#stack x oc

That was until the twins moved back. You hadn’t heard of them, too busy wrapped inside your own little world to worry about what others had going on but once they came back, the word spread like wildfire. The flames were big enough to knock the walls down of your domaine and the whispers echoed loudly in your ears.

“Heard they just came back from Chicago.”

“I heard they was over there stealing and killing people.”

“I’m surprised they ain’t locked up. Somebody should do something.”

You minded your business though, tended to your horses, dogs and your bakery business.

Cookies, pies, cakes, brownies and just about anything sweet that you could name, was your specialty. You started getting called Peaches for your obsession with making peach cobbler and handing it out to your neighbors. You had learned to cook and bake from a very early age, your mother making sure you knew how to throw down in the kitchen so that you could impress your potential husband.

But you didn’t care for that, you learned because you liked it, loved it actually, and eventually you took your talents elsewhere.

To Tik Tok.

Pink kitchen and utensils caught the attention of millions of people who liked to watch you do what you do best. You hadn’t expected the surge of attention, the videos only being posted in hopes to your reach your friends and family, but the algorithm had other plans. And so that’s how you spent your days, tending to your animals and baking sweets for your millions of fans and to share with your neighbors. Eventually you became the talk of the town, everybody wanted to try a piece of your desserts and before you knew it, you had people showing up at your doorstep asking for anything, a crumb even.

One night, while you were preparing sugar cookies, you heard a knock at your door that wasn’t frantic like it usually was. It was slow and loud. Just two knocks.

You wiped your hands on your pink apron, long curly light brown hair cascading down your back as you walk towards the entrance, the shorts you wore barely covered your ass and the cropped tank top hugged your upper body tight. You weren’t expecting anyone this late, no one usually showed up at this time.

The clock ticked to 11PM just as your hand reached the handle. A man, who you hadn’t seen before, stood there in a all black suit. His face was expressionless but his eyes stayed on the way your cheeks reddened before they traveled down your body, zeroing in on the deep brown moisturized skin that glowed against the moonlight.

Something about his demeanor made your stomach turn, nerves clawing at your body, but there was something else, a heat hidden behind the fear.

“Oh. Hi! H-How may I help you?” Your voice was soft and something about it caused Stack’s jaw to tick slightly, that and the way you smelled of fresh vanilla and peaches.

“Evenin ma’am. Names’ Stack. My apologizes for disturbing you so late. I’m here on behalf of Mrs. Delphine, says her husband sick and in the hospital again, been craving sum of them lemon cookies you be making.”

His voice was deep and rough in a way that would send anybody else running. Accent slow like molasses and thick just like yours. Your thighs clenched before you could stop yourself.

“Oh um. Y-yeah. I have some. I just gotta pack them up for him. Um—” You hesitated, teeth sinking into your plush lip before mentally telling yourself ‘Fuck it’.

“Um— Do you want to come in and wait while I get everything together?”

Stack nodded, a small smirk appeared on his lips before he stepped inside your little world that you had carefully crafted for yourself.

And the rest was history.

Your viewers started to notice the change, the way you recorded videos with a smile so wide you’d think the measuring cups had told you a joke. They noticed how softer you were, the dreamy look on your face and the way you just glowed.

Assumptions about a man being in the picture were in almost every single video you posted. You didn’t bother confirming nor denying anything. Just let them keep guessing.

Until you popped out with a ring on your finger. You weren’t even bothering on being discreet, your perfectly manicured hand was all in the camera as you recorded how you baked a cheesecake. The boulder on your finger catching the light and making its presence known.

You tried to remove the ring, your audience too distracted by it to pay attention to what you were making but Stack wasn’t having that. Not one bit.

“Stop fucking playin with me. Put that shit back on.”

He groaned as he watched the video you had posted without it. Stack didn’t even have a tik tok account before you, didn’t even care about anything pertaining to social media. But once the two of you got together, he made sure to watch anything you posted.

‘User3829928’ liked your video.

He didn’t even bother making a name for himself, didn’t care to post or even watch anything else. His only purpose was to watch you. Sometimes you’d post things to get under his skin. A picture with a miniskirt that was wayyyy too short. A dress that hugged your curves too tight for a video on how to make homemade ice cream. Or starting a ‘get ready with me’ video in a silk robe that showed a little too much for him. Each time ended with you on your knees, attempting to apologize to him as he fucked your throat. You promised you wouldn’t do it again through tears that seeped through the pillow case while he fucked you silly.

But you never kept your promises.

-

You shouldn’t have done it, but you were frustrated beyond belief. Stack had left early that morning with the lie stuck on his lips that he’d return in time to make cupcakes with you. It was a cute little tradition the two of you had started since you first got together.

Every Friday, the two of you would spend the day baking or cooking something. Anything.

Last Friday, Stack wanted tomato soup and grilled cheese. So the two of you spent the day making that, even had more than enough to send over to Smoke and Annie.

This Friday though, you and the small little bean growing inside of your belly were craving cupcakes and Stack had given you his word. Said he just had a few errands to run with Smoke and that he’d be back early enough to bake the cupcakes so that they’d be ready by dinner time.

By 5PM you were still waiting for him, the pout on your face deepened as you texted him for the 8th time in the past 10 minutes.

By 5:30 you have had enough. You changed into a red halter top, mini dress that Stack had specifically bought just for you to wear for him, fluffed out your curls and touched up your makeup. You grabbed your phone, set it up on the tripod in the kitchen and started the live.

Comments flooded in seconds, compliments being thrown left and right. Some from the ladies but most from men.

“Hi guys!” You waved to the camera, the stack of bracelets dancing loudly on your wrist. “It’s a bit late but I was planning on making cupcakes so I figured you guys would like to join me.” Your smile was sweet, as it always was. No one suspected your ulterior motives.

No more than 5 minutes of you starting, your iPad started ringing. Your phone, which was placed on DND, recorded as you watched your iPad ring before shutting it off.

It only took Stack 20 minutes to drive home. You were distracted, too deep into explaining your recipe to notice him walk into the kitchen. His heavily tatted arms were crossed across his chest, his body stiff behind your phone. White T shirt clung to his muscles, black jeans handing low on his hips, some Jordan’s and chains sitting heavy on his pretty neck.

“Okay so make sure that you’re adding enough vanilla extract or it’s going to taste like—” You jumped once you noticed him, heart racing loudly in your chest. The viewers noticed, half concerned, half excited to maybe get a glimpse of your man.

“Is that him?”

“Omg don’t tell me we’re about to meet Mr.Peaches himself.”

“Guys have you noticed that she looks a bit pregnant here?”

Stack eyed you. Fully. From the top of your head, down to the French tip pedicure on your toes. He clenched his jaw as he looked at the dress you wore.

“End the live fa me, baby.” You bit the side of your bottom lip, eyes wide and staring up at him. Somewhat embarrassed that this was happening on live, somewhat turned on from the intensity of his stare.

“I—I’m not done, papa.”

“I know you ain’t done but we gotta talk, so end the live.”

“Ooop not my good sis done fucked up”

“Shiiiitttt girl he sound like he not playing, ga head and end the live.”

“Why do I feel like I’m the one getting in trouble?”

You nodded. “Okay guys, I’ll see yall in a bit.” The screen went dark as soon as the live ended. You locked your phone and placed it on the counter. You could feel the weight of his eyes on you but pretended not to.

“You like playing with me?” Stack slowly walked up to you.

“Stack—”

“Nah, answer me. You like pissing me off?” He stood right in front of you, arms on either side, holding on to the counter behind you. He leaned down and it took everything in you not to throw yourself into his warmth. He smelled of cologne and weed, scent strong enough to make you dizzy with desire.

“No…” your lips formed a pout, eyes wide in the way you knew could get you anything you wanted. His lips twitched, trying hard not to smirk at how cute you looked. “Get ya ass upstairs. Now.”

“But-”

“Now, baby.”

You nodded, and headed up the stairs with him trailing behind you. He didn’t like being mean to you, you were too sweet for that, but he was never afraid to put you in your place.

You sat at the edge of the bed and waited for him to walk in, your nerves were through the roof but you also lived for the thrill and he knew that. Stack’s steps were heavy, you expected him to walk right to you, to grab you up and choke you like how he always does but instead he walks to the vanity that sat across from the bed. You watched the muscles on his back move, his big frame blocking what he was doing.

After a few seconds of messing around, he turned and walked to you. His hand gently gripped your jaw, thumb smoothing circles onto your skin. “You wanted my attention, mama? Huh? That’s why you did that?”

You nod, face formed into a pout. This wasn’t usual for him, the gentleness after you piss him off.

“Nah speak up. Tell me what the problem is.” Your breath stutters and eyebrows furrow in confusion. His voice was soft, the complete opposite of what you were expecting. “Speak, mama. I’m here now. Tell me what’s up.”

Your mouth opens, getting ready to spill your truth, to admit that your hormones and emotions were completely out of wack and all you wanted was your man.

Stack lowers down to his knees, his hands pull your dress up in one quick motion. A small gasp escapes your mouth when he presses a kiss to your knee, trailing his lips further up your thigh. “I don’t hear you.” He looks up at you, waiting for you to say something, anything.

“I—It’s just that I-” Stack spreads your legs further, prompting you to lean back on to your elbows. He digs his nose onto the damp spot of your panties, groaning at your scent. Your breathing picks up, hands already gripping onto the sheets and body slightly trembling.

“Mm, so fucking sensitive.” He places a kiss to your covered mound before gripping the sides of your underwear and pulling them down your legs. “I don’t hear you talking.”

You whimpered at the heat of his face so close to where you needed him the most. “Elias” You softly begged.

“Nah, none of that. I ain’t moving till you speak.”

You groan, laying your body down fully as your eyes stare up at the ceiling. “I just… I really wanted cupcakes and you promised me you’d make them with me—” Stack dug his face in your drenched pussy, tongue flattening on your clit before pulling back. A moan stops you mid sentence, eyes drifting down to him as you watch him spit. His fingers mix it with your essence before slowly pushing into your tight hole.

“Eliiiasssss” Your back arches, small belly bump covering the way he leans in and wraps his lips around your aching clit.

“I ain’t tell you to stop, did I?” His fingers curl inside of you, moving faster as his tongue continuously laps up your juices. “Talk to me. I’m listening.”

“F-Fuck!” Your moans mixed into whimpers, already feeling the coil forming in your stomach. “Don’t stop.” You gasped, eyes rolled to back of your head while Stack feasted on you.

He smacked the inside of your thigh with his free hand. “Keep talking or ima stop.” You felt him slow down, face slowly pulling back just as you were about to cum.

“Fuuuuckk, okay okayyy. I just, I needed you here—” Stack hummed in satisfaction, fingers continuing to slowly pump in and out of you while he watched you try not to fall apart. “A—And you were gone for a long time—” You couldn’t stop whimpering, pregnancy making you extra sensitive to his touch.

“Mhm and what else, mama?”

You squirmed, full body trembling from the feel of his fingers reaching deep inside of you as he slightly picked up his pace. “Eliasss fuucckkkk.”

“Keep going, you doing good, baby.” He placed kisses to your clit, holding you right at the edge of that breaking point.

“Fuccckkkk, I just needed you here. I needed your attention— I just wanted you, daddy.” You sounded so sultry, voice high and full of moans.

“Yeah? That’s all it was?” Stack puckered his lips around your clit again and let his tongue play with it. You cried out, hands reaching out to grab his head while your hips frantically moved up and down his face.

“Yes! Yes! That was all, daddy. I swear!” It didn’t take much for the restraint to snap, your juices decorated Stacks face and your body twisted and turned as if trying to find a place to store the pleasure you were feeling.

“You so fucking wet, my god.” Stack moaned as he sucked and licked every drop from you. He stood to his full height, hands immediately reaching for his shirt and removing it. Next was his pants, thrown to the side along with his boxers. You moaned at the sight of him, tattoos tracing his front and back, including your name right along the side of his neck.

Stack grabbed your body and turned you to the side, then laid right behind you. His arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you to his chest while the other one gripped your leg, lifting it high enough for your knee to reach his shoulder. “This what you wanted, right?” You felt the head of his dick nudge your folds, drenching it in your essence. The sound was obscene. There was no denying how badly you needed him.

“Yessssss.” You arched back onto him.

“Ga head, take it. Take what you want.”

Your trembling hand reached down and grabbed his dick, slowly pushing it inside of you. Stack groaned, burying his face in your neck as he slowly moved his hips.

Moans escaped your open mouth as you felt the stretch from the pure girth he carried. “Oh my god.” You cried out as he bottomed out, his full length deep inside of you while you clawed at his arm and the sheets. “Fuck!”

“Mhmm, take it, take that shit baby.” He sped up his pace. Thrusting in and out of you while you cried out every time he kissed your cervix.

“S—so big, papa!” You whined, already feeling the way your stomach was tightening again.

“I know baby, I know. But you can take it right? Look how good you’re doing. Taking all this big dick.” He grabbed your face and turned it to his. Your lips met in a slow dance that contrasted with the way he was fucking you. You couldn’t stop moaning into his mouth, your face forming a small pout.

“Don’t look at me like that. You wanted this right? Take it. Just like that.” His voice was like silk against your ears. Your hand weakly grabbed onto his arm as you squirted with every thrust.

“Eliaaaassssss!”

“Mhmmm, give it to me. Give me all that shit. Nut all on your dick, baby.”

Your body shook and bent against him but he wouldn’t dare stop. You were nothing but gasps and whimpers, trying your best to come down from the intense high you just experienced.

Stack pressed your lips together again, tongue sneaking its way into your mouth. “Open.” He spit into your mouth the second you followed his order. Hips still digging into you.

He slowed down and shifted so that he’d be able to deepen his strokes. You sobbed into his neck, your French tips pressing crescent moons on his thigh. His other hand rubbed your small but plump belly. “Cum for me again. Do it. Let me see you break.”

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as your juices sprayed out of you, another orgasm ripping through your body without permission.

“Drown me just like that. Keep going, don’t fucking stop.” His lips were right by your ear, you heard every small groan, every breath and whisper that he tried to hide.

“Okaaayyyy.” You whined, feeling completely out of your own body.

You couldn’t stop squirting, all you could was sob and try your hardest to gain some type of control of the situation but your body was overstimulated and done for. Stack didn’t care though, he kept going. Dick sliding in and out of you with a wet splat each time he went all the way in.

“Good girl, mama. You gon let me ruin you like this, huh?” His strokes slowed down, you felt each inch of his thick cock trying to tear you apart.

“I— I can’t.” Your tears fell in waterfalls, short breaths turned into gasps as he continued to abuse your already swollen folds.

“Yes you can. Come on, give me one more. You can do that for me, right?”

“I caaaannnt. Elias, I can’t, fuck. I can’t.” Your toes curled and your body hadn’t stopped trembling since he started. You cried out over and over again as you reached a state of what felt like hysteria. He felt so good but you could barely breathe and were practically drooling. Your eyes kept rolling to the back of your head and your juices drenched the mattress beneath you.

Stack reached his hand down and pressed a two fingers to your clit. Your jaw dropped, hand reaching back to lightly slap his chest over and over again, as he rubbed your nub in circles. Screams echoed throughout the room as your body practically convulsed.

“There she go. That’s exactly where I want you. Just like that, baby. Stay just like that while I ruin you.” Your walls fluttered around his length, another orgasm threatening to destroy you. “Breathe. Let me hear you.”

You took a deep breath, eyes squeezing shut while you sobbed. “I love your dick, daddy. I love it so much!” You cried out loud.

“Yea? This why yo ass pregnant now. Nasty ass girl.”

“Keep fucking me, please! You feel so good inside my pussy. Don’t stop. Don’t stop!”

He moaned against your ear, hips stuttering from trying to hold himself back. “Look at you. Dumb off of dick. They don’t even know how you get. Tryna act all innocent for them people—If only they fucking knew.” He sped up, hand lifting your leg higher to reach parts of you, you didn’t even know could be touched. “You love me, hm? Tell me you love me. Tell me I’m the only nigga that could ruin you like this.”

“I love you! I love you! I’m gonna cum. Fuck, I’m gonna fucking cum, Elias. Oh my god!” The hand on your clit sped up to match his thrusts.

“Say it. Tell me this mine. Tell me I own you.” His strokes were brutal, all that was heard was the slapping of his skin against yours and the mess you were currently making. “This my pussy, my body, my nut. All of it. Mine. You hear me? I own you, baby. All of you.”

“Yes! It’s yours. All yours! Fuck!” Your body snapped, shaking profusely as your cum flowed out of you. Stack whimpered, his thighs trembling as he filled you with his seed.

“Oh fucckkkk” he moaned against your shoulder, pressing kisses to your damp skin, trying his best to calm down. He slowed his movements, letting the both of you ride out the orgasm.

You twitched against him, slumped over in a state of absolute bliss. Stack kissed you all over, hands rubbing your sides to calm you down.

Your eyes opened slowly, looking around as if you couldn’t believe that just happened. It felt like you had an out of body experience.

The vanity that sat right in front you, had your phone propped up and facing the both of you. Your eyes widen as you gasp.

Stack followed your eyesight, he chuckled slightly before getting up. Grabbing your phone, he pointed it right at your exhausted figure.

“Thought I’d keep this for memory as a reminder of what happens when you try to play with me.” You bit your lip, stomach turning in a way that it shouldn’t have been after all that. But the thought of having a video of the two of you having sex, saved into your phone where you could watch whenever, caused a fire to burn deep within you.

“Come on, baby. Show the camera the mess we made.” A smirk played on your lips as you turn over. Back arched and chest pressed onto the bed, you reach back and open your folds with two fingers. Stack groans, moving the camera closer to catch the way his nut slides out of you.

“Perfect.” He moaned before turning it off and lightly spanked your ass.

“Let’s get you cleaned up before you get me started again.” You giggle as he picks you up bridal style and heads to the bathroom.

their attention turned back to you as smoke made his way to you, finally kissing you into the pillow your head was resting on.

he leaned in, close enough that you can feel the warmth of his breath against your lips. his hand brushes your jaw, gentle at first, then firmer, anchoring you to the moment. your heart stumbles as his mouth meets yours—slow, searching, then deeper, urgent. his lips taste like heat and want, and when he presses closer, it's as if the rest of the world falls away.

you respond without thinking, your fingers clutching his shirt, needing him nearer. the kiss burns—soft and rough all at once—leaving you breathless, undone beneath his touch.

as if on cue, while smoke kissed you, stack made his way to between your legs that he peeled open softly while gripping the flesh of your thighs for underneath your skirt. he hiked it up and kissed his way up your inner thigh, the proximity to his goal arousing him.

smoke pulled away, his hand snaking to underneath your top as he massaged your breast, his hand following your chests up-and-down movement. before you knew it, stack had pulled your underwear to the side, and you jumped when you felt his tongue lick a long, teasing stripe up your slit.

"o-oh my- what are you-!?" your cheeks heated up when you felt him smile against your cunt. you could not see him, as he was underneath your skirt, but the sensation of his warm breath on your now exposed skin had you throbbing. "you better not be messin' around under there, stack." smoke warned, which earned him another chuckle from the twin. "you'd be surprised."

smoke went back to distracting you from the overwhelming sensation of stack eating you out, pulling top down your shoulder to expose your breasts more. he leaned in once more, "may I?" and you nodded, before his lips landed on your nipple while the other one was being rolled between his finger tips.

"oh lord- my gosh! shit-" you kept cutting yourself off with your own moans, each sensation one upping the other. the feeling of smoke's warm tongue against your nipple had your back arching, aching for more.

but what you really felt was stack's eager tongue on your cunt. he was licking up and down, the tip of his tongue bumping against your clit which had your hips bucking slightly. he kissed the bud softly before diving in completely, sucking on it harshly which had you whining. then, he angled his head lower, and his tongue penetrated you slowly. you gasped, not used to the feeling of penetration.

smoke took advantage of your opened mouth and plunged two rough fingers inside it, pressing against your tongue as you instinctively sucked on them. "you feel that? you feel him making you feel good, sweetheart?" he began and you clenched around stack's tongue, making him grin.

"look at you, baby. we just began and you're already whining." he leans in to kiss your cheek, "ain't you lucky that we're the ones taking care of a sweet girl like you? huh?" you nodded eagerly, moaning around his wet fingers when you felt stack's tongue curve onto itself, grazing a spongey spot with its tip that had your eyes rolling back.

"you got a finger in?" smoke turned to stack, who pulled away from your cunt to hike your skirt up higher, completely exposing your lower body. he was sweating, you noticed. "nah, just my tongue. I'm about to put one in, though." smoke nodded, turning back to you, only to see that your eyes have already rolled back again—stack put a long finger inside, and he was unforgiving. his pace was relentless, quick and easy, slamming his palm onto your clit.

"go easy on her, yeah?" smoke instructed as he took your top off completely, exposing your chest and tummy. "just what I wanted to see..."

"it's so good! oh my- fuck, I'm-" he did not slow down one bit, even slightly speeding up just to pull more of those pretty sounds from your mouth. he felt your walls clamp down on his fingers and nodded to smoke who kissed you again, distracting all your senses.

you felt overwhelmed in the best way possible, and it's the moment you realize that, that you feel your first orgasm washing over you. it's felt intense, every muscle in your body tensing up as your mouth went slack, barely having the spirit to kiss smoke back. "thats it baby, youre doing perfect." he egged you on as your velvety walls clenched around stack's digits, coating them with cream.

your thighs, trembling, clenched around his hips, caging him in.

he kept pumping, getting progressively slower, letting you ride out your orgasm, before stopping completely when you go limp. he didn't want to overestimate you on your first time... not yet.

he allowed you to catch your breath, using that time to take your skirt off completely. you were now completely bare in front of two men who looked at you like you were the first meal they had on their table for years.

"that wasn't so bad now, was it?" stack looked at you, chuckling. you nodded sheepishly, "y-yeah.."

suddenly, smoke left your side, quickly getting replaced by stack. "here it comes, sugar." he smirked while watching his brother undo his belt, letting his pants drop. he pulled his cock out, rubbing it along your slick folds making you jump slightly. "she's so fucking wet..." he commented also absentmindedly, which had you clenching.

"you ready?" smoke asked you, and you nodded. you felt embarrassed, flustered, but you couldn't take you eyes off of the man that was about to take your virginity.

the push of his cock against your entrance knocked the wind out of you, and before you could recover, you felt two moist fingers tap against your cheek. you looked up to stack, "wanna taste yourself, baby?" you furrowed your eyebrows, "huh?" your voice being barely above a whisper. his thumb landed on your bottom lip, pulling it open softly and your followed, opening your mouth as clear saliva dripped down his mouth into yours.

the moment the drop of spit landed on your tongue, smoke had bottomed out, his tip bumping into your cervix which made you cry out. "you fully in?" stack question and smoke, lost in bliss, nodded eagerly while closing his eyes, throwing his head back. "holy fuck-" he couldn't help the buck of his hips as he grabbed onto yours, using his knees to dig into the fat of your thighs and pry them slightly more open.

"p-please-" that was the only confirmation he needed to start moving. he went back and forth, relishing in the feeling of your warm untouched walls around him. stack walked up to him and set a hand on your tower tummy, pressing down to heighten the sensation of smoke's dick inside you. you cried both of their names out, your body squirming uncontrollably.

stack other hand landed on your pussy, fingers immediately looking for your clit, rubbing it quickly when he found it. "r-right there! yes-!" you whined, as smoke's tip bumped into that one spot again.

"there?" his voice, baritone, bubbled from his chest as his body ran on pure instinct, angling your hips in a way that made him ram into your g-spot with every other thrust. you nodded, your voice simply dying down as you ran out of breath with all the moaning and whining.

stack pressed down a bit harder on your tummy, his hand making a wave motion to even out the sensation. "you like that, sugar?" "fuck- yes! I'm- I'm close- gonna-" and you barely got the opportunity to warn them before you creamed on smoke's cock again, squeezing down on his so hard he had trouble moving again. the view and sensation of you orgasming had him nearing his own high.

you whine when he pulled out of you to fist his dick, stroking himself fast enough to cum all over your tummy with some of it landing on stack's hand, squeezing around the base to ride out his high with a hiss. he moaned your name before tumbling back and plopping down onto the bed.

"s-shit... that was-" "smoke are serious right now? learn how to aim, man." he peaked at stack who was shaking his hand in the air, "some of it got on my hand! fuck," he walked out the room to grab a tissue.

smoke's arm wrapped around you as you were still catching your breath, mind still hazy from the orgasm.

"that was... amazing..." you managed to admit between breaths and he smiled.

"I know, baby."

Bunny let the door shut behind her with a quiet click. She pulled up the smile she had spent years perfecting, the one that reached her eyes just far enough to be convincing without costing her anything real, and she moved toward the vanity to set down her small kit. "Evenin', sir," she replied, voice sweet as honeysuckle draped over a fence post in July. "You get yourself settled alright?"

"Settled?" He laughed, the sound was disgustingly wet and blunt. "I been waitin' damn near twenty minutes."

"I apologize for that, sir." She turned subtly, sizing the client up again in the mirror's reflection while she appeared to be checking her hair. She took notice of the way his body tilted just slightly to the left when he tried to sit straighter. The way his hand reached for the bedpost to steady himself without seeming to realize he had done it. The glassy, navigating-through-fog quality of his stare. Bunny had been in this business long enough to know that a drunk man in a room with a woman he had paid for was a man operating without a leash, and a man without a leash was a dangerous creature.

She angled herself toward the door by a few degrees. Just enough to escape if needed. "Sir," she said, keeping her voice sweet and calm, "I just want to make sure you feelin' alright before we get started. You seem like you might've had yourself a full night already and I wouldn't want—"

The remainder of her sentence was cut off because the drunken man moved without warning. He lurched to his feet, knocking the small side table with his hip and sending its single glass of water spinning off the edge to shatter against the floor. His face had turned a particular shade of red that lived between embarrassment and fury, and his jaw worked like he was chewing something bitter before he could get the words out.

"Useless bitch," he spat. The syllables fell out of him ugly and hard. "Think I paid to have some whore tell me I done had too much to drink? Think I need you lookin' down at me? I'll kill you, you hear me?!? I'll put my hands ‘round ya' neck and I'll—"

His arm swung mid rant, but Bunny was already moving.

She dropped her chin to her chest and turned her body so the arc of his open palm caught nothing but air, and in the same motion her right hand went up to her hair. The blade she kept there was small, barely two inches of steel with a handle thin enough to disappear between two curling papers. It was something she had carried since she was nineteen years old and had learned in the most painful way possible that a pretty face and a small curvy frame were not assets in every room. Her fingers found it without hesitation, but with the calm surety of someone who had practiced the motion until it lived in her muscles instead of her mind.

She drew it in the same breath she stepped to his left side, and when she came back up, she sliced him across the cheekbone in one clean swipe.

The sound he made wasn’t quite a scream and not quite a word. It lived somewhere between the two, high and stunned. The moment he was sliced, his hand flew to his face as the blood welled immediately, vivid and dark, running between his fingers and dripping onto the collar he had loosened two buttons down. He staggered back into the bedpost as his eyes went wide, and suddenly he was brutally sober.

"Help!" The plea tore out of him then, ragged and furious. "HELP! She cut me! This wicked bitch cut my damn FACE!"

Bunny stood quietly like a marble statue with the blade still in her hand. Her chest moved in controlled, shallow breaths as her heartbeat threw itself against her ribs like a prisoner testing the walls, but her face… her face was completely still. Still like a woman who had survived more than enough dangerous rooms, and this was no different. She didn’t bother running or crying, instead she watched the blood run down his cheek and she waited.

Two seconds passed and the door swung open before the echo of his second shout had finished bouncing off the walls.

They filled the frame the way they always filled every frame they walked through, shoulder to shoulder, the both of them constructed from the same Mississippi clay and hardened by the same Jim Crow fire. Stack came through first, his jacket slightly disheveled as if he was in the middle of something… or someone, signature gold tooth catching the lamplight as his coffee brown eyes swept the room in three seconds flat. Smoke followed a half step behind, and his gaze went to the blood first, then to Bunny, then to the blade still loose in her fingers, and in that order he read the whole story without a single word being spoken.

The two of them looked at each other and it lasted less than a millisecond. They shared a sacred twin language, and there was no need to speak out loud when they could discuss everything necessary through a simple glance. There was no need for none of the vowels and consonants that other men required. Stack's chin lifted two degrees. Smoke's jaw shifted once to the right. That was all.

Smoke marched over to the bleeding man and grabbed him by the back of the collar with one hand. The client sputtered, grabbing at Smoke's wrist, voice rising again into something wheedling and enraged all at once, but Smoke wasn't listening. He was already moving, already dragging the man toward the door with that flat, unblinking quiet that was a hundred times more frightening than any raised voice.

Stack waited until the door swung shut behind his brother and then he turned to Bunny. He looked at her the way he looked at a ledger he needed to balance, thorough, patient, and giving nothing away in his expression. His hands found his jacket pockets and he stood with the loose posture of a man who had all the time left in the world. "Tell me what happened," he said.

Bunny's fingers curled tighter around the blade before she caught herself and lowered it. "He was drunk when I walked in," she explained, and her voice came out steadier than she had expected, considering. "Not just a couple of drinks. He was drownin’ in it. I called it out because I wasn't about to start a session with a man who could barely hold his head upright and when I did…" She nodded toward the door. "He called me out my name, said he was gonna kill me, and he swung. I moved… And I cut him."

Stack said nothing for a moment as his tongue rolled against the inside of his cheek. He looked at the blood on the floor where the man had been standing, then at the broken water glass, then at Bunny's face. "You ain't in trouble," he said finally, his Mississippi drawl coating every syllable like a second skin. "But I need you to hear me on this." He pulled one hand from his pocket and pointed a single finger at her. "Next time a client get rowdy, stupid, or liquored past the point of sense, you don't reach for that blade. You call for one of us. That's what we here for. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

He held her gaze a moment longer, making sure the instruction had gone somewhere it would stay, and then he nodded once. "Go on, wash up an get you some rest." He turned for the door, then paused with his hand on the frame, not looking back. "You did real good, not fallin' apart. Just... next time… let us handle the mess."

The door closed again, and Bunny stood alone in the room with the broken glass and the ruined sheets and the small blade still warm from her grip, and she exhaled for what felt like the first time in several minutes.

Out behind the brothel, the alley smelled of ash cans and summer.

Smoke walked the man through the rear exit with the same grip he used to drag him out of the room. He deposited him against the back wall, the man's knees finally gave out forcing him to slide down the brick and land in a graceless heap on the ground, one hand still pressed to his sliced cheek, blood threading between his fingers and dripping off his chin.

Smoke stood over him. His hands went to his jacket, straightening it once, and then settled at his sides. He looked down at the man like he was a disgruntled God figuring out what type of punishment to inflict.

The man looked up at him and found whatever he needed in Smoke's expression to start talking. "She attacked me," his drunkenness slipping out of his voice now that fear had come in to replace it. "That bitch came in there and she just… she had a knife. She cut my face. You need to do somethin’ about that. I paid good money for a civil hour and instead I get—"

"You said… you was gon' kill her."

The man blinked. "I was angry, I didn't—"

"Called her out her name twice in my presence."

The man's mouth opened and closed.

Smoke crouched down until his eyes were level with the man's, and in that position he looked less like a man and more like a demon ready to indulge in his bloodlust. His voice hadn't changed. It never changed. It held that same smooth, unshifted cadence through every conversation regardless of what the conversation was about. "Ion’ know exactly what went on in that room yet," he said. "But I want you to understand somethin'. That part don't fuckin’ matter to me. What matter to me is that you walked into my house, disrespected somethin' that belong to me, an then you done put ya' voice on her in a way that reminded her she needed a blade." He paused, letting that sit. "I don't take kindly to that."

His hand moved to his jacket, fingers parting the lapel, and the grip of his pistol caught the thin light of the alley moon.

The man's eyes went very wide. His injured hand came up, palm out, his whole body pressing back against the brick like he could dissolve into it. "Wait, wait, wait, I'll pay double, I'll pay whatever you—"

The hammer drew back with a soft, final click that cut the man's sentence clean off.

Smoke looked at him with those coal-flat eyes and the man fell silent as a stone thrown into deep water. No more words. Just the ragged labor of his own breathing and the thin, continuous sound of his blood hitting the ground.

Footsteps came down the alley behind Smoke and he didn’t bother turning around because he didn't need to. There was only one set of feet in the world that sounded like that.

Stack came up beside him, his hands loose at his sides, gold tooth catching the moon when he tilted his head down at the man on the ground. He took in the full picture. The gun. The blood. The look on Smoke's face. Then he took in a breath, slow and satisfied, and began to speak.

He told Smoke everything. The condition the man had come in. The things he had said when Bunny called it out. The swing that didn't land. The blade that did. When he finished, Stack was quiet for a moment, and then he reached into the interior pocket of his jacket and produced a knife with a blade four times the size of whatever Bunny had been carrying. He turned it once in his fingers, the steel catching and releasing the light in alternating flashes, and he smiled. It was the crooked smile, the one that reached his eyes and meant he was genuinely pleased about something.

"Lemme’ talk to him first," Stack said. "I ain't had a good conversation in a minute."

Smoke looked at his brother and then he looked at the man on the ground, who was now visibly shaking, tears cutting through the blood on his cheek without any prompting at all. Smoke stood from his crouch, straightened his jacket once more, and stepped to the side. He put his pistol back without a word, folded his hands behind his back, and watched.

Stack crouched in his place, knife resting easy between two fingers, his face open and joyful in the particular way that meant the worst thing imaginable was coming next. "How you doin', friend?" he asked, accent thick as summer mud, voice warm as a lit match. "Tell me somethin'. You ever have somebody look after you real good, put you somewhere soft an warm an safe, an you go an spit in they face for it? You ever do that?"

The man couldn’t answer.

Stack tilted his head and grinned like a Cheshire Cat. "Naw, naw, take ya' time. I got all night."

The alley didn’t hear from that man again after that. Not in any language that would've made sense to a person passing on the street.

A month passed by and it had the audacity to feel like three.

Bunny sat on the edge of her bed in the room the twins had given her and pulled a brush through her texturized hair for the fourth time that evening. She counted the strokes the way she had been taught to count them since childhood, one and two and three and four, because there was nothing else to count and the act of counting kept her hands busy and her hands being busy kept her from acknowledging a particular restlessness that had been living under her skin for the better part of two weeks.

The room she was stationed in was nice. That was the first thing she had thought when Stack walked her to it, one week after the incident, with his hand at the small of her back and a short instruction to make herself comfortable. She had expected a small, utilitarian thing, the kind of space a working doll got assigned on the upper floor with a shared bath down the hall and a window that faced the brick wall of the building next door. What she got was a room with curtains. Actual curtains, silk ones that pooled at the floor and caught the last of the day's light in a way that turned the whole space the color of a candle flame. A vanity with a proper oval mirror. A wardrobe that had been stocked before she arrived with dresses and wrappers and nightgowns of a quality that made her catch her breath the first time she opened its doors, fabrics so fine they slipped through her fingers like water. On the small table beside her bed, a covered dish of food arrived three times a day whether she asked for it or not. Things she hadn't tasted since she was a little girl sitting in her grandmother's kitchen, sweet potato pie with a crust that shattered her taste buds like stained glass, braised oxtail over white rice, pound cake soaked in lemon syrup that left a sweetness on the roof of her mouth for hours.

She was being treated like a woman of some standing… And it was driving her absolutely out of her mind.

Bunny set the hairbrush down and looked at herself in the vanity mirror with an assessing expression she reserved for private moments like these. She was thirty-four years old. She had curves that grown men wrote embarrassing letters about and women studied with something too complicated to be called jealousy and too honest to be called admiration. She had hands that knew how to work, thighs that knew how to hold, a mouth that had never once left a client feeling cheated, and a reputation in three separate cities that had always, always been built by her own effort, her own body, her own particular genius for the kind of pleasure that made a man feel like he was the most important thing in the room. She hadn’t come to this brothel to be kept like a flower in a glass case. She had come because she heard that the Moore twins ran the most lucrative operation north of the Mason Dixon and she wanted in on it. She wanted to work.

The bath she had taken earlier still clung to her skin in the form of the vanilla oil she had worked into her arms and her neck, and the nightgown the wardrobe had produced tonight was deep gold that made her brown skin glow like something lit from within. She looked breathtakingly beautiful, yet she felt like a caged thing in beautiful wrappings.

After looking herself over one more time in the mirror, she stood and made a silent decision as she made her way to the kitchen.

The brothel at midnight had a particular quality to it, a quietness that fell somewhere between a sleeping house and a thinking one. The downstairs jazz had stopped three hours ago. The girls were either asleep or occupied, and the hallways that had been warm and perfumed with commerce earlier in the evening were now cool and dim, lit by the occasional wall sconce that’s wick had been turned down low. Bunny moved through the brothel on her bare feet, the gold nightgown sighing against her legs with every step, and she told herself she was just going for a peach before confronting the twins. There was always a bowl of peaches in the kitchen. She had discovered this on her second day and found it oddly comforting that someone in this house thought fresh fruit was important enough to replenish daily.

She pushed open the kitchen door and the room was drenched in darkness. That was the first thing. The second thing was that it wasn’t empty.

As Bunny's eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, eventually she was able to see there was a woman sitting at the long kitchen table in the dark eating cornbread.

Bunny stood in the doorway with her hand still on the door and looked at the mystery woman as she took her in piece by piece. Height first, even sitting, the woman had somewhat of a long-limbed frame that telegraphed itself. Bunny guessed that she was maybe five foot eight or nine if she stood. Her skin was deep, even brown like good molasses in a jar, paired with hair that fell straight and unadorned down past her shoulders, jet black, the color of ink before it dries. And to finish it off, she had a face that did a thing Bunny had only seen faces do in paintings, not the kind hung in houses like this one, but the kind in old churches where the artists tried to put something holy and something frightening in the same expression at the same time. The mystery woman looked young feature wise as if she hadn’t yet turned twenty-two, but her eyes… her eyes were something else entirely.

Bunny wasn’t a woman who was scared easily. She had lived too much, seen too much, and cut too many men across the face to give fear the kind of real estate it wanted in her mind. But those violet eyes made something ancient crawl up the back of her neck, not unpleasant, just… aware. Like stepping into a room and understanding that whatever was in it had been there since before the house was built.

The woman looked up from her cornbread and regarded Bunny with an expression of complete composure, as though being found eating cold food alone in a dark kitchen of a brothel in the middle of the night was exactly where she was expected to be.

"You Rosalie," the woman said. It wasn't a question.

Bunny blinked. "How'd you—"

"You look like a Rosalie." She broke off another piece of cornbread, unhurried about it. "I'm Josephine. Everybody an they mama call me Josie."

Bunny stepped into the kitchen and let the door drift shut behind her. "I go by Bunny," she said, and then, because she couldn't help herself, "why are you sittin' in the dark?"

Josie ignored the question with such thoroughness that it was almost artful. She tilted her head at Bunny and asked, "They call you Bunny 'cause you can bounce on a dick 'til a man start beggin' for his mama?"

The initial response that leaped to Bunny's lips was something ladylike and deflective. What came out instead was a flustered, sputtering exhale, as her cheeks went warm and her hand raised halfway to her mouth before she caught it. She cleared her throat. "That's… yes," she admitted. "That's… um… exactly why."

The corner of Josie's mouth moved in something that could've been a smile if it committed to itself. She pushed the plate of cornbread forward by an inch, the gesture of a woman sharing without making much of it. "Have some."

Bunny looked at the cornbread. It was ice cold and hard as a rock. She could see the waxy surface on it that cornbread got when it had been sitting awhile. She was fond of cornbread. She was not fond of that. She moved instead to the bowl on the counter and lifted a peach, testing its weight in her palm before biting into it, and she hummed as the juice ran down her chin warm and sweet.

She stood there eating the peach and watching Josie, and Josie let herself be watched for a time, eating her cold cornbread with equanimity, apparently perfectly at peace with the scrutiny. But Bunny was staring and she knew it and the reason she was staring was the thing she couldn't pin down, the thing that sat off-center about this woman the way a picture sits off-center on a wall. She wasn’t dressed like any of the other dolls Bunny had met in the past month. No lace, no slip, nothing that mirrored the nature of this house and its business. She wore a plain white blouse tucked into a flowy dark skirt with her feet bare on the kitchen floor. She looked like a woman who had stepped in from another dimension entirely and simply hadn't gotten around to leaving.

Bunny had met all the other dolls in the house during her first week. She was certain of that. This woman had not been among them.

Josie took another bite of her cornbread and looked at Bunny the way Bunny had been looking at her, with that clear, still assessment that took nothing personally and missed nothing either. "How you likin' it here?" she asked. "Smoke and Stack pretty decent owners, far as that kind of thing go."

The word owners sat in Bunny's mouth for a moment before she swallowed it. "I wouldn't know yet," she reluctantly admitted. "I had one client, one incident, and since then they've had me locked up in a room like I'm made of porcelain and they're afraid I'll chip." She took another bite of peach. "I haven't worked a single real night. I came here to make money. Instead I've been eatin' pie and watchin' the curtains move."

Josie's eyes sharpened the way a fire sharpens when you give it more air. "Which one claimed you?" she quipped.

Bunny frowned her brows in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

"Which twin? Smoke or Stack? Elijah or Elias? Which one claimed you as his doll?"

The frown deepened. "Neither of them," Bunny said slowly, like she was working out whether that was the right answer even as she gave it. "When I arrived they walked me through the rules, explained how the percentages worked, showed me the floor. Neither of them said anything about… claiming."

Now it was Josie’s turn to be confused as she stopped eating and placed her cornbread very gently on the plate in front of her. She looked at Bunny with the full force of those ancient alien lavender eyes and she was quiet for a stretched-out moment that had weight to it. Then she leaned forward and without a word of warning she took Bunny's face between both her hands and squeezed her cheeks together, compressing Bunny's lips into a surprised, rounded 'O'.

"You are thee cutest thing," Josie cooed, with the slightly awed sincerity of someone who had just found a very small, very charming animal in an unexpected location.

Bunny's eyes went wide above her squished cheeks. She made a sound that was supposed to be a protest and emerged as something closer to a muffled quack.

Josie released her with an unrushed giggle and settled back in her chair as though that had been a perfectly reasonable thing to do. "Alright," she said. "Let me explain how this house works."

Bunny smoothed her cheeks with her palms and fixed Josie with a look that she reserved for people who had just done something she didn't have the vocabulary to address properly. Then she sighed, finished the peach, and sat down.

Josie explained the rules of the house with a questionable amount of knowledge that Bunny would inquire about later. When a doll went through something the way Bunny had gone through something, they were taken off the floor. Not longer than a week, typically. No clients, no housework, just time to let the body and the mind settle back into themselves without being asked to perform. After that period, whichever twin had claimed that particular doll would take her through a retraining week. A proper retraining. Not punishment, not because she had done something wrong, but because the mind needed to be walked back through safety the same way the body needed to be walked back through strength after a sickness. The twins were a great many things, Josie explained, and some of those things weren’t things that would be listed in a church bulletin, but they weren’t complete monsters and wouldn't send a shaken woman back to work before she was ready. That wasn’t morality for morality's sake. It was also just bad business, and they were nothing if not precise businessmen.

Bunny absorbed this. Processed it. Turned it over. And then arrived at the part that had been sitting sideways in her chest since the question first got asked.

"It's been a month," she said.

Josie looked at her dumbfounded like she didn’t hear her correctly.

"It's been a month," Bunny said again. "The incident was a month ago. Nobody took me through any retraining. Nobody said anythin’ about when I'd go back to work. And you're telling me that the reason for that is…"

She could see it in Josie's expression before she said it, like she was about to deliver news that amused her to the highest degree.

"Either you one of the special ones," Josie said, the childish grin breaking through now, unconstrained, like a schoolgirl who had been holding it in for the last five minutes, "or you somehow so boring that both of them forgot you exist entirely."

Bunny straightened up in her chair. "I am not boring," she said.

"I didn't say you were."

"You implied it."

"I offered it as a possibility."

"It is not a fuckin’ possibility." Bunny's chin came up and her voice took on the tone of a woman defending something she had built with a considerable effort over many years. Before she had walked through the Moore brothers' doors she had left three separate establishments because she had outgrown them. She had a clientele that wrote letters to find out where she had gone. She had a reputation that didn’t include the word boring in any language. "I done made grown ass men cry," she said. "Not from pain… From gratitude."

Josie held up one hand in a gesture of peace, her playful grin not moving an inch. "Alright, alright. I believe you. I apologize." She folded her hands on the table. "The other explanation, then, is that they both want to claim you and neither one of them know how to go about it without steppin’ on the other's toes."

Bunny's chair scraped back half an inch. "Both of them?"

"It's rare," Josie whispered, as if she was saying too much too soon. "In the whole time this house been runnin’ there've only been two dolls that both of them claimed at once. Just two. The second one is named Buttercup. She handles their books and investments. She’s been both of theirs for many moons." A pause, thoughtful and private. "The first one…" She picked up her cornbread again and looked at it, not at Bunny. "Well..."

The silence that lingered behind that one word forced Bunny to really look at Josie's profile. She took in the serenity of it, the complete and settled comfort with which this woman occupied any space she entered, including dark kitchens in the middle of the night. The way she didn't need to finish the sentence because the sentence was already obvious to anyone paying attention.

"Hypothetically," Bunny said carefully.

Josie's mouth curved with mischief. "Hypothetically..."

"If a woman found herself in that position. Both of them. At once. How would she… manage that?"

Josie was quiet for a moment, chewing her cornbread, looking somewhere past Bunny's shoulder as though consulting a memory that lived in the middle distance. "Hypothetically," she repeated, "such a woman would need to learn how not to get frostbitten by an avalanche of coldness." A pause. "While also not burnin’ up in a lake of uncontrolled fire." Another pause, this one carrying a slightly different weight, the weight of something remembered in the body as much as the mind. "And on top of all that, she would need to learn how to take two men at the same time without tearin’ in half."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"That's… useful information," Bunny said finally.

"I thought you'd think so."

They sat for another minute, the two of them, in the warm dark kitchen with the peach bowl on the counter and the plate of cold cornbread between them, and something passed between them that couldn’t be labeled as friendship yet but was the thing that comes just before it, a recognition, a sense of shared understanding arrived at by different roads.

A few more comforting minutes passed and then Bunny stood. She pulled the gold nightgown straight across her hips and ran one hand through the freshly brushed waterfall of her hair and looked at Josie with the expression of a woman who had made up her mind about something and had no further interest in deliberating. "Hypothetically, if I wanted to speak with them tonight... you know where they are?"

"Their office," Josie said. "End of the hall. Door on the left." She reached for the last piece of frosty cornbread. "Knock four times when you get there. Even count, same rhythm. That's how they know it's a doll behind the door and not somebody they need to put a bullet in."

Bunny's eyes widened slightly. "Good to know."

"One more thing," Josie said, without looking up, the words landing easy as a stone dropped into still water, "whoever open that door? Look him dead in the eye when you tell him what you want. Don't let him take the silence from you first. They'll stand in a quiet room and wait you out 'til you forget what you came for. Don't let him." She broke off a bite of cornbread. "Now go."

The hallway to their office was dim and long as the floorboards under her bare feet held the warmth of the day's heat, soaked up and slowly releasing into the night. She walked it with her chin level and her footsteps quiet, the vanilla oil on her skin mixing with the faint residual perfume that lived in all the walls of this house. At the far end of the hall, beneath the last sconce, a door sat closed and faintly rimmed with the amber line of lamplight from beneath it.

She stopped in front of it. Pressed her palm flat against the wood for one second. Then she knocked. Four times. Even. The same rhythm. Just as Josie had instructed.

On the other side of the door, the office breathed with the quietness of two men working in a comfortable parallel. The desk was spread with ledgers and cash in organized columns, the ashtray on its corner nursed a half-finished cigarette that had gone cold, and the lamp threw a yellow circle of warmth across the arithmetic of their operations. Stack stood at the desk's far edge, jacket off, suspenders down, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, one hand moving down a column of figures with the end of a pencil. Smoke sat on the lounge couch along the near wall, his own jacket folded beside him, a glass of brown liquor balanced on the arm of the cushion, his eyes moving across a folded sheet of paper he had been reading for the third time.

Four knocks came through the door.

Even. Measured.

Both men went still.

Stack's pencil stopped and his eyes lifted from the ledger to find his brother's face across the room. Smoke had already set the paper down. His hand had already moved to the glass, lifting it, not drinking from it, just holding it in the idle way of a man whose other hand needed to be free. His eyes were steady on the door.

The four-count knock meant a doll. Both of them knew that. The problem was that only two dolls in their entire operation knew that particular code, and neither of those two women were supposed to be within three city blocks of this brothel for another three days.

Smoke set the glass down very carefully on the side table before standing and crossing the room to the door. His shoulder holster rode against his undershirt as he pulled his pistol free in one clean motion before turning the knob and pulling the office door open.

Bunny stood in the hallway nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The lamplight from inside the office hit her caramel brown skin from the side and the effect of this wasn't something Smoke had originally budgeted for. She was soft, luminous, small, and entirely the kind of woman that a man had to consciously remind himself to look away from, all of that deep-curved, warm-skinned, doe-eyed beauty arranged in the specific way that made the gold fabric laced over her body look like it had been commissioned for her personally. She blinked up at him. Her eyes were the color of good rum and they caught the light and held it, and for one unguarded half second the hardness in his face did something complicated before it arranged itself back into its usual flat composure.

Smoke held the pistol at his side. His face settled back into the expression of a man who was conducting business regardless of the hour. His eyes moved over her once, the way he surveyed any situation that required assessment before a response. "Why," he said, voice smooth and level as a road built to last, his Mississippi roots dragging slow and warm beneath every word, "is you at my door knockin' four times?"

Bunny didn’t flinch as she looked him in the eye exactly as Josie had instructed and she held the look steady. "Because," she said, "I am tired of being treated like I'm made of glass." She let a breath pass as she remembered who she was speaking to. "... Sir."

Smoke looked at her for a long minute. He ran his mind back, sorting through the preceding month like how a man sorts through a drawer looking for something he put down without thinking. The girl on the floor. The drunk client. The blade. Stack handling her, him handling the client. The decision to move her to the room across from theirs. Then the weeks had continued to happen, the operation had continued to require their attention, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, the particular task of walking her back through had gotten caught in the gap between what he assumed Stack had handled and what Stack apparently assumed he had handled.

He let the exhale come through his nose, small and contained. Then he stepped back from the door and nodded once towards the interior of the room. "Come in."

Bunny wasn’t a woman that needed to be instructed twice as she came in.

Smoke shut the door behind her and walked back to the couch, settling into it with the glass of liquor retrieved from the side table. His eyes stayed on her as she took in the office, the desk and its columns, Stack still standing at the far edge of it now with his arms folded. Smoke's gaze moved from her face to his brother's and he said, with the absolute calm of a man stating a mathematical fact, "You done forgot to recommission ya' doll."

Stack's expression moved toward as expression of confusion that was also slightly offended at the framing. "Fuck you mean my doll?" he quipped. "Thought she was yours."

"I moved her to the room 'cross the hall," Smoke said. "I was leavin' the rest to you."

"Nobody told me that."

"I ain't gotta tell you everythin’, Elias. Use ya' brain."

Stack unfolded his arms and planted both hands flat on the desk. "My brain was operatin' under the assumption that the woman sittin' over in that room with the good curtains was your doll that you was handlin' in ya' own time, Elijah. Had I known she was mine to recommission I would've had her back on the floor four weeks ago."

"She been over there four an a half weeks."

"Four an a half weeks then. My point stands, muthafucka."

"Ya' point is that you wasn't payin' attention—"

"My point is that you could've opened ya' mouth like a grown ass man an said the words 'Elias, go handle Bunny' an I would've gone an handled Bunny, but instead you sittin’ over there on that couch drinkin' ya' liquor an assumin' I was gon' read ya' mind—"

"I don't need you readin' my mind, I need you payin' attention to what's happenin' in this house—"

"Stupid bitch, I pay more attention to what happens in this house than you do, I just ain't also expected to be a fuckin' mind reader on top of everythin’ else—"

"Language, Elias.” Smoke said.

"Now I need to read ya' mind an watch my mouth?"

"We got a doll present. Tighten up." Smoke's eyes cut to Bunny for one brief moment that carried the tiniest edge of an apology.

Bunny had been watching this exchange with the expression of a woman who was simultaneously relieved that Josie was right and also annoyed that Josie was right. She looked at the ceiling for one moment, gathering something, and then she looked at Stack directly.

"I didn't come here to listen to y'all argue about whose doll I am," she cut in. The words came out clean and direct, and beneath them ran a current of something real, something stored up across four weeks in a pretty room with silk curtains and three meals a day that she hadn’t earned. "I came here because I am a woman who been working since I was old enough to understand that money you make yourself is the only kind that belongs to you in full." She let that settle for a moment. 

Before she had walked through their door she had left three establishments because she outgrew them. Before that, back when she was Rosalie and not Bunny, she hadn't been permitted to own so much as the dress on her back. That life was behind her and it would stay behind her as long as she had a body to work with and the sense God gave her to use it. "I appreciate the food," she said. "I appreciate the nightgowns and the curtains and the sweetness. I do. But I am not a woman who takes without giving back, and I am not going to sit in that room one more week eating indulging in things I ain't earn. I want to work."

The office held the sound of that for a brief second.

Stack analyzed her from top to bottom. The annoyance from the argument with his twin had drained off his face entirely, replaced by something more attentive and interesting. He possessed the look of a man who had been watching something he wanted for some time and had just been reminded of it. His gaze moved down the gold nightgown with the focused assessment of a man reviewing an investment he had forgotten to manage and was now reconsidering with renewed and comprehensive interest.

He came around the desk, crossed the office floor, and closed the distance between them until his chest was close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off him. His hands came up. His fingers settled first at the hollow of her throat, light and acquainting themselves with the shape of her, feeling the small flutter there she couldn't suppress, feeling the way she swallowed. Then they traveled with thorough patience across her collarbones, over the generous swell of her chest through the nightgown's thin fabric. She was built lavishly, heavy and warm everywhere in a way that made his hands slow down and pay attention, and he let them linger there, cataloguing her, until her breathing changed and she tried to hide the change but couldn't.

His hands continued their inventory, moving down the soft plush landscape of her stomach, the deep inward curve of her waist, spreading wide across the full round geography of her hips. He took his time with her hips. He spent what felt like an extended amount of time mapping them, as though committing their particular architecture to some private record he intended to revisit at a later date. Then one hand swept low and around, and he brought his palm down hard and flat across the full magnificent curve of her backside with a crack that split the quiet of the office like a starting pistol.

The sound rang off the walls, the bookcase, the glass in the lamp, everything. Bunny's gasp tore out of her before she had the opportunity to make any decisions about it, sharp and bright, her body moving without consulting her brain, tilting forward into the impact and then backward away from it, settling finally against Stack's chest in a way that was involuntary enough to be entirely honest.

Stack felt her melt against him and his exhale came out long and satisfied. His arm wrapped around her from behind, pulling her flush against the front of him, and he bent his mouth to the curve of her ear. "I'm gon’ be the one runnin' ya' retrainin' tonight." He pressed his mouth closer to her ear, words dropping to a rough near-whisper. "An dependin' on how that go… I might need to keep you locked away from everybody else for another month… Really take my time so ya' body don't ever forget who it belong to."

The sound Bunny made was small, strangled, and entirely against her will.

He reached for the thin strap at her shoulder and slid it down. The other strap followed. He peeled the gold nightgown from her slowly, letting it whisper down her curves until it pooled at her feet in a gilded ring, and what was left standing in the middle of their office was every generous, luminous, full inch of Bunny without a single layer between her skin and the lamplight. The lamp threw amber across the swell of her hips, the deep curve of her waist, the heavy softness of her breasts, the deep brown warmth of her, and the office became immediately a different kind of room.

Stack stepped back and bit down on his bottom lip as he took in her goddess figure. Then, with the easy authority of a man in his own house, he waltzed over to the couch where Smoke sat and dropped down beside his brother. He plucked the liquor glass from Smoke's hand, drained what remained, and reached for the refill trolley at the couch's edge. Smoke didn’t argue with his twin. He simply shifted his weight to accommodate Stack’s presence and locked his eyes on Bunny.

Two men on the same couch. Side by side. Undershirts and slacks, loafers, the warm lamplight running along the defined lines of their arms where the fabric ended, the undeniable press of their interest visible in the material of their trousers. Stack poured a fresh glass and settled into the cushion. Smoke took Bunny in from head to foot with that flat, complete attention that gave nothing away and missed nothing. The air in the room had changed and pressed heavily on all their shoulders.

Stack leaned forward, elbows to his knees, glass hanging loose in his fingers. "Show me," he said, "why you worth the trouble of retrainin' when you already cost me a dead white man, two dry cleaning bills, a shovel we had to replace after breakin' it diggin' that peckerwoods grave, plus four an a half weeks of room an board an meals that even my top earners don't see on a regular Tuesday." He settled back into the cushion. "All that, an you ain't brought us a single dollar. So show me what you got, Bunny."

Bunny stood naked in the center of their office and looked at both of them. She took one breath. Then she walked to Smoke.

She came to stand directly before him and held his gaze and placed one knee on the cushion beside his thigh and then the other, straddling his lap with the practiced ease of a woman who had made herself at home in more difficult situations than this. She could feel him beneath her already, the dense, insistent hardness of him through his slacks, and the discovery sent something bold climbing up her spine and into her shoulders. She rolled her hips, one slow and complete rotation, felt him twitch beneath her, and did it again. She leaned forward and put her mouth to the side of his neck, the warm brown skin above his collar, and kissed him there. Felt his jaw tighten. Kissed across his collarbone, the gap where his undershirt opened at the throat. She found his earlobe with her teeth, caught it just barely, and felt the exhale that came out of him, contained and controlled, the only version of a sound he was willing to give her yet.

She pulled back and looked at Stack over her shoulder. "I can't promise I won't cause more trouble with your clients," she said, her hips still moving against Smoke's in that slow, measured grind. "That ain’t a promise I can keep. But I am an investment." She felt Smoke's hand settle on her hip, heavy and certain, the grip of a man who was claiming something without announcing he's done it. "And you'd be foolish men to let me go."

Then she climbed off Smoke's lap and moved to Stack.

She settled herself across his thighs before he had quite finished processing the intention, and his hands came up instinctively, finding her hips, and she moved against him the way she had moved against his brother, with that same frank, unhurried competence, rolling her hips in grinding rolls that had him fully hard inside his slacks under a minute. She kissed along his jaw, the corner of his mouth, found his throat and bit softly at it and felt him grip her harder. She turned her mouth to his ear. "Well?" she said quietly.

Stack's answer was both hands sliding down to fill themselves with the full, heavy weight of her backside, squeezing with the proprietary thoroughness of a man claiming something he had decided belongs to him and only him.

From the other side of couch, Smoke reached forward and caught the back of her hair in his fist. Not rough, not gentle, just completely unambiguous, pulling her head back until she was looking up at him from Stack's lap with her neck at a stretched and exposed angle. Smoke looked down at her, his eyes never leaving her face. "Who," he said, each word its own complete and unhurried thing, "taught you that knock?"

"Josie," Bunny replied quickly.

The quality of the silence that followed was specific. She felt Stack go still beneath her. She saw something shift in Smoke's expression, not much, just a recalibration of a single degree. "Josie," he repeated. Flat.

"She was in the kitchen," Bunny continued. "Just now. I spoke with her before I came down here."

Smoke's eyes moved to Stack's face. Stack's eyes moved back. That language again, the one that needed no words. Whatever moved between them in that half second was mutual and resolved by the time it was done.

Smoke released her hair. He stood, adjusted the set of his shoulder holster with one practiced motion, and looked at Bunny. "Come," he said.

Stack stood from the couch with Bunny still in his arms, lifting her from his lap without any apparent effort, her weight absorbed into his frame as a matter of course. He carried her out of the office. Smoke walked ahead through the dim corridor, his footsteps quiet on the floorboards, and they moved as a unit through the darkness of the second floor until they reached the kitchen.

Smoke pushed the door open.

Bunny looked into the kitchen from over Stack's shoulder.

The room was empty.

The room wasn't just vacant as if someone had just stepped out, the room was suddenly empty in a way that was wrong. Profoundly, specifically wrong. The chair at the table sat at the exact angle it had been in when she first sat down across from Josie, as though no one had adjusted it at all, as though no one had ever pulled it out to sit in it. The plate of cornbread was gone without a trace, not in the washtub, not on the counter, not anywhere. Simply absent from the room as if it was never there. The peach bowl sat exactly where it always sat. The lamplight came through the window at its usual angle and landed on a kitchen that offered no evidence whatsoever that a woman with ancient eyes had been sitting in it not even twenty minutes ago.

Bunny stared. The hair on her arms rose.

"She was right there," she said, and her voice had climbed half a register before she noticed. "She was sittin' right there at that table. She had cornbread on a plate, cold cornbread, she had it on a plate right there in front that chair, she offered some to me and I took a peach instead. She squeezed my cheeks." Bunny's hand rose and touched her own face at the memory of it, the very real and physical memory of Josie's palms pressing her cheeks together. "She was a real person who was in this room. She had feet. I heard her feet on the floor when she shifted her chair. That ain't somethin' I imagined." She heard her own voice rising once more and made herself stop. Swallowed down her confusion and looked from the empty table, to the empty chair, to the empty counter where a plate had been sitting less than a few minutes ago. The wrongness of the empty kitchen pressed against her like a cold hand. 

"Where'd she go," she whispered, and this time her voice came out quieter, stripped of its former certainty, with something underneath it that was very close to fear. "The hallway is one hallway. I walked the whole length of it to get to your office. I would have seen her. I would have passed her. Where'd she—"

"I believe you."

Smoke's voice arrived quietly and cut through everything else like a lamp lit in a dark room. He stepped next to Stack and reached out, taking her chin between his fingers, tilting her face toward him with a gentleness that wasn’t his usual mode and was therefore more effective than almost anything else he could’ve done. His eyes moved across her face, reading whatever he found there with that same thorough attention, and then he said it again without elaboration or apology. "I believe you. You saw her. You spoke to her. It's 'ight." He held her gaze until the climbing quality went out of her breathing, until her eyes settled from startled back to present. His thumb moved once along her jaw, the lightest possible contact, and then he released her chin and looked at Stack over her head. 

The look between them lasted one second and carried something private in it, something that had history in it, some understanding of Josie that they shared between themselves and weren’t presently sharing with Bunny. "Need to put a leash on that woman," Smoke grumbled, with the flat certainty of someone adding an item to a list.

"You an me both, nigga," Stack said, quietly.

Smoke turned from the kitchen. He didn’t go back towards their office, instead he went the other direction, toward the room at the far end of the hall, and Stack followed with Bunny still in his arms, carrying her away from the empty kitchen and the empty chair and the cold and inexplicable absence of a woman who had been sitting in it minutes ago eating cold cornbread like she owned the place.

The room at the end of the hall was broad and purposeful. A wide bed sat at its center on a dark mahogany frame, the headboard tall and unadorned. White linens, clean. A single lamp burning low in the corner, its flame turned down until the light came out warm and intimate. This was a simple room designed for one thing and one thing only, retraining a doll that didn’t need to be disciplined. 

Stack deposited Bunny in the center of the bed with more chivalry than intended. He straightened up and looked at her sprawled across the white linens, her moisturized brown skin drinking the lamplight the way it was built to, every curve of her catching and holding the warmth of it. He let out a small satisfied grunt before rolling his shoulders once and then bending down to kiss the inside of her knee.

The sound Bunny made started in her throat and got halfway out before she caught it, her thigh twitching under his mouth. Stack felt the twitch and registered it with the calmness of a man who had spent a considerable amount of time studying the language of women's bodies, then he returned and pressed his lips to her inner knee again. 

One kiss… two kiss… three kiss… four… Stack continued his playful worship before moving lower, or rather higher towards Bunny’s inner thigh. He was greeted with the soft warm skin there as his mouth opened against it, tongue dragging along the crease where her thigh met nothing and then meeting the next crease. He was learning the deep inner geography of her, building the path inward with a patience that was intentionally designed to make her lose her mind before he arrived at his final destination.

Her scent hit him before his mouth did and he let out a low sound against her skin that was pure appreciation. "Four an a half weeks," he said, lips moving against her inner thigh, his breath warming the space he hadn't touched yet. "You been sittin' in that pretty room unfucked all this time, huh, lil’ bunny rabbit?"

Bunny responded vocally with something that was technically a word, or at least she thought she did.

Stack chuckled to himself and then his mouth immediately found her aching bundle of nerves. He worked her the way a classically trained musician works an instrument he knows intimately. He didn’t rush his performance but instead attended to the specific truth of her responses with the kind of focused and intelligent attention that made up the difference between a man who was present and a man who was going through the motions. He learned her in the first thirty seconds, learned the particular way her hips moved when he pressed the flat of his tongue against her center, the way her thighs tried to close around his head and then caught themselves and spread wider, the way the sound she made climbed an entire octave when he tended to her clit and circled it with skilled precision.

He effortlessly brought her to the edge in under four minutes.

He knew when she was there. He had been watching for it, feeling for it in the tightening of her thighs and the change in her breathing, the way her hands had found the back of his head and were pressing down with that desperate and gnawing pressure that meant she was right there, right on the rim of it, one more motion and she would go over. He could feel her gathering herself, the coil of it pulling tight in her body and her hips tilting up to meet him.

But, because Stack was Stack, he couldn’t help himself as he pulled back and denied Bunny instant relief. She wasn’t a doll that needed to be punished, but she was still a doll under control of her master. He didn’t pull away far, just enough for his mouth to leave her core and rest against the inside of her thigh instead. He looked utterly composed as he breathed against her soaked, twitching heat while she fell apart beneath him in a different way than she had intended.

"Stack," she breathlessly whined, the word arriving with a thicker desperation than she had planned.

"Mm," he said, mouth still against her thigh.

"Please… Don't do that."

"Do what? " he asked pleasantly.

She made a frustrated sound and whined again before Stack returned to his honeysuckle feast.

He took his time getting there, moving up through the wet of her with his tongue like he was reading something he found interesting, and then he was back at her clit and the sounds coming out of her rebuilt themselves immediately, climbing again, her hips rolling, her fingers curling into the sheets. He gave her forty-five seconds this time before the edge showed up again in the ragged pacing of her breathing, and he pulled back once more. Pressed his mouth to her inner thigh. Breathed. And let her curse at him out.

"You raggedy ass nigga," she managed.

His laugh came out against her skin, warm and genuinely amused. "I done been called worse, babydoll."

At the head of the bed the mattress dipped. Bunny's eyes reopened, head turning, and Smoke leaned above her, and the sight of him was enough to make every other thought in her head exit quickly. He had shedded everything. His undershirt, slacks, holster, all of it was gone, and what was left was all of him, broad and carved and rich dark brown skin. His body looked like the map of a man who had moved through the world with physical force for a long time and had the evidence of that written in muscle and old scars. He was hard, entirely and obviously, and looking at her with those flat obsidian eyes that gave nothing away.

Smoke said nothing as he reached for the small table at the bed's edge and a cigarette appeared between his fingers, a match scratched against the bedframe with a brief bright leap of flame before it found its target. He took the first pull, held it, let the clouds of tobacco climb toward the ceiling in a long and perfectly controlled column. And then he looked down at her, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, his eyes traveling across her face with the calm, weighing assessment of a man reviewing something he may or may not be satisfied with.

"Who," he said, voice low and quiet and warm as the smoking end of something burning, "you think you talkin’ to like that in my house?"

Between her thighs, Stack's mouth had found the soft heat of her again, and the sound that tried to escape Bunny's throat was intercepted by her own determination not to give Smoke the satisfaction of an incoherent answer before she had the chance to give him a real one. "I-I didn’t mean none by it… I-I wasn’t givin’ orders," she managed.

"Mm." Smoke's eyes dropped from her face to the space just below them, where his erection jumped and throbbed directly above her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, and then his eyes came back up to hers. "You came to my office," he continued as he lazily gripped his manhood before taking another puff. "Told me what you was tired of. Told me what you wanted. Got yaself’ naked in front my brother an I, then sat in both our laps like you had the right." He exhaled smoke from the side of his mouth, away from her face. "That sound like a doll who know her place to you?"

Before she could respond, Stack's tongue distracted her by circling her clit with renewed and specific intention, as one finger pressed into her slowly, testing the heat of her… the tight grip of her. She was utterly soaked and already shaking in a finely controlled way, like how a bow shakes just before the arrow is released.

Smoke watched her face with the careful attention of a man reading a weather report. "A doll," he said, voice quieter, the edge in it sharpening enough to send shivers down her spine, "asks. She don't tell. She don't march down a hallway an knock on my door like she owed somethin'. She asks her owner. She say please. She waits." His thumb brushed her jaw, the touch light and intentional, as his eyes dropped to her mouth and then came back up. "You still ain’t proved you worth the trouble."

It didn't take much for Bunny to read between the lines as her right hand moved from the sheet and gripped Smoke’s precum dripping length. She felt the substantial weight of him against her palm and heard the slight controlled catch of his inhale as she felt him twitch against her hand. He filled her hand, dense and hot, and she stroked him from base to crown once with a grip that was firm.

She angled her head against the pillow, opened her mouth, and drew him in.

His size settled against her tongue, thick and dense, and she worked her lips around him with the exploring attention of a woman who had been told her whole career that her mouth was something extraordinary and had spent years proving it right. She hollowed her cheeks and sucked on him with an unhurried suction, her tongue mapping the underside of him on each pull, tracing the swollen vein that ran along his length, lapping at the crown when she came up before gobbling him back down again. Her free hand wrapped around his base and worked in a measured counterpoint. The combination of hand and mouth coordinated with the easy confidence of someone who had been doing this long enough that it lived in her body the way playing an instrument lives in a musician's hands had Smoke internally losing his mind.

Smoke's own hand found her hair, fingers settling among her now sweated out tresses without pressing, without directing, just resting there with a weight that communicated his full attention. The quality of his breathing changed almost immediately, each exhale coming a degree longer than it should have, each inhale a degree more controlled than usual. He brought the cigarette to his lips with his free hand and took a pull, held it, let the tobacco clouds go from the side of his mouth. The image of him above her doing that while she worked him below was the most Elijah “Smoke” Moore thing she could imagine, controlling himself with a lit cigarette while she did her damnedest to remove that control from him entirely.

For a long minute, Bunny genuinely believed she was finally in control, but then, the devious twin still situated between her thick thighs added a second finger inside her and she gasped. It only lasted a split second as her eyes almost rolled to the back of her head while she momentarily let the pleasure consume her, but that was short lived with a slight tug to her hair.

"Look at me," Smoke demanded.

She didn’t need to be told twice as she retrained her eyes back onto the owner that was in front of her.

"Mmm… good… you capable of suckin’ dick an followin’ instructions," he said softly, in a voice that had dropped below the level where it was meant to sound gentle and instead sounded much more intimate and a whole lot more dangerous. "You got somethin' to say?"

Bunny, whose mouth was still full of raw meat, slightly shook her head ‘no’ and continued servicing Smoke’s dick. Her tongue continued working the underside of him in the way that she had been complimented on in cities that were miles away from this one. She went down until the back of her throat met him and held there, breathing through her nose, feeling his fingers tighten in her hair by one degree, and then she came back up and did it again.

Smoke's exhale was long and relaxed. "Mm," he said, and it was the most honest amount of praise he had given Bunny all night.

Stack had brought her to the edge twice more in the interim, each time withdrawing with the particular cruelty of a man who is enjoying the architecture of her desperation more than he would enjoy its resolution, and she was by now a tightly wounded and thoroughly soaked little doll. Her body was operating at a level of need that had begun to make her cry a little. Not from pain or unhappiness, just from the relentless accumulation of pleasure with nowhere to go.

"Stack… Sir…" she managed, pulling off Smoke for a breath.

"Still here," Stack said, against her thigh.

"Please." The word came out stripped of all pretense. Just the word. Just the need in it, raw and uncomplicated.

Stack looked up at her along the length of her body. His mouth was wet, his eyes were bright, and he looked like a man who had been given an exceptional gift that was in no hurry to unwrap it fully. "Please what?" he asked rhetorically already knowing the answer to the question.

"Please… l-let me finish."

"Let you finish?" His voice carried genuine amusement. "Babydoll, I barley scratched the surface."

Smoke looked at the tears streaming from Bunny’s eyes. Something moved across his face, an emotion too foreign for anyone to decipher. He pulled free of her mouth with a soft sound and moved, climbing off the mattress and coming around the foot of the bed, and the sight of him moving toward Stack's position made Stack lift his head.

Smoke looked at his brother. Then he looked at the place between Bunny's thighs, the glistening, swollen, and desperately twitching evidence of the last fifteen minutes, and he looked back at Stack with an expression that was entirely final.

"Move," he said.

Stack sat up and squinted his eyes in disbelief. "S’cuse you, nigga?"

"Move," Smoke said again.

Stack's eyes narrowed. "She's my doll, Elijah."

"Yeah… well… she’s also mine," Smoke said. "I just decided."

Stack stared at him. The look on his face was the look of a mannish boy who didn’t like having to share his toys. "You can't just decide that," he complained. "That ain't how this works. You can't crawl over here in the middle of my session an claim a whole woman like you can’t go pick another damn doll—"

"Elias."

"What?!”

"I been watchin' her for a month," Smoke said, with the patience of someone explaining something obvious. "She in the room ‘cross the hall from ours. I been the one who had her moved there. I been the one who made sure her meals was right. Made sure her room was right an made sure nobody bothered her." A pause. "She mine. She also yours. Move."

Stack's jaw tightened. He looked at Bunny. Bunny looked back at him from the mattress with wide eyes, her lips still swollen, her thighs still trembling, and her expression carrying the cocky confusion of a woman who had just been claimed by two men simultaneously while lying naked in their bed and was still in the early stages of processing this information. Stack pointed at Smoke. "You owe me," he said. "You owe me big time, nigga."

"Mhm. Add it to the list," Smoke said.

Stack moved, climbing up toward the headboard with a muttered stream of commentary, and Smoke took his place between Bunny's thighs before lowering his head. He wasted no time as his mouth found her center without preamble, his tongue worked her with the focused of a man who went through life either doing something well or not at all. The sound Bunny made was enormous and immediate, her hands flying out to grip the sheets.

Smoke was vastly different from Stack in how he devoured Bunny’s pussy. Stack built her pleasure up as if he was an architect with a boundless amount of patience. Whereas Smoke treated her pleasure like a man reading a language only he knew. Every response she gave him, he immediately incorporated it into what he did next, adjusting, refining, arriving at the exact pressure and rhythm that made her thighs lock around his head and her back clear off the mattress as every coherent thought she had exited the premises.

He didn’t bother edging her since he had already clearly read what the edging had done to her. He could read the accumulated tension in every line of her body. Instead, he drove her straight to the finish line without stopping. The orgasm that finally rippled through her felt spiritual as if her soul was raptured out of her body. Her voice tore out of her open and honest, her hips grinding against his mouth as he worked her through every wave of it, his hands locked on her hips to keep her from pitching away from him.

Stack sat at the headboard watching all of this with his arms folded like a sulking child. When Smoke finally lifted his head, Stack uncrossed his arms and pointed at his brother with one finger. "My turn," he said.

"She sensitive," Smoke said, sitting back on his heels.

"I know she sensitive. That's the point."

Smoke moved aside without any urgency, and Stack replaced him between Bunny's thighs with the eagerness of a man who had been waiting for his turn at something exceptional. He looked at the convulsing center of her for a beat with something purely acquisitive in his expression, and then he put his skilled mouth back on her.

Bunny's entire body jerked backwards. The sound she made this time was considerably more desperate than the last, her hips trying to back away from the overstimulation and Stack's hands locking around them before she got anywhere.

"Stay," he murmured against her, voice vibrating right against her hypersensitive clit.

"Stack I can't, it's too much—"

"You can," he growled, and meant it, and went back to work.

Smoke let his twin have his fun as he situated himself on Bunny’s left side, and his mouth found her breast. His lips closed around her nipple and sucked on the coco nub with an intensity that sent a euphoric sensation shooting directly down her spine. His other hand flattened on her ribs, feeling the heave of her breathing, the rapid and helpless rise and fall of her chest. He worked across to her other breast with the same thorough attention, his teeth grazing just lightly enough to make her gasp, and then moan, and then grip the back of his head.

Meanwhile, Stack feasted like a starving madman. His tongue worked her pulsing and overstimulated pussy with an almost vindictive thoroughness, licking into her and circling her clit with alternating attention, building the sensation higher than it had any right to go given that she had just come apart under his brother's mouth not two minutes ago. He watched her face when he could, watched the progression of it, the way her mouth fell open, how her brows drew together, and when the tears started again fresh from the corners of her eyes, overstimulation and pleasure braided together until she couldn't separate one from the other.

When she came the second time it was different in character, wilder, less controlled, her body arching and convulsing with a force that had nothing of restraint left in it, and the flood of her against Stack's mouth was audible in the quiet room. He drank her juices down with a delighted groan while his jaw still worked her through every aftershock, refusing to stop until her thighs had gone from locked to trembling to limp and her voice had dropped from cries to the soft and utterly wrecked sound of a woman who has nothing left to give.

Thirty seconds of blissful torture occurred until Stack finally sat back. He looked at the evidence of what he had done to her with profound satisfaction, wiping his jaw with the back of his hand. He looked at Smoke. "She ready," he said.

"She definitely ready," Smoke agreed.

Smoke laid down on his back on the mattress beside Bunny, his nine inches pointing toward the ceiling. He turned his head and looked at her where she lay against the linens, trembling and thoroughly undone. His voice, when it came, was dominate and certain. "Show me," he said, "how you got ya' name, bunny rabbit. Show me why you worth the trouble."

The second Bunny heard Smoke’s request, she sat up on trembling arms. She looked at him stretched out beside her, at the full dark length of him, at the patient flatness of his expression, at the way he was simply waiting with the absolute confidence of a man who knew what was coming and secretly couldn’t wait.

She was still a little loopy from her prior orgasms but gathered up enough strength and swung her leg over him. She positioned herself above him and reached down to guide him to her entrance before sinking onto him with a long, controlled descent that pulled a sound from the back of her throat and a sound from the back of his. Both of them couldn’t help themselves responding to the stretch, the heat, and the fullness of her pussy wrapping around his length as she settled herself completely onto him. She stayed there for a second, adjusting, letting her body accommodate the considerable size of him and feeling him everywhere at once before beginning to move.

It only took three bounces for Bunny to prove to Smoke why she had earned her name. She wasn’t just a lady of the night who knew how to ride a dick until sunrise. No. She had spent years refining a specific combination of bouncing, grinding, and rolling that made men weep, beg, and reach for her like she was the only water in a desert. She worked him with her hips, rising and falling in the deep rolling motion that used every muscle she had, the sound of their bodies meeting building in the lamp-warm room, her succulent breasts moving with every stroke, her hands braced on his chest for leverage, her thighs flexing and releasing with each downward drive.

Smoke looked up at her and something happened in his face, some arrangement of his features that wasn’t quite expressionless in the way he usually was, instead something behind his eyes showed a genuine side of him that wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. His hands came to rest on her thighs, not to direct or control the pace, just to hold her, to feel what she was doing from the closest possible position.

He let her have it. He laid there beneath her and he absorbed every stroke with the stillness of a man receiving something with his full attention. His only movements were the tightening of his hands on her thighs, the slight flare of his nostrils, and the slight clenching of his jaw that betrayed how thoroughly he was feeling everything she was giving him. "That's it," he groaned, voice rough and lower than usual. "Keep goin'. Show me everythin’."

And indeed she showed him everything. She rolled her hips in her signature deep figure-eight that made her thighs burn and made men forget what city they were in. She let out a needy whine when she felt him twitch hard inside her, felt his fingers dig into her thighs and felt the sound he made rumble up from somewhere below the place where he usually kept his inner desires.

"Goddamn," Stack praised from somewhere behind her.

Bunny had nearly forgotten, in the consuming present-tense occupation of riding Smoke, that Stack was still in the room with them. She remembered now. She remembered specifically when she felt his hand press warm and flat against the small of her back, pushing her forward just slightly, changing the angle, and she felt the presence of him settling in behind her, the specific warmth of a second body entering the space, and something in her belly turned over at the knowing of what was coming next.

"Don't stop movin'," Smoke growled below her, his voice steady and laced with something that wasn’t quite command and not quite warning, something between the two that communicated that her motion was the thing keeping him from losing his composure. "Keep ya pretty eyes right here."

It was difficult, but she kept her eyes on him. She kept moving, slower now, the rhythm becoming something more rocking and less bouncing as Stack's hand remained at the small of her back and his other hand reached for something on the side table. The sound of a bottle. The sensation of something cool worked at the back entrance she hadn't been using, Stack's fingers pressed and circled with a careful, methodical preparation of a man who knew exactly how to stretch a doll without tearing her. He worked her chocolate starfish open with practiced patience, each circle and press accompanied by Smoke's hands on her hips maintaining their slow rhythm and his voice occasional and low.

"Breathe," Smoke said, one hand traveling from her hip to her stomach, palm flat and warm against her skin. "Stay with me. Just breathe."

She breathed. She kept her eyes on his and kept rolling her hips over him and breathed through Stack's fingers working behind her, opening her gradually, each moment of it accompanied by Smoke's voice and Smoke's hands and Smoke's eyes holding her in place in every sense.

After a minute of probing and preparing, Stack withdrew his fingers. The blunt pressure that replaced them was broader, and it pressed forward with the slow and inexorable patience of a man who had done this enough times to know that patience here was not optional. Bunny's motion over Smoke stuttered as the pressure built and Stack worked his way inside her. He knew better than to rush or force his way inside, instead he continued steadily forward until the stretch had gone from too much, to full, to something that rewired every nerve ending she had at the same moment and left her gripping Smoke's chest with both hands and pressing her face into his shoulder.

"There it is," Stack said from behind her, voice strained as he relished in the tightness of her asshole. "You got all of it, babydoll. You got it."

This wasn’t the first time Bunny participated in anal sex, but it was the first time she had both of her holes filled to the brim. She took both of them, fully, completely, in the most total sense of that word, and the feeling of it wasn’t something she could’ve prepared herself for no matter how plainly Josie had described it. Her body had become an instrument of pure sensation, attended to from both directions at once, filled past the point where she could distinguish between the fullness and herself.

"Move with me," Smoke ordered, and began to rock his hips upward in a slow, careful rhythm.

Stack matched it from behind, withdrawing just barely and pressing back in on the same count, the two of them falling into sync with the ease of people who have shared a frequency their entire lives. Bunny gripped Smoke's chest and held on.

Smoke's hands ran up from her hips to her waist to the curve of her sides, mapping her as she moved, grounding her with the weight and warmth of his hands when the sensation from everywhere else threatened to become too much. "Look at me," he said.

She looked at him.

"You ours," he continued. Not a question, just a statement of something that had apparently been decided and was now being confirmed. "You understand that."

"Yes," she breathed.

"Say it."

"I-I-I'm yours," she whined, and her voice cracked on the last word because Stack had adjusted behind her and found the angle that turned her thoughts entirely to static.

"Fuck," Stack hissed through his teeth. "Keep squeezin’ me like you finna cum an I'm gon' embarrass myself."

Smoke's jaw ticked. He drove his hips up sharper than he had been, once, and her forehead dropped to his chest. "Hold it," he said, one hand traveling up her spine, settling between her shoulder blades. "Don't finish yet."

Like a good little doll, Bunny obeyed even if withholding her orgasm was one of the hardest things for her to do. She held it through the next several minutes of the two of them working her from both sides with building and competing intensity. Stack's hips found a rhythm behind her that grew less restrained with each stroke, his hands gripping her waist with the force of a man holding onto something he didn’t intend to lose. Meanwhile, Smoke drove up into her pussy with a calculated and precise force that hit the same place every time and built the pressure in her body to a pitch that had no precedent in her experience.

She held back her orgasm with her fingernails deep in Smoke's bare chest and tears running freely down her face from the sheer accumulated pressure of pleasure with nowhere to go. Her body shook uncontrollably between them in continuous tremors.

"Hold it," Smoke said again, quieter this time, his hand moving from between her shoulder blades to the back of her neck, his thumb pressing at the base of her skull with a firmness that was grounding. "Hold it for me. Just a little longer."

She felt like an overfilled waterballoon on the verge of popping but she held it a little longer.

"Now," he said.

The second Smoke gave the command, Bunny let go. This orgasm made her entire body convulse between them, and the viper grip of her fluttering holes around both of them became violent and involuntary, her voice tearing out in a sound that came from a place so primal and ancient it didn’t have a name. Stack grunted hard behind her, the sound losing its edges, his rhythm breaking apart, his hips pressing deep and going still as her body worked around him without any input from her at all. Smoke's hands locked on her hips and held her through every spasm, his breath coming in controlled pulls through his nose, his jaw set, his eyes on her face.

She was still a shaking mess when they moved her.

Stack withdrew and the absence of him was its own overwhelming sensation as they repositioned her between them with fluid and efficient coordination, guiding her body into the new arrangement before she could fully process that things were changing. Her hands and knees were positioned on the mattress with Smoke now behind her. Stack was in front of her, already at the edge of the bed, his hand finding her hair, his thumb tilting her chin upward.

"Open," Stack said, his voice dragged rough by the effort of the last several minutes.

She opened. He slid into her mouth and she wrapped her thick lips around him and worked him with the full attention of a woman who had made sucking dick into an art form, her tongue pressing along his length, her cheeks hollowing with each pull. Behind her Smoke gripped her hips with both hands and pressed into her pussy from behind with a force that had nothing of restraint left in it, each thrust was deep and drove her forward into Stack so that the two of them worked her from both ends in a rhythm that had its own crude, overwhelming music.

Smoke's hand came down on the curve of her backside, a sharp slap that made Stack look over her head at his brother with raised brows.

Smoke looked back at him with an expression that communicated absolutely nothing except his full awareness of what he had just done. "She a doll. She our whore," he said casually between thrusts.

Stack's grin broke across his face, gold tooth and all. "Mm hm." His hand joined Smoke's sentiment, fisting tighter in her curls, working himself into her mouth with an authority that matched his brother's behind her. "Take it," he said, "just like that. All of it."

She took it. She took all of it, from both of them, from behind and in front. Her tears ran freely down her face again, dripped off her chin, and ran down Stack's length where he fucked into her throat. She felt another climax building from somewhere deeper than the previous ones had come from, further down, more structural, and her body told her it was coming whether she was ready or not.

Stack felt it in the change of her mouth around him. Smoke felt it in the change of her hypersensitive pussy around him. Both of them drove harder at the same time as Smoke's hand came to her hip and gripped it with the force of a man who wanted to feel the final round tightness squeeze around him. "Give it," Smoke said, rough against her.

Bunny’s body clenched and released in a rolling sequence that started at her core and moved outward, her voice was muffled around Stack’s twitching length and her thighs shook against Smoke's grip. Everything in her narrowed down to the specific and enormous fact of coming apart between these two men who had decided, right then and there, that she was theirs. Stack's hips completely lost their rhythm entirely and he groaned from deep in his chest, his hot sticky release filling her throat in long, heavy pulses, his hand in her hair tightening as he worked through every second of it. Behind her Smoke thrusted into her through the spasms of her climax with a final series of strokes that cost him the last of his control as his hips pressed flush against hers and stayed there while he finished inside her, the sound that came out of him brief and real.

The room after was silent except for breathing.

Three people in various states of collapse across the ruined white linens, the lamp still burning in the corner, the amber light still doing its only job. Bunny was laying face down in the center of the bed with no intention of moving for the foreseeable future. Stack was somewhere to her left, his hand resting on the mattress near her shoulder. Smoke stood after a moment, crossed to the washstand, and returned with a warm cloth. He cleaned her with that same focused efficiency she had heard other dolls gossip about but never experienced, his hands moved over her with the attention of a man who considered this part of the task just as important as any other.

It was Stack’s turn to move from his spot on the bed, as he waltzed over to a nearby drink cart and poured himself a fresh glass of whiskey glass, took a long sip, and exhaled with the deep satisfaction of a man at genuine peace with every decision he had made in the last several hours. He looked at Bunny where she laid against the linens, a beautiful and thoroughly claimed wreck of a woman. Then he turned to look at his brother across the room.

"She can't go back on the floor," he said.

Smoke wrung the cloth out over the basin. "Mm?"

"I'm serious, Eli. Her talent is undeniable. That thang she did with them hips is somethin' I intend to study at length for the next several weeks of my life." He took another sip. "But her control? Her control is nonexistent. She finished too many damn times in one session. You put her in a room with a payin' client who came here expectin' an hour an she gon' be done in two minutes. That man gon' feel robbed an robbed men talk… an talkin' men bad for business." He set the glass down and crossed his arms over his chest like a man presenting a logical conclusion. "Two more weeks. Minimum. We retrain her every night ‘til she can hold back a nut the way a real doll ‘posed to."

Smoke stayed quiet as he came back to the bed, sat at its edge and looked at his twin with the knowing expression he wore when Stack was making an argument he wanted to put an immediate end to. "Elias," he said.

Stack looked at him.

"Drink ya' whiskey an shut the fuck up."

Stack sucked his teeth but he kept his eyes on Bunny.

Bunny turned her face against the pillow and looked at both of them from the comfortable horizontal vantage point of a woman who had been thoroughly wrecked. Smoke, quiet at the bed's edge, let his hand come to rest at her ankle. Stack, whiskey back in hand and gold tooth gleaming was already building his next argument with the enthusiasm of a man who was looking forward to the next two weeks considerably more than he is letting on.

"Two weeks," she mumbled underneath her breath, to the ceiling.

Stack pointed at her with excitement. "See! She gets it. That’s a good lil’ bunny rabbit."

"But the food stays the same," she added.

The room went quiet for a moment. 

Then Stack started laughing, full and genuine, the sound rolling through the room and finding all the corners. This time he pointed at Smoke with the glass. "Eli," he said, "I like her."

"I know," Smoke replied as he kept his hand on her ankle. “I know…” 

.

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Author’s Note: Wowzers! See I ammmmm capable of writing the twins as civilized deviants… *cough* So… um… how about that Josie?? 😏

Nobody:

Bunny:

Nothing. She just waved him away again. He smirked, as slow and sharp as a knife, the kind of smile that always spelled trouble. “Oh, so that’s how we doing it tonight.”

He crept around her with a silent, uncanny speed, settling into the couch so that his thighs framed her own. His fingertips were cool as they slipped under the blanket, tracing idle shapes on the warm brown skin of her thigh. A shiver escaped her, betraying herself immediately.

“There it is,” he whispered, lips brushing against her ear. “That little tremble. You really think a nigga like me don’t notice? Good thing I can always smell how much you need me, huh, Lex?”

Her breath caught as her eyes remained glued to the TV screen to avoid a throw from Peach. Still, she didn’t say anything.

“And you still tryin’ to play your little game.” He nudged the Switch in her hands with a slow, amused tap. “That’s real cute.”

Stack didn’t rush; he never had to.

He let his fingers drift higher, cool skin dragging slowly across her warmth, just enough to make her hips twitch. Lex tried to swallow it down, tried to keep her eyes on the screen, but the character on her Switch had already stopped moving.

“Nah. Don’t stop your game on my account,” he whispered, feigning innocence as if his voice wasn’t laced with pure carnal need.

“I didn’t,” she lied, her voice cracking traitorously.

“Sure,” he said as he pressed a kiss under her ear, lips soft, fangs grazing just enough to make her shiver. And oh… he smelled it. That tiny spike in her desire, her heartbeat tripping over itself, her breath catching.

Her thighs pressed together, a useless attempt at hiding anything from a man who could smell a lie, taste a want, and hear a pulse stutter.

His hand slipped under the waistband of her shorts, claiming, already knowing exactly what he’d find. Her warmth soaked right into his cool fingers, and he growled low in appreciation.

“There she go,” he whispered, fingers sliding through her slick. “My sweet girl.”

Lex sucked in a breath. “Elias—”

“That’s funny,” he murmured against her neck. “You said one more level… but your body sayin’ a whole lotta other shit.”

His fingers circled her clit slowly and deliberately, almost like he was tasting her reactions with every brush, his head tilted just in the slightest way as if listening to a private melody only his ears could register. 

Lex’s eyes fluttered, Switch slipping from her hands onto the blanket with a soft thud.

“Oh? We done playing?” he teased.

She tried to answer, but when he pushed two fingers inside her, her breath caught in her chest like he’d stolen it.

When her hips lifted and when her thighs tightened, he felt it. The way her scent shifted. The way her pulse fluttered. She was right there.

And right as her orgasm crested, right as she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to stifle a whimper, he pulled his hand away completely.

Lex let out a broken gasp. “Stack?!”

“I told you,” he said, voice thick with smug hunger as he leaned back against the couch like he hadn’t just ruined her soul, “I know exactly when you gonna come, sweet girl.”

His tongue ran slowly across one fang, a glint of sharp white teasing. “And I ain’t say you could.”

Lex was still trying to catch her breath when he slithered his hand right back between her thighs, slowly this time, almost soothing . Like he was apologizing without actually apologizing.

“You mad at me?” he asked, fingers ghosting over her, not allowing her anything sufficient.

She tried to pull away from his teasing touch, but his other arm circled her waist, pinning her back against his chest. “Stack, please,” she whispered, voice already trembling.

He nuzzled at her shoulder lazily. “Mmh. You know I like how you sound when you beg a nigga like that.”

His fingers dipped in again, two knuckles deep, curling just right. Her head fell back on his shoulder immediately, breath catching in a soft cry that he swallowed with a smirk. His thumb brushed her clit once, featherlight, controlled, and devastating.

Her whole body jolted.

“That’s it,” he murmured, moving slower than any man with mercy had the right to. “Give it to me.”

Lex held on to his forearm, nails digging in as he hit that spot again and again, slowly building her up, dragging her higher until her thighs were shaking against him.

“Don’t stop, Stack. Please don’t stop—” she breathed, voice breaking open.

He felt it. He felt every trembling second stomping to her release. Her scent getting sweeter, her heartbeat sprinting, walls tightening around his fingers like a fist.

Right as she approached the edge again, he pulled out.

Lex choked on a sound that wasn't even a word, her hips lifted in pure desperation. “Stack—this nigga— Why won’t you let me come?”

He cupped her thigh, grounding her, controlling her. “Because you not ready yet,” he murmured against her cheek, lips brushing her skin. “I want you shakin’ when you finally come for me.”

Before she could continue her protests, he pushed back in. Harder and deeper, absolutely no teasing at all this time.

Lex cried out, her thick thighs trembling, his name escaping her lips in between sharp pants. He curled his fingers and thumbed her clit in tight, measured circles. He was merciless with her, relentless.

The pressure hit her like a wave. She was clearly going to tumble over the edge this time, no matter what.

“Stack! I’m gonna—fuckfuckfuck—please don’t stop!”

“Let go,” he growled into her neck, voice deep and sharp with hunger. “Now.”

Her orgasm ripped through her so hard her whole body arched off him, thighs shaking uncontrollably as she squirted all over his hand, soaking the blanket beneath them. She yelped, then sobbed through the release, every nerve sparking.

Stack held her tight, guiding her through it, praising her softly. “There you go…that’s my good girl.”

She was shaking against him, overwhelmed with the aftershocks, walls still pulsing around his fingers. He eased out slowly, his hand glistening, his smirk wicked as he kissed the back of her shoulder.

“See?” he murmured, licking his soaked fingers clean. “That’s why I like making yo ass wait.”

Lex was still trying to regain her composure, slumped against him as if all the bones in her body had lost their function. Stack had one hand rested against her tummy while using the other to brush her locs from her forehead and away from her face, softly kissing her cheek almost sweetly; it was suspicious, because Stack was never that gentle unless he had ulterior motives.

“You good?” he asked, playing innocent again, as if he hadn’t just snatched her soul out on the living room couch.

She nodded weakly. “I… think so.”

He chuckled quietly to himself, “You think so.”

He helped her sit up, rubbing lazy circles on her thigh with his thumb, and leaned in, lips against her ear, voice low and smug. 

“If you beat me to the bedroom,” he whispered, “I’ll let you ride my face.”

Lex didn’t breathe, blink, or move.

“And,” he added, now standing up slowly, stretching like a man that had all the time in the world, “I ain’t letting you get up til you nut twice,” he finished with a grin, bottom lip curled to show off his fangs.

Lex’s eyes snapped wide, mouth agape.

“You have a ten-second start, sweet girl.”

She leapt off the couch SO quickly she damn near tripped over the blanket, scrambling to stay on her feet as if her life depended on it.

Stack just snorted at the spectacle of it all, looking down at his ticking watch.

"Ten…" he drawled. “Nine…”