#valensmut

“You look like a goddess of the old stories,” she says, catching your gaze in the silvered glass. “Vidar agrees.” She gestures at the orange cat, who has perched himself upon the window ledge and watches your reflection with the gravity of a child awaiting a bedtime tale.

He hops down and jumps into your lap, clearly knowing his own name. You smile and stroke his ears, then peer up at Astrid as your scalp tingles with each gentle tug. “Remind me not to sway my head too much. I’m afraid your artistry might come undone.”

“It would take a storm at sea to ruin this braid, my queen.” Astrid ties off the end with a precise knot, then leans back to admire her work, face split by a grin too wide for the room. “Though you should know—Helga says there’s trouble in the kitchens. The foreign ships arrived with more mouths than expected.”

Before you can ask what “trouble” means—spoiled meat, missing wine, or some new spat among the bread-maidens—Helga herself enters with her customary briskness, skirts swishing in determined arcs. She is flushed, but not winded, and you know immediately that she is holding onto information, but holding back from immediately tossing it at your feet.

Helga closes the door behind her, not with a bang but with a soft, purposeful click. Her gaze flicks first to Astrid, then to you, but she doesn’t speak right away. Instead, she dusts her hands on her apron, glances out the window, and then reaches to smooth a stray lock of hair at your temple.

You steel yourself for news of some disaster: a fire, a sour barrel, an insult from the southerners that could spark a feud. What you do not expect is for Helga to say, quietly, “There is a woman among the southern guests. She travels with their lord, but she is not his kin. Nor is she a simple companion.” Helga’s voice is even, but her eyes flick up to meet yours, sharp as a kestrel’s. “They say she once belonged to your husband. In ways that matter.”

It’s not the information itself that unmoors you—of course Steven would have had lovers, many of them, maybe a line of them stretching along the spine of the continent. You’d guessed it not only in the way he took you in the beginning, but in how skilled he was, how voracious his appetites were. But this, the fact of a woman from his past making landfall here, clutching an invitation to your table, is different.

And what matter should it be to you? Both of you had lives before he carried you away from your old one and forged you into his.

You raise your eyebrows just enough to suggest curiosity, not concern. You even manage a small smile. “Thank you, Helga,” you say, and you stroke Vidar’s back to steady your hands. “Has the woman caused any concern?”

Astrid, eager to defend your honor, clenches her fists, and you see her glare in the reflection. “Is she here to undermine our queen? To make a spectacle?”

Helga lifts a hand, stilling the younger woman with a look. “No spectacle, not unless someone makes one. She holds herself apart. Wears no clan colors. But she has not taken her eyes off your husband since they arrived.”

Helga is still watching for a reaction, so you ask, “Did she give her name?”

Helga nods. “Inga of Storn.” She says it cautiously, as if delivering the name will levy more of an impact.

You ask the only question that really matters. “Has the king acknowledged her presence?”

“He has not spoken to her publicly,” Helga replies. “He may choose not to. She has withdrawn now, as have the others, to prepare for tonight’s festivities.”

You nod, and preserve as much of your wits as you can. You try manage the slow, spreading heat that comes from knowing you will soon be obliged to share a room, a table, perhaps even the throne, with the shape of the woman who held your husband's heart—or, at least, his body.

Astrid is still fuming. “If she tries to speak to you, my queen, you need only give the smallest glance—”

“No,” you say, not so sharply as to wound, but enough to plant your feet in this moment before it runs away from you. “She is here as a guest. As long as she is so, there will be no pettiness.”

Astrid huffs, as if she wishes she could personally bar the door against any ghost of Steven’s past, but she relents somewhat in her fire. You marvel at her loyalty, but you’re not a child. If there’s any power dynamic to be threatened here, you intend to stay abreast of it, not be held at its mercy.

“I’m grateful, Helga,” you say, pressing a thumb to Vidar’s chin to make him look at you. “We’ll show our guests the courtesy—and strength—of this hall tonight.” You rise, skirts crackling as you straighten them, and the orange cat leaps gracefully from your lap to pad after you.

The final hour before the feast passes in a cloak of anticipation. The sun falls lower until the halls are rimmed in copper, and servants light the torches, fanning the smoke with sprigs of dried sage. In the antechamber, you stand with the other women of the household, conscious of every movement, every tilt of your chin, as if the very air is a lens through which every soul will judge you tonight.

The horns sound, and you file in. The hall is pulsing with voices and color and music. The main table, set up on its dais, is resplendent with silverwork and dressed in the king’s blue. The guest tables are alive with a cheerful chaos of strangers’ laughter, a thousand tiny dramas swirling in the air. Steven stands at the center of it all, hair bound with a leather cord, his tunic blue to match yours. But he is already deep in conversation with the lord of the southerners, and beside him stands a woman, draped in gray and gold, her hair the kind of pale that seems to catch and hold the last of the sun. She is neither beautiful nor plain—her features are sharp, her gaze even sharper.

You allow yourself a single moment to look—the way she turns her face up to him, the quick curve of her mouth, the deliberate way she does not touch his arm but lets her presence fill the space between them like perfume.

You feel Steven’s gaze slide to you a moment later. The cut of him is remarkable. Your king is nearly a head taller than any man in the hall and so broad at the shoulder that even his finest tunic strains to contain him, but tonight it’s the angle of his eyes, the directness of his claim, that makes you catch your breath. He gestures you forward with an imperceptible tilt of his chin.

You cross the main floor of the hall, the clamor dimming as you approach. The southerners bow their heads, the ring of their movement perfectly choreographed—each body turning just enough to show deference, but not servitude. The pale woman, Inga of Storn, nods to you with a correctness so precise it almost scalds.

You keep your chin up, expression schooled into the perfect image of hospitality—welcoming, but not wishing to betray any nerves.

“Queen,” she says, her voice low, clear. “It is an honor.”

You answer carefully, “You honor our hall with your presence.” You smile, enough to be diplomatic, but not enough to offer welcome to someone you must see as rival, remnant, or both.

Steven’s gaze darts between you and Inga, then back to the lord of the southerners, a shrewd man he introduces as Tomas. He looks to be older than Steven by some twenty years, but by no means born down by age, but instead a strong and vibrant force of a man.

Tomas’s eyes crinkle as he bows to you, the movement fluid, practiced, and just the right side of unthreatening. “Your majesty. It is a fine hall and a finer welcome, especially in the dark of the year.”

“Not so dark tonight,” you observe, glancing at the torches and the banners and the armies of candelabra above. “We strive to make it warm for our guests even when the snow stacks to the eaves by sunrise.”

He smiles wider at that, revealing slightly crooked teeth—a flaw that only makes him more approachable. With everyone now present, you take your seats, you and Steven at the head table, though not seated next to each other this night. Tomas sits at his right hand—as is fitting for the highest ranking guest of honor—and to your unease, Inga is placed at his left, but you square your shoulders and determine to put it out of your mind.

Bowls of wild carrot soup are ladled out to begin the feast, warming those who trekked in through the chill outside. Both Tomas and the southern guests seated on your other side are warm and jovial, and full of many stories. The feast unfurls in courses—cured fish, roasted fowl, the first of last year’s turnips and winter apples. Conversation swirls: trade, adventure, discovery and battle stories. Tomas’ expression and manners are warm, almost fatherly, and it strikes a pang of longing for your own father, left behind in your former life.

You do your best to contribute lightness to the conversation, steering the southern guests to delight in the oddities of northern cuisine. The men at your table are charmed by your wit, and you can feel the subtle undertow of approval in the way even the local men listen when you speak. You pay careful attention to Inga’s end of the table, however. She appears to be quiet but captivating, attentive but reserved. She confers with Steven in sparse, low exchanges, always too brief for you to catch more than a murmur. When their eyes meet, Steven’s gaze is unwavering, but if there is emotion in it, you haven’t the skill to name it.

As the feast progresses, the warm haze of mead and full bellies softens the edges of the hall’s tension, and by the time the musicians strike up their first tune of the night, the mood is jubilant.

Steven eventually stands, towering above the crowd. He raises his drinking horn and with a voice that rolls over every torch and table, calls, “Tonight we honor old friends and new! Raise your cups to the bonds that hold us fast, and to the storms that make us stronger.” The hall erupts in a shout, the echo near deafening. He sweeps his gaze over the assembled, and though the words are for all, the message is for you as much as for Tomas, Inga, or anyone else present: This is a show of unity, of mastery, of tradition. There is no room for ghosts here unless Steven himself invites them to the table.

And there is at least one ghost at this table, which, for your own sanity, you can not blow bellows to the tiny flares of envy or jealousy. You must exist beyond the clutches of it.

So you raise your own cup, letting the warm thrum of solidarity pulse through your hand and into your chest, focusing on the other visitors in the hall.

But as you lower your cup from your lips, for the first time in the night you meet Inga’s eye. You think she is about to smile at you—something sly, almost conspiratorial—but the moment is gone before it can fully form. She turns her attention to Steven, saying something that makes him laugh, his baritone booming over the harmonies from the musicians’ corner. You can’t help but study her in the periphery—every tilt of the head, every calculated calm. Is she a threat? An echo of what Steven once needed, or proof that he has changed appetites—for the better or worse, you can’t say. And as the queen, you do not wish to give any obvious behavior for anyone to speculate over.

You notice Inga does not drink heavily, does not indulge in the flirtatious banter that is a currency among the guests. She listens as much as she speaks, and when she does, the table grows quiet, as if all sense recognize the gravity of her voice. Even then, she never once attempts to draw Steven away from conversation, or even to claim his attention. Her very restraint feels like a challenge, and you find yourself equally determined not to betray any agitation, keeping your laughter easy, your conversation nimble.

You are grateful for the music, for the tartness of apple cider that follows and the way the children of the hall begin darting between the tables, snatching sweet buns and giggling, unburdened by the weight of any history. Their laughter is a buffer, and you use it to steady yourself between exchanges.

At the first coaxing notes of the next song—a lively dance tune from the southern coast—Tomas stands and extends a hand to you. “Will the north’s most gracious queen honor an old man with a dance to beckon spring to hurry its speed back to us?” he asks, grinning widely.

You’ve never danced formally in this hall. For a split second, nerves coil in your belly, but then you consider the alternative: remaining at the table, a passive spectator to the silent communication running like a tide beneath Inga and Steven’s every movement. You’d rather risk a stumble on the slick flagstones than be left to chew over every possibility.

You stand and take Tomas’s hand, a ripple of interest moving through the guests as he leads you out into the open before the hearth. A gap opens in the crowd, and the musicians punctuate the moment with a flourish of strings and drum. Tomas bows with exaggerated solemnity, then sweeps you into a measured turn.

You follow his lead, surprised by your own ease. Tomas is a practiced partner, gentle with your hands but confident, never once jerking or crowding your stride. His feet are silent on the stone, but his voice is not. “You’ve the poise of a born queen.”

You tilt your chin, keeping the smile soft at the corner of your mouth. “I was not born for this, but I endeavor to do my part now that I am here.”

You spin across the stones, and as you do, you scan the tables. Steven’s eyes are on you. For a moment the music and the crowd dissolve, and there is only him: his gaze, steady and measuring, tracking your every motion. You do not falter. You let Tomas spin you and cross-step backwards right up to the hearth, recalling the reels of your childhood, the feel of packed dirt and summer wind and the memory of a future you never lived. The steps come back to you, and you find yourself smiling for real, alive in the exertion and the quickening of your own pulse.

“Grace alone is never enough for a court like this,” Tomas murmurs, leaning close during a tight turn. “You have mettle. Not the kind acquired by accident, either.”

You search his face, but his tone is light, his intentions wrapped in courtly ambiguity. “If that’s meant as counsel, my lord, I am ever eager for the wisdom of those who have weathered more storms than I.”

Tomas’s steps never falter, though his grip on your hand tightens a fraction. “That is good. If you ever need a friend at court, or anywhere else, you would do well to keep my confidence.” The dance brings you in close, and you catch the glint of honest intent in Tomas’s eyes. “There will be many storms, and you must endeavor to discern which storms require bolting the doors, and which are best met with open arms.”

Whether it is a warning, an offer, or simply a kindness, you do not know, but you incline your chin in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Tomas of the south. I will remember the counsel.”

“I believe between you and I, we are cut from the same cloth. Perhaps a finer, softer weave than these old bones, but the same resilience deep in the thread.”

The dance ends, and he bows you out with a flourish. There is a round of applause from the assembled guests, followed by a ripple of laughter from you and the others who joined you in dance, and Tomas gently guides you back toward your seat.

But before you make it, Ursa intercepts you, her eyes wide with the thrill of the moment. “My queen, you were glorious,” she whispers, then slips away as quickly as she arrived, swishing back into the tide of party.

The song ends. Tomas bows you out, guiding you back to the table with a flourish that leaves your head slightly spinning. As you sit, Inga of Storn is watching you, chin propped on the backs of her fingers. She offers you a nod, measured and dignified; you answer with the same, nothing more, nothing less.

The courses roll on. Dishes change rapidly as servants whisk away battered platters and empty bowls and refill goblets at a tempo that keeps the feast in perpetual motion until honeyed cakes and dried fruits are brought around at the end.

You’ve barely savored the last morsel when Steven appears at your side, towering, the heat of his body radiating through the cold of the hall. He takes your hand, enveloping it in his, and tugs you gently but inexorably away from the crowd, ignoring any final etiquette or protocol the occasion may actually have called for. Not a single protest is raised. You can feel the tension radiating off him, and you can only imagine the intensity that must be written on his face. No one will challenge this man in this moment.

You expect him to drag you, as he sometimes does, straight to the bed, or to pin you against the wall and ravish you before the echoes of the feast have even faded. Instead, Steven releases your hand the moment you cross the threshold of your chambers and crosses to the hearth, where the fire is guttering low. His movements are restless, unrooted. He throws a handful of pine boughs onto the embers, and the fresh pitch cracks and blooms with the flames and the sweet, sharp scent that you always associate with midwinter.

He neither speaks nor turns, only begins to unlace the collar of his tunic, then pulls it over his head with a movement so forceful you hear the threads strain. He works at the bindings of his arms and wrists, then his belt, and a tremor in his hands betrays the force of his mood. You watch, uncertain—half expecting him to turn on you with that voracious hunger that rarely seems to be quelled. He continues undressing until he’s stripped down to the waist. He is all muscle and shadow, scarred and beautiful in his brutality, but there is something closed off inside him, a storm clouded rather than spent.

Finally, you move further into the room and commence your own nighttime preparations, beginning with removing bracelets from your arms and slipping out of your shoes, still keeping an eye on him.

He seems to sense your scrutiny, shoulders rising in a slow, controlled breath. “You handled yourself well,” he says. The words are measured and strange. “Better than some would have, in the presence of a woman like her.” He can only mean Inga of Storn.

“She is your past, not mine,” you say, and you mean it—or at least, you want to mean it. “Why should I rise or fall for her presence?”

He turns at last, blue eyes catching the full flare of the firelight, and he studies your face like a puzzle he cannot put together. “You should,” he says. The words are hard, unyielding. “It is the nature of things, little wife. Inga is a woman who inspires envy—and not on accident.”

You bristle, the spark of his challenge igniting something that had lain carefully banked all night. “Is that what you wanted? For me to make a scene? Douse the table in your mead and tear her hair out, so the court thinks I am threatened by a pretty ghost?”

His jaw sets, the muscle in his cheek ticking. “Not a scene. I expected you to care.” He spits the last word like a barb, as if it offends him to say it. “You did not flinch, not a blink, when she looked at me with hunger in her eyes.”

It angers him. Truly angers him—not the cold, analytical anger you’ve seen him summon in anger or as a tool of command, but a real, burning, personal need that you see so rarely in him.

“You did not ask me to care. Nor do you seem to require it.”

He stalks forward, bare from the waist up but for the scars that mark him as both king and conqueror. The fire newly lit gives his skin an uncanny glow, as if he’s built from the gods’ own rage and spit. “So that is what it is for you?” he asks, not waiting for response. “A matter of requirement?”

You don’t answer, not directly. You stand your ground and begin to unfasten the heavy belt at your waist, the traditional blue and white sash Astrid had wound and knotted. The silk slips loosely between your hands before you lay it over the back of the chair at your vanity. You undo the laces of your dress, and slip out of it, leaving you in only the simplest of undergarments. “What am I except your conquest? The treasure you brought here? I am scarely more than a trophy fucked and paraded as your queen. I did not know there was an allowance for feeling.”

Steven closes the distance, the air heavy with the pine smoke and the tension you can nearly taste on your tongue. He stands in front of you, massive and imposing, every inch of him radiating heat and intent. “You think that is all you are to me?” he says, voice low and dangerous. “After so many months, you still believe you are just a prize?” He snatches the discarded silk sash and—too fast for you to resist—loops it around your wrists, pulling tight, binding them before your body as if you are a lamb readied for ritual. There’s nothing gentle in the motion, but you drink in the shock and let your body summon the wariness that once governed everything here.

He drags the length of blue over his fist and yanks you forward. You crash against the wall of his chest, the heat of his body a living fire, but his hands do not grope or clutch at you—he holds you at arm’s length, searching your face for something you cannot name.

“I could have any prize, have had many,” he breathes, but it’s fire and not flattery. “I do not keep what I do not want. I have never yearned or sought for more from a woman the way it was from that very first evening.” He leans in so close you smell the salt of his skin, the iron of his mood, and for a moment all you can do is match the wildness in his eyes.

“And even when I have you, I am not satisfied. You become more.” He lets go, not with violence, but in a way that makes the lack of his touch ache.

He circles, pacing almost, the blue silk still twisted around your wrists. "When I look at you," he says, softer now but fiercer too, "I see every dream I have ever had for this hall, this land, my blood. And still it is not enough." He shakes his head, wild with a need that cuts deeper than desire. "That is what you should know, little wife." The last two words rumble from his chest, not dismissive but desperate, as if it is the only truth worth clinging to.

And with that, he drops to his knees—in front of you, not as a servant or a slave but as a king stripped to his hunger. He presses his forehead to your bound hands, inhaling as if scenting your skin might save him. The heat of his breath is humid against your knuckles. For a moment you see the massive hands that have destroyed and built so much now trembling at your command, your body.

But then his hands close around your hips and jerk you forward, so abruptly your knees buckle and you nearly overbalance. He grips you—hard—and rakes both hands up your thighs. The snowy white of your chemise is no hindrance to him: Steven seizes it in both fists and, eyes burning up at you, and rips it from the hem up to your hips with a force that shocks even you, the fibers surrendering in a gasp of threads. The rush of air is cold against your bare skin, but his hands are instantly on the flesh of your thighs, spreading them, and you stagger, almost lose your footing on the rug, except he holds you firmly enough to pursue you poised there as he wishes you to be.

He does not hesitate. He presses his face into the junction of your thighs, beard scraping your bare skin, his mouth finding your cunt with a hunger absent of delicacy but not of skill. He holds you in place by the blue-silked wrists and licks at you, slow and then quick, the heat of his mouth blazing against your skin, beard rough at the crease of your thighs. You gasp, the sound escaping you as a broken little cry, and he drags his tongue up your slit, thumb grinding the bud of your clit until your head tips back and you are moaning, open-mouthed, at the ceiling.

Steven twists you by the hips, turning you, commanding your body how he wants it. He bites your flank, then lower, sharp teeth grazing the swell of your ass, and you yelp, a sound you try to muffle in your own shoulder but which makes him laugh against your skin. He kneads the flesh in handfuls, then thumbs your cheeks apart, spreading you so bluntly you want to disappear into the floor, but you cannot because Steven is behind you, greedy and intent.

The next sensation shocks you: the wet, hot press of his tongue at your tightest opening, circling and probing, and you buck against the sensation, a strangled gasp tearing from your lips. Though Steven has claimed all your holes, he does not torture or pleasure your tightest hole frequently. The shock of his tongue there is always a violation so intimate you might burn to ash beneath from his ministrations.

He sucks at you, his tongue sliding into places ever dared even imagine you would be touched before him. Even now the crudeness of it alone would have made you weep from shame if not for the fact that your knees are shaking with the need to be filled, to have him utterly claim every part of you. Your body responds to him with the swiftness of a summer storm—one touch and you're drenched in need, lightning coursing through nerves that know only him. Months in his bed have carved these pathways of pleasure to flood at his command.

He pulls you down and you end up kneeling on all fours. You whimper—it is all you can do—and Steven holds you steady, his hands bruising your hips as he works his tongue over both your cunt and the tight ring of muscle, switching between them until you’re trembling, the world reduced to blue silk, candlelight, and the raw, obscene wet slickness of your own arousal. You do not have the wherewithal to care if any hear you cry out. There is only your need, the way Steven’s mouth and hands erase everything but the edge you’re teetering on.

He shoves your knees wider, so wide you sway in the joints and nearly collapse—except there is his arm, corded and firm, braced across your hips like you are some wild animal being tamed. He licks at you, fucking his tongue into your cunt, then back to your ass, alternating with a rhythm that leaves you panting, open-mouthed, on the rug. You feel a fresh rush between your legs with each circle of his tongue, and Steven groans as if the taste of you is his favorite mead, his favorite honey, his only holy thing.

Suddenly he stops, and you have just enough time to register the loss, the ache of missing his touch for even a heartbeat, before he’s looming over you, rising to his knees and fitting the wide, hot head of his cock to your entrance.

He doesn’t push in yet. He slides the tip up and down, teasing, painting the slick of your arousal along your cunt and further back to your ass, pressing just enough that you feel the hint of promise, the threat of it, a stretch you both want and dread.

“Steven,” you gasp, your voice gone hoarse, “please—”

He braces one hand at the base of your neck, thumb pressed to your nape, and with the other, guides himself in, slowly, filling you inch by inch until you’re gasping, blinded by the fullness, the impossibility that this act never grows less shocking. He drags it out, slowly, making you feel every notch and ridge, until he bottoms out inside you, hips flush to your ass.

He holds you like this, utterly open and claimed, and rocks his hips forward. The first thrust is slow, almost reverent, but it is a brief moment of gentleness before the pace sharpens. His cock drives in and out of you, using your cunt as an anchor, but every third thrust, you feel the blunt head of him nudge against your other opening, slicked with your own arousal and the wet residue of his mouth. The pressure is relentless, an inexorable stretching, and then—without further warning—he is pushing inside you there too, just the tip at first, but widening you, forcing the tight ring of muscle to yield.

You cry out, the sound raw and wild, and Steven laughs, low and dark, as he works both holes—one with cock, the other with a ruthless finger slicked in spit and your own juices. You can barely process the sensation, pleasure and pain crashing in waves, every nerve in your body tuned to the twin pulses of pain and satisfaction.

He fucks you like this, both cock and fingers filling you, setting a rhythm that is brutal and perfectly pitched to bring you to shattering. The force of his thrusts pitches your body forward, but Steven follows, his hand bracing at your shoulder, yanking you back to impale yourself on him again, again, until you’re wrung out, body bowed, the blue silk biting into your wrists. Your moans are so loud you think you must be heard down the hall, maybe in the kitchens, maybe in the snow fields beyond the fortress walls, but you are past caring.

He leans over you, chest against your back, the scratch of his beard burning your neck, and you hear him snarl into your ear, “Mine. Only mine.” He bites down, hard but not breaking skin, a mark of claim to your own. The heat of his mouth and the iron grip of his arm send you over the edge, your body convulsing, the orgasm crashing through you like a wave ripping a cliffside to ruins. Your cunt milks his cock desperately, and Steven groans, a sound that vibrates through your whole body. He presses further, thrusting as if he could drive his soul into you through pure force of will, matching each spasm of your core with a savage, punishing pace.

He does not let up. Not when your legs collapse under you, not when your cries go ragged and raw, not when you sob for breath and for mercy and for more in the same voice. He ruts your ass until he feels you tremble again, the pain and pleasure indistinguishable now, and then he yanks out, slides his slick length back into your cunt, and fucks you until you scream his name.

Finally, when you are empty of everything but your voice, Steven shoves in hard and stills, cock pulsing as he finally spills into you, a rush of heat so intense you weep from the fullness of it. He slumps forward, folding you beneath him, pinning you to the rug so you cannot move, cannot even think to move, and for a long moment there is nothing but the roar of your heartbeat in your ears and the heat of his breath at your neck.

He doesn’t speak. He stays, spent and trembling against you, his sweat slick at your back, his cock softening but held inside as if to keep you forever tethered to the earth and to him. The pine boughs in the hearth spit and crackle, the only sound in the chamber aside from your twin gasps for breath.

After what feels like an age, Steven rolls you to the side, still bound, and gathers you up before rising himself and carrying you to the bed. He lays you down, then produces a knife from where exactly you know not, and cuts away the remnants of your chemise. Only then does he descend, moving in behind you, pressing your back to his naked, sweat-slicked chest. He slings one burly arm across your belly, cinching you to him, as if he suspects you might unravel and slip away, vanish into the night unless physically anchored. The other hand, still holding the blue silk binding your wrists, brings them to rest at your breastbone, a possessive knot over your heart. He nestles his nose into the braid of your hair, breathing in the sweat and salt and whatever trace the night has left on you. For a long while, he is silent, letting the wet heat of your bodies leach into the linen, letting both your hearts hammer back toward something like peace.

This is not uncommon, a ferocious fucking, and then a decent into slumber, but then he does speak before you’re too far gone.

He speaks as if you are not there, as if he is confessing to the dark, beard rasping your neck. “If it was merely your body I wanted, I could have stolen and kept you as a concubine, a pet for the king and his men.” He draws your bound hands to his mouth, presses a kiss to the ribbon cinching your wrists. “But I saw in you a queen who would have strength and the wits of survival. You proved it through your actions in ushering your women, children, and elderly to flee into the forest and hide. You were only caught because you were the last to leave, the rear of the pack.

“And I think maybe I knew—” He laughs, the sound gruff and incredulous, “—the moment you stared down a blade and spat in the dirt at my men, you had the bone in you that could survive me, could take all I would give and not break."

You want to tell him that’s not what you feel now—not breaking and survival, but the slow, hot flare of something more dangerous and enveloping. But you cannot move your mouth, cannot move your hands. The warmth, the utter exhaustion, pins you like an insect in amber. It’s the truth, though: you can take all Steven gives and more, and even when he breaks you, you reform, sharper and surer than before.

He pulls your braid loose and combs his fingers through your sweat-damp hair, unbraiding it section by section, as if to erase the ribbons and colors the court braided into you and replace it with only his mark. He works methodically, with the patience of a hunter skinning his prize, so slow you feel every drag of his thumb at your nape, every careful untwining.

When his hands have untangled every ribbon, when your hair spills wild and loose as the night he first took you, Steven says, voice raw and unguarded, "Do you want him?" The question is a blade, unexpected, honed to a perfect, silent edge.

It is not the kind of jealousy you expect from him—Steven, the conqueror, the unmoved, the one who’s consumed, enthralled, and conquered you. But there’s a new, black hunger in the way he says it, a need to know if you can be swayed, if Tomas’ gentler words or softer eyes could tempt your loyalty a finger’s breadth from Steven’s grasp.

You twist to look over your shoulder, wrists still bound, and see the truth of it in his expression. He is not angry, but something deeper: haunted. You know then that he could trust you with his life, but not with his terror of being abandoned. “You like the southern lord Tomas.”

His tone is feral, a warning note you know instinctively not to ignore. You lie propped against the iron of his arm, your heart thrumming against the knot of blue silk, and wonder if he will truly believe any answer you give.

You do not play coy. That would only make it worse. “He reminds me of someone,” you say.

A pause. The heat of him presses in at your back, more tense, and you can sense his mind tearing through every possibility, every motive. “Someone you would have preferred to me?” The words are almost spat, but beneath the venom is a tremor—a thread of vulnerability that stuns you.

“My father,” you say quietly. “He was… kind. He asked questions. He listened.” The ache that trembles there in your voice, you know it will not land gently for him or for you. You go on anyway, the words catching like thorns in your throat. “I miss him. I miss my mother, my sisters.” You swallow, hard. “Tomas is nothing like you. He can see through a room and set those around him at ease. It reminds me of how my father was. I don’t want him. I want…” You pause, the word refusing to come, but you force it out, soft as a bruise. “I want not to be alone.”

There’s a long silence. Steven’s breath rasps in your ear, ragged, and you feel the strong pulse of his heart beating. The words hang between you, heavy as the furs that swathe the bed. For a long time, neither of you moves. You expect Steven to snarl, to snap, to claim you again with hands or teeth or cock, but he only tightens his arm around you, pressing you close enough that your breath stutters in your chest.

“Alone,” he finally echoes, as if this is a thing he has never truly named. His chin presses into your shoulder, and the scrape of beard is almost tender. “You have never been alone since the day I brought you here. Not a single night, not a single dawn.” The words rumble out of him, half accusation, half vow.

But you know what he can’t know, what no one here could possibly understand, and you find yourself trembling as you say, “It’s not the same.” The words are small in the dark, nearly swallowed by the thick cocoon of the bedding and the iron of his arms and the weight of him still half inside you.

He stiffens, but you press on, voice hollow with a truth you have never let touch air, have scarcely allowed yourself to acknowledge since the early days of your new life. “You think I am not alone because you are always here, because I have servants and duties and… an entire kingdom to help care for. But every face is new, every wall echoes with the absence of the home that was mine.” You swallow, steeling yourself. “Every kindness here is suspect. Every affection is one I must earn, or keep, or defend.” The words tumble out before you can stop them, raw and truer than anything you’ve ever let him see.

Steven is very still behind you, considering. You feel his hand, slow and careful, splay over your belly. “And me?” he asks. “Am I only… a conqueror to you, even now?”

What can you say? You have wanted, desperately, to hate him, to let yourself be ice and stone, but every night you share this bed, every morning you wake pressed close to him, his heat and his hunger and the unexpected moments of care. “You are a conqueror,” you admit, “and there are days I loathe you for it.” You turn, finally, within the cage of his arms, and this time the blue silk is support, not restraint. “But you are also the root the grows all I have now,” you admit, the words dry as bone, the last of your pride crumbling with them. “Everything I was is gone, except for how you see me, the life I’m building here only because of you and my position as your queen.” The confession is everything you know how to give. You expect him to seize it, to use it as leverage or to brand you with it in the way only Steven can. Instead, he is silent, haunted by the truth of it, and you sense a shift in the air.

He searches your face, eyes dark and wild and unmoored, and then something in him gives. He closes his eyes, a long, shuddering exhale bleeding out of him, and then, with the patience of a stone altered by centuries of wind, he gently unwinds your bound wrists and brings your hands to his lips. He kisses the inside of each palm, one and then the other, callused hands cupped around yours to hold them steady for the ritual. You think he means to claim you again, to turn every declaration of weakness into a demonstration of strength, but instead Steven just holds your hands to his heart, bared and thrumming fast and fragile against your skin.

He presses his brow to yours, the heat of his body incandescent, a lighthouse in the storm. “I see you,” he says. “I saw you from the first, and I will not let you vanish, not even if you wish it.” The words are a cord binding you, not to the palace or the kingdom, but to the man beneath the scarred skin and steel beneath. The admission is not in words, but in the slow pulse of his heartbeat under your palm, the way he curls his hand around your head to keep you there, to keep your face pressed close, as if proximity can substitute for explanation.

You are swept by a wave of exhaustion, not the clean fatigue of sated pleasure, but a deep, marrow-tracing depletion, the kind that comes from exposure more than exertion. For a time neither of you moves, except for the hot, desperate breaths that collapse in your lungs and then shudder out of you both, braided together and matching pace. You close your eyes, feeling the scrape of his thumb over your cheekbone, and tell yourself you don’t care that you cry a little. How many times have you shed tears in his presence? Of fear, of frustration, of pleasure, of longing.

There is nothing left to say this night. You surrender to the thickness of the moment, to Steven’s hands redrawing every line of your body, as if this is the first and last night he will ever have you. You shudder against him, not from cold, but from the slow-mounting realization that love, even the broken, brutal kind, has taken root where only survival grew before.

viking themed divider by @saradika-graphics

So? Thoughts? Feelings?

Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“Oh.” Your heart drops to the bottom of your stomach. “That’s totally fine.” You quickly give the tightest, best smile you can, and then focus back on your plate.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, no big deal.”

You hadn’t been getting excited in any way over the fact that this was the first year you were going to actually be with someone in any kind of real way for the holiday. Nope. Things were still very new. Barely a relationship. If it lasted, you could spend the holiday together next year.

“I know Denver’s not usually the dream destination, but I thought you’d be at least a little excited.”

You blink up at him. “Um, I guess I’m excited for you? Take a picture of the crazy horse for me?”

Ari frowns. Then he laughs. “Beautiful, no,” he reaches across the table for your hand. “You’ve gotta come with me.”

“Oh,” you feel heat rise up your neck, and drop your gaze again.

He leans forward while pulling your hand close to his chest. “It’s Valentines Day weekend, you can’t think I’d want to spend it without you.”

It’s a level of earnestness you still have trouble calibrating. Ari’s gaze doesn’t drop, his thumb working little circles over your knuckles like he’s trying to memorize the bones and tendons beneath your skin. You will never get used to it. Not the awe or the attention, the fact that he just gives it so freely to you.

You try to keep your voice steady. “Aren’t you going to be busy up to your eyeballs with, like, whatever it is architects do?”

Ari grins. “I’ll be working, sure. But I’ll finish up site visits in the mornings, then we can go do whatever people do in Denver. Or, you know…” He pulls your hand up so he can press a warm kiss to your wrist, and you try desperately not to melt immediately. “We could just stay in the hotel room. I booked a suite with a view. There’s even a fireplace.”

You try to swallow, and nearly choke instead. “You already booked it?”

Ari shakes his head, the smile softening around the edges. “Only the hotel. I wanted to make sure you could come before I bought tickets. If you can’t miss work, I’ve got to go out Wednesday but you can come Thursday or Friday night, as long as you’re there for the weekend, that’s all that matters. We’ll fly home together Monday, since it falls over Presidents Day weekend this year.”

You purse your lips together, trying to look thoughtful, but the part of you that’s been so carefully pacing itself—don’t get too eager, don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t assume you’re wanted—wants to climb into his lap and say yes, yes to anything, yes to a bleak Denver February, because it’s with him.

Instead you give him a slow, careful smile. “Sure, Denver. I should have the hours, and we’re usually light in February. I may not be able to swing Wednesday, but probably Thursday.”

Ari beams. “Text me tomorrow as soon as you clear it with your boss.” He’s so open, so easy, it almost breaks you. The way he lifts your hand to his lips again, reverent. It’s not entirely clear whether the gesture is about you or about him, like maybe he’s grateful for being allowed to adore somebody this straightforwardly. Either way, you try to receive it, to let it land. You try not to think about how, if you’d ever had to design a person for yourself, you wouldn’t have had the audacity to sketch out the veritable greek god that sits across from you.

“What’s this?” Ari asks, coming into the bathroom as you’re just putting the finishing touches on your makeup.

You glance over, then almost drop your mascara when you see he’s holding up the modest piece of lingerie—a teddy.

“Where did you—? How did you—?” It was nothing too flashy, but something that you felt like you might feel confident enough in to wear this weekend with Ari. Maybe. But it was supposed to be tucked away in the zippered pocket of your suitcase—partly as a surprise, but partly in case you couldn’t muster the gumption this weekend to trot yourself out on display for him.

Ari smiles, wickedly. “I was shamelessly trying to hide one of my shirts in your luggage to take home—isn’t that one of the perks I’m supposed to spoil you with as your boyfriend?”

Swoops of butterflies.

This man.

He comes up behind you and you catch his eyes in the mirror, the gleam in them, the entirely unsubtle, delighted flirty mischief. You’re not sure if you’ll ever get used to the way Ari looks at you, especially when you’re not even in the outfit yet.

“I didn’t know if I’d—if you’d—”

He loops a hand around your waist and presses a kiss just below your ear. “The only thing that would disappoint me about this,” he murmurs, “is if you didn’t wear it.”

He starts kissing his way down the side of your neck, the brush of his beard sending up a tiny parade of goosebumps along your skin. You laugh, try to squirm away, but his arms cage you in, broad and insistent. “Ari,” you gasp, “we’ll be late for the museum. Remember? The whole reason we got out of bed this morning?”

He grins into your pulse. “My only plan today is to be with you. Everything else is a footnote.” The look he gives you in the mirror is pure hunger, softened by a kind of wonder as if he can’t quite believe you’re real. “Now that I know this was in your suitcase the whole time, how am I supposed to think about paintings or sculpture or even breakfast?”

You make a show of rolling your eyes, but your heart is pounding so hard you can hear it in your ears. “You’re hopeless.”

“Damn right I’m hopeless when it comes to you.” His hand tightens, gently, on your waist. “You don’t have to wear it, of course,” he murmurs, voice muffled against your skin. “But if you wanted to, I might actually die.”

Your eyes flutter closed as he kisses your neck again. “Ari,” you nearly moan.

“You decide, museum or a morning here, I’ll go back out and wait, and when you come out to join me, whatever you’re wearing will determine the experience I will happily facilitate as your doting and dutiful boyfriend.”

He smiles warmly at you in the mirror’s reflection before pressing a quick kiss to your temple and then exiting the bathroom.

You bite your lip, weighing the options. This is how it’s always been between you and Ari: a careful negotiation between the allure of his certainty and your own ingrained skepticism. From the beginning, he clocked your wariness—how you read every compliment as possibly ironic or, worse, as an act of charity. You’d been slow, not because you didn’t want him, but because it seemed cosmically impossible that he wanted you.

Still, he met your pace. If you pulled away, he waited, hands gentle, eyes steady. If you wanted him, he came to you like you were gravity. He told you what he wanted—your hands, your mouth, your laugh. Sometimes he said it in words, sometimes with the weight and heat of his body pressed to yours. You’ve been dating for months, and you are beginning to believe that this is real. He never hesitates to touch you—not in public, in private, with friends, alone. He’s direct with his feelings. But years of not being the desirable one is hard work to unlearn.

It’s not that you haven’t had sex before—god, no, Ari’s appetite for you is prodigious, and you have learned things about your own body and the sheer power of longing you didn’t think possible from a man who looks at you like you’re a whole constellation. But lingerie was new, and with it came all the crusted-over narratives from years of body shame, the ones you thought you’d shed in your mid-twenties but always managed to drag along by a thread, a kind of tattered emotional security blanket. Have you ever felt beautiful, truly beautiful, exposed?

With Ari, yes, your heart says. And your gut agrees.

You look in the mirror at the the girl you’ve known for years: thick through the arms and hips, a jaw too soft for angles. But your cheeks are glowing and your eyes sparkle, and you realize, abruptly, that you look happy.

There is a fizzing anticipation now—not just the memory of Ari’s lips, but the invitation in his words, the dare of intimacy without holding back. You reach for the scrap of black silk and lace, finger the tag, and press it tight against your chest. There’s a shiver—not fear, exactly, but the feeling of standing on a high diving board, toes curling over the edge, looking down at the impossible blue below.

You step out of your jeans and toss your t-shirt across the room with a confidence you don’t quite possess yet, underwear and bra coming off quickly as well. The teddy slips on easily, a soft statement of delicate but calculated desire spelled out in lace and silk. You inspect the fit—there’s nowhere to hide, curves pooled and displayed, but instead of humiliation, you feel almost electric. This is not the body you were supposed to have, according to the magazines, but it’s the body you’ve had since the day you and Ari met.

You take a full, bracing breath and step out of the bathroom.

Ari is sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in hand but not looking at it, gaze already drawn and fixed to the doorframe at the first click of the knob. He stands. The world tilts slightly with the force of his attention. You have to grab the jamb to steady yourself, which is either mortifying or thrilling or both.

Ari closes the gap between you in three strides, slow enough that you could step back if you wanted, but you don’t want to, not at all. His eyes flick up and down, reverent and a little wild, hands hovering at your hips as if asking permission with every micro-movement. When he breathes it’s a little ragged, and he says your name in a voice that makes you feel newly invented.

For a full ten seconds he just looks at you. Not scanning for flaws, not searching for argument, just taking you in fully, and finally letting his hands trace your waist as though it’s holy work. “You are so fucking gorgeous,” he says, almost helpless.

If you could bottle this moment, you would: his breathing, the way he’s fighting the urge to speak but can’t help it, the look of overwhelming want. His fingertips are shaking a little as he slips them under the thin straps, then drops his forehead to your shoulder and just stands there, holding you.

You giggle, unexpected and high-pitched. “Ari, you’re making a scene.”

He brings his lips to your temple, your cheek. “Good,” he growls, smiling.

You cluck your tongue, but you can feel your face heating. The nerves are dissipating, melting out through your skin, ovrtaken by something molten and exhilarating. You lean up, press your lips to his neck, and savor the way it makes him shudder.

He hands move down over your waist, then under your thighs, and suddenly the floor drops away and you’re in his arms. He carries you with no visible strain, and deposits you in the center of the bed with a deliberate reverence. The sheets are cool and crisp beneath your bare skin. He sits on the edge, arms bracketing you, tracing his palm up your thigh, over your hip, to the small of your back.

“You,” he says again, shaking his head, as if you have upended the entire order of things. “I don’t think you have the faintest idea what you do to me.”

You do, a little, but only because he makes it so obvious. Even now, his hands can’t stop touching you. He pushes your hair back, kisses your collarbone, your jaw, and when his mouth finds yours it’s half-hungry, half grateful, like he’s thankful for something you did not realize mattered so much. You let him, and you let yourself, too. The whole bed rocks with the intensity of his worship, and you realize—hushed and dazzling—that there is nowhere else in the world, possibly the entire universe, that you want to be. The memory of old shames, all the careful, reticent years, dissolve in the heat of his mouth on your skin.

He slides a palm down your thigh and back up, pausing to thumb a lace edge with such focus it’s almost comical, as if reading a map written in touch. When he shifts, his jeans creak and you realize Ari is trying and failing to keep himself composed, the hard line of him pressing against the fly.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “I want to slow down, but you—” and then he’s kissing you again, but this time it’s with an edge, your name half-growled against your mouth, his hand a hot stripe across your ribcage. You reach for his shirt, tug upward, and Ari laughs into the kiss and obligingly peels it off, tossing it behind him. You savor the view as always: Ari’s golden tanned skin, the muscle of his shoulders, the hair over his chest and the trail down to his manhood cock.

Ari’s hands are on your shoulders, then your hips, guiding you back to the mattress. He lowers you with a gentleness that only makes the hunger more acute, kissing you all the while—with an urgency that infects your whole body. You’re aware of your heart, your skin, the press of his chest hair against your breasts through the lattice of black lace. You’re aware of the heat of his breath, the way his hands cup your thighs as if nothing in the world matters more than the exact give of your flesh beneath his palms.

And then, with a suddenness that’s almost comical, he breaks the kiss, leans back, and rolls, so you’re straddling him, knees bracketing his waist. Ari grins up at you, a wildness in his eyes. You feel suddenly, alarmingly exposed, perched over him in your tiny slip of nothing. But then Ari’s hands are back, running with purpose over your thighs, and then he’s bracing you by the hips, sliding you further upward, until your knees are on either side of his shoulders. The world pivots, every point of contact suddenly the precise axis of your need. He’s looking up at you, mouth already open, eyes almost black with intent.

And then, in that voice that’s all velvet and steel, Ari says, “Please sit on my face.” Like it’s not even possible to be embarrassed, like it’s the most obvious idea in the world, like you hadn’t ever considered it because you didn’t think you could possibly be the kind of person someone would want that much. He says it again, slower, each word a benediction: “Sit. On. My. Face.”

You blink, heat flooding your face—no one’s ever asked you for this, not so directly, so greedily. Ari doesn’t ask, though, so much as he demands, invites, wants. So he waits for you, hands gentle but insistent, the axis on which the universe turns. He licks his lower lip, and the sight is so obscene and so beautiful that you have to bite back a gasp.

You hover for a moment, uncertain—you in your ridiculous lace, the ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, the daylight too honest in the window, until Ari’s hands tighten, just a bit, and he says, “I need to have you like this.”

And just like that, your last reservations dissolve—not because Ari is goading or pressuring, but because he means it. He wants you, all of you, with such ferocity that the only possible answer is yes. So you let yourself slide into place, guided by his hands, knees pressed into the sheets, thighs tensing as you hover above him. He looks up at you with devotion, hands smoothing the curve of your ass, the insistent flex and squeeze, and then he’s pulling you down, gently, no half-steps, mouth finding you through the silk first, a decisive kiss, and then pushing it aside, one thumb, and you’re bared.

The first contact is so tender it nearly buckles your knees, but Ari holds you steady, flattening his tongue, a careful, patient sweep, indicating he’ll play the long game. Then he grows bolder. He licks, then sucks, suck, sucks until you gasp and roll your hips forward, meeting that hunger head-on—then something opens up inside him, and he buries his face in your cunt.

Ari’s builds a rhythm of furious generosity; he’s greedy for it, yes, but not rushing, and every time you shiver, he murmurs these little words of encouragement, half-lost in the press of your thighs against his ears. You’re undone. The ceiling vanishes, the Colorado morning outside the window fades to a watercolor blur, and the only thing real is the trace of tongue and teeth and devotion.

You grip the headboard—no, you’re white-knuckling it, gasping something that might be his name or just a prayer. Ari’s hands aren’t gentle anymore; they’re greedy, molding your legs around his head with full intent. He doesn’t let up, not for air, not for a reprieve, and you want it that way, all the way, his eyes closed in rapture, like he can taste your soul.

You’ve been eaten out before—been eaten out by him before—but never like this. Every nerve ending in your body sings with electricity. You ride it, your brain flickering between arousal and laughter and disbelief and awe, until your breath is ragged and your voice is nearly gone.

He brings you to the edge and holds you there, again and again, until you’re babbling his name, a litany, the wet suck of his mouth a punctuation mark. There’s a moment where you think you might cry, the feeling is so intense, but instead you arch your back, pulling at his hair, and Ari makes a sound—delighted, greedy—grabs you harder, and just like that you come, shuddering so hard you’re certain you’ll leave a dent in the mattress.

But Ari doesn’t stop, tongue coaxing you to a second, smaller aftershock, hands gentling as though he knows that too much might tip you right off the planet. For a bright, trembling minute, you lose the thread of all language; you just hang there, open and panting and amazed that you are still in your body, much less staring down at the man you love, whose whole jaw is slick with your arousal, his eyes filled with the kind of pride usually reserved for Olympic gold medalists.

Fuck.

The man you love?

Ari’s hands slide under your thighs and, with an indulgence of gentleness, he lowers you to the mattress. You expect him to collect your body to his, tuck your face into his neck and maybe mumble some praise against the top of your head, but instead—he shifts, one knee on the bed, and then shoulders his way back between your legs like he’s clearing a path through the world.

You are about to protest, to tell him you’re already more than spent, that you might actually vaporize if he doesn’t let you recover, but you never get the words out. He’s planted himself between your knees, wide palms pushing your thighs apart and anchoring you as if you might try to escape. Like you could, even if you wanted to.

He’s merciless this time. You keep expecting him to slow, to ease off, to let you down gently, but he devours you, tongue and lips and whole face buried in the heart of you. The sensation is more intense now, and every nerve ending lights up with raw, electric pleasure. The overload is so complete your body can’t keep up; your hands scrabble at the sheets, your knees clamp hard around his head, and you curse, helpless, every word a rush of disbelief and wild joy. He pulls you apart and fastens you back together, again and again, each pass of his mouth intentional and deft. He’s not just eating you out, he’s consuming every atom you can offer, like you’re the only meal he’ll ever get.

You come again—harder, sharper—and it’s so much you sob, just a little, into your forearm, tears hot and unwelcome but somehow perfectly right. Ari never lets up. He holds you open, reverent, face wet with your need, tongue pushing you into a fourth, blinding orgasm. By the time he finally pauses, his cheek pressed to the inside of your thigh, your whole body is a jumbled mess.

Your breath is still coming in ragged tides, and your vision is streaked at the edges with the afterburn of ecstasy. But the moment your body slackens, Ari’s hands regrip with intent, and you realize—with a stab of terror and awe—that he is nowhere near done with you.

You try to wriggle away, or at least signal surrender, but Ari responds with a low, animal hum, so deep you feel it vibrating through the muscle of your thigh, and pins your hips down with a sweet, inexorable force.

Ari’s mouth returns to you, so greedy and thorough you realize that nothing on earth will slow him except your absolute depletion. He wants you ruined, wants you delirious and molten and incoherent. The only sounds in the room are your hoarse whines and the obscene, wet music of his mouth. When you try to catch your breath, he pulls you even closer, arms like iron bars under your legs, hands digging into your hips like he could wear you as a second skin. He doesn’t say a word, but everything about the way he eats you reads as a promise and a warning: he’s not finished until you’re empty, trembling, boneless. Maybe not even then.

You have no memory of ever feeling so helpless in the best possible way, all self-consciousness stripped away by the relentless, gracious violence of his devotion. You start laughing midway through the fifth, sixth, seventh wave—gasping, “I can’t—I can’t—” but Ari only redoubles, pulling every last shudder from you. When you finally fall limp, sobbing silently, the world reduced to a damp whiteout of spent pleasure, he cradles you like a prince rescuing a glass slipper.

Your bones feel unstrung, muscles flickering with the afterimage of climax. You fit perfectly in the crook of his body, cheek mashed against the warm, sweat-sticky skin of his chest. He breathes you in for a while, as if you’re some rare flower that might vanish if he blinks.

You don’t talk at first. You float on the leftover waves of pleasure, feeling the burn of your own thighs, the weirdly delightful chill of air on your wet skin, the thudding of Ari’s heart next to your cheek like a language you’re starting to learn. For a while he holds you that way, cradled in the safety of his ridiculous embrace, and lets you drift. Fingers play the vertebrae of your spine, gentle, one by one, as if your bones are a musical instrument and he’s determined to coax every note.

Eventually, your vision returns, embarrassment trying and failing to find oxygen in the thick air. Ari is still there, of course; he never leaves. “Hey,” he murmurs, kissing your temple, “are you alive in there?”

“No,” you say. “Ghost haunting you now.” Your voice is shredded, sore, so you croak it out, exhausted and elated. Ari’s answering laughter floods into the hollow between your collarbones, and you feel it like a soft animal curled in your ribs. He tucks you in tighter, wraps the sheet around your legs, drapes a tender, solicitous arm across your midsection like a shield.

Minutes pass. You’re not compelled to talk, which is one of the best parts of being with him. The silence isn’t expectant or loaded, just soft, feathered with the little sounds of breathing and heartbeat and, from the street below, the white noise of Denver plowing its way through late winter.

You press your ear to his chest, listen. Underneath the thick, dull rush of his pulse you can hear, distantly, the sound of his stomach rumbling.

“We… missed breakfast,” you mumble.

“You did, I didn’t.” He snorts, the sound reverberating through both of your bodies. “That was my breakfast, Beautiful. I could eat you every day for the rest of my life and never want for anything else.”

You try not to laugh, but the absurdity, the sincerity, it undoes you. Ari tips your chin up with a finger, then kisses you, gentle and lingering, as if you are a secret he means to keep. When he pulls away, he looks so smug it’s almost criminal.

You snort. “I’ve seen the amounts of food you consume to stay alive.”

He grins and shakes his head. “I guess that’s what room service is for then.” He stretches to the side, dragging you with him to keep you splayed half over his chest, retangling his long legs with yours under the sheets as he reaches for the phone on the bedside table. You arrange your cheek against the fuzz of his pec and let the slow, narcotic thump of his heart lull you back into you post-coital trance while he rattles off a long, impressive order that you miss the end of for falling asleep.

um 🥹

On some level there's always at least a whisper of some part of me in the reader characters I write, but I put a lot of what I would hope to find in a partner/relationship into this reader and this architect!Ari.

Heart divider was made by @firefly-graphics.

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“It is nothing unexpected, but there are rumors brewing. The people are ever eager for news of their sovereigns, and the palace is not a monastery. I have managed, thus far, to dampen speculation and keep any possible news of your condition from being made public before you wish it. But,” he gives brief pause, “we are approaching the time when discretion will fail.”

You meet Coulson’s eyes, a clear blue only a few shades lighter than Steve’s, though where Steve’s gaze is all earnestness and passion, Coulson’s is distilled into a kind of conscientious precision. You sigh. “You are right,” you say. “It is only a matter of days or weeks, perhaps a month if providence is good to us, before gossip and speculation align with circumstantial clues and a growing belly that can no longer be ignored for what it is. And though I do not wish to keep it a secret from the people, I did not want to make such a pronouncement without the king.”

It’s not just the ceremonial appropriateness of it, it’s that your heart aches to see Steve’s face when the news is given to his people, at how they would rejoice.

After a few moments, Coulson’s voice, gentle but firm, closes the moment of contemplative silence. “We are in uncertain times, Your Majesty. There are few things more potent than hope when the shadow of war is on us. The kingdom would rally behind this good news. If I may be so bold, the sooner the people are allowed to celebrate, the brighter the light we can hold against the darkness of our present shadows.”

Your hand drops to your stomach, fingers brushing over the barely-there bump coming along as you ponder his words, feeling the press of their truth. Still, you are still reticent.

“Thank you, Coulson. I will consider it with all due diligence and urgency.” You try on a smile for him, and he recognizes it for the closing of the matter for now that it is.

“The other matter I hoped to discuss with Your Majesty is the celebration of Summer Solstice, there are many matters pending final decisions, and some we cannot hold off on much longer.”

“I am aware.” Your own voice comes out tired and more vulnerable than you would like, but Coulson does not exploit this.

The Summer Solstice was a cornerstone of the kingdom’s calendar, something the people reveled in and clung to fiercely, even as their rulers, affairs, and fortunes changed over the generations, matched only in sentiment and fervor by the Winter Solstice.

“Did His Majesty leave instructions?” you ask, though you can imagine the answer. There would have been no time and no priority given for Steve to leave notes about Summer Solstice festivities while he was marching out the door to face an emerging Hydra threat. It would have been that last thing from his mind.

Coulson’s response only confirms your further thoughts that any elements made tradition by him would already be assumed into the planning already underway.

“I reviewed His Majesty’s previous preferences and communicated these directly with the staff. Everything that can be done according to House Rogers’ customs is being done.” Coulson doesn’t hesitate to add, “His Majesty trusts your judgment implicitly, and in all matters of statecraft, especially those that touch the people most directly, he would welcome a queen’s hand in the details.”

There’s a warmth that moves through you. For all the weight of the crown, the court life, even the threat of war pressing at the border, there are moments like this—small points of light, where trust is not only spoken, but practiced. It is one thing to have the wishes of the king on record and followed because it’s the duty of Coulson and others to serve, but it is another to feel the undercurrent of genuine belief, trust, and devotion, something that extends beyond obligation to loyalty.

You say, “I am not ready as yet to venture into decisions about the Solstice, but I appreciate your candor and your counsel, Coulson. I rely on it, and I will take it on advisement to revisit these matters soon. Now what of Hydra?”

His face draws somber. “Still no news since the messenger arrived three nights ago.”

The last secure message communicated that Hydra’s forces appeared to be holding outside the border, Steve’s troops still holding them at bay and countering any offense with the assistance of some allies, but they were not easily countered, and perhaps far from conquered.

“I would wager,” Coulson says carefully, “that His Majesty has not risked further dispatches in order to prevent interception. The Hydrans have spies everywhere in the north. They may even have sympathizers among the townships along the border.”

“Keep me apprised. Let me know directly if any word arrives, day or night.” You stand, which has become an incrementally more laborious affair in recent days. Coulson moves to steady you, but you wave him off with a gentle shake of your head.

“Of course, Your Majesty. I am at your service,” he says, voice softening.

"Thank you, Coulson. Are there any other matters that require my attention?”

“No, Your Majesty. But know that if you should wish to speak further on these things, or anything else, never hesitate to call on me.” He hesitates himself—just for an instant—then bows and turns and takes his leave.

You are grateful for him, for the rare certainty that he does not merely see you as a vessel for a future king, nor some accessory to the crown, but a living, breathing, valuable half of the crown.

After a moment, you arch your back, wincing at the mounting stiffness. Your fingers span over the your lower belly. “Now what words are you keeping so carefully to yourself over there in the corner, Duchess?” you ask, turning to Natalia.

The Duchess had been silent throughout the exchange, withdrawing to the fringes of the room so as to be present, available, but not to encroach. She always carries herself with the hyper-vigilance of a cat, but now she drops her hands from where they’d been folded against her gown. “Only that women know when the tide is about to turn,” she says, stepping forward. “I commend you for holding back the announcement until you are ready, that you wish for our king to return before you make it, but I also caution you against this perpetual stasis of waiting in uncertainty.”

You frown and sigh.

“I do think you can still delay one matter if you will indulge another. Engage in the preparations for the Summer Solstice, build up the festivities and celebrations that can be a worthwhile focal point for the people. There is a bit of old wisdom, Your Majesty—plan for joy and you bend the future towards it. If you pour yourself into what comes next, your heart will have at least one safe harbor in this storm, and you may very well be able to extend that to your people.”

You recognize that Natalia’s advice is no mere platitude. The Solstice is less than ten days away. The entire kingdom will arrange its hours and appetites and ambitions around the coming festival, and you, as their queen, could harness it like a prism: channel hopes, quell the worst of the anxieties, and—perhaps most selfishly—give yourself a purpose beyond waiting for word from the distant king and the uncertain border.

Natalia’s eyes remain intent on your face, as if searching every muscle for the precise flavor of your reluctance, and when you do not answer right away, she asks gently, “What is it, truly? I feel you are holding something else behind your careful words.”

You pause, searching for the how to convey your thoughts, then admit, “The Summer Solstice is not only beloved because it is the peoples’ tradition, but because it was my introduction to this kingdom, to these people. You know as you were assigned to by my escort, though I suspect it was as a trusted spy,” you jest, but know it is undoubtedly also true—if Natalia had doubted your character or potential for the kingdom, the Duchess would not have held back her assessment from the king. There is a hint of a smirk in the soft smile on Natalia’s face, and you shake your head, but continue. “The talks for betrothal had taken place, but kept private and not fully agreed upon until the king and I met.” Other visiting royal dignitaries had been present, the normal extension of invitations to foreign friends and allies a useful guise so as not to rouse suspicions for your attendance.

“But I remember last year,” you continued, “how every street, every home, every remote village in Brooklyn was awash in lanterns, in ribbons and banners, in music, in flowers, in an anticipation so thick it crackled in the air. Steve said his kingdom was made of people, not palaces, and I saw it in every element of those festivities. It was my first time seeing what I myself might become part of, but I was only focused on experiencing, evaluating. My every moment was colored by the formalities of courtship, the politics, the scrutiny.” You smile ruefully. “I assumed I would have Steve to share the preparations and customs with me the following year, to guide me. Instead—”

“Instead, you are alone, and expected to be at the center of it.” Natalia finishes for you, but not unsympathetically. She steps to your side, voice low.

“No one expects you to give the people a show, Majesty. They expect you to be a beacon. If you are afraid, they will know. If you are excited, they will follow. If you are grieving—even for a husband who is not dead, only away—they will rally to support you. Let yourself want the joy of it. All the rest will fall into place.”

You swallow past the knot in your throat. Selfish as it maybe, you let spill the other confession you have not allowed yourself to say aloud till now.

“I ache to see him. I am surrounded by purpose, by duty, by constant reminders that this crown is not for myself alone. I can do all that’s required—I will, and will do it well—but I do not know if I can hold on for so long without news. Or if…if he does not return.”

It comes out in more of a whisper than a proclamation, and your hands clench in the fabric of your gown.

Natalia’s presence, always so composed and self-contained, suddenly softens. She touches your elbow, and the lines of her face crease in a rare show of empathy. “You may not realize it, but your courage is what will keep the kingdom steady,” she says. “It is not wrong to long for your husband. It is not even so wrong to show that longing.” She adds, more gently, “You do not have to shoulder every ache alone, especially not now.”

You nod, once, and squeeze Natalia’s hand where it grasps your arm. She holds steady for a few seconds, then steps back, and with that, the connection is reset—she is again the Duchess, your shadow and your shield.

You take a deep breath and square your shoulders. “Tell Coulson to set a meeting with the festival stewards for tomorrow.”

Over the next week you throw yourself into many elements of the Summer Solstice preparations.

You delegate, arbitrate, and—when the festival stewards look at you with unmasked hope—promise more than a little magic. Your days become a whir of meetings, decisions made in earnest, and hours spent reviewing every facet of the plans, from the musicians and revelers for the great public parade, to the composition of the Midnight Feast, to the allocation of food and shelter for those who would travel from afar. In the past, this would have been ceremonial and light. Now, with troops fighting in the north, full-blown war breathing down the neck of the kingdom, you embrace how much it is a matter of holding the fabric of the kingdom’s hope taut and bright.

It’s soothing, almost addictive, to lose yourself in work. The days pass quickly, and the routine is a balm to your restless bones. You spend hours in the library with the castle’s archivist, combing through the records of past solstices, learning the nuances of old custom and new expectation.

The loneliness is its own living thing, gnawing at you in the hours between midnight and dawn, clawing up memories of his hands and his voice and the constant, solid comfort he gave without even thinking about it. At night, you lie awake, sometimes for hours, listening to the shivering hush of the palace. It is never truly silent, but Steve’s absence stretches through it, amplifying every hollow gap, leaving a ghostly ache in the walls and in your chest. You dream of Steve, sometimes in his full armor, sometimes laughing shirtless by the river, sometimes with his head bent against your shoulder so softly it feels like a memory from another life.

When you rise in the mornings, your hands reach for the spot beside you, searching for the heat of his body. Sometimes there is a phantom pressure: his palm coming to rest on the small of your back, his lips pressed to your hair, his steady breath against your neck.

The night before the Solstice, you fall into bed feeling the good kind of exhausted, and you dream again of Steve. This time he is kneeling at your bedside after a campaign, his hair damp and wild, his tunic stained dark with sweat and the velvets bedraggled from travel. He kneels not as a king but as a supplicant, and his large, warm hand brushes softly over your cheek, thumb tracing the bone as if to memorize the shape. You lean into the comfort of his touch and the longing it stirs, the ache so powerful you feel it in your throat, as if you will choke on it.

You inhale deeply, expecting the scent of him—soap, ink and parchment, the faintest hint of old cedarwood. Instead, the smell is pungent with sweat and horses and old leather, overpowering the lavender sachet tucked in your pillowcase.

For half a second you are convinced this is only the dream’s cruelest trick, the longing so deep it has conjured even the reek of what he would smell like after hours on horseback and days without a bath. But the scent intensifies, crowding the air.

It is not a dream.

The shock hits you with a physical violence, and you bolt upright and launch yourself into him, clear out of the coverlet and straight into his arms. Steve is on his knees, kneeling at the side of your bed with the battered, travel-worn look of a man who has not slept for days and crossed hundreds of miles to get here. There is sweat and old blood and something earthen on him, and you bury your face in the crook of his neck, both of you shaking. He holds you against his chest, arms caging you, rigid as iron, and you sense immediately that if he could, he would rip open his own ribs and place you, the baby, the whole world inside for safekeeping.

You feel the bowstring tension in his body, the trembling weariness shuddering through his hands, the fever-heat of his skin. His lips find your temple, your cheek, your jaw—hungrily, as if he’ll never get enough.

Then he says your name.

It comes out rough-edged and low, and the sound burrows into the marrow of your bones, releases every caged heartbeat you have kept on reserve.

You clutch him even closer, pressed together so tightly it aches. His breath rasps against your ear and you are shaking, but then you realize it’s him—he is shaking—and the riot of trembling in his arms makes you feel for the first time since he left not just loved, not just wanted, but necessary.

At length, you draw back, just enough for your hands to find his face. The light from the moon outside casts a blue glow on the edges of his jaw, and in his eyes—oh, your heart—you read a rawness so stark it’s practically palpable. The blue of his eyes is bloodshot, rimmed raw with fatigue and the kind of pain he would refuse to let anyone else see. In that moment he is not a king at all, only a man desperate for home, desperate for you.

He searches your features as if he must check that every line, every lash, every bone is unbroken and real; as if he will believe in nothing else until he is sure.

Then his lips are on yours, nothing gentle, just need—crushed, frantic, fervent.

You don’t realize you’re crying until you taste the salt on your tongue, don’t realize your hands are in his hair until you feel the sticky matting of it, dark with sweat and travel. You want to ask if he’s alright, if he’s wounded, but your lips can’t form words, only gasp in what little air you can snatch between his kisses.

He surges off his knees and hauls you up with him, mouth never leaving yours, lifting you onto the bed as if you weigh less than the air itself. You feel the urgency in him, no ceremony, no preamble, just hands and breath and heat. His fingers tangle with the ties of your nightdress, and when they will not yield fast enough, he tears at the fabric, yanking it away. You cannot help but laugh, but it is a wet, wild sound, strangled with both relief and want, and even as you reach for him—buttons, buckles, leather protection, the salt-stiffened linen of his shirt—you are aware that your hands are shaking too.

When the last of the clothing is gone, you are left with naught but the night air and weeks and weeks of longing between you. Your hands, mindless, frantic, slip up his arms, his shoulders, over the ridges of his back, cataloguing every knot of muscle and scar, taking inventory against the old, searching for if there’s anything new, but you’re too frantic to process any of it in the dark.

The mattress yields beneath you as Steve presses you down into it, pinning you to the moment and erasing every other ache except for this one. The hunger. The need. The wild, animal want that banishes any remnant of decorum, anything but your true, unadulterated connection. The scraping of his beard against your neck burns, but you welcome it, tilt your head to bare more of your throat, and he marks a trail—jaw, pulse point, clavicle—devouring every inch.

You taste salt on his shoulder and on your own lips. The taste of him is different tonight, blunter, earthier, and it makes you shiver. He thrusts into you, burying himself to the hilt, and the cry that rips from your throat is a release. You wrap your legs around his hips, welcoming him home.

Joined once more in the most intimate ways, Steve holds the reclaimed ground, hips, chest, foreheads pressed fully flush together while he’s inside you. You breathe each other in again and again. There’s a need for more, but not yet, for this suspended moment, the need is only this.

When he finally moves, his thrusts are not gentle but they are not rough. You rake your nails down his ribs, feeling him shudder, feeling his breath explode from his chest with every drag of your hands, every flex of your thighs. You want to savor him but you cannot, not when he’s all over you, around you, inside you, every sense drunk on the reality of his presence after so long spent with only the memory of him.

“Gods, I missed you,” he murmurs, voice torn with hunger. He covers your mouth with his, and these kisses are like drawing breath, necessary. His weight on you is everything you need, as he thrusts into you. Each stroke lands somewhere deeper, somewhere more intimate, more needed. It’s frantic, then it’s tender, then it’s frantic again, the pulse of it building inside you, between you.

He grunts, the sound breaking apart as he rocks into you. Your own voice is at once desperate and meek. “Please, please, I need…” but the words die there, replaced by a shuddering moan you cannot swallow back. The violence of it ricochets through Steve. He seizes your hips and you feel him, every inch, thick and hot and trembling.

In your first year of marriage, he has come to know your tells, the signs of your body gathering, all the places and rhythms that unspool you. But it’s a new thing now, a new tension, a new tightness in the walls of your cunt, a hypersensitivity that stuns you nearly to tears, and Steve notes it, the change, the powerful difference of you. His hand spreads over the new curve at your belly—he had not said a word yet, not even looked down, but the way his thumb strokes over it makes it clear: not only has he been thinking of you both, you and the tiny human growing in your womb, he loves the physical sign of it, worships it as a natural extension of all the other ways he has loved you.

You arch up, trying to get closer, though there’s nowhere left to go. It is too much, and not enough, and you are sobbing his name, “Steve, Steve, Steve,” as if it is the only anchor in the world. He thrusts deeper, harder, and you sense in the frantic cadence of his hips the fever pitch of his own desperation for you. The only sound is breath and flesh and the splayed, unbridled honesty of two people who have been sundered too long.

You explode around him, a tidal wave of sensation that rolls through every limb, your toes curling and fingers clawing into the thick muscle at his shoulders. Steve groans into the hollow of your throat, the sound raw, and you feel the shudders wreck his frame as he spills into you, a heat that pulses and pools deep inside. For a heartbeat, your vision blurs white, and you float, lost in the moment, in the pounding of your heart, the rhythm of his hips, the scent of sweat and salt and iron and sex.

When you collapse together, there’s no distinction between your bodies. You’re just a knot of tangled limbs and tangled hearts, breath mingling, sweat mingling, tears and laughter and devotion99eds——-rtf all pressed into the same narrow space. It’s not until you’re gasping for air that you realize you’ve never truly needed anything in your life the way you need this man—his presence, his weight, the simple, grounding comfort of his body anchoring you, his soul sewn into every cell of your being.

For a long time, you lie in the hush that follows, the storm of your hearts ebbing slowly to a sated quiet. His hands drift over your skin, drawing slow, worshipful lines. You feel the way his palm roams down your ribs, spans the rise and fall of your belly, lingers there—an unspoken promise, an offering, a vow renewed and renewed and renewed with every breath. Your own hand follows his, and you let your fingers tangle together, threading over the place where new life is growing.

“Are you alright?” The words are rough, but the way he says them—tender, reverent—makes you want to cry again.

“Better than alright,” you manage, and it’s a wonder you can speak for the surging in your chest. You touch his cheek, tracing the path over the overgrowth of the beard usually so well kept. “Are you alright?” you echo his query.

He swallows, a clenched jaw working under your fingers. “I am,” he says, and you hear the lie of omission in how the words catch. You arch a brow, and he releases a stiff breath. “I am now,” he amends. “It was—” He searches the ceiling as if the right word is up there in the architecture, then settles on you. “Worse than worse than we anticipated. Too many dead, too many close calls.” His voice cracks, and you realize this is a wound you cannot salve, not with all the kisses in the world.

“You’re here. That’s all that matters.” You stroke the line of his jaw with your thumb, careful with the tenderness that wells up. You ask again, softer this time, “Steve. Are you hurt?”

He closes his eyes, as if the question itself is a mercy, some moment of gentleness he’d gone too long without. “Not in any way that will last,” he says, then, after a heavy silence, “but there are wounds and scars endured by my men, horrors I would not have had them face in their lifetime.”

There’s a quiet knock on the door, but it still startles you.

“Yes?” Steve calls out.

“Your Majesty, the bath you requested has been prepared,” you recognize the baritone of his groom.

“Thank you,” Steve responds, and you whimper quietly. He smiles at your pout, and asks, “What is that frown for?”

“You do reek dreadfully, but I don’t want you away from me and leaving for your chambers so immediately.”

He laughs. “It is a good thing I had the foresight to ask the tub in your bath chamber to be prepared, especially as you scant smell any better than me now,” he growls into your neck, before scooping you up from the bed and into his arms.

He carries you effortlessly—despite the travel and the exhaustion, he is still a force, solid and kinetic, the momentum of his desire to be close to you overcoming anything so trivial as fatigue or soreness.

The bath is drawn high and steaming, fragrant with eucalyptus and mint from the castle gardens, the tendrils of vapor curling through the candlelit air. Steve doesn’t put you down even then, instead, he sits you gently on the bench beside the basin, kneeling at your feet to help you shuck what little fabric remains—he mutters apologies for how he’d torn your nightdress, but the glint in his eyes as he peels it away makes clear that he is not sorry at all.

Then he draws you to your feet guides you into the tub. The heat and warmth of the water is its own bliss, and you sigh happily as you sink down, drawing your legs close to your chest so there’s room for your husband to join you. But your eyes rove over his body with the additional light afforded from the candles all around. His big frame is battered and taut, an altar of old and new wounds. The bruises are vivid, purple and ochre blooms against his ribs and limbs, and there’s a long, slick scar bisecting the length of his thigh—a new addition, pink and angry. Your hands go there, trembling, and you gently dare to brush over it. “Did this—?”

“A saber, but only a graze,” he assures you as he folds himself into the hot water before you.

You reach for the soap and, with hands steadier than your heart, begin to wash him. You are methodical, a surgeon’s precision in the way you map every contusion and cut, each new story etched into his skin. He keeps his eyes closed, breath even, but when you press a little too close to a darkening bruise at his ribs, he inhales sharply, and you murmur a quiet apology.

Steve’s head tips back, a breath escaping him as your hands knead over the muscle. “Don’t worry,” he says at last, “looks worse than it ever felt.” He’s lying, but you forgive him for it, and your hands continue up, methodically, as you chase away the grime and bruises with the warmth of your touch.

“Talk to me,” you say, voice as gentle as your hands. “Tell me what happened. All of it, or as much as you can bear.”

He sinks, for a moment, into the steam, and exhales. “We pressed north with two hundred, mostly foot soldiers, some cavaliers. Sam led the advance. Bucky rode the left flank, and I took right.” Steve’s words thicken with the memory, and your hands, moving over the breadth of his shoulder, pause to let him speak. “We gained ground at first, too easily, and that was itself a warning. Hydra never leaves the doors open unless they’ve set a trap on the other side.” His jaw works, silent for a moment, so you urge him with a subtle scruff of the soap up the plane of his chest.

“We lost the scouting party, and nearly the whole west flank. Sam doubled back, drew a third of their force away long enough to let us regroup, but it was—” he pauses, then resumes, “but Sam’s unit had it worst.” The lilt of regret, heavy and bitter, is thick in Steve’s voice. “Hydra cycles their men like ghosts. You think they’re beaten, but they come back. They set up false camps. They sent false surrenders, decoys, even children as messengers.” He rubs his face, the sound rasping over his stubble, and you ache with the urge to fold yourself around him, to protect what’s left unscathed.

You wait, patient, as he rakes a wet hand through his hair, as if the gesture might physically clear the images from his mind. “For a time, the only way we could keep ahead was to match their malice with our own terror. Every morning, I expected to hear Bucky or Sam was gone, or that Hydra had burned another town or hanged another farmer for the example. But after a month, we stopped losing men. We learned Hydra’s rhythms, their favorite tricks and forgeries. We started living in the loopholes, but it was difficult to know if we were making any progress or only playing games. Bucky’s men became shadows in their own right, impossible to pin down, and Sam—” He shakes his head, pride and worry perfectly commingled. “Sam learned to trade wounds for ground, and he never let the enemy see the same move twice.”

You urge Steve to turn his back to you so you could wash his hair, fingers gently kneading his scalp, and he groans warmly. After you rinse the suds from his hair, he leans back against you, sighing through the ache of memory. You gather him closer, folding your knees to bracket his hips beneath the surface. He lets you pull him down to rest between your thighs, his head heavy on your chest, your arms closing around his torso.

“After we learned to survive,” Steve goes on, voice low, “it was a stalemate. Hydra would not break us, but we could not find their center. Every time we tried to press the advantage, they shifted—like smoke through a sieve. I started to worry that their real aim was only to keep us locked there, bleeding months and men into the border, until they could break the kingdom from behind. And the longer it went on, the worse I thought it would get, until—” his expression shifts, and you see a flicker of reluctant gratitude. “Until it didn’t. Until we got help.”

“Help?”

“From the east. The Wakandans. I never even saw them coming, and neither did the Hydrans.” He opens his eyes at last, and you’re startled by how alert they are, how alive. Steve sits up and turns, reaching for a clean cloth next to the tub and taking the soap from your hands before he begins to clean your skin. “King T’Challa and his people had been watching for years, waiting until Hydra showed itself as enough of a threat to risk intervening.”

You feel a cold thrill run through your arms. You’d heard the legends of Wakanda—every child had, the kingdom that never fell, the city disappeared into legend. The scholars called it the dream of a utopia. Most everyone else called it a fable. No one in your lifetime had ever seen a Wakandan, let alone fought side by side with them. Yet, here is Steve, speaking of them not as rumor, but as comrades in arms.

“Bucky made the contact. He snuck away without my knowledge or permission after midnight, escaping through the woods. He went in alone and was gone almost six days. When he returned, it was with the Black Panther T’Challa himself and his advance guard, the Dora Milaje. They didn’t bring an army—didn’t need to—they brought knowledge. Maps, codes, infiltrators. One week with them by our side and we gained back what we’d lost in a month. We crushed their lines, liberated two towns, and forced the Hydrans into retreat before they could torch the wheat fields for the year’s supply.”

You shiver. “Are they gone?” Steve presses a warm, soapy cloth to your back, working methodically, his hands slow and gentle.

“Hydra? Never gone.” Steve’s mouth is a thin, exhausted line. “But for now we’ve at least bought time and freedom for our corner of this realm.”

He dips the cloth, wrings it out, traces the line of your spine. “T’Challa found me alone the night we finally prevailed. Said he had ridden out our way for three days before encountering Bucky, wanted to see if I was worthy of the throne I claimed.”

The line of his hands on your back is steady as a metronome, but you feel the tiniest tremor in his fingers—a tell you’ve come to know, rare as a celestial event in your resolute king. “And you are,” you say resolutely, voice barely more than a hush above the bathwater’s surface, but you know he hears you.

He presses his lips to the nape of your neck, murmuring your name like a prayer and a secret, and then, as if reluctant to break the spell of closeness, simply breathes you in for a long moment. You listen to the slow force of his heartbeat, the steady cadence of his breathing as it stitches the two of you together, crowned and made new by the intimacy of this moment.

“But the Black Panther said what?” you prompt, the words barely audible against the hush of the bathwater.

He smiles—a small, tired thing, but real. “T’Challa agreed with you,” he says, and at last a glimmer of warmth creeps in. “He said he expected a king and found a man with his heart already outside his own body. Said any ruler who needed every man to make it home, every village to survive, and who would not quit even when he ought, was a king Wakanda could respect.”

Now you turn and wrap your arms around his shoulders, faces close. “You earned it from the hour you took it. T’Challa sees what I see, what your people have seen for so many years.” You thumb another drop of water off his cheek, this one less bath and more the gleaming edge of emotion, though he blinks and it’s gone as if it never existed. He touches your jaw, and you realize he is searching for reassurance—your faith in him, not as a king, not as a hero of blood and iron, but as a man.

You let your words be the kiss you press to his mouth, letting him breathe it in, letting it fill whatever void the campaign carved. He kisses back with a fervency that tells you he hasn’t let himself need this softness, not in all the weeks gone. When his lips break from yours, he draws you up from the bath and pulls a towel around you, enfolding you close together until your body is pressed to his, toweling off your chilled arms as the steam clings to your skin and your knees all but buckle from that first step onto the flagstone. Steve’s big hands span your ribs, steadying you, and you realize for the thousandth time that no matter how battered the world leaves this man, he will always, always be careful with you.

You half-collapse onto the nearest cushioned bench, and he kneels in front of you, draping thick terrycloth over your shoulders, running his hands up and down your arms as if he could physically rub the exhaustion out of your bloodstream. You let yourself soak up all his diligent care, letting your forehead rest against his.

After Steve dries himself, he reaches down, and you tut when he tries to carry you again. But you do lean into him as you pad alongside him back into the bed chamber.

He tucks you into bed, drawing the blankets up to your chin, before climbing in beside you. The heat of his body radiates through your bones and into your marrow. The silence between you is companionable, but it is also thick. You feel the press of unspoken things, secrets still caught and locked away in the web of his breathing. There are always losses in war, and these will weigh on Steve the most, some he may still never share, but clearly some still on his mind at present—so you ask, softly, “How many did you bring home?”

His arms tighten once, a reflex, and he hesitates. “Most,” he says, but it is a careful word, and you feel the lack of completeness in it. “We lost fewer than we would have, and returned sooner than we would have if not for the Wakandans. The men did everything asked and more. The kingdom won’t forget what they endured, or what they gave.”

You twist, catching his gaze full-on. “And what are you still weighing whether or not to speak of now?”

He does not answer immediately. The air in the room shifts, a chill rolling in around the edges, and you tense. He turns you toward him, brushes the back of his knuckle down your cheek, but his eyes do not match the gentleness of his touch. They are hollow now, haunted.

“Steve?”

He looks away, jaw clenched. “Bucky didn’t come back with us,” he says.

You gasp, the sound violent in the hush, a thousand terrors flickering through your. Your breath is gone, enormous panic and sadness all at once clawing at your chest. “He’s—” but you can’t finish the word, as if saying it aloud will make it true.

But Steve sees the panic, and his hands close around your shoulders, anchoring you, voice urgent. “He is not dead. I am sorry—I should have said. He lives.” The relief is so sharp you nearly sob, and you clamp your mouth shut, forcing yourself to focus as Steve continues. “It was the last push, near the end. Bucky was at my side, spearheading the charge. He caught a Hydra blade that should have killed me. The bastard nearly took off his arm—nearly all the way to the socket. T’Challa and the Dora Milaje took him back to Wakanda. They said there is hope, real hope, that their science and magic could fix what was ruined.”

Relief floods through you in a tidal wave so strong you sink into the mattress, and Steve holds on to you, anchoring both of you in the moment. You press your face to his shoulder, and he’s tense again, and you realize it’s not from cold, not from want, but from the toll of weeks without rest, without certainty.

You take three deep breaths, in and out, remembering that you are two hearts, and you are here for each other, wanting to soothe his weary soul. You kiss him, soft and slow, and when you pull back, you cup his jaw in your hands so that you can anchor him to you, steady his rarely-wavering heart with the constancy of your own.

“If anyone can survive that,” you say, “it is Bucky, and if anyone can heal him, it must be Wakanda.” You run your thumb over the sharp ridge of Steve’s collarbone. “He will come back to us. I know he will. But you owe him nothing less than your full faith, and your rest, until then.”

Steve’s brow pinches, a flash of pain in the blue of his eyes, but it softens as you stroke your hand down his arm, careful around a constellation of bruises. “We lived through things I will never want you to see,” he says, “but I need you to know this: I thought of you every day. Every day, you kept me coming back through the mire and the blood. No matter how bad it got, I would see your face and—” he pauses, as if pulled back, then exhales. “It was not the idea of the kingdom, or duty. It was just you. Only ever you, and our future.” The last words are accompanied by his hand spanning the swell of your stomach, the life growing there. The words are lead and gold, both a confession and a benediction, and you hold them in your heart like an amulet. The two of you kiss, fervent, treasured.

After a long, close silence, Steve sighs, the last of the tension leaving him with the exhale. Suddenly, you realize he has grown deadweight against you. The steady rise and fall of his chest turns slower, deeper, and in the hush between heartbeats you realize he’s falling asleep, right there in your arms, battle-bruised but finally at peace. You feel the urge to let him drift, to watch him as you often did in those early months, but now it’s different, even more tangible. Now you see every crease, every new scar, every effort he made to haul himself home to you, and you understand that the kingdom you two are building is not made of stone and banners, but of this—of the bodies and the hearts that come together and re-forge themselves in these moments. You are not merely king and queen, but husband and wife. And because you know he would never let you keep watch alone, not even in his sleep, you close your eyes, too, and let yourself drift with him, twin stars fused against the hush of what’s left of the night before dawn.

My heaaaaarrrrrt! I thought of these two often, and I knew the shapes of what I wanted, but it took so long to sort them out, and we can all thank @stargazingfangirl18 for helping me figure out the bits that were sticking for me and my muse.

BUT KING STEVE! I love him with my whole chest! I'm glad I finally got to share him with you again.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

You beam, hands clasped behind your back in an attempt to contain your giddy pride. “A surprise for your team for their Monday. You said they’ve been running on fumes and caffeine, so I thought maybe…a little sugar rush? Carbs can work wonders for office morale.”

He eyes the basket like you’ve potentially booby-trapped it. “You baked all this?”

You nod, rocking on your heels. “You know I did! There’s lemon bars, the espresso brownies you like, and—” you tap the gingham napkin tucked around a lumpy loaf “—honey oat bread for the gluten-free intern. I made extra, just in case.”

There’s also a braided bread ring in the middle, surrounded by flaky turnovers, a whole loaf of banana bread (you went heavy on the chocolate chips), and two rows of sugar cookies decorated as conversation hearts. The XOXO one is your favorite.

“But I thought you were just living your best baking life for us. I didn’t know I’dd have to share it.”

You lift one of your shoulders in an exaggerated, playful shrug and smile sweetly at him.

Lloyd squints at the selection, then back at you. “So, you want me to show up to work with this basket and hand out cookies like some kind of—” he gestures vaguely “—PTA mom?”

You wrinkle your nose, a little wounded. “You can just set it on the break room table. You don’t have to announce it or anything. But, I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to have people associate you with something other than terror and passive-aggressive motivational emails?”

Lloyd’s mouth purses like he’s bit into a lemon—not one of the lemon bars—and you watch the internal struggle play out as he weighs your efforts against…whatever bones in his body are rebelling against showing any modicum of niceness to his coworkers. He huffs, resigned, and starts hunting for a travel mug. “Fine. I’ll bring your—” he squints at the basket again “—heart-attack sampler to the office.” He pointedly ignores the smiley cookies, but you see him sneak one as soon as he thinks you’re not looking.

You grin into your coffee. “You’re secretly soft, Lloyd. It’ll be good for you to practice more of it before the baby comes.”

“I’m not soft,” he mutters, then glances at you, still full-frowning. “You’re just, like, a relentless kindness blizzard. Nobody can stand up to that.”

You beam.

.:MONDAY EVENING:.

When Lloyd comes home, it’s with the kind of energy of a man who has spent a full day stomping out metaphorical fires, slamming the door like it’s the front door’s fault. You barely have time to register the sound of his keys being tossed into the bowl in the entryway before he’s in the kitchen and on you, lifting you bodily against the fridge and kissing you with the kind of bruising, insistent hunger that says something inside him has snapped, but in a good way.

You barely get out an “Oh—” before he’s got your pants unzipped and pushing down over your hips, his hands already unceremoniously shoving your underwear aside. He’s still in full office drag, minus the tie, sleeves rolled up to the crook of his elbows. His collar is open, and under the harsh kitchen light his knuckles are pink and raw-looking, as if he’s had to white-knuckle his way through the entire day.

“You made me a goddamn celebrity,” he growls against your mouth, his voice ragged and reverent, his hands absolutely everywhere. “I had to listen to a dozen people tell me how thoughtful and ‘refreshing’ it was, and the fucking intern almost cried.”

You break into helpless laughter, clutching at his shoulders as he props you harder against the refrigerator door. “You’re welcome,” you manage, between giggles and gasps as his mouth finds the sensitive spot just under your ear. “Did they like the cookies?”

“Of course the liked your fucking cookies! They were delicious,” he huffs, carrying you over to the counter. “All day, it was ‘Is this your wife’s recipe?’, ‘Will she teach us her secret?’, ‘You should marry her again these are so good’. I couldn’t get through one email without someone licking brownie off their fingers and their productivity went through the goddamn roof.”

You bite a giggle into his neck; he groans, the vibration transmitting from his throat straight into your chest. His hands are everywhere, kneading into the meat of your ass. “And all I could think about all day? How fucking proud I was to have the best fucking wife on the planet and how I couldn’t wait to devour your sweet pussy the way they were devouring those treats.”

“I was just trying to help,” you say, breathless as he kisses down your jaw, over the place where your pulse beats wild.

“All. Day. Pumpkin,” he repeats. “I didn’t get one single goddamn moment’s peace, couldn’t send an email, all my meetings derailed because HR turned into your personal fangirl squad, so now I’m going to fucking ruin you.”

You don’t have time to bask in the delight of his confession because Lloyd spins you, physically bracing your hands against the counter of the kitchen island. He presses at the small of your back until your lower half is arched provocatively, ass out, just the way he likes. He’s rough, not mean, but so insistent you can’t help but gasp as he yanks your panties all the way down to your knees.

You feel the wet heat of his tongue before his hands dig in and spread you open. The first lap is greedy, almost punishing, as if he’s trying to erase the sugar high with something saltier, dirtier, and entirely his.

He laps at you messily, groaning unselfconsciously. You grip the countertop, knuckles white, hips lifted into the ferocious rhythm of his mouth. He suckles your clit like it’s his own private vendetta and you have no choice but to tremble, to rut back against his slick, talented mouth, and that bonus feature of a mustache.

“You missed a spot,” you joke, voice quavering on the edge of laughter and something more ragged.

Lloyd’s answering snarl is muffled but so fucking pleased. He slaps the inside of one of your thighs, and you yelp. The tip of his nose nudges between your folds. The sloppy noise of spit and arousal is loud and obscene and perfect.

You end up with your forehead pressed to the cool marble, hands scrabbling for the edge as he eats you out with single-minded dedication.

He doesn’t slow—not when you beg, not when you whimper, not even when your thighs begin to shake with the effort of staying upright. You’re trembling so hard your thighs shake, the marble threatening to crack your teeth as you try to bite back the noises you’re making. Lloyd is relentless, alternating between full-tongue swipes and tight, focused circles around your clit, never quite letting you settle into a rhythm before he yanks it away. You choke on a moan, his name splitting into a plaintive mewl.

He pulls off with a wet pop, spit and slick connecting you for a moment. “You gonna come for me, baby?”

You nod, maybe a little violently, vision gone soft around the edges.

“Use your words,” Lloyd demands, licking a shiny stripe up from your entrance then blowing gently, sending goosebumps arcing over your ass and down both legs.

“Please,” you gasp, desperate. “I want it, I need—fuck, Lloyd—”

“Yeah?”

You shove your hips greedily into his face, words dissolving into moans. "Yes, please, I need to come, Lloyd—"

"That's what I want to fucking hear." His tongue is all brute force, no mercy, and your body shudders at the edge before a decisive, hard suck on your clit pushes you over the cliff and pleasure shatters through you.

Lloyd holds you through it, arms tight around your hips, mouth never leaving you, almost as if he plans to keep you in that state forever. When you sag, boneless and trembling, against the countertop, he licks you clean—gentler now, but still greedy—before standing and dragging his mouth up your back, his teeth catching on the ridge of your spine through your rumpled shirt.

He straightens, wiping his chin with the back of his hand, and looms over you. “You’re not going to out-nice me, Pumpkin,” he says, the roughness catching on the softness underneath. “You want to spoil people? This is how I spoil you.”

BAHAHAHAHA I FORGOT HOW MUCH I LOVE THESE TWO!

Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

It has been long enough that he truly doesn’t even cross your mind when there’s a knock at your door on a Thursday night. You are just taking a swig from your emotional support water bottle, surveying your closet, deciding what to pack when there’s a sharp knock. Not the tentative knuckle-rap of a neighbor in distress or the pathetic fumble of a package delivery guy, but you’re not expecting anyone. Maybe it’s a drop off for something you forgot you bought online…

You pad toward the door in fuzzy socks, water bottle in hand, and for a second in your approach you consider ignoring it. Maybe if you waited, whoever it was would float away.

But the knock comes again, more insistent, and since you’ve already made it to the front door, you satisfy your curiosity.

You peer through the peephole, expecting anything but the face figure you see standing on your doorstep: Bucky Barnes, his eyes even bluer than you remember, his jaw locked tight, a large paper bag clutched in one arm.

And you—traitor that you are—open the door without hesitation, even as all the hurt feelings you told yourself you couldn’t have, that you had stuffed away into corners and cracks, burst and surge all at once, hot and cold and weird inside your chest.

He’s not in anything resembling one of his usual night shift getups or the hard-wearing denims and black tees you’d become accustomed to seeing him in. Instead, he’s clean-shaven and sharp in a blue-grey henley and a bomber jacket. He’s as tall and as broad as ever, filling up your doorway and the entire frame of your life.

You recover first. “Bucky.” You shouldn’t let the surprise hollow your voice, but you do.

“Hey.” He keeps his head straight but looks you up and down anyway, as if you might not be you.

Silence suffocates the space between you. Then, eyes cutting away, he hoists the bag. “Can I come in?”

You blink at him. Then frown and blink again. “What is that?” you nod at the bag.

“Dinner?”

You press your lips firmly together while you teeter on the edge, but then you find the matching firmness in your voice to say, “No, Bucky.”

“Yes,” he presses, shifting from one foot to the other. “Please.”

“No.”

“Just dinner.” He shifts his weight back to the other foot again.

“Just dinner? Hell no.” But it’s that shifting, that his own intentions are hedged with hesitancy, that compels you to at least share the thoughts surging in your mind that have the upper hand, have you refusing him. “We weren’t serious, Bucky, and then you slept in my bed four nights in a row, let me go off on a brunch date with someone else, which, sure, fine, we hadn’t established anything, but then you completely dropped off the radar for months. Radio silence. So any of that easy casual connection we had? You erased that from existence.”

There’s no flicker of offense in his eyes when you say it, only a grinding focus, the set of his jaw working as if he is loathe to waste his words. “It was only fucking,” he says, then tries again. “It was supposed to be only fucking.”

You let out a brittle, incredulous laugh, because of course that’s what he would open with. “Hell of a sales pitch, Bucky.”

He shakes his head, running a hand through hair that’s still long, but no longer greasy. “No, listen. You wanna shut the door in my face, I’ll get it, but if I can’t say it over dinner, let me get the next part out.”

You cross your arms, lean against the jamb, let him see you aren’t planning on making this easy.

“I could have kept going forever, just like that. I’d get off work, I’d think about your legs or your mouth or how you looked at me when I was inside you, and it was just… no expectations, no demands, unconventional, but easy. Easier than anything in my fucking life, and I didn’t know what we had was like breathing until I saw you in real life, and then I tried to breathe in as much of you as I could, because even if I only ever got scraps and leftovers and the hours before dawn, it was the first thing that ever made me want to start to trade my day for something again.”

He looks down, like he’s afraid you’ll see the rest of it in his face. “But then I thought—what the fuck was I even offering you? Some burned-out divorcee in a dead-end job, a guy with a kid who when he gets him is always going to come first, and maybe he teaches you to come so hard you cry sometimes, but that’s all he’s good for.”

He glances up, the sharpness wavering in the chill of his voice. “And then I saw you in real life, and I saw him flirting with you, and I should have just given you a clean break altogether, but I took selfish gulps of air at the end because I needed them if I was going to give you the clean break you deserved.”

You push off the door, uncross your arms, and plant your hands on your hips. “That’s not your call. Whatever story you told yourself, you didn’t even try to talk to me.”

Bucky lets out a sharp breath, squeezing his eyes shut so hard his lashes knit together. “You’re right,” he says, so softly you almost don’t hear it. “You’re right about your half of the story, but you don’t know mine because I never gave you the chance.” He licks his lips, wrestling with the words. “I was going to keep it just fucking, just those nights, and then those four in a row, I—”

He stops, and so does your heart.

Then he continues.

“I knew after that, that I wanted every night. Not just the ones you’d let me sneak in, but all of them. And I also knew that if I didn’t figure out what the fuck I was doing with my life, who I was when the sun was up, I’d fuck up the chance to ever have you outside of those hours.”

There’s no more breath in your lungs, and your chest is tight and aching at that admission. “That… Damn it, Bucky. That might be worth forgiving.”

“No, I’m not asking for forgiveness yet. Just dinner.”

You lower your hands from your hips, lowering your defenses.

He holds out the bag as if the weight of it could tip the balance, and you can’t help but notice he’s trembling. You have never seen Bucky tremble, not in anger, not in lust, not even when he’d held your hand on an October night and made you come so hard you forgot to breathe for a few seconds. It’s too meaningful to be funny.

You step aside.

He doesn’t rush past you, doesn’t touch you, just gives a short nod and carries the paper bag to your kitchen counter. You follow, arms wrapped around yourself, cold and prickly under the white-blue light of the hallway.

Bucky sets the bag down gently. There’s steak and a bottle of wine, a salad, and roasted vegetables ready to be cooked. You had expected takeout, and so this means so much more. There’s also a medium-sized bagguette and a sleeve of fancy macarons. He lays it all out, not looking at you but not avoiding you either—just methodical, lining everything parallel to the edge of the counter. He uncorks the wine and finds your mismatched Ikea glasses without having to ask where you keep them.

You’re so thrown by the domesticity, the odd gentleness of it, you forget to say anything until he pours you a glass and slides it across the counter.

“Hope you aren’t vegan now,” he says, glancing at the steak, and it’s so dumb and small that it yanks a little laugh from you.

“No,” you confirm.

“Pans?” he asks.

You point to the cupboard he needs, he nods, takes his jacket off, slinging it over a chair, then rolles his sleeves up, and starts moving around the kitchen.

You just stand there for a minute, arms still crossed, letting yourself orbit around the sheer strangeness of the next few minutes. Bucky moving about your space, retrieving pans, flicking the stove flame to life, running the tap until it runs cold before filling a glass for himself. You catch yourself staring at the breadth of his shoulders, the way the cuff of his henley clings to the muscle of his forearm, the tattoo crowning his right wrist, the light glinting off the black and gold of his metal arm. Every domestic thing he does reminds you of a hundred indecent things you’d done together, and the paradox of it scrambles you.

He peppers the steak lightly, bastes it in butter and thyme, and it starts to sizzle. He slides the vegetables into the oven to warm up slowly, then starts on the salad. His hands are skilled and fast. He opens the bagged greens and adds chopped up vegetables and then soft goat cheese and something that looks suspiciously like homemade vinaigrette.

You perch on the corner of the counter, cold laminate against the palm of one of your hands, the other swirling the wine in your glass.

He glances up from the pan. “Used to cook a lot. At home growing up, then with my kid. Before.”

The ‘before’ hangs in the air, and you let it.

“We’re cooking again.”

“You never told me about him,” you say, the words heavier than you want, but not unkind.

“There’s a lot of talking we didn’t do, but I want to now.”

He moves the steak to a plate, lets it rest, and then turns the burner low, his hands occupied just for the sake of occupation. "He's seven," Bucky says, and this time the weight comes in the form of unexpected pride, so gentle it almost evaporates the tension between you. "And he lives with his mom most of the time." The corner of his mouth twitches. "He’s the only person in the world who can put me in my place in three words or fewer."

You don’t know what to say, so instead you sip the wine he poured, letting it coat your tongue as you study the set of his shoulders, the way his hands clench and unclench on the handle of the skillet.

He’s said so much tonight already. Meanwhile you have no idea what to say. He came here hoping to talk, had been preparing for who knows how long.

He cuts the steak with a precision you remember from his hands in other contexts, lays it out on white plates, spoons the roasted vegetables alongside.

He gestures to join him at the small table, and you do so, resisting the urge to turn on music or the TV just to have something between you. Bucky pours more wine, then picks up his fork, looking at you straight on for the first time.

He says, “I’m not great at this part.” Then, as if the stakes can’t get any higher or lower at the same time, “But you got in my head.”

You want to laugh—don’t, but want to—because the idea of Bucky Barnes, who used to show up at your place just to fuck you until you lost track of what year it was, being so fundamentally unsettled by you feels completely unmooring.

“So what do you want from me, Bucky?”

His knife trembles lightly against his plate. “I want a new chapter. I don’t want to erase what we had. I just want to try to do the things outside the bedroom, too.”

You chew on that for the length of a single, deliberate sip of wine. “So…you’re not here for sex, then?”

He starts to smile, catches himself, then lets it sit crooked on his face. “I wouldn’t turn it down if it was on the dessert menu, but no. Not tonight. Tonight I want to see if you actually hate me, or if you just want to.” He leans back, surveying you like you’re a chess problem and he’s two moves away from checkmate—or losing completely.

“But if we did want it?” you volley, because you can’t help yourself. “What, you’d stay the night and then make me pancakes in the morning?”

He shrugs. Shrugs with so much surprising humility it almost makes you want to throw yourself at him immediately. “I’d burn them probably. But I’d try. And then I’d eat the burned ones and give you the good ones.”

You can’t help but laugh.

“Look, I needed time. To get my shit together. For you, for my kid, for me, too, but mostly so that if I came back, it wasn’t as the same guy who’d already hurt you. I’m still building, but I’m sturdy now.”

“I don’t need any more convincing about you, Bucky,” you say, and you surprise yourself at the evenness of your voice, the lack of sharpness or ache. He blinks, confused, maybe a little hurt, and you soften it with a half smile. “You’re not the only one who needed time, Bucky. You’re not the only project under renovation.”

He nods, lips pressed thin, but doesn’t jump to fill the air. There’s a chunk of silence, brittle and clean as the edge of a cold glass. You take a bite of steak, the sauce tangy on your tongue, and you realize you’re hungry, really hungry—starved not just for food but for what’s on the table here. The possibility. The risk.

You say, “It was always easy with you because we had no expectations. I don’t know what it looks like if we have expectations. I’ve…” you swallow and look down at your food. I’ve never really been anyone’s first choice," you finish, quietly. “At work, I’m the one who always gets the project over the finish line, who closes the client, who makes everyone look good. But in the romance arena? I’ve never been the girl a guy really wanted. Second choice, or enough to date but not to commit. And after a while, you just… stop trying to be.”

Your fork hovers over the roasted carrots as you try to explain it. “It was easy with you because there was nothing to mess up. I could just… show up. I could just want, and not worry about proving anything.”

Bucky leans forward, arms braced on the table. “Maybe that’s why we kept coming back for more. You weren’t trying to impress me, or get me to stay, or whatever it is people do when they want to keep a guy around. You just were. And I could be, too.” He shrugs, the smallest upward hitch of his shoulders.

“That’s what worked about you, about us. It didn’t matter how you failed at small talk, or how I sometimes forgot to shave. You always wanted the unfiltered version.” The longer it went on, the more you started to believe that maybe—just maybe—there was nothing wrong with the unfiltered version. That it wasn’t a project or a mess, just a person who wanted things and sometimes got them, and sometimes didn’t.

You shrug and make yourself look up at him. "I think we both got kind of addicted to that freedom. I didn't know how much I wanted it until I had it with you." You pause, thumbing the condensation off your glass, then say it. "That's why I cared when you disappeared. It wasn’t just the sex or the nights or the breakfastless mornings, it was”—you gesture helplessly—“having somewhere to set down the things I usually keep zipped up.”

Bucky watches you, he doesn’t try to fill the silence. He’s lets it land. He’s letting all of it land, until it fills the room the way the smell of steak and butter and wine fills the room, a saturating, inescapable presence.

You sigh. “I missed you, but I also kept living. I went on that date—”

“With Aiden Hartley,” he says, like he’s reading it off a page, no inflection, no need for confirmation. “The Golden Retriever.”

You want to laugh, but it comes out thin, more like a shiver. “He’s not…” But you don’t bother to finish, because he is, and you both know it.

“He’s what you’re supposed to want.”

You drop your head, smiling at the truth of it, because Bucky Barnes was not a golden retriever. He was a German shepherd, or a wolf, or some other half-wild creature, and the wildness ran all the way out to the ends of his hair, to the corners of his ever-hungry mouth. But here he was, making you dinner, asking—however awkwardly—for a new chance.

You stir your salad, let a leaf dangle over your fork a moment before taking a small bite. "I don’t think I want supposed-to anymore," you say tentatively, as if saying it out loud might make it less true.

Bucky nods, slowly, like he understands the weight of it. He reaches across the table for your hand, cautiously, as if you might refuse. You don’t. His hand is warm and rough and unexpectedly gentle. “I’m not going anywhere this time unless you ask. You can set the tempo. We can go slow.” He grins, that old devil-may-care edge peeking through. "Or not."

You pull your hand away—not in anger, but because you have to explain the other half of the equation.

“You picked a hell of a night to come back.” The words walk the line between accusation and marvel, but you let them hang as you push to your feet. “I’m supposed to be packing for a weekend away. With Aiden. He invited me to his family’s lake house. I thought it’d be polite to bring him cookies.” You shrug, half-sheepish, half-defiant. “That’s why there are three kinds of cookies cooling on the counter.”

Bucky’s gaze flicks over counter of cookies and then back to you, trying to laugh but not quite pulling it off. “So, you’re going, then?”

“I don’t know.” It comes out before you even realize it’s true. "I said yes before I knew I was going to see you again."

Bucky stands, his shoulders back, but it’s not a posture of intimidation. It’s the posture of a man accepting a verdict. “You don’t owe me anything. If you wanna go, you should.”

He says it so simply, as if he'd come to your door resigned to the idea he might be rejected outright—and yet you hear the strain in his voice, the way he can’t help but hope he’s still in the running.

You look at him, really look. His heir nicely trimmed, his eyes clear, not the haunted, hungry thing they used to be. He’s standing with his hands braced on the back of the chair, waiting for you to dismiss him or ask him to stay. He would take either. He just wants something to be decided.

You cross to the counter, the cold tile bracing under your hands. You stare at the three sets of cookies, lined up in their rows on cooling racks like little soldiers or little children waiting to be picked for teams.

You try to imagine the weekend, all of it: the long drive with Aiden, the polite laughter with his family, sunburn and dockside beers and maybe, maybe a lazy hand sliding up your thigh.

“I haven’t even slept with him,” you admit.

The way Bucky’s blue eyes narrow, then flare in surprise, makes you want to laugh. You don’t, but a smile creeps at the edge of your lips.

“It’s not that he didn’t try,” you add, rolling the stem of your wineglass between thumb and forefinger. “We just never… got there.”

“Didn’t want to?” Bucky asks, voice low.

You think about all the ways you could answer, all the complicated, self-sabotaging truths. Think about the way you let yourself drift, not wanting to want, not wanting to have to want. The way Aiden always texted in the daytime, full of plans and sunlit optimism, always asking what you needed and never once reading your mind. He made you laugh, made you feel soft and seen, but never lit your skin up, never made you yearn.

“I wanted to want to. But I wanted to want him badly. A want that’s like a need, you know?” Your voice is a whisper now, even though it's just the two of you in the apartment. "But I never did."

Bucky nods, considering. "Doesn't mean he's not a good guy."

"He probably is," you say, and it's not a knock on him. It's just that he isn't the one standing in your kitchen right now, the one already tangled up in the hard and hopeful corners of your heart.

Bucky props himself on the counter, his arms folded tight, gaze sharp but not unkind. He asks, “So what is it you do want?” And the question lands with a gentle, seismic jolt, shaking loose all the denial and deflection you’ve been layering over the answer.

You meet his eyes and say it, plain as day: “You.” It isn’t a confession so much as a release, a muscle unclenching after months of useless tension. “I want you,” you say.

The words hang there, unornamented and true.

Bucky’s breath leaves him in a rush—relief and surprise and a little bit of terror, if you’re reading him right. He searches your face for a long second, as if waiting for an asterisk or a punchline, but you offer neither.

He says, “Okay,” and the smallest smile, raw and unvarnished, breaks through. “Okay.”

Bucky doesn’t swoop in, doesn’t clutch you or cross the space; he just stands still, as if even that might be taken away if he poked it wrong. Meanwhile, all the desire and clamor—need, want, fuck all—crashes into you at once, and you’re the one who closes the gap. In a few steps you’re in his arms, and at first you expect the animal, destructive Bucky who used to wreck your nights and leave you on other planets, body and breath rearranged. But this isn’t that—he opens his arms and you tumble, all of you, into him, and he holds you so tight and certain that you can’t help but smile.

You taste the wine on his mouth before you taste his mouth, and the old rhythm is still there—a short kiss, then a slow one, then a small, ridiculous peck on the tip of your nose that makes you want to slap him, so you do, lovingly and hard, and he grabs your wrist, yanks you into his chest, and then it’s all teeth and hunger and the world finally remembers how to spin.

The first time he puts his hands on you, really on you, it’s not the demolition derby of past nights. His touch is steady, almost reverent, as if the sheer fact of you wanted and in his arms is a miracle he’s not sure he deserves. You can feel the tremor in his fingers, the restraint in every inch of pressure, and you know it would only take a word to tip him into the animal again. But tonight, he’s building, not knocking down.

He kisses you again, more sure but not more aggressive, mouth slotting to yours the way you knew it would. You think, absently, about the cookies lined up like sweet little casualties, but then he is kissing your neck, bracing you by the hips, and your ass is on the counter. You have no memory of climbing up on the counter, but that’s where you are, knees bracketing his waist and hands fisted in the front of his shirt.

His hands slide up your calves, your thighs, catch the waistband of your leggings, and in one smooth tug he pulls them and your socks clean off, peeling you down to bare skin before you can even register a protest. You remember with a half-laugh, half-gasp that you didn't bother with underwear, and the effect on him is seismic. He stares, wolfish, for half a beat, then drops to his knees right there on your linoleum, crowding between your thighs with such intent that if you tried to close your legs you'd snap his jaw.

"Bucky," you start, but can't finish, because he's already bent in, hands bracketing your hips, pushing you open, mouth working down your inner thigh. You want to call it hunger but it's more than that—it's just as much apology. He's slow at first, reverent, the tip of his nose tracing the crease of your thigh, lips sucking a small bruise onto your skin as if to re-mark you as his. His hands, metal and flesh, cradle your thighs, thumbs pressing slow circles into your skin as he finally, finally puts his mouth on you, tongue hot and sure.

It's obscene, the things his tongue can do, the way he flattens it and drags it, then darts and circles, every pass mapped from a memory of what you liked and still like, even if you try for a second to pretend you are untouched territory. He’s more patient about it now, and you realize how used to violence you’d become, how you’d trained your body to expect nothing soft, to wince at the thought of it. But tonight there’s nothing vicious, nothing rough, just the measured, relentless way he laps and sucks until your legs shake and you are gasping his name in a way that would embarrass you if not for how much you want to give it to him.

He groans against you, the vibration low and guttural, and the sound tips you over the edge. Though it arrives quickly—your body clearly starved for him—it’s not a loud or dramatic orgasm. It’s a slow, full-body shudder that leaves you boneless and clinging to the edge of the counter, your heels digging into his shoulder blades, your fingers knotted in his hair. He rides it out with you, never breaking rhythm, the slide of his tongue and the weight of his arms around your thighs making you feel as helpless and held as you’ve ever felt.

When you finally gasp out his name—“Bucky, Jesus, please”—he draws back, his mouth shining, his chest rising and falling with the kind of restraint you understand on a molecular level. He rests his forehead against the soft skin of your inner thigh for two measured breaths, hands still braced around you like he’s half-worried this isn’t real.

Only then does he lift his head, face flushed, eyes dark, and survey the damage.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and leans up, kissing the inside of your knee. “I’ve waited months to eat your sweet cunt again,” he says, humble and triumphant all at once.

You can't help it: you laugh, though it's still shaped like a sob, even as your skin is flaring alive with pleasure and the ache for more.

He stands, pulls you forward until you’re perched right at the edge, feet off the floor, chest to chest, then kisses you, slow and deep, and you taste yourself on his tongue, which has always ruined you in ways you never could articulate.

You feel the hard shape of him pressed between your legs, and it would be so easy to just move your hips, to slide him against you and surrender to the next waves of sensation. But you don’t. He doesn’t either. He just holds you, arms circling your waist, his thumb tracing the curve of your hip.

He’s unhurried, as if he wants to memorize every new configuration of you, as if he’s in no hurry to fuck this up by fucking too soon. Instead, he kisses your jaw, your cheek, your brow. He basks in the scent of you, mouths against your ear in a way that used to make you crazy and still does. When you reach for the fly of his jeans, he catches your hand and wraps your fingers in his own.

He wants, you realize, to take you apart slowly. To undo you, not with brute force, but with every careful, covetous touch and word. It’s unsettling, this patience, like being stalked by a storm that’s content to wait, to gather itself up until you can’t remember what the sky looked like before. You’re so used to being ruined in a single, blinding rush, you almost don’t know what to do with the sensation of being worshipped instead, except this feels like what you started to have those nights the last week you spent tangled up together.

“You want to finish dinner first?” Bucky asks, but you can hear in his voice he hopes you say no, and you oblige.

You shake your head, “I want you,” and he exhales through his teeth.

He cups your face in his hands, drawing you back from the heat that threatens to swallow you both. His thumbs stroke your cheeks. “Not yet.” His voice is steady, but you can feel the leashed violence of his need.

You blink at him, confused. Didn’t he come here for all of this?

He shakes his head, gentle but insistent. “No more of us in the dark. You’re not with me until you’re not with him. You call him, or I leave. Right now.”

The words land with a thunk, heavy as a gavel. You should have expected this, but you didn’t. You’re not sure if you want to hit him or kiss him for it. But you know you’ll be infinitely glad he remembered you would want to do this as cleanly as you could for a guy who had never done anything wrong.

He wipes his mouth, the blush still high on his cheeks, then presses a peck to your forehead and withdraws.

You slide off the counter, legs wobbly, and retrieve your phone from the coffee table with the slow dread of someone about to cut a wire to diffuse a bomb.

You could text. But that would be cowardly, and even if you’re not in love, you do care about him. So you scroll to Aiden’s name and thumb the call icon, heart firing in your chest at the ring, at the thrill of doing the right thing and being terrified by the rightness of it.

He answers on the second ring, always dependable, always there for you. "Hey, you," he says, so warm you want to burn up for what you know you’re about to do.

You ask him how his day was. You do this because it’s how you always begin, because you want to hear something ordinary, to anchor yourself in what was nearly yours. He gives a steady, thoughtful answer, and it’s the kind of answer that would have stoked the hope you had for all the potential between you a few months ago—full of little observations, surprising you with a detail about his work, about his kid, about the barista at his usual coffee shop. He tells you he's picked up a new bottle of cold brew for the car ride. “I was about to text you. Is it okay if I grab you at seven tomorrow? I know that’s early but the road construction is killer on Fridays and—”

He’s trying for breezy; you can tell the difference now, six months in, between his real enthusiasm and his performance. And tonight, there’s a performance. You wonder if he senses something in your voice, in the way you more quietly listened to his anecdotes from the day.

“Hey, can we talk for a second?”

He’s silent for a tick. Then, “You’re not coming are you?” He says it softly, as if he already knows the answer and just wants the confirmation, the relief of naming it.

You feel the air sucked out of your chest. “I’m not,” you say. You don’t offer up excuses, or even apologies, because that would only wrap the wound tighter. “I’m sorry. Not because I don’t want to go—I like you, Aiden. I really do. But it’s not...” You swallow, the words a little bitter on your tongue. “It isn’t you.”

He doesn’t do the wounded silence, or the desperate scramble to salvage something. He lets out a measured, almost amused breath. “I’m not as surprised as I should be.”

There’s a gentle resignation in his voice, not the sharpness of anger but the kind of quiet that comes from having been on both sides of this before. The pause expands. You try to fill it with something gentle, maybe even salvaging, "Aiden, you’re—"

“It’s fine,” he says, and he must be forcing a smile because you can hear the flex of it behind his words. “You don’t have to explain. I figured out a while ago, maybe after the third date, that your heart wasn’t really up for lease.” He laughs, soft and self-mocking. “I think I just kept the fires burning because it was nice spending time with someone who wasn’t trying to eat me alive and get a ring on her finger and my money in her bank account.”

“Jesus, is it really that bad?” you blurt before you can stop yourself, and you cringe, sure you’ve just made it worse.

Bucky is standing on the other side of the kitchen, back to you, cleaning up the dinner prep, but you know he’s listening.

Aiden’s answering laugh is bright, untethered, and a little sad. “You have no idea,” he says. “It’s like the Hunger Games, but with more Instagram filters and fewer scruples.” He pauses, and there’s a weight to it. “We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. And I hope whoever you woke up for tonight is worth it.”

The words sting, but not in the way you thought they might. There’s no real bite, just a gentle ache, and you want to reach through the phone, to shake his hand, to say thank you for making it easy for both of you. “I hope you have a great weekend anyway.” The only thing left is the click of the call, and the echo of what you just closed.

You return the phone to the table, then look up and the first thing you see is Bucky’s eyes on you, wide and focused. There’s no gloating, no leering, just a respectful brightness to his posture. "I'm not good at… transitions," he says, voice mild, but you know he means more than the passage from dinner to whatever comes next. "Take your time. If you want me out, just say it."

"Stay." It's one word, weirdly momentous and also apparently all he needs.

Bucky is at you before gravity can catch up. His mouth is on yours, firmer this time, nothing left to lose now. You surge up into it, sloshing the aftermath of adrenaline and longing and relief together. Your hands fist in his shirt, knuckles whitening, and he crowds you back against the counter, body thrumming with a banked ferocity that makes you want to weep and claw at him in equal measure.

He lifts you like it costs him nothing, an arm under your thighs and the other bracing your back, and you’re startled into a laugh that tears itself into another gasp as he mouths hungrily at your throat, teeth scraping, tongue soothing. He carries you down the hallway, knocking the doorframe with a shoulder so hard it shudders, and you both laugh at the sheer idiocy of it, at the shared knowledge that there’s no one else in the world who would fuck up a grand gesture like the two of you.

He drops you on the bed with a thud and then stands above you, haloed by the cheap lamp light and the shadow of his own intensity. You sit up and peel your sweatshirt over your head, hair static-wild, and toss it to the floor. He’s undressing, too, jerking the sleeves of his henley off in one practiced motion, then pausing—just briefly—at the waistband of his jeans, like he wants you to see the bare, animal want under all the patience he’s held onto this evening up till now. Your bra comes off next—no preamble, no sexiness, just the urgent, graceless motion of someone who’s been waiting months for a single, specific thing and is determined not to fuck it up by pretending to be coy. Your nipples pebble up instantly in the cold, and he’s on you before you can even shiver, licking a stripe across your breast, catching the skin hard between his teeth and letting the sting bloom and fade.

He is starved for you in a way that feels both familiar and shockingly new. His tongue swirls your nipple, gentle, ferocious, worshipful. He licks, he sucks, then he moves to the other, mouth wet with heat, and your back arches off the mattress. He palms your breast with his flesh hand, squeezing it in a way that feels vulgarly greedy, and then the cold shiver of his metal fingers traces fire down your ribs, over your stomach, toward the place he’s already claimed as his own.

You moan and he answers with a sound deep in his chest, like he’s been holding his breath for half a year, like he’s not going to survive another second of not being inside you, his fingers impatiently working you open so you can take his cock. He mouths at your collarbone, your throat, your jaw, and then kisses you again, open-mouthed, the kind of hungry animal kiss that left you ruined in the back of his truck when you started fucking those very first times.

You fumble for his belt, yanking it open almost violently, nails scraping the V of his hips. He groans, a sound so raw it vibrates in your teeth, and when you finally get his jeans down past his thighs, his cock snaps against his stomach, thick and ruddy and leaking already. You can’t remember ever wanting anything as much as this, not even the times you thought you’d never see him again.

He shucks his pants the rest of the way down and kicks them to the floor, then kneels, his thighs spread wide, and sits back on his heels. He yanks your hips right into the v of his thighs, and you prop yourself up on your elbows for a better view of everything. He slides a hand under your ass, bracing you up so he can run his cock against your slit, dragging the head through your wetness with a shiver of anticipation so intense you almost sob. He pulls one of your legs up against his shoulder, licks a strip up the inside of your calf with his hot tongue, just because he can, and then he takes his cock in his fist and lines himself up with your slit.

You’re so wet, the head of him slides right in. He presses in slow, not because he’s being careful but because he wants to feel every microsecond of it, the way you stretch around him, the way your whole body tightens in welcome and shock. You’re so full immediately, it feels like you might break open, and the fact that you want that, that you want to be obliterated, is perversely perfect. Bucky holds himself at the threshold for a moment, sweat beading at his brow, and you see in his face the war he’s waging against himself, the urge to pound you into the mattress versus the need to savor this. Then he leans over you—one hand braced next to your head, the other pinning your thigh up high—and rocks in, filling you with a slow, devastating patience.

It’s not gentle, not really—he’s too big, too hungry, too wired for that—but there’s a discipline to it, a gravity that pulls you in. He slides out, slow enough to drag your insides with him, then thrusts back in, deep and sure, and the world narrows to the wet heat between your bodies and the sharp, shattering edge of every stroke.

You can’t breathe. You don’t want to.

He leans in, your leg still pressed up against him, and he grips the back of your neck, pulling you just close enough for another kiss, tongue searching for yours. When he pulls back, he speaks with his mouth against yours. “Missed the sound you make when I do it just right.” Then he fucks you a little harder, a little less reined-in, and you do make it, that low, helpless whine that used to haunt his every day.

He pushes himself back up, hugging your leg to his chest while using it for leverage to fuck you at this angle. Your hips writhe, adjusting to the depth he gets this way. He presses two hot, open mouthed kisses to your ankle.

You can already feel your orgasm lurking, tensed and coiled in your belly, but you want to last, to see how long you can hold out against the new Bucky, patient and demanding all at once. His thrusts come at that measured, agonizing tempo, and every time you try to claw your way to more, to faster, he somehow senses it—he pins you down, grins a wolfish grin, and deliberately slows, makes you take it until your vision edges with tears.

He eases his big body down to the mattress, intending to spoon you up against his chest and fuck you from behind, but now with a the ability to move, you push him to his back and climb up over his pelvis.

“Fuck, take what you want, baby,” he growls, and helps you impale yourself on his cock. You slam your hips down on him, greedy for all of it. For a few seconds it's agony-bliss, stretched so wide on top of him that you clutch at his chest for balance, panting with the effort of absorbing him. Bucky's hands run up your thighs, higher, until he's holding your waist in place, guiding you, letting you rock down on him at whatever speed or violence you can manage. You ride him hard, faster than you meant to, because it's been so goddamn long, because nothing has ever been better than being fucked open on this man.

He doesn't lie back and let you do the work—never has, never will. He pushes up to meet your every thrust, keeps his hands splayed on your hips and his eyes locked on your face.

The friction is perfect, relentless, a grind that leaves you breathless and wild-eyed above him. He watches you like he’s never seen anything so good in all his life, and every time you take him to the base, his jaw goes slack with wonder. “Fuck, just like that. You look so good like this, riding me. So fucking pretty.”

You can barely keep your eyes open. The sensation of being filled, totally, every part of you stretched and filled with his glorious cock, hitting you nearly up in your throat it’s that good, that fast, that relentless.

His cool, metal hand wraps your throat and snaps you down, crushing your mouth onto his before you have time to brace or even breathe. Bucky’s lips are bruising, demanding, but it’s his tongue that devastates: he licks into you with precision, staking claim. Your hands fly to his wrist out of instinct, but there’s no hope of escape. You don’t want to escape. He kisses you so hard your lips bruise and your mind whites out. He bites your lower lip and wrenches you back up, just as fast, your whole body quaking on the axis of his cock, only now you are flayed open and helpless to the violence of your own need.

His hand tightens at the hollow of your throat. Pressure and cold, a pulse under the steel, a pressure that walks the knife edge of too much. Your head swims, and you can only gasp around it, the oxygen deprivation smearing out time and sense until the only thing real is the anchoring scale of his body and the throbbing desperation inside you.

Your body bows and bends to his will, and as your vision narrows you chase the high that’s always been so easy, so close, with Bucky. He keeps you impaled on him, pace never faltering, but his free hand slides down to circle your clit, relentless and wet. The sensation is almost too much—overload, white-out, a burning that melts you at the core—and you clamp around him, squeezing so tight that you feel him shudder with the effort of restraint. He’s always liked your endurance, your grit, but you know he’s always liked breaking you even more.

“Gonna come for me?” he taunts, voice barely holding together. “Gonna soak my cock like you always do?”

You try to answer but can only whimper, the pleasure blinding, the edge razoring closer and closer. He fucks up into you once, twice more, and then you’re gone, body fracturing into brightness. You come so hard you make no sound at all, only a wild pulse that ramps from the pit of your belly to the tips of your toes, every muscle clamping, your body crying out in one long, silent scream. He fucks you through it, not letting up on your throat, making you ride the waves until you’re clawing at his chest, at the bedsheets, at anything to ground you again.

You sag on top of him, a ragdoll splayed across his chest, but he’s not finished. He rolls you over, keeps your legs locked around his hips, and pounds into you, harder, harder, until this new position, this new combination of angles is too much all over again. You’re certain you’re done, wrung out, but he knows you, still knows what your body’s capable of, rides you so hard with the last shreds of your own will that you come again—harder, desperate, a small "no no no" giving lie to the way you cling to him, the way your nails dig into his lower back and your hips piston up to meet him with every punishing thrust.

He never loses rhythm, never stops whispering the filth that used to light you up for days, "that’s it, baby, milk my cock, fuck, so pretty, so fucking perfect, tighten up for me, make it hurt, want to break you open, fill you up, gonna fill you up, fuck—"

He slams into you, hard enough to jolt the headboard, and the kindness is that he finally lets go of your throat, gives you air and stars and so much praise. He shudders above you, the length of him flexing inside you, and then he comes, a brutal, beautiful capitulation, and you feel the heat of him flood you, pulse after pulse.

He doesn’t let you go, not for a minute. He collapses down, pinning you under every inch of him, but you don’t mind—you want the weight, the warmth, the certainty that this isn’t a dream. You twist your fingers in his damp hair and hang on, wrung out and wrung dry, and you think maybe you could lie here with him until time restarts.

He nuzzles into your neck, breath hot and chaotic, then shifts, disappearing down your body again. He plants a kiss just above your clit, then spreads you open with both hands, and you flinch at the exposure—but he’s enraptured, palming your inner thigh, watching the cream and mess spill slowly out of you, the twitch of your cunt around nothing.

He presses two fingers into your spent cunt, gathering the slick that oozes out, then circles your clit with a lazy, proprietary satisfaction—he wants to make you twitch for him, wants to see your body respond even when you have nothing left to give.

“Can’t stop looking at her, how hungry your pussy is for me,” he says, voice rough, more awe than taunt. He circles the ruined, hypersensitive flesh with a gentleness that feels obscene, and you jerk, nearly whimper, at the overload.

“You missed this, didn’t you?” He presses you open with his thumbs, then dips his head, tongue lapping at you, scooping out the overflow. You writhe, the sensation a raw nerve, but he’s relentless, eating up every drop, tongue fucking you slow and deep, then licking and sucking at the mess he’s made until you are beyond boneless and wrung out beneath him.

He looks up at you through his lashes, mouth and chin slick with your combined release, then slides two of his slicked fingers down your slit and pushes the mess between your ass cheeks, and your eyes widen.

He catches the flicker of surprise, the ghosts of all the old nights, and he grins, wolfish and delighted, as he slicks a wet finger around your rim and presses, slowly, inexorably, until the tip eases inside. You lose your breath with a gasp—exposed, overfilled, already destroyed and now opened further, every nerve ending a live wire. His other hand cups your mound, thumb flicking over your clit, while his tongue paints lazy, adoring stripes up your slit.

“Let me,” he says, not a question, not a command, but an offering through the haze of want.

And you do—you let him. You let him slide a finger back into your cunt, slow, gathering more slick, then trace a half-circle with his thumb around your asshole, waiting for you to twitch before pressing in again, this time deeper. It doesn’t hurt, not really, just a starburst of pressure that spins off into pleasure, sharp and deep and so, so dirty. You clench around him, whimper, and feel him grin against your thigh—so smug, so delighted to rewrite your old boundaries, to remind you of all the other ways you’re his.

You know you won’t get any real sleep tonight. And you don’t want to, either.

Besides, you have the whole weekend now to do nothing but be with him.

Would be a shame to waste it.

Are you screeching? I'm screeching. My face is melting off of my face, to be honest. PLEASE SHRIEK AT ME!

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

He’s in aviators and a suit that looks darker and more dangerous in the angled light above the river. Your own clothing, still stiff with newness, is what he picked out: navy pencil skirt, tailored so high it makes you blush, a cream-colored blouse, with gold buttons, and a structured neckline that would be demure if your breasts were less noticeable. You can feel the rush of air from the vents, sharp as ice against your skin, and know Steve planned this, too.

You’re barely five minutes in the air before Steve’s hand is sliding up your thigh, fingers toying absently with the seam where stocking becomes skin. It’s a private helicopter—there are no other passengers—but still, the reality of being midair, the city a glass tray of secrets below, makes you flush, preemptively guilty.

He leans in, breath ghosting your ear, voice tight and low. “Spread your legs.”

You pretend to hesitate, but you’re already shifting, knees drifting apart, the skirt riding indecorously high. His hand slips further, knuckle grazing the junction of your thighs, pausing where the lace mesh panel starts. He tugs, not rough but insistent, like he’s only reminding you of what should already belong to him. You draw a breath, sharp enough to sting, and Steve’s mouth turns up to the side, amused and appraising.

The whir of the blades is relentless, a constant in your bones. With his palm warm and steady, Steve draws circles across the panties, then presses a thumb against the damp center. He hums—a low, pleased sound—then slips two fingers beneath the panel, knuckles dragging slow and deliberate up your slit. The fabric is an afterthought. Your hips jerk, the upholstery frictionless and slick under the arch of your back.

He leans closer, his lips never quite touching your cheek. “Quiet,” he says, so soft you feel it more than hear it. “Unless you want our pilot to hear you over the headsets.”

You try to keep your face neutral, eyes fixed forward, but Steve is ruthless. He works the pads of his fingers with a precision that would be clinical as surgery. Within a minute, your thighs are trembling. You bite your tongue, then your lip, the heady, metallic taste grounding you to the cockpit as the world tilts and lists beyond the plexiglass.

You’re wet already. You’re coming to terms with this. That you want him to know, but more than that, you want to be shamelessly used, and this has never been clearer than when he slips the panties to one side and sinks two fingers into you with a precise, possessive twist. You let your head fall back; the rotors, the wind, the skyline—none of it matters except the way he crooks his fingers, the impossible pressure that has you squeezing his arm for purchase.

He fucks you with just those two fingers, unhurried, all the heat in his gaze and a lazy, proprietary smile. He uses his other hand to pin your thigh open, three knuckles wedged against the inside of your knee, thumb arched hard into your pulse.

He murmurs, “That’s my good girl,” mouth close to your earlobe, and the compliment does something ugly-sweet to your stomach. He sets a punishing rhythm for a moment, relentless, precise, levered against a spot that makes your knees lock and your chest seize. You want to scream, but instead you grit your teeth, knuckles whitening on the armrest. Your body wants to come, is already spiraling—so embarrassing, how fast, how easy—but you try to hold it back, to preserve some dignity. He must see it on your face, because he pulls back, just enough, thumb smoothing over your clit in a slow, mean circle, holding you at the edge.

“Not yet,” he says, his lips brushing your temple, his voice still soft, still so private. You want to turn and bite him. Instead you drag your eyes to the bubble of the city below, to the flat, blue lake in the distance and the way the sun glances off the windows, reminding you how exposed you are, how this is as far from the ground as you’ve ever been fucked.

You’re barely holding composure. Steve’s hand cups your cunt, fingers wet and knuckles curved, a leash of pleasure and shame keeping you pinned to the moment. He slows again, palm flush against you, spreading the ache. You feel the pressure build, see it in his hungry, sidelong glance, how much he likes you like this: arms rigid, eyes wild, lip bit with restraint.

He leans in, his tongue darting hot against the shell of your ear. “You look so pretty when you try to behave,” he says, low enough that you sense it down your spine more than hear it.

You don’t trust yourself to speak. You can only nod, jaw tight with effort. He rewards this by sliding his thumb up, circling the hard, slick knot at your center, not gentle, ruthless, until you’re shaking again, the seatbelt biting into your hips.

“Good,” he whispers, his tone edged with pride and something else—admiration, maybe, or gratitude. “Now you can come for me.”

The words—so blunt, so final—destroy what little self-possession you were clinging to. The orgasm erupts quick and violent through your pelvis, blurring out the skyline, flooding your vision with static. Your jaw snaps shut on a whimper, but it still escapes, soft and shattered, and you ride the wave while Steve coaxes you through with gentle, obscene strokes.

When you finally sag against the seat, spent and buzzing, Steve draws his hand back, fingers glossy, the scent of you rising sharp above the whiff of jet fuel. He kisses your cheek, and dips the fingers into his mouth, tongue conspicuous as he licks the taste of you, eyes never leaving your slack, thrashed face. The gesture would embarrass you if you hadn’t already sacrificed shame on the altar of him.

The flight lands with a low cough of turbines. You force yourself upright, tugging skirt and blouse into place, palms damp, legs laced with pins and needles. Steve waits for the blades to still before unclipping your belt and guiding you with a palm at the base of your spine. His.

Next to no plot here, just another day, another orgasm from your boss! But how many more days until something's gotta give...?

Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

You wake each morning before the sun, often finding Bucky already awake beside you. Sometimes he is working at a tablet, sometimes just lying there, head propped on his fist, watching you with that unbroken focus that feels like both a danger and a benediction. Sometimes you catch him watching you sleep. He never denies it. He likes to scoop you into the crook of his body and keep you there while you come alive, tucking your bare calves beneath his thigh, tracing circles against your shoulder with his vibranium thumb. You don’t talk much in the mornings—you rarely need to. All the words are for the rest of the day.

You have no mind to try to escape, not really, though he’s replaced every lock, every code, every guard. It’s not just the threat of what he would do—it’s that you don’t even know where you’d go. Safe havens? The places you could guess, you know he’d find you. Knowing what you do of his infrastructure and personnel, traveling unnoticed in this territory would be nearly impossible for you.

But you know this is also where you can be of the most use. You are the heir-intended turned hostage, a queen and a prisoner, and underneath all of it, you are his omega.

You no longer want to go, and the myriad of reasons are a web of complexity.

Like now. You luxuriate in the softness of the pre-dawn with the humid pressure of Bucky’s mouth between your thighs, his breath and tongue working in slow, devastating precision. The only light is the blue hour glow streaming through the balcony, a haze that sharpens every sensation. He’s on his laying on his stomach, hands bracketing your hips, holding you open with a worshipful, unyielding grip. Where he touches you, you feel the unique contrast of cool vibranium and callused, heat-stamped flesh.

He works you with a patience that borders on punitive, mouth soft and slow until you start to tremble, then he ramps back the intensity. He’s become an expert in the workings of your body, and this morning he’s allowing the pleasure to rise up in slow, gentle swells, like waves on a calm beach. He does not seem interested in making you come—at least, not yet.

He’s not pushing you to shatter for his pleasure, or to prove his dominance, or even to render you mindless and pliant—though you both know he could, because he has done all of these things. No, Bucky licks you the way a man eats a ripe peach, pausing to savor, lingering on the slow drip, happy to let the soft strands of your want spill down his chin.

This slow, unrushed intimacy is its own kind of torture. He’s not trying to break you, not this morning. He’s just… there, between your legs for close to an hour, basking in the shallows of pleasure. It does not matter how you try to coax him—if you tug his hair, he only hums and buries himself deeper, if you try to close your legs, he gently but inexorably pries them apart.

He does this for so long you start to drift, floating somewhere between sleep and waking, only to surface when his tongue slides along your seam, so gentle it feels like a memory of touch rather than real contact. Sometimes he hums against you, a low vibration that travels up your pulse points and makes your hips shiver helplessly. He likes your hips in his hands, either to hold your hips steady, or to work your entire body against his face.

At some point, you give in—let yourself go slack, limbs heavy and surrendered, your mind emptying out the way water drains from a basin. You will let him have you for as long as he needs. You forget about leverage and tactics, all those games you still play outside the bedroom, and just become the thing he worships with tongue and heat and patience.

It’s generous. It’s gratuitous. You’re ruined by it and rebuilt by it in the same moment.

He has not let you sleep the night through in over a week. Each time you rouse, it is to the knowledge or memory of being used, of being possessed, of the near-feral hunger that radiates through the bond you share with him. Sometimes, you wake to the feel of him already inside you, his weight blanketing you into the bed, arm snaked under your waist; sometimes, like now, to the animal patience of his mouth working you open, wet and thorough and tireless.

You never knew the omega side of you would want like this. And you do. You want him back with equal fervor.

It seems the two of you are accepting that whatever his intentions or yours are, were, have been, or will be, your bond as alpha and omega runs through each others veins as necessary now as blood to survive. There’s a tremor of fear in the marrow of your bones in that inimitable truth.

Only when your thighs have gone slack, when your voice is nearly lost from the repeated moans, does he finally give in. He pushes you over with a flex of his neck and a sound that is pure satisfaction. You come so hard you only know your pulse, his grip, the flood of pleasure physically surging through you in all its blissful glory.

His lips graze your thigh, a benediction, then he flips you over—smooth, efficient, a movement that lifts your hips and flattens your chest to the mattress—before he climbs up your body. He’s hard, leaking, and the imprint of his cock on your skin as he slides over you is as familiar now as the sound of your own name. Bucky nuzzles at your pulse point, and scrapes his teeth over your bonding mark, where he first claimed you. You keen—for the pleasure that intimate place evokes, for him, for the bond.

“You have no idea how good you are for me,” he says, voice a low, rough scrape down your spine. You feel the blunt crown of him nudging at your entrance, already so impossibly hard you want to weep at the promise of it. He spreads his palm over the small of your back, a solid, anchoring weight, and with the other hand he drags his cock down your seam, wetting himself in your slick.

You both groan as he pushes inside—one slow, inevitable movement, the stretch so perfect it feels like pain and pleasure are bound together. There’s no protest in your body, only a greedy clutching around him, your hips arching back to take more, always more.

"Good Omega," he murmurs into your ear.

You hear yourself pant, body still trembling from the aftershocks of orgasm, and you don't have it in you to pretend indifference. His flesh palm flattens at the small of your back, while his vibranium hand finds your shoulder, pinning you to the bed. The weight of his body over yours is crushing and exquisite, and you arch your hips in silent plea, desperate for more.

He pulls back, strokes in again, a measured, punishing rhythm that makes you want to crawl out of your skin. Bucky fucks you deep, slow.

He never lets you have the rhythm. He chooses every thrust, every breath, every escalation and mercy. You brace your hands against the bed and whine for him, open-mouthed, helpless to anything except what he wants to do to you. He’s gotten so good at reading your body that sometimes you think your own pleasure starts and ends in his nervous system.

You feel the thickening as he fucks you, the way his cock knots up, swelling even larger, filling you to the brink with each relentless thrust. It’s a dangerous pleasure, the stretch just enough to make your eyes roll back, your body at his mercy, cunt clutching him.

His voice is a low rasp, barely more than breath. “Take it,” he says, and you do, you have no choice, and you want nothing except to be filled by him, held down and rendered mindless by the heat and the stretch, the primal certainty of what’s happening.

You shudder and moan, the sound pitching upward as the knot swells at your entrance, locking you together, and the helplessness of it is so intense you can only sob into the sheets.

You feel the arc of it before you see it coming, the way he tenses and then goes utterly still. Bucky leans forward and bites down, hard, at the slick curve between your shoulder and neck, not breaking the skin but pressing deep enough that the pleasure sharpens to almost-pain. You yelp for him, which makes him thrust even deeper. He groans, a sound from the bottom of his chest, and you feel the first hot surge of his spend inside you. You clench down on him, chasing your own climax even as he’s pouring himself into you, because he likes it best when you’re pulsing, milking him, cock locked inside while you tremor through your own. You do, shattering around him again even as he finishes, your body catching every drop, every twitch.

When he’s done, he collapses over you, full-weight, heart jackhammering at your back. You let him crush you, let yourself collapse entirely beneath him, two animals spent by their own necessity.

With you locked on his knot, he wraps his arms around your whole body and pulls you with him as he rolls to his side, keeping you bracketed and half-impaled. He kisses the hot, sweaty hollow behind your ear, then nips and laps and kisses at that sacred bond mark, the spot of your original undoing, sending something both soothing and surging through the flow of the alpha-omega bond between you.

Bucky’s still panting, his nose pressed to the back of your neck, when he says, “You know I’m going to fuck you at the announcement today.” His voice is gravel, still raw from groaning your name, and it vibrates from his chest into your ribs.

You’re still locked together, cunt fluttering around the last dregs of his knot as it starts to shrink, and the idea of being presented—again, always—for his pleasure, for the spectacle, for the optics or the myth or whatever reason he’s decided, is more inevitable than surprising. What does surprise you is that he tells you in advance.

You turn your head, and he’s already watching your reaction. “You’re not going to ask?” you say.

“I’m telling you in advance. I fucked you for my men in that strategy meeting so they understood how intoxicating it is to witness, how enthralling it becomes.” He hums against your hairline, his lips moving on your scalp. “I want you ready for it. This time it’s not just the council, a square of people, or my circle. We will be pairing every unbonded omega in the territory to an alpha, so they should see why they should all want it.”

Your jaw tightens. “Still compulsory?” You’ve heard the proposal, the adjustments and enhancements.

“Pairing an alphas and omegas is good. It’s natural.”

You huff. “I still don’t agree with it all.”

He slips his hand under your chin and turns your face until your mouth grazes his. “You don’t have to be tame for this.” He rocks his hips, cock still thick and wet inside you, and you shiver, every nerve ending alive. “They should see exactly what they’re missing.”

He sucks a bruise into your neck just below your jaw, right over where the bond thuds with your heartbeat. "There will be cameras, and there’s no going back after I announce the new order. And when I have my hand between your legs, you’ll show them what it’s like to want an alpha more than air. You’ll show them how it looks when we’re together."

You know yourself well enough to admit the humiliating truth: you will, and you’ll mean every desperate whine the cameras catch, every flex and writhe when he spreads you open to the world and makes you come on his hand, or mouth, or cock, whichever he chooses. You may be the governor’s omega, the daughter of a dynasty, but your value today is this: the spectacle of being conquered, and the spectacle of being wanted even more.

You consider letting it lie, but the resentment that’s been accumulating, simmering since the first horrific day, flares brief and hot.

“It’s not what they’re missing,” you say, voice low and even. “It’s what you make of them, what you need them to be for your system to work. That’s the point, right? You reshape the appetite for your benefit. For your narrative.” You twist in his grip, pushing your face close to his, daring him to dismiss what you’re saying as just another outburst.

Bucky’s eyes narrow. “Consider your words, Omega.”

You draw in a steadying breath, then let it out slow, feeling his hold around your ribcage, the heavy, unyielding latch of his arm. “I am considering them,” you say, voice clipped and sure. “Every day, every hour, I live in the skin of your narrative.”

You’ve sacrificed, played the good omega, the willing exhibitionist, all to keep the world from burning down around you. But it’s not for you, not what you ever thought your life would be.

He props himself on one elbow, knot finally slipped and leaving you empty, leaking his come onto the sheets. The hand at your throat is gentle, but the look in his eyes says: I am listening, and I am deciding whether you are being brave or being reckless.

You want to believe it’s both. “I was raised to lead, Bucky,” you say, “not to be bred. I know that’s how it has to be right now, and I’m not resisting you. But I—” you break off, then start again, quieter. “I want more than this. Than being your spectacle. I want to matter. Not just as the omega on your arm and in your bed. To the people I used to—” You stop again, wishing you could clamber out of your own vulnerability, or at least throttle it back to some manageable, tradable thing.

Bucky is silent for many long moments. Then he turns his head slightly and noses against the side of your head, inhaling deeply. Drinking in your scent? The action appears to be curiously thoughtful. “You already matter,” he says, the words slow, not dismissive. “More than anyone in this goddamn territory.” He brushes his nose along your hairline, breathing in, then exhaling in a gust against your cheek. For a moment, you sense the truth behind it—not just the possession, but something deeper, something like… need. “And I won’t have you cost me everything by wanting to save people who don’t deserve you.”

“You don’t know this territory the way I do,” you bite back immediately."

“And you don’t know them the way I do, Omega.You saw your father's regime. It was built on hope and good intentions and a thousand tiny lies to keep the peace, and I came in, infiltrated the cracks, and broke it apart.”

You can’t look at him for a moment. You bite your tongue, will yourself not to cry or to scream or to melt, and instead watch the early morning gold creep up the far wall of the bedroom. “You could have done it differently,” you say. I

The bed is going cold under your bare thighs as you lie there, back to Bucky, his come slicking your inner thighs, your pulse still trying to catch up with your mind. He lets the silence stretch until it hums like a high wire. When he speaks, his voice is level, but you can hear the drag of steel through velvet, “You think I wanted to be the villain? You think I wanted a world that needs monsters like me?”

You want to press him further, to make him admit there were better ways, that brutality isn’t a virtue in itself, but he senses the words coming and tightens his hold, thumb at your jaw, silencing the rest. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says, the cadence final. “All that matters is what we do next.”

He pulls you in so close his breath stirs the fine hairs at your temple, and with a single, decisive gesture, shoves his hand down between your sticky thighs and presses his fingers into your folds. The movement parts you open, the sensation electric and humiliating. He circles your clit with two careful fingers, not seeking to please, not yet—just to remind you that your body, your will, your pleasure is his to modulate, dial up or down or snuff out as he chooses. The message is plain: whatever claim you think you have to autonomy, here in this bed, you are as much under his thumb as the rest of the territory.

You arch in his grip, a reflex you can't control. He drags his fingers lower, pushing one back into your cunt, then two. The mess of his come and your slick coats his knuckles, and he lets you feel every wet, obscene movement.

“I know you want more,” he says, “but don’t forget, you agreed to this. You asked for the terms, and now you’ll keep them. The value of your position at my side will grow or diminish by your own actions.”

He works his fingers in and out, then flicks them up to circle your clit, a relentless pressure that seems only to sharpen his words. “Say it. Say you know your place.”

You want to spit the words back at him. You almost do. Maybe you will—later, when you have more than the air in your lungs and the need clawing through you. For now, you’re helpless to the sensation, and so you gasp, “I know my place, Alpha.”

He grunts, a sound of approval and hunger rolled in one. “That’s right.” His fingers speed up just enough to have you writhing again, pushing into his hand for more. “You’ve done so well already, you’ve made it look like power, what I do to you,” he says, almost soft, almost proud. “No one will believe you don’t want it. And now you’re going to come on my hand while you think about how you’re going to show the territory you’re mine.”

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

This is the wrong hotel to base a wild bachelorette party out of.

And you’ve clearly recognized your mistake as he observes you talking to one of the front desk agents checking in your party.

The lobby is a sea of sensible shoes and pastel windbreakers. Curtis can clocks eight mobility scooters parked in a neat row by the afternoon tea station, their owners trading stories about aching hips and grandchildren with alarming volume. The carpet is a repeating motif of fuchsia and turquoise shapes, gaudy enough to induce motion sickness, but your posse’s coordinated outfits actually fit right in with the loud colors.

The desk agent keeps assuring you that yes, the hospitality suite is set up for her use, yes, the adjoining rooms are stocked with extra towels and there’s a “cake station” in one of the suite per the reservation notes, but underscores that this is not a “party hotel,” and he has to enforce “quiet hours” after nine p.m.

You nod and sign the forms, clearly trying to pretend this is fine, undoubtedly trying to imagine how you’ll keep ten women entertained in a glorified bingo hall after the sun sets.

As the casino manager for the resort, Curtis was in the upper management meetings when its owner Ari Levinson discussed the deep discount weekends throughout January, February, and March to try and lure snowbirds back in to the senior-citizen-focused resort property. The weekend before Valentines had been discounted even more than most of the others.

He smirks from across the way when he sees you grimace as the agent hands you the keys and informs you that breakfast runs from five to eight am, the bar closes at nine pm, and so does room service.

Curtis can see the frenzied look behind your eyes even from this distance. You’re clearly a type-A planner, so this kind of fuck-up is beyond comprehension in your book. There’s an urban breed of young woman who attacks leisure with the zeal and logistics of a military campaign. He respects that, technically. He saw it frequently at the hotels he was at before this one. And he can already see it in the crisp way you take the key cards, the sharp nod as you gather your flock and herd them toward the elevators. You never glance down at your phone once, fielding the complaints, concerns, and chaos that’s threatening to erupt with unflagging optimism. You’ll Uber out—which had been the plan from the beginning for some of the elements of the itinerary, get food delivered after hours—which would probably be better than room service anyway, and a resort of senior citizens means none of you will have to deal with frat boys or finance bros trying to hit on any of them while you’re all here at the hotel home base at least.

Curtis will not admit that he might be a little bit impressed.

You’re going to end up being trouble for him at some point, he can just feel it.

By two pm the next day the casino floor is a festival of carnage, the slot machines screaming under the barrage of your bridesmaids. Your group is easy to track, a showy spectacle of sequins and synthetics trailing through the baccarat pit, martinis sloshing as conversation ricochets off every surface. The youngest of your group—twenty-two, maybe—already has a paper wristband for the “Mocktail Mania” crawl, and her phone out, live-streaming the chaos to a social media audience. Curtis counts five times you are stopped to take selfies with someone’s grandma. The grandmothers are loving it. They circle your orbit like you’re the new floor show, poking at your feathered headbands and laughing when some of you teach them the choreography to one of the latest viral TikToks.

As the afternoon progresses, you steer the group through the different offerings, trailed by the loyal, the hungover, and the barely-standing. Curtis has to admire the logistical ballet—how you are already distributing twenty-dollar bills with the distracted authority of a treasurer. But he has his eye on you. Appreciated novelty though you may be to the elderly now, Curtis will not hesitate to remove your party from the floor if the menagerie becomes a menace of any kind.

It’s a slow-motion collision of generations. The old folks can’t get enough of you. They beam when your group slips them pink satin sashes and inserts them into group photos, suddenly elevating a routine Tuesday into a major life event. There’s a sashay in the step of Mrs. Eileen, age ninety and proud, as she wheels between slot rows with a feather boa loosely looped around her neck, cackling at the iPad screen her great-niece uses to stream the dance party to “the internet.” Other regulars, in their lavender and beige, sprout out of their seats to offer tales of their own honeymoons, their own marriages, sometimes their own bachelorette shenanigans.

Curtis sees it all from the security desk, which gives him the best vantage on the mayhem. He’s supposed to be finishing paperwork—new vendor contracts, a proposal for replacing the bulbs in the chandelier above the poker room—but he ends up using most of his monitor’s real estate to watch your group’s progress via the security camera split-screen. There’s a method to your madness, he realizes. You’re not just leading the mob. You’re scouting. By three, you’ve had a chat with the cocktail waitresses, a run-in with the barback, and some sort of exchange with one of the off-duty pit bosses. Curtis catches the pit boss’s face on camera, a fleeting, sheepish look as he hands something off to you. At first, he thinks it’s a comped drink voucher—usual for a weekend like this, no crime in it. But you pocket it without showing anyone, flash a lopsided grin, and move on.

You’re working an angle. Maybe it’s the luck of the tables, maybe you’re just collecting stories for your war chest, but he’s suspicious. And it’s his job to be.

Midway through a routine sweep of the floor, he’s making his way toward the back of the penny slots when Curtis makes his decision and threads through the crowd to intercept you. The rest of your group is already deep in the throes of minor chaos—someone in pink is doubled over laughing, two are engaged in a mock arm-wrestling match on a cocktail table, one is arguing with a cocktail waitress about the correct way to say “appletini.” As he closes in, he sees that you’ve parked yourself on a padded bench between the keno machines, legs crossed, phone in hand. You’re texting, or maybe orchestrating something else, but you notice him before he can make the first move. For a second, your expression tightens—he braces for it, the guilt, the deer-in-the-headlights—but instead, your face breaks into a lopsided, almost grateful smile.

“Just the man they told me to talk to!” Like you’re greeting a friend, or long-lost co-conspirator. “You’re Curtis, right? I was told you’re the guy who can get things done around here.”

Curtis is momentarily wrong-footed. This is not how it’s supposed to go. He was coming to find you, he was ready to deal out a polite warning, a thinly veiled threat in customer-service-ese, not this.

But he nods, lips pressed into a neutral line. He waits for the ask, already rehearsing the tight, professional shut-down. But you beat him to it, voice sliding straight into business.

“It’s about the bar,” you say. “We’re not looking to cause problems, really—we’ll keep it down, we’ll clean up after ourselves, we’ll tip everyone at least twenty percent, cross my heart.” You put your hand over your heart for emphasis. “Is there any scenario where the bar could stay open after hours, for us for a special event?” You don’t even glance at the chaos in your wake. “Like, a couple hours. Just for my group. Is there a form for that or something?”

It takes him a second to recalibrate, but he does. “That’s not my department,” he says, definitive. “That’s Ari’s call. The owner.”

You nod, but you don’t miss a beat. "That’s what I heard, but someone said when Ari’s on vacation, you have final say. Figured it couldn’t hurt to ask."

He keeps his expression as flat as the casino carpet. "Ari’s out until Monday, and I can’t sign off on something like that. Sorry. Policy." He crosses his arms, which usually signals an end to this sort of conversation.

You tap your nails against your phone. Then your smile turns even sweeter. “But, if you were, hypothetically, going to green-light it for, say, a very harmless group of out-of-towners,” you lean infinitesimally closer, “is there any way we could make that happen?” And you put a gentle hand on his forearm, a brief brush, just for a moment.

Instantly, Curtis’s nostrils flare, and for all of three seconds, his veins surge with hunger, with the urge to press you up behind a row of these machines, and—

“No,” he insists.

None of that.

His sharp refusal has you shaking your head, seemingly coming back to yourself as well. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” you say, and the apology is so barefaced, it almost startles Curtis more than the hand.

You cross your arms, too, hugging yourself in that way people do when they’re recalibrating. “Sorry,” you repeat, “I didn’t mean to…” A vague gesture. “Honestly, that’s not even my style. I’m just—” You look away, jaw flexing. “This whole weekend was supposed to be perfect. I planned it for months. I thought I booked the right hotel, but it turns out the other ‘Sunburst Resort’ is forty miles south. The one with the rooftop bar and the infinity pool. Half the girls already want to murder me. The other half are just… really, really chill about it, which makes it even worse somehow? So, yeah. I just wanted to pull off one thing for them. Still make this weekend special.” You look at him then, straight on. “But I get it. You’re just doing your job.”

Curtis feels his jaw loosen, but he’s not going to lower his suspicions completely or make concessions. He should walk off, should leave you to the swarm of friends and the memorializing of catastrophe into just another party story. And yet…

“It’s not like your girls are having a bad time,” he says, jerking his head toward the havoc at the penny slots. The bride is wearing a plastic tiara and howling with laughter. Someone else is eating maraschino cherries straight from a glass. The bridesmaids might as well be background extras in a movie about senior living remixed for social media. “You may even be single-handedly responsible for the most fun anyone’s had here since the pandemic.”

You give him a look that’s both relieved and incredulous, like maybe you’re not used to being let off the hook. “I guess I’m just projecting,” you say, and your smile does a weird, sidelong thing. “I need it to be good more than they do, you know?” You glance down at your phone—probably to check for incoming fires—and then back up. “I appreciate you not making this into a whole thing.”

He shrugs. “I just know how much worse it can get,” he says. “And I’ll take your rowdy bachelorettes over the Texas Hold ‘Em AARP tour any day.”

“But it’s still zero on the after-hours?”

He shakes his head, and you nod in your polite resignation.

Textbook good girl.

Women in the first halves of their lives are an almost-never kind of occurrence at this place, but it’s not as if he’s never interacted with them before.

But it’s how good you are, how perfect you try to be that’s ignited some itch in him over you. He wants to hold all your attention in his hands for a minute and suffocate it in pleasure, see if he could get you to relinquish the reins of control and let whatever was corked tight inside uncork, explode, run rampant.

Because where he can see you’re spirited in your pursuit of control and perfection, he’s cool, calm, collected in his.

But you’re the last thing he needs.

He clears his throat. “The hospitality suite’s got a fridge,” he offers, voice at half-volume, trying to avoid the path between of being too helpful. He doesn’t want to give the impression that he’ll soften. “If you tip our concierge Lloyd, he’ll stock you with the good stuff. And some of the stuff he shouldn’t.”

You blink, and then give him a real smile. “Thank you.” Your voice is warm with those two words, and, fuck, if now he doesn’t want to get you saying thank you for other reasons.

Again, no. He won’t go there.

You start to say something else, but he’s already pivoting away, put an end to the scene before he can get any more entangled. He doesn’t need to continue looking into your soft eyes, doesn’t need to think about how wide they’d if he stuffed his—

He growls and then barks at one of his pit bosses to keep an eye on table seven, and stalks off toward the cage to count down the afternoon drop.

At 10:17 PM, Curtis is on his way out, mind already shifting to the leftovers and whiskey sour waiting for him in his shoebox apartment.

He freezes, pivots.

Music. Laughter. The unmistakable warble of Abba at full throttle, the chorus punched with off-key shrieking. All of it coming from the bar that was supposed to be closed over an hour ago.

Curtis marches through the swing doors and right into a riot.

The bachelorette party is there, of course, but they’re not alone. At least two dozen seniors are crammed into the bar's banquette, drinks in hand, some already mid-dance on the sticky faux-wood floor. Eileen’s signature feather boa is now a communal scarf, being passed from neck to neck. Someone’s great-uncle—he recognizes him from the slots—has his tie around his forehead like a Rambo bandana, and is doing shots with two of the bridesmaids. The bride is slow dancing with someone’s grandma. The DJ booth is unmanned, the playlist hijacked by a phone plugged directly into the sound system, which is blaring “Dancing Queen” at top volume.

And, somehow, Ari Levinson is behind the bar himself, slamming a bottle of tequila on the counter with a theatrical flourish.

Ari who’s not supposed to be back until Monday.

Curtis wades through the bedlam, dodging an emerging conga line, and slides behind the bar next to Ari.

“You’re supposed to be in New York,” Curtis says, voice low but edged.

Ari just flashes a golden grin. “I have a private jet, and Eileen called me personally,” he says, as if that explains everything. “Said if I didn’t make this bachelorette party’s dreams come true, she’d never forgive me.”

Eileen was their wickedest widow slash beloved queen of the resort, left with more money than god, and stayed at Sunburst in one of the penthouse suites that was essentially hers every other weekend at this point.

Curtis feels the corner of his mouth twitch. “So you’re bartending now?” Curtis asks, monitoring the controlled chaos.

Ari shrugs, “Back to my roots.”

Curtis locates you instantly, perched at the end of the bar, not in the fray but close enough to referee. You’re in a pale knit mini-dress and white sneakers, another outfit to match the rest of the bridal party. There’s a highball glass in your hand, the liquid inside nuclear red and fizzy. Cherry garnish. Shirley Temple. He snorts—of course.

You’re running the spectacle, but not running wild. Your head is tipped just so, like you’re listening for the precise moment the party will veer from beautiful disaster into regrettable territory. The instant it would go too far, you would be there to drag your girls back.

His stare must be a laser, because you catch him immediately, and your face bursts wide open with a smile. Not just a little polite, thanks-for-your-help smile—a full, flashing, not-even-a-little-bit-sober beam. You’re off the barstool and striding toward him before he can look away.

You reach him in an instant, and before he can ask what you need, you blurt, “I just wanted to say, thank you! I never dreamed of anything this big, but it’s bigger and better than I could have hoped for!”

Curtis knows how to field gratitude—he does this every day, nodding his way through the bland, forgettable compliments of winners and losers. But this, the way you lean in, smiling like you’ve just hit the jackpot, tips something loose in him.

“This wasn’t me. It’s Eileen you have to thank for all of this. She’s a force of nature,” he says.

You turn and look for her in the crowd, but Curtis can still hear you. “She’s a fucking legend,” you say, soft, reverent.

Curtis doesn’t let it sit. He leans in, close enough you have to tip your chin up to meet his eyes. “You looked like you were eager to thank me, though,” he says, and the words are so direct, so specific, that your eyes widen.

Curtis’s mouth shifts into a smirk, and then his hand is at your elbow, guiding you up and away from the bar with a grip a shade firmer than necessary. Not a gentle graze, but a serious claim. He doesn’t say a word—just nods to Ari, who raises his tequila bottle in salute, and then steers you through the riot of bodies and then around a corner to a masterfully hidden set of stairs. Privacy to ascend to the dark kingdom of the VIP lounges.

Curtis badges a golden door open and you step in, a little ahead of him, a little breathless, and something dark in him revs at your wide-eyed reaction as you look around, soaking up every angle. You turn in a slow circle, taking it in, the perfectionist in you surely already clocking the amenities, the escape routes, the places where a control freak could retreat if she suddenly needed to.

The room is a jewel box with velvet seating, a mirrored bar with bottles for a hundred moods, and outside the glass doors, a crescent-moon balcony that wraps around the entire level, cantilevered over the revel below. The sound comes up through the floor, dull and distant and thrilling.

Curtis closes the door behind them with a soft click, then flips a switch that kills the ugly ceiling lights and bathes everything in a pinky-purple glow.

He leans against the door, arms crossed, blocking the exit with a casual, unignorable presence. “Not quite the rooftop bar you wanted, but it has its advantages,” he says.

You drift to the balcony railing, which overlooks the bar and a slice of the dance floor below, packed with the intergenerational party. He comes up behind, close enough that you must feel him, but he doesn’t touch you yet.

After a minute, you say, “So this is the VIP suite.” You sound breathless, lighter than you probably want to.

Curtis makes a noise of affirmation. “Should be for high rollers, but turns out ours come here to be in the crowd, not above it.”

You lean on the railing, looking down. “I’ve never been in a VIP anything.” You smile, but it’s tight.

“We should make it an experience you’ll never forget then, shouldn’t we?”

He leans in, sets his palms on either side of you, bracketing your ribs, caging you in as you grip the balcony. He can see you’re nervous, the first crack in your facade.

Curtis wants to see what happens if you let go—just a little. See if he can shake something loose in you that won't snap back into shape. He wants to see how far he can make you unravel, if you’ll trust his control, indulge in surrender, let him break you.

He sets his hand on your hip. A test. He feels you tense, feels the nerves shudder through your spine as you take a deliberate breath, all the way to the bottom. Your hands grip the balcony railing, but you tilt your head just enough that he can see the hint of defiance in your profile. Not fear—just the need for a reason to surrender.

He gives you one.

His lips graze your ear, and he pitches his words low, dangerous. “You know you want to let go,” Curtis says. “You don’t have to run the show every second.”

He waits for a protest. Instead, your voice comes out soft, “What if I don’t know how?”

Now, that is interesting.

And perfect.

Curtis doesn’t hesitate. He puts both hands on your hips, sharp and possessive, and pulls you back against him. There’s no space between your bodies, just the heat and the thud of his heart against your spine and the point of his cock, already hard, pressed up between the small of your back and your ass. The party below blurs out of focus. His lips drag a line from the curve of your ear to the side of your throat, the scruff on his jaw catching and scraping against your skin. He doesn’t bother with sweet nothings, just fills your world with the shudder of your own breath and the slow, insistent sweep of his palms up and under the hem of your dress.

“I’ll show you,” he growls, and you shiver in his hands but don’t resist.

Curtis lifts the skirt up over your hips, slow and sure, not for seduction but to test you, to see if you’ll stop him. You don’t. You’re trembling, but it’s the good kind—a shudder up your spine, a breath snatched and held tight. He likes that. He likes that a lot. He skims his hands further up and under, finds the smooth curve of your ass, finds the edge of your panties and tugs them down with a single, practiced motion, just far enough to bare you.

You twist to glance back, half shy, half incautious, and your voice comes out husky, nothing like the chirpy, put-together party leader from the lobby. “Is this…okay?”

He smirks. “Doesn’t matter if it’s okay, as long as you want it,” he growls, teeth grazing the juncture at your neck.

Then he’s undoing his own belt, one-handed, and you’re already melting into a perfect arch, braced and bent, just how he likes. Curtis is not a man for pleasantries. He likes efficiency, wants results, but something about you—this fine-tuned girl with the power stance and nervous little quiver—makes him want to prolong this, draw it out like the last hand at the table.

It’s a dangerous place to do this, up here and not so far from view, but that’s the point. The wide glass gives a perfect god’s-eye view of the casino, and below in the bar anyone who glances up might see a silhouette, but not a face. That risk turns the air inside electric. He wants to see how far he can push you, if you’ll crash out as a good girl or revel in coming to heel.

There’s no buildup. He doesn’t tease, doesn’t check in, just pushes forward and fills you in a single, breathtaking lunge. You choke out a surprised noise, probably loud to your own ears but lost in the spill of music and laughter that pulses up from below. He keeps going, not giving you time to adjust, not gentling his pace, just claiming you over the balcony with the force of a man who’s been starved.

The drag of his hands, the pound of his hips, the roughness of fabric and fingers and bone—he means every thrust to bruise, to mark you with the memory of this room until you can never walk into another casino again without feeling phantom pressure on your waist. It’s insane, this surge of possessiveness, but it only twists tighter as you arch and gasp and fight to keep yourself silent, because you’re good, you’ve always been good, and Curtis can sense the struggle as you try to keep the noises caged. He won’t let you. He wants you to let go, and he’s not above brute force to get you there.

He snakes a hand up under your dress, flattens his palm against your stomach, keeping you pinned so you’re forced to stay put and take every inch. His other hand creeps up, wraps around your throat and squeezes, thumb against your windpipe—not enough to hurt, just enough to underscore who’s in control.

He fucks you, relentless, and it’s not performative, not for show, just the pure, greedy satisfaction of it. If there’s any doubt in him about whether you want this, it dies when you start bucking back into him, meet him thrust for thrust, until the friction threatens to light the air on fire.

Curtis relishes every stifled gasp you make, the way you spasm and cling to the rail as your knees start to go. There’s a pretty, wild abandon now, your hands scrambling for purchase, and for the first time you look utterly unstaged, raw and perfect. His thumb strokes your pulse, steady, both pushing to more and grounding you at the same time.

Curtis is never gentle, but he’s always attentive. He’s got enough years behind him to tell when someone is about to crash. You’re creaking, threatening to snap in his hands, hips torqued back against him, begging, desperate for more. He takes a hand off your stomach and slips it lower, finds the knot of nerves that he knows can quell your need.

He works you, deliberate and precise, until your body rebels against you, locked tight around his cock as you choke out a single, helpless sound that’s all desperation. “Good girl,” he growls, and you keen.

He doesn’t stop. He keeps punishing you through it, and even when you shudder and sob, proud spine melting into a loose, slack curve, he won’t let you slide off the edge. Not until he’s wrung you out once, twice, three times—he wants you completely spent, the sight of you ruined, breath gone jagged. Only then does he come, a savage surge he buries in your heat, hands digging in with a grip that promises bruises by morning.

He laughs—low, dark, delighted—and stays pressed against your back until he’s wrung every last bit of shiver from your muscles, still touching and tormenting the your oversensitive intimate parts, fingers still tormenting with out, cock punishing your inner walls with slow ruts while he’s still half-hard. When he lets go of your throat, he pulls your face around and bites your earlobe, hard enough to leave a mark.

There’s no clean-up, not with him, not in a place like this. He slides out, fixes your dress, puts himself together with the brutal efficiency. You stand there, trembling, breathless, stuck in place.

His cocky self-satisfaction bubbles in his chest while you stay hunched over the balcony, hands vise-locked on the rail, knuckles bleached to bone. He relishes every second of it—the way you strain to straighten up but can’t quite, the way your body fights to process what just detonated inside. He enjoys watching you flinch when he slides your ruined panties delicately back into place, tugs them up with a snap of elastic. “Gotta keep my hot cum inside your tight cunt,” he mutters, the words more ruin he knows you can’t be used to.

Then he finally guides you to the couch. You look up at him, blinking, lips only slightly parted, doe-eyed in your ruined haze. He pats the side of your head before stepping away.

He pours you both a drink, because he’s not a complete animal, and hands yours over wordlessly. You sip it. He’s got vodka, but he only gave you a flavored sparkling water. You meet his gaze. He likes the way you steady yourself on a few sips.

“Now everyone in the bridal party should be able to say they had a weekend they’ll never forget,” Curtis says a few minutes later, once you seem more settled.

You huff a small laugh. At last, you manage to say, “I don’t even know if my legs work.”

He stands, knocking back the last of his vodka. “You can stay up here long as you want.”

He doesn’t offer to walk you to your room, doesn’t linger, just brushes his knuckles across your cheek and lets himself out the suite, the click of the latch leaving you in a glittering, elevated hush. He’ll send a note to your room, leaving his number and a line letting you know he’ll ruin you more if you want him to before you leave.

🥵🥴

so, again, that happened.

I must throw out a note to @stargazingfangirl18 who was there when I imagined up this man and encouraged his development! Gave great fuel to my fire once again!!

read what happens the next morning: MORNING DEPARTURE

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