#thirst asks

You’d had a day. The coffee shop near your office was closed, relegating you to the unsatisfactory bitterness of pre-prepared office coffee. You had missed lunch. You had been on the receiving end of a few choice passive-aggressive emails today. A guy had leered at you on the bus home (and no matter how much you’d wanted to snap at the creep, you didn’t have a death wish.) And to top it all off, you arrived home just in time to remember that you had agreed days before to be at this party, when you’d much rather relax in silence in your bathtub, in your home – you know, where your stuff was and where other people weren’t. 

And as you glanced around the room of packed-in partygoers (most of whom you assumed were friends of Anita’s), you made eye contact with him. 

Him.

Your neighbor from the opposite end of the hall. You were quick to glance away out of self-preservation, lest he think you were staring, while you tried to place a name to an admittedly devastating face.

What was his name? Andy? Adam? Something with an A…

“Hi,” a tanned hand entered your periphery, interrupting your musings and shaking you from your reverie. If you hadn’t been so busy worrying about remembering your neighbor’s name, you might have noticed that he made his way over to you, now standing before you with a hand waiting expectantly for you to shake. “I’m Ash.” 

Ash. That was it. 

You gave him your hand and your name, trying not to belay any of the molten gold rushing through you at the way your hand felt so warm in his (was that just the heat of the room, or was it him?), or at the way your name sounded from his lips as he repeated it back to you, before sidling to your side and taking a drink from his own cup, dark, glimmering eyes taking you in over the rim, never leaving you.

"I know," he admitted, leaning into your space to do it, lips just shy of your ear – and, in all honesty, probably too familiar for someone who had just introduced himself to you. Even if you saw him most every day.

"Know what?" You query. And really, you'd only been here for a bit, but the combination of the dim lights, the music, the punch, and now the man in front of you was doing a bit of a number on your better senses, heated and hazy.

"Your name," he smiled. Although, smile would imply congeniality, grace. The show of teeth was flattering, charming, brilliant, even on his angular face. But it wasn't… friendly.

 A Cheshire's grin, sinful and smirking. Potentially predatory, pernicious and pithy. Almost… pornographic, really, if you associated sexual attraction with flashing warning lights. 

And, you supposed, you had seen him seeing you, week after week, by the mailboxes. Out of the corner of your eye, like a shadow looming, before you slip back into your apartment. Unsettling. As if he was hoping to catch something of your correspondence, what packages you received from week to week. Something about you.

"And what else do you know?" You breezed, taking another sip of the sickly-sweet concoction, appraising the man before you – his inky dark curls shining in the low light, the flirtation of a solitary curl teasing and tempting along his forehead.

“I know that you wanna get out of here,” Ash’s voice was a little too smooth, a little too easy, still crowding you in the dark corner you were occupying. He paid you the courtesy of the swooping up-and-down of obsidian, oilslick eyes roving your form, biting his lip in brief pause before continuing. “You put on that skirt, but you keep eyeing the door like you can’t wait to make a break for it.” 

“Parties aren’t really my thing,” you conceded, turning to place your now-empty cup down on any available surface, when Ash’s arm met the wall beside your head, boxing you in and invading your senses with the woodsy smell of his aftershave. 

“So you do wanna get out of here,” his eyes flicked from yours down to your lips. “How about it? With me?” 

So, now, what did you know? You knew that he was smooth. He eased his way through conversations with your neighbors, through the building’s common spaces, with a facile air hat urges the edge of something, something like “charm, but practiced,” as though he had studied how to smile. How to seem just-so. And, like you said,  always, always on the edge of your peripheral vision. 

And maybe… maybe … maybe if you weren’t a drink-on-an-empty-stomach deep, and if your gut wasn’t already in knots at the heat coursing through you, you might have been more wary of him. Had overheard him once telling the old lady across from him that he was “originally from San Fran,” when you knew that no self-respecting California native ever referred to it that way  – it was always “SF,” or “The City.” 

But Ash’s lips on the shell of your ear were causing your skin to tingle to your toes – you nevertheless clung to your better senses by the very tips of your fingers when you replied with a snort, 

“Oh, bite me,” you rejoined, a playful roll of your eyes so as not to too-deeply offend. 

His responding grin was fully-predatory now, glimmering and shining teeth … waiting to devour. 

“If you insist,” he purred. 

And Ash does not just devour. (At least not yet.) Ash overwhelms, like a capsizing wave, the way he ushers you through your neighboring apartment door – crowding you in with strong arms and a solid frame in your interior hallway, pulling at your lips with his own, nipping your lower lip between those hunter’s teeth, groaning at the feel of you as he pressed a warm thigh between yours, parting your legs. 

His hands are warm on the peaks of your cheeks as they trail down to the hollow of your throat, tugging at the loose collar of your oversized sweater, taking in the flash of your crimson bra adorning your bare shoulder. 

“Aw, Cherry,” he breathed, the new moniker spilling from him as his full lips pressed to your neck. “That’s a pretty little piece of red.” 

He shucks the sweater from you, exposing your chest encased in the red lace to his narrowed, glittering gaze, drawing a heated hand down to your thigh and beneath your skirt, up, up, up to meet the clothed heat of your center, taking in the gasping part of your lips at his touch, your response garnering a smirk from him before devouring your lips with his own.

Ash maneuvered you through your living space to your bedroom as though he’d been there before – and how was that possible? What should have unsettled you tipped out of your head as Ash’s mouth fused to yours, his fingers roving purposefully along your clothed slit before he guides you back onto your bed. Thoroughly melted, despite not even having really touched you. 

“C’mon, Cherry,” Ash goaded, withdrawing his hand from your center, looking down his nose at you, and smirking at your resulting whimper, “I’ll touch you if you tell me you really want it.” 

And in the low light of your bedroom, you could swear his inkwell eyes, though heated, were empty – as though he was seeing you without really seeing you, taking in every inch of you with jet-black gaze and sinful touch alike as he roved covetous fingers over your form, drawing whimpers from your throat. 

And, if you were keeping track, this would be well-past strike three. But who could keep track when he was touching you like that? – Still … 

“I – I don’t even know you,” you sighed as his hands cupped your tits through the lace of your red bra, heated thumbs tweaking your nipples. 

“No,” Ash hummed his agreement as he swarmed over you again, drawing the bridge of his nose across your throat, lips following to trail the fine line of your neck, feeling the hum of your pulse beneath his lips. “But you still wanna fuck me. I see you, pretty girl,” his lips press again to the column of your throat. 

His hands are beneath your skirt again, shucking it up to expose your panties, half-hard already at the sight of you, in what is now clearly a matching set – all wrapped up like a gift for him. And maybe, just maybe, if he’d had his way, he would tie you up with a bow. And the thought of tying you up, the sweet, quiet little thing from down the hall – all gasping breaths from full lips, all wide, doe eyes – was sinful. And Ash was no stranger to sin. 

“Y-yeah?” you sighed, rolling your hips to place yourself more fully in Ash’s greedy hands, encouraging him to guide your panties down your legs.

“I see you down the hall,” a kiss to your throat.

“I see you in the elevator with your head down,” a kiss to your chest, a little tease of tongue behind it, as though he were tasting the beat of your heart, the pulse of you. 

“I see you waiting,” And he’s maneuvered down your body, between your legs, pressing full-mouthed kisses to the skin behind your knees. "Waiting for someone to come along and give it to you how you like it… how you need it."

And when had he lost his sweatshirt? His shirt? You take him in, now, eyes blown at his words, as he kisses his way up your legs, toward your aching center, his fingers following the blazing trail of his lips.

Ash’s fingers slide along your glistening slit, a perpetual tease, as he continues to press full kisses to the insides of your thighs, the firm line of his jaw sharp against your skin like a heated blade. 

And you’re basking in it, reveling at the feel of his thick fingers teasing your center, gathering your wetness and playing you like a game he knows so well. (And how would that be??) When –

You yelp at the jolt of pain, as the softness of his lips against your inner thigh is abruptly gone, replaced with a painful scrape of teeth. 

He had bitten you?!

You reach down to jerk Ash’s head from between your legs, moving your hips back and withdrawing at the hard bite he had rendered to your inner thigh. You glance down to see an imprint of teeth marks on the tender skin there.

“Wh-what the hell?” you demanded, “Too hard!”

“Sorry,” Ash bit, sounding not one ounce of sorry, cooly shrugging one bare, sculpted shoulder at your angry face. “You said to bite you, Cherry.” He smirked again, his face a puzzle of mismatched emotions as his bourbon eyes swirled with what looked like penitence, urging your forgiveness in their sincerity. While his mouth continued to play you with its soulless smirk. 

Red flag number… what was it now?? Just who was this guy?

And dd his mouth only know how to quirk in that one sinful, maddening way? 

He rocked forward on his knees, and you felt him then, fully hard in his jeans against your naked center, crowding you once more as he cupped the base of your jaw, fingers spidering back to tangle in the hair at the nape of your neck, eyes finding yours once more before kissing you.

Now his lips were penitent. Kissing your lips raw, like the scrape of crystallized honey – once smooth. 

Breathless, your heart stuttering, Ash pulls away, admiring your lips swollen from the nip-and-tug of his teeth, admiring your starry, lust-blown eyes with the heavy lids, the whole of you undone by his lips and his fingers, and he demands. Demands more. Wants you to need him as much as he desires to control you, the ache in him twisting like a knife between his ribs. The ache in you, fluttering and flush. He wants you to want it, to need it.

“Do it again?" He asks, busying himself with undoing his jeans and sliding them down his own legs, along with his boxer briefs. exposing more and more of his golden skin to your gaze before turning those obsidian-smoke eyes back to your piteous form, heated and wet for him. 

You quirked a brow, "Do what?"

"Pull my hair, Cherry," Ash replied leaning back over you once more to envelop you, a rolling shadow. A facile and firm wave, content to drown you in him. "Hard as you want."

And you're only too happy to oblige, moaning at the roll of Ash's hips into yours, his length sliding along your slit, weaving hour fingers through his curls and tugging – your reward a deep, desirous groan into your mouth as Ash slides his lips along yours, open-mouthed and wanting.

And he’s got you tied up in knots – figuratively, that is. Though you had the sneaking suspicion that if you’d vocalized any iteration of this, he’d only be too happy to do just that. And the thought of your shady neighbor tying your wrists to your own headboard shouldn’t make you wet. Shouldn’t make you groan while he’s kissing you, his tongue plunging into your mouth to taste your reciprocal moans. 

With a decided roll of his hips, he's inside of you, the drag of him heavy as he begins to thrust. He skates his palms along your legs, wrapping his hands around your thighs to hoist them up around his waist, satisfied when you lock your ankles around him.

He rewards you with a decidedly brutal thrust, pleased at the gasp it tears from your lungs.

He allows his hands to travel further upwards, to grip the leather skirt still bunched around your hips, using it as leverage to lift your hips and guide you, fucking you back onto his own cock at the frenzied pace he's set. 

It's almost overwhelming how just everywhere he feels, the drag of him inside of you heavy. The strange astrology of him, of your pairing, as he fucks you like you're a stranger to yourself.

Your headboard, you note faintly, is thumping against your wall in time with Ash's ministrations, but you're too out-of-body to care, the sound falling hollowly on your ears as the rest of your skin tingles and warms with in tandem with the building pleasure inside of you. You've never been more grateful for one of Anita's parties. Certain that no one on the other side of the shared wall could hear the headboard through the pulsing bass, could hear the hiccuping moans slipping from your lips.

And Ash must've had the same thought, his lips twisting as he rolls his hips, tearing his eyes from the sight of your now-heaving tits, to appreciate the headboard snapping against your lavender-painted bedroom wall.

Cute.

"D'ya think they can hear you, babe?" He croons mockingly, rolling forward and planting his hands on either side of your head, a heated roll of his hips causing a brush against your clit at this new angle. "Do you want them to?"

You shook your head mildly, the pleasure-pain at Ash's rough, repeated thrusts causing a blur in your eyes.

He's pleased at this, you note, whether it was your honesty or a blushing stroke to his own ego, Ash smiles again. All resplendent radiance that seemed so right on such a wrong face.

He's brushing your clit with a circling thumb, you note absently, and when had he shifted again?

"That's right," he murmurs to you, leaning forward to lick a line down your neck while he continues to rub your clit. "Only I get to hear you scream. No one else."

With a renewed vigor, his thrusts continue, his attention on your clit almost punishing now, punching the air from your lungs in a strangled moan that did, indeed, sound like a shuttered scream. Music to Ash's ears, like breaking glass, jagged and desperate. 

You were a wreck now, your arousal dripping down Ash's cock. The skin of your thigh burning where he had bitten you was now rubbing repeatedly against the taut skin of his waist. 

“Look at that,” Ash cooed, his voice a whiskey murmur of smoky haze into your ear, cupping your cheek as he used his thumb to drag the tears that had pricked in the corners of your eyes along your lower lash-line and beneath your eye, causing your eye makeup to smear and smudge. “Did you know how fucking pretty you are when you cry? When I make a mess of you?” 

He pressed his lips to your other cheek, dragging them along your heated skin and down to your mouth.

“No,” he murmured into your lips, catching your lower one between his full ones, chasing with teeth enough to lightly pull the plush of your bottom lip, “nonono… of course you don’t. You’re only pretty like this for me.” 

And, maybe you were addicted, now, to losing your senses. To throwing caution to the wind. To jagged little shards of danger. To pretty men with pretty curls whose words spilled like oil, thick and dark, from chapped lips. And you think you may be losing a bit of yourself at the feeling of him overwhelming you – what other reason would you be fucking your neighbor who always gave you the mild heebs? Fucking you dumb into your own mattress.

You snap at a particularly clever roll of his hips, coming on Ash's cock, the wet squeeze of your walls around him has a groan spilling from his lips like snake’s venom, blazing its way from his mouth through your veins – the whites of his eyes behind fluttering lids as they roll back at the feel of you around him, spurring his own orgasm as he came inside of you.

His mouth was covetous and prideful as he kissed you again, forceful, before withdrawing himself and guiding you onto your stomach.

You were too blissed out to care, too numb, dumb, and warm from your own release that you allowed Ash to shape your bones, running a palm down the curve of your spine as he guided your hips up. Allowing those glimmering, empty eyes to take in your swollen, abused pussy – to admire the way his own release leaked from between your lips.

He gathered a bit of himself on his thumb, causing you to shiver at the touch on your sensitive skin, before bringing it to your mouth. Wordlessly, you wrapped your lips around his thumb, hollowing your cheeks and allowing your tongue to run along the length of his digit, tasting himself on his own skin. A rare thing, as you realized, distantly, he hadn't really offered you to touch him during this entire encounter.

Ash groaned again at the sight and feel of your mouth on him as he took himself, still hard, and thrust back into your pussy, fucking his own come back into you with a few lazy thrusts, met with your mewls and squirming hips.

Content that you were full of him, he withdrew again, extricating his thumb from your lips before bringing it to his own, tasting your saliva before pulling it from his lips with a pop, smiling at you again. 

"Aren't you just a dream, Cherry?" 

You offer a wan half-smile in return, still hazy from the feel of him smattered in tingles across your skin, like fallen stars at the end of the world, eyeing him as he begins to bustle around your room, smoothing hands over his curls and making himself presentable. Seemingly uncaring for your boneless state, legs at an odd angle, like a fucked-out doll.

“See ya ‘round, alba,” he bids, tucking himself back into his pants and starting toward your door. Leaving you with the feeling of bad, wrong, want – in his destructive wake. 

“I truly hope not,” you murmur, unsure whether your words will reach Ash’s ears as he clicks open your door and begins to stride in the hallway. The ambiguity resolved for you, as you see him turn around to reward you with a blinding grin, a wall of white teeth. On a less pretty face, it likely would have served as intended – a warning. But then again, you clearly weren’t so good at heeding those when they were wrapped in handsome packages. 

Oh, you were so screwed… 

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