#plus-size reader

You were never the outdoors type, but you had promised your friends you would try it at least once, and now here you were deep in the woods with three of your closest friends. Jasper and Ophelia, who were a couple, and Lily. While they set up camp, you and Lily set out to collect firewood. It was early Spring, so the nights here were still cold.

You continued down the marked trail, shining your flashlight ahead as Lily scanned the trees, when she suddenly stopped, and you did the same.

"Did you hear that?" She whispered.

You rolled your eyes, unconvinced, knowing she enjoyed scaring you any chance she got, and the same applied to you. "I'm not fallin' for that. You think I'm that gullible?"

She dropped the act, then turned to face you as she smiled and laughed before you both continued walking.

The land you were camping on was privately owned by Jasper's parents, so you both knew it was only the four of you on the property. As you carried on the conversation with Lily, the faint sound of a twig snapping in the distance made both of you stop mid-step. The silence stretched, broken only by the wind rustling through the trees.

"Let's just get the wood and go," Lily urged, and you nodded in agreement.

Lilly began cutting down a tree, the rhythmic thwack smacking into the wood as you scanned your surroundings with the beam of light. You didn't see or hear anything unusual. Maybe you were just imagining things.

Just as you were beginning to calm down, you spotted a pair of glowing crimson eyes far off in the distance. You blinked to clear your vision, and they vanished just as quickly as they had appeared. Your brows knitted together in confusion, and you pointed the light in the same spot you saw the glowing eyes, but there was nothing there.

It thankfully didn't take long for her to cut down enough wood to fill two bags. You carried one while she carried the other, and you neither of you wasted any time getting back to camp.

The moment you returned, you felt an eerie pickle at the back of your neck, like something was watching. You turned sharply, scanning the woods again, but nothing.

Jasper chucked at your nervousness while he stoked the fire. "City girls," he scoffed, shaking his head.

The tent was a few feet away from the fire and was large enough to fit six people. So there was plenty of room for everyone to have their own space inside.

You set down the bag of wood beside Jasper and grabbed your backpack to set up your area inside the tent. Lily was already inside, and that left you with the space closest to the entrance. A soft sigh escaped you as you began the process of unpacking. It took you longer than it should have, you couldn't decide if you should sleep with your head or feet closest to the entrance.

The night closed in, and the only source of light was the moon and fire where you and your friends sat. You drank from your bottle of alcohol as you stared into the flames, barely listening to the conversation going on around you.

Hidden deep within the tree line, the Vampire leaned casually against a tree. His eyes fixated on you with predatory fascination. The scent of your blood carried on the wind, warm and intoxicating. He inhaled deeply, fingers flexing as he fought the instinct to pounce.

Jasper leaned forward, the firelight casting shadows across his grinning face as he lowered his voice dramatically. "Ya'll ever heard of the story 'bout the Man of Black Hollow? My daddy swore it was true...said his granddaddy saw him back in the mid-eighties."

Ophelia rolled her eyes while Lily scoffed softly.

"This land," Jasper continued, tapping the ground with his shoe, "used to be a part of his huntin' grounds. Southern fella, dressed in a light blue button-up and suspenders. Said he'd lure women into the woods..."

Your grip on your bottle subtly tightened as you scanned the woods before settling on Jasper; he continued with the story.

The fire crackled, sending sparks spiraling upwards as his voice took on a theatrical rasp. "See, folks say he just ain't any regular human, supposedly he's a vampire. Older than the trees and got a hunger that don't quit."

Lily snorted, nudging your knee with hers. "Bet he'd take one look at you and run screamin'," she teased. But you barely registered the jab, your fingers tracing slow circles against the condensation on your bottle. The hairs on your neck stood upright, not from Jasper's tale, but from the unseen presence lurking in the dark.

"A vampire?" You asked with a hint of skepticism.

Ophelia seemed mostly disinterested, as if she'd heard the story too many times. Her disbelief didn't stop Jasper from sharing more.

The vampire grinned, fangs glinting in the moonlight. "Oh, darlin'," he murmured to himself, voice dripping with amusement. "If you only knew how real and close the monster really is..." His gaze never left you, following the curve of your neck where your pulse fluttered.

Jasper tossed another log into the fire, "my granddaddy swore he saw him once, just standin' at the tree line, smilin' like he knew somethin' awful was comin'."

Lily shuddered dramatically while Ophelia finally perked up. "Wait," she said slowly, "didn't you say he saw red eyes?"

Your stomach dropped when Jasper nodded, and your breath caught. Your fingers tightened around the bottle as you watched Ophelia down the rest of her drink, hiccuping afterwards, then lean over to Jasper as she whispered something into his ear. A sly grin slowly appeared on his face before he spoke.

"So...do ya'll think we could get the tent to ourselves for a bit. Like an hour?" He asked, and Ophelia softly added, "please."

"Fine," you and Lily said in unison.

"You get one hour," you agreed reluctantly. You both watched as he tossed Ophelia over his shoulder and hauled her towards the tent.

"Stay on your side of the tent, please." You begged urgently, calling out to them as they disappeared inside, zipping the door shut.

The fire burned lower now, casting long, flickering shadows across the clearing. Lily stretched lazily, tossing the remnants of her drink into the flames.

"Well, suppose it's just you and me. Unless you wanna listen in on...whatever that is." Lily muttered, standing and brushing the dirt off her jeans.

You snorted, pushing to your feet just as a gust of wind sent the trees whispering. The sound made you shiver. To pass the time by you suggested walking the perimeter of the lake a few times, and Lily agreed. You look up, grabbed your flashlight and jacket before heading towards the body of water. Lily stumbled, obviously drunk, as she laughed and steadied herself.

The moonlight reflected off the water, your footsteps crunching softly on the pebbled shore. Lily hummed off-key, swinging her flashlight beam across the water. Suddenly, a snap could be heard, and you both froze. The sound came from somewhere beyond the tree line.

Your pulse hammered against your ribs as you slowly turned your light in the direction of the noise, illuminating nothing but swaying branches.

"Probably just a raccoon," Lily said, but her voice wavered.

A half hour had passed when you made your second lap around the lake, and your legs were starting to ache. The effects of the alcohol were more noticeable now. Your body felt a bit heavier as you spoke softly to each other to fill the uncomfortable silence.

"Do you think the story Jasper was tellin' is true?" You asked, keeping your eyes on the trail ahead.

Lily smirked, amused and nudged you gently with her shoulder. "You're seriously freaked out by that? It's just some dumb campfire tale."

But you couldn't shake the uneasy feeling, the way the woods seemed eerily quiet at random moments, you couldn't ignore the unnatural stillness. Or the fact that the red eyes you saw were, in fact, real. Maybe Lily was right; it was your first time camping, and the area was unfamiliar to you. You exhaled deeply, trying to release the tension in your body as you headed back to camp.

By now, an hour had passed, and you were shivering. The campfire was barely lit as you both approached the tent. Luckily, no noises were coming from inside. You unzipped the door, they were both fast asleep, and stepped inside, removing your shoes before changing into your pajamas. The faint sound of the door being zipped closed, Lily's doing since she offered to put out the fire, could be heard behind you.

As you were drinking from your water bottle, Lily was already in her sleeping bag, snoring softly. Sleep wouldn't come for you; every rustle of fabric, every distant noise beyond the tent made your muscles tense. The alcohol's warmth had faded, leaving you cold and hyperaware of how the tent's nylon walls seemed too thin, too fragile against the vast, waiting dark outside.

Just as exhaustion finally dragged you under, the tent's zipper opened an inch. Slowly, and deliberately. Like something was testing to see if you were really asleep. You didn't stir as the zipper crept higher, revealing a sliver of moonlight and the toe of an old leather boot.

The scent of your fear earlier had been delicious, but this, your sleeping breath, slow and vulnerable, made his gums ache. Remmick crouched beside your sleeping bag, the fabric of his clothes rustling softly as he tilted his head. "Now ain't you just a sight," he breathed, words smooth and barely audible.

Moonlight caught the faint gleam of his fangs, and they lengthened. Just slightly, his tongue darted out to catch a bead of saliva threatening to fall. He knelt closer, his knee pressing into the nylon floor with a faint crinkle. One finger hovered above your lips, not quite touching.

His fingers found the sleeping bag's zipper, tugging it downward with agonizing slowness, the sound drowned out by Lily's snores. The fabric parted, revealing your curves beneath your baggy clothes. He exhaled through his nose, nostrils flaring at the warmth of your skin radiating through the thin fabric. "Gods have mercy," he murmured, fingertips ghosting along the hem where it had ridden up as you slept.

The shirt had twisted in your restlessness, exposing a sliver of bare stomach, soft and warm, begging for teeth. His thumb brushed the skin there, feather-light, before trailing higher. The fabric stretched taut over your chest, and oh—those peaked nipples pressing against the material made his jaw clench. A smile curled his lips as he leaned down, breath fanning your collarbone. "Mmm, cold out, ain't it darlin'?" He whispered.

His hand slid beneath your sweatshirt, fingers splaying possessively across the swell of your stomach, relishing how your breathing hitched even in sleep. Your thick thighs shifted unconsciously, pressing together. He used his knee to nudge between them with practiced ease. The scent of your wetness bloomed, mingling with the wood-smoke and sweat.

Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your sweatpants, tugging them down just enough to reveal your black underwear, and a patch of curls on your pubic mound, dark against your warm-bronze skin. His tongue dragged across his fangs as he traced a single fingertip along the hem of your panties. "Sweet thing, don't even know what's comin'," he murmured in a rough voice.

The shirt rode up further as he pushed it toward your neck, exposing the full, heavy swell of your breasts barely contained by a black cotton bralette. His breath hitched, just slightly, as he admired the sight of you. One thumb brushed over a peaked nipple, reveling in the way your body arched subtly toward his touch even in sleep. "Made for ruinin'," he mused, dragging the pad of his thumb in slow circles.

His free hand unbuttoned his own pants with practiced ease, freeing the thick aching length beneath. Precum beaded at the tip as he gave himself a slow stroke, never once looking away from your sleeping face. "Bet you'd scream real pretty," he whispers, thumbing the slit just to hear the slick sound it made. Too loud in the quiet tent. He clenched his jaw and suppressed a growl of frustration, forcing his rhythm to stay slow despite the way his hip wanted to buck.

The nylon floor crinkled under his shifting weight as he maneuvered himself between your spread thighs. The heat radiating from your pussy made his cock twitch against your curls as they peeked out from the top of your underwear. He exhaled sharply through his nose, arousal thick in the air, and rolled his hips experimentally. The softest whimper escaped your parted lips, still half-asleep, and his grin turned feral.

Remmick’s hand clamped over your mouth the second your eyelids fluttered, his other hand pinned your wrists above your head. "Now now, darlin'," he purred against your ear, "you wake them up, and I'll snap their necks one by one while you watch." His hips pressed down insistently, the thick ridge of his cock ground against your soaked folds through the fabric. "Understood?"

You nodded as your heart fluttered frantically, your body trembled from the adrenaline rush. Or maybe it was the cold or your fear, you couldn't tell. You could feel the cool night air against your exposed skin. Your eyes widened in shock as you felt the broad head of his cock press against you through your underwear.

He smirked, pleased with your cooperation and chucked softly, releasing your wrists to trail a single fingertip down your sternum. Slowly, savoring every hitch in your breath. "Good girl," he praised. His hips rolled again, the friction was maddening, even through the thin layer, and his fangs ached with the need to sink into your throat. "Tell me somethin', sugar. You ever been fucked by someone who knows how to ruin you?"

The silence stretched between you, thick with your ragged breathing and the distant rustle of the wind outside. His grin widened at your stunned expression. That told him everything. "Didn't think so," he says, dragging his cockhead through your cunt, the damp fabric clinging obscenely. "Bet you never even dreamed of bein' taken like this."

Your lips trembled beneath his palm, your breath catching as his nail traced lower, circling your navel before slipping into your panties. He inhaled deeply at the heady musk there, fingers brushing through coarse curls. "Mmm—soaked already, " he hummed in approval, hooking a finger under the fabric. "Ever been with anyone before?"

Your panicked gaze involuntarily darted toward Lily, just for a heartbeat, but it was enough. Remmick froze, crimson eyes glowing, then narrowed as he followed your line of sight. His lips curled back, revealing his fangs in a silent snarl, his hips jerking forward, pressing harder into you. "Ohh," he breathed, "fuckin' hell."

It was something that only happened a handful of times. Mostly out of curiosity or boredom, and you both agreed to keep it between you and Lily.

The feeling of his cock twitching eagerly against your cunt pulled you out of your thoughts. Your eyes widened as you took in the unnatural crimson of his eyes, the same ones you had seen earlier in the woods. The truth settled in your gut. Jasper's story was true, vampires were real, and one was casually pressing his erection against you.

You swallowed hard, pulse hammering erratically as his palm still muffled any noises that may escape you.

His index claw grew, catching on your underwear before he gently tugged, ripping through the fabric. The sound was barely audible over Lily's snores. Cold air kissed your exposed folds, followed immediately by the scorching heat of his tongue dragging up your slit in one, filthy stroke.

"Mmm—just as I imagined," he groaned against you. His fangs grazed delicately against your labia as his thumbs spread you wider.

The vibrations of his chuckle sent tremors through your clit as he circled it lazily, nostrils flaring at your scent. "Quiet now," he murmured between licks, the words vibrating against your slick flesh. "Wouldn't want your friends wakin' up to see how prettily you drip for monsters, would we?" His tongue plunged inside without warning, curling just so to make your hips jerk, only for his iron grip to pin your pelvis down.

Your hips twitched helplessly beneath his grip, torn between arching into that wicked mouth and scrambling away. The tent filled with the faint wet wounds I'd his mouth working you over. Slow, deep strokes alternating with cruel flicks of his tongue against your clit.

When you whimpered, he bit down gently on your inner thigh, just enough for twin beads of blood to well up. His groan was pure sin as he lapped them clean.

"Mm—fuck, you're perfect," he rasped, dragging his fangs higher along your thigh.

The sting of his bite melted into molten pleasure, your thighs trembling as his tongue circled your clit with torturous precision. Ever suppressed moan vibrated against his palm. You could feel the smugness radiating off him.

His chuckle vibrated against your clit as he released your mouth only to immediately replace his palm with his lips, swallowing your gasp while his tongue plunged inside you in tandem with the thrust of his fingers.

The taste of you, copper from your thigh, salt from your sweat and alcohol from your breath, made his cock twitch wildly against your inner thigh.

He dragged his free hand up your body, fingers wrapping around your throat just tight enough to feel your pulse racing against his palm.

Drool slicked your joined lips as he deepened the kiss, fangs nicking your bottom lip just enough for the tang of your blood to flood his senses again. His hips rolled instinctively, grinding his aching length on your thigh while his fingers curled inside you, searching for that sweet spot that'd make your legs shake.

"That's it," he whispered against your mouth, breath chilling the spit-slick skin, "let me hear those pretty lil' noises."

Your muffled whimpers vibrated against his lips as his fingers crooked just right, sending sparks up your spine. The cold air contrasted sharply with the searing heat of his mouth. Everywhere he touched left you trembling. Torn between hear and something far more dangerous. Your nails dug into the sleeping bag beneath you, hips bucking involuntarily against his hand.

The moment your thighs clenched around his wrist, he knew he had you. He could taste the surrender in your shallow breaths, feel it in the way your pulse stuttered beneath his fangs where they grazed your throat.

Drool connected you as he broke the kiss just long enough to lick it away and kiss you again, deeper this time, his tongue mimicking the relentless thrust of his fingers.

"Mmm, sweet thing's makin' a mess of herself," he murmured against your lips. His hips rolled forward, smearing precum across your clit while his thumb circled your clit with precision, relishing every hitched breath you couldn't suppress. The way your back arched when he twisted his fingers, stretching you around the intrusion. "Gonna ruin you proper," he promised in a hushed voice. He withdrew his fingers only to press them past your lips. "Taste," he ordered, pupils blown wide as he watched your tongue dart out obediently.

Your lips closed around his fingers, tongue swirling between them to lick your own arousal clean, his composure nearly cracked. Bloodlust and lust warred beneath his skin as he watched you. Without warning, he thrusted three fingers back inside, curling upward to stroke your G-spot that made your eyes roll back.

"There we go," he murmurs against your throat, fangs dimpling the skin as your walls flutter around him. "Let's see what sounds you make when I wreck this pretty cunt."

Your breath hitched from the sudden fullness, making your hips buck. The stink of hint fangs in your throat sent a jolt through you, equal parts terror and desire. Your hands tightly gripped the sleeping bag beneath you. Every drag of his fingers sent sparks up your spine, your thighs trembling with the effort to stay quiet.

His chuckle was dark as he slowly withdrew his fingers again, watching the way your hips lifted. "Already beggin' for more." He teased, pressing the slick digits to your parted lips.

As your mouth wrapped around his fingers, his hips jerked forward involuntarily, the head of his cock catching against your slickness with a filthy sound that made Lily stir in her sleep. He froze, nostrils flaring as he waited, then smirked when she merely rolled over, completely oblivious.

Remmick’s lips curled into a feral grin as he dragged his cock through your folds, slow and deliberate, savoring every shudder it wrenched from you. The scent of your arousal was thick between you.

The second you gasped from the pain and pleasure as he pressed just the tip inside, he gripped your hip hard enough to bruise. "Easy now, darlin'," he crooned, voice rough, while his free hand traced circles on your clit. "Just the tip, just to see how tight that sweet cunt grips me."

His smirk widened as your walls fluttered around that first invading inch, breath hitching when he deliberately rolled his hips to stretch you further. The nylon floor crinkled beneath as he leaned down, fangs scraping your collarbone. "Gods—knew you'd feel like heaven," he murmured, tongue darting out to catch the sweat beading along your throat. "Bet you'd scream real pretty if I buried myself all at once."

Your eyes flew wide as he pressed deeper without warning, the thick stretch burning even through your slickness. His chuckle vibrated against your skin when your nails dug into his shoulders, your silent scream muffled by his lips crashing down on yours. The kiss was all teeth and dominance, his tongue mimicking the relentless thrust of his hips as he bottomed out with a groan that shook his entire frame. "Fuck—tighter than I imagined," he rasped against your mouth, fingers tightening around your throat just enough to feel your pulse stutter.

Your thighs trembled around his waist as your body struggled to adjust; every inch of him felt inhumanly hot, stretching you to the brink. The cold night air contrasted sharply with the searing heat of his skin against yours, the scent of leather and something faintly metallic clinging to him. You arched when his thumb found your clit again, the dual sensations overwhelming as your walls fluttered around his girth.

His groan was pure sin as he pulled out agonizingly slow—only to slam back in with enough force to make the tent poles shudder. "There we go," he purred against your throat, fangs scraping the bite mark he'd left earlier. "Takin' it like you were made for me, darlin'." His hips set a brutal pace, the soft wet slap of skin echoing beneath Lily's oblivious snores.

The moment your walls clenched around him in helpless rhythm, Remmick's composure cracked, just for a heartbeat. His fingers dug into your hips hard enough to leave crescent-shaped bruises as he pistoned into you, each thrust dragging a muffled whimper from your throat. The scent of your arousal, thick with bourbon and fear and something deeper, made his vision swim red at the edges. "Fuck—fuck—" he growled against your collarbone, his rhythm stuttering when your nails scored down his back. He caught your wrist midair, pinning it beside your head with a feral fanged grin. "No marks unless I say so, sugar."

Your body arched instinctively when his thumb found your clit again, the dual sensations of his punishing thrusts and clever fingers sending sparks up your spine. Every inch of him burned hotter than humanly possible, stretching you in ways that bordered on pain, yet the slick sounds between you betrayed just how much your body welcomed it. A silent sob shook your shoulders when he angled his hips just right, hitting a spot that made your toes curl against the sleeping bag.

His chuckle was dark as your walls fluttered desperately around him, the rhythmic clench of your cunt dragging a groan from his throat. "There's my good girl," he purred, fangs scraping your pulse point as his hips snapped forward relentlessly. "Shit, squeezin' so hard." His fingers tightened around your throat just enough to feel you swallow, the vibration traveling straight to his cock.

The moment your breath hitched, high and thin, he knew you were close. His thumb circled your clit faster, matching the brutal pace of his thrusts as the tent filled with the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin. "That's it," he growled against your ear, "cum for me. I wanna feel you ruin yourself on my cock."

Your back arched violently as the orgasm ripped through you, thighs clamping around his waist as your walls fluttered around him in helpless spasms. Heat flooded between you, soaking the sleeping bag beneath you. You could feel it dripping down your thighs and ass even as he kept pistoning into you without mercy.

His groan vibrated against your throat, half pleasure and half frustration, as your cunt milked him relentlessly. "Fuck—already?" he rasped, hips stuttering when your inner walls clenched around him in rhythmic pulses. His fangs scraped your collarbone, tasting salt and arousal as he forced himself to slow, just enough to savor the way your breath hitched with each shallow thrust. "Shit—thought you'd last longer, sugar." He laughed breathlessly.

Your thighs trembled around his waist, soft flesh yielding beneath his grip. Remmick's composure slipped another notch. Bloodlust and lust warred beneath his skin as he dragged his tongue up your throat, savoring the way your pulse rabbited against his lips. His hips rolled deliberately now, grinding deep to prolong the aftershocks while his fingers traced idle circles on your oversensitive clit. "Bet you never came that hard for anyone," he murmured against your damp skin; the possessive edge in his voice was unmistakable.

The scent of your climax hung thick, musky and sweet with an undercurrent of fear that made his fangs ache. His rhythm stuttered when your walls fluttered around him again, the slick squeeze dragging a groan from his throat as he fought to maintain control. He shifted his grip on your hips, nails biting into soft flesh just to hear you gasp. "Fuck—keep clenchin' like that, and I'll paint your pretty insides," he warned, voice roughened by restraint as his thumb pressed harder against your swollen clit.

Your eyes widened in panic as you shoved weakly at his chest, only for him to catch your wrists in one hand and pin them above your head with effortless strength. "Not in—"

His other hand clamped over your mouth again, stifling your half-formed protest as his hips snapped forward in a brutal thrust that stole your breath. "Shhh," he murmured against your ear, fangs scraping the shell, "you'll take it all—every last drop—and thank me after." His rhythm turned punishing, each snap of his hips driving you toward another climax whether you wanted it or not.

The moment your thighs trembled around his waist, your body betraying you with fresh slickness despite your fear, Remmick's nostrils flared at the scent. His free hand slid between you, fingers circling your clit with cruel precision as he leaned down to lick the tear streaking your cheek. "Mm—salty," he murmured against her skin, hips rolling in slow, deep thrusts that stretched you. "Gonna make you cum again while I fill you up, darlin'. Bet you never dreamed of bein' bred by a monster."

His composure cracked just slightly when your walls fluttered around him, your body responding instinctively to the relentless pressure of his thumb and the thick drag of his cock. The scent of your terror mingling with arousal made his fangs ache, but he maintained control, withdrawing almost completely before slamming back in. "There we go," he purred against your ear, voice rough as gravel, "just like that. Squeezin' me so tight—like you don't want me to pull out."

Your whimper was muffled against his palm as another orgasm crashed over you, thighs clamping around him desperately, slickness dripping between you. The rhythmic clenching of your cunt shattered his restraint at last; with a low snarl that shook the tent poles, he buried himself to the hilt and came hard, fangs sinking into your throat as his hips jerked erratically against yours. The taste of your blood, copper and spice and something undeniably yours, flooded his senses like aged whiskey.

His groan vibrated against your skin as the head of his cock pulsed against your deepest walls, each twitch pressing obscenely against your womb while your blood trickled down his throat. The dual sensations, your climax milking him dry while your life essence warmed his cold veins, made his vision swim crimson at the edges. Only centuries of control kept him from draining you completely; instead, he lapped lazily at the twin punctures, savoring the way your pulse fluttered beneath his tongue like a trapped bird. "Fuck—fuck—" he rasped against your damp skin, hips grinding in slow circles to prolong the aftershocks.

Your eyelids fluttered, your breath coming in shallow pants as exhaustion dragged at your limbs. Remmick withdrew with deliberate slowness, watching the way your spent body trembled at the loss. His cum dripped obscenely between your thighs, glistening in the moonlight filtering through the tent fabric. With a smirk, he dragged two fingers through the mess before pressing them past your lips. "Clean up your mess, sugar," he murmured, thumb brushing your bottom lip when your tongue darted out weakly. "That's it."

You swallowed weakly, the taste of him mingling with the copper tang of your own blood still drying on your throat. Every movement sent fresh aftershocks through your oversensitive body, yet through half-lidded eyes, you couldn't help but watch as he straightened with inhuman grace, buttoning his slacks with deliberate precision while his crimson gaze never left yours.

His smirk deepened as he plucked the torn panties from where they'd tangled around your ankle, tucking them into his breast pocket with a flourish that made you blush.

"Souvenir," he purred, running a clawed thumb over the damp fabric before leaning down to drag your sweatpants back over trembling thighs. "Wouldn't want your friends noticin' how well-used you are just yet." His fingers lingered at the waistband, adjusting the fabric with surprising gentleness for a creature who'd just wrecked you.

Exhaustion threatened to pull you under; his pupils dilated as he pressed a palm to your forehead, murmuring words in a language foreign to you that slithered through your veins like ice.

Your limbs grew impossibly heavy, eyelids flickering shut as the world blurred into soft-edged darkness. Only when your breathing evened out did he withdraw, straightening his cuffs with practiced ease while moonlight caught the fresh and faint scratches you'd left on his shoulders.

This is a man who respects anyone regardless of what their appearance is, it’s their morals that stir his respect. He doesn’t have a specific type in looks, not your size or skin colour, as long as you are a good and true person. He wants someone who’s funny, caring, understanding. A person who would gel well with the living dynamic he has, getting along well with Jack, with Jessica (at least enough to accept that she is Jack’s aunt and a big part of their lives). Someone who accepts he has a lot of both physical and psychological scars, that he is a flawed person, but that he will try his best for you.

That’s not to say he wouldn’t be absolutely in love with your appearance though, quite the opposite in fact. He’s the kind of guy who can really appreciate and admire a big woman, I mean he’s got big hands for a reason 🤭 he loves holding you, not just in a sexual way, but just in an affectionate way. His arms around your waist, holding you close to him whenever he gets the chance. He loves how soft you are, though not because “you look like you give good hugs”- he hates that non-compliment people say to you- but because you contrast so much with the roughness and harshness of his job, that whole aspect of his life.

But also you’re so gorgeous and sexy to him, and he wants a good handful of you no matter what (with permission of course). If you let him, he has no qualms with really digging his fingers into your body, pulling you towards him to sit on his lap, to lay on top of him, to manhandle you as much as you’ll allow him to. Holding you gently though when you need that most, tracing his fingers along your skin, over ripples and dimples and folds, across stretch marks and bumps and cellulite. You’re beautiful, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

He can’t claim to understand what it’s like to exist as someone who’s fat, who’s grown up fat, who deals with the discrimination and cruelty that fat people face, but he will listen though, and he will learn. You’d best believe he’s going to be your number one defender, putting anyone who dares even look at you wrong in their place. You mean everything to him and he won’t let anything slide.

When it comes to sex, he is the most patient man ever. He won’t rush things, won’t make you do anything you aren’t ready for. If you wanna keep a shirt on? That’s okay. Wanna keep the lights off/dimmed? Fair enough! Whatever makes you feel the most confident he supports. Of course, he would love to see you fully naked, to take in every little detail of your plush, big body. To spend ages kissing and licking and biting and sucking on your skin, to cover your most insecure areas with love and adoration and desire. To watch your body bounce and move while he makes love to you (or fuck you real hard and nasty 🤭), to grip onto you to leverage his thrusts. This man wants to devour you whole, and that’s what he’s gonna do.

Chapter 2: Bedsharing

You drifted between wake and sleep, pulling the straps of your tank top over your shoulder as you turned, seeking out the warmth of Bruce's form as you nuzzled into his chest.

Even in his deep sleep, like clockwork he wrapped an arm around your waist, nesting his chin atop your head.

You laid there a moment, so safe and secure—this is your first time sharing this moment and somehow you felt like you already missed this.

"Can't sleep?" He mumbled, half awake.

"Yeah." Your eyelids fluttered, trying your damnedest to stimulate them open, but they were as stubborn as you.

Your mind faded elsewhere, fighting tirelessly to stay in bed and keep this moment for as long as possible, but your body rejected it.

Bruce, however, had other plans.

"I'm so glad you're here." He whispered, sounding a tad bit more alert.

His finger slowly danced down your shoulder, carrying your thin strap with it. The stimulation was enough to bring your mind back but you didn't have enough energy to move. 

You felt his lips press gently against your shoulder, his breath fanning across your prickling skin.

"Don't worry, I've got you." He whispered as you felt a rush of adrenaline warm your body.

His fingers spread across your arms, movements tired and sluggish as he brushed his hands along your exposed stomach.

You didn't think about how squishy your stomach was, or how his knuckles kissed over your stretch marks. Instead you smiled. Your fingers finding his cheek before messing his curls.

He kissed, catching the round of your nose and you giggled, guiding him gently crashing into your lips.

The kiss was soft and short. Not the first kiss you ever shared, but far more intimate.

Eyes adjusting to the dim light cast through his curtains, you made out Bruce's silhouette and you stroked down his arm. Your hand fit right around his finger, as it tickled down your side.

"Whatcha thinkin bout?"

A weary giggle escaped you as his thumb kneaded your hip.

"You." He chuckled. "Laying in my bed. With no panties on."

You snickered, running your nails along his hairy forearms.

"Is that what you were dreaming about?"

"I wish." He cracked, his laugh echoing in the still of his bedroom.

You sat up, turning on your knees before reaching above his headboard, nudging open the near blackout curtains, inviting in soft moonlight.

You laid back on your side, scooting closer, wrapping his arm around your waist.

"I wanted to see you." You booped his nose, earning a slow blink from him.

"This feels like a dream."

He chuckled, "Maybe it is and you're still on your 6 hour flight to New York."

You smiled gently, his eyes following yours as you slid free your other strap, slowly tugging at the front of the top revealing more of your breasts.

His smile faded, digging his teeth into his tongue as you stripped the undershirt down to your stomach.

"Then pinch me."

He sighed heavy, hands moving to cup your breasts, palms grazing your nipples as you gasped wearily.

Bruce leaned in, nuzzling into your neck as he worked your growing buds with his thumb tips.

A choked moan escaped you as he pinched then pulled on your sensitive nubs, groaning lowly into your shoulder.

He rolled his fingers, twisting the erect nipples and you sighed ragged against his ear.

"Bruce."

The energy surge he felt hearing his name roll feverishly off your tongue made his next actions especially erotic.

He leaned into you, pressing you onto your back as your legs spread wide accommodating him.

He laid over top of you for a moment, catching a glimpse of your face, stretched wanton with need as you pressed him against your body, craving his touch and warmth.

Dutifully, you pressed your lips to his neck, sucking and biting at what you hope would turn into hickeys as you hooked your fingers under the hem of his white tee.

He obliged you, sitting up to his knees, the blinds casting stripes across his deep musculature as he peeled the t-shirt off.

You sat up on your elbows, watching intensely as his chest swelled and his forehead wrinkled with concern.

"Do you want this?"

Sure, you'd shared some intimate moments before, but never has it progressed to this level.

Bruce was rightly concerned.

You reached for his hand and he broke the distance. Guiding his palm leisurely over your knee, down the curve of your thigh and flesh of increasing warmth, before his fingers slid over your mound, resting wet and sticky against your lips.

Your hips rolled gently against his hand and mumbled salaciously. "Does it feel like I don't want this?"

Bruce swallowed as you guided his fingers, slow and gentle, pressing between your lips, indulging him in the sultry wetness that streamed from your core.

He leaned over you, latching onto your trembling lips as his hand stroked tirelessly over your clit.

You gasped against his lips, hands gripping at everything until you found the column of Bruce's forearm.

You squeezed him hard, nails pressing into his skin as you threw your head back and cursed into the air.

He was loving this, this short tempered, unsatisfied energy that contrasted your own, resting just beneath your surface.

He wanted to draw it out further, see how long you could handle such mild stimulation before suddenly you were pleading, curling your toes and clutching vigorously at his hair—a habit of yours that he'd learn to grow accustomed to.

"Fu-ck." You whimpered, eyes rolling back as your body tensed up and you held your breath, teetering on the edge of oversensitivity as he tirelessly rubbed the throbbing nub.

Abruptly you stilled his hand, panting into the air as your body relaxed, tremors still shocking your system.

Your kiss was impatient and torrid as you pulled him into your lips, flinching quietly as his finger mistakenly grazed your clit.

A soft chuckle fell from his lips as he realized, stroking his slick knuckle over your clit and you flinched again, pulling away his mischievous wrist.

"Wow." Was all Bruce could manage as he gazed over your trembling form.

"You're a little firecracker when you're all worked up."

You snickered, covering your eyes as he joined you in laughter.

"Stop. It's not that serious."

"You scared me, grabbing my hair like that." You burst into laughter, squeezing his shoulders in protest.

"Shut up and kiss me, idiot." You tossed your arms over his shoulders, meeting his lips as he laid flat on his stomach.

You breathed against each other, his chest rose and fell to match yours as you brushed the top of your foot down his happy trail.

He moaned softly against your lips as you explored further, finding his cock semi erect in his pajamas.

You were inching down his waistband as your tongue slid over his bottom lip when he halted your curious foot, whispering against your lips.

"No—we can't."

"Because?" You sang into his lips, crawling your hands down his chest.

He broke off your kiss and sat to his knees, but not before you sucked his lip between your teeth.

"I'm—it's too big."

"Too big?"

Too big sounded like a challenge, and you were always intrigued by a challenge.

You smirked, stroking your foot up his thigh, toes ghosting his shaft as you dragged along his crotch.

A quiet, hesitant groan rumbled in his chest as you pat your feet on either side of his cock.

He measured up quite well. Easily longer than one of your feet and he wasn't even fully erect yet. His cock rising and falling perpendicular to his body.

"Y—It won't fit. So we probably shouldn't."

"No?"

You could see his will breaking the longer you stroked, teasing your toes up his shaft.

He sighed raggedly, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth as his gaze followed your other foot, pressing between his thighs to fondle at his balls.

"You really don't need to—" His hips grinded against you unconsciously and you giggled.

"It kinda seems like you want to, though." You rolled your shoulders, scooting to sit in front of his legs as he kneeled.

"Can I at least see it?" You curled your thumbs around the thick of his waistband, earning a small throb from his cock.

Finally he gave in, sighing. "Just. Promise me you won't get scared."

You laughed, humoring him then abruptly stopped as you realized he wasn't kidding.

"Of course I won't. I'm not afraid of you, Bruce. So you've got a big dick, it's not that uncommon—" You stared dumbly as you pulled his waistband down past his thighs, his length easily surpassing that of your forearm, and his girth wider than your closed fist.

Much like the rest of his body, his cock felt warm, thick, and veiny.

Surely a sight like this would be a nightmare to any normal person, but you weren't normal.

Your chest tightened as your eyes traced from the silky gray hairs on his pelvis to his shiny, bulbous head.

Bruce, growing uncomfortable with all this newly manifested curiosity surrounding his penis, wanted to cut this short.

"There, you saw it. Are you hap—"

Before he could finish his wisecrack, you gripped around the base of his shaft as your other hand began stroking over his head and he gasped sharply, hips stuttering forward.

Every word Bruce's mind tried to form came out as quiet whines and pants.

His cock was weighty, requiring a little effort to raise his shaft as you massaged his balls in your hands.

"Your balls are so big, too. Where were you hiding all this?" You marveled, pulling gently on his scrotum earning a weak groan from him.

"M-must be a grower."

You swirled your tongue around his tip, noting the salty, musky taste of his skin and precum, and he wheezed, his cock growing steadily stiffer.

Upon releasing it, his cock rose and bounced against his stomach, throbbing pleasantly at the prior stimulation.

"Do you want me to stop?"

Wide eyed, Bruce furiously shook his head, resting his hands on your shoulders as you excitedly crawled to your knees.

You, admittedly, had no idea how to deal with a cock of this size, but you were determined to make him cum, nonetheless. 

Bruce grabbed the base of his shaft, lifting it up so you could easier access his balls as you tugged and determinedly sucked them into your mouth interchangeably.

He stroked up and down his shaft slowly, your actions drawing drips of precum out his heavy tip.

He couldn't believe the woman he loved was gargling his balls right now.

"How do you like it?" He stroked his shaft with more vigor.

You pulled back for a moment, catching your breath, your lips and chin wet with saliva.

“—I love it." You gave a quickfire response. A genuine passion in your eyes as you watched his hand tug up and down his shaft.

You grabbed his hand angling his tip down so you could slide him into your mouth, but alas, his head was far too wide to fit comfortably inside.

You mouthed over his cock, your tongue swirling around his tip glazed with precum as he growled, rubbing his hand across his pecs.

"God, that feels so good."

You moaned with a vigor unheard of prior to this evening, a giddy arousal filled the room as your tongue and mouth explored every inch of his cock and balls.

You had exhausted your efforts; your mouth was only so large and tongue only so active. But you had truly never been so wet—so turned on by a cock before. Perhaps that made you a size queen?

You sat to your butt, your inner thighs slick as your pussy radiated a need too shiny to ignore.

Bruce's breath hitched in his throat, his stroking growing more vigorous.

"God, you're so wet."

You stretched out to your back, spreading your legs to reveal the beautiful, sullied mess that glazed your thighs and pussy.

Bruce groaned softly, his one hand fisting his cock as he crawled between your legs for a better view.

"Bruce." You chuckled, covering yourself with your hand, all of a sudden camera shy.

He felt a deep throb in his stomach that reached his groin at the sound of his name.

"I like it when you say my name."

You giggled, sitting up to your elbows, his eyes fervent with passion as he stroked.

"I like watching you stroke your dick."

You bent your legs over each of his outstretched thighs, opening up yourself further as you trailed your hand up your thighs.

Your hips bucked as you parted your lips, the wet offering just enough stimulation to your already sensitive clit.

Bruce groaned softly, resting a hand on your thigh as your fingers worked slowly to spread the gleaming wet up your vulva and across your clit.

You whined, legs trembling as you massaged over your clit, trading between watching him stroke and tossing your head back against the bed.

Bruce's fingers pressed into your thigh as he growled deep from his chest.

"Bruce." You moaned, chest heaving and he cursed quickly.

"Spit on it." You instructed, to which he gave a panicked: "What?"

"Spit on your cock and stroke it."

He spit into his hand, working it over his head before stroking the rest across his shaft.

You relished in the sight of his fingers thoroughly covered in wet and the slick sound of his hand sliding over his cock.

Bruce could feel himself getting there, meeting the point where his stomach began to tighten and his heart began to pound in his ears.

You rocked into your fingers, gasping for breath as your hand clenched at his, squeezing at your thigh.

You were in your own world, breathing his name and filthy pleas into the night as you squelched at the wet between your legs.

He wanted to hold off, wait to cum with you but there was no stopping the intense adrenaline rush that willed his hips to thrust into his hand.

His grip was intense as he groaned loudly, leaning back, hips stuttering.

"I'm gonna cum—"

He froze up, cock throbbing as cum dribbled from his tip, rolling down his fist at such a rate you thought it'd never end.

God you wanted this so bad, more than anything you wanted—no—needed to cum. You needed to fall head into ecstasy and drown in it.

Bruce followed your pleasure, stilling your sore fingers before he leaned into your pussy, lapping at the source of the slick that stained your thighs.

You gasped, back arching off the bed before your hands fixed in his hair.

"Bruce—" You shrieked as he easily lifted your hips from the bed, supporting you easily with his own strength.

His pace was aggressive as his lips sucked at your throbbing clit.

You surrendered. You folded to the intense pleasure overtaking your senses as you came with a ragged gasp. Your legs closed around his head, threatening to suffocate him as you tensed up before your limbs fell listlessly.

Bruce gently laid you down against the cooling puddle of cum that had dripped from you and onto the sheet, his breath warm against your flesh. You wanted to see his face, taste his lips which probably probably tasted of you, but instead you laid catching your breath.

After a few moments laying there, you felt Bruce's lips smile against your skin.

"That was hot." Bruce laughed and you burst into giggles as he laid his head against your thigh, breathing heavily.

You can hear them in her venerable voice, streaming through tales of history, their peculiar sounds flitting through lessons of vocabulary and tapping out instructions for life. Even as you sit beside Arthur on the wagon seat, both of you with hair still dripping as you jostle along in the noonday sun, you can hear them.

They are all words that represent a part of you that the world has conspired so efficiently to bury. So efficiently, that even you have gone days at a time forgetting part of your own being.

You try your best, once again, not to feel nauseated at that realization. But in this world, your mother’s warning still holds true: some things may be best left buried—deep. And it astonishes you that that part of yourself had risen to the surface with just two words.

It had happened so easily. The words had spilled from your mouth before you’d even realized it—words that wanted to be alive, wanted to be heard. Not more than a couple hours earlier. This, the morning after Arthur had used the dark of night to gently, coaxingly teach you another way to make love.

If you close your eyes, you are there again, waking nude beneath a blanket on the forest floor with Arthur.

…

The distant, resonant trill of the birds’ matins gently wakes you before it does Arthur. Lying on your side facing him, you watch as his eyes gradually blink open to show you deep lazuli wells of truth and warmth, leading straight down into his soul.

A smile flings onto your mouth at the sight, and he begins to smirk as he stretches awake.

Hardly ever have you known him to wake even a moment after yourself, or anyone. But this morning, a wry grin pulls on his mouth as he closes his eyes again. He groans as he dips beneath the woolen blanket and pulls it up over his head, half covering your face along with his.

Your smile brightens, and you follow below, enjoying the secreted dimness of a fort made for two.

“You kept me up all night,” he mumbles blearily as he slinks an arm over your bare waist.

He draws close and presses sleepy kisses to your cheek, chin, and neck as you mumble a giggled response.

“Want some coffee?” he asks as he pulls back just enough to see your face in the tanned dim of dawn through the mottled wool. He swipes a finger back over your temple, brushing some of the night air-dried clumps of flattened hair from your eyes.

When you simply nod, he mumbles assent and offers another kiss before exiting the blanket with an airy grunt. He quickly tucks the blanket’s edge in close to you to reduce the rush of morning chill to your skin.

You take a breath and arch against the forest floor as you curl your toes and stretch your naked limbs. It takes presence of mind to absorb the brief calm in the course of a morning like this—a felicitous mix of restoration and comfort—and you remind yourself to listen to the mourning dove’s precious, serene hoot.

When you finally lift your head from the blanket and sit up to greet the verdant ribbons of light shining through the forest leaves, Arthur’s already dressed in his red union suit and beginning to stoke a newly lit campfire.

The thick woolen blanket becomes your cave as you wrap it around your body and sit cross legged on the mat.

Arthur spares a hidden glance your way and glimpses your face, finding you focused on wrapping the edges of the blanket around yourself. He smiles privately as he faces forward. Your nude neck and shoulders—streamed with wisps of your untidy hair—are evidential reminders of the thorough loving you’d enjoyed together the night before. He allows himself to consider it another territorial victory—another few steps deeper into the gorgeously lush and alive walled garden of your heart.

After he’s poured a mug of steaming black brew from the coffee pot, he walks it over to you. Clinging to the blanket around your arms, you stand to take it. And when the dented tin mug gingerly changes cupped hands, you notice a small, dark crimson blood blister beneath Arthur’s wide thumbnail, that you hadn’t before.

As he walks back to the fire, your mind wanders to produce what possible moiling task could’ve put it there. Had he sworn? Torn his hand away? Shaken it? Or quickly stuffed his thumb into the innate relief of his mouth?

Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps such a reaction is reserved for young ones; and perhaps a grown, dauntless, hardy man such as Arthur had managed to cage even his sudden, unforeseen pains inward.

Once Arthur’s returned the percolator to the fire’s coals, you watch the odd shapes of his bare feet shift and settle upon the lakeside’s soil and roughage as he stands a few feet away, enjoying his own newly poured mug of coffee.

After he tilts the mug for his last sip of dregs, he turns and reaches for the percolator. When his fingers hardly graze it, he hisses, swiftly jerks his hand back, shakes it once, and licks his fingertips.

A wiggly smile springs onto your mouth, and you tuck your lips inward as it grows brighter, finally deciding to hide it behind your mug.

Just as he turns in your direction, you force a focused squint and look out to the forest’s pool to try to hide your grin.

As you gaze at the cool, tranquil water, the image in your mind returns to the little blood blister on your lover’s thumb. Such an exceedingly small thing, but for you it represents his continuous hard work, his severe way of life. He almost certainly never even noticed its formation.

Arthur has known enough pain, you think. Enough in expanse and burrowed in depth to last a lifetime. Hardly any fun. Just a bit. And even that, always tainted by shadows of mind games and tangled by a tapestry of looming realities.

He’s now been able to weep once, as he’d needed; his easiness with you has seen to that. You wish him to know the pureness of fun for its own sake—shed of the demand or need for any other conscious thought. Be it worry or fear, shame or heartbreak, distrust or disappointment, necessity…or even time.

Your lovemaking last night is still strikingly vivid in your mind: the deeply comforting sensation of being held by him, the feel of his skin, the heat of his body, the memories of his eyes, his roaming hands and arms, his chest against yours, his clever mouth. All still effervescing in your mind and across your skin.

You remember well how he’d tried so gently to coax you to trust him more deeply. How he’d tried with such understanding, to spur you to be playful and uninhibited in your lovemaking. To make each other laugh. To nudge you towards spontaneity. Fun.

Arthur has known enough pain. And you want so desperately to be his playful, uninhibited lover. To deserve his interest, garner his amusement, and above all, bring him relief. Pleasure. Fill him with all the love you feel for him.

So in a moment of utter folly, and with a heart trying its best to give itself over to spontaneity, you shut your eyes and squeal as you dart towards the water, letting go of the the woolen blanket at the last moment before splashing unceremoniously into the water. Turning to look at him with a buoyant smile, you lurch backwards into the woodland pool and dare him to follow.

“Needin’ another bath so soon?” His grin is almost boyish—lit by anticipation and pleasant surprise. He’s already awkwardly bent at the hip with his calf cocked in the air as he tries to roll his union suit down his hairy ankle, never letting his eyes leave your face and nude form.

“It’s my turn to entice you,” you call with a silken voice. Smirking, you sink to dip the lower half of your face below the water’s surface. You gaze at him on the shore with eyes that silently say he should already be in the water with you. Eyes laced with as much boldness and coyness as you’ve ever had occasion to find within yourself in all your life. He’s hurrying towards the pool’s edge when you add, “Mr. Morgan.”

“Don’t need to entice me twice,” he chuckles choppily as he stumbles into the water after you. “Mrs. Morgan.”

You giggle at his quip. As he steps into the forest pool completely nude, you notice that he reaches both hands down to cup himself and hisses a bit as his hips enter the cool water.

You can’t help but laugh outright. “Oh, the water’s a little colder for you this morning than it was last night?”

“Cheeky.”

A tickled chortle sputters from your lips.

As he steps deeper into the water, you’re once again caught off guard by the form of him. Firmly built and angular, the bulks of his shoulders and chest hewn from stone, and his abdomen so perfectly, faintly scored. His thighs are resilient and strong, and his exquisitely carved hip bones could have you groveling in a moment. And those whorls of coarse hair that start at his chest and amble down his belly, running lower and ever lower, growing darker and more delicious as they reach his sex. That alone has you dizzy and almost drooling.

It is not merely a living masterpiece who wades toward you, but the one person you love most in all the world. And you are so deeply, physically affected by the sight of him that a swoop fills your belly, and your chest audibly croons with delight.

But you hadn’t noticed his face. The way he looks at you… Like you might be just as special and mesmerizing to him.

When he reaches you, the grins you flash are a matching pair. He draws close for a few open, smiling, lazy kisses. You return them easily, languidly, your grin remaining open to the cool air that slips between your tongues.

Forcing yourself to tear away, you turn and swim in the opposite direction.

“Where you goin’?” he calls.

You chuckle at the bemused exasperation in his voice and toss over your shoulder, “Fish breath!”

He guffaws. “And you’re much better!”

Laughter immediately erupts from you. He stretches out his arms and glides forward to follow you. The two of you swim out deeper towards the center, becoming lithe and weightless.

A faint mist softly hovers and lingers above the water’s surface. Its diaphanous veil of minuscule beads ensnare the forest’s glow like the fine filaments of a web and briefly cast it in an array of vibrant colors. Sheets of warm, yellow sunlight filter into the crystal-like water like broad, dancing curtains, illuminating all that lies beneath.

The two of you find teems of tiny minnows, darting and dispersing at your presence. Scores of tadpoles, dark and bulbous, waggling their funny string tails. And the king of them all—the stunning trout—a fluid slip of evergreen and slate, his side and belly as vivid pastel as dusk clouds, his demeanor calm and suspended in his cool kingdom. The water is so pristine and clear that each fish seems so immediately tangible and corporeal—so close that you could reach out and brush your fingertips to their slippery forms. But each time you do, your arm proves just too short.

To all of them, your nakedness means nothing, and the two of you are no more than a pair of lissome silhouettes against the sunlight—arms and legs folding and flexing to vault you through the water above them.

It’s easy for you to see the beauty in it: two lovers swimming naked in a woodland pool, playing, laughing, kissing in the mist of day.

With the light of morning, you’re provided with a better look at the edges of the pool than you’d had the night before. You notice that on one end, the pool siphons into a small brook that leads deeper into the forest. On the other end stands a cliff of aggregate rock layers, with greenery and woodland growth sprawling over it. The body of the pool seems to extend around the jutting cliff and further back than you can see. When you swim closer to the little inlet, the quiet sound of crashing water emerges and grows a little clearer. And when you finally round the wall of rock, you see it—a small, trickling waterfall down the rock face into the pool.

With a bright smile, you turn to him. “It’s a spring.”

He returns your grin at the uncanniness of it. “You always seem to find ‘em. Don’t even have to try.” As the two of you look back at the waterfall, he wags his head. “Seems we’ve circled back to our beginning, baby.”

The thought makes you beam. It hadn’t crossed your mind until he’d said it. And of course, it isn’t the same waterfall. But it was bathing in a little spring similar to this that had somehow given you the chance at a love and a life with Arthur that you’d always longed for. Even at its start, you couldn’t have imagined being comfortable enough in your marriage as to find yourself swimming nude with him.

A surge of undiluted joy swivels through you like the sparkling fountain itself. You lift your arms straight into the air and release a hoot as you let yourself drift backwards and down into the water.

Before you know it, the two of you are scaling the dark rocks at the base of the spring and letting out long yowls of happiness before jumping off one at a time into the water with a great splash. Each time the two of you step beneath the fall, the water that sleuces down the outline of Arthur’s muscular body wholly mesmerizes you.

Over again, you both climb up the rocks and jump off, dodging the patches of slippery moss with each step, tucking your legs beneath you when you leap, trying to spray the other who waits in the water with the biggest splash you can create.

After several ebullient leaps into the water, the two of you begin to float tranquilly on your backs with eyes closed. Your faces gradually dry a bit in the sun. But you don’t let Arthur float in peace too long. You sneak beside him and flick your wrist to send a huge splash of water over him—payback for last night. He immediately makes you pay with a forceful wave over you, far bigger than you could’ve created. The tinkling spray falls amidst your own wild laughter and Arthur’s snickers.

Is there some peculiar childishness to it? You can only hope so, for Arthur’s sake. And what business have you playing this way, with so little care harbored in the woven fibers of your bodies, at your ages? With the weight of life you both have behind you? It doesn’t matter. Here, in the secluded wilderness, it does not matter. It’s one benefit of your precious love, made sweeter and emboldened and strengthened by the internal, unbreakable cord of true, tender friendship. Your friendship and love are not two separate things, but rather intertwined. It’s a love that cares for the other and wants nothing, only finds sheer delight in each other. For the two of you, togetherness is freedom.

For yourself, this has never felt purer or more concentrated. Because somehow, you have found the one man who doesn’t seem to see all that’s wrong with you. Doesn’t see the curdled dimples of fat in your thighs. If he does, he doesn’t treat them as grotesque; he treats them like dimples in the finest, rarest turquoise mined from the bowels of earth. He doesn’t seem to see your unsightly scars or all the parts of you that, to the rest of society and even to you, are all misshapen, broken, marred. Somehow, he treats you like you are wanted. So deeply wanted. Like you are the most beautiful woman in the world.

And as you play and let your limbs skim the cool water, let your hands lazily sweep its surface, as you feel it lap at your skin and buoy you in an envelope of silken quartz, you allow your mind to revel in the miracle of it. Here you are, filled again with the selfsame senses of insouciance, safety, serenity, and freedom, that you were that day you bathed in the waterfall, thinking you were totally alone—alone in both the river, and in life. But now, you feel those things with another person in the water. You feel them with Arthur near.

When Arthur swims toward the pool’s edge, you follow. He pulls himself up onto the earthen bank and flops onto his back, closing his eyes again and letting his hands rest limply on his chest as he catches his breath.

When he feels you, Arthur opens his eyes just in time to see the damn near mythic sight of you crawling forth from the water. Alerted and riveted by you, he props himself up on his elbows so he doesn’t miss a moment. Your long, darkened tresses are stuck to you in many loosed, unruly tendrils. Rivulets of lagoon water by the dozens stream swiftly down your voluptuous form, shimmering like liquid crystal. But as you crawl towards him, you seem to hardly notice the water’s gentle tug on you.

He can’t help but lower himself to his back as you close the gap between you and crawl over him.

Desire. It courses through you, pulsating and raw, until you’re flooded with it.

Where Arthur is, there you are. His skin is fresh and sweet as you lick the water droplets away in a string of kisses, moving up the hard line of his body. You tenderly kiss across his belly, faintly covered with hair. You let your tongue sweep along that dulcet, round rim of his navel and dip inside its crater, swishing the river water away and relishing its perfect hollow shape set in the faintly ridged plane of his abdomen. You continue kissing upward, through the denser hair of his broad chest. Approaching a nipple, you lathe your tongue across it and playfully bite it with the barest press of the tip of your teeth against its edge.

When you reach his mouth, you abandon yourself in the kiss you give him. Deep and full, the slip of his tongue rich and warm against yours. You pull your fingers through his wet hair, dragging your nails across his scalp, and feel him moan in satisfaction as he returns the depth of your kisses. When you tilt your head to fit your mouths perfectly together, your nose bunches against his for a moment, and you lose yourself further in the heady kiss. You feel him cradle the back of your head, and you slit your eyes open to see with elation that his eyes are closed, lost in the kiss as much as you are.

Arthur brings both large hands to your supple back. Reaching one hand up to where your chests meet, he traces the round swell of your full breast where it’s pressed and spilling from between the two of you. He can feel you wriggle with pleasure at the way his coarse chest hair nuzzles the sensitive beads of your nipples. He luxuriates in the sensation of the tender, sumptuous length of your body fitted against his own. And he is nearly dizzy at the thought of what a lucky son of a bitch he has somehow become, to have such a luscious she-fox as you swathed over him.

Making advantageous use of the sun’s drying, warming effect on your back, Arthur lets his hands quickly rub up and down your plump, shapely skin, taking the flare of your hips and the perfect curve of your ass in handfuls. When you settle to rest with one leg between his own, his breath hitches in his throat at the sensation of your waterlogged bundle of curls slaking over the top of his thigh.

All in his mind is you—giving you pleasure, making you happy, seeing ecstasy on your face and feeling rapture rip through your body, experiencing the way your soul dances and resonates with his own.

Before another moment passes, he stretches a hand down between you, reaching to dip a finger into the sweet well of your sex. His fingertips have hardly curled past the soft cusp of your flesh before you abruptly break with his mouth, gasping a word.

“Wait—”

Arthur is half stunned, trying not to reel, his own chest huffing for air as his eyes find yours.

“I—” After a quick glance downward, you meet his eyes again as you hesitatingly scoot yourself downward along his body. “I want to…try.”

When you pause with his taught sex beneath you, you can see that Arthur takes your meaning. He surprises you with the briefest stammer.

“O-oh— Uh,” he begins, reticent. “You don’t have to do that, dar—"

“I just want to try.” You offer a slight smile.

Arthur blinks to locate your expression, with the rising sun behind you as it is. But when he finds it, he is spellbound. The sky of brilliant azure around you, your stunning wet hair dangling about you and framing your face so sensually… How could he ever refuse such a vision of a woman?

You look down to his erect manhood. Arthur is so aroused, his thick sex so tightly stiff, that you must carefully pull the length of his shaft away from his belly toward your mouth.

Though you bear an absence rather than a surplus of experience, you try to proceed with an air of demonstrable confidence. What you’re spared from knowing is that for Arthur, your attempt at a confident air conveys itself much more as innocent ardor. Unknown to you, the faintest smile flickers onto his mouth as he watches you, his sweet love.

Slowly, you press little kisses up the length of Arthur’s erection, and down the other side. You devote attention to every moment he moans, so you can linger in that spot and ply your lips and tongue against him with new fervor. His gritty voice is so deeply, wonderfully masculine to you, and never had you thought you’d hear it forming such beautifully breathy, intimate sounds.

And God, the way his moans affect you. Lighting your nerves with dancing sparks until the merciless flames lick alongside your own body. Sending shivers through your heated flesh until your womb flips, and your sex aches with the sweetest mingling of pain and pleasureful longing, and you feel your slick arousal slowly course from the curved crease at the jointure of your leg and down the inside of your thigh.

When your mouth passes along the underside of his cock and you notice the way his moans grow, you lick him there in a long, warm line, until you reach the sensitive, swollen head of his sex. He’s feverishly hot and almost pulsing there, and you realize he must be aching with need, the way you so often do for his touch. After plunging his sex into the warmth of your mouth, you massage him with your tongue and suckle him.

You watch Arthur clench his fists. He groans, his eyes shutting tight and his face contorting. For a fleeting moment, you feel concern that he may be in pain; but when you hear the new tone in his moans—a faint, hardly discernible leak of whimpered air—when you notice the crimson wash of warmth across his face, your every concern is allayed. If Arthur feels anything remotely resembling pain, it is the agony of racing pleasure.

Experimentally, you caress his testicles in your hands, stroking and fondling them. Then you run your open hands over the tops of his thighs and over the smooth skin of hipbones, letting yourself sigh through your nose with a relaxed moan of satisfaction.

With huffed breaths, Arthur watches your long, water-darkened hair tumble and spill in glorious waves about his middle as you lathe his most private organ with your tongue.

How wonderful you’d looked while playing and enjoying the water's coolness—so free and safe, like you’d truly had not a care on your shoulders. That sight in itself had been a revelation to him; you were without doubt the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, just like that day he’d stumbled upon you bathing alone in the forest. Now you’re draped over him, pleasuring him like a clever draiad sprung from under the pool’s surface, and the sight is far more than he can bear.

It’s been a long time since he’d enjoyed such a raw intimacy, and never this particular act with a woman he loves as he loves you. Somehow, he’d forgotten just how intimate an act it is. That he must expose all of himself to you, his dear lover, and trust you.

He’d known in his head just how trusting you’d had to be with him last night. But now his heart’s understanding is renewed afresh. Here he is, a longtime coarse, raffish, self-governed outlaw, having to keep his own disconcertments in check. And you, who were already somewhat timid, had never done such a thing. You’d had to have been downright daring to bare yourself so fully to him, and to trust him so deeply.

When you hit a particularly sensitive spot, Arthur’s head flings backward, his eyes clenching shut at the abrupt, sheer spike in pleasure. He listens to your sweet breaths and moans of enjoyment, listens to the lewd clicks of your wet mouth against him. You are nothing short of magnificent—amazing to him. Here you are, the very next morning, prodding yourself to try another new thing. Here you are, proving your loving can be frolicsome, no less. With no experience of this and little notion of the minute mappings of his body.

And already, you are conquering him. You can have no idea what you do to him. How you unspool and unravel him. Every thought of every other thing in this world is banished utterly from his head. There is nothing and no one but you.

As you suckle at the head of Arthur’s length, you feel him shudder and tense. The longer you work him with your mouth, the more he writhes on the water’s bank, until he’s grasping fistfuls of the sod on either side of him. The breathy groan he releases then is a searing force you feel all the way down to your womb.

Suddenly, Arthur’s body becomes stretched tight, his facile play of rigid muscles constricting and contracting beneath his skin, his back slightly arching away from the earth beneath him as he tosses and writhes through gasps and broken groans.

With wide eyes and with your mouth still closed around him, your head abruptly bobs up in shock at the sight. It’s a shock so thorough that you don’t recognize you’ve pulled away from the very task that’s caused the sight. In the next moment, Arthur’s stiff sex has slipped from your mouth and has sprung back into its lonesome place against his belly; and still, you watch him gasp and wriggle with the residual effects of the extreme arousal you’ve heaved upon him.

You’re gasping yourself, though you hardly register that either. Because you are covered in spiny pinpricks at the realization that you—you, of all people—have achieved such intensely heightened levels of pleasure in Arthur. You are the one who has just commanded his arousal, who has sent him reeling into the sweet chambers of heaven. You have just exhibited such wondrous, sensual power over him—power to achieve throes of blissful agony in his body. You.

It’s unlike any feeling you’ve known before. Like an undulating glow of ochre and vermilion—lit coals, incipient with seething flame, but radiating internally with a heat that will scorch.

As Arthur gradually relaxes from his state of heightening euphoria, he slits his eyes open, and your gaze locks with his. You notice his lids gently flutter open wider at the sight of you.

Arthur watches you crawl slowly up his body with a smile glinting on your mouth—small, but with a faint hint of deviltry in it. He watches the gorgeously round, delectably full curves of your ass sway behind you, so perfect to him. He watches the beautifully delicate creases of flesh where your thighs meet your hips, and they call out his name as you prowl over him like a lissome lioness.

Dipping your head and pressing your lips to the hard plane of his chest, you let yourself enjoy the feeling of the exquisitely male body beneath you, with all his hard warmth and the distinct scent he currently bears of bay and pine, soil and sunshine. With a muffled murmur of appreciation behind your lips, you string a burning path of sweet kisses upward and further, along his throat.

“I did that to you.”

He hears you softly purr it into the crook of his neck, the warm mist of your breath fanning along his skin as you roam for places to kiss.

“You’re surprised?” His incredulous laugh is stuttered by a hiss when he feels you dare to take a nibble at his earlobe. It’s only the first time you’ve done that, and already it’s one of his favorite things.

It takes everything in him not to lose his last vestiges of sanity and topple you to your back right then. His voice is gruff and husky with exertion and ungovernable want as you lick a line that traces the tendons of his throat. “You leave me in ruins, woman.”

Smiling buoyantly, you fit your mouth neatly behind his firm jaw and suckle him there voraciously, unable to get enough of his dreamily dulcet skin, and fully intent on leaving a vivid purple bruise.

While you let your kisses meander, you catch sight of his expression. His eyelids drape low, but what’s still revealed of his eyes watch you. They are blearily overcome with cupidity, taking in your every move, an utter slave to your nearness.

He’s right. He is wrecked and undone, a fine mess for you, right here on the secluded forest floor.

Your ambling mouth finally reaches his, and you hide your smile against his lips. “Maybe I’ll be the one to mend you too.”

With your back slightly arched and your chest pressed against him, you cup his face near the back of his devastatingly sharp jaw and give him a number of sumptuously slow kisses, each ending with a heady, sensual click of tongues and lips.

You feel Arthur’s large hand cradle that little arch in the small of your bare back. Opening your eyes a moment, you watch him kiss you with his eyes shut, watch him chase your mouth through each parting breath.

Pulling away, you lift yourself up just enough to shift and straddle him. The soft curve of a smile rests on your lips as you gaze down at him. His cock is solid as a diamond and swollen tight against his belly. But that’s perfect for what you have in mind to try.

Arthur lifts his head and watches you intently. You can almost read his thoughts. Never have you taken the lead this way, let alone to this extent, and he’s not about to miss a moment of it.

With your knees in the dirt, you shimmy your rear down into the cradle of his groin and lean forward until the glistening folds of your feminine flesh caress his hard sex. A broken gasp snags in his throat, and still, you press your hips forward. You shift and press your hips just so, until he is perfectly snug between the hot, wet, caressing folds of your body.

“Right there…” you breath out in one extended exhale. And the sound of it is like an awakening.

After resting your hands on the plane of his chest, you immediately begin to rock and jut your hips against him, letting the scrumptiously fitted clasp of your sex glide and rub up and down against his shaft. Each time you grind against him, his hardened length hits that swollen spot at the apex of your sex, so deliciously, so perfectly.

“Oh God,” Arthur moans, something you’ve never heard from him before. It sends electric jolts through all your nerve endings and flips your womb with excited pleasure, until you’re aching with desire and soaking him with your arousal.

Arthur’s head falls back to the sodden earth, his eyes drowsy with intense pleasure. Both of you moan in loud, tandem bursts—sometimes growled and unified, sometimes hoarse and breathy.

“Goddamn…” he utters weakly. And then the rest of his deep, heady moans promptly lose all intelligibility.

“Oh, God!” you whine. A twisted crease between your brows betrays the sweetest agony of tortuous, sensual bliss.

His hands have come to rest on the creased bundle of your soft, fleshy hips. With each of your rolling thrusts against him, that hold is like a grounding tether for the two of you. He sees you, whole and real and sweating woman that you are above him. He sees the whirling effort of your tense body in all your passion. And he has you.

Letting your head fall back, you shut your eyes and focus on the pulling, inexorable need you feel deep in your body to rock your hips against him. Your inexperience may show, but you try your best to find and sustain a useful rhythm with a gradually quickening pace. You lean down towards him until the tips of your breast graze through the hair on his chest once again. The abrasive sensation adds to the accumulating pleasure radiating in your body. You can’t help but strain and squirm against the delectably hard, warm, virile male body beneath you.

That’s when his stubbled face, his bright lazuli-jade eyes, the plump shape of his lips, come so close to yours.

Every part of you burns with desire. Molten embers have taken hold of you at the fullness of the realization: the same flame that singes you at Arthur’s sensual touch, singes Arthur when you touch him.

You can possess him, you’re learning. Maybe it will take you years to know with unshakeable certainty whether you possess each other in soul. Whether you can hope for a depth of connection that transcends this world, transcends what can be seen and handled. Whether he truly feels about you the way you feel about him. But you can possess him this way. In body and in fiery heat.

And you’re alive anew with this lesson.

As the pace and force of your writhing rhythm quickens and deepens in intensity, you inhale his every hard-rushing, fitful breath and offer him your own. Finally, you cover his mouth with yours and kiss him wildly, lips bunching against his as the hot, searching slip of your tongue invades his mouth.

In the next moment, Arthur swiftly reaches up and takes the whole of your jaw in the secure grip of his thumb and first finger, urging your mouth against his. With one motion, he flips you onto your back and turns to climb over your body. You’re now perpendicular to where you’d been lying and are more parallel with the edge of the forest pool. You’re pinned and can scarcely draw breath, and it is heavenly.

A natural lilt of breathy, giggling laughter arises from you, and you speak between abating breaths and all his pressed kisses. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Not with you.” Raised on one forearm, he looks down at you, hair dripping with sweat and river water around his face. His dry mouth clicks, and his quiet voice is hoarse and bleary, almost drunk with wolfish longing. “I’m so hard, hun.”

A bolt of winced pain flashes across his brows as he looks into your eyes. The combination of his hissed, threadbare voice and desperate expression puts a mild but insistent pang in your heart.

“I need you.”

Your own expression slightly hazes to a tender thoughtfulness at the words. You let your thighs fall open to welcome him with their characteristic doughiness and warmth.

Arthur calmly seals his mouth over yours and gives you several long, lusciously probing kisses. With each teasing, silken stroke of his tongue, shocks of sensation streak through your body—to the tips of your breasts and gathering low within your intimacy—somehow even more vibrant and strong than what you’d been experiencing moments ago.

He transitions from deep, hungry kisses to breathy, persistent presses to your lips, and back again. You lose yourself in the sensual feeling of your tongues rolling and rubbing together, in the heated, lurching reaction gathering between your legs to his every demanding kiss.

Before long and without even realizing it, you’re luxuriating in his total possession of your mouth, in the feeling of being so desperately wanted, in his masterful knowledge of your body’s reactions to so little. And the understanding strikes you: this man loves to kiss you. Maybe most men cut right to the main event with little to no preamble, but not this one. Without a doubt, Arthur deeply, thoroughly enjoys kissing you. He sups from your mouth with languid, savoring passion, tasting of his pleasure. And you are delirious with need.

Leave it to Arthur to shift the atmosphere of your lovemaking from desperate and wild to slow and sweet and tender. You smile against his mouth at the thought. Sure, there have been instances when he’s led your lovemaking to be hasty and exciting. But often, his lead seems to bring the two of you to something slow and full, as if he wants to feel every bit of everything, as if he wants you to feel it all too. Almost as though he wants his mind to be right here, with you. As though he’s looking to make the joining of your bodies tender and meaningful.

Perhaps that’s so much of what love with another person is, you think. Carrying faith with you—faith, or at least hope, that the other person loves you just as much as you love him.

So here the two of you are beside the crystal edge of a creek’s confluence, bare bodies about to conjoin in an intimate clasp that’s as lazily tender and affectionate as a thick stack of letters read one by one on a porch in the midst of warm summer’s day. To you, the depth of feeling poured out is the very same.

It’s somewhere in all of this blissful thought that you hear the vital, trickling rush of water, and a memory brushes against your mind like the feathery fern fronds that surround you. It’s a somewhat distant memory—the edges are blurred and fuzzed. It has something to do with the water nearby.

And the memory is not an image, but a sound. A word or two. Imbued with meaning. A key to something. Words spoken so many moons ago by your grandmother, in all her ancient wisdoms of life and its needs. The words’ meaning is what you need. Something important. Something you know you must remember, right now. Right this moment.

“Oka…” you whisper as Arthur kisses your neck, and you feel the slick tip of his length prod the aperture of your sex.

“Hm?”

“Oka—” Your brows collide as you try to remember, try to tug the memory towards you.

“What is it?” he whispers.

Your eyes flash open. Not a moment too soon, you feel it, you have it. But you bite back and swallow the original words, choosing to speak others aloud. Others that won’t give you away.

“Quick water.”

Somehow, in this moment, you and Arthur find yourselves about to make love at the confluence of a creek. The confluence. And you can’t waste it.

Hurriedly, you scramble to reach your left arm past the loamy bank, looking for the water.

“What was that?”

“I…” You gulp and gather your thoughts. “Quickened—enlivened. It’s just a metaphor, the water where a new river begins.” Your eyes glance to his and just as quickly dart away at the knowledge of how silly it must sound. “If I touch it while we make love, it can help us conceive. Help us have a baby.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice is groggy, almost slurred with lusty longing as he watches you stretch your arm and reach for the edge of the pool. “Sounds a bit like an old wives’ tale.”

“I just need to touch it.”

“Hey, hey…” he murmurs, becoming more clear-headed when he realizes how serious and desperate you are.

He scoots the two of you just a couple inches, and your fingertips finally grace the water’s surface with ease.

You smile and sigh with the feeling of relieved success as you turn to look back at him. “Maybe it is. An old wives’ tale, I mean. But…we’re already here. I just thought, why not give ourselves every help.” You look into his eyes as the tree limbs sway so slightly above him, their green leaves a moving mural of fractured, glittering sunshine. “Everything that grows needs sunlight and water to do it.”

His smile slowly brightens at your logic. He leans forward and takes your mouth again with wet, succulent kisses.

Sighing with pleasure and satisfaction at his generous touch, you slowly bring one arm over his back, letting your open palm and fingers brush over his skin until your forearm his hooked around his neck. And with the other arm, you lazily dangle your hand at the wrist, letting your fingertips dip and comb into the cool, wild water, where the spring sends a new creek on its meandering way.

Together, you experience that miraculous slotting of hardness sheathed within softness when he fills you with himself. The two of you cry out as your bodies merge, there beside the water. Earthy and pure, entwined and unencumbered.

With him deep inside, your body clutches his, and you finish what you’d started minutes ago. Arthur gives up to you that which you wrest from him—the labored breath, the fitful climax you share, the released flood of heavenly pleasure. And when you watch it all wash over him—those forceful, gripping waves of glorious, pearlescent ecstasy—you have to believe he knows that’s how you love him. That’s it’s a physical way you can show him what he does inside your heart.

Arthur intently watches you shudder and gasp as your sumptuous flesh ripples around him. He is always astonished at the way your pleasure spreads to him in rolling waves of fire, at the way your joy crashes and rushes over him like some powerful windstorm. And he is always enthralled by your lovemaking—that almost otherworldly ability it has to knit and bind the two of you closer together.

When you’ve both spent yourselves, gulping and heaving for air, he lies ragged atop you. His arm rests casually limp across your chest, its slight, rested curl caressing your bare breast, the hair on his forearm brushing the ruddy, intimate bloom of your nipple. A place on a woman no one ever sees—reserved for doctors, babies, and husbands. And you are not ashamed.

His intelligent eyes are now laden with rest, peace, comfort, pleasure. You start to smile as you brush the length of your finger down along the side of his cheek, now covered in steadily growing stubble. His crows’ feet gather, and his eyes dance with silent laughter as he kisses the inside of your wrist and your palm before you can speak.

“Your beard is growing.” The subtle breeze of laughter wafts through your voice.

“Yeah?” he mumbles amidst a kiss to the heel of your palm. “I need someone to give me another shave.”

“I like it.” The smile in your voice is jocund and playful. “But I like you every way.”

His smirk brightens. “I won’t want to give up my shaves. Not with the way you give ‘em.” He relishes in the knowingly, shyly mumbled chuckle that jostles your chest beneath him. “I get to sit and watch your pretty eyes and face… Feel you touch mine, so nice and gentle.”

He tips his head with a little truncated grunt. “No— What man in his right mind would give that up?” Resting his chin on your chest, he watches your smile warm as your chuckle flourishes, and your chest returns to its familiar rise and fall. “Went long enough without it.”

Your eyes still and center on him at the sentiment. How true it is for both of you. Having found each other and come together later than most, you’d both spent many years learning to trudge through the desolate aloneness of independence. Each touch, each word, each generous act of affection and kindness you freely give each other means tenfold now.

“Dear heart,” you address him quietly amid the stillness.

Arthur’s eyes flicker to yours at the lover’s endearment you’ve never used for him before. The haggard insides of one huge, lumbering outlaw melt utterly and in an instant.

“You can have a shave from me whenever you want.”

His lips warm to a nearly imperceptible smile. “But it doesn’t mean you’ll never see my beard again.”

“Burly beards one winter and sweet shaves in spring,” you grin with a contented breath. “There’s a time for everything, I guess.”

He nods, and his arms snug tighter around you.

A time for everything. The remark’s unique fusion of persistent apprehension and fragile, wistful hope still rings softly in your head as the two of you pack up your little camp and return to the wagon to resume your travels.

─── ↟ ᨒ 𖠰 ───

After another few days of being on the road, the constant, jostling bounce begins to take its toll. You can feel nearly every pebble and stone in the obscure, rugged trails Arthur takes as they pass beneath the rickety wagon wheels. No amount of stretching or shifting eases the achey soreness beginning to grow in your back and middle. You’re learning the best ways to stay hydrated while simultaneously not requiring too many breaks, but you haven’t fully mastered the skill. When your bladder makes an especially noticeable protest, you rest a hand on Arthur’s forearm and quietly ask him to stop.

Arthur tugs on the reins and brings the horses to a halt. At his right, you turn and promptly hop down from the wagon seat with an old, tattered book in one hand. The words have long faded from the pages, and you’ve both been using it for lavatory needs. He keeps his eyes forward on the road as you approach a tree a short way off and disappear behind it.

A tufted titmouse and a wren war for loudest song in the branches overhead, and a squirrel bounds away from the base of the tree you stop beside.

Lifting your layers of skirts and lowering your drawers, you squat near the base of the tree. After relieving yourself, you rip a couple pages from the book’s spine and begin to tidy. When you look down at the used page, your countenance falls, and your brows draw up. You tisk your tongue at the sight of blood.

A pang of dismay and despondency slices at your chest.

At the wagon, Arthur lets himself squint from the corner of his eye in the direction you’d gone.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out, you dig into the linen pocket you’ve got tied beneath your skirts and retrieve a few of the absorbent flannel swatches you have stored there for such a time. And though you do your best to gather yourself, you still feel plaintive with disappointment as you begin to head back to the wagon.

When you appear from behind the tree, just the sight of you gladdens Arthur’s heart. He inwardly chaffs himself for being so inordinately easy to affect. Then he notices your downcast expression as you walk toward the wagon, and the way you won’t quite look up at him. And a small flash of concern piques in him.

You give him no word. Only finally glance into his eyes and quickly away again, shaking your head dolefully as you climb up into the wagon seat, praying that he understands it to mean, ‘No baby. Not this month.’

It takes him a moment, as he carefully watches you settle into the seat beside him. But he does seem to. And mercifully, in that moment he does not offer a single audible word of response. Nothing about how needlessly or unreasonably anxious you may be, not a word about how many years you may have left to conceive.

He only takes your hand in his and rubs the back of your palm softly back and forth with his thumb, as he so often does. And with the other hand, he urges the horses onward.

As the sun slips beneath the horizon and leaves a shuddered cool in its wake, Arthur enters a pleasant rhythm of evening chatter with you. Thoughts of what types of climes he’d most like to settle in, the herbs he’s still in search of, memories of his mother. He’s just broached casual wonderings of how John and his family are getting on when he notices the way you start beside him, nodding and humming with groggy eyes.

Glancing at you, he offers a simple smile. He faces the road, though he keeps his clandestine attention on you. And after several minutes, he sees you nod off, your head bobbing to the side in an unknowing search of something to rest against.

From the corner of his eyes, he watches you as he conducts his experiment.

“Yeah, I wonder if John’s taken Jack fishin’ yet.”

You pop up in your seat, eagerly offering little hums of vague agreement. “Mm, yeah, maybe.”

A grin slowly splits his face as he looks at you and takes in the way you lift your brows and try to peel your eyes open, the way you try to enunciate clearly and appear as if you’d never been asleep.

He faces forward again and manages to smooth his expression to a warm smirk before you can notice his grin and before he has to burst into smothered snickers.

He realizes you must be exhausted to be falling asleep in a rocking, bouncing wagon. Despite it, you’ve been taking care to keep yourself just awake and aware enough to hear him speak up. And every single time he’s said something, you’ve been trying your hardest to make him feel listened to and regarded.

When you fall asleep this time, he speaks under his breath only to himself. “Yeah, it’s time to stop and get you to bed.”

He picks a spot by a babbling creek and tugs the horses to a stop. Quietly turning to you, he leans in, pressing his mouth to your cheek and waking you with several loud, continuous smacks of his lips.

“You were— You were straightenin’ up every time I said somethin’,” he wheezes dryly into the kisses against your cheek, explaining it all to you.

He’s never had someone in his life who’d love him enough to show it to him in such a small, yet selfless way. It’s like your love is a way of life. Like breath. You don’t have to think about it.

…

With the next morning’s dawn, you stir from sleep bundled beside Arthur under one quilt in the wagon bed. Noticing Arthur still slumbering, you decide to rise and brew coffee for him.

Raw and sore, you press yourself to sit up from lying on your side. The moment you feel a puddle of stickiness between your legs, a stiffening chill seeps into your veins. Your eyes linger an extra moment on Arthur’s sleeping form before you look down to carefully lift the quilt, shuffle the folds of your muslin nightgown, shift your thighs, and remove the several scraps of flannel you’d tucked there the night before. Immediately, your shoulders sag, and you let out a broken sigh at the bright, sprawling scarlet bloom that fouls the lower blanket you and Arthur share.

First, no baby. Now this. Your cheeks heat, and your eyes threaten to sting. Your mortified mind scurries to produce a way you can fix this and hide it—hide it well enough your new husband will never know it ever happened. Is there even a way to achieve such a thing now?

Gulping, you release a breath through pursed lips and will your vision to clear. One portion at a time. You’ll take the situation one portion at a time, and try your best.

Deciding to make coffee, you slowly crawl from within the wagon’s bonnet and put on your simple dress. After starting a campfire and setting the percolator to brew, you take your nightgown to the nearby brook and stoop to try to salvage it. But no matter how many times you submerge it and let the crisply bubbling water run over it, no matter how often you run your lye soap over the stain and very gently scrub the spot with your fingernails, the crimson smirch doesn’t seem to give.

After dunking the stain for the seventh time, you lift it to try another tentative crisscross with your fingernails. It’s then that you realize the sheer material’s delicate weft is beginning to fray.

At once, you let your left hand plop into the water with the scraggly nightgown bundled inside it, and you bring the web of your other shaking hand to your forehead. As you turn to gaze back at the wagon, you feel the cool water dribble down your temple.

Leaving the soiled nightgown crumpled at the brookside, you stand and walk back to the wagon. Peering past the bonnet’s open tie, you watch Arthur intently and wait for him to wake. When he finally stirs, you call to him, trying to keep from your tone the direness you feel.

“Come outside, Arthur.”

He takes his time to shift and rub his eyes. Your heart begins to thump, and you nibble at your lip and wring your hands a bit.

“Come to the fire. I’ve got coffee on.”

“Thinkin’ I need some,” he groans hoarsely as he crawls forward and dons his hat.

The moment he emerges from the wagon and heads for the campfire, you hunch to squeeze your shoulders past the bonnet’s opening and pull the large, stained blanket from the wagon bed. You promptly fold it multiple times and drape the bulky mass over your forearm, tossing an easy smile Arthur’s way as you stride to the brook.

With his tin mug to his lips, Arthur watches you in the distance from over the rim. His brows momentarily come together when you stoop without fanfare and begin washing the old blanket in the brook. Not yourself. Not your clothes. The blanket. He turns to look back at the wagon and looks at you again.

At the brook, you’re hurriedly swiping the soap bar over the smirch in the blanket and furiously scraping your fingernails into the fabric. You’re hoping to God your nightgown is no indication of how this laundering is going to go. Time and again, you submerge the fabric into the rushing water and scrub ferociously. To little avail.

You’re on your fifth pass when a large, roughened hand enters your vision from the left, reaching for the sodden blanket and slowly taking it from your hands before you have a chance to protest or even think.

With burning eyes, you look up at him to find his eyes fastened to your face rather than the blanket. His expression is not curdled and crinkled with the revulsion you would expect to see; rather it’s slack and soft with something like understanding.

“You ain’t had your coffee yet.” The coarse grain of his voice is quiet, level—void of the inflection that would make it a query. “Have you.”

Fighting to keep your chin from trembling, you give your head a small, staccato shake.

“Go on. Before it cools.”

He knows now. And you have to admit that he’s probably right, after all. It’s a useless endeavor.

Struggling to your feet, you wince when your lower abdomen objects with a harsh, metallic jab. But you’re distracted from that when Arthur doesn’t follow. You look on with a mix of disbelief and horror when instead, he stoops to the brook and begins to wash the blanket’s stain himself.

“No. A-Arthur,” you push out, but the meek sound is fibrous and flimsy. “You don’t have to d—”

“Go on,” he looks over his hunched shoulder. “I want you to drink some while it’s still hot.”

He returns to his task and doesn’t address you again, expecting you to comply with his request. You watch him scrub at the blood stain with his big fingers and scour the blanket against itself above the water.

It seemed to happen so quickly. Already his hands have come in contact with the fabric marred by your menstruation. There’s nothing left for you to worry over, nothing left for you to hide. So it’s become all you can do to walk back to the campfire, sit beside it, and pour yourself a tin mug of the coffee you’d brewed for him.

Trying to avoid watching his hunched form in the distance, you gaze down instead at the coiling eddies of steam as they quickly furl and flow in seemingly random patterns from the mug in your hands. It does little to ease the shame pinching at the nape of your neck and cloaking you with heat.

From one troubling thought to the next, your harried mind darts and spirals like the eddies. Why you can’t seem to handle even one of the most natural, fundamental things about being who you are. Why you still seem to be twelve years old, rather than a capable adult. And how can Arthur think any differently? How can he be all right with discovering that his wife doesn’t seem to be put-together, able to handle herself? How can he not resent the fact that he’s had to take on the care of you, rather than the other way around?

And worst of all: how long can he last with you, if all these things are true?

Mixed in with all of it is the niggling sadness and disappointment you’re trying not to let yourself feel about not being pregnant this month. Of course, you don’t need that pressure, especially so soon after consummating. Marriage is enough of a new thing to experience for anyone, for both of you. Love itself is new enough for you in particular to navigate. And of course, there should be plenty of time for such a thing.

You can hear the cases for rational thinking, and you want to heed them. And part of you really, truly does. But somehow you’re no less disheartened, and your deep longing is no more quieted. Which makes you all the more frustrated with yourself, on top of everything else.

Scoffing bitterly through a stuffy sob, you let your forehead drop into your hand. You could giggle with laughter at yourself if you weren’t so bedraggled by it all. Oh… You’re menstruating pretty well all right.

A new squeak of faint exasperation rises from your throat at the thought of being threadbare and worn, just like the newly rotten blanket.

When you hear the crunch of Arthur’s shifting boot-falls, you lift your head with a snuffle to see the white bundle of your muslin nightgown entering the corner of your vision.

“Takes a light hand,” you hear him say, and you could swear you’d heard the smallest trace of a smirk in his voice. “Is all.”

There it is, when you look up into his face shadowed by the brim of his black hat: the faint glimmer of light in his eyes, the crows’ feet gathered so subtly at their corners. His expression knowing and loving, both.

I love you so, you want to say. But the words won’t seem to order themselves, and you don’t trust your voice at all in this moment.

You’d forgotten about the nightgown. He must have seen it crumpled at the brookside and laundered it too.

Keeping your eyes on his, you pull it from him. The slip of sheer, gauzy white slowly spools from the loose pocket of his curled fingers, transferring from his hand to yours. When the last of it finally falls free from his fingers, your eyes dart away.

You hold it up and open to see that the stain is much faded, though the delineation is visible if you look for it. And the fraying you’d done has been prodded back into place until it’s become less noticeable, though the gown won’t ever quite return to what it was before.

“We’ll get you a new one, babe.”

When you lower the gown, you’re greeted by his warm smile and the almost imperceptible slant to his brows—a look of feeling and compassion.

“Promise.”

Your mouth stutters open, but before you can say that this is far better than you’d thought it could ever look again, you notice that he’s fanning open the blanket and spreading it over the side of a nearby boulder, facing the campfire to dry. The bloody smirch in the dyed wool is greatly diminished—so faint you can hardly tell it had ever been there.

Arthur next bends to the fire and uses a pair of tongs to pull a few smooth stones from near the blaze. You don’t remember them being there when you built the fire this morning; he must’ve put them there. You watch as he leaves the stones atop a nearby rock to cool a bit. Digging into his satchel, he retrieves a thick flannel pouch with a drawstring closure. One by one, he takes the stones with the tongs and drops them into the pouch with a clinking clatter. He cinches the drawstring and offers the bag of warm stones to you.

Finally overcome, you slowly take the pouch from him as your expression falls like shaken sand, and you release a single sniveled whine.

Arthur crouches before you and holds you steady with his shimmering blue-green irises, like looking into an iridescent spring.

“I want to know…” He stops himself, glances down with a sigh, and starts again. “I’ll take it day by day, bein’ a good husband. With each one, I want you to tell me the ways I can be better to you. I want to know.”

Your brows rise and draw together. With your lips and chin trembling, you manage to answer shakily past tight lungs as a single tear rolls down your cheek. “You already give me yourself. What else could you do?”

“Do?” His handsome face relaxes to a bright grin, and he releases a little laughed breath through his nose. He dips his head loosely from between his shoulders, gives it a tip, and lifts it back up to look at you. “There’s a lot.”

Pulling your bottom lip inward, you close your watery eyes. Somehow, the two of you have stumbled upon some miraculous mystery. And maybe somehow, you’re both right. Exerting oneself to serve another means little if one does not give one’s heart to the other. And giving one’s heart to another bears little practical tangibility if it does not bud and fruit forth in loving-kindness and service.

If you have it right, it seems Arthur is saying he doesn’t want you to ever settle for one without the other.

Opening your eyes to look at him, you take a tremulous breath and lift an arm to him. “Hold me.”

A small smile warms on his mouth. He takes a seat beside you and wraps an arm around you as you lean in close and press the pouch of warm stones to your lower abdomen.

After a few minutes of quiet, you think to ask, “Who first told you about a woman’s monthly time?”

He takes a breath and releases it through his nose. “Hosea.”

“How old were you?”

“‘Bout…seventeen. Thereabouts. Sat me down and…gave me the basics. He’d already given me a different kinda talkin’ to the year before,” he chuckles lightly. “I think in his mind it was just…preparin’ me. So I’d have some minimum workin’ knowledge of what women go through, in case I met someone.” His voice grows mumbly. “You know Hosea—he had his faults, but he didn’t want to raise a total brute.”

“I understand.”

“Then, I…guess I came to learn a bit more with Eliza.”

You shift a bit so you can turn your head and look at his profile. “How much do you know?”

“That it… It makes it possible for you to bear children. Feeds the baby, as it were. By the same token, it’s a sign that…there i’n’t a babe to feed.”

You nod, a bit forlornly.

“That it…can be a hard time for ya. Painful. Body aches and such. Seems to me it might vary some, woman to woman. But I know Eliza’d tend to get a bit…frantic. Real sad, worried.” He scratches at his stubbled jaw as he ponders. “Figure that’s about it.”

When he looks at you expectantly, you gulp. How can you explain to him all the ways your mind can tumble and your body can feel as though it’s sabotaging you during this time? That you can feel isolated, alone, scared. That you can desperately long for a dearly loved one to wrap you up flush and tight in his arms, but that other times, the barest contact to your skin can feel like fiery thistles. That one minute you can be on the verge of bursting into tears for no reason you can decipher, and the next you might feel like screeching. That you almost always feel like an unwanted, repulsive hag. But that at the very same time, all you want is for someone to believe that what your body does is beautiful and miraculous and amazing. For someone to believe that you are strong.

How can you say all of that to him now, your precious new husband, without stunning and overwhelming him? Granted, very little seems to scare Arthur Morgan. But facing that frenzy of a woman’s worries all at once could be staggering for any man, let alone a man brand new to marriage.

When you feel the faintest presence of something ghost down the side of your face, you turn slightly to look at him beside you. He’s been gazing at you while you’ve been thinking, and he’d brushed the back of one finger down across your cheek to your jaw.

A message floats in his eyes, saying, Tell me.

The affection you feel for him brims high and whelms you. A small, tentative smile flickers in your eyes. “There’ll be…time. For gettin’ to know all the little things we can’t quiet explain to each other.”

A knowing smile softens his gaze as he nods agreement. “It’ll keep.”

Your smile dares to grow a bit, and you venture to quietly test your voice. “Mainly I just need to know that I have someone who’ll be there for me through it, never turn me away. That’s what I went so long without.”