exactly this reaction.

He shifts slightly beside you, turning just enough that his knee brushes yours, his body angling toward you in a way that feels deliberate without being forced.

“Yeah,” he says, voice low, edged with something warm and teasing. “I know how it’s usually done.”

There’s a beat.

His gaze lingers on you - not fleeting, not distracted, but steady, intent, as though he’s choosing his next words carefully… or perhaps enjoying the moment just a little too much.

“But this isn’t usually.”

Your breath catches, just slightly.

He watches it happen. Of course he does.

That smirk shifts into something gentler, though no less dangerous in its own quiet way. His thumb brushes absently along the edge of the ribbon, not looking at it, his attention entirely on you.

“It’s our first Christmas,” he continues, voice dipping just a fraction, “as a married couple.”

The words settle between you, heavier now, more deliberate.

His shoulder presses a little more firmly against yours - not enough to trap, but enough to anchor.

“And,” he adds, tilting his head just slightly, eyes flicking over your face with a softness that contrasts the teasing curve of his mouth, “you’ve been a little… stressed lately.”

There’s something in the way he says it - not accusing, not even questioning but rather observing.

Your lips part, perhaps to protest, perhaps to dismiss it - but he doesn’t quite give you the chance.

His hand shifts, just barely, brushing against yours where it rests between you on the couch. The contact is light, almost accidental in appearance, but it lingers just long enough to be anything but.

“So,” he says, quieter now, his voice carrying that low, familiar warmth that seems to settle somewhere just beneath your skin, “I figured I’d do something about that.”

His eyes meet yours again - steady, unwavering.

And then, with the faintest lift of one brow, the smirk returning in full.

“What?” he murmurs, voice soft, teasing, unmistakably flirty now. “You gonna tell me I’m not allowed to spoil my wife a little?”

His blue eyes sparkle with mischief, that bright smile widening just a touch as he nods toward the box. “Go on, open it. It’s all for you.”

He doesn’t shift an inch, keeping the box firmly in place over his crotch, his body heat radiating through the thin material.

Curiosity piqued, you reach for the ribbon, your fingers brushing the edge of the box. 

You untie the bow and lift the lid, a soft gasp escapes your lips. 

There, nestled in the tissue paper like the most forbidden present, is Ed’s cock - thick and hard, poking up through a cleverly cut hole in the bottom of the box. 

The shaft stands proud, veined and flushed a deep pink, curving slightly toward you with a glossy bead of precum glistening at the swollen tip. 

It’s girthy, easily filling the space, the smooth skin stretched taut over the rigid length, his heavy balls tucked just below, peeking out from the opening in his pants that he’s obviously freed himself from. 

Ed  chuckles, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrates through his chest. “Surprise, sweetheart. Merry fucking Christmas. See how hard I got just thinking about you opening this? Your present’s been waiting all morning for you...”

He shifts his hips ever so slightly, making his cock twitch in the box, the tip brushing the edge of the tissue paper. 

“Go ahead, touch it. Wrap your hand around my fat dick and feel how much I want to pound into you right here on the floor, make you forget every damn worry. Or maybe slide your mouth down on it - suck me off like the naughty wife you are while I watch those pretty lips stretch around me.”

His voice drops lower, laced with hunger, as his free hand guides yours toward the box. “What do you say? Ready to unwrap the rest of your gift?”

Your eyes widen in genuine surprise, a bubble of laughter escaping your lips before you can stop it - nervous, delighted, and utterly turned on all at once. 

The audacity of it hits you like a warm wave, your cheeks flushing hot as you stare at Ed's exposed cock in that ridiculous, genius gift box. 

It's so him: playful yet filthy, knowing exactly how to catch you off guard and ignite that spark low in your belly. Your heart races, a mix of shock and arousal pooling between your thighs, making your pussy clench with anticipation. 

“Ed! Oh my god,” you manage between giggles, shaking your head in disbelief, but your gaze lingers on the thick cock, already imagining how it would feel sliding inside you.

Ed’s bright smile turns downright predatory, his blue eyes darkening with lust as he watches your reaction.

“Yeah, laugh it up, baby. But I see that look - you're soaked already, aren't you? Thinking about how my big cock’s gonna fill you up, make you scream my name while I fuck you senseless under this tree before our families arrive.” His voice is a gravelly whisper, dripping with promise, as he reaches for your hand, his strong fingers wrapping around yours with gentle insistence. 

He guides your palm downward, pressing it against the warm, velvety skin of his shaft. The heat of him sears into you, the rigid girth throbbing under your touch, veins pulsing as you instinctively curl your fingers around it. His dick is heavy, the precum slicking your skin as you give it a tentative stroke.

A low groan rumbles from his chest, his hips bucking slightly into your grip. 

“Fuck, that's it...stroke my cock like you own it, wife. Feel how hard you make me? Been dreaming of your tight mouth wrapped around the head, sucking me deep while I tangle my fingers in your hair and thrust down your throat.” 

His words send shivers racing down your spine, your laughter fading into a soft moan as arousal floods your cunt, your nipples hardening against the fabric of your robe.

You pump him slowly, savouring the way he twitches in your hand, the salty scent of his arousal filling the air, making your mouth water. Every glide of your fist heightens the ache between your legs, your clit throbbing with need.

After a few more teasing strokes, Ed’s breath hitches, his free hand abandoning your arm to grip the edge of the box. 

“Enough playing, sweetheart. Time to taste your present.” With a swift motion, he lifts the lid and shoves the box aside, his cock springing free.

The sight makes your pulse pound, desire overriding any lingering surprise as you lean forward without hesitation, your robe slipping open slightly. 

Your lips part, tongue flicking out to lap at the tip, over the salty bead there before you take him in - stretching your mouth around the swollen head, hollowing your cheeks as you suck him deeper. 

He fills you so perfectly, the musky flavour exploding on your tongue, and you hum in pleasure, your hand still working the base while waves of heat build inside you, eager for whatever comes next.

Ed’s fingers thread through your hair, gripping firmly at the roots as he tilts your head back just enough to meet your eyes, his gaze smouldering with that mix of affection and raw hunger. 

“Look at you, baby - already so eager for my cock down your throat. But let’s see how much you can handle this morning. Tap my thigh if it's too much, okay? I want you to take it all for me.” His voice is a husky command, laced with teasing challenge, sending a fresh rush of heat through your veins. 

You're nodding before you even realise it, the thrill of his control making your pussy throb, slickness gathering as you relax your jaw wider around him.

He eases in shallow at first, his hips rocking gently to slide just the head past your lips, letting you swirl your tongue along the underside while he watches your every reaction. 

The velvety texture drags against your mouth, his precum mixing with your saliva, and you moan softly, the vibration drawing a sharp hiss from him. 

His free hand cups your cheek, thumb brushing your stretched lips, the tenderness contrasting the building intensity as he pushes a little further, testing your limits with each incremental thrust.

Your body responds instinctively, arousal coiling tighter in your core, as you hollow your cheeks and take him deeper. 

The stretch starts to build, his thickness pressing against the back of your throat, but you’re so into it - the way he fills you, the power dynamic that makes your clit ache for friction. 

He talks more now, words tumbling out in a gravelly stream as his grip tightens. “Fuck, your mouth’s so hot and wet, swallowing me like a good little wife. Deeper now - relax that throat for me, let me bury my dick all the way in.”

His hips snap forward with more force, driving past your gag reflex, the intrusion deeper than he's ever gone before.

The sensation borders on uncomfortable, your throat constricting around the invading girth, muscles fluttering as you fight to breathe through your nose. 

Saliva pools and spills from the corners of your mouth, dripping down your chin in messy strings, but the discomfort only heightens the pleasure surging through you - waves of endorphins mixing with the burn, making your thighs clench together for relief. 

You gag wetly on the next push, the filthy, choking sound echoing in the quiet living room, but he doesn't stop, holding you steady as he grinds in further. 

“Gag on it, sweetheart. I love hearing those slutty noises. You’re taking me so well, throat, squeezing my cock like it’s begging for my load.”

Tears prick at your eyes from the effort, but you’re lost in the intensity, drool slicking his shaft and balls as you manage to take every last inch, your nose brushing his trimmed pubic hair. 

The fullness is overwhelming, your body trembling with the effort to accommodate him, yet the ache in your pussy intensifies, turning the almost-pain into pure, electric need. He fucks your mouth relentlessly now, pace quickening as wet slurps and gurgles fill the air, his balls slapping lightly against your chin with each deep plunge. 

“All of me, baby…Fuck, you’re perfect. Gonna cum so hard watching you choke on my dick like this.”

His rhythm falters, breaths coming in ragged pants, and you feel him swell impossibly thicker against your tongue. 

With a guttural groan, he pulls back just enough before cumming, half his length still buried in your mouth. Hot spurts flood your tongue first, salty and thick, coating your throat as you swallow what you can, the taste exploding with his essence. 

He yanks free on the next pulse, ropes of cum painting your lips, cheeks, and chin in sticky white streaks, some landing warm on your closed eyelids. 

You gasp for air, chest heaving, the mess dripping down your neck as aftershocks ripple through you, your own arousal at a fever pitch, body buzzing from the raw claim he’s just made.

Ed’s chest heaves as he stares down at you, his blue eyes darkening with a potent mix of satisfaction and lingering desire.

Cum glistens on your skin, warm trails cooling against your flushed cheeks and neck, while the remnants in your mouth pool thickly on your tongue. 

He doesn’t let the moment fade; instead, he cups your jaw gently, thumb swiping across your lower lip to gather a stray rope of his release. 

“Open up for me, love. Don’t waste a drop. Show me how much you love tasting me.” His voice dips low, coaxing rather than commanding, but the heat in it stirs the fire still smoldering in your belly.

You part your lips obediently, letting him slide his thumb inside, pressing the salty essence against your tongue. 

Obediently, you close around the digit, sucking softly to draw it clean. 

He watches intently, a soft groan escaping him when you swallow, the motion visible in the bob of your throat. “Good girl,” he murmurs, repeating the gesture with his fingers, scooping more from your chin and feeding it to you bit by bit. 

Each swallow sends a shiver through you, your body humming with submission, pussy clenching emptily as you take every salty bit he offers, eyes locked on his until the mess is mostly gone, leaving only faint shiny streaks.

Once he’s satisfied, Ed pulls you up into his lap, his strong arms wrapping around your waist to tuck you against his broad chest. 

The white shirt clings to his skin, damp from the intensity, and you can feel the steady thump of his heart under your palm as you rest your head on his shoulder. 

He grabs a nearby throw blanket from the couch, draping it over both of you, his hands roaming soothingly - stroking your back, brushing tangled hair from your face, wiping the last traces from your eyelids with the soft fabric.

“You were incredible, baby. So brave taking all of me like that. Merry Christmas. Couldn't think of a better way to start our day.” His words are tender, laced with that bright smile you adore, as he presses a kiss to your forehead, then your temple, nuzzling into your hair with affectionate hums.

But even in the afterglow, one hand drifts lower, palming your ass through the thin robe, squeezing the flesh as he shifts you closer, his semi-hard cock pressing insistently against your thigh. 

"Fuck, you’re so wet for me, aren’t you? I can feel it soaking through.” He nips at your earlobe, breath hot as his fingers tease the hem of your robe, dipping just inside to trace the slick folds of your pussy. 

The pet names were new too. A welcome addition that never failed to make your heart race. 

“Stop reading over my shoulder then- agh-”

You grumble in faux annoyance when his hand pinches at the vulnerable softness of your side. You attempt to pinch back, but the attack proves to be futile considering the durability of Atlantean skin, meaning not an ounce of ticklishness lived in the prince’s body. 

“You know not to test me, human-”

“You know not to use that name with me, blondie-”

Orm lets out a bemused chuckle, his elbow pressing against yours as he adjusts his seating on the couch. He presses closer to you, though you don’t mind, letting your shoulder rest against him. 

“My apologies, little one. Sometimes I forget about your…delicate sensibilities.”

“Not delicate, I just won’t take any shit from you, fish boy.”

Your words hold no real malice, a smile playing on your lips as you attempt to get back to what you’re reading. 

Orm found himself relishing in moments like this with you - the easy and comfortable silence that falls over you both. A comfort that he was not able to give himself when he was thought to be rightful heir to the throne of Atlantis. He was, more often than not, forced to live amidst the chaos that came with being a royal - the bustling lifestyle that he had grown accustomed to. Although he was clearly leadership oriented and was a capable prince, he had never stopped to ask himself if he played his role because he truly enjoyed it, or simply because of duty - duty to the ghost of his father’s wrath and to the mother he had once thought dead. 

It was moments like this, with you, that made him try to think on where exactly he used to source his joy from. 

“Hm, that you don’t.”

More comfortable silence passes over you two as you co-read, nothing but the chirping birds and bristling leaves to add soundtrack to the scene. However, the way you fidget against the cushion and the fact that you have been looking at the same page for an extended amount of minutes puts Orm on alert.

“You are thinking very loudly.”

“M’fine, scales.”

Orm closes his book at your stubbornness, turning his body fully so that he faces you as you pretend to be engrossed in your story.

“Out with it.”

You withhold your groan at Orm’s attentiveness, closing your own book before looking at the Atlantean who waits for you to speak. 

“Tom is having a barbeque this weekend - it’s kind of an annual thing. I know he’s still a sore subject, but would you maybe wanna come-”

“I don’t think that’s wise, little one.”

You wince at his quick response, though you already expected the rejection.

“C’mon, Orm, the Sampsons will be there! So, you’ll know someone aside from me-” 

Orm’s heavy hand lands on your thigh, quelling any of your suggestions as he squeezes above your knee.

“I do appreciate your Herculean efforts to help me assimilate into society, but it is not a good idea to put me in the same room as that man-”

You whack Orm in the shoulder for his poor choice of words.

“That man has a name, and he is one of the few good ones that I know. If you don’t wanna come with me, fine, but I suggest you ease up on how you talk about him.”

You scooch an inch or so away from Orm as you turn back to your book, the small distance feeling like a great canyon to the Atlantean. 

Orm sighs to himself upon realizing the offense he’s laid towards your close friend’s father, moving closer on the couch to gain your attention. It had become clear to him that Tom had become a solid pillar in your life over the course of you relocating back to Amnesty Bay. While Orm still felt a sting in his heart at the mention of him, he knew just how important he was to you.

“Little one?

Your gaze stays trained on the pages of your book, knees kicked up to your chest.

“Do not ignore me, you know that does not end well.”

Your nose practically turns up at Orm’s gentle warning, making no move to acknowledge the Atlantean. 

“I understand that Arthur’s father is important to you, truly, but please see that I only wish to not make the festivities…uncomfortable.”

Orm’s hand comes up to brush a strand of your hair behind your ear, a gesture that had become familiar in this “friendship” you two had built. The book in your hand folds slightly, telling Orm that your eyes were slowly averting from the pages.

“He…he serves as a reminder of why my mother was banished - him and Arthur. While I am coming to terms with what they mean to her, I cannot put on a smile for them just yet.”

You let out a soft sigh at his words, your downturned eyes landing on him. You discard your book on the coffee table, taking one of Orm’s large hands into your own. 

“I know that, honey, and I don’t want you to force yourself either, but Tom’s a really good guy. Maybe, if we keep you separated for a bit - y’know, put you guys in separate rooms so you don’t have to say hi-”

“That will be quite enough.”

The sharpness in his tone nearly makes you reel back. You knew where he was coming from and you thought he had every right to be apprehensive, but a part of you felt pulled in different directions now that you and Orm were keeping up a better relationship. You hadn’t visited the Curry house in weeks, and while you didn’t blame Orm, you couldn’t help but feel like a part of you was missing when separated from them.

Still, the last thing you wanted was to make Orm uncomfortable in his temporary home.

“Right. Sorry. I…won’t push again.”

You return your gaze to your book, trying to stamp down the subtle ache in your chest at his response.

A pang of guilt hits the blonde when you suddenly go quiet, the lack of your chirpiness a sore reminder of the effects of his temper.  

“Little one, I am sorry for the harshness of my words, but you must understand the position I would be put in if I did go.”

You can barely keep up your silence for more than half a minute, immediately turning to look at Orm with soft, saddened eyes and a heavy heart. 

“I know. Yeah, I know, Orm. You're right, m’sorry for bringing it up. I just can’t help but be a bit…hopeful? I mean, we’ve been getting on so well and I just thought that if you could tolerate me then maybe…” Your words trail off. “...but that’s not fair of me to suggest. M’sorry-”

Orm cuts your apology off short with a hand coming up to your face, his thumb softly tracing the swell of your cheekbone. 

“You have nothing to be sorry about. You’re sweet. That’s good.”

You roll your eyes at the subtle praise in hopes that the gesture will mask how warm his proximity makes you.

“Oh? Is it not weak of me to be? Too human?” You retort sarcastically.

Orm chortles at that, his thumb maintaining a leisure pace running along your cheek. 

“No. It’s refreshing…and warm…and…”

You and Orm had more of these moments too - moments where you would just look at each other in silence. There’s no undertone of fear or creepiness in them - just peace. 

“And…?”

“And-” Orm suddenly rises from the couch with a cough, his book tucked under his arm as he straightens up his posture. “-and I’m going to the porch for some air.” 

The moment ends just as it begins as the Atlantean hurries off to the side porch, the door rattling slightly due to the quickness in which Orm closed it. 

You huff to yourself in disbelief, unsure of how such a quiet moment could be cut so abruptly. With a shrug, you lay yourself over your couch, hoping to drown out your anxious thoughts within the pages of the book, completely unaware of how heavy the Atlantean is breathing on the porch just outside.

(end of preview)

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The Warren sedan came up the gravel drive with a slow and deliberate crunch, its dark body catching the afternoon light in long, wavering reflections. It was an old thing, broad and heavy, the sort of car that seemed less driven than brought to bear upon a place.

The engine ticked softly beneath the hood as it cooled. Somewhere beyond the hedges, cicadas rasped in the summer heat, their sound thin and ceaseless, like a wire drawn too tight. 

The house stood at the end of the drive, larger now than it had seemed in the photographs you had mailed weeks before. Time had gathered upon it with an almost visible patience as ivy clung to the weathered boards. One shutter hung a little crooked, rattling in the wind. The upstairs windows reflected the pale sky without giving anything of themselves away.

Then the driver’s door opened, and a man stepped out with an ease that did not belong to the house at all.

Ed Warren was not what your imagination, sharpened by weeks of bad sleep, had prepared for. 

Tall, broad through the shoulders, composed in a way that made the air around him seem steadier. The dark green polo he wore clung lightly across his chest before falling loose at the waist. 

The sleeves ended well above the elbow, exposing forearms marked by sun and work alike. When he reached back into the car, the muscles in his arms shifted beneath the fabric with an easy strength that made the heavy equipment appear deceptively light. 

His jacket rested over one arm despite the warmth of the afternoon, and at the open collar of his shirt a silver cross lay against his chest, shifting almost imperceptibly with each breath. When the sun found it, it flashed for only an instant before disappearing again.

His hair was dark and carefully combed back, and strong sideburns framed his jaw.

He was, you realised with some annoyance, a remarkably handsome man.

Not in the polished, self-conscious fashion of actors or magazine covers, but with the quiet attractiveness of someone entirely unaware of it. There was nothing rehearsed in the way he carried himself. No studied confidence. No expectation that he would be looked at.

And maybe just because of that, you found yourself looking.

He looked ordinary.

That was what unsettled you first.

Not because he was plain. But he looked like a man one might meet at a church picnic, or outside a school, or beside a stalled car on the road. A man who would ask if you needed help before you had to ask for it.

Not a television ghost hunter. Not a man chasing proof. Not someone eager to name the darkness before he had listened to the people living inside it.

Just a man.

The sort of man who smiled before he spoke, and that made it unexpectedly difficult to look away from him. It seemed an entirely inappropriate time to discover that the man you had invited to investigate your haunting was, in fact, exceedingly handsome. 

It was absurd.

For weeks, your thoughts had been consumed by footsteps where no one stood, doors opening of their own accord, whispers that dissolved whenever you tried to follow them. You had invited one of the country’s most respected paranormal investigators to your home because you feared something inhuman might be sharing it with you.

And your first coherent impression of him was that he had remarkably broad shoulders and astonishingly blue eyes.

You looked away almost at once, mildly irritated with yourself for doing so.

“You must be Miss…?”

His voice carried easily across the drive, warm and steady without ever becoming overly familiar, and when he extended his hand, there was such effortless sincerity in the gesture that you accepted it almost before realising you had moved.

You gave him your name.

His handshake was firm, and his palm warm and rough enough to betray years spent carrying equipment, repairing things, and working with his hands rather than merely writing about such work.

“Ed Warren,” he said with an easy smile, though there was hardly any need for the introduction. “Thank you for inviting me.”

It should have sounded strange. Who thanked someone for asking them to come to a haunted house?

Yet there was no false politeness in it. Only a sincere and almost disarming kindness, as though he understood that the invitation had cost you something.

“I’m sorry Lorraine couldn’t make it,” he said as he reached back into the sedan for another case, his voice carrying the sort of easy steadiness that seemed to belong more to bright kitchens and Sunday afternoons than to the shadowed front of your house. “She’s helping with a family matter today. She sends her apologies.”

“It’s alright,” you replied, though the words came out with less certainty than you would have liked.

“I told her I’d manage.”

There was no boastfulness in the statement, no careless dismissal of what you had written to him about, no masculine bravado offered up before a frightened woman and a decaying house. 

He did not look at the place as if it were harmless, nor did he look at you as if fear itself were an embarrassment. Instead, his gaze moved over the porch, the windows, the drawn curtains and warped boards with the sober attention of a man regarding a storm that had not yet broken. 

He seemed to understand that whatever waited inside was not to be mocked or underestimated, but neither did he appear inclined to surrender to it before he had even crossed the threshold.

That should have reassured you only in the ordinary sense. Instead, it unsettled you in another way entirely.

There was something deeply, inconveniently attractive in that calm. 

Perhaps it was the breadth of him against the uneasy stillness of the house, or the way the summer light caught along the strong line of his forearm when he moved, or the simple fact that he seemed so solid where everything in your life had lately become uncertain. 

The dark green polo pulled slightly across his upper arms, and you noticed the vein running over his biceps.

You looked away before he could catch you looking.

The porch boards groaned beneath your feet as you led him towards the door, and the sound seemed too loud in the waiting afternoon.

“I should probably warn you,” you said, attempting a laugh that emerged thinner and more brittle than you intended, “it usually starts after sunset.”

His expression changed only slightly, but you felt the whole of his attention settle upon you.

“Usually?”

“The footsteps.”

He nodded once, not with surprise, and not with disbelief, but with that careful patience which had already begun to make you feel both safer and more exposed than you wished to be.

“When did they begin?”

You fitted the key into the lock, though your hand hesitated before turning it.

“About three months ago.”

“No renovations?”

“No.”

“No work done in the walls, the pipes, the roof?”

You shook your head.

“No deaths in the family? No illness? No objects brought into the house before it started?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

He listened while you spoke, and that too became oddly difficult. 

You had expected questions, perhaps even professional scepticism, but you had not expected to be watched with such complete and gentle attention. He did not pounce upon your answers as if each might prove some theory of his own. He did not scribble over your fear in a notebook. He allowed you the time to speak badly and still be understood, and that was somehow more intimate than comfort should have been.

Then, very gently, he said, “You haven’t been sleeping.”

The observation stopped you just inside the hall.

“What?”

“The circles under your eyes,” he pointed out, not unkindly, but with awareness.

Heat rose into your face at once, absurd and swift, made worse by the fact that his voice contained no judgment. You became conscious of it, all at once, of your own appearance, of the sleeplessness you had tried to disguise, of the way you must have looked to him standing there in the stale, dim air of your own front hall.

“I’ve managed.”

“I don’t think you’ve had much choice.”

There was no pity in his expression, and that caught you off guard. Pity could have been defended against or have been resented and pushed aside. But this was just concern, plain and unadorned, and it had the terrible softness of something you had not permitted yourself to want.

You had not realised how badly you needed someone to notice.

The air inside the house was cooler than outside, but not with the blessed coolness of shade after heat. This was a denser cold, one that seemed to have lingered too long without movement. 

It lay beneath the staircase and along the closed doors; it collected in the corners where the afternoon shadows had become too still, and even the dust motes turning in the weak light seemed reluctant to drift.

Ed paused, and his gaze moved slowly around the foyer, but there was nothing dramatic in the gesture. He did not stare at every darkened corner as though expecting a face to form there, nor did he raise his voice or lower it for effect. 

He merely took in the house with quiet precision: the family photographs along the wall, the scuffed stair rail, the dust gathered at the baseboards, the worn runner on the floor, the grandfather clock standing silent against the far wall.

“You stopped winding it?” he asked.

You blinked. “How did you know?”

“It hasn’t stopped at twelve.”

You looked at the clock properly for the first time in what might have been weeks.

Half past four.

“I didn’t even notice.”

A faint smile touched his mouth, not amused, not condescending, only gentle once again.

“People stop noticing ordinary things when they’ve been frightened for a long time.”

The words settled in you with uncomfortable precision. 

They were not grand words, nor especially strange ones, and yet they seemed to find their way beneath every excuse you had made for yourself. You had stopped winding the clock. You had stopped opening certain curtains. You had stopped going upstairs after dark unless you had no choice. 

One by one, without ceremony, the ordinary territories of your life had been surrendered.

“So,” he said, setting one of the equipment cases on the dining room table with a soft, careful thud, “would you mind showing me where you’ve experienced the most activity?”

You showed him the kitchen first, where cabinet doors had begun to stand open in the mornings despite your certainty that you had shut them the night before. Then the hall, where the light flickered even after you changed the bulb. Then the staircase, where footsteps crossed the upper landing almost every night, slow and deliberate, though no one lived above you and no one had reason to walk there.

He asked practical questions as you moved from room to room. Times. Patterns. Temperatures. Drafts. Whether the neighbours had heard anything unusual. Whether you had pets. Whether the activity worsened when you were alone, or tired, or frightened. 

His voice remained calm through it all, but it was not detached. He had a way of listening that made every answer feel as if it had been placed carefully into his hands.

Never once did he make you feel silly.

By the time he began unpacking his cameras and recording equipment, some of the nervousness you had carried all afternoon had, almost against your will, begun to loosen. It did not disappear; the house would not allow that. But it had shifted, making room for another awareness, one you were far less prepared to admit to.

Because Ed Warren, for all his calmness, kindness, and grave professional attention, was still very difficult not to notice.

The room was dimmer now than it had been when you entered, and in that softening light, he looked even more solid, more disarmingly human. 

His sleeves sat snug around his arms when he reached to unfold a tripod, and the movement drew your eyes before you could stop yourself. 

There was strength in the width of his shoulders, in the broadness of his hands, in the way he handled each piece of equipment with a controlled ease that suggested he knew precisely how much force was required and never used more than that. The silver cross shifted at his chest when he bent over the case, catching a pale glimmer of light from the window.

“You don’t have to help,” he said, glancing over.

“I’d rather stay busy.”

Something softened in his face, and you had the unsettling impression that he understood the confession beneath the words: that standing still in this house allowed too many things to catch up with you.

You picked up one of the cases before he could protest. But the handle slipped immediately when it was heavier than it looked. Before it could strike the hardwood floor, another hand caught it.

His.

For one brief second, both of you held the weight together, your fingers caught near his on the worn leather handle. You looked up, and the nearness of him struck you with such sudden force that the room itself seemed to narrow.

He was closer than you had realised.

Close enough that the details of him became inescapable: the faint scent of aftershave beneath coffee and old leather, the neat darkness of his hair with only a few grey strands, the sideburns framing his face, the small lines at the corners of his eyes, the warmth radiating from him in the cool, unpleasant air of the house. 

Close enough to see the silver cross resting against his chest, moving with the measured rise and fall of his breathing. Close enough that you became aware not only of his strength, but of your own hand still holding the case beside his, and of the fact that neither of you had stepped back as quickly as you might have done.

For an instant, the house receded.

The cold corners, the silent clock, the upstairs landing, the footsteps that would come after sunset, all of it seemed to draw away, leaving only the absurd intimacy of shared weight and his quiet gaze upon your face.

“You alright?” he asked.

His voice was low, meant only for you, though there was no one else in the room to hear it.

You realised you were still looking at him.

“Yeah,” you said, and the softness of your own voice betrayed you.

He released the handle first, though not abruptly. His fingers withdrew from yours with a care that made the brief contact feel more deliberate than it had any right to be.

“Let’s not have our first casualty be my equipment,” he said.

You laughed, and the sound surprised you because it was real.

His smile deepened at once, slow and warm, and for a moment, he looked not like the man who had come to confront whatever haunted your house, but like someone who had been pleased to find you still capable of laughter.

“There,” he said, lifting the case safely onto the table. “That already sounds better.”

“What does?”

“You.”

The silence that followed was not awkward, but it was not simple either. Something had shifted, almost imperceptibly, and you felt it in the way he looked at you and then looked away, in the way you became suddenly conscious of the space between you, in the way the house seemed to hold its breath around that small, impossible warmth.

Outside, the afternoon light dimmed as clouds slowly drew over the sun.

Then, somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

Neither of you had moved.

_____

For the next hour, Ed Warren turned your house into something that hovered uneasily between a chapel and a laboratory.

He moved through the rooms with the practised efficiency of a man who had learned, over many years, that fear became less shapeless once it was measured. 

Cases were carried from one place to another, latches pressed open beneath his thumb, lids lifted, wires uncoiled, tripods unfolded, and cameras positioned with a care so exact it seemed almost ritualistic. 

There were tape recorders, thermometers, small black instruments whose purpose you did not know, and lengths of cable that he laid along walls and beneath furniture with patient, workmanlike precision. 

A camera in the dining room, its glass eye trained toward the hallway.

A tape recorder at the foot of the stairs, where the first steps so often began.

A thermometer near the kitchen doorway, where the cold spots gathered in the evenings like invisible water.

Another camera facing the staircase.

You followed him more than you intended.

At first, you permitted yourself the sensible explanation that this was after all your house and that you had every right to know what was being done within it. You told yourself it was practical to learn where the wires lay, where the cameras pointed, what instruments might begin clicking or whirring after dark. 

But explanations, however sensible, have a way of becoming transparent when one stands too close to the truth, and after a while, you could no longer pretend that practicality was the whole of it.

The truth was that Ed Warren made the rooms feel less hostile by merely standing in them.

It was ridiculous, and you knew it was ridiculous. 

He had not altered the house in any fundamental way. The wallpaper still curled at the seams where damp had found it. The grandfather clock still stood silent in the foyer like a witness that had refused to speak. The upstairs hall still waited above you with its stale darkness and its listening doors. 

Yet with Ed moving from room to room, broad-shouldered and calm, his dark green polo drawn slightly across his chest whenever he bent over a case, his muscular arms flexing, the house seemed, for the moment at least, to have been compelled into obedience.

“Do you always do this alone?” you asked as he adjusted the height of one tripod.

He glanced up from the camera, and the soft light from the window found the side of his face, catching along the strong line of his cheek and the dark sweep of his carefully combed hair.

“Not usually.”

“Lorraine helps?”

“She does.” His mouth softened when he said her name, not in a way that felt distant or unreachable, but with the quiet fondness of a man acknowledging a truth so established it required no display. “She sees things I don’t.”

“And what do you see?”

The question escaped before you could decide whether it was too personal.

Ed paused with one hand still resting on the tripod, his fingers curled loosely around the metal fitting. 

For a moment, you thought he might dismiss the question or answer it in some professional way that would restore the proper distance between you. Instead, he looked at you fully, and you felt again that unnerving steadiness of his attention.

“I see patterns,” he said. “Places where fear repeats itself. Where people begin changing their habits around something they don’t understand.”

Your throat tightened.

“Like not sleeping.”

“Like not sleeping,” he said.

You looked away first, embarrassed not because he had caught you in some lie, but because he had seen the shape of your life too accurately. He did not press the point, and that restraint was becoming one of the more dangerous things about him. 

Instead, he tightened the tripod screw and lifted the camera a fraction higher.

“I’ll need to put one upstairs as well.”

Your stomach pulled tight before you could stop it.

“Upstairs?”

“If that’s where most of the activity happens.”

“It is.”

“Then yes.”

You nodded, though your fingers had already curled into each other.

Ed saw that too, of course. He saw everything, or seemed to, and yet he said nothing at all. He only straightened, the movement drawing your attention unwillingly to the breadth of his shoulders and the easy strength in his arms as he lifted the case again.

“You don’t have to come with me,” he said.

A small, humourless laugh escaped you.

“I live here.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to be brave every second.”

The gentleness of it struck you more deeply than you wanted it to. 

It was not pity, nor indulgence, nor the sort of comfort offered by people who wished to quiet distress because it inconvenienced them. He said it as if courage were not a performance owed to him, or to the house, or even to yourself, and for one dangerous moment, your throat ached with the childish, humiliating desire to believe him.

Because standing there silently seemed worse than moving, you stepped toward the staircase.

“I’ll show you.”

The stairs creaked beneath your weight.

They always had, even before the house became what it was now; before the nights began to arrange themselves around listening; before you learned the sound of each board well enough to know when one of them complained beneath your foot and when something else was crossing the landing above you. 

In daylight, the staircase ought to have been merely old, merely wood and nails and dust, but the sound of it rising beneath you now seemed to travel ahead into the upper hall, and return changed.

Ed followed one step behind, not close enough to crowd you, but close enough that, should you stumble, you suspected he would catch you before you had time to fall.

His gaze moved past you and towards your partly open bedroom door.

You hated that at once because you never left it open anymore.

“I closed that,” you said.

Ed’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

“When?”

“Before you arrived.”

He waited.

That was another thing you hated and trusted in equal measure: the waiting, the way he allowed silence enough room for the truth to stand up inside it.

“I know I closed it.”

“I believe you.”

Those three words affected you far more than they should have done.

Most people asked whether you were sure, or whether you might have forgotten. Even when they meant well, it left some small space for the possibility that fear had made you unreliable.

Ed did not.

He moved past you slowly, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, and for a brief, improper instant, you were aware not of the open door but of his warmth and his scent. Then he nudged the bedroom door open with two fingers.

Nothing happened.

No shriek tore through the air.

No sudden slam answered him.

No figure waited in the corner.

There was only your bedroom, dim beneath the greying afternoon light, exactly as you had left it and yet, by the fact of the open door, no longer entirely yours.

You remained in the doorway as Ed stepped inside.

It was strange watching him there, stranger than you had expected. Your bedroom had become the one room in the house you both feared and clung to, the last territory of privacy in a place that had begun to trespass upon every private thing. 

There were your unmade bed, your clothes folded over the back of a chair, the book lying open on the nightstand because you had been trying, unsuccessfully, to read yourself into exhaustion.

And now Ed Warren stood in the middle of it, respectful, careful, and impossibly solid.

He looked first at the window, then at the closet, then at the bed. His attention lingered nowhere improperly, and somehow that made your awareness of him there even worse. 

A careless man could have been resented. A vulgar one could have been dismissed. But Ed’s restraint made the intimacy of the room sharper, because it forced you to acknowledge that the discomfort was not coming from him.

It was coming from you.

“Do you hear the footsteps from here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Above you?”

You shook your head.

“In the room.”

His eyes returned to yours.

“In here?”

You nodded.

“At night, it sounds like someone pacing around the bed.”

Ed said nothing for a moment, and in that silence the bed behind you seemed to become more present, more revealing, as though the mere mention of it had drawn attention to the shape of your sleep and the loneliness of those hours.

Then he set the camera case on your desk.

“I’ll place one in the corner facing the door and part of the bed,” he said. “Not the whole room.”

Your face warmed before you could prevent it.

He seemed to realise how that sounded at almost the same instant, and for the first time since entering the house, something like awkwardness touched him.

“I don’t need to invade your privacy,” he added quickly. “Only the area where you’ve reported movement.”

“I know.”

And you did know.

Yet knowing did not prevent the sudden, acute awareness of everything around you and the fact that this man, calm and handsome and kind in a way that made kindness feel perilous, was standing close to where you slept.

Ed turned his attention to the equipment, perhaps out of mercy.

He extended the tripod legs, adjusted their height, glanced through the camera lens, then towards the door, then back again. His professionalism ought to have made the moment easier.

But if anything, it made it worse.

Because he was trying very carefully not to make you uncomfortable, and that care made him impossible not to watch. Your eyes found the steadiness of his hands, the concentration gathered between his brows, the way his forearms flexed when he tightened the mount. When he bent slightly to adjust the angle, the silver cross swung forward from his collar.

You looked away, unable to bear it any longer. Afraid he'd somehow know the inappropriate thoughts in your head just by glancing at you.

“Would you mind standing near the bed for a second?”

Your eyes snapped back to him.

“For the camera,” he clarified, though his mouth twitched faintly, as if he knew exactly how unfortunate the phrasing had been.

“Oh.”

You moved to the side of the bed.

“Here?”

“A little to your left.”

You stepped left, and he looked through the camera.

“Half a step back.”

You obeyed, and the backs of your knees touched the mattress.

Something about that small contact felt absurdly intimate. You were merely helping him frame a shot; you knew that. He knew that. 

Still, the room seemed to close around the two of you, narrowing itself to the bed, the camera, his lowered voice, and the careful way he did not look at you except through the lens.

“Good,” he said. “That gives me the doorway, the foot of the bed, and the closet.”

“The closet too?”

“You said it opens sometimes.”

“Right.”

Your voice sounded too tight.

Ed looked up.

“Has it opened while you were in the room?”

You nodded.

“At night?”

Another nod.

His expression softened in a way that made your chest hurt.

“No wonder you’re tired.”

You tried to smile, but the effort failed before it reached your mouth.

“I keep telling myself it’s just a house.”

“And do you believe that?”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly, too honestly, and for a second neither of you spoke.

Then a soft click came from behind him.

Both of you looked toward the closet.

The door had moved.

Barely an inch, perhaps less, but enough.

Ed straightened slowly, and you forgot to breathe.

Another click followed, small and precise in the stillness, and the door opened wider.

Not fast. Not violently. Slowly, as though someone inside had curled their fingers around the edge and pulled.

Ed moved before you could.

He did not rush, and he did not panic. He simply stepped between you and the closet, his body placing itself in the line of whatever might emerge with such instinctive certainty that your fear momentarily tangled with something far warmer and more dangerous.

“Stay where you are,” he said.

His voice had changed. It was still calm, but lower now, firmer, carrying a command that seemed to belong not to authority but to protection.

You should have listened, but as he approached the closet, you left the bed and followed him.

He noticed immediately. “I asked you to stay there.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s my bedroom.”

He looked back at you, and for one suspended moment fear and something else passed between you so quickly it might have been mistaken for the shifting light.

Then, unexpectedly, he gave the faintest nod.

“Fair enough.”

He reached for the closet handle.

You stood close enough behind him to see the tension gather across his shoulders beneath the green of his shirt, close enough to notice that his breathing had slowed deliberately, as though he had commanded his own body into steadiness. His hand closed around the handle and the muscles in his forearm moved as he opened the door.

Nothing waited inside.

Only hanging clothes. Shoes. A box of old photographs on the upper shelf. The ordinary contents of an ordinary closet.

Ed reached inside and pushed the clothes aside carefully, checking the back wall, the floor, the upper shelf, the places where an explanation might have been hidden if the world were kinder. There was no panel. No animal. No draft stirring through the plaster. No visible trick by which a door might decide to open itself.

Then the bedroom door slammed shut behind you. The sound struck the room like a gunshot.

You startled so violently that you stumbled forward, and Ed turned quickly. His arm came around you before you could collide fully with him, one hand closing at your waist while the other braced your shoulder. 

The movement was immediate, protective, and for a heartbeat, you were pressed against him in the dimness of your own bedroom.

Nor by choice, nor by design. Only because the house had frightened you, and his body had been the nearest safe thing.

But safety, you were beginning to understand, could be dangerous in its own way.

Your hands had landed against his chest. Beneath your palm, his heartbeat was steady, not calm exactly, but controlled, a living rhythm beneath the fabric of his shirt. His silver cross was trapped between you, cold through the thin material of your blouse, and the contrast of it against the warmth of him made your breath falter in a way that had very little to do with the door.

“You’re alright,” he said.

The words were meant to soothe, yet it wasn't. 

Your breathing was too fast, your heartbeat loud in your ears in a way that has nothing to do with what has just happened. 

His thumb moved once at your waist, almost absently, not quite a caress and yet too gentle to be nothing. It was reassurance, perhaps even instinct. The kind of touch one gave without thinking when someone had been frightened.

Still, it moved through you like a spark. When your breath hitched he seemed to realise where his hand was.

He released you carefully, as though any sudden movement might break something neither of you had named.

“Sorry.”

You shook your head.

“No. Don’t be.”

He looked at you then. Not as a client, not merely as a frightened woman standing in a haunted house.

Just as you. 

And for the first time since Ed Warren had arrived, you wondered whether the thing in your house was the only danger you had invited in.

Silence reclaimed the bedroom after the closet door had ceased moving, but it was not the gentle silence that follows a storm or the ordinary hush of a room settling toward evening. 

Ed finished adjusting the camera in the corner and remained bent toward the small monitor for several seconds, watching the grainy image of the room with a concentration that made the line of his brow deepen. 

The faint light from the window touched the side of his face, catching the clear blue of his eyes when he glanced between the screen and the room itself. There was something striking about his face in that uncertain light, something more arresting than simple handsomeness, though he had that too in a way that made it difficult not to notice. 

His features were strong without being hard, his mouth capable of warmth even when set in thought, and the calm intelligence in his gaze gave him the look of a man who had trained himself to see past the obvious shape of things.

For a while, nothing happened.

The image on the monitor remained steady.

“You’ll want this running all night,” he murmured, more to himself than to you, though his voice was low enough to seem shaped for the room.

You folded your arms and kept your gaze fixed on the closet, as if staring at it might prevent it from making another quiet, deliberate movement.

“I don’t think I’m sleeping tonight.”

Ed looked over his shoulder. The motion brought his eyes to yours, blue and attentive beneath the shadow of his brow, and even then, with the room still cold and your nerves still trembling beneath your skin, you were conscious of the absurd unfairness of him being so composed and so utterly handsome at once.

“No?” he asked.

You gave a quiet laugh, though there was little humour in it.

“I haven’t really slept in weeks.”

There was no self-pity left in your voice now, only exhaustion, worn down to its plainest form. 

Ed seemed to hear that, because his expression altered almost imperceptibly; the professional alertness remained, but something softer moved beneath it, something that looked too much like concern and made your chest tighten.

He closed the equipment case with a soft click and set it beside the dresser.

“I was planning to stay awake and monitor the recordings,” he said. “Most activity tends to increase after midnight.”

“And you’ll stay downstairs?”

“For now.”

The answer came easily enough, practical and calm, until he noticed the change in your face. Your shoulders had drawn tight again, your eyes moving past him to the hallway beyond the bedroom door, where darkness would gather first, and footsteps would begin later with their slow, hateful patience.

“You don’t like that idea,” he said.

“I don’t like...” You stopped, embarrassed by the childishness of the confession before you had even finished making it. “I don’t like being alone.”

He nodded, not quickly, not dismissively, but as though you had offered him something serious and he meant to treat it as such.

“I understand.”

“You probably hear that a lot.”

“I do.”

“And?”

His gaze did not leave yours.

“And fear rarely concerns itself with whether it is reasonable.”

The words settled over you gently, and because he had not tried to soften them into something false, they comforted you more than reassurance might have done. 

He did not tell you there was nothing to fear. He did not tell you that you were safe because safety, in that house, would have been an insultingly fragile promise. 

He only acknowledged that you were afraid, and somehow the honesty of it made the fear easier to bear.

You looked around the bedroom. The camera stood quietly in its corner, its small red light steady as an unblinking eye. The recorder rested on your dresser. 

Everything had been prepared with methodical care, every wire laid, every angle measured, every instrument set to witness what you had endured alone for weeks.

“I could stay outside your door,” Ed offered after a moment, and there was a caution in his tone that told you he understood the delicacy of the offer before he made it. “If that would make you more comfortable.”

You considered it. The hallway. The long dark strip beneath the door.

The sound of footsteps crossing the landing, pausing, returning, sometimes stopping just outside your room as if whatever made them knew exactly where you lay awake and listening.

“No,” you said.

“I can sit in the chair.”

You looked at the chair beside the window, narrow and wooden and placed too far from the bed to make any difference to the panic that had already begun imagining itself in advance.

“No.”

A faint crease appeared between his brows, not impatience but uncertainty. In that expression, the steadiness of him became more human.

The blue of his eyes seemed darker in the dim room, his face caught between professional concern and some private calculation he was trying very hard to keep from you.

“The bed’s...” You cleared your throat, and the heat that rose into your face felt wildly inappropriate in a room where a closet door had just opened by itself. “It’s big enough.”

The sentence did not fall so much as remain suspended between you.

Ed looked at you for a long moment, contemplating. 

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” he said at last.

“I know.”

His expression remained patient, but not unaffected. That was the dangerous part. If he had been stern, you might have retreated into embarrassment; if he had laughed, you might have taken offence and found safety in it. But he did neither, just looked at you with that grave, blue-eyed attention, and the gentleness of it made the room feel smaller.

“I’m not asking for...” You searched for the word and failed because the thing you were trying not to name had already made itself present. “Anything.”

A small, embarrassed smile touched your mouth, though it trembled at the edges.

“I just don’t want to wake up by myself if something happens.”

For the first time since he had arrived, Ed Warren looked genuinely uncertain.

It was there only briefly, but you saw it: the conflict passing across his face, the duty that held him back and the instinct that drew him forward. 

He had come here as an investigator, a man with cameras and recorders and questions, a man whose work depended upon boundaries as much as belief. Yet he was also standing in your bedroom with your fear laid bare before him, and whatever professional distance he had maintained all afternoon seemed suddenly much thinner than either of you had expected.

His gaze moved once toward the closed door, then to the camera, then back to you.

At last, he exhaled quietly.

“Alright.”

Relief crossed your face so quickly that you could not hide it, and his eyes softened when he saw it.

“But only because I don’t think you would sleep otherwise,” he said, his lips curved into a soft smile.

“I wouldn’t.”

“I suspected as much.”

There should have been comfort in the decision, and there was, but it arrived braided with something else, something warmer and more perilous than relief. 

The house remained silent around you, listening from its corners, while Ed stood near the foot of your bed with the silver cross at his throat and the last of the afternoon light resting across his face.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then he looked away first, as though some boundary had to be preserved by the simple act of not looking too long.

“I’ll keep the recorder running,” he said, his voice returning with effort to the practical. “And the camera stays on.”

You nodded.

“Okay.”

“And if anything happens, you wake me.”

The instructions should have sounded ordinary. Instead, spoken in the dimness of your bedroom, it felt almost intimate.

You managed another nod.

Ed picked up the equipment case and moved it from the bed to the floor, careful not to touch the folded nightgown at the foot of the mattress. 

That small courtesy, that quiet refusal to make himself at home in your private space, made something tighten low in your stomach. He was trying so hard to remain proper, and because of that, you became more conscious of every improper thought you had been trying not to have.

_____

By the time evening settled fully over the house, the last of the daylight had withdrawn from the windows, leaving only a dull reflection upon the rain-darkened glass before surrendering altogether to night.

The bedroom was altered with the fading light.

During the afternoon, it had merely seemed neglected by the sun; now it belonged wholly to the shadows, which gathered patiently in the corners beyond the reach of the single bedside lamp. Its warm amber glow stretched across the bed and little else, leaving the wardrobe, the closet door, and the far wall to dissolve into uncertain darkness. 

You changed in the adjoining bathroom, exchanging your clothes for an oversized sleep shirt that fell well below your knees. You remained there longer than necessary, splashing cool water over your face and lingering before the mirror in the foolish hope that it might somehow quiet the nervousness gathering beneath your ribs.

It did not.

When you finally opened the bathroom door, Ed had only just returned from making one last circuit of the house.

He paused upon the threshold.

He had changed out of the clothes he’d worn that afternoon, exchanging the dark green polo for a simple white T-shirt and loose striped pyjama trousers he had evidently packed among his equipment.

The shirt fitted him with an almost unfair simplicity, the plain fabric stretched comfortably across his broad chest, while the short sleeves clung to his big arms more than the polo did. The silver cross still rested against his chest.

Without the careful neatness of his daytime clothes, he seemed somehow younger.

More approachable. Dangerously handsome.

The warmth of the bedside lamp softened the strong planes of his face, drawing gentle shadows beneath his cheekbones and along the firm line of his jaw. 

His dark hair, still combed back though no longer quite as immaculate as it had been that afternoon, left his forehead open. His eyes, clear, impossibly blue even in the dim light, lifted to meet yours with the same quiet attentiveness they had held all day, and there was something about the kindness in them that made looking away unexpectedly difficult.

He was, you realised with some irritation, even more striking dressed like this than he had been before.

There was nothing formal left to hide behind.

Only an ordinary man standing in the doorway of your ordinary bedroom, broad-shouldered and quietly uncertain, looking as though he belonged anywhere but a haunted house.

His gaze wandered briefly around the room before returning to you.

“I’m afraid,” he said, offering the faintest, almost apologetic smile, “this still feels rather unusual.”

“It does.”

For a moment, neither of you seemed entirely certain how to proceed. So you climbed beneath the blankets first, drawing them carefully over yourself before settling close to one edge of the mattress, leaving what must have looked like an unnecessarily generous amount of space beside you.

Ed hesitated only a second longer before crossing the room.

Even the simple act of sitting upon the bed seemed to require deliberation. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, and you became acutely aware of the distance between you, not small enough to permit an accidental touch, yet not quite large enough to ignore another person's presence.

“I suppose,” you said at last, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you while the rain whispered against the window, “this isn’t how most investigations usually go.”

The corner of Ed’s mouth lifted before a quiet laugh escaped him, low enough that it scarcely disturbed the stillness of the room.

“No,” he admitted. “I can’t honestly say that it is.”

“You’ve never shared a client’s bed before?”

His eyebrows rose with unmistakable amusement, and for a fleeting moment the solemn investigator disappeared, replaced by the easy, good-humoured man you had begun to glimpse beneath the day’s work.

“No,” he repeated, a smile lingering in his voice as much as upon his face. “That is certainly a first.”

Colour rose faintly across your cheeks. He looked away first.

A slight clearing of his throat followed, and with an almost endearing awkwardness, he attempted to steer the conversation somewhere safer.

“So…” he started. “Tell me about the house before all of this.”

You did.

You spoke of childhood summers spent chasing fireflies through the garden until your mother called you in after sunset. Of birthdays celebrated around the old dining-room table beneath paper decorations, your father always insisted upon hanging crooked. Of Christmas mornings when the staircase had echoed with laughter instead of footsteps, and evenings when the rooms had glowed with lamplight instead of shadows.

As you spoke, the house seemed almost to reclaim those memories for itself.

For a little while, it ceased to be merely haunted.

It became the place where you had learned to walk, where you had scraped your knees, hidden beneath blankets during thunderstorms, and fallen asleep to the reassuring murmur of your parents’ voices downstairs.

Ed listened without interruption.

There was something extraordinary in the way he listened, as though every memory, however ordinary, deserved to be received with care. He asked no needless questions and offered no interruptions, allowing the stories to unfold at their own pace while his attention remained entirely yours.

When at last your voice grew quiet again, he answered not with ghosts but with people.

He spoke of frightened families whose names he never mentioned, of lonely farmhouses and crowded city apartments, of parents who had stayed awake for weeks because they feared what waited outside their children's bedrooms. 

He never made himself the centre of those stories. If anything, he spoke far more often of the courage of ordinary people than of anything he himself had done.

“People deserve to feel safe in their own homes,” he said quietly, his gaze resting somewhere beyond the rain-streaked window.

“You really believe you can give them that?”

His eyes returned to yours.

“I believe everyone deserves someone willing to try.”

The simplicity of the answer settled somewhere unexpectedly deep inside you. There was no pride in it, no self-congratulation. Only conviction.

“You really are exactly as people say.”

A faint smile touched his mouth.

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Why?”

“They usually leave out all my faults.”

You regarded him with unconcealed scepticism.

“You have faults?”

He laughed, and the sound was richer this time, filling the room with a warmth that felt strangely at odds with the cold pressing against the windows.

“Oh, plenty.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m afraid that’s because you’ve only known me a day.”

“I’m beginning to think one day has been enough to make up my mind.”

His smile lingered a little longer than before, and for reasons you could not have explained, neither of you seemed inclined to look away.

Then a heavy thud sounded somewhere above the ceiling. The noise cracked through the quiet so abruptly that you flinched before you could stop yourself.

Without thinking, you turned towards him, your hand closed around his forearm. The muscles beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt tightened instinctively beneath your fingers, firm and warm against the chill that had settled over your skin.

Ed reacted just as naturally.

His arm came around your shoulders with calm, reassuring certainty, drawing you nearer without urgency, without hesitation, simply because you had reached for him and every instinct he possessed had answered in return.

“It’s alright,” he murmured.

His voice was low, steady, close enough that you felt it almost as much as heard it. You nodded, though you were not entirely certain you believed him.

Gradually, your breathing slowed, settling into the same measured rhythm as his until it became difficult to tell where your nervous trembling ended, and his quiet steadiness began.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered after a long while.

He looked down at you.

“What for?”

“I keep…” A faint, embarrassed smile touched your lips. “I keep finding excuses to cling to you.”

Something softened in his expression.

“If it helps you feel safe…”

The sentence drifted away unfinished as you lifted your head and found he was already looking at you.

There was something different in his face now. Somehow the professional reserve that had accompanied him into the house had not vanished entirely, but it had become gentler somehow, giving way to an affection so quiet that it almost escaped notice.

“You’ve been very kind to me today,” you said softly.

“I’ve only done what anyone ought to.”

You shook your head.

“No.” The word emerged almost before you realised you intended to speak it. “They didn’t.”

For a moment, he said nothing, did not ask who you meant or what had happened. His blue eyes searched yours with a tenderness that somehow understood more than questions ever could.

Almost hesitantly, you raised one hand. A loose strand of dark hair had escaped across his forehead sometime during the evening. Your fingertips brushed it gently back into place, lingering for only the briefest instant against his temple.

You meant to withdraw quickly, aware that you were overstepping already and that that fine line you were tiptoeing on was already blurred. But he was faster, his hand rose and enclosed yours with extraordinary care. His thumb rested lightly against the back of your hand, neither holding you there by force nor letting you go.

He searched your face in silence, and there was no haste in him.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

It was not permission he sought for himself. It was a reassurance that you wanted this as much as he did. You answered with the smallest nod, not trusting your voice. 

His gaze lingered upon you another heartbeat, as though committing your expression to memory before he leaned towards you so slowly that you would have had enough time to change your mind. That you could stop this with every inch he came closer.

But you never did.

His lips met yours with a gentleness so profound that, for one suspended instant, you forgot the house entirely. 

His hand came up to cup your jaw, thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone with a tenderness that seemed almost reverent, and you felt the trembling stop, not because the fear had vanished, but because something stronger had taken its place, something warm and bright that spread through your chest like the first light of morning. 

His lips moved against yours with a slowness that asked nothing and offered everything, and you found yourself responding, pressing closer, your fingers curling into the fabric of his white t-shirt, feeling the muscle flex beneath your grip, holding on as though he were the solid ground and you were the one adrift.

When he pulled back, his eyes searched yours in the dim light, blue and deep and full of something you could not name but recognised instinctively, the way one recognises warmth or safety without needing to be taught.

Then he pressed his forehead against yours.

The contact was simple, intimate, more so even than the kiss. 

The warmth of his skin met the cool of yours, and you felt his breath mingling with your own, uneven, shallow, carrying the faint tremour of a man who was not as steady as he appeared. 

His eyes closed. You felt the weight of him settle against you, not heavy but present, as though he were letting you hold him up for just a moment, letting you feel the shape of his own need. 

His thumb still traced slow circles against your cheekbone, and you could feel the roughness of his palm where it cradled the side of your face. 

Then he kissed you again. But this time, there was force behind it.

His lips pressed against yours with a hunger that had not been there before, still controlled, still Ed, but no longer asking, rather telling. 

His hand slid from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, gripping just firmly enough to make your breath hitch. 

His mouth moved against yours with an urgency that tasted of holding back, of nights spent lying awake in rooms like this one, of the particular ache of wanting to protect someone and realising that protection was not enough, that what you truly wanted was to hold them so close the darkness could not find a single inch of space between you.

You gasped against his mouth, and he took the sound like an offering, deepening the kiss, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips before slipping inside with a sureness that made your spine arch, your body pressing flush against his. 

You could feel the heat of him radiating through the fabric, the swell of muscle beneath your palms where your hands flattened against him, and his arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer still, eliminating every remaining inch of distance until you could feel his heartbeat against your own. 

No longer slow and steady but quick now, quickened by you, by this, by the thing that had been building between you since the moment he walked through your door.

Your fingers twisted tighter into his shirt, pulling him down towards you, and he came willingly, his weight settling over you with a controlled pressure that was both shelter and claim. 

The kiss deepened further, his mouth moving from your lips to your jaw to the sensitive skin beneath your ear, and you heard yourself make a sound - small, helpless, wanting - that seemed to belong to someone else entirely.

His mouth found the curve of your neck, and you tilted your head back against the pillow, eyes half-closed, the ceiling above you a dark blur you no longer cared about. 

His lips traced a path from beneath your ear to the hollow of your throat, and each press of his mouth left a warmth that sank into your skin like a brand, slow and deliberate, as though he were mapping you.

His hips shifted against yours, and the hardness of his dick pressed against your thigh, hot even through the worn flannel of his pants. 

A sound escaped your throat, something between a whimper and a gasp, and you felt him pause, his breath hot against your collarbone, his body going still with the careful control of a man who was measuring himself against the edge of something he could not easily come back from. 

There was a terror in that, that he might stop, that he might remember what he was and what you were and the professional distance he was meant to keep, and the terror was not unlike the fear that had driven you to him in the first place, except that this fear was warm and aching and rooted not in the dark but in the terrifying prospect of being wanted.

“You feel that?” he murmured against your skin, his voice rougher than it had been, stripped of its earlier steadiness. The words were low, meant only for you, spoken into the space between your jaw and your neck where his lips still hovered. “That’s what you do to me.”

Your fingers tightened in his hair, and he groaned. A sound that vibrated through his chest and into yours, and his hips pressed forward again, harder this time, the thick length of him grinding against your thigh with a slow, deliberate friction that sent heat pooling low in your belly. 

You felt yourself flush with something that was not embarrassment, not quite, but a kind of astonishment, that this man, this steady and certain man, should be undone by you, should be holding himself back because of you, should be hard and aching because of you.

“Ed…” His name left your mouth like a prayer, breathless and incomplete.

“I know,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle again, but there was something beneath it now, a command wrapped in velvet, a directive that did not need volume to be obeyed. “I’ve got you. You’re going to let me take care of you tonight. You understand?”

You nodded, but it wasn’t enough. 

His hand slid from your hair to your chin, tilting your face toward his, and those blue eyes held yours in the gloomy darkness, burning with something that made your pulse hammer against your ribs. 

You felt, in that gaze, the same quality you had felt when he first walked through your door and told you he would help you: the unshakeable certainty of a man who believed in what he did. 

Only now that certainty was turned upon you, upon your body, upon the trembling creature you became beneath him, and it was almost too much to bear.

“Say it.”

“I understand,” you whispered, and the words came out trembling, but not from fear.

His mouth claimed yours again, and this time the kiss was deep and slow and consuming, his tongue stroking against yours with a rhythm that left no room for thought. 

His hand slid down from your chin to your shoulder, fingers catching the loose neckline of your oversized sleep shirt, before moving even lower. 

The cool air touched your stomach where his hand pushed the fabric upward, and you shivered from the sensation of his rough palm dragging across your bare skin, warm and calloused, moving with a slowness that was almost unbearable. 

He pulled the cloth up over your ribs, his knuckles brushing the underside of your breast, and you arched into his touch with a sound that you swallowed against his mouth. 

He drew back just enough to pull the garment over your head, and then his lips descended down your throat, across your collarbone, trailing heated kisses along the slope of your tits until your back bowed off the mattress and your fingers clutched at the sheets beneath you. 

Then the cross touched you.

The silver chain slipped from his neck as he leaned down, and the small metal pendant dragged across your bare chest, cool against your flushed skin, a shock of sensation that made you inhale sharply. 

It rested there between your breasts, rising and falling with your own breath now, and the weight of it was strange and sacred and obscene all at once, a holy thing pressed against the unholy heat of what was building between you. 

You thought, with a clarity that surprised you, of all the rooms he had entered with that cross around his neck, rooms full of darkness and malice and things that defied explanation, and now here it was, resting against your bare skin, warm from his body, a small cool weight that seemed to anchor you to something older than fear.

Ed glanced down at where it lay against your skin, and something shifted in his expression, darkness and devotion tangled together, a man who had spent his life in service to something greater now kneeling before something he could not exorcise.

“You have no idea,” he breathed, “what you look like right now.”

Then he straightened, kneeling between your legs, and reached behind his neck to pull his t-shirt over his head in one swift motion.

The sight of him stole the air from your lungs. 

His chest was broad and taut, muscles defined beneath a smattering of dark hair that trailed down the centre of his abdomen toward the waistband of his flannel pants.

His shoulders were even wider without the shirt, thick and powerful, the kind of body that spoke of physical labour and quiet strength. The cross hung against his sternum again now, silver against skin, and you could smell him. Something raw and intoxicating that made your mouth water and your thighs press together. 

You felt, looking at him, a thing you had not felt in a very long time: safe. 

Not because the darkness had left the house, not because the haunting had ceased, but because in this moment, in this bed, with this man above you, there was no room for anything else. 

The fear had not been conquered; it had simply been displaced, pushed to the far corners of your mind by the overwhelming reality of his body, his hands, his breath, his eyes.

His hands moved to the waistband of your panties, and you felt his fingers hook beneath the thin cotton, the backs of his knuckles grazing the swell of your hips with a deliberateness that made your stomach clench. 

Ed did not rush but drew the fabric down slowly, inch by inch, as though unwrapping something sacred, and the cool air of the room kissed the wet heat between your thighs as he exposed you. 

His breath caught, a sound so quiet you might have imagined it, had you not seen the way his jaw tightened, the way his blue eyes darkened to something deeper than hunger.

His fingers traced the curve of your inner thigh, feather-light, reverent, trailing upwards through the slick wetness that had gathered there. You whimpered, hips lifting toward his hand without your permission, and he made a low sound in his chest.

“So wet,” he murmured, and his voice was rough, stripped bare. 

His thumb brushed through your folds, parting them gently, and the sensation was so acute that your hands flew to the sheets, fingers twisting in the fabric. 

He explored you with the same patience he had shown in learning your mouth, your neck, your breasts, mapping the wet terrain of you with careful strokes, circling the swollen bud at your centre until your thighs trembled on either side of his broad shoulders.

Then his mouth followed, or so you thought.

His lips pressed against your inner thigh first, warm and deliberate, kissing a path upwards through the trembling flesh. You tensed, waiting, aching, but he stopped short. 

His breath ghosting hot over your cunt without touching it. The nearness of his mouth was unbearable. You felt every exhale like a brand against your swollen flesh, and your hips bucked upward, seeking contact, and he pulled back just enough to deny you.

“Not yet,” he said, and the words were spoken against your pussy, his lips so close that the vibration of his voice rippled through you. 

You whimpered, thighs shaking, and he smiled; you felt it more than saw it, the curve of his mouth pressing into the crease of your thigh.

His tongue traced a slow line along the outside of your cunt, never parting it, never giving you the pressure you needed, and you let out a broken sound that was half sob, half moan. He kissed the mound above your pussy with the same reverence he had kissed your mouth, his lips lingering there.

“You want my mouth on you,” he murmured against your skin, and it was not a question. His thumb brushed your clit, barely, just enough to make your spine arch, and then withdrew. “I can feel how badly you want it. Like a prayer you haven’t spoken yet.”

The cross swung against his chest as he shifted, the cool silver catching the dim light, and you watched it sway there. This man, who had spoken of God and faith and protection with such conviction, was now lying between your spread thighs with his breath hot against your soaked cunt. 

The sacred obscenity of it made your head spin.

“Ed, please.” The words fell from your mouth broken and breathless.

He pressed a single kiss to your outer cunt, chaste, and then pulled back entirely. You nearly sobbed at the loss, at the cruelty of it, at the way his blue eyes held yours with a patience that bordered on devotion.

“You’ll have what you need,” he said quietly. “But you’ll come to me for it.”

His hands gripped your waist, and the room tilted as he rolled, pulling you with him in one fluid motion until you were astride him, your knees on either side of his broad chest, your hands braced against his shoulders. 

He settled beneath you, his blue eyes finding yours in the dim grey light, and his hands slid up your thighs to rest on your hips, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh there.

“Sit down.”

The command was quiet, neither a request nor a suggestion. A directive spoken in the same steady voice he had used to tell you he would take care of you, and your body responded before your mind could catch up. You shifted forward, trembling, your knees bracketing his head, and you felt his breath hot against your inner thigh, then hotter still as you hovered above his mouth.

He didn’t touch you yet. He simply breathed against your cunt, close enough that you felt the heat of every exhale soaking into you, and the waiting was agony. 

“Lower,” he spoke, and his voice was a low rumble that vibrated through the air between your legs. “Give yourself to me. Like an offering.”

A shudder ran through you at the way he said the words, reverent and commanding all at once. His thumbs pressed into your hips, guiding you down with firm, steady pressure, and you obeyed, lowering yourself inch by inch until your cunt hovered a breath away from his mouth.

“That’s it,” he murmured, his lips brushing the wet skin of you, and the vibration of his voice nearly undid you. His hands directed you down the final distance, until your cunt was properly pressed against his mouth and his tongue found you.

You gasped, hands flying to the headboard above him, fingers curling around the wood as his mouth sealed over your clit and sucked. The angle was different, somehow deeper, and more complete. You felt yourself grinding against him without shame, chasing the pleasure that coiled tight in your belly.

His hands gripped your ass, pulling you harder against his face, and you heard him groan beneath you, felt the sound hum through your body like a second heartbeat.

“Christ, you taste like salvation,” he breathed against you, and the words were so profane, so sacred, that they broke something open inside you. 

His tongue pressed deeper, fucking into you with a rhythm that left no room for thought, and you felt yourself clenching around him, chasing the pressure, and he seemed to know, because his thumb replaced his tongue at your clit, rubbing slow circles while his mouth sealed over your pussy, drinking you in.

The cross lay against his chest beneath you, its edge pressing into your thigh, and you thought dimly, through the haze of sensation, that you had never felt so exposed, so claimed, so utterly at the mercy of someone who would never let you fall.

His tongue swept through you with a hunger that contradicted every measured patience he had shown before. Broad, flat strokes that lapped at your wet cunt like a man dying of thirst that diminished every logical and illogical thought you’ve had. 

You heard the wet sounds of his mouth between your thighs, obscene and slick, and each stroke pulled a sound from your throat that you barely recognised as your own. His jaw worked against you, tongue curling deep inside you, and the stubble on his chin scraped the tender flesh of your inner thighs raw with the kind of burn you would feel for days.

“Ed…” His name broke from your lips in a sob, and your hips rolled against his mouth of their own accord, grinding down onto his tongue as it fucked into you. 

He groaned in response, the vibration rippling through your cunt and up your spine, and his hands tightened on your hips, pulling you down harder against his face. He was relentless now, his earlier teasing replaced by a devouring urgency that made your vision blur at the edges.

Then his fingers joined, thick and calloused, slipping inside you with a slowness that was almost cruel after the frantic rhythm of his mouth. You felt them stretch you, felt the way your walls clenched around them as they curled upward, stroking the slick flesh inside you with a deliberate pressure that made your thighs shake violently on either side of his head. His tongue returned to your clit, circling it in tight, wet strokes while his fingers fucked you with a patience that bordered on cruelty.

You moaned loudly, unguarded, the sound echoing off the walls of the haunted room, and your hands left the headboard to grip the sheets on either side of his head, fingers twisting in the fabric as your body bowed. The pleasure built in your belly like something holy, something terrible, and you could feel every stroke of his fingers inside you with a clarity that made your head spin.

That was when you saw it, the gold band on his ring finger, glinting in the dim light as his hand worked between your legs. The metal caught a sliver of light with each thrust, and the sight of it sent a jolt through you that was equal parts guilt and dark, burning arousal. 

His wedding ring. He was wearing his wedding ring while his fingers curled inside you, while his mouth devoured you like a man who had forgotten every vow he had ever made.

The obscenity of it made you clench around his fingers, and he made a low sound of approval against your clit, his tongue flicking faster as though he knew exactly what you had seen, exactly what it did to you.

“That’s it,” he murmured against your swollen flesh, his voice rough and wet. “Take what you need. Let me worship you.”

His fingers thrust deeper, curling with a rhythm that matched the strokes of his tongue, and the dual sensation was too much. Your back arched, your thighs clamped around his head, and you felt yourself grinding against his mouth with a shamelessness that should have mortified you but didn’t.

Nothing existed except the pressure building inside you, the wet heat of his mouth, the thick stretch of his fingers, the cold press of his ring against your entrance as he drove them home.

“Ed, I’m - “ The words fractured before you could finish them, and he seemed to understand, because his mouth sealed over your clit and sucked hard while his fingers curled against the spot inside you that made your vision go white.

The orgasm hit you like a wave breaking; your whole body seized, thighs trembling violently around his head, and you felt yourself gushing against his mouth and fingers as the pleasure ripped through you in pulsing waves. 

Ed didn’t stop, though. His tongue worked you through it, lapping at your pussy with eager, wet strokes, drinking every drop of you like it was the finest wine while his fingers continued to fuck you slowly, drawing out the aftershocks until your body went limp above him.

His mouth pressed one final kiss to your oversensitive clit, and then his fingers slipped free, leaving you empty and trembling. You felt the wetness on his hand as it returned to your hip, the slick evidence of your release smeared across his skin, and somewhere in the haze of your fading pleasure, you heard him exhale. A long, shuddering breath that sounded almost like a prayer.

His blue eyes found yours in the dim light as he looked you from under you, and they were dark, pupils blown wide, his lips still glistening with you.

His hands found your waist, and with a strength that should not have surprised you but did, he lifted you up, sliding you off his face and back onto the mattress beside him. 

Your body crumpled against the sheets like something boneless, still trembling in the aftershocks, thighs slick and shaking, breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps that sounded foreign to your own ears. 

The room swam. The ceiling above you was grey and cracked with age, water stains spreading like dark bruises across the plaster, and for one disorienting moment, you could not tell whether the darkness pressing at the edges of your vision was anything otherworldly or simply the blood rushing back to your skull.

Ed shifted beside you, and you felt the mattress dip under his weight, felt the warmth of him settle close. Not yet touching, just near enough that his body heat reached your bare skin like a promise. His breathing was heavier than before, controlled but audible, and when you turned your head on the pillow to look at him, you saw the hunger still written across his face. 

His jaw was tight, lips still wet, still shining with you, and the sight of it made something clench deep in your belly despite the exhaustion already turning your limbs to lead.

He reached for you with his left hand, lifted it slowly, deliberately, and you watched as he brought it to your face. His knuckles brushed along your jawline, rough and warm, tracing the curve of bone beneath your skin with a tenderness that made your chest ache. Then his fingers turned, and you felt it; the cool, smooth press of metal dragging across your jaw.

His ring.

The gold band caught against your skin, not painfully, just enough that you felt every millimetre of its path as it traced from the hinge of your jaw to the soft dip beneath your ear. 

Your breath hitched in a sharp, involuntary sound, and your whole body shuddered beneath his touch, a tremor so visible that you saw his eyes darken in response. Blue gone nearly black. His gaze dropped to where the ring met your flesh, watching the metal drag across you with the same reverent attention he had given your cunt, and the corner of his mouth curved, not quite a smile, something darker, something that knew exactly what it was doing to you.

“You do that every time. Every single time.” His thumb followed the ring’s path, pressing the band more firmly against your skin, and you shuddered again. You couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. And his breath came out in a slow, satisfied exhale. “Like something in you recognises what it means. What I’m doing here with you.”

He leaned closer and you could smell yourself on his breath, and the scent sent a fresh wave of heat through your wrecked body. His lips hovered near your ear, close enough that the warmth of each word landed on your skin like a touch.

“You think God isn’t watching this?” he whispered, and the words settled into you like a blade, cutting through every defence you had left. “You think He doesn’t see you falling apart under my hands? See how wet you get when you feel this ring on your skin?” 

His fingers traced down your throat, the metal cool against your pulse point, and you felt your heartbeat hammering against the gold like it wanted to confess something. “He sees. And you don’t care. You’re still here. Still trembling. Still opening for me.”

Then his other hand moved to his own chest. He gripped the silver cross hanging from his neck, pulled it free from where it rested against his sternum, unclipped it from around his neck, and pressed it flat against the bare skin just above your collarbone. 

The metal was warm from his body, and it seared into you like a brand, not painful, but present, undeniable. Your breath caught audibly, your eyes flying to his, and you watched his expression shift into something almost predatory as he registered your reaction.

“There it is again,” he murmured, watching your face with those dark, hungry eyes. He pressed the cross harder against your skin. Not enough to hurt, just enough that you felt every edge, every contour of it burning into your flesh. “That little breath. That look in your eyes.” 

He tilted his head, studying you the way he might study a haunting, patient, meticulous, cataloguing every detail. “You like this. The blasphemy of it. The wrongness.” His thumb stroked over the cross where it met your skin, and the gesture was so gentle, so at odds with the words coming from his mouth, that it made your head spin. “You want to be corrupted, don’t you? Want me to make this sacred thing filthy?”

He didn’t wait for an answer; rather, he simply watched you. Taking in how your chest rose and fell, the way your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets and how your body betrayed every word your mouth refused to say.

The silence stretched between you like a held breath, thick with the weight of everything his words had laid bare. You lay there, wrecked and trembling beneath the sheets, your body still humming with the aftershocks of what his mouth had done to you, and you watched him with eyes that felt too wide, too hungry, too honest.

Ed’s hand left the cross and your skin. The absence of his touch made you whimper, a small sound that was so unlike you.

He shifted, rising onto his knees beside you, and his hand moved to the waistband of his pants that were stretched tight across the bulge of his dick. He paused there, fingers hooked beneath the elastic, watching you.

“You’ve been looking at me all day,” he said, his voice low and rough, scraped raw with want. "Every time I touched you, you kept looking at what you couldn’t have.” His thumb traced along the waistband, slow, deliberate, drawing your eyes down to where his hand rested. “You want more.”

He pulled the pants down and slid them over his hips, down his thighs, until his cock sprang free. 

The head was flushed dark, slick with precum, and the sight of it made your mouth go dry, and your cunt clench at the same time. He was thick enough that you felt an echo of anticipation in your pussy just by looking at him, and you pressed your thighs together, trying to ease the ache.

Ed kicked the pants aside and settled back against his feet. His hand wrapped around his cock slowly, fingers circling the shaft, and he stroked upward once, a long, deliberate pull that drew a groan from somewhere deep in his chest.

“Watch me,” he commanded, and his eyes found yours. “Don’t look away. Don’t close your eyes. You watch what you’ve done to me.”

His hand moved in leisurely strokes, fist tightening as it reached the head, thumb smearing precum down the shaft. The sound of it filled the quiet room, punctuated by the ragged edge of his breathing. His hips rolled slightly with each move, muscles in his thighs tensing, and you watched the way his dick twitched in his grip, the way his balls drew up tight beneath his fist.

“You think this is just for you?” he said, voice strained now, rougher. “You think I didn’t know what I was getting into when I came here?” Another stroke, slower, and his jaw clenched. “I knew. I knew the moment you opened that door, trembling in broad daylight, looking at me like I was your salvation.” His thumb circled the head of his cock, spreading the slick, and his breath hitched, barely controlled. “I’m not your salvation. I’m the thing that's going to ruin you.”

He paused, and his gaze dropped to the gold band on his finger, the ring catching light with every stroke. “You know what this is,” he said, and his voice dropped lower, rougher, something almost dangerous threading through it. “You know I’m a married man. You've known it since the moment you saw me.” 

His hand moved again, slower, letting the ring flash in the dim light. “She’s at home right now. Sleeping. Trusting me to be here, doing God’s work in this house.” His jaw tightened, and a sound escaped him - half groan, half something darker. “And here I am. Hard as a sinner in a whorehouse, stroking myself in front of a woman who isn't her.”

You couldn’t move or breathe. Your hands gripped the sheets beneath you, knuckles white, and you felt your cunt throbbing in time with his strokes, empty and aching, wanting. He was making you watch, making you feel every stroke like it was happening inside you, and he knew it. Could see it in the involuntary shift of your hips and the heaving of your chest.

“Stay still,” he murmured, and the command landed in your chest like a physical weight. “Don’t touch yourself. Don’t touch me. You just watch. You take what I give you.”

His hand moved faster now, strokes shorter, harder, and the muscles in his forearm flexed with each movement. Precum on his knuckles, and the wet sound of it made your thighs clench together so hard they trembled. 

“You like that, don’t you?” he said, watching your face with those dark, knowing eyes. ”You like knowing I'm married. That I took vows - before God, before  her - and here I am breaking every single one.” His hand moved faster, the ring glinting with each pass. “I promised to forsake all others. And I’m looking at you right now, thinking about how badly I want to bury myself inside you, and I don’t feel an ounce of remorse.” His voice cracked on the last word, raw and honest. “What does that make me?”

“Ed,” you breathed, and the sound of his name in your mouth made him groan, low and rough, his head tipping back.

“Every time I stroke myself, you watch it. You watch a married man touch himself for you. A man who stood before God and swore himself to another woman.” His thumb dragged across the head of his cock, and his hips bucked. “Lorraine trusts me. She trusts me with her life, her soul, everything she is. And I’m here, hard and aching for you, wanting to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name.”

Ed slowed, his grip loosening and tightening in a rhythm that made your breath catch with every shift. “I’m going to go home tomorrow,” he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. “I’m going to walk through my door, and she’s going to ask me about this house. And I’m going to lie to her. I’m going to tell her about the haunting and the spirits and leave out every single time I made you come.” 

Then eyes locked onto yours, hungry and unbearably honest. “I’m going to kiss her with the same mouth that worshipped your cunt tonight. And I’m not going to feel guilty about it.”

He wasn’t going to come, you could see it in the way he held himself back, the way his jaw clenched against the release building in his body. He was denying himself just as much as he was denying you, and the knowledge of it made something dark and hungry unfurl in your chest.

His hand stilled and you could see the way his cock pulsed in his grip. It jerked with need, thick and flushed, and he simply held it there, letting you look and the want build until it pressed against the inside of your skull like a scream that could not be uttered. 

Then he let go entirely.

His dick stood rigid against his stomach, flushed and slick, curling slightly upwards now. 

The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he shifted closer to you, and his body heat washed over you like a tide, warm and solid and inescapable, carrying with it the scent of him. Sweat and skin and something faintly ecclesiastical, as though the prayers he'd spoken over the years had seeped into his pores and become part of his very flesh. 

His hand grazed the skin of your stomach with a touch so light it made your muscles jump beneath the surface, a small involuntary revolt of nerve and sinew.

“You’re still shaking,” he murmured, and his fingers traced upward, following the curve of your ribs with maddening slowness, each rib counted like a bead on a rosary. “I haven’t even started yet.” 

His fingertips brushed the underside of your breast, and your breath stuttered. The sharp, broken sound which escaped you seemed to delight him, and made his mouth curve into something that wasn't quite a smile but rather the expression of a man who has discovered something precious and intends to keep it. “There it is. There’s the sound I wanted.’

He cupped your breast with his rough palm, calloused from years of work that had nothing to do with tenderness, and his thumb dragged across your nipple in a single, slow stroke. 

The sensation shot through you like a current, traversing the length of your body with an electric urgency that seemed to originate not at the point of contact but somewhere deeper, somewhere primal and unguarded. 

Your back arched off the mattress in an involuntary, desperate thing that pressed your chest into his hand with a need you could not disguise and would not have even if you could. He didn’t give you more, just letting his thumb rest against the hardened peak, letting you feel the weight of his palm without moving, without granting the friction your body begged for.

“Ed, please!” The words came out wrecked, barely a whisper, the voice of a woman who had been dismantled by gentleness.

“Patience,” he said, and his thumb moved in a slow circle, deliberate, tracing your nipple like he was drawing a halo around it with the reverence of a man anointing something sacred. “I told you. You take what I give you. When I give it. How I give it.” 

His voice dropped lower, a rumble that seemed to vibrate through the mattress and into your bones. “And what I give you now is this. Just this. My hand on you. My voice in your ear. The knowledge that every inch of your skin belongs to me tonight.”

His other hand reached for the cross beside you. His fingers closed around the chain, lifting it, and the silver pendant swung between you. A pendulum, catching what little light the room offered, turning slowly in the darkness like a compass needle seeking a direction it could not find. 

He watched it turn for a moment, his expression unreadable, the blue of his eyes darkened to something approaching black in the dimness, and then he lowered it.

The metal touched your chest just below your collarbone, and you gasped. It was cool, somehow cooler than before and then it should have been, as though it had absorbed not merely the temperature of the room but something else, something that existed between the physical and the metaphysical. He pressed it against your skin like a brand in reverse, a cold kiss from something holy. 

He dragged it downwards, slowly, the chain pooling in the hollow of your throat while the cross itself traced a path between your breasts. The sensation was unbearable as the smooth metal slid over flushed skin, the faint chill of it contrasting with the heat of his breath as he leaned closer, watching the path it carved with the focused intensity of a scholar examining a text written in a language only he could read.

“You feel that?” he whispered, his mouth close enough to yours that you could feel the words as much as hear them, each syllable a small disturbance of air against your lips. “That’s been against my skin for years. Every exorcism. Every blessing. Every night I held my wife and prayed for forgiveness for things I hadn’t done yet.” 

The cross reached your nipple, and he pressed it flat against the hardened peak, holding it there with a pressure that was neither cruel nor kind but something in between that existed in a space where sanctity and sin had become indistinguishable. 

The cold bit into you, and you whimpered loud and shameless, your hips rolling against nothing, seeking friction that was not there. 

“And now it's on you. Where I want to be. Where I should be. Where a married man has no right to want anything at all, and yet…” His breath hitched as he trailed off, the first crack in his composure. “Yet here I am.”

He bent his head and kissed you.

His mouth crashed into yours with a violence that stole the air from your lungs, and you felt the groan he made vibrate through his chest and into yours, a resonance that passed between your bodies like a shared confession. His tongue pushed past your lips, tasting you, claiming you, and your hands flew to him. 

Fingers tangling in his hair, gripping the back of his neck, pulling him closer until there was nothing between you but heat and sweat and the cross trapped between your bodies, pressing its cold edge into your skin like a reminder that would not be silenced.

His weight settled over you, heavy and grounding, and you felt his cock press against your thigh. He was so hard, impossibly so, the slick head dragging across your skin as he shifted, leaving a trail of heat and wetness that made your cunt clench around nothing with a ferocity that bordered on pain, desperate for him. 

The contact made you both groan into each other’s mouths, a shared sound of mutual ruin, and his hips rolled, grinding himself against you with a slow, deliberate pressure that was not seeking release but rather asserting presence. As if reminding you with each drag of his dick against your skin that he was here, that he wanted you, that the wanting had become a thing he could no more control than the tide.

“This is what you do to me,” he growled against your lips, and his hand tightened on your breast, fingers pinching your nipple around the cross still pressed there, the metal biting into the tender flesh. “Feel how hard I am for you. A married man, hard as iron, grinding against a woman who isn’t his wife, leaking against her skin like a boy who can’t control himself.” 

His mouth found your jaw, your neck, teeth grazing skin, and his voice dropped to a rough whisper against your pulse, each word a hot exhalation that seemed to sear itself into your throat. “I swore to cleave only unto her. Before God and the congregation. And here I am, cleaving myself to you…pressing myself against you like an animal, wanting to bury myself so deep inside you that I forget my own name, forget my wife’s name, forget every damn vow I ever made.”

His hips pushed forwards again, cock sliding against your thigh with a wet sound, and you felt the precum smearing across your skin as if marking you in a primal and unmistakable way. His hand slid from your breast down to your hip, fingers digging into the flesh there with a grip that was no longer gentle but possessive, the grip of a man who had decided that what he held was his.

“You’re going to take everything I give you,” he murmured against your neck, his lips brushing the place where your pulse hammered beneath the skin. “Every touch. Every word. Every sin I commit against your body tonight.” 

His cock jerked against your thigh, and he groaned. A sound that seemed dragged from somewhere deep and unwilling. “And I'm going to take everything too. Everything you’ve never given anyone. Everything you’ve been saving.” His teeth found the tendon of your neck and bit down, not hard enough to break, but hard enough to claim. “Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” you breathed, and the words came out not as surrender but as offering. A voluntary descent into whatever abyss he was leading you towards. 

Something shifted behind his eyes at that, a flicker, brief and bright, like a candle flame caught in a draft. His grip on your hip loosened and then tightened again, fingers pressing crescents into your flesh that would bloom purple by morning.

“Say it again,” he said, and his voice had gone rough, scraped raw, as though the words had to climb over broken glass to reach his mouth. “Say my name like that again. Like you’re giving me something no one else gets to have.”

“Ed.” It was barely a sound. 

He made a noise low and guttural, something that belonged more to the dark corners of the house than to any civilised room, and his mouth crashed into yours again, tongue pushing deep, tasting and taking with a desperation that had abandoned all pretence of restraint. 

His hand left your hip and slid downward, rough palm skimming the outside of your thigh before hooking behind your knee, lifting your leg, opening you. The shift in position pressed his cock against your cunt. Not yet inside, just there, the thick length of him nestled against your wetness, the heat of him searing against the slick, swollen flesh that had been aching for him since the moment his lips first touched yours.

You both went still, and the sensation was overwhelming. 

The sheer pressure of him against you, the way your arousal had coated him in a single slick glide, the way his dick pulsed against your entrance with a need that matched your own heartbeat for heartbeat. 

He pulled back from the kiss, his breathing ragged, his forehead pressed against yours, and you could feel the tremour in his arms where they braced against the mattress. He was shaking. 

The man who had held you through your terror with steady hands and a steadier voice was shaking, and the knowledge that you had undone him, that your body had become the thing that broke his composure, it sent a surge of wet heat flooding between your thighs, coating him further, making the slide of him against you obscene and slick.

“I should…” he started, his voice thick, and you felt him shift, felt the head of his cock notch against your entrance, felt the first inch of pressure that made your body open for him like a door that had been waiting for its key. “I should get something. Protection.”

He stopped speaking, just pressed his hips forward another inch, almost instinctually, making you both gasp.

“Fuck it,” he said, and the words were quiet but final, spoken with the gravity of a man who had weighed his soul and found it wanting. “No. I’m not going to put anything between us. Not tonight.”

His eyes found yours in the darkness, and what you saw in them was not hesitation but something far more dangerous; it was certainty. 

“If God wills it, then He wills it. If He puts a child in your belly because of what I do tonight, because I couldn’t stop myself, because I wanted you too much to be careful -” His voice cracked, and his hips push forward again, sinking deeper, stretching you open around his thick dick inch by inch. “Then that’s His judgment on me. And I’ll carry it. You will carry it.”

“Ed!” His name broke apart in your mouth as he moved again, your body resisting and yielding in equal measure, the stretch of him bordering on pain, a fullness so complete it felt like being unmade and remade simultaneously.

“I want you to carry it,” he growled, and his hand found your hip again, gripping hard enough to bruise once more, holding you in place as he sank the rest of the way inside you with a single, deliberate thrust that buried him to the hilt. “I want you to carry something of mine. A mark. A memory. A child.” 

His mouth found your ear, and his words came hot and broken against the shell of it. “I want to look at you in this house, in this bed, weeks from now, when I check up on you and know that my seed is inside you. That part of me is living in you. Growing in you.”

You arched beneath him, a cry tearing from your throat that was not entirely pleasure and not entirely pain but some unholy communion of both. Your cunt clenched around him, involuntary and fierce, and he groaned raw and animal and utterly without pretence.

“Christ,” he breathed, and it was not an expletive but a prayer. “You feel like…you feel like…” He couldn’t finish, just pulled back, slow, dragging against every nerve ending inside you until only the tip of him remained, and then he thrust forward again. Harder this time, deeper, a stroke that punched the air from your lungs and sent the headboard rattling against the wall. “Like you were made for this. Made for me to find in the dark.”

Ed set a rhythm that was not gentle but was not cruel, with each thrust measured and deliberate, the pace of a man who was memorising something, who knew that what he was doing could not be undone and was determined to make every second of it count. His mouth found your neck, your shoulder, the curve of your breast, teeth grazing skin between words that were half prayer and half profanity.

“Protect her,” he muttered against your collarbone, and you realised with a jolt that he was not speaking to you. “Protect her from what’s in this house. From what I’m doing to her. From me.” His hips snapped forward, and you sobbed, nails raking down his back, leaving welts. “Forgive me for wanting this. For needing this. For being unable to stop.”

His hand found the cross where it lay beside your head, the silver chain pooling against the pillow like a serpent waiting to be lifted, each link catching the thin moonlight that bled through the curtains in a pale, uncertain ribbon. Deliberately his fingers closed around it slowly, the way a man might grasp something he feared would dissolve at his touch, and you watched the pendant dangle from his grip, turning lazily in the dark air, casting a thin line of reflected light across your collarbone like a scratch made of moonlight. 

“Tell me to stop,” he said, but his hips never ceased their rhythm, driving into you with a steadiness that made your thoughts scatter like ash from a fire long burned down. Each thrust was measured, the kind of controlled force that spoke of a man who wanted to lose himself but refused to. At least not yet, not until he had wrung every shuddering note from your body first. 

You felt him fill you completely, the thick tip of his cock pressing deep against the place inside you that made your vision blur, stretching you open with a fullness that bordered on too much and somehow never quite crossed over. 

The wet sound of your body accepting him filled the room, obscene and rhythmic, punctuated by the soft creak of the bed frame and the shallow, ragged edge of his breathing. 

“Tell me if this is too much.”

Even if it were too much, the words wouldn’t come. They had gathered somewhere behind your sternum, a tangled knot of syllables that refused to arrange themselves into anything resembling speech. Instead, you tilted your chin up, baring your throat to him in a gesture that was older than language. 

Just pure submission, trust, the exposed vulnerability of a creature choosing to be held by something larger than itself. You felt the tendons in your neck stretch taut, the thin skin over the jugular, and you offered it to him anyway, the way one offers a hand to a fire without knowing if it will warm or burn. 

Your lips parted, but no sound emerged, only a trembling exhale that carried the shape of his name without giving it voice.

Ed’s breath hitched abd you felt it in the pause of his hips, the fraction of a second where his control wavered like a man standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down , but not with fear, rather with the terrible, magnetic pull of wanting to fall. 

His eyes, dark and liquid in the dim light, fixed on the column of your throat with an intensity that made your skin prickle, made the fine hairs at the nape of your neck rise as though some ancient instinct recognised the look of a predator who had decided not to bite. 

His free hand came up, rough palm settling against the side of your neck, thumb resting just beneath your jaw where your pulse hammered against his skin like a trapped bird.

“You don’t know what you’re offering me,” he murmured, and his voice had dropped into a register you hadn’t heard before. It was low, almost guttural, scraped raw from somewhere deep in his chest where restraint and desire warred like two dogs pulling at the same rope. 

His thumb pressed, not enough to choke, just enough that you felt the pressure against your arteries, felt the way your breath had to work harder to pass, felt the dizzying warmth that began to creep up from your chest into your skull. 

His hips drove forward again, harder this time, and the combination of that deep, filling pressure and the careful constriction of his hand made your back arch off the mattress, made your hands claw at the sheets beneath you.

Then he lifted the cross.

He brought it forward slowly, letting the chain unspool between his fingers until the pendant hung low enough to graze the hollow of your throat. The silver was cool against your overheated skin, and you shuddered at the contrast with his hand, hot and rough, the metal cold and smooth, both of them pressing into the same vulnerable space. 

He looped the chain once around your neck, not tight, just present. A collar of faith and surrender that rested against your collarbone, with a weight heavier than silver should be. 

The cross itself settled into the hollow of your throat, right above where his thumb still pressed, and when he thrust into you again, the pendant bounced against your skin in a rhythm that felt like a benediction and a condemnation tangled together.

“You feel that?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, rough and thick with want. His thumb shifted, pressing the cross more firmly against your throat, and you felt the edges of it dig in. A reminder of every sacred thing he was choosing to defile with every stroke of his dick inside you. “That’s mine. And right now, so are you.”

A moan broke from you then, dragged out from somewhere you couldn’t control. Your hips rolled up to meet his, desperate and graceless, chasing the friction that was building something unbearable in the pit of your stomach. 

The cross pressed harder as your throat moved beneath it, swallowing, gasping, trying to form words that still wouldn’t come. His hand tightened just enough that the edges of the pendant bit into the soft skin beneath your jaw, and the world narrowed to the points of contact: His cock buried deep inside you, his hand on your throat, the cold silver cross pressed between his palm and your pulse.

“Ed - “ you managed, just the one word, broken and breathless, and the sound of it seemed to undo something in him.

His mouth crashed into yours again. Raw, consuming, the kind of kiss that tasted like surrender and sin and the desperate need to crawl inside another person and stay there. 

His tongue swept past your lips, claiming the inside of your mouth with the same deliberate force his hips were claiming the rest of you, and you tasted salt and heat and something that might have been desperation. The cross shifted against your throat, the chain catching in his grip, pulling just enough that you felt the silver links press into the side of your neck like a leash being gathered.

“Stay with me,” he growled against your mouth, and you weren’t sure if it was a command or a prayer. 

His hips snapped forward, driving deep enough that you felt him in your stomach, felt the head of his cock drag against that spot inside you that made white sparks bloom behind your eyes. “Stay right here. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

You hadn’t even realised they were closing. So you forced them open, found his gaze inches from yours. It was dark, wet, and burning with something that looked like it was eating him alive from the inside out. 

His rhythm faltered for the first time, became ragged, less controlled, and you felt the tremor run through his arm where it braced against the mattress, felt the way his fingers dug into the pillow beside your head as though he needed something to anchor himself against the pull of his own release.

“Good girl,” he breathed, and the words landed against your skin like a brand. His thumb pressed the cross tighter against your throat, and you felt the edges leave faint impressions in your skin. Marks that would be there in the morning, small silver ghosts of this moment pressed into your flesh like a signature. “Take it. Take all of it.”

His rhythm shifted as if something had broken open in him, some final thread of restraint snapping beneath the weight of your surrender, and his hips drove into you with a force that made the bed frame shudder against the wall. 

Each thrust was deeper than the last, harder, the kind of relentless pressure that stoked the fire already burning low in your belly until it roared up through your spine like a flame finding oxygen. You felt him everywhere. 

The thick stretch of his cock filling you, the slick heat of your own arousal coating your thighs, the rough grip of his hand still holding the cross against your throat like a leash he had no intention of releasing.

“Come on,” he growled, his voice wrecked, barely human. His free hand found your hip, fingers digging into the flesh there hard, more relics you would find tomorrow. 

He used the grip to angle you, to tilt your hips up so that every stroke dragged the head of his cock against that spot inside you he hit earlier. “I felt you getting close. Don’t you dare hold back on me now.”

You couldn’t have held back if you had tried. 

The pressure was building again, faster this time, cresting like a wave that had already broken once and was somehow gathering itself for a second, larger swell. 

Your walls clenched around him, greedy and desperate, and the sound of your bodies meeting filled the dark room like a hymn sung in a language only flesh understood. The cross pressed harder against your throat as you swallowed, as you gasped, and you felt the edges of it bite into the soft skin beneath your jaw with a sharpness that blurred the line between pain and pleasure until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

“Ed - God -” The words tore out of you, ragged and raw, and your hands flew up to grip his arms, nails raking down the hard muscle of his forearms. You felt the tendons beneath his skin flex with each thrust, felt the sweat gathering in the hollow of his collarbone, felt the way his entire body was coiled tight like a spring about to snap.

“Good girl,” he breathed, and his thumb pressed the cross even harder into your throat, not choking, but holding you there, pinned between his hand and his cock and the weight of everything sacred he was defiling with every stroke. “Let go for me. Let me feel it.”

The orgasm crashed through you like something holy and violent at once, ripping a cry from your throat that you barely recognised as your own voice. Your back arched off the mattress, your body bowing beneath him, and your walls contracted around his dick in rhythmic, desperate pulses that you had no control over. 

The world went white at the edges, then dark, then a blinding rush of sensation so intense it felt like being unmade and remade in the same breath. You felt yourself clench and release around him in waves, felt the wet heat of your own release coating him, and the cross bit into your throat as you swallowed hard against the scream that wanted to escape.

Ed groaned from somewhere beneath his chest as his hips stuttered, lost their rhythm, and you felt the moment his control finally broke. His hand tightened on your hip, and he drove into you one final time, burying himself to the hilt as his body tensed above you.

“Take it,” he rasped against your ear, his voice shattered and raw, and you felt the first hot pulse of his release flood inside you. Thick, deliberate, a warmth that spread through your core like communion wine blessing a hollow vessel. 

His cock jerked within your cunt, and you felt every ridge of him swell and throb as he spent himself, each pulse distinct, each one a claim he was stamping into the deepest part of you. He didn’t pull back, didn’t withdraw, just held himself there, buried deep, as though making certain every drop stayed where he’d put it. 

“Take all of it. Every drop. You wanted to be saved tonight…this is how I save you.”

His jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck corded tight, and a low, broken sound escaped him, half groan, half prayer. His hips ground forward in slow, deliberate circles, not thrusting now but pressing, nudging himself even deeper as another thick rope of cum pulsed from him into you. 

You felt the heat of it pool against your cervix, felt your walls flutter around him as if drinking him in, and his whole body shuddered with the effort of holding still while the pleasure wracked through him.

“You feel that?” he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of your ear with each word. “That’s not sin. I told you what this was. I told you what I’m doing here.” His voice cracked on the last word, and you felt his cock twitch inside you again. Another pulse, weaker but no less deliberate, as though his body was squeezing out every last offering it had to give. “This is the only sacrament I have left to give you. And I’m giving it all.”

Ed’s hips jerked once more, grinding himself deeper still, and you felt the overflow, his cum leaking out around his cock, slicking your thighs, dripping down onto the sheets beneath you. He shuddered above you, his breath coming in broken gasps, and his lips found your ear again.

“If the Lord means for this to take,” he whispered, his voice wrecked and trembling, “then it takes. And if He doesn’t? Then I’ll keep trying. Every night. Every night until this house doesn’t scare you anymore, until you’re not alone in that bed, until there’s a child in your arms that came from this…from us. From something that shouldn’t have happened but did.” 

His hand slid from your hip to your stomach, pressing flat against your lower belly where the heat of his release pooled inside you. “You feel that warmth? That's where it’s going to stay. That’s where it takes root.”

The cross pressed against your throat one final time as he collapsed forward, his weight settling over you with a heaviness that felt like shelter rather than burden. His forehead dropped to the hollow of your shoulder, and you felt his breath against your damp skin. 

His hand released the chain, let it fall loose against your collarbone, but the pendant stayed pressed into the soft hollow of your throat, warm now from both your bodies’ heat, resting there like a seal. His other hand stayed pressed to your stomach, holding the warmth of his release inside you like a benediction.

The room was quiet except for the sound of breathing. His deep and slow, yours shallow and trembling. Ed’s heart hammered against your chest, and you felt it through the thin barrier of sweat-slicked skin, a rhythm that matched your own racing pulse beat for beat until they slowly, gradually began to sync into something steadier.

His hand came up and brushed the hair back from your face with a gentleness that seemed almost impossible after the rawness of what had just passed between you. His fingers lingered at your temple, tracing the damp line of your hairline, and when he finally lifted his head to look at you, his eyes were dark and soft and full of something that looked like it terrified him.

He didn’t pull out, though.

You felt the thick, softening weight of his dick still buried inside you, still plugging the warmth of his seed deep within your body, and when you shifted slightly, his hand pressed flat against your stomach again, holding you still.

“Don’t move.” His voice was low, wrecked, barely above a whisper, and his lips dragged against your shoulder as he spoke. “I’m staying right here. Do you understand me? Right here, all night.”

You swallowed hard against the cross still resting at your throat, and the motion made your walls clench around him involuntarily. His hips shifted, not thrusting, just settling deeper, adjusting himself within you as though finding a position he intended to hold for hours. 

The weight of him pressed you into the narrow bed, his chest flush against yours, his legs tangled with yours, and you felt pinned, held in place by his body and his cock and the sacred mess of what he’d left inside you.

“I mean it.” His arm slid beneath your shoulders, curling around you, pulling you tighter against him until there was no space left between your bodies. The cross pendant shifted against your throat, sliding on sweat and heat, and his breath came warm and slow against your temple. “I’m not leaving you alone in this house tonight. Not with those doors closing on their own, not with whatever you saw in the hallway. I’m staying right here,inside you, where nothing can get to you.”

His heartbeat thudded against your chest, slow and sure now, and you matched your breathing to it without thinking, each inhale drawing in the scent of him sweat and flannel and something woodsy, something that smelled like safety and sin all tangled together.

“Ed…” you started, but his fingers pressed against your lips, silencing you.

“Shh. No more talking. Not tonight.” His thumb traced your lower lip, then drifted down to your chin, tilting your face toward him. In the dim light filtering through the curtains, his eyes were heavy-lidded, dark with something that looked like devotion and exhaustion in equal measure. “Tonight you just breathe. Just feel me holding you. That’s all you need to do.”

His hand slid from your chin back to your stomach, pressing flat, and you felt the warmth of his palm seep into your skin. His fingers splayed wide, claiming that space, and his thumb traced slow circles against your flesh. Gentle and reverent, like he was tracing the outline of something that hadn't taken root yet but might.

“I’m going to keep you full like this,” he murmured, and his voice had dropped to something raw and intimate, a sound meant only for the dark and for you. “Keep you warm. Keep everything I put inside you right where it belongs.” 

His hips shifted again, a slow, deliberate grind that made you gasp, his cock still thick enough to feel despite the softening, still stretching you, still holding his release sealed within your walls. “And when morning comes…”

He paused. His jaw tightened, and you watched something move behind his eyes; hunger, faith, a need so deep it seemed to frighten him.

“When morning comes, I’m going to do this again.” The words fell from his lips like a vow spoken at an altar. “I’m going to wake you up with my mouth on you, and I'm going to fill you again before you’ve even opened your eyes. And the next night, and the next, until this house doesn’t dare touch you anymore, until everything inside these walls knows you belong to me.”

His hand pressed harder against your stomach, and you felt his dicktwitch inside you. A slow pulse of warmth leaked from him, and you felt it spread through your core, thick and heavy, mixing with the overflow already slicking your thighs.

“You know what this is?” His voice dropped lower, rougher, and his wedding ring caught a sliver of moonlight as his hand splayed wider across your belly. That band of gold, the one he’d never taken off, not once, not even when he had pushed inside you, not even when he had spilled himself bare and groaning into your body. 

“This is a sacrament. The truest one I know. Not the kind they teach you about in church, not the kind I’ve spent my life chasing through haunted houses and demon-infested rooms.” His thumb pressed into the soft flesh below your navel, and his cock pulsed again. “This kind. The kind where a man empties himself into a woman and means it. The kind where God himself couldn’t pull me out of you right now.”

His lips found your ear, and his breath was hot and unsteady. “Lorraine…she’s my partner. She is my gift. But she can’t touch what lives inside me when I’m with you. She sees things, she feels things, but she doesn’t know this. She doesn’t know that the moment I walked into this house and saw you shaking in that doorway, something inside me cracked open like a sealed tomb.” 

His tongue traced the shell of your ear, slow and obscene. “She doesn't know that I’m lying inside another woman right now, buried so deep I can feel your heartbeat through my cock. She doesn’t know that I’m keeping my cum inside you like a fucking offering.”

You shuddered beneath him, and your walls clenched around him again, a desperate grip that made him exhale a ragged breath against your neck.

“That’s it. Hold me. Hold me like you’re holding a prayer inside you.” His hand slid up from your stomach to your chest, fingers finding the cross pendant still resting against your throat. He lifted it, pressed it between your collarbones, and kept it there. 

“You know what the Church would call this? What they would call a man who fucks his client in a haunted house and tells her she belongs to him?” He laughed softly, but there was no humour in it, only hunger, only the raw edge of a man who’d stopped pretending he was anything but desperate. 

“Adultery. Sin. Damnation.” Each word landed like a nail driven into wood. “But I’ll tell you what I think. I think God made you for me to find. I think He put you in this house, trembling and afraid, so I’d walk through that door and know exactly what salvation feels like. And salvation…” his hips rolled, slow and deep, pushing his half-hard cock against your slick walls, “ -salvation feels like this. Like being buried so deep inside you that nothing else matters.”

The house creaked somewhere down the hall, and you flinched, but his arm tightened around you, his cock pulsed inside you, and his voice came low and steady against your ear.

“Nothing’s getting through me. Not tonight. Not ever.”

His ring finger traced your jaw, and the cool metal made you shiver, pressing against skin he’d already claimed with his mouth, hands and cock. He noticed it, and something dark flickered across his face.

“That’s my vow. That’s the promise I made in a church with Lorraine standing beside me, and here I am pressing it against your skin like it belongs to you.” He turned his hand, let the ring drag slowly down your throat, over your collarbone, across the swell of your breast. 

The metal was warm from his skin but still cooler than your flushed flesh, and the contrast made your nipples tighten. “I’m a married man. I wear this ring like a chain, and I’ve never once wanted to take it off. Until you.” 

He paused, and his voice dropped to something barely audible. “I still won't take it off. But God help me, I want you to feel it every time I touch you. I want you to know that every inch of you I claim is claimed by a man who already belongs to someone else. And I want you to want it anyway.”

His breathing slowed, and his body grew heavier against yours, his weight settling like a blanket, a wall between you and whatever waited in the dark. His hand stayed pressed to your stomach, fingers splayed wide, wedding ring glinting faintly in the dim light, holding his warmth inside you like a promise sealed in flesh.