#weavingduck

📍 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | LONDON, ENGLAND. 1888.

London stank of smoke, wet wool, and misery, and you had always thrived in misery. All those years of it—stitching hems, patching torn ribbons, hearing whispers no one else bothered with—had sharpened you. Whitechapel had teeth, and tonight, so did you.

Your brother, a Police Constable with H Division, laughed every time you fretted over the ballerinas’ fears.

“Leave sleuthing t’ the Yard, will you? You read that Holmes serial once and now fancy yerself the bloody oracle o’ Baker Street.”

“If you actually listened—”

“Stop tryin’ t’ get yerself killed.”

He’d waved you off with that stiff Yorkshire accent of his, leaving you in the damp flat while rain sluiced down the windows. You had meant to stay home, dry and safe, and yet you couldn’t. Not when those girls whispered of a silent shadow following them, watching hungrily from the dark.

And deep inside, you knew that shadow had something to do with him.

Remmick.

You’d met him once before. Once too bloody many. Dark-haired, shabby-genteel in a salt-and-pepper jacket, low-crowned brown felt hat, and a reddish neckerchief peeking beneath his collar. He had striking eyes that stripped you bare, dissected, and devoured you whole. The moment he smirked at you that first night you met, you knew he was trouble.

You never meant to chase anyone after dark, least of all a man like Remmick.

Violence didn’t frighten you. But whatever stalked Whitechapel now… chilled you to the marrow. Every night you listened from the cramped backroom of the studio as you patched hems:

“Another girl’s gone, luv… Mary Jane saw a man in a brown felt hat watchin’ from the alley.”

So you went after the only lead you had; that same shape you’d glimpsed once in the studio. The same gait. The same uncanny stillness.

Your thighs wouldn’t stop shaking.

That was the first thing you noticed when you came to yourself. The storm still echoing in your bones.

Not the rain—though that had soaked you straight through—but the night. The trembling buzz left over from earlier, back in that alley. You hadn’t meant to let half the things that happened out there happen.

You couldn’t stop thinking about how shamefully easy it had been to follow him—limping, soaked, furious, and still holding his hand because you were too much of a coward to pull away.

But now here you were, arms wrapped tight around yourself as you took in the cramped space of Remmick’s art studio. Lantern light flickered shadows across canvases of painted ballerinas—bodies blurred in motion, both intimate and haunting.

Your muscles still ached in places that made you shift uncomfortably… a dull, persistent reminder of earlier. Hips sore, body still humming from overstimulation, a lingering heat in places you didn’t even want to think about. The memory of it, the way you’d betrayed yourself, made it impossible to focus on the studio for more than a second.

Then you saw it.

There was only one bed.

A narrow wretched thing, barely wide enough for one person who didn’t move. After everything that happened between the two of you, sharing it with him felt impossible… yet somehow inevitable.

You swallowed. Hard.

Remmick’s boots thudded on the floor as he shucked them off. Peeling off his soaked coat, you couldn’t help but notice how his shirt and waistcoat clung to his chest and shoulders. Droplets of rainwater dripped down his temples, tracing the side of his throat, before disappearing into the neckerchief tucked in the collar of his shirt.

He caught you staring and raised a brow. “You can take the left side,” he said, motioning towards the bed. “Sit.”

Your mouth went dry. And your traitorous and exhausted body almost did.

“I’m not sharing a bed with you.”

He smirked, that infuriating gleam in his eyes returning. “Still being smart after our little play lessons out there?”

You froze. Lessons. The word made your pulse spike. You remembered how completely undone he had you, but you couldn’t recall exactly which part he was referring to. All you knew was that you should’ve been wary.

“You’re welcome to sleep standing if you like.”

“God, you’re insufferable.”

“And you’re shivering.”

“I wonder why,” you snapped, hugging yourself tighter. “Maybe because someone hauled me through half the city in a damned storm after—”

You cut yourself off.

You were not going to say it out loud.

Remmick stopped where he stood, his eyes dragging over you slowly. The room seemed to shrink around his shape as he took a single step towards you.

“You can say it,” he murmured softly.

You looked away too fast. “No.”

He was right about one thing though. You were shivering. Your dress was soaked through—petticoat, corset, and chemise sticking to your skin like a second, colder body. You were trembling so hard, your teeth were chattering.

You hesitated.

“Don’t worry, seamstress,” he said, “I won’t bite.”

A beat, before his tone turned dark and wicked.

“Not… unintentionally.”

Your glare could’ve burned holes through brick.

Turning your back to him, you clumsily set to work with stiff, numb fingers and leftover nerves, shrugging out of your sodden clothes. Bending forward, you took your shoes off and peeled your stockings down, toes numb as you stepped free of them one by one. You tugged at your overskirt and petticoat, the miserable fabrics clinging stubbornly to your hips before finally being shoved down in an impatient rush—as if speed might make this easier.

“Bloody thing,” you muttered, more to yourself than him.

Next came the bodice.

Your fingers fumbled with the buttons at your spine, cursing under your breath as they slipped from your grip. When it finally came free, the stays beneath were already soaked through, the whalebone stiff and unforgiving against your ribs. You didn’t bother untying them properly, just yanked at the side laces and dragged the whole cursed thing off in one swift go, sucking in a long, shuddering breath—the sudden freedom of your ribs almost dizzying.

Each layer peeled away felt louder than the last, the room too quiet, his presence too near without him touching you at all.

When there was only the chemise left—thin cotton, near translucent—you hesitated. It was plastered to your body, clinging everywhere it ought not to, like it meant to betray you: over the slope of your breasts, nipples drawn tight in stiff peaks, darkened where it stuck to the hollow between them, over your stomach, and outlining the tops of your thighs; all of you nearly laid bare through damp cloth.

You stood there a moment, breathing hard, fists clenched at your sides, aware of your own body in a way that felt almost obscene.

You could stop here.

You should stop here.

The thought barely finished before something hot and reckless flared in you—anger, pride, spite, you weren’t sure which. Before it could cool, you reached up and pulled the chemise over your head.

The air hit you like a slap.

Gooseflesh erupted violently along your arms and down your sides. Sucking in a breath, you folded in on yourself at once, arms crossing tight over your chest, shoulders hunched as if that might undo what had already been seen.

It didn’t work. You could feel the air there, cold and nosy, touching you where it had no right.

You knew he was looking.

The back of your neck prickled. Heat gathered low in your belly.

Grinding your teeth together, you straightened your spine and lifted your chin in pure defiance. If he was going to look, he was going to choke on it.

“Not a word,” you said flatly when you felt him shift behind you.

Standing there, shivering despite yourself, you were aware of every small sound behind you in the cramped space. You pretended not to notice his silhouette in the lantern glow, the sounds of the wet drag of fabric, the soft grunts as he shed his own soaked layers.

The room felt smaller for it. Taut. Charged.

“Give me something,” you said. “A shirt. A jumper. I don’t care what.”

Then, sharper, because you hated the tremor in your own voice:

“I’ll not be ogled at like a picture in a window.”

He did not answer right away.

Silence stretched. Heavy. You could feel it between your shoulder blades, his attention sitting there like a hand you wouldn’t allow.

“You’ve no patience at all,” he said at last, voice low and even. “Even bare-arsed and shiverin’.”

“If you’re done enjoyin’ the view… Either hand it over,” you snapped, “or take yourself back a step.”

“Careful,” he murmured. “You’re soundin’ like you want me to look harder.”

That did it. Anger flared hot enough to steady you.

You spun halfway, just enough to glare over your shoulder, arms still locked tight over your chest, chin high, eyes flashing.

And there it was—too much, all at once.

The red neckerchief he wore hung loose and crooked now, a flash of colour at his throat. His shirt was fully unbuttoned and hanging open, the linen clinging to his forearms. Beneath it, the thin undershirt was plastered to him, slightly rucked up, exposing a strip of skin at his middle. His braces sagged uselessly at his sides, trousers still on but unfastened, riding low on his hips in a way that felt deliberately indecent—gaping just enough to betray the beginnings of a few wisps of hair at his lower belly.

Just enough of him was revealed to set your thoughts skidding, your eyes catching before you could stop yourself. You hated that you noticed. Your stomach tightened with the knowledge of what sat there.

“You think I like standin’ here shaking like a fool?” you hissed, dragging your eyes away. “You think this is some sort of invitation?”

His gaze didn’t flicker. If anything, it sharpened.

“No,” he said. “I think you hate that your body’s tellin’ on you.”

Your face burned. Your thighs clenching together tighter, betraying you outright. “Turn around,” you snapped. “Or so help me—”

“Or what?” he asked softly.

You had no answer. No smart response. None that didn’t make your stomach flip.

There was a quiet sound from him, something between a breath and a laugh, quickly swallowed.

“Christ,” he murmured. “You don’t make it easy.”

He moved at last, careful. A dry shirt brushed your elbow as he held it out, not daring to drape it over you himself.

“Here… take it before you say somethin’ you can’t unsay,” he said. “Don’t worry… I’ll behave.”

You snatched it from his hand, yanking it on with stiff, furious movements, heart pounding too hard for comfort. Your skin was still buzzing, oversensitive in places you refused to think about. Every brush of cloth felt too much. The smell of him clung to it. You hated that part worst of all.

Because you remembered.

God help you, you remembered.

The alley. The cold brick at your back. The way your body folded so easily, so traitorously. The sounds you’d made—soft and wrecked and nothing like the sharp-tongued woman you liked to think you were. You burned with it now, anger and arousal tangled so tight you could hardly breathe.

“Don’t speak to me like I’m some skittish girl,” you said, voice brittle. “You should be ashamed.”

He paused mid-turn.

“If you think I’m tremblin’ because of you,” you went on, sharper now, reckless with it, “you’ve mistaken the cause.”

He faced you again. Slowly. Careful as a man approaching a wild animal.

“Oh?” he said.

“You had your fill back there, didn’t you?” You lifted your chin, even as your pulse jumped. “Or was that not enough to satisfy you—would you like some more?”

Something dark flickered behind his eyes. Lust. Hunger. Something like restraint. The kind that costs effort.

“You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean,” he said quietly.

“I mean every word,” you shot back at once, too fast.

His gaze dipped, slow and assessing, as though weighing something he had already decided once, and was deciding again.

“You’re angry,” he said again. “So angry you’re tryin’ to make me forget my manners.”

“And are your manners so easily misplaced?” you asked, voice biting. “You’ve already forgotten half of ‘em tonight.”

That earned you a step closer. Not touching. Never touching.

“I haven’t forgotten a single one,” he said. “I’m rememberin’ them very carefully.”

You should have stopped. You swallowed, hating that your body leaned a fraction towards him without permission. You felt the moment stretch taut, like a stitch pulled too hard, the fabric already tearing—and still you pushed.

“If you’re so worried about temptation, perhaps you should sleep elsewhere.”

A beat.

Then, softly: “And leave you alone with your thoughts?”

The question landed wrong. You felt a faint flare of heat curling low in your belly.

“I can manage my own thoughts,” you said, too fast, scoffing to cover your nerves.

“I don’t doubt it,” he replied. “But night does strange things to us all.”

You keep going, reckless as a hand reaching back toward a flame, because stopping would mean hearing yourself.

“I suppose you’ll swear you’re a gentleman once I’m senseless.” You laughed once, ugly and short. “That how it works? Eyes shut, conscience clear?”

You feel the mistake even as you say it. The room seems to lean. One last shove—because you cannot bear the quiet.

“Or is it easier,” you add, voice sharp with false cheer, “when I can’t see you at all?”

The words leave your mouth quicker than thought, brittle and ugly. You mean it as an accusation. To taunt him. To wound. To take back a shred of control after the alley, after the way your body had betrayed you so eagerly. It lands, even to your own ears, closer to an invitation. A dare.

The silence that followed was complete. You could hear your own breathing, the rain coming down outside.

He did not answer at once. When he did, his voice was lower, eyes not straying from yours.

“Sleep makes people careless, loosens them… leaves them open.”

Your mouth went dry. Something coiled tight in your chest. You remembered being a girl, your aunt’s voice snapping at you to pull your knees together, to lie still, to stop sprawling like you’d no sense. Slackness, she’d called it. Indecent even in sleep.

You folded your arms tighter, the old heat crawling up your neck. You wonder—traitorously—what your face does when you let go. Whether your mouth falls open. Whether you make small, foolish sounds. The thought tightens something low in your belly.

You think of his mouth.

The memory of it earlier flashes hot and unwelcome. You hate yourself for the way your body answers before you can stop it.

Disgusting, you think.

Shameless.

Your mind drifts somewhere you do not follow—only glances at, then flees. If you woke and found—

No.

You cut the thought off sharply. But it lingers anyway, half-formed:

Would you shout?

Would you freeze?

Would you pretend to still be asleep?

The answer frightens you because it is not clean. And some treacherous part of you already knew.

You lift your chin again, because defiance is easier than reckoning.

“Show me to bed,” you said after a while. “I’d rather be dead than listen to you talk in riddles.”

His mouth curved up at the corners.

“As you wish,” he said.

And as you followed him, you couldn’t shake the feeling that you had just dared something awake… and that once night settled in, it would be far harder to pretend you hadn’t meant it.

You crawled into the farthest sliver of mattress, hugging the edge as though it might save you. But the bed was too damn narrow. His thigh brushed yours. The frame creaked as he adjusted, each shift dragging his leg—or his hip—or his breath—closer.

It was torture.

You cursed under your breath.

He huffed a soft laugh, the kind that curled around your spine.

You stared into the dark and told yourself you would not sleep.

You told yourself many things.

That exhaustion was a kind of mercy.

That the narrow bed in the attic room was too mean to allow for dreaming.

That sleep, when it came, would be blank.

It was not.

Your body went first—limbs loosening, the long habit of holding yourself tight finally slipping its grip. The mattress was hard and uneven beneath you, straw poking through in places, the quilt thin and smelling faintly of coal dust and soap. November cold pressed in from the eaves, a damp chill that crept along your calves and up your spine.

A faint brush of heat along your inner thighs made your stomach clench hard. You didn’t understand why your legs shifted of their own accord, knees bending, hips easing back as though to make room.

“Mmmm…” Your lips parted slightly, a soft sigh—shaped into something needy—escaping unguarded in the dark.

A low, wet slurp slipped through the foggy haze of your consciousness. Your body shivered, thighs pressing together, chest rising and falling unevenly, heart hammering in sync with the slick noises echoing in the small room. You moaned softly, muffled and disoriented—dreaming, maybe, or maybe not. You instinctively moved closer, as if seeking more of the sensation, your body knowing something before your mind did.

But there—shoulders wedged between your legs—was the steady weight of a man.

You felt his breath first.

Then his mouth.

Opened over the bare, swollen seam of you like he meant to take a full bite and swallow you whole—working between your thighs like he’d been starving the whole night and only now found a way to quiet himself.

Calloused hands found your waist, dragging you closer into his face, grinding your hips down just enough to make your body scream without your voice. You drifted on the edge of waking, tangled in sensation. Your hands roamed freeñy, sliding back across the sheets, fingers curling in coarse linen, then—hair. They stroked the damp strands, caressed the hard lines of a back, tugging him closer as if you could somehow pull him into yourself. The low, wet sounds beneath you, the feel of his mouth, the way your own body arched into him—it all blurred together, until suddenly you were completely awake.

The dream snapped clean in two.

You jolted, gasping, eyes flying open.

The attic room swam into focus in pieces: the slanted ceiling, the darkened grate, the faint wash of lamplight leaking through the cracked door below. Rain tapped against the window. Somewhere far off, a cart rattled over cobblestones.

And there, buried between your legs—

Was Remmick. His mouth hot and wet and impossibly demanding against your aching cunt. Your stomach clenched, legs trembling as realization fully slammed into you—then you couldn’t stop yourself.

“Oh—!”

The shock of it quickly twisted into something else. Your fingers tangled in his hair, clamping down, tugging sharply on his scalp, holding him to you as you rocked your hips uncontrollably. He hissed a low, thrilling sound that made your walls flutter, and bit you for it. Nipping at the inside of your thigh in response, his teeth grazed you hard enough to make you jolt—every nerve ending in your body lighting up.

“R-Remmick—?”

Your voice cracked.

He did not stop.

Didn’t lift his head.

Didn’t even pretend to.

He was relentless.

You squirmed, kicking weakly, heel knocking the mattress, hands scrabbling uselessly at the sheets, your body humming in a way that felt entirely beyond your control. Your voice broke into ragged mewling, leaking with need. Your pussy fluttering around his mouth, hips jerking, nails clawing at the nape of his neck, then locking onto his hand when he reached for you—fingers lacing with yours, desperate in their hold.

“Easy,” he murmured, voice maddeningly calm as a man settling a horse. A breath of cold air kissed the slick, swollen center of your cunt when he spoke, and you shivered so hard your knees bumped his shoulders. “You’re all right.”

You were not.

Every prim lesson, every careful habit screamed at you to close your legs, to cover yourself, to behave—and yet you laid there spread wide by his shoulders, caught and open, gasping like something ruined.

“Look at me,” Remmick murmured from between your legs.

You shook your head.

“Come on now, sweetheart… I want to watch you make a mess on my tongue while I ruin your pretty manners.”

You forced your eyes open; your vision swam, blurry, as you tilted your head downward, eyes snapping to meet his gaze, while he looked up at you through the cradle of your thighs.

And you almost came from the sight alone.

The sight of him—hair mussed, eyes so dark they looked near black, pupils blown wide, lips swollen, mouth and chin shining glossy with your slick as his face was buried between your thighs—made your stomach twist in a mortifying rush of heat.

Your shirt was rucked to your waist, legs parted by the breadth of his shoulders.You were still half-asleep and already on the verge of falling off the edge. You hated the way he looked at you then—as though you were something he’d found, claimed, and meant to keep.

Then—smiling like he’d done something holy—

“There’s my good girl.” His grin was wicked and triumphant as he murmured against your slick folds, “Not sleeping anymore, seamstress? Are we awake enough to play properly—I worked my jaw half the night for you.”

You made a strangled sound that only made him smile wider.

“Let me up—” you tried.

“No.” He said it softly. Almost kindly.

Another bite to the inside of your thigh, followed by a lazy, almost apologetic lap of his tongue over the sting.

You couldn’t speak properly, couldn’t form words, but the feel of his hand in yours, the grip of your fingers entwined with his, said everything. You were his—trembling, panting, slick, and utterly, completely his.

Lightning flashed through the attic window, and for a split second… his pupils flashed red. Again.

Something hot coiled deep in your belly.

“It’s you,” you breathed, voice coming out thin, the words breaking on your tongue. Remembering glowing red eyes staring from the dark alleyway earlier in the night.

“Say my name—Say it proper,” he said, his breath ghosting over you, enough to make your hips arch in anticipation—his name stumbling out your mouth, tangled in a breathy moan.

He let out a soft laugh before sliding his hand up, palm open. He ran two fingers through your soft aching sex with an unhurried, lewd confidence that made your whole body clench. His pointer and middle finger grazing your outer edges, stroking and spreading the folds he’d left swollen with his mouth.

He was… teasing you. Playing with you like he had all the time in the world.

You tried to close your thighs. But he just held you open with one broad hand, spreading you wider.

And then—without warning—Remmick bowed his head and with a slow, obscene thoroughness that stole the air from your lungs, licked a long, filthy stripe up the centre of your cunt using the flat of his tongue.

You choked out a sob before your hand flew to your mouth.

He caught your wrist, tightly gripping your hand in his.

“Let me hear it,” he whispered against you. “All of it.”

You felt him shift—his weight adjusting—and the faint, unmistakable grind of him thrusting against the mattress.

The bastard was using your legs as leverage.

Half-humping the bloody mattress while his mouth worked, dragging you into frantic, desperate need. Your body betrayed you even as your mind scrambled to remonstrate. You couldn’t stop squirming. Couldn’t stop moaning. Couldn’t stop the helpless, needy whining that bubbled from your chest in ragged bursts: “Please, please… Remmick, oh—oh, gods—”

“Please what?” he murmured against your skin. “You’re the one makin’ all the little noises. I’m only helpin’ you along.”

He let out a groan, low in his throat, voice rasping into you, “My God, look at you… You’re so wet for me, all puffed up and dripping, soaking my damned mouth. Sweetheart, I—oh, I could drown in you… Don’t you pretend I ain’t allowed a taste.”

When you whimpered, begged, tried to argue, it only seemed to spur him more.

“Shh,” he hushed you, teeth nipping lightly. “Always so eager… so stubborn… but you’ll learn. You’ll learn exactly how far you belong beneath me.”

His lips sealed around your clit, nose pressed to your pubic bone, and he drew in a long breath like he meant to scent you through before beginning to suck—hard, greedy pulls, sucking hard enough to make your breath break like you’d been punched.

“Bastard!”

You jolted like you’d been struck, your fingers curling into his hair and tugging hard as your breath stuttered out.

A sharp pain bloomed on the inside of your thigh, his teeth finally breaking through skin, tongue lapping at the blood, easing the sting. Your whole core pulled tight, a sharp little spasm that made your toes curl against the sheets.

His voice dropped lower, darker, “Call me ‘bastard’ again and I’ll bend you over my knee ’til you forget your own name.”

Outrage flared in your face. Remmick waited, patient, watching you think.

Your whole body flushed.

You felt wicked.

Wild.

And somehow more yourself than you ever were awake during the day.

Then your mouth curved, slow and dangerous. Your eyes meeting his.

“You think you’ve got me figured,” you said softly. “Don’t you, you bastard?”

His breath hitched, hard and hungry, before letting out a delighted laugh.

“Oh, seamstress…” His breath fanned over you. “We’re going to have so much fun.”

His palm braced under your ass, lifting you to his mouth. You felt the pads of his thumbs dig into the soft crease of your thighs—bruises forming—holding you open with a strength that frightened you almost as much as it thrilled you.

Then he pressed his tongue flat against your clit and shook his head, just enough to send a wild, unbearable rush through your whole body.

Your back arched clear off the mattress, hands clawing at the sheets. Your thighs clamped around his head, trembling.

The sounds you made were filthy.

Shameful.

Loud.

His moans folded into yours—a hungry, desperate duet—and you felt him rut harder against the bed. The steady, desperate grind of his hips into the mattress, the faint creak of the springs under him. Slow at first, then harder, then downright filthy. You heard the wet sound of him stroking himself slick with precum between thrusts, moving in perfect rhythm with the grinding of his pelvis against the mattYou felt his breath stutter wheneveneb he rubbed his cock just right.

He wasn’t even trying to hide it. It was like he was using your pleasure to work himself senseless.

You felt every inch of his mouth. Every scrape of stubble. Every spill of air where he exhaled. Every wet drag of his tongue through your folds. Every soft tug of suction. The sounds he made—the high pitched whining, the bitten-off curses, the low, guttural praise—all wrapped around you like heat.

“Look at you,” he groaned, voice breaking on a laugh as you whimpered. “Spread out pretty as a prayer. Warm as a summer loaf. Soft, too. Bet your cunt’s achin’ for me, ain’t it?”

Your body burned so hot you thought you might faint.

“Stop talking like—like some guttersnipe—”

He lifted his head, eyes bright and feral in the half-light.

“Sweetheart, I am a guttersnipe where you’re concerned.”

You felt him ease back from you by slow, maddening degrees, his mouth leaving the slick heat between your thighs only to travel higher—closer—until his breath trembled over your lips. He didn’t kiss you. Didn’t need to. He lingered there, a breath’s distance away, close enough that you could smell yourself on him: musky, warm, indecent—clinging to his tongue and smeared faintly on the curve of his upper lip.

“I’m going to absolutely ruin you,” he rasped, the words quiet but certain, his voice roughened with desire.

Even though his mouth was gone, his fingers never stopped. They worked you with long, wicked strokes, dragging the pads of them through your folds as though he was strumming an instrument; slow, deliberate passes, broken by the occasional, shallow pump into you. His thumb skated up along the seam of your sex before reaching your clit, circling slow at first—slow enough to make you groan in frustration—and then bearing down with a pressure that made your hips buck into his palm.

Your breath fractured. Your hands stayed fisted in the sheets.

The room tipped.

“Now,” he muttered, though nothing about him was gentle. “Beg properly, seamstress. You should know by now—you’re mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to taste. Mine to make a mess of. So, beg.”

And you did.

He was barely finished speaking before your voice, breathless and shaking, cracked high: “Please… please, take me… Remmick, please, I’m yours—please, I need—”

The words struck him like a spark, igniting him. He cut you off without ceremony, his fingers buried in your aching cunt. You clenched around him on instinct, wet and needy and humiliatingly eager, fluttering as he pushed deeper to the last knuckle.

You could feel the roughness of his skin, the drag and pull inside you, the obscene fullness of his hand working you like he meant to wring something out of you. He fucked you with his hand alone, slow then fast, finding every sensitive spot, curling and pumping his fingers just right, until your breath came in ragged gasps and broke apart in helpless little mewls.

His free hand came up to brace beside your head, tilting your face toward his until your foreheads nearly touched. You felt each of his breaths as they stumbled against your skin.

He pulled his fingers free just to watch your hips follow, needy and unashamed, a sound tearing out of her throat when he left you empty. He lifted his hand between the two of you, fingers spread, sticky and shining in the low light.

“You see that?” he said. “That’s all you.”

You could feel yourself growing sloppier, softer, slick coating the inside of your thighs, the shame of it only sharpening your arousal.

“Open your mouth,” he said suddenly, voice quiet but soaked in command.

“W-what for?” You barely choked it out.

His fingers returned to pumping a steady, relentless rhythm into you. If anything, they drove deeper—your breath hitting your throat like a punch.

“Do as I say.”

You did. You parted your lips, trembling, your breath catching on the edge of something sharp and bright inside you. He watched your mouth open like you’d just handed him a secret.

A crooked smile touched his lips before he leaned in, filling your vision.

You felt the warm slip of moisture leave his mouth and fall into yours—slow, deliberate, filthy in a way that made your whole body jolt.

Before you could fully react, he caught your mouth with his—lips sealing over yours, swallowing the shocked sound you made. The kiss was deep, claiming, his tongue barely moving but his lips pressing firm, forcing you to take the moment whole.

And that was when you shattered.

The world cinched tight, sparks blooming behind your eyes, your breath breaking apart in sharp, strangled gasps beneath his mouth. Your spine arched clean off the bedding as something white-hot tore through you. Your fingers fisted uselessly at the sheets, grasping at anything to anchor yourself.

He kissed you through it, swallowing every broken sound, every quiver of breath, every gasp you couldn’t hold in. You could taste yourself on his tongue. Hear your own heartbeat pounding behind your ears. Feel the weight of his stare as he watched you come apart in his hands.

Your senses blurred—sound thinning to a high, ringing hum, vision flickering at the edges, the room tipping slightly as though the floor had given way beneath you. Heat shot down your legs, your toes curling so hard into the sheets it hurt. You were aware—dimly—of his fingers slowing, but not stopping. His forehead pressed to yours. His breath shaking just as much as yours.

“There you are,” he murmured, voice barely there as he peppered you with light kisses. “Good girl… there you are.”

Tears bead your lashes as you come down from the high of your orgasm. You can feel his cock strained, thick and hard, pressed against your side.

“Shhh, it’s okay—I got you… you did so good for me.” He hushes you quietly, petting your hair and face. “You look so pretty when you cry, seamstress.” He says tenderly, one hand caressing your cheek, thumb brushing back and forth, tilting your face up so your eyes meet his.

Remmick smiles… a slow, wolfish thing. “I’d wager you look even prettier when you’re being held down.”

You get furious.

You wrench yourself free, surprising him enough to slip out from under him. You twist, using every bit of strength you had to pin him onto his back, so you’re on top, straddling him. Your knees braced on either side of his hips, digging into the lumpy mattress underneath—the shirt you’re wearing rucked up around your hips.

Grabbing just under his jaw, you forced him to look at you.

You felt his skin under your palms, felt his throat flexing as he swallowed. His stubble scraped your fingers. The storm outside rattled the attic, but all you could hear was your own pulse banging in your ears.

“It’s you,” you breathed, chest heaving. “Jack. You killed those girls.”

His entire body shuddered.

Not a delicate tremor, but a full-body, spine-deep, visceral jolt, like your accusation hit some buried, feral nerve.

His throat worked beneath your hand again. You felt the movement against your palm—muscle tightening, loosening, tightening again. He was breathing too fast. Too rough. Too hungry.

“And if I did,” he rasped, voice cracking open on the truth. “You don’t accuse a man like that unless you’re already half in love with the idea of what he might be capable of.”

Victory burned hot in your chest, feeling triumphant over cracking a case not even your brother had figured out yet, before the moment shattered into something breathless and frantic.

You lunged.

He caught you and rolled with impossible strength, flipping you beneath him before you could blink.

He gripped your waist, fingers spreading wide, digging into your skin like he meant to brand the shape of his hands onto you. You felt every inch of him, the way his hips dug into yours. His cock straining against the plush, softness of your ass. He groaned at the contact—low and guttural, like he’d been holding that sound in his teeth. You felt a tremor in his thighs, the way he fought—barely—to keep from rutting into you like a man starved.

“Damn you,” you panted, fist clenched tight around the sheets next to your head. Your cheek pressed to the pillow, his body flush to your back, his chest rising against your spine.

He leaned down, his breath ghosting over the shell of your ear, “Don’t pretend you didn’t chase after me for this.” His hand slowly slid down your front, fingers teasing your breasts on their way down, stopping just shy of the place where you were throbbing hot and needy.

You didn’t answer him.

You didn’t have to.

He felt it in the way your body stayed beneath his, in the way you didn’t pull away. In the way your hips shifted back towards his, slow and deliberate, inviting trouble you already knew the shape of.

By the time dawn crept thin and gray through the attic window, the sheets were twisted, the air heavy and spent… and neither of you had gone anywhere at all.

📍 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | LONDON, ENGLAND. 1888.

The evening air had already settled into a damp chill. The ballet studio windows were smeared with grime, catching the last of the gaslight spilling from the street. You pushed through the heavy door carrying your basket of torn skirts, tulle, and satin, fingers aching from a day of pinning and hemming; prepared to spend the night mending fabrics and patching bodices. It should have been quiet, solitary work, rhythmic and soothing.

The smell of rosin, sweat, and damp wool hit you immediately… and beneath it all, the faint new tang of a foreign cologne prickled your senses—a metallic edge like a new coin.

Inside, the studio was alive with laughter. Your older brother leaned easy against a wall; shoulders relaxed, hat tipped back, laughing quietly and speaking in casual tones with a man you did not know. The man held a brush in one hand and a palette in the other, studying one of the girls—lean, long-limbed, neck craned, and balancing on tiptoe—as she posed for him on a raised platform while holding a delicate arabesque. Her cheeks were flushed, lips parted in delight, eyes bright with admiration. Nearby, the other girls giggled, cooed, and swooned in a chorus of infatuation like schoolgirls with a shared secret crush.

You rolled your eyes. Hard.

“Well, well,” you said, letting your voice carry, loud enough to cut through the chatter and faint music from a cheap hand-cranked gramophone in the corner. “Has the Met finally decided t’get off their arses and be useful for once?” you asked, stepping further inside. “We’re to believe you lot actually give a toss about… you know, about the—” you motioned vaguely to the studio and the girls, before whispering harshly, “—the murders?”

You’d lost near all faith in the Yard handling anything properly since the Matchgirls’ Strike. If the Met couldn’t mind a crowd of working women without blundering it, how were they supposed to mind a killer? You’d seen enough to know: when it came to women in trouble, you were on your own.

“Good evening, darling sister,” your brother sighed, sounding every inch the overworked constable he was, and every inch the man who’d had quite enough of your mouth testing his patience these past few months. He tipped his helmet back, the gaslight gleaming off the wet sheen on the brim. “I’m not here to jaw about your theories tonight. I came to speak with a friend.”

You paused.

A friend.

Your breath caught a little as hope flared in your chest—foolish, girlish, hopeful thing that you were—and cursed yourself for it even as the words tripped out, too quickly and far too eagerly:

“A-Arthur?” You flinched, stammering, hating yourself the second his name left your lips. “I mean… Dr. Doyle—Is Dr. Doyle here?”

Your brother closed his eyes and dragged a hand down his jaw, letting out a long, suffering breath—as though you were a persistent draught under a door. He wasn’t angry, just weary enough to make you feel six years old again, caught pinching sugar off the spoon.

“Christ above, will you listen to yourself?” he muttered. “No, he ain’t here. And you’d do well not t’go askin’ after the man every bleedin’ time I open my mouth and say ‘friend.’ The man’s married, for God’s sake.”

You bristled visibly, embarrassingly.

“So?” you shot back under your breath. “Married men can still have friends, can’t they?”

His entire face went flat, giving you a long look. A constable’s steeled look. A brother’s reprimand wrapped in uniform blue.

“He’s a married man with a babe on the way, mind,” he said, lowering his voice in that patronising Yorkshire lilt. “He ain’t got time t’be entertainin’ the wild fancies of a—”

“—Don’t say it.”

“Oh, I’ll say it,” he countered, stepping closer. “—of a girl who ought to know better than to spend her days moonin’ over his letters.”

Your face burned hot enough to scorch the tulle still dangling from your basket.

“I do not moon,” you hissed.

“You do,” he said. “And half the postman’s route knows it.”

You wanted to hit him with your mending kit.

“It ain’t improper to discuss a case,” you huffed, muttering under your breath. “The good Doctor finds my insights—”

“Amusin’,” your brother cut in. “He finds you amusin’, love. Not wifely material.”

The blow landed like a boot to your ribs. Your heart stuttered thinking of the careful, amused politeness Doyle’s letters always extended to you—the way he treated you as his friend’s clever, capable, sharp-tongued sister, and not some fluttering doll.

You still remembered the day that letter arrived, telling you he’d wed sweet-faced Louise Hawkins. Soft-spoken, docile, fair as clover honey. Everything you weren’t. You remembered staring at the ink until it blurred, until your mouth filled with blood from biting your tongue near through.

Your brother didn’t notice the wound reopening, or perhaps he did, and said nothing.

“I weren’t askin’ for his time,” you said stiffly, chin lifting high. “Only who you meant by ‘friend.’ Since when d’you take to makin’ new ones and not mentionin’ ’em.”

“This gentleman here is Mister Remmick,” your brother sighed, motioning towards the man still busy painting. “We crossed paths last November… after that Bloody Sunday mess down Trafalgar Square had half the Yard in the gutter,” he scratched at the strap of his helmet, the way he did whenever a memory didn’t sit comfortably. “I got knocked from my line, near had a mob on top of me.”

He paused, not for effect, but from the faint, lingering embarrassment of it.

“Would’ve got me skull split open if he hadn’t hauled me clear. Didn’t know him from Adam then, mind—thought he were just another bloke tryin’ not t’get his head bashed in.” A small shrug.

“So when I saw him again months later—”

His gaze slid toward Remmick again.

“—standin’ near that murder off Commercial Road, swearin’ blind he saw a bloke runnin’ from the scene… well. I thought it no small bit of providence.”

You stiffened.

“A witness?” you asked sharply.

“Don’t start,” he muttered. “It weren’t one o’ your ‘shadow-in-the-alley’ tales. Weren’t even one of the Ripper’s, so far as the Yard thinks. But he spoke clear, gave a fine description, and truth told… he talked better sense than half the constables on shift.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes softening.

“Man’s got an eye for detail. Proper artist’s eye, I s’pose. Talks like he’s read half the British Museum, but don’t lord it over you. Helps, listens, and don’t make me feel daft for askin’ him summat outside me ken.”

Then, with a smirk that bordered on smug:

“Not that you’d recognise a decent man if he handed you a penny and told you what pattern it was struck with.”

Your jaw dropped.

Your brother continued before you could bite him for it.

He glanced at Remmick, still painting. “Just be civil. For once. He’s done nothin’ t’ earn that look you’re givin’ him.”

Your skin prickled with unease as you stared down the man in question. Your instincts—your father’s sea-sense and your mother’s Tiger Bay gut—whispered wrong, wrong, wrong with every stroke of his brush.

“And before you decide to chew my head off, dearest baby sister,” he noted the scowl already curving on your lips, “I’ll hear some of the girls’ concerns, for your peace of mind. Happy?”

Before going off to talk to the rest of the girls, your brother guided you toward the strange man, with a hand on your elbow, muttering under his breath, “Play nice,” like you were a badly behaved terrier he’d rather not have in public.

“I can be nice,” you hissed after him.

You straightened your shoulders and turned towards this Remmick figure. He didn’t meet your eyes at first, instead his focus remained intently watching the ballerina’s delicate pose.

“Who are you?” Your eyes swept over the easel in front of him, scrutinizing the work. “One o’ them Paris artist-types? A little Degas-wannabe in the makin’, is it? Though I suppose looking at your so-called talent, ‘wannabe’ is generous.”

Your brother shot you a look, but you barely saw it.

Because the painter—this Remmick—had turned his head at the sound of your voice, and you felt the weight of his stare like a gloved hand closing round your neck. It was slow, measured, like he was inspecting a curious insect, or perhaps a pest. His smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth, sly, knowing.

“Ah,” he said finally, voice flat, but with a curl of amusement. “You must be the spinster seamstress I've heard so much about. The one with a bite sharp enough to scare away any would-be suitors—at least those not brave enough to bite back.”

“Oh, am I to understand that as an offer?” you retorted with a sarcastic lilt, moving the basket in your arms to your hip and stepping closer. “Not keen, I’d say thanks, but I’m not that desperate.”

He chuckled softly, a sound that grated on your nerves in ways you didn’t care to admit. “You flatter yerself too much, darlin’. Though, I do admire the spirit.”

Your hands, still clutching the basket at your hip, flexed into fists, itching to toss the skirts at him. “Admiration from a man painting girls in tights?” you spat, voice sharp. “Forgive me if I don’t swoon with the rest of them. Though I daresay, some of the ladies are willing to, for just about anyone, regardless of skill, hmm?”

Remmick lifted an eyebrow, clearly entertained, like he enjoyed the sting of your words more than he ought to. “I can see what he meant. You do got quite the wicked little mouth on you. I was hoping you’d live up to the reputation… and here you are, spinning words like needles, sharp and dangerous. I like that. Dangerous suits you.”

“What, I’m barely out of my skirts and you’re already trembling at the thought?” You stepped closer, uninvited. “Or is it just your imagination running wild?”

The girls nearby stifled their giggles. Your brother cleared his throat, clearly aware the banter was teetering on something far too sharp for polite company.

“Perhaps,” he said, voice smooth, teasing, dangerous. “Or I’ve learned to recognize trouble when it walks in wearing skirts and petticoats.”

You snorted. “Trouble? Me? How quaint. I’ll remind you, it’s the painter who’s standing there acting like some… inspired poet, hiding behind a wet brush and pretending to charm the world with dolled up words. Do you smell that?” You sniffed dramatically, your lips twitching into a half-smile, half-sneer. “Smells of turpentine… and arrogance.”

Your brother rubbed his forehead, muttering under his breath, clearly aware of the chaos that always seemed to follow you like a lost pup.

“And you, from what I hear,” he countered, eyes sweeping over your form, lingering in ways far longer than what was appropriate, “Sherlock Holmes in skirts, off t’ solve a crime with needle and thread, is it? Careful now, seamstress,” Remmick murmured, voice sliding into velvet-coated danger. “You keep chasin’ the dark like that, don’t be shocked when it chases you back.”

That smirk, that voice… Gods, he was insufferable.

You bristled, cheeks warming. “And yet I think I’ll risk it,” you snapped, biting the words off carefully, letting your gaze flick to the girls, their eyes shining with giddy admiration. “Better than watching the likes of you flounder at posing girls and pretend it's genius.”

He smirked then, fully amused, leaning against the easel as if he owned the space. “Ah, insolence. That’s the spirit, yes. You continue to amuse me in spite of yourself, seamstress,” he paused, eyes meeting yours with something unreadable, “I suspect one day, that sharp tongue of yours really may bleed you far deeper than you can handle.”

Your nostrils flared, words tumbling out in a half-rant, bristling with defiance. “Or perhaps it’ll teach you a thing or two about yourself, and how ugly you sound. And while we’re at it, maybe you should also learn to mind your own business and leave those of us who—”

“Enough!” Your brother’s voice cracked like a whip, startling the room. He marched over to you, fingers wrapping tight around your arm, and dragged you back a pace or two. “I said that’s enough. We’ve talked about this—You have got to show some… restraint.”

Remmick, meanwhile, had stopped painting. The ballerina on the platform wobbled slightly, ignored. Oh, he kept his hand up, brush angled, hovering forgotten. But his eyes were fixed entirely on you, following every twitch of your body. Watching you unravel under your brother’s admonishments. And your brother, distracted in his scolding of you, had no notion of the ongoing intensity erupting between you and the Irishman.

“You’re not listening,” your brother said, voice dropping to a firm, low tone. “Since the passing of mother and father, you are now under my care. My responsibility. And I expect you to behave—conduct yourself accordingly.”

You blinked at him, caught mid-scowl, but then your eyes wandered back to Remmick, and… damn him. Your brother’s words faded behind the thrum of your pulse, your mind halting mid-thought. He was still watching you, that infuriating smirk never fading, eyes locked on yours, heat coloring that gaze, almost feral in their amusement.

“Are you paying attention?” your brother barked, noticing your distraction.

“Yes, yes,” you blurted quickly, too fast, too hot, too transparent. “I am.” You bit the inside of your cheek and tried not to sneer back in response at Remmick. Tried.

He stood several paces behind your brother, arms crossed, brush hanging idle between his fingers. His gaze fixed wholly on you, hungry for your reaction.

Remmick waited until your brother raised his voice again—just enough to mask any sound—and then he shaped silent, devastating words with his mouth, meant for you alone:

Pretty temper…

His gaze dipped deliberately to your lips.

Ought to mind that tongue…

A tiny smirk.

…you pert little thing.

You inhaled sharply as heat surged up your throat, blooming traitorously. You couldn’t stop the way your thighs clenched together. You wanted to scoff, to roll your eyes, to spit something scathing at him, but your tongue tangled itself uselessly behind your teeth.

Pressing your lips into a thin line, you attempted to look unaffected, scornful even.

And you failed.

You failed spectacularly.

Remmick saw it—the flicker of embarrassment, the flare of something more—and his smirk deepened, eyes glinting like a man who’d just discovered an unexpected delight.

Your brother grunted, giving your arm a firm shake. “Am I making myself clear? I may not understand your refusal of every decent man in Whitechapel, but you’ll conduct yourself like a lady. We’re not out in the street for you to be flinging barbs at strangers. I love you, just—please… don’t make a show of me.”

You nodded, or tried to, but the movement barely registered.

Because your gaze… slipped. Again.

You couldn’t help it—your eyes kept drifting past your brother’s shoulder, drawn like a moth to a flame.

Drawn to him.

Your brother kept speaking, tightening his grip as though that alone might tether your attention. But it didn’t.

God help you, you weren’t looking at him at all.

Only at Remmick.

And Remmick looked right back at you.

Still leaning there—brows pushed together in mock worry, shaking his head, lips pursed as he gave the smallest tut of feigned disappointment—still watching you, still wearing that sin-soaked little smirk beneath it all…

…and mouthing a final word only you could see:

Trouble.

The streets were slick with rain when you caught sight of a dark silhouette that night. You kept to the shadows, following, your heartbeat hammering a loud war-drum rhythm in your chest.

He was moving too quickly. Running wasn’t the exact word, more… gliding. As if the night welcomed him, made room for him.

Breath fogging in the air, you pushed on.

He turned down an alley.

You hurried after him—

Suddenly, a girl’s scream cracked through the dark. Instinct or just sheer stubbornness propelled you forward.

Damn him.

“Not again,” you muttered under your breath, as you picked up your pace. “Oi! You there!”

You weren’t prepared for the chase.

The shadow bolted deeper into Whitechapel’s veins with the fluidity of a born predator. You lunged after him—long skirts be damned—ignoring puddles, rubbish heaps, and the icy wind knifing your face.

He moved like he knew the streets better than the rats did; ducking beneath hanging wash-lines, slipping between crates, taking turns no sane man would take after dark.

“You bastard—hold a moment!” you hissed, breath catching in your throat, wet and rasping.

God help you, you ran like a woman who’d lost her wits. The night swallowed your footfalls, yet somehow they echoed back at you, louder, wrong… like someone was right behind you when there shouldn’t be.

You dared a glance over your shoulder, eyes sweeping your surroundings.

Nothing.

Only shifting fog, the faint gleam of gutter water, and two red points glowing at the far end of a dark lane.

You blinked.

Nothing to fret over.

But the feeling remained—eyes crawling over your back, slow and sure, the way a tomcat studies a sparrow before it pounces. That prickle of awareness along your spine made your breath hitch, pulse slam frantic against your ribs, and your stomach clench in a way that was terrifying… and shamefully thrilling.

“Keep on,” you muttered to yourself, breath quivering. “Don’t turn daft now.”

You rounded a corner—

And skidded to a halt.

He was gone.

Vanished clean. As if he’d stepped sideways into the fog and let it swallow him whole.

Your chest rose and fell violently. You swallowed hard, listening. The alley stretched ahead, empty. Too empty.

A drip of water fell from a gutter. Far off, a cart wheel groaned. Somewhere a drunk slurred a song too low to make out the words.

A light drizzle of rain picked up again—soft and pattering—like fingertips tapping along the roofs above.

You stumbled into a narrow chokepoint, where three alleyways branched ahead of you. Slick black jaws of stone yawning like open throats, breathing cold mist. You spun, scanning every direction, trembling, trying to find a path out. Your skirts were beginning to get soaked and cling to your skin, wet hair plastered to your face, teeth clenched as the taste of iron filled your mouth from biting down too hard on your tongue.

“Which way—?” You spun, desperate. “Where’d he go?”

Thunder grumbled over the city.

Picking one at random, you bolted down a narrow alley, twisting and turning as stone walls pressed in on either side. Still, you couldn’t stop.

Every instinct, every nerve screamed in tandem with the pounding of your heart, that part of you—the part that burned with need—was alive, awake, and hungry; howling faster, faster. Even as rain-slick cobbles threatened to betray your footing, you didn’t care. You had to see him. Had to catch him. Had to—

The thought died as realization struck cold. You weren’t following him anymore… He was following you.

Footsteps pattered somewhere behind you.

Not yours.

Lighter. Quicker. Then stopping.

The skin at the nape of your neck tightened like it had been caught between two cold fingers. Your breath hitched. You turned slowly, every hair along your arms standing. The air shifted around you like a living thing. You felt it, curling along your skin, brushing your hair, teasing your senses.

“Who’s there?” you called out, voice trembling between command and plea. “Show yourself!”

Nothing but darkness answered.

“Don’t play the devil with me,” you whispered. “I ain’t frightened.”

Lie. God help you, it was a lie.

Because you were, delightfully so. But you also wanted this. The chase. The unknown. The wicked thrill of being hunted.

And then you saw them again—those two red points in the darkness, watching from the dark. Piercing. Hungry. All-consuming. Not human.

Your stomach dropped clean to your knees. Pure, sharp, delicious terror.

Ice flooded your veins. Instinct screamed—run!—but your legs felt unsteady. You were prey and prisoner all at once. The wild flare of panic that bloomed in you tasted like fire on the tongue.

“No…” you breathed, voice thin as thread. Your pulse hammered faster, wild and uneven. You backed up a few steps, skirts brushing a stack of crates. “No, you—”

You didn’t finish as a hand clamped down over your mouth—

—and you were yanked into the dark, swallowed whole before the scream could leave your throat.

Your breath vanished in one sharp, panicked jolt. You clawed at the hand covering your mouth, nails scraping skin, but it only sealed tighter, nearly cutting off all circulation. Another arm snaked across your middle, dragging you further back, bearing you flush against something solid.

A chest. A man’s chest. Broad, immovable, firm against your back.

Your ribs strained to draw air.

His body pinned you from throat to thigh.

Your breath stuttered through your nose, hot and trembling. His breath feathered through your damp hair, slow and intimate, as if he were inhaling the panic rolling off you.

“Hold still, seamstress.”

That voice.

Remmick.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured in her ear, voice low and smooth. “Or hell, maybe do. You smell beautiful when you’re scared.”

Your thighs pressed together on instinct, shamefully quick, heat blooming where fear and want tangled. Sweat prickled under your bodice despite the cold drizzle.

Remmick’s thumb brushed the edge of your cheek—testing, teasing—his breath grazing the shell of your ear in a way no gentleman would dare at this hour… or any hour. The touch wasn’t meant to soothe.

You twisted hard in his grip, fury rising faster than fear. Your heart thundered so loud you felt it shaking your own ribs. You tried again to shove the hand from your mouth.

He didn’t budge.

“Unhand me,” you hissed against his palm, the words hot and furious, still struggling to get out of his hold.

He leaned in close enough that you felt the shape of his smile curve against your jaw. “As you wish.”

The words slid down your spine like a blade warmed by breath.

And then—too suddenly—his arms vanished from around your body.

Unfortunately for you, already in the midst of bracing away from him hard, the moment he let go, your balance fled you. You stumbled out of his grasp, skirts twisting around your ankles, boots skidding on slick stone, and landed flat in a deep puddle. Cold water surged up your spine, soaking you wet to the bone.

A shocked sound tore from your throat. You squeezed your eyes shut and let out a groan of pure, murderous frustration. Water ran in thin rivulets down your face as you sucked in air.

You pushed yourself up on trembling palms and glared daggers at the man standing over you.

“You’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting!” you spat, pointing at him with a hand that shook more from adrenaline than anything else.

You wanted to slap him. And… something else.

Something coiling low and shameful in the pit of your belly.

Something you refused—absolutely refused—to name.

He didn’t offer you a hand.

Of course he didn’t.

Instead, Remmick stepped down into the puddle with you, boots splashing deliberately, water rippling around your soaked skirts. He moved with that same maddening calm, as if the entire chase, the screaming, the terror, the cold—none of it could so much as scuff his composure.

He crouched beside you slowly, one knee sinking into the filthy water without hesitation, bringing his face level with yours.

His eyes were too bright at this distance. The lamplight caught them in a way that made your pulse leap like it had something to fear.

Or desire.

He braced an arm casually across his knee, the proximity of him, far too close, cut through the discomfort of your wet clothes.

You shifted back on your palms.

He leaned forward just an inch, forcing you to choose: pull away or hold still.

You froze.

“Easy now,” he murmured, as if soothing a skittish animal. “You’re tremblin’.”

“I’m cold,” you snapped, far too quickly.

His eyes flicked to your mouth, then down your throat, watching it work as you swallowed.

“Mm,” he said, voice a warm rasp. “That’s part of it… though I reckon somethin’ else has your heart racin’ then.”

Heat crawled up your throat, mortifying in its honesty. You tried to rise, but his hand—light as a whisper—settled over your thigh through your damp skirts.

You opened your mouth—whether to argue or deny or curse him, you didn’t know.

His voice cut through whatever you were going to say. “You chased a shadow all through Whitechapel, lass. Streets full of cut-throats and worse. And yet here you sit, angry with me for catchin’ you first.”

Your fingers curled in the muddy water. “I wasn’t caught. I tripped.”

“You didn’t trip.”

His knee shifted an inch closer, forcing your legs to tense. His presence filled the tight alley, filled your lungs, filled the tiny frantic space behind your ribs where fear and thrill tangled.

“You ran,” he said, gaze fixed on you like a hand around your throat, “and I came after. That’s all.”

A drop of water rolled from your temple to your jaw. He tracked it with his eyes, slow, hungry.

Heat flooded your belly. Shame curled right behind it.

He reached out, not touching your skin, and lifted the loose edge of your soaked collar with two fingers, inspecting the shiver that raced down your shoulders.

“Look at you,” he murmured. “A quiverin’ little thing.”

You jerked back, furious. “Get away from me.”

A smile touched the corner of his mouth. “If you wanted me away, seamstress…” His gaze swept over you again. “You wouldn’t be here… sniffin’ at these dark alleys, chasin’ me about like a bloody lost pup.”

Your stomach flipped as anger flared too hot to contain, sharp and familiar. You planted your palms in the water and shoved yourself upright until you were sitting eye level with him, skirts plastered to your thighs, water dripping down your face.

“You think this is funny,” you hissed. “Scarin’ me. Is that what you do to every woman you follow through these streets?”

For the first time, his smile faded.

His eyes lifted to yours without blinking. Light rain peppered the space between you.

“Is that what you believe I’ve been doin’?” he asked softly.

“That’s what they say,” you snapped, too breathless, too shaken. “Girls vanishin’ in the night. Someone watchin’ from alleyways. They speak of a man lurkin’ where he oughtn’t be. And tonight I find you slinkin’ about in the dark like some bloody phantom—”

He leaned in.

Just enough that your next breath caught against his.

“Careful now,” he murmured. “Accusin’ a man of wickedness is a serious thing. Even in a place like this.”

You scoffed, glaring at him. “If the boot fits.”

His thumb brushed your knee—light, too light—and every muscle in your body clenched in treacherous response.

“So that’s what you think of me,” he said, almost to himself. “A shadow that snatches girls off the street.”

He tilted his head, studying you with a strange, unreadable curiosity—like he were examining a puzzle he meant to take apart piece by piece.ñ

Then his voice dropped into something dark and intimate.

“And if I were?”

His gaze held yours, unwavering.

“If I did stalk pretty things through the fog… if I did follow the sound of a woman’s breath down narrow alleys…” His eyes flicked to your throat. “Would you truly have come runnin’ after me tonight?”

Your mouth went dry. “I… I didn’t—”

“Didn’t you?” he breathed.

A shiver tore down your spine.

“Answer me honest, now: If you thought I was a danger… why chase me alone?”

You sucked in a shaky breath. “Because someone screamed.”

“Aye,” he said. “Someone did.”

You blinked. “You heard it too—?”

Remmick’s expression shifted.

“I did,” he murmured. His voice held something dark. Something knowing.

You felt the truth settle like ice in your gut: He hadn’t run from the scream. Maybe towards it... or was he the reason for it. Like a hunter stalking its prey at night before he jumps on it.

“Tell me, seamstress,” he whispered, breath fanning against your cheek. “Are you askin’ if I chase women… if I catch them?”

Your pulse hammered violently against your ribs. The fog felt too tight around you. You needed distance—air—anything that wasn’t him closing in on your skin like a second pulse.

You pushed at his chest.

“Get back,” you said, though it came out weaker than you liked.

He didn’t budge an inch.

So you tried again, palms flat against the fabric of his coat, shoving harder, and that was when he moved.

Not to restrain you or to loom.

Just… to rise.

Except he didn’t rise alone.

He rose with you, as though your attempt to push him had simply given him an excuse to take you with him. One moment you were half-sitting in the puddle, the next you were being hauled upright; your body lifted clean off the wet stones by a firm grip at your waist.

Not your hand.

Your waist.

His fingers slid around your middle, strong and decisive, catching you just under your ribs. It startled a small sound out of you—half gasp, half protest—as your feet left the ground for a breathless second. When he set you down, your boots barely made a splash; he handled you as if you weighed nothing at all.

Far, far too intimate to be proper.

Heat bloomed low in your belly, infuriating and impossible to deny.

You lashed out.

Your fingers flew to your hat, yanking the silver pin free in one sharp, practiced motion. Instinct, fury, fear—whatever it was—fueled you as you lunged at him, hand poised to strike.

But he was faster.

His fingers closed around your wrist mid-swing, catching it with humiliating ease. The pin halted a bare inch from his throat, your arm locked in place, trembling with the effort. His grip tightened—hard enough to make your fingers spasm—and the pin slipped free.

The silver flashed once as it fell, striking the stones at your feet with a thin, sharp clatter before skittering out of reach, swallowed by shadow and rain.

Before you could even register the loss, he shoved you back until your spine hit the cold brick, the breath punched clean out of your lungs.

And then his whole body was on you.

Pressed to you.

Pinning you.

Caging you in strength and the hard, unmistakable line of him through damp layers of clothing. His thigh wedged between your legs, forcing them apart. His hips locked against yours.

You inhaled sharply—the scent of iron, rain, and him filling your lungs all at once. Your hand, still caught in his grasp, trembled uncontrollably.

“Let go—” you choked out.

You fought against his hold.

Your free hand shoved at his shirtfront, fingers sliding uselessly over the damp fabric, but he caught that wrist too, hauling it up and pinning it above your head with ease.

He moved to hold both of your wrists with one hand. The position forcing you to arch your chest up against his, your breasts crushed against hard muscle, your ribs tightening under his weight. The pressure made your breath short, ragged, and just a little desperate.

“Easy,” he drawled, voice low and wicked. “Don’t faint on me yet, darlin’. Thought you London girls were made o’ sterner stuff.”

His thigh pressed higher between your legs—elevating you half an inch, dragging a startled, humiliating sound from your throat as your body adjusted around the intrusion, your thighs clamping down around his. Not obscene. Just… compromising. Suggestive in what he could do if he stopped playing pretend.

“That’s it,” he breathed, head tilting as if listening to your pulse stutter beneath your skin. “Hold on to me.”

His fingers curled around your jaw, tilting your head towards him, thumb sliding slow across your lower lip. Like he was checking the softness there. He dragged his thumb down your chin, forcing your mouth open on a soft gasp you didn’t mean to give. And when you jerked your head away, he laughed—a soft, rude sound that went straight to your core.

“There she is,” he murmured. “My little fighter.”

His free hand drifted down from your jaw to grip your hip, dragging you forward an inch on his thigh. The friction made you whine in a way that embarrassed the hell out of you.

“Oh, that’s filth,” he whispered, lips brushing your ear, “pure filth… listen t’ the way you sound when I touch you.”

“I ain’t—” you gasped.

“Ain’t what?” His voice sharpened, amused but cutting. “Ain’t enjoyin’ it? Ain’t wonderin’ what else I could lift you onto?”

Your ears burned.

His breath hit your throat before he bit down at the hollow space just under your jaw. Not breaking skin, but enough pressure to make your whole body seize, your thighs clamping around the muscle of his leg again on instinct—traitorous and reflexive.

“Sweet saints, girl…,” he rasped against your pulse. “If you squeeze like that by accident, what’d you do on purpose?”

You swore at him, voice cracking.

He groaned—actually groaned—his hips jerking into you with a rough grind that dragged the thick line of his cock over you.

Your breath tore out of your chest.

He laughed, pressing you deeper against the wall.

Your wrists twisted under his grip, but he just cinched them tighter, holding them helpless above your head. The angle further stretched your torso, baring your throat, making every breath feel like it had to fight through him.

“Just like that,” he purred, “struggle for me.”

“You’re sick,” you hissed. “Let me go.”

His lips dragged up your throat.The scrape of his teeth just beginning to push through.

“Say it again,” he murmured.

You said it again. Because some rotten, furious part of you wanted to see what he’d do.

He smiled against your jaw—triumphant and obscene in its satisfaction. “That’s my good girl.”

Your thighs clenched around his leg again. Hard.

“I hate you,” you whispered.

“You will,” he murmured, lips brushing your ear, “but not for the reason you think.”

He pressed his forehead to yours, as his hand slid to your throat, gently cradling the column of it, thumb under your jaw, holding you still.

“Now tell me somethin’ honest, seamstress…”

His mouth brushed your ear, breath hot and devastating.

“Do you really want me t’stop?”

Your entire body locked. You knew the answer you should give. The one that would end this. Break whatever spell he’d wrapped you in. Cut through the fog of fear and fury and want tangling in your chest. But all that came out was a strangled, breathless sound—something between a gasp and a helpless whimper.

Remmick went very still. Watching. Listening.

“…that’s what I thought,” he whispered.

Heat pooled, sharp and humiliating between your thighs.

“You don’t track monsters,” he leaned in, dragging his nose along your cheek, inhaling deeply, before his voice dropped into a dark, mocking murmur. “You tempt ’em.”

Then his hand moved. Up. Between your thighs.

His fingers slipped beneath the soaked hem of your skirts, under your petticoat and chemise, finding the open split of your drawers with humiliating ease. That small gap—meant for convenience over a chamber pot—gave him direct access to the heat between your legs.

His rough palm cupped you bare, no cloth to shield you, his hand pressing straight into the soft, slick flesh of your cunt. The shock of skin-to-skin contact punched the breath from your lungs, your hips bucking forward, before you could bite it back.

“Christ,” he breathed, voice wrecked, “you’re soaking wet.”

You were.

Humiliatingly so.

Your open drawers clung damply to your thighs, but where he touched you—where his fingers fit through the slit—there was nothing but your own heat… your own wetness. His fingertips felt everything. Every throb. Every twitch. Every desperate, traitorous ripple of desire that pulsed through you.

“Oh, seamstress…” he murmured, almost reverent. “All this from chasin’ me?”

You shamelessly ground down on his hand, seeking friction against the heel of his palm. The pressure sent heat licking up your spine, sweet and sharp.

“Look at you,” he murmured, voice low and rough, his accent sliding towards something foreign. “Can’t even keep still.”

You tried to steady yourself, but the heel of his palm ground up against the soft, swollen place between your legs, dragging a stunned cry from your throat. His thumb teased at your sex, slowly stroking along the seam of you, parting your slick folds with a sure, intimate familiarity that made your knees buckle. The bare slide of his skin on yours was obscene—nothing between you but the wet pulse of your own body answering his touch.

Your breath broke in a ragged gasp as your legs trembled, the pleasure so sharp it made the edges of your vision spark white. Your head thunked back against the wall, eyes squeezing shut just as his fingers skimmed over you—searching, testing, dragging slow through every swollen, needy inch until—

He found your clit.

A rough, shocked cry punched out of your throat before you could swallow it. Your hips jerked hard against his hand, your whole body jolting like a live wire. His grip on your wrists tightened—not painful, but firm enough to remind you that you weren’t going anywhere.

“Mm. There you are,” he purred, the words brushing warm against your cheek. “Knew you’d be hidin’ somewhere sweet.”

Then his thumb pressed down. He circled the nub with obscene precision, slow and deliberate, like he was mapping you—figuring out the exact shape of your desire with nothing but touch and patience.

Your knees nearly buckled.

“Easy now,” he murmured, voice low and wickedly amused. “Don’t go meltin’ on me. Not yet.”

“Remmick—oh God—” you gasped, voice cracking, thin and desperate, as his name tore out of you.

He huffed a quiet, dangerous laugh. You felt the sound vibrating against your cheek.

His thumb circled harder, rougher, right over the aching bundle of nerves, dragging slow enough to torture and precise enough to steal the breath from your lungs. Your skirts were bunched over his arm as he worked you open. Rainwater dripped off the edge of your hem and slid down your calf, cold against overheated skin.

And you couldn’t hold still. You writhed in his grasp. Your hips rutting against his hand, chasing the pressure like your body had broken away from your mind.

“There you go again,” he whispered. “Fightin’ me with your mouth, beggin’ me with your cunt.”

Your mind blanked at the crudeness and the truth of it. Your breath stuttered out, “D-don’t—”

“D-don’t what?” he taunted, pleased, mouth brushing the corner of your jaw. “Don’t touch you like this? Don’t say what you’re givin’ me? Darlin’, I haven’t even touched you properly yet.”

He kept stroking two fingers through your slick, dragging the wetness upward so he could grind it over your clit again, smearing the mess exactly where you ached the most. You could hear it and so could he—the wet sound of him dragging his fingers along your cunt, the soft obscene music of it.

Your voice broke. “Remmick, please—”

“Please what?” he said softly, cruelly. “Beg me proper, darlin’. You know how.”

Your cheeks burned. “Please… touch me.”

“Oh, I am touching you.” His fingers slid again, firmer this time, stroking you from bottom to top with the broad pads of them. “Feels like I’m drownin’ my hand in you.”

You bit your lip hard enough to taste copper, your body answering him before your mind could say stop, hips rolling down against his hand in a desperate, shameless grind.

He let out a quiet, wicked laugh. “Christ above… look at you hump my palm like a bitch in heat.”

Mortification crashed over you, hot as the flush creeping down your throat, but you didn’t stop. You couldn’t. The pressure was perfect, ruthless, the exact cruel drag your shaking body craved.

Your breath hitched, coming fast, shallow, almost panting.

“That’s it, seamstress,” he cooed, his wrist snapping in motion with your hips as you rode his palm just the way you wanted. “Use me. Rub yourself stupid. Show me what that pretty pussy of yours likes.”

Your knees wobbled. “I’m—oh God—Remmick—”

“Shhh.” His teeth grazed your throat, making your head snap back. “I’ve got you. I’ll keep you upright.”

Your whole world narrowed to the rough, swollen pulse between your thighs and his hand stroking right where you needed, his fingers slipping against the slick gathering at your core.

It was too much. Too good. Too fast.

Your shoulders shook from the mounting pleasure. “I—I’m close—”

“Oh, are you now?” His voice dropped, a dark smile in it. “Already? From this little bit o’ touchin’? Sweet merciful hell, what would you do if I truly buried my fingers in you?”

You’d fall apart. You knew it. And he knew you knew it.

You nodded, frantic, breath broken. “Please, Remmick, please—don’t stop—please—”

And that was what broke him. The desperation in your voice. Pleading. Begging.

You felt his cock, hard and straining, press against you in a slow, punishing grind, like he couldn’t help himself, like he needed friction just as desperately as you did.

“Beg again,” he groaned. “Say my name nice.”

You sobbed. “Remmick—please—don’t stop—please don’t stop—please, please—Remmick, please—”

You were right there, right on the edge, your breath choking in your chest.

He inhaled like he was drinking in your desperation. “You about to come for me?”

“Yes—yes—yes—”

And then—

He stopped.

He yanked his hand away so abruptly your whole body seized, a strangled, furious sound breaking from your throat. Your legs nearly buckled; the sudden emptiness was vicious.

“N-no—W-why—?!”

He seized your jaw, forcing you to look at him, the heady scent of your cunt still clinging to his fingers. His eyes glowed faintly in the dim, an inhuman red cutting straight through you.

“Because you don’t get to come,” he said softly, dangerously, “’til I decide you’ve earned it.”

Your whole body shook—rage, desire, humiliation, need, all of it tangled into something sharp and unbearable.

“But, Remmick—” You whined, your voice cracking into a ragged little cry, your hips still twitching, searching helplessly for the pressure he’d ripped away. “I was—I was right there—”

“I know.” He traced your trembling lower lip with his thumb, still wet with your slick. “I felt you clenchin’ around nothin’. Pathetic little thing. So needy you’d fuck my shadow if it pressed against you hard enough.”

Your thighs pressed together, trying to relieve the ache. It didn’t help.

He smirked.

“That’s it. Show me how empty you are now.”

You whimpered and his smile widened, wicked and warm. But then his voice softened, dropping into something molten.

“You did so good for me, seamstress,” he murmured, his nose stroking your cheek. “Took my hand so sweet. Begged so pretty.” His breath brushed your lips. “I’ll give you what you want.”

“Promise?” you whispered, breathless, your heart hammering in your chest.

“Aye.” He leaned in, grinding the hard length of his cock against your hip in another slow, deliberate thrust that wrung a broken moan out of you, letting you feel exactly how much he wanted this too. “And when I do—when I decide you get to fall apart—you’ll come so hard you’ll forget your own bloody name.”

You would have collapsed if he wasn’t still holding you up.

“Not yet,” he murmured. “But soon. Keep beggin’. Sweet as you can. Maybe I’ll let you fall apart against my hand… or maybe I’ll make you wait until you can’t breathe without cryin’ out for me.”

His mouth trailed down the side of your throat, the scrape of teeth unmistakable—just shy of biting—too sharp and not quite human, causing a tremor to run through you.

“You’re shakin’,” he murmured against your neck. “Poor little thing don’t know what t’do with herself.”

You thrashed once, furious, but he only laughed, low and delighted, shifting his stance. He rewarded your reaction by gripping your hip with bruising strength and slowly dragging you forward on his thigh, forcing your body to grind down against him.

A ragged sound tore out of you. It was something small and humiliating and gutted.

“There,” he crooned. “Feel that? That’s your pretty little cunt takin’ what it wants.”

He started moving you. Just a steady, brutal press of his thigh forcing your body to rub along him, back and forth, dragging your most sensitive flesh against the soaked, rough fabric of his leg.

Every bit of pride in your body strained to keep control. But your hips betrayed you. They jerked, bucked, and chased that pressure with pathetic, instinctive desperation.

“Ohhh,” he purred, “there’s my greedy girl.”

You shook your head weakly.

“No—I’m-I’m not—”

But you were.

Every drag against his thigh sent a spike of white-hot pleasure shooting through your spine. It pulsed low in your belly, tight and unbearable, curling you inward. Your thighs clamped around him once, then again, then harder—your body seeking friction even as your voice faltered with denial.

“Now… don’t you dare come without my say-so,” he murmured, licking a long stripe along your throat. “Don’t you bloody dare.”

You tried to stop. You tried to hold yourself back, truly. But he held you in place, his hand locking you down, forcing your hips to grind on his thigh.

You choked on a sob of pleasure.

“Rem-Remmick I’m—”

“No.”

The word cracked through you like lightning.

“I c-can’t—”

“No.”

“Please—I’m—oh God—I’m gonna—”

Your whole body clenched tightly, until finally… you came. Hard.

It ripped through you with humiliating violence, your back arching off the wall, a broken cry spilling from your mouth before you could swallow it down. Your legs seized around his thigh, hips stuttering in desperate, jerking little movements you couldn’t control.

For one stunned, breathless second, the world went white.

Then you realized what you’d done.

His breath went still.

A beat.

Two.

Then—

“Oh, you wicked little brat,” he whispered, voice shaking with hungry disbelief. “You came without permission.”

Terror and desire knotted together so tightly you could hardly breathe.

“I-I’m sorry, please—” you stammered.

His free hand dropped between your thighs—his thigh backing off to make some room—just a sudden flattening of his whole palm over your oversensitive core. The shock of it hit you like cold water—you gasped, body jolting violently.

“N-no—no—No more—I can’t—can’t—too much—”

“Oh, you can,” he said, tightening his grip on your wrists until your fingers went numb. “And you will.”

You tried to buck him off anyway, a strangled sound clawing out of your throat, only for him to press harder, pinning your sex like he was holding down something wild.

“Don’t you dare move,” he muttered softly.

You froze, breath stuttering.

Then—

Slap!

A sharp, mean crack of his hand against your cunt, the wet sound echoing off the alley walls before being swallowed instantly by the rain.

Your knees gave out. Your whole body folded in on itself, collapsing against his chest with a strangled cry.

“Ah—ah!”

“Mmh,” he hummed against your cheek, voice maddeningly calm as he caught you before you went limp. “That’s it. That’s the noise I wanted.”

Before the sting even settled, his touch turned slow, almost reverent. His palm cupped your mound, warm and open, stroking once, twice… long, languid passes that made your clit throb in spite of the pain.

You barely relaxed into it before he snapped that softness in half.

He dragged one fingertip up the seam of your sex and flicked your clit—a quick, cruel bolt of pressure that shot straight through your belly like lightning. Your hips jerked helplessly, a humiliating moan slipping out of you.

He clicked his tongue softly, like he was amused. “Sensitive, are we?”

You shook your head, mumbling under your breath, “Don’t… don’t do that—”

You tried to snap your thighs shut around his wrist on instinct, but he pried them apart, holding you open with his hip. He dragged the pad of his finger right across your clit, savoring the way your breath hitched. Then he pinched the swollen little nub in a deft squeeze that made you cry out.

“Shh,” he shushed you sweetly, almost tender. “I know it hurts.”

His hand softened again, palm opening wide as he petted your cunt, his touch slower, sweeter, almost apologetic. His middle and ring finger sliding right into the seam of your sex, gliding between the center of your slick folds, while his pointer and pinky stroked your outer lips. He wasn’t rushing; he was smoothing you down, spreading you open with long, deliberate sweeps meant to soothe every sting he’d just put there. Your breath hitched, hips tipping toward him despite yourself.

“I warned you,” he murmured, lips brushing your temple. “Told you not to fall apart without my word.”

And then he slapped you again.

The heel of his palm caught your clit and lips together in one vicious strike. You could feel the way your pussy clenched hard around nothing, a tight pull deep inside all from that snap of pressure. Your sob cracked open in the back of your throat.

You writhed in his grip trying to twist away, boots scraping on the wet wall behind you, useless little kicks that went nowhere. He held you still, both wrists in his grip, while his free hand worked tender strokes and soothing circles over the exact same spot he’d just abused—like he wanted to rock you toward another orgasm with nothing but a soft hand.

“Now,” he said warmly, almost fond, kissing away a tear before it slipped free from the corner of your eye, “take what I give you.”

His hand moved like he couldn’t decide whether to ruin you or worship you.

One moment his palm cracked up between your thighs, sending heat knifing up your spine. Then—just as your body reeled—he melted. Stroking you with an aching tenderness, murmuring something low and fond against your temple as if he hadn’t just made you flinch.

Another slap, followed by the gentlest sweep of his fingers, like an apology he had no intention of earning. His touch kept switching back and forth, caught perfectly between cruelty and devotion.

Back and forth, over and over, until you couldn’t tell the difference anymore—only that it was him, and that your body answered every touch he chose to give.

You were sobbing now, the sound raw and breathless.

“Remmick—I can’t—no more—stop, please—”

“Come again,” he ordered.

You let out an ugly, desperate whimper while your head fell back against the bricks, frantically shaking side to side.

“Please, please stop… I can’t… no more—”

He grabbed your jaw, staring intently into your eyes, lips hovering just a breath away from yours.

“I said,” he growled, “come again.”

And then he made sure you did.

He licked his fingers first—slow and deliberate, not breaking eye contact—coating them just enough to make your skin jolt when he slid his hand back between your thighs. Before you could even flinch away, his thumb and ring finger pinched lightly around your outer lips, puffing them up so your clit was right there, throbbing and helpless.

His middle finger found your clit blindly and rubbed tight, merciless strokes into it. Fast, little ministrations that didn’t give you any room to breathe. Your back arched off the wall like he’d shot electricity through your spine.

“No—no—no—” you gasped, feet scrabbling uselessly against the slick cobblestone.

He didn’t even blink.

“Come,” he whispered, breath brushing your lips. “Right now.”

You shattered again.

You cried out as another wave hit you, the sound torn straight from your lungs. Your legs twitched so uncontrollably you nearly slid down the wall, but he held you up and held you open for him. Even as you gasped for breath, even as your hips jerked away from the overstimulation, even as your whole body begged for mercy.

You couldn’t even form words anymore—just breathless mewls and soft whines, a babbling mess of half-pleas that collapsed into wet gasps.

Finally, letting go of your wrists, he caught you as you collapsed fully—your weight slumping against him, your legs useless, body trembling nonstop in his arms. With one arm wrapped around your waist, the other went under your knees, lifting you with ease and cradling you against his chest.

“Poor little thing,” he murmured—a tender, mocking croon that sounded almost like pity if pity could smile. “Legs gone soft as butter.”

You whimpered, feeling completely broken.

“Such a mess,” he whispered, breath warm against your temple. He tilted your chin up, forcing your heavy, unfocused gaze to meet his. “Look at me.”

You did. Barely, your head lolling against his shoulder.

He smiled—not sharp or vicious this time, but slow and sure, like he was looking at something he’d known he’d own from the start. A smile of certainty, of quiet possession.

“That’s my girl,” he crooned. “Look how pretty you come undone when you’re bein’ punished.”

Your breath hitched.

“And the best part?” he lowered his head to your hair, nose nuzzling into the damp strands, inhaling you like he needed the scent. “We ain’t done.”

The alley is narrow, wet, reeking of coal smoke and the sour tang of the river.

Remmick kicks a crate into place with the heel of his boot and sits down on it, hauling you onto his lap before you can gather yourself enough to think, much less resist. Your legs fall open over his, straddling him, face to face.

You try to shove at his chest, but your hands won’t behave. They fist into his coat instead, clinging to him. You hate that the contact you’re trying to escape is the same thing you’re holding onto.

“Ah now,” he murmurs, voice thick with amusement, “there’s my little fighter. Tryin’ to run and climb me in the same breath.”

You shake your head, weakly pushing at him, but he only wraps an arm around your lower back, dragging you forward until your body is flush against him, the friction brutal, embarrassing, and impossible to ignore. Your breath stutters as you uselessly attempt to ignore the sensation he’s deliberately feeding you.

“Uh-uh. You’re stayin’ right here,” he says against your ear, voice teetering on starving. “After makin’ a mess all over my damned thigh and hand? You’ve got some nerve.”

You choke on a protest, but he cuts it off by bucking his hips upward, pulling a desperate sound out of you that you didn’t mean to make. Remmick feels your hips twitch against him and laughs under his breath, before cupping the back of your neck, thumb stroking with a startling gentleness.

“Too worked up to think straight, ain’t ya?” he murmurs, amused and vicious all at once. “Clothes rubbin’ you raw. Bet you can feel every damn inch of me right between your legs.”

He bucks up into you again at the same time as he drags you down harder against the thick, rigid line of his cock, trapped beneath his trousers, grinding you along it, making the friction unmistakable. You let out a whimper; both from the overstimulation and the humiliation of the position you currently found yourself in.

You feel the tension in him like heat radiating off a furnace—how close he is to losing whatever restraint he’s desperately holding on to. His breath drags sharp between his teeth as he holds you tighter on his lap, forcing you to feel every inch of how badly he wants you, how close he is to snapping.

A sharp, dangerous spark flickers in your chest.

You deliberately drag your hips along the hard line of his crotch, letting the friction scrape against the slick of your own soaked cunt.

His breath punches out of him like you hit a nerve.

“Christ—” He grabs your hips with both hands, pulling you in closer—if closer was possible—trying to rein you in. “You keep rubbin’ on me like that, I swear, I’ll—”

But you cut him off by doing it again, harder this time, like you’re trying to claim something, wrestle some control back from him. Every movement pushes him closer to the edge, and you know it. You can feel him twitching under you, his cock hard and straining against his trousers, his fingers gripping with bruising strength as you rock your hips.

“Little brat,” he hisses, frustration bleeding into the edges of his voice. “You—You’re makin’ it damned hard to behave.”

You smirk before tilting your face to fully look at him, breath fanning across his cheek, fingers digging into the damp fabric of his coat.

“You like that?” you murmur, loud enough for him to hear the tease and provocation, leaning towards him so your lips brush his in a feather light touch. “Like feelin’ me rub all over you? Thought you were the one in control, didn’t you, you bastard?”

Remmick lets out a groan buried deep in the back of his throat, his teeth pressed into his lower lip, before slapping your ass through the layers of your dress as you keep riding him.

You feel it first in the way his hips buck sharply under you; a violent, desperate jerking motion that makes your cunt pulse around nothing.

Then you hear it—a high-pitched, broken whine, thin and wrecked, like he’s cursing the sensation even as his body betrays him. His head tips forward, forehead knocking against yours as his breath stutters uneven between you.

The warmth hits almost immediately. His cock throbs uselessly in his damp trousers, spurting hot, sticky precome against the confines of his pants. He grits his teeth, trying to control it, trying to pull himself together, but your grinding doesnt let up, doesnt give him a chance.

“Ohhh—Christ, you—little—” he hisses, hands biting into your hips, fingers digging like claws, holding you down instead of shoving you away. “You’re—fuckin’—God—damn it!”

You laugh triumphant, chest pressed to his, arms loosely looped around his shoulders. “Got you,” you murmur, breathless, voice thick with smug satisfaction. “Just couldn’t stop yourself, hm?”

And it’s true. Your smug grin widens as you feel him trembling beneath you, all sharp breaths and rough groans, utterly undone by your brazen defiance.

But there’s no time to gloat. Not when he’s like this—half-mad, half-lust-addled, and desperate to reclaim control. His fingers dig into your hips with renewed force, adjusting you against him as his cock stirs beneath the damp cloth. His pants shift with a curse, fingers fumbling at the button, then the zipper, ripping it open with a snap of leather and fabric.

When he looks at you, his eyes have gone red. The blue drowned out by something feral and hungry underneath. His lips pull back and you catch the flash of teeth—a touch too long, too sharp at the edges, lips drawn tight like he’s fighting the urge to bare them fully.

Then his mouth curls at the corner, something feral and dangerous flickering back into place as his thumb presses back into your hip, possessive and warning all at once.

“Oh seamstress,” he laughs, voice low and dangerous. “You think you get to play with me like that?”

His hand reaches under your skirts and yanks the opening in your drawers further apart. The wet, soaked fabric tore with a sharp rip under his fingers, exposing you fully, leaving nothing between him and your slick cunt.

“Now, you ride me proper, yeah?”

The moment the tip of his cock nudged against you, with the slick warmth of your bare cunt pressed to him, your body stiffened on instinct. You blinked, heart hammering, mouth parting in a sharp, startled gasp—it felt impossibly invasive.

“Christ,” he groaned, bracing your hips as he pushed forward, “you’re tight as sin…”

You tried to pull back, small, instinctive flinches, but he caught you, one hand resting possessively along your lower back, while the other gripped the back of your head. “None of that, now,” he tuts at you, seemingly disappointed.

A whimper slipped past your lips, high and sharp, your body already betraying you, quivering around the intrusion. “It’s—so—oh—” you gasped, words spilling in a mess of protest and pleasure.

He leaned close, brushing his lips to your ear, biting gently at the lobe, teeth grazing the sensitive skin. “You like me in you, don’t you, seamstress?” His hand dragged down to your ass, pressing firmly as he shoved his cock further in, teasing, testing. “Say it.”

“Please—oh, please, stop teasing—oh, fuck—I’m—” You groaned, voice catching in your throat, squirming as every inch of him pressed deeper, stretching you, setting your nerves alight.

He chuckled, voice vibrating against your skin. “Beggin’, eh? Already a fuckin’ mess, and I’ve barely started.” He gripped your ass tighter, rocking you slowly at first, then harder, bucking the full length of his cock inside you, bottoming out with a hard, deliberate thrust.

The sudden, full contact makes you cry out; every nerve in your body is alive. The wet, slick slide of your cunt over his cock drags a harsh, ragged moan from your lips.

“Ohhh! Ohhh! Rem—” your words tangled in gasps, cries, and the wet, messy sound of your cunt swallowing him. You were already dripping around him, your body succumbing to the feel of him.

“Christ, look at you,” he rasps, voice rough, but it’s already broken under the weight of his own arousal. “Little seamstress, falling apart on my cock, pussy flutterin’ around me, drippin’ all over me—God above, I could ruin you right proper to, and you’d thank me for it.”

You cling to him, half-defiant, half-melted, straddling him, hips rocking against the hardness of his cock, fully taking him inside the warm, slick channel of your cunt. Each desperate, sloppy rock of your hips dragged another groan from him. He responded in kind, tilting your body, thrusting up to meet you, his hands roaming possessively, dragging over your spine, hips, ass, and thighs.

“You feel that?” he growled, biting your neck gently, leaving small indentations without breaking the skin. “That’s every inch of me in you, stretching you, filling you. Mine, mine, all mine.”

“Please—ohhh—harder—fuckkkk, I need more—” you gasped, fingers digging into his shoulders, hair, anything you could clutch.

He smirked against your skin, voice thick with lust. “Aye, that’s it—wantin’ all of it, like a good little whore… So fuckin’ desperate. So fuckin’ greedy. So perfect for me. Never forget who’s teaching you these little lessons, eh?”

Remmick thrusted up into you again, cock buried balls-deep, throbbing inside you. You clutched at his shoulders, nails digging in as you clenched around him, hips jerking on instinct, trying to ride him, to match his rhythm.

He groaned into you, fingers gripping your hips so fiercely you’d bruise. You rutted against each other like you were both starving.

You breathed his name.

He breathed yours.

Neither of you stopped.

Tilting your face towards his, he swallowed the sounds of your moans with a kiss, pressing his forehead to yours. The smell of rain, sweat, sex, and something darker filled your head.

Your nipples ached, tight and embarrassingly responsive, dragging against the fabric of your clothes with every shift of your bodies. The friction was too much and not enough—you felt it all, the scrape of cloth against sensitive flesh making your back arch involuntarily.

He felt that too.

His thumbs brushed the underside of your breasts through your bodice, with just enough pressure to make heat pool sickeningly deep in your belly.

The alley is quiet except for your panting and his rough, uneven breathing.

You whimpered, rocking down on him, little moans and whines spilling uncontrollably. And then you felt it—something pressing, swelling deep inside you, hot and impossibly full, almost anchoring you to him. Your eyes flicked up at him, wide and fearful. “Wh-what… what is that?”

He caught your gaze, a low, almost fond smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You feel that?” One hand stayed on your hip, steadying you as he continued bucking up into you, while the other cupped your cheek, his voice softening slightly as he leaned close. “That, darlin’… is me. Bulgin’ in your cunt, holdin’ you in place. Can’t let you slip from me, not when you’re this perfect, this tight, this… ripe, all for me.”

Remmick’s thrusts became shuddering, punishing, hips snapping up, driving his cock deeper. You cried out, helpless against it, your pussy clenching, walls fluttering around him, slick and pulsing, and you felt him start to shake.

Your body collapsed against him, shivering, writhing, every nerve raw as he drove himself in, as he reached his peak—shuddering, groaning your name, teeth dragging across your jaw. Heat flooded you, a mess of thick ropes filling your cunt with him completely locking you in, your body quaking around the surge. You gasped, breathless and trembling, as he continued to pulse inside you, holding you on the edge of overstimulation, letting you feel every twitch and spasm as he emptied himself fully.

“Good girl,” he whined, voice needy and thin, breath hot against your ear. “You feel it, don’t you? My seed spilling into you, filling you, marking you… and you’ll carry it for me, right? Keep me inside, just like I keep you.”

You shivered, still seated on him, straddling him, drenched in your own sweat and the sticky mess he’d filled you with. You felt it. All of it. He held you there, half-panting, half-whispering soft praises while his arms wrapped around your waist, holding you close as if you might float away—like he was savoring the weight of you against him, the softness of your shivering body pressed flush to his chest.

“Mm… I like holdin’ you like this, seamstress,” he murmured, lips brushing your cheek as he nuzzled into you. His voice was low and rough, yet softened by some fondness you hadn’t expected.

You huffed and rolled your eyes at him, annoyed despite the ache pulsing deep in your chest, squirming a little in his embrace. “When… when can I get up, hmm? Or you planning to keep me glued here forever?”

“Not yet,” he said, thumb stroking the curve of your spine. “Could take a while.”

“Ohhh, that’s just bloody cruel,” you snapped, feeling indignant while shoving weakly at his chest. “You—ugh! I can feel… everything. And you’re just… sitting there!”

And then, the sky cracked open.

Rain hammered down in sheets as a sudden November storm broke overhead, cold and violent, drenching you both to the bone in seconds. Remmick’s coat plastered to him, your dress clung like a second skin, rivulets of cold water ran down your spine, teeth chattering as your body slumped flush against his. The weight of the downpour finally loosened the impossible hold that had bound you together.

You seized the moment, rolling off him slightly, though still clingy, breath ragged. “Let me go, you—ugh—maniac!” you shouted, drenched and full of rage, glaring at him as if your indignation could push him away.

He laughed, low and dark, eyes flickering red again just for a heartbeat in the dim. “As you wish.”

Before you could spit more insults at him, his hands released your hips, letting you collapse backward, shivering and wet, but finally free.

“You-You can’t just manhandle me like that—” you stumbled away from him, trying to regain some dignity.

He rose, fixing his clothes, before taking a half-step forward, just enough that had you swallowing hard as you maintained his gaze. You tried to sidestep him, but his fingers seized your wrist again, tugging you out of the open alley with him.

“Come.”

“You’re mad if you think I’m—”

“You’ll freeze where you stand.”

You hated that he was right.

Hated that your lips were already turning numb.

Hated that you followed anyway.

Half-drowned, half-furious, you stumbled after him through twisting backstreets, your fingers laced with his in an unrelenting grip, even as he navigated the maze of soaked cobblestones.

Finally he stopped beneath the narrow awning of a boarded shopfront. Rain hammered the roof above, the only thing keeping you from drowning where you stood.

He looked down at you—hair plastered to his forehead, water running down his cheekbones, eyes staring intently at you.

“Come with me,” he said again, quieter now.

You opened your mouth to argue.

But he didn’t wait.

He pushed open a warped side door you never would have noticed and guided you inside, up a steep, creaking stairwell that smelled of dust and turpentine. At the top, he opened another door leading you into a cramped attic—where his studio waited.

HULL, ENGLAND. MAY 2, 1859.

The morning after May Day broke thin and pale over Hull, as if the sky had not quite decided to fully commit to spring. The hard rains of March and April had finally lessened these past days, yet the damp remained in everything all the same.

Yesterday’s May Day revelry had turned dust to paste—muddy foot prints dried into the cobbles of Clifford Street long after all the cheer had gone stale. Flags hung limp from upper windows, their colors dimmed. Someone had left a crushed flower crown in the gutter beside the base of the Freemanson’s Hall, its white petals browned at the edges overnight. A persistent wind came off the water, worrying at hems, sleeves, and loose shutters with quiet insistence.

Sunlight slipped in through the bakery window, catching on the glass that would display the day’s freshly baked wares. The brick above had been painted with the words: FLETCHER’S BAKERY, in a hand that had long since faded. Beneath, the older board still read N.C. WHEELWRIGHT HULL, and the smaller wooden sign—tucked between the window and the front corner entrance—promised PIES and CAKES, AT MARKET PRICES. The bakery looked as weathered and stubborn as anything else in Hull.

She had been up before most.

The ovens were already lit—basking the room in a steady heat, coaxed rather than forced. The first loaves had gone in while the town still yawned itself awake. By the time the bell of the nearby timber yard in Queen’s Dock struck six, the bakery smelled of savory meat pies and something faintly sweet beginning to brown at the edges.

Sugar remained dear enough that most working folk treated sweetness as occasion rather than habit. But people still liked comfort where they could find it. And Fletcher’s sold comfort better than anyone on Clifford Street. Mostly because of her. Everyone knew it, though no one said it plain.

The bakery belonged to Mr. Fletcher, a widower in worsening health who seldom appeared at the shop except to inspect accounts or complain about flour prices. But she ran the bakery in every meaningful sense. She knew who owed money and who would pay honest when wages came in. She knew which sailors preferred pepper in their pies and which widows liked yesterday’s loaves sold half-cheap near closing. She knew which children stole sugared crusts and which only stared longingly at them through the glass.

She moved easily in the space, sleeves rolled above the elbow, apron tied twice, hair pinned but already escaping in habitual defiance. She worked with the unhurried efficiency of someone who had learned her craft young and whose hands knew the work well enough without needing to think about the mechanical parts of it. Slap, fold, turn, repeat. The dough yielded under her hands as it always did. There was comfort in such work—things that turned pliant when handled the right way. It left her attention free to go wherever it liked. And it liked, presently, to wander.

She hummed while she worked, as she always did, low in her throat, something with no fixed tune to it. The absentminded sort of singing that rose naturally from someone content enough in her own company not to notice silence. Bits of old folk tunes wandered in and out without finishing them properly. A snatch of “Barbara Allen.” Half a line from “The Water of Tyne.” Something sailors sometimes sang coming upriver after drink.

A line of prepared loaves waited proofing beneath cloth, rising slow and obedient. She delicately checked them with the back of her fingers, feeling its resistance.

“Not yet,” she murmured to herself.

Outside, the town began its usual turning. Foot traffic moved slowly, everyone having spent too much of themselves already the night before. The wheels of a cart rattling loudly over uneven stone. The butcher next door calling a boy to an errand. The door of the De La Pole Tavern down the alley opening, then closing again sharp enough to set a dog barking. From the alley behind the bakery came the sudden crash of emptied bottles and a string of inventive profanity from someone who had clearly not survived May Day celebrations gracefully.

The world went on. The street gathered itself gradually, piece by piece.

She did not look when the bell above the shop door gave its small, uncertain ring.

“Not open yet,” she called out matter-of-factly, still shaping dough between her hands.

There was no answer.

And that, more than anything, made her glance up.

He stood just within the threshold of the bakery, as if he had not quite committed to fully entering.

It was plain to see that he was not local.

His coat alone marked him apart from the threadbare attire worn by the dockmen outside. Good wool, good stitching, serviceable without being fashionable. His boots were clean despite the streets. Dark gloves carried in one hand. His posture was too deliberate to be careless, though there was none of the easy assurance one saw in the “better” sort of gentlemen either. Something in between, and ill-fitted to both.

“Good morning,” she said.

He hesitated a fraction too long before replying.

“Good morning.”

His voice was low and even. Softer than the Yorkshire accents around the docks. Educated too. Carefully leveled into something nearer London speech, though certain vowels betrayed him despite the effort.

He looked at the counter rather than her face.

That, too, she noticed.

“You’ll have to wait,” she said, softer now. “Bread’s not ready.”

He glanced toward the window, as though to confirm it.

“I had thought—” He stopped, then gave a slight, almost self-conscious correction. “I can wait.”

She tilted her head slightly, studying him with a frankness that would have unsettled some men. It did not seem to trouble him much. He simply endured it with a kind of practiced detachment.

“Rght then,” she said after a moment. “They won’t be long.”

He inclined his head once. Then stood by the nearest window while she returned to her work. He kept his hands at his sides as his eyes gaze swept about the space in a way that was unhurried and systematic. The shelves with their stacked tins and folded cloth. The boards worn pale where feet had crossed them for twenty years. Her. The oven’s warmth coming through in steady intervals. The cooling racks by the window display. Her. The cracks in the brickwork near the chimney breast. The knife beside the board. Her.

She felt his eyes land on her sooner than she let on.

“Have I flour on my face?” she asked without looking at him.

“No.”

“Then what is it—why do you stare so hard?”

“I was observing.”

She smiled faintly at that, still working.

“Well, mind you do not observe too closely,” she said, folding the dough neatly back upon itself. “You’ll find fault where there is none, and then we’ll both be put out.”

There was no answering smile from him—if he was inclined to such things—but something in his manner shifted, if only by a fraction.

She turned her attention back to the oven.

Lifting the heavy iron door with a folded cloth wrapped around her hand, she felt the rush of heat against her face like breath, carrying with it the rich smell of bread and scorched grain. She drew free one of the morning loaves, frowning softly. It was not the finest of the batch. The crust had taken well, browning evenly across the top, but a crack had split along the left side where the heat had caught it too quickly. She set it on the board and considered it.

“Ah,” she muttered under her breath, sounding displeased.

She took up the bread knife and cut into it regardless. Steam rose from the cut in a slow curl, warm and fragrant. She tore the rest off—a rough piece of the heel—and crossed the room to him.

“Here,” she said, pressing it into his hand before he might refuse. “Mind yourself—it’s hot.”

He looked briefly startled by the gesture. Most men in Hull would have taken it without thought. Thanked her, or made some remark upon the smell or the look of it. But he hesitated a moment, as though he were unused to receiving things freely, before lifting it to his mouth and tasting it. The only reaction she could see was a brief lowering of the eyes as he considered the flavor seriously.

She found that oddly interesting.

Turning away before he might notice her watching, she selected a proper loaf from the batch and wrapped it neatly in paper, tying the string twice before setting it on the counter.

Their hands did not touch when he took it.

“Passing through?” she asked while taking his coin. It was the sort of question one asked without meaning anything by it. Most would have answered just as easily.

“No,” he said. “Not exactly.”

She tilted her head, a fraction.

“Staying, then?”

“For a time.”

“Well,” she said. “Hull’s a fine enough city, if you don’t mind what it smells like.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“I am a man of modest expectations,” he said.

She laughed at that.

He inclined his head slightly, and there was something almost surprised in it, as though the sound had caught him off-guard. Then, after the smallest pause: “Thank you,” and left as quietly as he had come.

The bell gave its single note again, and the door shut behind him with a soft, final sound.

She stood watching for a moment after it shut behind him, the coin still warm in her palm. The room returned back to what it always was, after all, nothing had occurred, really. Only a stranger buying bread.

Across the street, the apothecary’s shutters had opened at last. The stranger who had just left her shop paused there only briefly, before turning and disappearing farther down Clifford Street into the gray morning crowd.

And though she immediately took up her humming as she worked—the day would go on, as it always did—she found herself glancing more than once toward the window.

That was how it began.

It went like that, at first. Not daily or with the expected regularity of calling it routine—yet. But frequent enough that after the first week she had stopped pretending the set-aside loaf was incidental.

He came at different hours. Sometimes early, sometimes later. He never stayed long, never lingered over talk the way some men did—leaning too easily on the counter, asking questions they had no business asking. He spoke when spoken to. Answered plainly. Offered little else.

She did not ask where he went when he left. Did not ask his business at the apothecary, though she had seen him there often enough now to have formed a quiet opinion about it.

It was not her place to say.

“You keep odd hours,” she remarked one morning, setting his order before him.

“I have no fixed employment at present.”

“Ah.” She nodded, as though that settled it, though in truth it explained very little. “A gentleman at leisure, then.”

“I would not say so.”

“No?” She glanced at him, quick and curious. “You don’t look overjoyed by it.”

“I am not.”

“Well, there you have it,” she said. “Better to be occupied than idle. Idle men grow queer.”

The rain came again on the twentieth, in the afternoon this time. It broke with little warning: the sky darkening fast, the air turning charged, that particular stillness before a storm that set the skin uneasy. The first crack of thunder split the afternoon open and heavy rain followed immediately, striking the glass hard enough to blur the street beyond into shadow and movement.

The customers that remained lingered, unwilling to step out into it.

He was among them. He had come in not long before the storm broke, damp already at the collar from the walk, though he had not remarked upon it.

There was not much space for him to stand idly by—the area by the counter was filled with damp coats, restless children occupied the main floor, the low murmur of strangers made the entire place feel temporarily familiar by circumstance. He had stepped aside to avoid the other customers, then further and further, until he found himself behind the worktable; near enough to her, that she was aware of him without needing to look directly.

“You’ll not earn wages that way,” she said, glancing at him. “Standing where the work is doesn’t make you a baker.”

He huffed a laugh, stifling the sound before it got too far, and looked away.

The storm held. Talk rose and fell around them. Someone laughed too loudly at something. A child began to fret and was shushed. And throughout it all, she worked as she always did.

At some point she reached for the flour and found it nearer than she expected. He had quietly moved it. Simply seen what was wanted and done it.

She glanced at him, but he did not meet her eye.

It was a strange thing, she thought, how quickly a habit formed.

One day a man comes in from the street, no more than any other. A week on and there is a place for him at the counter. Another week and he moves about the room as though he has always known its shape. She did not think on it much.

The morning she finally learned his name came on a fair day after a run of grey ones. Her day began as usual. Yet when the bell did not ring at the hour she had somehow come to expect, she felt it. A small thing, disappointment. Easily dismissed. She pressed her hands into the dough harder than necessary.

“Don’t be foolish,” she muttered to herself.

There were a hundred reasons a man might not come. A thousand. It meant nothing. He owed her nothing, and she him less.

The bell rang. And she looked up at once.

He stood there, as he always did. Nothing altered in his expression, nothing to suggest he knew he was late or that late was even a category that applied to him. And yet she felt, all at once, the release of something she had not known she was holding.

“You’re late,” she said, before she could think better of it.

He paused.

“I beg your pardon?”

She stilled. Then gave a small, dismissive shake of her head before turning toward the counter.

“I had the bread set aside,” she said, as though that explained it. “It’s no matter.”

A beat of silence, broken only by the soft sound of the door closing behind him. His step, nearer now.

“You anticipated my arrival,” he said, stepping nearer now.

She reached for the loaf she had, indeed, set aside.

“Did I?” she replied, lighter than she felt. “That would be a poor habit to fall into. I’d have half the street expecting the same treatment.”

He did not reach for the bread at once.

“I had not meant to be expected,” he said after a moment.

“Well,” she said, with a small lift of her chin, meeting his gaze head on, “you’ve made something of a habit of appearing, haven’t you? Can’t be surprised if a person starts to account for it.”

She saw the realization bloom on his face, clear as anything. The look of a man who had just become aware of his consistency.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I suppose I have.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment after that.

Then she set his order into his hands.

“Take care, Mr.—?” The question slipped free casually, as though it had not been sitting unanswered for close to three weeks.

He hesitated. Only slightly.

“Sumner,” he said. “Patrick Sumner.”

“Well then,” she said, softer now. “Take care, Mr. Sumner.”

He inclined his head. Then turned, and left as he always did. The bell giving its same small note above the door.

By the time the days had begun to lengthen properly, she no longer needed the bell to know he had come.

She had changed what she baked with the passing of the time. Heavier doughs gave way to lighter ones. Less lard, more fruit, when she could get it at a price worth paying. The dock children had switched their preference almost immediately, with the decisive loyalty of the very young. Even Alderman Coates had taken one on Thursday and asked what was different about it, in the satisfied tone of a man who did not want an explanation, only acknowledgement that something had improved.

Sumner had noticed too.

“You’ve changed it,” he said one morning, turning a small pastry in his hand.

“I have.” She leaned against the worktable and folded her arms. “It’s done the Berlin way.”

“Berlin,” he repeated.

“Aye.”

“You’ve been there.”

“No,” she said easily. “But I’ve known someone who has. He was particular about bread.” She paused. “Particular about most things, as it happened.”

He looked at the pastry rather than at her.

“Bread has no national character,” he said.

“Oh, it does,” she replied. “You’ve simply not eaten enough of it.”

“And what is the character of the Berlin variety?”

She tilted her head. “Less fussy, about how things ought to be done.”

“That is an unusual way to describe a method of baking.”

“I suppose I mean the people, as much as the bread.”

He set it down. “And what did he say of the people?”

She took a breath through her nose, measuring what—and how much—she would give him.

“That they do not ask permission before they become themselves,” she said.

“That sounds intolerable,” he said, after a moment.

“To you, perhaps.”

“And to you?”

She was quiet for a beat. “I prefer honesty,” she said. “Sometimes disorder and honesty look the same thing from a distance.”

He held her gaze.

“You think it would suit you.”

“I think it would not trouble itself about whether it suited me or not,” she said. “Which amounts to much the same.”

“You speak as if you wish to leave,” he said.

“Aye.”

“Seriously.”

“As seriously as anything gets,” she said.

He was quiet a moment. “There is no law that says you must stay.”

“No,” she said, matching his tone. “No law.”

She turned back to the tray and began moving the bread to the cooling rack, unhurried. The sounds of the street came through: cart wheels, voices, the distant industry of the docks. Somewhere beyond the rooftops a gull cried once.

“If you do go wandering off to the ends of the earth,” she said, not looking at him, voice easy, almost offhand, “you could do worse than find somewhere decent after. Mm… Berlin, perhaps.”

He made a quiet huff of amusement.

She smiled, though he could not see it. Then, before she could really think on it, barely loud enough to count:

“Come find me there, if you do.”

She did not make anything of it. Did not look up. Kept moving the bread from cloth to rack as though the words were nothing, had cost her nothing.

But when she finally did glance at him—

He was not smiling. Not frowning either. Only still, in the particular way he went still when something had reached him and he did not yet know what to do with it.

He said nothing about it. Merely, reached for his coin and set it on the counter.

“I expect,” he said, after a moment, voice carefully level, “that I will find myself somewhere in any case. One generally does.”

“Then you’ll find yourself somewhere all the same,” she said, nodding. “Better to choose than be found.”

He inclined his head slightly and reached for his hat.

At the door, he paused. Only briefly. Before stepping out once more. Then he was gone. The bell gave its note above the closed door, and the shop returned to itself.

It was not rain that kept him that day.

Hull had never needed rain to justify a man lingering where he ought not.

Still, the weather lent itself to certain moods. The sky had come down low and gray, pressing itself against the rooftops and chimney pots, holding no warmth within its light. The sort of day that flattened sound and dulled color, as though the whole town had been shut beneath a lid, separate from the rest of the world.

Inside Fletcher's Bakery, she worked with her sleeves rolled high above her elbow, flour dusting her hands white to the wrist. A strand of hair had escaped its pins again and clung to the damp sweat near her temple. Fresh loaves cooled in rows beside the window, while meat pies waited nearer the back, their crusts gone rich and golden from the morning firing.

The shop had settled into one of its quieter hours—the brief and precious sort of breathing space that came with the lull in between customers. The ovens held their heat without needing tending, the morning wives had already come and gone with their baskets, and the dockmen would not appear from the wharf until nearer midday. Even the butcher next door had momentarily quieted, his boy no longer clattering about outside by walls.

That was when the bell above the door gave its muted ring, signaling a customer. And considering a certain blossoming routine over the preceding days and weeks, she did not look up immediately, already coming to recognise the particular quality of his entry.

“You’ll bring the weather in with you at this rate,” she said, hands still deep in dough, pressing forward with the heel of her palm before folding it neatly back upon itself.

“If I possessed authority over the weather,” came the familiar voice, dry as old paper, “I should choose something less oppressive.”

That earned him a glance of faint amusement.

Patrick Sumner stood just inside the door drawing off his gloves finger by finger. He looked, as he always did, like a man assembled with care; the coat well-cut if not recent, the hat set at the precise angle of someone who had learned to perform a certain kind of gentility and had been performing it long enough that it had become almost second nature. Almost. She had noticed it early on since he had first appeared at her counter, that there was always something slightly behind the performance, some effort in the composure. A man who had learned to look like he belonged in a room could not entirely conceal the learning.

He set his coin down upon the counter and waited, as he always did.

Usually he took whatever he had ordered for the day, exchanged some dry remark or observation that pretended not to be conversation, and left again. The exchange was brief and pleasant in its way, carrying with it the comfortable fiction that he had come in only for bread and nothing else. She had been content to let him have the fiction. Men like him often needed more time than most to admit to themselves what they were actually doing.

But today, when she fetched the parcel wrapped for him, he did not reach for it and turn to leave immediately.

Instead, he reached into his coat and drew something out.

A book. Old and weathered and obviously well-loved. The leather worn soft at the corners, the spine cracked in a way that spoke of use rather than neglect. Pages uneven at the edge, some earmarked, some turned more often than others.

She watched him open it with the absent familiarity of a habit formed long before her and this place.

“You’ve taken to settling in,” she remarked lightly, tying string around his order with neat, practised movements, but not pushing it across just yet.

“I was not aware I required permission to read,” he said without looking up.

“You don’t,” she replied easily. “Though staying to do it suggests a dangerous slide toward comfort.”

That drew his eyes up at last. There was the briefest flicker of amusement there before it disappeared again beneath his usual reserve.

She held his gaze for a moment with a small, unhurried smile, before signaling with her eyes and the faintest inclination of her head toward the corner of the room.

There was a chair there. An old thing with one uneven leg, low-backed and plain, pushed against the wall. It had been in the bakery since before she could remember. Mostly for deliveries. Occasionally commandeered by old Alderman Coates, who came in on Thursdays to rest his bad leg, and had more to say about harbor tariffs and the dockyard commission than anyone had asked for.

Sumner had never used it. Never, so far as she could recall, even given it so much as a glance. Until now.

He crossed to it without comment and sat down, long legs stretched before him, book opened across one knee as though he had always belonged—some missing shape of a puzzle quietly slotting itself into position.

It should have looked out of place. Him, there, in his good coat, with his careful vowels and his London manners in a bakery on Clifford Street while the gray May morning pressed itself against the glass. But it did not. Something about him fit the room in ways she suspected he himself would have disliked knowing.

She turned back to the counter and said nothing about it. Flour dusted the boards beneath her hands as she kneaded another round of dough with practiced motions. Her eyes, however, had a will of their own, and they wandered more than once in his direction.

His hands, particularly. Surgeon’s hands. Long-fingered. Deft digits sliding between the words with the familiarity of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for. Precise even at rest. One thumb hooking lightly between the pages to keep his place, as the other hand came to rest open against his knee.

She realised she was staring.

“What is it?” she asked quickly, clearing her throat to rid herself of the sudden heat climbing up it.

“A poem,” he answered without looking up.

She gave him a look at that.

“That’s a monstrous object for a poem.”

“It is an old one.”

Curiosity overcame dignity as she leaned slightly over the counter. “Well…? Go on, then.”

A beat passed before he answered with faint reluctance.

“Homer. The Iliad.”

She blinked.

“That old thing?” she said.

That made him look up. Fully draw his focus away from the words on the page, his eyes drinking her in a new light, as though some internal calculation had gone subtly awry.

“You know it,” he said.

She shrugged one shoulder, as though it were nothing at all. “Well enough.”

“From where?” he asked.

There it was. An educated man’s unconscious sorting of the world into probable and improbable things. She recognized it at once. Women like her were not expected to know Homer. Not bakers’ girls with flour on their aprons and dough beneath their nails. And certainly not women from such a place as Hull.

She turned back toward the counter before answering.

“Same place anyone learns anything,” she said mildly. “From someone who knew it before.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No,” she said. “But it’s the truth of it.”

He closed the book halfway over one finger.

“It is not commonly read in establishments such as this.”

She stilled only briefly.

“Oh? You presume much,” she said.

The room quieted around them. Outside, somewhere down the street, cartwheels rattled over stone.

She looked back at him then, lightly leaning her weight against the counter.

“And yet,” she said, “here you are.”

Something flickered across his expression.

“I was educated,” he said.

It came out sharper than he intended. She could not tell if it was pride, or the particular defensiveness of a man who had worked very hard for a thing and was not quite ready for people to know it.

“I should hope so,” she replied lightly without flinching. “You speak like a man who’s swallowed several libraries and found each one disappointing.”

“That is not what I meant,” he said, narrowing his gaze a fraction.

“I know what you meant.”

And she did. He meant class, station, the probability of someone like her having access to such literature—or any at that. The invisible lines English society drew around knowledge and who had the right to possess it. She suspected he had learned those lines the hard way. Spent years crossing them, erasing them from himself, replacing Irish with English and labour with learning. He believed in them even as he resented them. Perhaps because of it.

But she did not resent him for it. Not entirely. Because she knew a man could hold a wrong idea and still be worth talking to, provided he was capable of loosening his grip on the belief that such distinctions mattered.

“You think it odd,” she went on, “that I should know the name of a book like that. That I should know anything of it at all.”

“I think it unusual,” he said, more measured now.

She tilted her head. “That’s a kinder word for it.”

She bent toward the shelf beneath the counter. Low and half-hidden beneath folded linens and stacked tins sat several books loosely tied with ribbon to keep their covers from warping in the damp. Gathering them carefully, she laid them upon the countertop.

“You’re not the only one with habits,” she said.

He was on his feet before she had quite finished setting them down.

She had not quite seen him rise. He had simply moved, leaving the Iliad on the chair and crossing the floor, stopping at the counter with his eyes on the small stack of volumes with an attention he had not, until this moment, directed at anything in the room.

“May I?” he asked, an apology hidden beneath his careful tone.

There was something in the asking—the instinct to ask rather than simply reach—that registered differently than his other courtesies. Those were largely performance. This was not.

“You may,” she nodded.

The first he picked up was slim, edges softened with use, its cover a dull green. Milton. He opened it at the flyleaf, skimmed the title page, and the slight furrow appeared between his brows.

“Paradise Lost,” he murmured.

“Not all of it,” she admitted. “Some of it’s dreadful, going on too long, if you ask me. Men declaring things at one another for twenty pages.”

“An accurate summary,” he said, holding back a smile.

“But… there are lines in it I like.”

“Such as?”

She hesitated. Then, a little self-conscious despite herself—“The ones that feel like they understand something of falling.”

His eyes lifted sharply to hers. “You understand that, do you?”

She met the look steadily. “I like to think I understand enough.”

He said nothing to that.

“…you’ll lose the argument of it, though,” he said after a moment, thumbing several pages.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Milton,” he vaguely gestured with the book still in his hands. “You said some of it goes on too long. If you only read the passages that please you, you miss the entire architecture of what he is building towards.”

She tilted her head. “And what does he build toward?”

“The justification of God’s ways to man,” he said. “Whether he succeeds in that is another matter entirely.”

“Does he? Succeed, I mean.”

Sumner was quiet for a beat.

“No,” he said, at last. “I don’t think he does. But the attempt is… instructive.”

“Why instructive, if it fails?”

“Because failure of that particular kind is more honest than most successes,” he said. “To look at suffering directly—at why it exists, what it is for, whether it is for anything at all—and to try to make sense of it… even if you arrive at nothing and fail to explain it convincingly. There is something honest in the attempt.”

She listened to all of this with the stillness she reserved for things worth attending to. He rarely spoke at length unless drawn out against his will.

“And what do you think?” she asked softly. “Is it for anything?”

He looked at her. “Suffering?”

She nodded.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I think it is simply the condition of living. The baseline. Men invent purpose for it afterward because they find randomness intolerable. I think we do ourselves a great disservice by insisting on meaning where there is only mechanism.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“That’s a very cold way of living,” she said. There was no rebuke in it—only a kind of honest observation one would employ as if remarking on the weather.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I have found sentiment more dangerous than cold-bloodedness.”

“Dangerous to whom?”

“To whoever has the misfortune of relying on it,” he said.

There were times he spoke as though the world had personally disappointed him beyond repair and he had responded by trying to need nothing from it ever again. Yet he kept returning to the bakery. Which complicated the theory considerably.

She looked at him long enough that he seemed to register it. Then she turned back to the books. The next volume proved to be poetry. Wordsworth mostly. Some Burns copied painstakingly by hand into the back pages.

“Thoreau,” she said conversationally, measuring it in her palm before switching it with the book in his hands, “thought something rather different.”

He looked down at what he was now holding. His expression moved through mild surprise into something approaching dissatisfaction.

“Walden,” he said flatly, examining the “new” book as though he were not quite sure what to make of it. He opened to the page that was marked with a flower pressed between its pages—petals gone near translucent—and read a line or two in silence. “You actually read this?”

Her eyes brightened. “You know it.”

“I know of it.”

“And?”

“And I suspect any man with enough leisure to wander about ponds reflecting on the nature of existence is already sufficiently insulated from most genuine hardship.”

That startled a genuine laugh out of her.

“Oh, you are cruel to him.”

“I am practical.”

“No,” she said cheerfully. “Cruel.”

He thumbed through a few more marked pages with reluctant interest.

“He says,” she began, watching him, “‘one must go to the woods should they wish to live deliberately.’”

“Yes, well… Most men go to the woods because they are starving.”

“That’s not the rest of it and you know it.”

His brow lifted, waiting.

She smiled despite herself and continued, quieter now, more thoughtful than teasing:

“‘To live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.’”

The words settled differently than the others had. Not with the bright-eyed naïveté he had expected from such sentiments. Perhaps because she believed them. She spoke them plainly, almost stubbornly, as if they were instructions she had chosen for herself long ago.

“Well,” she asked after a moment, “have you?”

“Have I what?”

“‘Sucked out all the marrow of life.’”

A faint line appeared between his brows. “That is an imprecise question.”

“It’s a simple one.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It only sounds simple.”

“You sound,” she said, folding her arms loosely around her midsection, “like a man waiting for his life to begin after it’s already half over.”

A dry laugh escaped him then. “I should hope not. I’m only eight-and-twenty.”

“Mm. And already tired enough for sixty.”

“That is uncharitable.”

“Is it?”

He looked at her again then, properly looked, and she felt the strange weight of it settle over her skin. He had a way of attending to a person that made them feel briefly pinned in place.

“You are very certain of your philosophies for someone so young,” he said.

“And you are very old for a man not yet thirty.”

They shared a small laugh.

He set the poems down and reached for the last. It was a cheap little chapbook of ballads that he turned over more carefully in his hands. Smaller than the others. The most worn. The cover was a pale pink, ink-stained at the corner, the title barely legible. He did not recognize it at once.

“That one’s just verses, mostly,” she said, before he could remark on the state of it. “Passed about. You get them cheap, if you know where to look.”

“Ballads,” he said.

“Aye.”

“It is not refined,” he said, turning the book over in his hands.

“No,” she replied cheerfully. “That’s why it survives being carried in an apron pocket.”

She wiped her hands on the cloth at her hip, leaned slightly closer, and tapped a short piece on the page with her finger. It was one she had been meaning for him to find.

“This one’s my favorite.”

He looked down at it. A short, unadorned piece. Nothing of the classical sort. He read it over once, taking in its simplicity. Then again, more slowly.

“It is… unsophisticated,” he said.

“I never said it wasn’t,” she said laughing.

“But it is not without merit,” he added, almost despite himself.

“There now,” she said warmly. “You’re improving already.”

He set the ballad book down with surprising care.

“You surprise me,” he said, though no condescension could be found in it now. Only recognition.

Her chest warmed strangely at that.

“You shouldn’t let it distress you too much,” she shrugged, though her smile lingered. “The world’s wider than it looks from certain angles.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment, studying her for a moment that ran slightly longer than was polite. “It would seem so.”

She turned back toward her work after that, and he took to the chair once again. But something between them had changed irrevocably, from one shape to another, and neither of them remarked upon it.

He took the chair once again, book open across a knee, one hand resting against the page, thumb hooked back into the crease to keep his place as he read, or doing something near enough to it. His eyes moved across the page at intervals, but they lifted often, drifting toward the counter, toward the window, toward nothing in particular. Once or twice they settled on her for extended periods of time. Following the movement of her hands. The sound of her humming beneath her breath. The way she tucked loose strands of hair back with her wrist when her fingers were sticky with dough.

She gave no sign of noticing.

“You don’t read much of it,” she observed eventually, after watching him do exactly that for the better part of five minutes.

His attention returned to her, drawn back from wherever it had gone.

“I read enough.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he said after a pause. “I suppose not.”

“Well?” she said after a moment.

“Well, what?”

“If you’ve brought Homer all the way into my bakery, you may as well make proper use of him.” she said. “Go on—read.”

He blinked at her. A brief, almost imperceptible pause while he registered the suggestion as a serious one.

“I do not make a habit of performing for others,” he said.

“It’s not a performance,” she replied lightly. “There’s no audience to speak of.”

His mouth quirked up slightly, biting back a half-smile. “That is hardly reassuring.”

“You’re a difficult man to please, Mr. Sumner,” she said, laughing softly.

“I had not noticed.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She wiped her hands and came a little nearer from behind the counter, leaning one elbow against it, tipping her chin into her palm. Waiting.

He watched her a moment longer, debating with himself on how to proceed.

“You would not understand most it,” he said at last.

There it was again, that prejudice.

And again she did not bristle, merely let it pass without offense, like water off a duck’s back.

“You may be surprised,” she said, raising her brows a fraction, “what women understand when men stop explaining the world at them.”

His expression flickered with a trace of something that might have been embarrassment. Then, he looked back down at the page with the air of a man making a small concession that costs him very little, “Very well,” he said and began to read:

“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus,” he began, something intimate in his words despite the formality of the language, “that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”

The bakery seemed to quiet itself around it, making space for the sound of him.

“Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades,” he continued, eyes moving steadily now, “and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures…”

She listened less to Homer than to him. To the way he carried the words. The exhaustion beneath the precision. The strange reverence he carried for suffering, even while—she was almost certain—despising it.

“…for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled,” his voice tapered slightly as he came to a natural pause, “from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another,” he finished, closing the book halfway.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat lightly and looking away from her in a manner she suspected he imagined was less obvious than it was. “There it is.”

Was he embarrassed?

“That’s miserable.”

“It is war.”

“That’s what men always say.” She folded her arms loosely. “As though it explains anything.”

“It explains enough.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head lightly. “It explains why men begin. Not why they continue.”

That caught him off guard in a way he wasn’t expecting.

“And what answer would satisfy you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But not inevitability. Maybe… why they don’t stop,” she said.

He turned the book in his hands, fingers pressing into the worn leather as though testing its shape.

“It is in men,” he said quietly. “Violence. Ambition. Vanity. Pride. They dress it differently across the centuries, but it remains the same.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“It is an observation.”

She met his gaze, unflinching.

“And you believe that?”

He paused for a moment, debating. He could have deflected it, turned it aside and dismissed it. She half-expected him to—he had a talent, nothing overtly rude, for redirecting conversation when it ventured somewhere particular. She had noticed it in the days he had been coming in. He could talk freely enough about the weather, medicine, London society; but ask him anything that required him to account for himself, and he moved like a man who had learned to quietly steer away from certain topics, without appearing to do so.

But this time he did not.

“Yes,” he said.

“You’ve seen it, then—war,” she said.

His expression altered at the word. War. Not by much, not the collapse she might have expected, only enough that she regretted it immediately. He stared down at the page in his hands as though the answers to life—to all his troubles—might be hidden there instead.

“I have seen enough,” he said, grinding his jaw slightly.

That was all he had to say on it. But it was not nothing—something old and dark moved there. Death lived beyond those words, though he would not breathe life into them.

She studied him with an almost sadness in her expression now. Not pitying, never that. There was too much self-possession in her for pity to sit naturally upon her face. But she had been around the docks enough to recognize that particular quality of pain, in the men who came back from the sea with their silences changed. There was a difference between a door that was locked and one that was only closed, and she knew better than to confuse the two.

Instead, she reached for one of her own books, fingers finding it without needing to look.

“Then read this instead,” she said, holding out the little ballad book toward him once more.

He hesitated a second before closing the distance to her, reluctantly taking the book into his hands. Brows lifting slightly, staring at her incredulously, when he saw the page she had marked with her thumb.

“Burns.”

“Aye,” she replied. “But read it proper.”

Something in that—proper—might have been teasing. Might not. His eyes quickly skimmed the lines before he sighed in defeat and began:

“O, my love is like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June…

O, my love is like the melody,

That’s sweetly played in tune.”

His voice grew more careful as he read, as though even foolishness deserved accuracy. Even if he did not quite believe in it.

She watched him again, rather than the page. The shape of lips around the words. The way his voice gentled despite himself. The way his tongue darted at the corner.

“So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I…

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.”

He stopped there, scoffing.

“It is sentimental nonsense,” he declared.

“And yet you read it lovely,” she replied, smiling softly at him.

“That does not improve its argument.”

“You don’t think much of that sort of thing,” she said, tilting her head and studying him.

“No,” he replied. He set the book on the counter with more care than the verdict suggested, and she felt again the slight gap between what he said and what his hands did.

“Why not?”

“Because it is not true,” he kept his eyes on the cover of the book.

She nodded once, slowly, as though she had expected no other answer. “No?”

“No,” he repeated. “Love does not endure beyond its conditions. Love alters. People alter. By circumstance, time, necessity. Affection is… conditional, whether poets care to admit it or not.”

She blinked, before smiling sadly at him. “That’s a very fine way of saying it fades.”

“It does.”

“And you’re certain of that?”

“I have seen no evidence to the contrary.”

She considered him a moment longer before gently taking the little book back from his hands. Their fingers brushed in a quick meeting, leaving a tingle in their wake.

“Perhaps,” she said softly, “you’ve spent too long looking where things break, and not enough in the right places.”

For once, he had no immediate reply. And for the first time since entering Fletcher’s Bakery, he looked not like a man playing pretend, humoring pleasant company… but rather like a man beginning, against all better judgment, to hope she might understand him.

He unconsciously flexed his fingers against his side, in the wake of their brief touch.

“I think I have looked precisely where such things are most likely to appear,” he said.

“And found absolutely nothing worth keeping?”

Outside, the yard bell rang somewhere near the docks. Low and iron-heavy. Marking the hour. The afternoon light had gone flatter still while they spoke. The windows showed only a dull wash of cloud now, the glass faintly fogged at the corners from the heat inside.

“You place a great deal of faith in feeling,” he said after a moment.

“And you place too little.” She laughed softly beneath her breath and shook her head, before turning away to busy herself with tidying a tray that scarcely needed tidying at all. “For a man of such avowed indifference and remarkable distrust in pleasure, you sure do return here with remarkable regularity.”

“It is not pleasure I distrust.”

“No?” She glanced back at him. “What, then?”

“Expectation.”

The answer came too quickly to have been prepared. It surprised him as much as her—she saw it in the slight stillness that followed, the way he looked away.

“You think,” she said slowly, “that if a thing is wanted badly enough, it is bound to be taken away.”

His gaze lifted to her again.

“Is that not the usual order of things?”

She studied him quietly.

“Funny. I never pegged you as a cynic.”

That seemed genuinely to catch him off guard.

“I am not a cynic,” he said after a moment.

“No?”

“No. More of a… realist.”

“And what’s the difference?”

“A realist sees the world as it is.”

“And a cynic?”

“The same thing,” he admitted dryly, “but with less precision.”

She reached for the slim pamphlet at the bottom of the stack, flipping through it, until she found the page she wanted, as she stepped around the counter to stand next to him—not close enough to touch, but nearer all the same.

He watched her approach with a slight wariness.

“Listen.”

Before he could object, she began reading aloud:

“‘O me, O life… of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish…’”

Her voice softened as she read, but did not lose conviction.

“‘What good amid these, O me, O life?’”

He listened despite himself.

“‘Answer: that you are here—that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’”

She closed the pamphlet gently, watching him with an expression he could not quite categorise: attentive, warm, something quiet and steady at the back of it.

“…optimistic to the point of naivety,” he said after a moment.

“Is it?” she said. “Or is it merely honest?”

“There is a difference?”

“A very great one,” she said. “Naivety doesn’t know things are terrible. Optimism does. It simply refuses surrender.”

He looked at her for a long moment, a faint crease forming between his brows.

“You believe that strongly.”

“I do.”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary.”

“I think Whitman had seen enough of things to know they were terrible,” she said, “and still thought a man could contribute something. That the play goes on regardless, but that you are in it all the same. That that is not nothing.” She paused. “I think that is a harder thing to believe than despair.”

Sumner was quiet a moment, her answer seemingly holding him. She saw it happen; not agreement, not yet. But attention of a different kind entirely.

Respect, dangerous thing, that.

“And what verse would you contribute?” he asked.

She considered it honestly, without rushing the answer.

“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “But I think that’s all right. Perhaps the point is the contributing, not the certainty about what it is.”

He turned the pamphlet over in his hands once, then set it back on the counter.

“And you?” she said. “What verse?”

He did not answer immediately. She had half-readied herself for the quiet sidestep of his deflection. But he sat with the question instead.

“I am not sure I have one,” he said, at last.

“No?” she said.

“No.” A pause. “I have only—” he stopped. Began again, differently. “I have been in several places I should not have been, done several things that were in my interest and several that were not, and I cannot always tell which were which in retrospect. I have read a great deal, and have come to few conclusions that held.” He looked back at the Iliad, still there, still open. “Homer seems the most honest to me, in the end: ‘We men are wretched things, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives.’ That has not yet proved false.”

She was quiet for a moment, watching him.

“This is the most you’ve told me about yourself since you first walked in here,” she said.

He looked up. Something in his expression shifted into the look of a man who had only just registered how far the door had opened throughout their talk—subconsciously allowing her a glance beyond—and is uncertain whether or not to be alarmed by it.

“So it is,” he said.

“You needn’t look so alarmed,” she said gently. “It’s only conversation.”

“I have not been very good at it lately,” he said.

“You’ll get better,” she said, smiling softly at him.

He held her gaze for a beat. Then, quietly: “The verse,” he said. “I hope you find it.”

She smiled—the full, unselfconscious one, not the quick, polite one she saved for customers.

Before she could reply back, the bell above the door gave a sudden, sharp ring. Too loud for the conversation they had settled into. The intimacy of the moment vanished so quickly it felt imagined.

She straightened instinctively and turned.

“Hester,” she said, the name slipping out before she quite thought it.

The woman in question came in with the confidence of someone who had long since stopped worrying about what others thought of her.

“Well,” Hester said with the faintest lift at the corner of her mouth. Her gaze moved from the baker to Sumner and back again, reading the room with a practiced efficiency. “Aren’t you kept in good company.”

Giving a cough, Sumner took a sideways step, adding more distance. The space between them restored with a swiftness enough to be noticed.

“It’s a shop, same as ever,” she said.

“Aye,” Hester replied pleasantly. “And I’ve eyes, same as ever.”

“Miss,” he said, with a small inclination of his head toward Hester.

Hester looked him over with a slow, unhurried thoroughness that she made no effort to conceal. “Sir,” she said, delicate eyebrow raising, though there was no real deference in it.

He reached for his gloves and coat, tucking his book away, before placing his hat back atop his head and gathering the wrapped parcel in his hands.

“I should not intrude further,” he said, directed—she noticed—more to her than Hester.

“You’re not—” she began.

But he had already stepped back.

“It is a busy establishment,” he added, though it plainly was not, and all three of them knew it.

He moved toward the door. The bell gave its same small, tired ring as he stepped out into the gray. The door closed. And then he was gone and the window showed nothing but the ordinary afternoon going about itself as though nothing of any particular significance had occurred.

She stood at the counter a moment, her hand gripping its edge.

The shop felt different for his absence. Hester was already making herself comfortable and had the look of someone who intended to be there for some time.

“Well,” Hester said, after a beat, folding her arms. “You’ll wear that look into your face if you’re not careful.”

“What look?”

“The one where you forget yourself,” Hester said while smirking.

“I’ve no notion what you mean,” she said and turned back to the work waiting for her hands on the counter. But her eyes flicked to the window more than once.Where the street had already swallowed him whole and left no trace.

The letter had arrived in the morning.

She had read it once, standing at the back table with the ovens already lit and the whole day still ahead of her, and then she had folded it carefully and set it beneath the edge of a tin where it would not be seen, and told herself she would think about it later.

She had not thought about it. She had not stopped thinking about it.

She had meant only to make a small batch of caramel, nothing elaborate, a simple thing she had done a hundred times without thought. Sugar to heat, turned just so, drawn at the right moment.

The first batch caught before she reached it.

She saw it too late; the shift from amber to something darker and wrong, the smell turning sharp and acrid at the edge. She pulled it from the heat, but the damage was done. She set it aside, measured fresh sugar into the pan, and began again.

The second burned at the same point.

She stood over it longer than necessary with the spoon in her hand, watching the slow, ruined pull of it, the thin smoke rising in a pale thread toward the ceiling.

“Damn,” she murmured to herself.

She set the pan aside and pressed her hands flat against eyes. Outside, the dockyard had grown louder in the past days. She could hear it even from within the shop: the steady increase of labor and preparation, the creak of timber under new strain, men called to and fro with increasing urgency. Ships being made ready. The season pressing forward.

She drew a breath. Set the third pan on the heat.

And then—

Too fast, again. The colour turned before she expected it, the moment she had been reaching for coming and going while her attention slipped, and by the time she moved it was already past.

“Come on,” she said, the words half under her breath. “Just—come on, come on—”

Her throat tightened with a suddenness that had nothing at all to do with the sugar, and she knew it, and it made no difference. She pressed the back of her fingers to her mouth and stood very still for a moment, eyes shut.

He had been passing through. They always were, in a port city. He had stayed long enough that she had believed, for a time, that staying was a thing he intended. He had spoken of Berlin the way people speak of places they mean to return to, and she had let herself believe she would be included in that future too. He had been warm, and certain, and full of the world in a way she had not yet encountered in anyone else. And then one morning the ship was in the harbor and he was on it, and all his certainty went with him, and she had been left with a recipe and the distinct impression of having been the last to know.

That she had half-expected it had not made it easier to receive the news of him. That he was gone entirely now, really gone—some battle out in Milan—made the old feeling sit differently in her chest. Not the ache of being left. Something heavier that had not been there before and would, she suspected, take some considerable time to properly account for.

“Stupid,” she said, to the ruined pan, to herself, to no one. “Stupid, stupid—”

The bell above the door rang.

Too early. The shutters were not even up.

“We’re not open,” she called, without turning, her voice rougher than she wanted it. “You’ll have to come back at half past—”

She stopped, lowered her hand, and turned.

He stood just inside the door.

He did not speak. His gaze moved across the room once, taking in the pans set aside, the darkened sugar cooling from within, the air still holding the sharp, bittersweet remnant of three failures. Then it shifted to her.

She straightened at once. “It’s nothing,” she said, too quickly, wiping her face. “A batch gone off. I’ll have it right before opening, there’s still time—”

He crossed the room without answering.

He set his hat on the counter. Shrugged his coat off with the same economy he did everything, folded it over the back of the chair. Rolled his sleeves to the elbow. Then he went to the basin, unhurried, and washed his hands as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be doing.

She stared at him. “You needn’t—”

“I know,” he said, drying his hands without looking up.

“You’ve not the first idea how—”

“Probably not,” he agreed.

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

He moved to the worktable, examined the pans briefly before setting the ruined ones to the side without ceremony. Then he reached for the sugar.

She ought to have stopped him. Said something sharper. Put him back on his proper side of the counter, where customers belonged. She did not. Something in the way of him kept her rooted where she stood.

He worked without haste. Not with the ease of long practice but with the careful attention of a man accustomed to doing unfamiliar things correctly. He measured. Watched the heat. Made two small errors in the first minute, which she corrected without comment, adjusting the flame with her own hand, moving the pan slightly.

They did not speak much.

“You’ve it too high,” she said, after a moment. Her voice had steadied somewhat.

“I see it.”

“Do you? Because you’ve not seen it the last three attempts.”

“Those were yours,” he said.

That caught her. “Fair enough…”

She stepped closer, reaching past him to adjust the heat further, her hand closing over his on the handle to still it.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then she shifted his grip, brought the flame lower, guided the slow rotation of the pan.

“Gradual,” she said, more quietly now. “You’ve got to let it come on by degrees or it turns on you before you know it’s gone.”

He did not argue. His attention was fixed on the pan, but she was aware of him in a particular way she had not thought before.

“There,” she said. “That’s it.”

He looked at the pan. Then at her.

“Is it corrected?”

“Near enough,” she said. “You can’t undo it entirely. Only bring it back from the edge.”

She realised, a moment too late, that she was not looking at the pan.

He was not, either.

The silence between them held for a moment.

“You’ve got flour,” he said, after a moment.

She frowned, confusion painting across her face. “What?”

“There,” gestured, briefly, toward her face. “Your cheek.”

“Oh—” She reached up with the back of her hand, rubbing at the wrong place entirely.

“Not like that,” he said.

And before she could manage it herself—

He reached out.

It was a small thing, should have been nothing, was nothing. His thumb brushed her cheek once, light and precise, the way he did most things. But he did not hurry it, and she did not move away. For a moment the kitchen held very still around them, the ovens breathing steadily, the sounds of the street coming through the open shutter in their ordinary way, as though nothing of any particular significance were occurring.

“There,” he said. Quieter than before.

Their eyes met, and they found themselves closer than was strictly necessary. Neither of them stepped back.

“Are you sweet on me, Mr. Sumner?” The words came out before she had decided to say them. Light, almost careless in their tone. Almost.

He went still. Did not look at her. Not at once.

She thought he might let it pass. He was capable of it. Had done it a dozen times before when something pressed too close.

Then, very quietly: “You’ll burn the sugar.”

“I see that,” she said, letting out a short laugh.

He said nothing more. And that—the not-answering— was answer enough.

Before long he was gone again. The bell rang sharp in the quiet. The door closed.

She stood for a long moment after.

Looked at the coin on the counter. Looked at the shelf above the worktable, where the edge of folded paper sat tucked beneath the tin, unremarkable and terrible in its stillness. She had known, when she read it, that she would have to carry it through the day the way one carries a heavy stone. She had known there was no other option available to her. The world remained entirely uninterested in accommodating grief with a decent interval. What she had not known was that someone might come in from the street and stay, without being asked to and without making anything of it.

Her feet found the chair in the corner without her directing them there, and she sat, pressing her fingers to her eyes. She told herself it was only for a moment, to take the weight off, to let the tremor in her hands subside before the first customers came. And somewhere between one breath and the next, the weight of the morning caught up with her at last.

HULL, ENGLAND. JUNE 7, 1859.

The shop had been closed for hours.

Outside, Hull carried on in its usual rough fashion: voices raised, the distant swell of drink, tempers rising and falling as the night took hold. Now and then came the sharp crack of laughter from the direction of the taverns, or the hollow clatter of iron-rimmed wheels striking uneven stone. Life persisted stubbornly in the dark.

But held within a quieter pocket of time, the bakery sat apart from it all.

A storm had broken over the town earlier in the day. Rainwater still clung in the shallow black seams between the cobbles outside. The air beyond the windows glowed faintly yellow beneath the gas lamps lining Clifford Street, their light softened by the mist creeping in from the Humber.

Inside, the ovens had been banked low. They no longer roared, but breathed a slow, steady heat that had settled deep into the bones of the place. It made the bakery feel lived-in, even amongst the stillness. A single lamp burned low on the counter, its dim glow catching the fine drift of flour that hung suspended in the air, and managed to cling to everything—shelves, aprons, skin, even the worn boards beneath her feet.

She had stayed later than usual.

There had been no real reason for it. The day’s baking was done. Tomorrow’s dough prepared and resting. Shutters drawn. Accounts squared near enough. And yet she lingered, moving slower than she needed to, hands idle setting things that required no setting. Straightening what was already straight. Wiping what was already clean.

Waiting, though she could not have said for what.

It’s not like she was expecting anyone.

She let out a breath and reached for the scrap pail beside the worktable.

“Well,” she murmured to herself, “can’t stand here all night looking foolish.”

The back door stuck slightly from the damp when she pushed it open into the back alley, half-swallowed in shadow. It ran narrow between the bakery and the adjoining houses and shops, opening farther down toward the timber yard and docks where the silhouettes of masts stood black against the sky.

She heard the dull iron note of the Queen’s Dock yard bell tolling the midnight hour. A dog answered with a mournful howl from farther down the lane.

She stepped out carefully with the pail balanced against her hip.

And stopped.

There, standing several paces off in the dark, she saw the vague shape of a man.

For one sharp instant her pulse jumped.

Then the figure shifted slightly beneath the dim light and resolved into something familiar—the broad dark coat rumpled at the edges, the bowler hat tipped low, the particular stillness of him.

“—Lord above—”

The words left her before she could temper them.

“Mr. Sumner?”

He stood turned half away from her, his attention fixed not upon the bakery but farther down the alley itself, toward some pocket of deeper shadow between the alley walls. As though he had heard something there. Or expected some monster to pop out of its darkness.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, bewilderment overtaking alarm. “You’ve lost your way entirely if you’ve come round the back.”

No answer. Or none that matched the question.

When he finally looked toward her, it happened as if he were returning from somewhere very far off. His gaze taking a second to settle into focus. His pupils looked dark and blown wide in the low light. But when his eyes fixed on her, it was as though he had come upon something unexpected… something worth considering.

“I did not mean to disturb you.”

“You were not going to knock?”

“I had not decided.”

That made her laugh softly despite herself.

“Hopeless creature,” she muttered. “Come inside before you take cold entirely.”

He did not move.

Only continued watching her with that same unnervingly intent gaze.

She shifted the scrap pail to her other hand, studying him more carefully now. There lingered the unmistakable scent of spirits, along with an oddness to him tonight. His attention fixed too hard when it landed. His movements a touch delayed.

She stepped closer, and without thinking, caught hold of his hand.

Cold.

Truly cold.

“Oh, your hands are freezing.” Her brow pinched at once. “Standing out here in wet weather… You’ll have yourself laid up before the night is done—have you no sense at all?”

She pulled him in after her before he could object.

He obeyed easily.

The warmth of the bakery met them at once upon entering, softening the damp chill clinging to him. She shut the door firmly against the alley and set the scrap pail aside with a clatter.

“There,” she said briskly. “Better already.”

The room seemed smaller suddenly with him inside it at such a late hour. More intimate.

The low lamp cast amber light across the planes of his face, catching the faint roughness along his jaw and the tired shadows beneath his eyes. He looked worn tonight.

“There’s still heat left in the bricks.” She took

She drew him nearer toward the ovens.

“Fire’s near gone, but it’s better than out there.” She took both his hands between hers again, rubbing warmth back into them. “Honestly, you’d let yourself perish from stubbornness if nobody stopped you.”

He nodded absentmindedly, though he had not been listening. His attention remained fixed elsewhere with solemn concentration.

Her.

The dark ribbon loosened halfway from her hair. The way the low light of the lamp illuminated parts of her face. The movement of her mouth as she spoke, the way her lips wrapped around the consonants and syllables, though he could not make out the words. The warmth of her hands—the contrast to his own.

“You’re so warm,” he said suddenly.

It came out quieter than he had meant it to. Almost as if it were a thought he had not intended to share out loud.

Her hands stilled only for a moment.

“Well, I should hope so,” she said, attempting at lightness and not quite finding it. “I’ve been standing over these ovens since before dawn.”

She squeezed his hands once more before letting go to set a kettle on the coals.

“A little something hot will do you more good than whatever you’ve been at,” she added, not looking at him now. “You reek of it.”

He gave the smallest hint of a smile at that.

“Do I?”

“You do.”

A pause.

“You always do, a little. But tonight—” she exhaled sharply through her nose, biting back a laugh. “You are a difficult man, Mr. Sumner.”

“I have been told so.”

She shook her head once, dismissing the topic. “Sit, if you’ve the sense for it.”

He did not sit. Instead, he remained where he was, his attention fixed on her hands as she moved. The flour still caught in the creases of her skin. The way she brushed it absently against her apron, only to gather more.

She poured what remained of the warmed milk into two little cups, adding a little spice. When she handed one to him, his fingers brushed hers deliberately, lingering a touch too long to be accidental.

“You’ve been absent all day,” she said after a moment, scratching lightly at her cheek, unknowingly spreading a fine dusting of flour across.

“I have been occupied.”

“Mm.”

She leaned back against a counter, head tilted slightly, studying him with that same open, unguarded expression that had unsettled him since the first day he stepped foot into the shop. It had always been the thing he could not account for.

“I thought perhaps you’d decided you no longer cared for the bread,” she added.

“I never cared for it,” he said, almost reflexively.

Her mouth curved. “You might have spared yourself the trouble of coming, then.”

“I considered it.”

“And yet…”

“And yet—” he had come. Again, and again, and again. He did not finish it in words. He did not need to.

“You are in a strange humour tonight.”

“I am not in humour at all.”

“No? Then perhaps you are only strange.”

A quick flash of amusement flickered across his face.

She looked over his form—the unsteady stillness, the way he held himself as if by effort, the faint sheen of distance in his eyes. There was an unguarded aura about him tonight. A carelessness—no—something less… arranged. Brought on by the late hour, perhaps. Or the knowledge of departure pressing at the edges of things.

“You’ll be gone tomorrow,” she said, quieter now.

“Yes.” He said it plainly, with no attempt at reassurance. Just yes. And somehow that made it worse.

“And that’s all you’ve to say on it?”

“What would you have me say.”

She traced idle circles against the warm side of her cup, a smile touching briefly at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, I don’t know. Something finer, perhaps. Something that might make a better story of it.”

“I am not in the habit of improving things for the sake of how they sound.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said, a little dry. “Well, I suppose I shall miss you.”

He placed his cup down, untouched. He seemed, for a moment, not to know what to do with her revelation. Which, more than anything, made her soften as she continued staring at him.

“Why?”

She blinked at him.

“Why?”

“Yes.”

The sincerity of it nearly made her laugh.

“Because you appear here every day and say very little and pretend not to enjoy yourself.”

“I do not enjoy myself.”

“No,” she agreed lightly. “But you come all the same and somehow make—me—the room feel… different for it.”

“That is not a reason.”

“It is the only one you are getting.”

Silence settled again. The oven ticked softly behind them, heat pressing close, turning the air thick. She became aware of the flour still dusted along her forearms, the loosened tie of her apron, the lateness of the hour in a way she had not, until now.

He had not looked away from her.

“I have observed,” he said at last, voice low and measured, “that you are… industrious.”

She blinked. “Industrious.”

“You rise before light, and work until well past it. You engage with a great many people of little consequence, and yet you maintain—” he paused, searching for the word, “—a composure that suggests you are… unusually content with it.”

That startled a smile from her.

“You have been studying me, then.”

“You work incessantly.”

“So do half the women in Hull.”

“Yes,” he said, studying her, “though most do not sing and recite poetry whilst doing it.”

She felt her ears heating up faintly beneath his attention.

“That is hardly a crime.”

“I did not say it was.”

“Well,” she said, unable to help it, “I am glad my work has proven so… philosophically stimulating.”

“There is nothing philosophical in it.”

“No?”

“No. It is a matter of fact.”

She shook her head, trying to bite back her smile, and failing. “And what fact is that?”

“That you are ill-suited to the life you are living.”

That caught her off-guard.

She set her cup aside slowly. “I beg your pardon?”

“You are confined by it,” he went on, tone unchanged. “Your circumstances. Your trade. It is… limiting.”

There it was—that bluntness, that careless disregard for the weight of his own words.

She stared at him a moment, then barked a laugh outright. Bright, full, unabashed, and in his face.

“Oh, that is a terrible thing to say to a woman—is that meant to be a compliment?”

“It is an observation.”

“No, I daresay it is an insult,” she corrected, still laughing, though there was a sharper edge beneath it now. “And a poorly delivered one at that.”

A faint crease formed between his brows.

“You make sport of me.”

“You make it very easy.”

He exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving hers.

“I did not mean it as an insult,” he said. “I meant—” another pause, longer this time, as though the thought resisted him, “—that I have found myself… reluctant to leave.”

The laughter faded.

“That is a rather different statement altogether.”

“Yes.”

“And you could not have begun with that?”

“I am not practiced in such things.”

“No,” she said softly. “I do not suppose you are.”

Another silence, but this one shifted—something unspoken pressing between them.

“There are objections,” he said at last. “You should not have… encouraged this.”

Her brow lifted faintly. “Encouraged what, exactly?”

“This—” He gestured at the space between them.

A small, almost incredulous breath left her.

“This?” she echoed. “You’ll have to be more particular, Mr. Sumner, I’ve not the gift of—”

“This familiarity” he interrupted her, furrowing his brows, as if the word itself did not suit what he meant. “Your… attentions—”

She laughed, soft and surprised. “My attentions?”

“They are misplaced.”

His words were clipped, awkward, blunt, and almost clinical in their delivery. He did not soften them. Did not dress them up. Simply laid it between them like something that might be examined and then set aside.

“You ought not encourage men without prospects.”

“And are you such a man?”

“Yes.”

The answer came too quickly to doubt.

“You’ve a shop to run,” he continued, quieter now. “And I am… temporary. Not a man accustomed to… reciprocation in the manner you seem to expect. Nor one suited to them. My circumstances, my profession, my… history—render such considerations impractical.”

“Impractical,” she echoed him again, faintly amused, all while leaning back against the counter. “I do not seem to recall asking anything of you.”

“No, you did not need to. That is precisely the difficulty,” he said, meeting her eyes fully, with none of the distance that usually sat behind it. “Your openness, it invites… misinterpretation where it is unwise.”

The words should have landed harder than they did. His voice remained level, but there was strain beneath it now. He stood before her like a man arguing himself into retreat even while remaining exactly where he was.

“Does it?”

“It does.” A beat. “And I have not discouraged it as I ought.”

That, at least, was honest.

“You’ve done a fair job of discouraging most things, in my experience.” Her smile widened.

“This is not most things.”

“No,” she said softly. “It isn’t.”

He drew a breath, as if bracing himself against something far less tangible than her.

“And beyond that,” he continued, more firmly now, as if the argument strengthened the longer he held it, “there is the matter of—of propriety. You are—”

He stopped, not so much as searching for the word, but rather deciding whether to use it at all.

She arched a brow. “I am…?”

“—unsuitable.”

Much as she tried to maintain her composure amongst his posturing, she laughed. Again. Couldn’t help it. It broke clean through the careful structure of his speech, bright and unrestrained and entirely at odds with the solemnity of his words.

He went rigid.

“Oh, that is poorly done,” she said, shaking her head, pressing the backs of her fingers to her lips as if to contain the rest of it. “Truly. You had it near enough—grave and severe and entirely convinced of yourself—and then you lost your footing.”

“I am not attempting to entertain you.”

“No,” she said, still smiling. “You’re attempting to propose, I think. Or something very like it.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“You are.”

“I am not.”

“You absolutely are.” She pushed off the counter, crossing toward him with an easy confidence that seemed only to unsettle him further. “You’ve come here, on the night before you are to leave, to inform me that despite my obvious deficiencies—my station, my trade, my general unsuitability—you find yourself unaccountably attached.”

His jaw tightened.

“And that this attachment,” she went on, softer now but no less amused, “has been formed against your better judgment. Quite against it, in fact.”

“That is not—”

“It is,” she said gently. “And it’s very noble of you, I’m sure.”

“This is not a matter for mockery.”

“I’m not mocking,” she said, though there was laughter still threaded through her voice. “I’m—what is the word—delighted, perhaps. You’ve made such a production of resisting the obvious.”

“The obvious,” he repeated.

“That you are sweet on me, Mr. Sumner.”

The silence that followed was full of all the things he would not say plainly.

“I will not be made a fool of,” he said at last.

“You aren’t,” she replied, the softness returning, settling into something steadier now. “You’re only a little late to your own understanding…”

“I’ll miss you,” she said it again after a moment, though the words landed differently this time—said with a tenderness he was unused to, making his heart ache.

His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth before lifting again.

The room felt very warm suddenly.

“I think,” he said, voice slowing, lowering in pitch, “that you would do better to direct your inclinations elsewhere.”

She stepped closer, close enough now that he did not need to reach out to touch her, though he had not yet done so. The space between them closed in increments, narrowed to almost nothing now.

“And if I won’t take the advice?”

“You would do better to forget me.”

“I won’t do that either.”

The honesty of her caught him off guard, a faint breath of frustration and incredulity leaving him.

“You persist,” he said.

And yet, he did not step back. That, more than anything, felt like an answer, emboldening her to continue pressing forward.

“I do.”

Her hand rose up the front of his coat, then higher, fingers catching briefly to brush at the edge of his collar, where a trace of flour had transferred from some earlier, unnoticed contact. The gesture was small. Almost domestic. The sort of thing done without thought.

He went still beneath it.

“You’ve spent a whole month pretending not to like me,” she said softly. “I thought I might allow you one imperfect speech in return.”

Her fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary. Then, just as easily, she let them fall.

“It was not imperfect.”

“It was dreadful.”

His mouth twitched into almost a smile, if one were inclined to be generous. He looked at her then as if seeing her properly for the first time—not the surface of her, not the easy brightness, but the steadiness beneath it. The choice in it.

“You should not have laughed,” he murmured, though there was no real reproach in it now.

“I couldn’t help it.”

“You rarely do.”

“Would you prefer I did?”

“No.”

His hand lifted slowly, as if wading through water, fingers brushing a faint line of flour off her cheek before settling there.

She felt the contact like a spark.

“So very warm,” he said, almost absently.

Her eyes closed at the touch, a soft “mm” slipping past her lips as she nuzzled her cheek further into his palm.

His other hand came up, just as slow, just as deliberate, touching her other cheek as though confirming she was there at all. His thumb dragged lightly along her skin, catching on the corner of her mouth.

She exhaled, unsteady.

“You sure take your time.”

“Yes.”

“Is that the drink?”

“Yes.”

“Or just you.”

A pause—

“Both.”

She laughed under her breath, but it faltered when he leaned in with that same inexorable slowness he’d displayed since showing up at her doorstep. Giving her every opportunity to refuse him and pull away.

She did not.

The kiss, when it came, was slower than she expected. It was the natural end of something that had been building longer than either of them had named.

Warmth, first. Then pressure.

He kissed her like a man unaccustomed to tenderness but hungry for it all the same. As though he was testing the reality of it, learning the shape of her mouth against his, savoring the warmth of her breath between each slow press of his lips against hers.

He tasted of alcohol—rum—laced faintly with some bitter, medicinal tincture beneath—Laudanum, though she did not know it by name—but it did not lessen the focus of his attention. If anything, it sharpened it, narrowing the world to the space between them.

She answered him easily and in kind; though where he held, she yielded; where he hesitated, she drew him on just enough to bridge it. Her hands found their way to him without thinking, as though they had known the path all along. The roughness of his coat beneath her palms, her fingers curling into the fabric, drawing him ever closer, before moving higher, brushing the faint stubble along the line of his jaw.

He answered with a whine high in his throat that seemed almost startled from him.

Flour brushed between them as she shifted, her apron catching against him. She felt the heat of him through the layers, the steadiness of his hands as they moved. His touch remained careful, with a precision that betrayed the surgeon in him even now—down her arms, along her waist, tracing, mapping, committing every dip and contour to memory.

“You are very certain,” she murmured against his mouth.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

That made her laugh quietly into the next kiss.

Time stretched. The small room seemed to fold in on itself, the warmth of the ovens pressing close, the scent of bread and sugar thick in the air.

He drew back only slightly, forehead resting against hers.

“This is ill-advised,” he said, though his hand had not moved from her, it remained on her hip, thumb brushing absentmindedly back and forth.

“Terribly,” she agreed, licking her lips.

“And yet…”

“And yet.”

A ghost of that earlier humor returned briefly.

“You’ll go tomorrow,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“And there’ll be no letters to expect?”

“No.”

She nodded, accepting it with the same strange openness that had undone him from the start.

“Well, then you’d best remember me properly,” she added lightly, that familiar brightness threading through her voice.

“I will,” he replied. His gaze held hers, dark and full of intent.

She gave him a soft, sad smile at that. Her fingers tracing along his sleeves, then higher, to wrap around the tops of his shoulders.

“Don’t forget me… please,” she said, barely above a whisper.

A pause.

“Alright.”

It was the closest thing to a promise he could offer.

He bent his head again, not in argument, but in quiet concession. Whatever came after, he would not name.

Outside, the mist thinned.

Clouds broke in slow seams overhead, and through it the moon showed—pale gold, not yet full, but near enough to cast its light cleanly across the roofs and the dock beyond.

By morning, he would be gone.

But not yet. Not yet.

Tonight, for a few more borrowed hours, he was hers.

And that, to her, was everything.

ZOOLOGISCHER GARTEN, BERLIN, GERMANY. MAY 2, 1861.

He had woken knowing the date.

He could not have said why it should matter. Two years was not a significant amount by any measure—not an anniversary of anything he had the right to call his own. He had spent a single month in Hull in the spring of 1859 before boarding a ship that subsequently sank, leaving him stranded in the Arctic. Whatever had occurred during that month was not the kind of thing that warranted much weight attached to it.

And yet.

He had woken knowing it, and had not been able to forget it. Eventually he rose, dressed, and went out walking in the way he did when the thinking became more trouble than it was worth.

Berlin did not mind. That was something he had noticed about the city in the months since he had arrived. Here, he was not anything in particular at all. He had found that comforting in a way he had not expected.

He had come to the Zoologischer Garten because it was there, and the afternoon was clear, and he had nothing better to do.

He had not been prepared for the bear.

He had stood before that enclosure longer than he intended. The bear had regarded him with the flat, extinguished patience of something that had been powerful in another life and retained only the shape of it. In that moment, standing there, he felt the uncomfortable recognition of looking at something he had hoped he no longer resembled.

That was when the sound reached him.

Small. Unguarded. Something between protest and delight, the kind of sound that belonged entirely to a creature that had not yet learned to moderate itself for the benefit of others.

He turned without thinking much on it.

There was a woman some yards off near a railing, standing with her back to him, with a child settled on her hip with the easy authority of a long habit. The afternoon light fell across them both at an angle that caught the railing’s ironwork and broke into narrow shadows at their feet.

He noted all of this in the way he noted most things—without attaching any particular significance to it.

Then he found he could not look away.

There was nothing unusual about the woman, nothing that should have delayed his attention. She was turned from him. The child was occupied with something at her collar. The scene was entirely ordinary.

And yet he was still looking at it.

He looked more carefully.

It was not that she looked like someone he knew. It was that she moved like someone he had known.

May 2, 1859. The first morning he found himself in her bakery. He stood in Berlin two years to the day from that morning.

The memory arrived without permission. He had trained himself not to think on that time, in the same way he had trained himself not to reach for the laudanum, understanding that both were habits of avoidance dressed as comfort. But this one came of its own accord, unbidden and entirely precise: flour on her cheek, the smell of the bakery pressing in from all sides, the ovens already lit and the morning just beginning, and a woman who had not looked up immediately because she had already known, by some quality of his step or the sound of the latch, exactly who it was.

The child suddenly moved.

Pushing outward instead, small body leaning away from her with the exploratory confidence of something that had never yet encountered a boundary. She adjusted her hold, settling her palm against the child’s back, drawing it in instinctively.

The movement turned the child’s face into the light. And turned her, slightly, with it.

Her profile became clear to him at once and he had enough time to understand what he was looking at.

It was her.

Not the preserved image of her he carried, which had dimmed and blurred at the edges in the way such things did with time. But her, as she actually was. Altered in the way of someone who had continued living in the meantime.

His heart gave a painful lurch within his chest. And that was when his eyes drifted toward the child.

Who was already looking back at him with the direct, unafraid regard of someone who had not yet learned that strangers warranted caution. A brow. A mouth. A face he recognised with a precision that removed any remaining possibility of dismissal.

He had, on occasion, wished he were a less observant man. He had never wished it as sharply as he did at this moment.

He looked at her again.

She had turned fully now. While he had been busy inspecting the child, it seemed she had been aware of him for some time.

She looked at him, and he looked at her.

The distance between them was perhaps twenty yards. It was not a large distance. He was aware of it with an accuracy that had nothing to do with measurement.

He had come to the Zoologischer Garten because it was there, and the date had been sitting on him since before dawn, and he had not known what else to do with it. He had told her, once, that he did not think he had a verse to contribute. He had not known, at the time, what he was saying.

The child lifted one small hand and reached toward him.

And he took a step.

The child’s hand stayed open.

He had been in several places he should not have been. He had done several things that were in his interest and several that were not. He had read a great deal. He had arrived at very few conclusions that held.

This, he thought, looking at her while a child reached toward him with a hand he recognized—

This he could not argue with.

He took another step.

The community center empties in stages.

First the voices fade. Kelly’s laugh echoing down the corridor, Alisha’s sharper comments cutting through it. A door bangs somewhere. Footsteps recede. Then, silence settling in layers.

You wait—counting to be sure.

Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Nothing.

You wait longer than you need to, until you’re absolutely sure you don’t hear anything else.

The building is finally quiet.

Then, you close the bathroom door and lock it.

It rattles in the frame, the sound too loud in the empty building. You grimace, then strip anyway, tugging your clothes off and shoving them into a heap on the cracked bench. The air is cool against your bare skin. Your shoulders ache from scrubbing windows that never seem to stay clean. You’re sweaty, sticky, and irritated.

You want the grime off you. Now.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead.

The showers are old, tiled in that chipped off-white that never quite looks clean. The space is narrow—two steps wide, barely enough room to turn around without bumping the tile. You twist the knob and the pipes shriek before the water punches out, hot and aggressive. You step under it without hesitation and hiss, before adjusting the temperature down, sighing when it hits just right.

Steam begins to bloom and curl around your naked form, fogging the mirror and blurring the room into something softer. Safer.

Your body loosens in stages. Neck first. Then your shoulders drop. The tension sinks lower, into your hips, then thighs. Closing your eyes, you spread your feet a little, letting the hot water run down your back—letting it rinse the ache of the day off.

In the room, unseen, Simon stands very still.

He hadn’t meant to stay. He told himself that. He told himself he was checking the building, making sure no one else was around. That you weren’t alone in a place like this. He even followed Kelly and Alisha out, then quickly circled back to you. And waited.

The sound of the running water fills the room. Simon stays invisible, back pressed against the tiled wall, watching the way steam beads small droplets on your skin.

He can see everything—your back, your hips, your ass, the way your stomach softens when you relax. He could reach out and touch you without even leaning forward.

He doesn’t.

You tilt your head forward and let the water soak your hair. You drag a hand through it, fingers scraping your scalp. Your breasts shift with the movement. The water runs down the back of your neck, a loud sigh sound leaving your lips when it hits another sore spot.

“Fuck,” you mutter.

You scrub shampoo through your hair, elbows lifted, posture unguarded. You roll your neck, easing tension, eyes still closed. You scrub yourself. Palm over collarbone. Down your ribs. Over your chest. The water traces lines over body parts you don’t think about with no one around. You’re tired. You’re sweaty. You just want to feel clean.

You hum quietly to yourself.

In the background, Simon swallows. Hard.

He knows he should leave. The thought barely registers as he watches the way you tilt your head back, throat exposed, lips parted as you breathe. Watches the way your nipples pebble as your hands glide over your breasts, washing yourself slowly and absent-mindedly, like your body finally belongs to you again for the first time all day.

Simon’s jaw tightens.

The stall feels smaller by the second. Steam sticks to his lungs. The air tastes like soap and metal and you. He’s so close he can see every naked curve as you turn around to rinse your hair, goosebumps erupting along your arms and thighs as the temperature shifts.

You rest your head against the cool tile for a moment, shoulders slumping. Vulnerable. Alone. So sure no one can see you like this.

Simon’s chest tightens, awe curdling into something raw and impatient, so much so it almost hurts. He shifts his stance, the hard outline of his cock straining against his pants impossible to ignore now.

The damp fabric clings as he adjusts himself in small, almost imperceptible movements—fingers hooking into his waistband, tugging it down (dragging his briefs with them) just enough to ease the tight pressure pulling low in his gut. There’s a faint rasp of clothes sliding against his hips as he frees himself, his cock springing out heavy and flushed red, hard from base to tip.

Cool air hits him and he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth as he presses a palm over his crotch, bluntly wrapping a hand around his cock, thumb settling at the head as his fingers close around the shaft. The contact makes his jaw clench and eyes roll to the back of his head, throat working as he gives himself a slow, testing pull.

Simon braces his shoulder against the tile, cock in his fist, as he watches you through the mist like he’s starving. His breathing falters, chest rising and falling in measured pulls he’s trying—and failing—to keep silent.

You stiffen.

The stall suddenly feels… crowded.

It’s not a thought so much as a pressure—like standing too close to someone on a packed bus. Heat where there shouldn’t be heat. Air that feels breathed. The feeling hits you all at once—that prickle between your shoulder blades. The hairs at the nape of your neck standing at attention. The sense of being observed.

Every muscle in your body locks at once. Your head snaps up, eyes open, heart slamming hard enough it feels like it might crack a rib. You slightly turn in place, scanning the edge of the stall and glancing towards the direction of fogged mirror down the hallway.

“Hello?” you call out, voice echoing oddly in the tiled room.

No answers. Just the water continuing to pour down. The lights buzzing and flickering overhead.

Simon doesn’t breathe.

You stand there—naked and dripping—listening, suddenly very aware of how small the space is. How boxed in and exposed you are. How if someone were here, there’d be nowhere to go.

After a beat too long, you swallow and shake your head, “Get it together,” you mutter, irritated at yourself.

You swallow and rinse yourself off faster now. Rougher. Less relaxed. With your back towards the wall, eyes kept open, glancing towards the curtain the whole time.

You angle your foot toward the drain to keep the water from pooling.

The water temperature jumps.

You swear—muttering under your breath, annoyed and overstimulated—before you lean back, readjusting, when something warm suddenly hits you, sliding down along the back of your thigh.

You jerk in surprise, heart spiking hard enough to make your ears ring. You half-turn, scanning the fogged tile again, the corner of the stall where there is barely enough room for you, let alone—

Nothing.

Your breath comes shallow. Get a grip.

You look down, frowning.

There’s a pale streak clinging to your skin, thicker than the water, cloudy for a second before the spray starts thinning it. You touch it without thinking, thumb and forefinger coming away slick.

“What the fuck…” you murmur, rubbing the mysterious substance between your fingers.

You sniff your fingers, confused. Soap? Conditioner? The cheap stuff from the dispenser smells like nothing and everything.

“Gross,” you mutter, assuming soap scum. Or whatever ancient gunk these pipes cough up when they’re hot too fast. This place is a dump. Of course the drains are fucked. You grimace, feeling stupid and a little embarrassed at yourself, before rinsing your hand under the spray.

More of it trails down your leg, diluted immediately, swirling past your feet. Your frown deepens as you nudge it with your big toe. The water eddies, cloudy for a second, then clears.

You watch it disappear down the drain, and something in your stomach tightens as it goes. The way it clung for half a second too long. The way it looked against your skin before it was gone.

Your pulse won’t slow.

You rinse your foot, unsettled without knowing why.

Turning the water off, the sudden quiet is somehow worse—your own breathing loud in your ears, the fluorescent lights buzzing like they’re right above your skull. You grab your towel and wrap it around yourself quickly, skin still tingling, nerves on edge for no good reason you can name.

You hesitate. Just for a second.

When nothing happens, you step out and dry off fast—dressing even faster. Your pulse doesn’t slow until you’re halfway down the corridor, hair still damp, replaying the shower back in your mind like you missed something important.

Later, at home, you shower again.

Longer this time. Hotter. You keep your eyes open the entire time, heart racing at every shift of air, every creak of the pipes. When you dry off, you check your skin twice, three times, like you expect to find something there.

That night, lying in bed, you can’t get comfortable.

Every brush of the sheets feels too intimate. Every shift of your own body makes you tense. You’re acutely aware of yourself in a way you never felt before—of how you breathe, how you move, how exposed you are even alone.

You check the door to make sure it’s locked.

Again.

And again.

You tell yourself it was nothing.

That it was just exhaustion.

That old buildings just make noise.

That it’s just your imagination running away with you because you were tired and wired and alone in a place that never feels safe.

You won’t think about how warm it felt. How little room there was in that stall. And you definitely won’t think about how it felt like there was another person behind you, breathing down your neck.

Because somewhere deep, buried under denial and confusion, something in you knows:

You weren’t alone.

You just don’t know how to prove it.

Sleep is difficult to come.

You roll onto your side. Then your back. Then your other side. The sheets drag across your skin and every shift feels too noticeable, like you’re brushing up against someone instead of cotton.

You try to focus on your breathing.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

You check the clock.

12:17 p.m.

You huff and throw an arm over your eyes.

Your body is exhausted. Your brain won’t shut up. Every time you start to drift, you’re back in that shower stall. Back in that heat. Still feeling sensitive. Still feeling like your body isn't fully yours.

That thought irritates you.

No.

It is yours.

Your pulse keeps landing low in your belly instead of your chest.

You press your thighs together instinctively, the pressure sending a small spark running through you.

You freeze.

Then, slowly, your mind reroutes.

Community service. Nathan. Loud, careless, uncomplicated Nathan.

You think about the way he'd looked at you earlier today. The way he smirked when you rolled your eyes at him. The way his mouth quirked up when you told him to shut up. The way his voice dropped when he said something filthy just to get a reaction out of the group.

Heat curls low in your stomach, this time on your terms.

You slightly lift your hips off the bed, giving you space to scoot your underwear down your legs and throw them off towards a corner of the room, unseen and forgotten.

Your hand slips lower.

Not because you’re dreamy.

But because you’re wired, and if you’re going to feel this wound up, you might as well use it.

And maybe, if you burn this feeling out of your system, you’ll finally sleep—release might finally quiet your head.

You’re on your knees on the bed, torso folded forward so your chest is laying flat against the mattress. The T-shirt you sleep in hangs loosely off of you—a few sizes too big, collar stretched too wide, hem barely skimming the tops of your thighs so there’s nothing between your skin and the open air. Your bare ass is raised up high, back arched, spine tense, breath coming too fast through your mouth.

Your head is turned to the side, cheek pressed into the pillow, lips slightly parted open. You can hear yourself panting, sharp little pulls of air like you’ve been running. One hand is braced near your face, fingers fisting the pillow, knuckles clenched hard, nails clawing at the fabric. The other is wedged between your thighs, still moving because stopping now feels impossible.

Every snap of your wrist sends a pulse of heat blooming through you, an overwhelming sensation that makes your toes curl and your hips rock back against your hand. You tell yourself it’s just nerves, stress. That you’ve had worse nights than this. But your body does not care what story you tell yourself.

The inner skin of your thighs is slick, and you are painfully aware of how open you are—how nothing is hidden in this position. How the mattress creaks faintly under you, the slide of skin on skin loud in the quiet room.

Your fingers are clumsy, unsatisfying, and a poor substitute. You know that. They slip and falter, never quite hitting what you need, never quite enough—leaving you more frustrated than satisfied—but you keep going anyway, chasing the edge more out of frustration than hunger.

Your thoughts slide back towards him.

Towards Nathan.

With that stupid mouth of his. The way he looks at you like everything’s a joke and he’s already in on the punchline. The way his eyes linger a second too long when he thinks no one’s looking. The exchanges you and him have had, across rooms and crowded moments—heated, charged, blink and you miss it. Like stolen cigarettes behind the trash bins. Like trouble you pretended not to want.

You wonder if he thinks about you too. If he notices the same things. If he ever replays those moments the way you do, alone, late at night, when your mind refuses to cooperate. You wonder how he'd react if he was here, right now, in your room. If he’d hesitate and ask permission. Or if he’d lose control. Would he use his tongue? His fingers? Would he take his time? Or simply rush in to bury his cock in your aching, sopping wet pussy.

The idea tightens low in your belly.

“I want those long fingers of his… to tease me till I cum. Want him to lick my pussy with that hot tongue of his—mm—want him to suck… mm… and play with all of me till I can’t think no more.”

The room’s silence fractured under the sound of your panting—breathless mewls and needy whines spilling from your lips, filling the space—underscored by the sloppy, wet noises of your fingers fucking a frantic rhythm into your slick cunt.

You shouldn’t be thinking about Nathan.

And you definitely shouldn’t be thinking about the way Simon has been watching you watch him.

That thought—Simon noticing—slides in uninvited as your mind, stupidly, drifts.

You try not to let them. You really do. But they slide towards him instead.

The way his questions linger too long afterward. Too casual. And him, just… there. Watching. Always watching. That quiet intensity of his, the careful way his eyes track things other people miss, like he’s always thinking three steps ahead. And you think of the way his jaw tightens when Nathan is near.

Jealousy, barely disguised.

The thought sours something in your chest.

You shove it away, drag your mind back where it belongs. Back to Nathan’s grin. His mouth running off before his brain catches up. You picture him saying something filthy just to see if it makes you stutter. You picture his hands, careless and rougher than he lets on, moving with no reverence, no hesitation—just that irritating confidence, like he could do exactly what he wanted and dare you to stop him.

“Even if I tell him to stop, I know he’d be relentless… would I even want him to stop?”

The thought twists strangely in your chest. Would he? Or would he just apologize under his breath and keep going, convinced you didn’t really mean it?

Your breath breaks. Your back arches despite yourself.

“I wonder how his dick feels when it’s hard? Would it fit inside me? I might tell him it hurts at first, but I’m sure it’d feel incredible. He’d hold me in his embrace, so tightly I could break at any second. Pounding me deep inside… and then filling me up with his—”

That thought tips you over before you can rein it in. Your whole body tenses, toes digging painfully into the sheets as your orgasm rips through you with violent force.

“—athan!”

You moan out his name without thinking. It slips out rough and half-swallowed, like you meant to bite it back but failed.

You clamp your teeth around the inside of your wrist, biting down hard and stifling your whines. Heat floods your face as your chest heaves, breath uneven. You were half-lost in it, fingers slick with evidence you refused to think too hard about. The room spins slightly, dark and lit only by the orange wash of a streetlight bleeding through the blinds.

“ngh—Ah—It feels so good!”

You shouldn’t have been thinking about him.

You definitely shouldn’t have said his name aloud.

But you’re alone in your room—safe—his name a continuing cry spilling out from your lips between ragged gasps and breathy moans. Soft. Embarrassing. Honest.

“Nathan—”

The pressure in the room changes. Just like back then. In the shower stall.

The air suddenly shifts like something has stepped into it. Your breath catches sharp in your throat. Your hand stills between your thighs, fingers freezing where they are. For one horrible second you stay like that, caught in the act, ass in the air, heart slamming against your ribs so hard it hurts.

Then you hear it.

A soft sound. An exhale of breath that isn’t yours.

Your eyes fly open—

“—so that’s who you were thinking about,” a voice says quietly.

—and see he’s there.

Simon.

Standing at the foot of your bed.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t raise his voice—he rarely does. He just looks at you. Staring directly with wide unblinking eyes, looking almost as shocked as you feel. His ears are red, jaw clenched tight, hands curled into fists at his sides. His gaze flicks to where your hand rests, slick evidence glinting faintly in the low light.

Then back to your face.

Something sharp and ugly moves behind his eyes.

A scream tangles in the back of your throat as you twist, scrambling backwards, the sheets tangling around your legs. “What the fuck, Simon?! What are you doing here?” You snap, voice cracking as your mind races in wild, panicked circles. “Get the hell out! How did you even—get out!”

How did he get in?

How long has he been there?

Did he hear—

“Nathan,” he repeats, like he’s testing the name. Like he’s turning it over to see where it cuts. There’s a tightness in his face now, something pinched and resentful, his jaw working as if he’s chewing on a thought he doesn’t like.

You push yourself up on one elbow, heart skidding. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—” Your face burns hot. "So what? That’s not any of your—”

“You were touching yourself,” he says, blunt and awful. Matter-of-fact. His eyes trail down your frame. “Thinking about Nathan.”

Your skin prickles.

Nathan’s laugh flashes through your mind unbidden—too loud, too pleased with itself.

Simon’s gaze hardens, reading your silence as a confession.

“So that’s what you do,” he says quietly. “You think about him when you’re alone.”

There’s accusation there, but also something possessive. Like he’s been cheated out of something he’s owed.

“But you know how he is. Says whatever comes into his head. Touches whatever he wants and laughs it off after… makes everything mean nothing.”

His hands curl tighter at his sides. Knuckles whitening.

“You think he sees you?” Simon asks. “Really sees you?”

Outside, somewhere across the street, someone shouts. A door slams. The distant hum of traffic bleeds in through the cracked window. Life going on, oblivious.

Simon takes a step closer now.

“I do,” he says, voice low, certainty lacing every syllable. “I see you—I always have.”

Your stomach twists.

There’s a version of Nathan in your head—grinning, careless, already moving on to the next thing. And there’s a version of Simon standing in front of you that feels far more dangerous: quiet, observant, and convinced he’s been overlooked.

“You don’t even realise what you give away,” Simon continues, softer now, like he’s talking to himself. “The way you look when you think you’re alone. The sounds you make when you forget yourself.”

“Get out,” you snap, anger and humiliation tangling sharply together. “Right now.”

Something changes in his face then. That wounded look. That soft, awful hurt like you’ve done something to him.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay…” he says. “He wouldn’t care if you were,” Simon adds, resolve tightening his words.

You try to back away, but there’s nowhere to go. The bed dips as he comes even closer. A hand lands on your ankle—hesitant for half a second, then firmer, fingers spreading like he’s afraid you’ll bolt.

Before you could react, you were dragged down the bed, sprawled flat on your back, the breath punched from your lungs as his body covers yours. At the same time, his hands close around your wrists, pinning them above your head. Simon’s mouth crashes onto yours. Teeth knocking, breath hot and frantic, kissing you like he’s starving. Like if he doesn’t do this right now, he’ll come apart.

Your body betrays you first, breath stuttering, thighs tensing, the awful reflex of freezing instead of fighting. Shock locks you in place. Your body doesn’t catch up fast enough to fight, to shove, to scream.

“Simon—stop,” you gasp against his mouth, but he swallows it, kissing harder, sloppier, like he’s trying to crawl inside you. His tongue licks the inside of your mouth. His hands tremble where they hold you down.

“Don’t,” you try again. “Simon—please.”

“I thought you might need someone,” he says. “Someone who actually pays attention.”

Nathan becomes a caricature in his mind as he speaks: loud, flippant, antagonistic, all elbows and jokes. Nathan wouldn’t notice fear. Wouldn’t notice hesitation. Nathan would laugh it off, push too far, walk away.

Simon would never do that.

“I’m not hurting you,” he says immediately, voice thin, almost pleading. “I wouldn’t. I’d never. I just—look at you. You’re already like this… and I-I think you misunderstand me.”

His hand slides, slow and deliberate, following the curve of your body like he’s memorizing it. You shudder despite yourself, thoughts scattering, ugly and loud. The awareness of your own body turns sharp and humiliating.

Simon notices it all. He always does.

“I knew it,” he whispers against your lips, sounding breathless, wrecked and relieved. “See, I knew you wanted me.”

Your eyes sting.

“Please,” you choke, the word coming out thin and small. “You have to stop—”

Simon does not respond. He only exhales, slow and patient, like you are being unreasonable. His knee settles between your legs, spreading you just enough to make a point. Your heart slams so hard it makes your vision blur. You can feel him everywhere now: his weight, his leg holding you open, the unmistakable press of his bulge against you with every shift of his body.

“Simon,” your voice cracks on his name. You try again, softer now. “Please. I don’t want—please, I just need—”

Your protests die on your lips as your thoughts skid. You cannot decide what you are pleading for. Time. Space. Mercy. A version of him that listens.

Instead, he leans closer.

You can smell soap on his skin, something clean and wrong for the way his body cages yours. His free hand goes to his belt, fingers fumbling briefly with it, then stilling, as if reconsidering how to proceed.

A wash of cold floods your skin, terror slides down your spine as your chest locks tight and every breath feels borrowed.

“Simon, stop,” you say again, louder, panic sharpening it. “I’m serious. Please—please, don’t—”

You start pleading faster, words tumbling over each other, promising things you do not mean, offering explanations he did not ask for. If you keep him listening, maybe you can keep him still.

He tilts his head, studying you, brows drawn together in something like confusion. “I thought you wanted me too,” he says calmly, “because you looked like you didn’t want to be alone.”

His eyes soften, almost pleading now.

“And if I was wrong,” he adds, voice barely above a whisper, “you would’ve already told me no. Wouldn’t you?”

Your mouth opens to argue, to explain, to claw back control. “You’re not listening to me. I just—please, I don’t want this. I swear I don’t—"

He exhales through his nose again, almost annoyed. “You talk too much,” he says, mild as a correction.

Then his hand is over your mouth.

Not a slap, nor violent, or out of anger, but rather firm and practiced. Covering your mouth like he’s done this a thousand times in his head before.

“There,” he murmurs. “That’s better.”

You taste skin as your words die against his palm, reduced to breath and a small, muffled sound in your throat.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know, I know, I just—promise you won’t shout… please.”

The bed creaks under your combined weight as he cages you in, sweat already slicking his skin, the room feels thick with heat and tension. You can feel him shaking. Feel how badly he wants this to be okay.

Your chest feels too tight, ribs locked around panic. You shake your head, a small, frantic movement, but he only presses closer, like that means comfort.

“Shh—shh, you’re okay,” he breathes, pressing his forehead to yours. “You’re just overwhelmed. I should’ve been gentler.”

His face is close enough that you can see the focus in his eyes, the way he has already decided how this goes. Only when you're completely still does the hand covering your mouth drop. Somewhere below your line of sight, you hear him finally loosen his belt buckle with a soft metallic click. The sound lands heavy in your chest like a verdict, your body going cold with the understanding of it.

You start crying in earnest then. Silent at first. Hot tears spilling over, streaking down your temples and soaking into your hair.

His breath stutters when he sees it.

“Oh—no, no,” he whispers, frantically wiping your cheeks to rid evidence of your tears. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I hate when you cry.”

As if that makes it better.

He nuzzles clumsily at your neck, murmuring apologies that don’t stop anything. His words a jumbled mess—I’m sorry, I’m trying, I just want you safe and cared for—while his body presses in closer, without him seeming to notice, claiming space you don’t have to give.

“I-I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says, voice thin and strained, almost desperate. “You just—You looked at me and talked to me. You’re always so nice. And you always do that thing where you see me when nobody ever does. And I thought—God, I thought maybe this time—”

You shake beneath him, breath coming in broken, shallow gasps.

“I know you’re upset,” he continues, rushing it out, breath hitching. “But it’s okay, yeah? I’ve got you. I won’t hurt you. I swear I won’t—I’d never hurt you. I just need you to be quiet. Just for a bit, yeah?”

Your pulse is screaming in your ears. Your body has gone horribly still, the way it does when your brain can’t keep up. You hate that he feels that stillness and mistakes it for permission.

He notices and his voice cracks.

“See?” he says softly, desperately. “You’re not fighting me. You’re just nervous. That’s normal. I’m nervous too.”

His hand trembles as he caresses your face, thumb brushing your lips in a way that makes your stomach twist. He swallows, eyes glassy, almost tearful, as if this is something happening to him.

“I’ll make it better,” he promises, leaning closer, kissing the corner of your eye as tears continue to spill out. “I always mess things up. Just—just let me fix it, yeah? Please.”

He takes your hand again, fingers closing around your wrist, firm enough that you feel the bones shift under his grip. It is the same hand that had been between your thighs. Cradling it in his, the way he turns it palm-up, like he is checking for evidence, makes your stomach drop.

“Hey,” he murmurs, almost curious.

Your fingers tremble in his grip. He brings your hand up to his face, close enough that you can feel his breath spill over your palm, his nose brushing against the backs of your knuckles. He inhales, deep and unguarded, eyes fluttering shut as if the smell alone is enough to ground him.

“This,” he says quietly, almost reverent. “This is the hand you were using.”

Your pulse stutters.

“It felt good,” he adds, more to himself than to you. “Didn’t it?”

Your fingers curl instinctively as you try to pull the hand back. He notices immediately and tightens his grip, just enough to stop you.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” he adds, voice gentler, like he was consoling you. “Everybody does it.”

His mouth brushes your skin—tongue dragging along your palm, warm and wet. Your whole body recoils. He lingers there too long, taking his time, breathing against your hand like he is learning you by scent and taste alone. Your stomach twists hard enough to make you dizzy.

“You smell—” he breaks off, swallowing hard. “You smell incredible.”

Panic coils tighter in your chest as his other hand slips under the hem of your shirt. The fabric bunches in his fist as he drags it up your ribs without ceremony, exposing your bare skin to the cool air.

Simon’s hands move to cup your breasts. His thumb presses over a nipple, rolling it, testing how it tightens under pressure. You flinch. He mistakes it for sensitivity.

“God,” he breathes. “You feel so responsive.”

He leans in, and smooshes his face to your chest, his cheek, nose, and open mouth moving clumsily against your skin, like he cannot decide where to put himself. His lips and tongue drag with each movement, wet and insistent, leaving slick trails of spit and drool behind. He nuzzles the space between your breasts, breathing hard, like he is trying to anchor himself.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he says quickly, like he needs to hear it out loud. “I’m just touching you. You’d leave if you didn’t want it.”

“Simon—please—” you weakly try again, but the words barely form.

He makes a small, broken sound, like desperation, at your chest. His mouth hastily closes around a nipple, latching on and sucking greedily—the shock of it steals whatever protest you had left.

You gasp before you can stop yourself.

He hears it and softens instantly, eyes shining, convinced.

“That’s what I mean,” he whispers against your skin, almost grateful, relieved even.

Your hands curl uselessly at your sides. Your body reacts in ways you hate, traitorous and immediate.

“You’re not pulling away,” he whispers, misreading the way you’ve gone rigid. “You just don’t know how to ask.”

Your heart is hammering so hard it makes your ears ring.

“I’ll go slow,” he promises, already not doing that. “I swear. I just… needed to be sure you wanted me too.”

The room feels too small. Too warm. His breathing is loud in your ears, uneven, like he is barely holding himself together.

“Please,” he murmurs again, not to stop, but to continue. “Just let me.”

With a hand fondling one of your breasts, his mouth closes around the other nipple again. His hand kneads at your breast, fingers rough, thumb circling with too much pressure. He pinches experimentally, then softens, like he’s correcting himself. His mouth is messy and unfocused. Teeth grazing just enough to make you flinch. His tongue flicks out, clumsy and insistent, before flattening broad and wet against your nipple. He sucks harder this time, too hard, jaw tense like he is afraid to let go.

Simon lets out a small sound like something has finally clicked into place for him. He is fully convinced—by your warmth, your breathing, the way your body reacts—that this is mutual.

You are so caught inside your own head that you don’t register the hand at your breast moving until the weight of it settles low and firm against your bare mound. Just there—warm palm, fingers spread, fully cupping you.

The sound that rips out of you is sharp and startled, more breath than voice.

“Aah—!”

“You’re so wet…” he groans, panting open-mouthed while his head rests between your breasts. His fingers are insistent, dragging through your cunt with quick, harsh strokes, parting your folds and scooping the wetness gathered at your entrance. “You get like this thinking about me… and only me, don’t you?”

Easing his hand away, he lifts it up towards you, inspecting the shine of your slick coating his fingers.

“Look at all this,” he murmurs, voice low, awed, spreading his fingers and admiring the way long sticky lines stretch, cling, and come apart in between. “You’re soaked. That’s—that’s because of me… not Nathan.”

You feel heat crawling up your throat—mortified because he’s wrong, and he isn’t. Because the truth is, only minutes ago, your hand had been there instead of his, fingers rubbing your pussy raw while your mind helplessly chased him away, seeking release with someone else instead.

But it didn’t matter because he’s already decided. Because in his mind, this is proof.

And you can’t correct him.

In your silence—your lack of objection—Simon’s mouth curves faintly, wounded pride soothed into certainty. “I knew it,” he says under his breath, like he’s been bracing for the answer and finally got it. His thumb smears the wetness back across his fingers, satisfied. “You don’t even have to say it.”

Your stomach twists. He thinks he’s won something.

“Stop—just stop,” you gasp, finally finding your voice. You shove at his shoulders, desperate, clumsy, trying to create enough space to slip out from under him. “Why are you doing this?”

He lifts his head from the valley of your breasts, blinking at you like you’ve said something cruel. His expression folds into hurt again, confusion clouding his eyes as if the answer should be obvious.

“Do I really have to say it out loud?”

Simon shifts from where he’s laying on top of you, enough to re-center his weight. The mattress dips hard beneath you. The headboard knocks softly against the wall.

He straddles you fully with his thighs braced on either side of you. The weight of him presses down, inescapable. Your pelvis is trapped, pinned beneath him. Every inhale feels smaller by his proximity.

“I’m doing this because I love you,” he says, breath uneven, gripping your jaw and tilting your face towards his. “I’d kill for you. You should know that.”

Your breath stutters, heart pounding so hard it feels like it might crack your ribs.

You try to turn your head away. He catches your jaw between his fingers and turns it back, firm enough that it stings.

“Hey,” he murmurs, wounded. “Don’t do that.”

Leaning forward so your foreheads touch, in a seemingly intimate gesture, one hand cradles your cheek, thumb brushing back and forth like he’s soothing you. His other hand reaches back down to settle between your thighs, the heel of his palm pressed firm against the soft center of your cunt, fingers parting your folds enough that you feel the open air hit you. The sensation makes your hips jolt once, sharp and reflexive.

His thumb brushes higher until it finds that little bundle of nerves at the top of your lips, pressing rough circles where your clit sits swollen and too sensitive. Your thighs tense instantly, knees drawing up, trying to close around his wrist and failing. Your hands fly to his shoulders, gripping hard enough to wrinkle the fabric under your fists. The bed creaks as your back arches a fraction, a sound that feels too loud in the room.

“Mm—nnh—“

Your mouth falls open around wet, uneven pants and choked back whines you can’t swallow back.

“Ah—ah—ah—!”

“Good,” he exhales softly, satisfaction threading his voice, almost proud of himself for dragging such reactions out of you. “I want to hear how loud you can be when you cum… Just like… you always are.”

His thumb works your clit with purpose now, in tight, insistent circles. The touch sends a sharp flare of heat sparking low in your belly, before snapping upward along your spine like a struck match. Your muscles draw tight around the feeling, pulse hammering in your ears. You can feel it building fast—too fast—that inevitable, creeping pressure that makes your pulse roar in your ears.

“W-wait, that—that feels—”

Your stomach knots.

If he keeps touching me like that…

You can hear it: the slick, obscene sound of his fingers moving against you. Your vision blurs as tears gather along your lashes. Your grip on his shoulders tightens, fingers curling into the fabric, not pulling him closer or pushing him away—just holding on, desperate for something to steady you.

Simon notices and mistakes it for you wanting more.

“Hey,” he says timidly, uncertain, almost embarrassed. “Can I—can I…?” He swallows. “Can I eat you out?”

The question is absurd after everything he has already done. The sheer nerve of it steals the air from your lungs.

“Huh? Wh-what are you—?”

He smiles at you then, small and earnest, as if he’s asking permission for something sweet. He leans in and brushes a quick, clumsy kiss against your mouth.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”

Before you had the chance to react—to voice your displeasure—he was already moving. His body scooting down yours with awkward urgency, until he’s kneeling between your legs, nestling himself there.

“H-hey… Simon—stop.”

He doesn’t.

Hooking his arms under and around your thighs, he tugs you closer, dragging your hips towards his face. His breath spills hot over your bare cunt, close enough to make your skin prickle.

“It’ll feel good,” he insists, breathless. “I know it will… Promise.”

His hands frame the inner soft skin of your thighs, thumbs pressing into either side of your pussy, spreading your lips apart like he’s unveiling something he’s been waiting ages to see up close.

You bite down on a gasp.

“Look at you,” he whispers, awe creeping into his voice. “You’re—you’re glistening.”

You feel exposed in the worst way—your cunt bared under his gaze, folds parted under his fingers, slick and flushed. He stares like it’s something precious, special, meant just for him alone.

“All pink,” he murmurs, the warmth of his breath fanning directly over your exposed core with every uttered syllable. “God… you’re beautiful.”

He leans in close enough that you can feel the heat of his mouth hovering there, without him touching. Yet.

“Even better up close,” he adds quietly, like he’s talking to himself.

Then, without warning, without giving you time to brace yourself, Simon leans in and drags his tongue in a single, deliberate stripe up the full length of your cunt—starting low, from the slick heat gathering at your entrance, drawing it slowly upward until he reaches your clit at the top.

Your eyes squeeze shut at the shock of it. One hand drops instinctively to cover his, your fingers wrapped around his wrist, but his grip at the backs of your thighs stays firm—doesn’t loosen even an inch.

He takes your reaction as encouragement, spurring him on further.

Simon’s mouth turns messy and unfocused—licking and sucking at your juices without rhythm, like he can’t decide where to linger between your legs. The wet sounds of his slurping fill your ears, each movement careless and hungry. Your nails dig into his wrist, crescents biting into his skin as another wave of sensation rolls through you, stealing whatever words you meant to say, leaving your thoughts a scattered, jumbled mess.

The room feels too small. Too loud with your breathing. Too aware of every inch of skin he’s touching, crowding, claiming.

You feel betrayed by your initial kindness towards him… and how your body has failed you in this moment. How it responds, how easily it gives him what he wants. You think of how different this could have been—maybe if you’d been tipsy enough—how you might have entertained the ideas of this, how you might have been willing to actually sleep with him, if only he’d asked. Instead, he takes, acting as if you already belonged to him and your body was already his.

“I don’t want his mouth there,” you think weakly. “I should stop him…”

But your limbs feel heavy, uncooperative, your resolve slipping every time his tongue drags over you again.

“Mmm,” he murmurs, voice muffled against you. “You’re so silky soft.”

You’re laying flat on your back on the bed, feeling helpless with your legs spread wide under his grip. Simon kneels between them, leaning into you, hands braced behind your knees, holding you open while his mouth works you over.

Your breath tears out of you in uneven, wet pants. Your hips twitch and jerk towards his mouth, thighs trembling, trying to close around his head and failing. You can feel how soaked you are, feel your slick dribbling out, coating the insides of your inner thighs.

“It’s just… flooding out of you,” he says quietly, almost curious. “That’s normal for you, right?”

“Please—mm—nnh!”

A proper reply from you never comes. It can’t.

The feeling crests too quickly, too loudly in you, stealing the shape of words clean out your mouth.

Instead, your nails bite harder into his hand, like that might stop the way everything inside you is tightening and spilling at once. Your jaw locks as you bite down into your bottom lip, hard enough to sting and draw blood, iron blooming on your tongue—desperately choking back the sounds threatening to spill out.

It only makes them break loose—small, helpless little mewls slipping out.

Simon feels the way your body tips toward him, grinding against his face, chasing sensation even as you try to pull yourself together. The tremor running through you gives you away, leaves you shaking and wordless—caught between wanting him to stop and wanting the pressure to finally break.

“Does my tongue feel good?” he mutters against your slick cunt, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “You—you can tell me…”

He murmurs your name.

“You like being touched here, don’t you?”

He’s referring to where his mouth is buried between your thighs, focusing on your clit, working at it without mercy. You squirm under him, but he refuses to ease up. He flicks at it with the tip of his tongue, then flattening and giving broad strokes, before his lips seal around you to slurp, hard and noisily. The room fills with the sounds of his mouth working you, all mouth and spit—slick, sloppy pulls and the rough, breathless cry yanked out of you every time he sucks at you like he’s parched.

“No! Simon, stop—”

“Don’t lie, I know you do,” he cuts you off, voice muffled against you, yet still managing to sound almost defensive. “I’ve watched you every day. You always touch yourself. Always rubbing… right… here.”

His mouth doesn’t let up as he talks, continuing to swipe at and circle your clit as he talks, never giving you a second to think. He laps at you languidly, then flicks fast and mean, making your hips jolt.

Your thoughts derail completely. What's he saying? Watched me every day? When—How—?

Your heart slams erratically against your ribs, struggling to pull in air. The idea of Simon peeping on you, watching you at your most vulnerable, makes your stomach drop. The shower stall flashes in your mind. The heat at your back. The feeling of someone behind you. The streak of white against your flesh.

Simon’s voice cuts through your spiraling thoughts.

“I’ve been doing it too, you know?”

At some point he’d stopped eating you out and shifted back up your body, straddling you again. You’d barely registered the movement until he picks up talking again.

“Thinking about you,” he says, almost shyly proud. “Picturing you while jerking off…”

His pants hang open and loose, riding low on his hips. His cock sprung free—thick and flushed a deep angry red, the head swollen and shiny. A fist is wrapped tight around the shaft, stroking. It bobs just mere inches from your face with every pump.

You can’t stop looking—can’t seem to make your eyes move to anything else.

A bead of precum gathers at the slit and slides down, smearing glossy along the head before dripping off.

“I always wondered how soft you’d be,” he continues, breath thickening, pumping himself slower now, thumb dragging over the tip. “How good you’d smell… how sweet you’d taste.”

Simon’s grip on his cock tightens, knuckles whitening as he gives himself a few clumsy tugs, fist sliding over skin slick with spit and precum. Your stomach twists. You know you should look away. But you can’t seem to make your head move, your eyes drawn to him like a moth to flame.

“I always wondered what fucking you would feel like.”

Your thoughts skid, sharp and panicked.

What the hell is wrong with this guy—Is he for real?

Simon either doesn’t notice your silence or refuses to acknowledge it. He scoots closer up towards your face, knees pressing tight on either side of your ribs. His cock hangs heavier now, swaying nearer with each movement, crowding your space until it floods your vision and it’s all you see.

“During community service,” he rushes on, breath turning ragged, “you’re just—you’re so beautiful. Innocent. Pure… You shouldn’t be there—don’t belong. Not with those bastards.”

With every word, he gets more worked up, fist sliding faster along his shaft, pumping himself in short, messy strokes.

“I’m not like them,” he insists, voice pitching high, almost whining. “I’m a good guy. I don’t just pounce on you. Not like Nathan would.”

His hand works frantically now, fingers squeezing a tight circle around the base before dragging up again, thumb smearing precum gathering at the tip.

“Look,” he pants, strained, desperate for your attention. “I’m so hard because of you—you got me dripping everywhere.”

Warm drops splatter onto your chest, landing softly against your bare breasts—still exposed to the air from Simon having rucked up your shirt earlier. The liquid is sticky as it spreads across your skin.

Somewhere along the way, you distantly realize you’ve propped yourself up on your elbows, drawn forward without meaning to. You’re frozen—horrified, transfixed—eyes locked on the way his fist moves, the way his cock jerks and twitches with every stroke.

I’m scared, you think dimly, but I can’t stop staring.

Your lip trembles, tears spilling freely down your cheeks. Each sloppy thrust into his fist drives the swollen head of his cock forward until it knocks against your mouth, smearing streaks of precum across your lips and down your chin.

The contact makes you flinch. Your tongue darting out on reflex, catching the slick saltiness before you realize what you’ve done. You recoil instantly, gagging on the taste, jerking your head back with a broken sound of disgust as the sticky fluid glistens across your lips.

Simon lets out a strangled moan, dragged up from deep within his chest, his whole body shuddering as he ruts into his own fist. He looks pathetic as he whines.

“If you keep looking at me like that,” he warns, voice trembling, “I won’t be able to stop.”

His rhythm falters.

For a split second his face tightens; eyes squeezing shut, jaw clenching hard enough to tremble. “Shit—” he mutters under his breath, hips stuttering against his own fist like he’s losing the fight with his own body to hold back.

“I—I can’t hold it anymore… oh, fuck, fuck.” A flicker of panic crosses his face. “Wait—Wait—I need you.”

Everything changes in an instant.

One second he was upright, hovering over you, jerking off in your face.

The next he’s scrambling downward in a desperate, frantic rush to reposition himself. His knees awkwardly knock against yours as he tries to wedge himself between your legs, nearly losing balance in the process. There’s nothing controlled about him in that moment. Just clumsy urgency. It would almost be ridiculous if it weren’t happening so fast.

You instinctively lift your head at the same time he drops his.

And then—

There’s a sickening, blunt crack.

Bone against bone.

His forehead slamming directly into the bridge of your nose.

For half a second you don’t even register what happened, there’s no pain, just shock. A white flash bursting behind your eyes.

Then it hits.

A sharp, blinding spike of pain explodes through the center of your face, radiating outward into your skull. Your head snaps back into the pillow as your vision floods instantly, tears spilling uncontrollably as if someone dunked your head underwater. You squeeze your eyes shut on reflex.

“Fuck—!” Simon jerks back, clutching his own forehead.

You gasp, but it turns into a broken whimper. Warmth rushes down over your upper lip almost instantly—thick and metallic. The taste of iron coats your tongue and slides to the back of your throat before you even realize what’s happening. You swallow instinctively and gag.

Bringing a hand up shakily, you wince as you gingerly touch your nose and it comes away smeared red.

Your nostrils burn. Each breath sends another sharp pulse of pain through the tender cartilage. The sensation is overwhelming at first—sharp and all consuming… almost nauseating. Your eyes won’t stop watering. You can’t seem to focus. Your head feels like it’s ringing from the inside.

Simon is staring at you, wide-eyed and breathing fast.

“Oh my God. Shit! I didn’t—I didn’t mean—” His words trip over themselves. “You moved—I mean, I moved—fuck—I just—”

He swallows hard. His hands hover uselessly in the air, unsure where to touch.

You press your palm under your nose, trying to stem the flow. The blood keeps dripping between your fingers anyways, staining your hands and dotting the pillow. Every throb of pain pulses in time with your heartbeat.

Simon looks smaller suddenly. The fantasy version of himself—the one who narrates and preens and insists he’s different—is gone.

He apologizes repeatedly, his hands suddenly everywhere all at once, wiping at your face, shushing you, hoping to soothe you. He cups your face, then pulls back at the sight of the blood, then presses his thumbs under your eyes like he can wipe the tears away faster if he just tries hard enough.

“Hey—hey, shh. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” he pleads, voice tight.

You whimper again as your body instinctively wants to curl in on itself, but find you can’t—not with Simon still straddling you, the shock of his cock still pressed against your pelvis a stiff reminder that he hasn’t budged an inch.

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—ohh fuck, sh shh, don’t cry. Please—“

He grabs the collar of your shirt and hastily wipes at the lower half of your face, further smudging the blood coming out of your nose across your cheeks, lips, and chin.

“You’re in pain, yeah?” he says quickly, like he’s had an idea. “I know what’ll help. I can make you forget. Just—please stop crying. I hate seeing you cry.”

The words barely register.

You don’t pay attention to what he’s saying, your mind still reeling from the pain pulsating from your nose. Your thoughts feel thick and delayed, like wading through water.

It doesn’t click what he means until his hands grab your hips, aligning his with yours.

The realization hits a second too late.

Before you have the chance to stop him, Simon thrusts into you in one quick, fluid motion.

The shock of it punches all the air from your lungs.

Everything goes tight and breathless all at once—pain and confusion crashing together—and for a moment you can’t even form a sound.

Your thighs tense instinctively from the sudden fullness, trying to close, trying to push him out and away—anything to force space between the two of you. A sharp pulse of adrenaline fires through your limbs. Your spine presses hard into the sheets, like you’re trying to sink through them and disappear. Your hands shove back against his shoulders, but he’s already crowding you; his weight settling over you, heavy and inescapable.

You recoil at the raw heat of him pressed against you—mind lagging half a second behind the physical reality of what just happened. Your heart is pounding so hard it makes your vision darken at the edges.

The room feels smaller again.

Like the shower stall.

Like there’s nowhere to go.

Simon’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, pupils blown dark, a flicker of panic buried under raw need. His hips stutter, jerky and uncoordinated—but the moment he feels himself fully seated inside you, something in him snaps. The hesitation vanishes, and the desperate urge to keep moving takes over.

He folds your legs up toward your chest, forcing your knees back, gripping them tight with both hands. His knuckles go white as he tries to steady himself, even as his hips start bucking into you. The bed creaks, frame squealing, shifting under the force of it.

There’s no rhythm.

Just force.

Each thrust lands wrong—too fast, too hard, too shallow, then suddenly too deep, punching the air from your lungs as you try to stifle all sounds from escaping your lips.

A pathetic, high pitched whine slips past his lips, thick with desperation. “Fuck… shit… God… so tight…”

Every word is punctuated with a harsh snap of his hips forward as he feels your pussy walls clamp and squeeze around him, muscles tightening whether you want them to or not, trying to accommodate to the intrusion.

His voice cracks, caught between a mix of frustration and pleasure, as he tries to find a steady pace of fucking you. He mutters your name in broken, strangled syllables, hands gripping your knees so tightly you can already feel the bruises that will surely bloom on your skin come tomorrow morning.

It’s too much.

Unable to bear it, you turn your head away to the side, cheek pressed into the pillow, jaw clenched tight and eyes squeezed shut. You can’t look at him. You can’t be here.

The world fractures into pieces.

The creak of the bedframe.

The harsh sound of his ragged breathing.

The wet, sharp slap of skin against skin.

You let go.

Your mind slips, drifting away—retreating inward and dissociating deep into somewhere else that isn’t here.

Somewhere quieter.

Somewhere safer.

Where your kindness isn’t twisted into something to be taken advantage of.

Where he can’t reach you. Can’t touch you.

Where—

“Ohh—!”

A loud, needy mewl is suddenly ripped out of you—raw and humiliating—as his dick hits a spot so deep, so achingly sensitive, it violently yanks your attention back into your body before you can disappear completely.

His fingers fumble between your thighs, clumsy and insistent. They drag through your pussy without care, circling your clit in rough, unsteady strokes. You find yourself thrust back into the place you were so desperately trying to hide from.

Back into the room.

Back into the noise, the smell, the crushing weight of his body pressed over yours.

Back into the wet heat between your thighs.

Back into the undeniable reality of him—still inside you, still fucking you.

Your senses crash over you all at once, leaving no room to run. No space to disappear into and hide. You are here, pinned beneath Simon, with every inch of you claiming him—whether you want it to or not—as urgently as he claims you.

His breath is hot and ragged against your jaw and neck, your name a continuing whine spilling from his lips, as he fucks you with frantic, sloppy urgency.

“You—you’re so… God… I can’t… oh shit… I can’t stop—oh fuck, I need you…” The words tumble out, tripping over themselves, swallowed by the wet, relentless sound of him quickly losing control.

His fingers falter as he clumsily presses down against your dripping slit, barely getting the right angle. “I… I wanna… I just…” His words break into a strangled moan as he tries to find that spot again that makes you cry out. He stumbles over his own coordination, sliding his fingers over your pussy while keeping his cock buried, pumping sluggishly, all desperate and needy.

“Oh fuck… you’re… so… so good,” he pants, voice cracking, lips brushing your temple and cheeks, kissing away your tears and drying blood without even noticing.

Your thighs tremble around him, trying to chase that spiraling coil building inside you.

You hate it.

Hate the heat pooling inside you.

Hate the way your nipples harden painfully under the rough scrape of his shirt against your chest.

Hate how your body can’t tell the difference—can’t separate the revulsion from the rising, undeniable pull of arousal twisting through you.

Your hands claw at his shoulders, fists bunching in the fabric of his shirt before moving to wrap around him, gripping tight as your body gives in beneath the chaos of him—caught between pushing him away and holding on just to survive the intensity of it.

“Ah—S-imon… nohhh—” your moans break free, half frustration, half need, as your body trembles beneath him. He whines at each sound, almost pitiful, cock twitching in response, eyes glazed and unfocused as he keeps rubbing against your clit.

The pressure builds fast, tightening low in your belly and climbing higher until it feels like it’s pressing in behind your eyes.

Simon moans, utterly undone, pressing more sloppy kisses to your shoulder, jaw, temple, anything he can reach without pulling away.

The combination of his fingers and cock tips you over the edge, pressure building until—

A sharp, sudden pulse shoots through you, breaking somewhere at the base of your skull. Your pussy clamps down around his cock, your thighs quaking as your stomach locks and your back arches involuntarily into him. Simon is still murmuring your name, over and over, like he doesn’t know how to stop.

You gasp as it hits—your whole body trembling violently as your release floods out of you in ways you can’t control. Your nails dig painfully into him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

Simon groans, low and needy, overwhelmed by the feel of you clinging onto him, his fingers still rubbing against your oversensitive cunt, soaking in your juices.

“I—I need… oh fuck—I need you, I need you, I—I’m gonna—” he pants, voice breaking, tone raw with panic and need.

His hips stutter and falter, then jerk forward one last time before he spills himself inside you. Thick, hot spurts of cum flood your cunt, his release spilling deep, fast, and messy, filling you completely. He shudders hard against you, whole body trembling, chest pressed flush to yours as he rides out the wave of his own orgasm in uneven, desperate thrusts.

You feel your own body answer him without permission—pussy tightening and spasming, milking him completely as you both come down.

Simon groans, almost whimpering at the sensation of you clinging to him. After a moment, he pulls out, and you feel him dragging the softening length of his dick through your slick folds, rubbing his cum all over your pussy, further smearing the mess between your thighs.

“S-sorry, you—you feel… oh fuck…”

You feel wrung out.

Boneless.

Every muscle slack, like your bones have dissolved and your body has melted into the mattress beneath you. Your thighs fall open, faint tremors running through you, skin damp and oversensitive. You can feel the slow, slick warmth of his cum dribbling out of you, trailing down between your ass.

Your chest rises and falls in slow, shallow pulls, breath finally starting to steady after everything crashed through you all at once.

Simon collapses almost fully onto you. His forehead carelessly bumps your aching nose again, accidental but he doesn’t pull back. Instead, he presses closer, lips finding yours in a clumsy, needy kiss.

It’s wet and messy. Tongue sliding against yours, teeth catching your lips as he nuzzles into your mouth.

He lets out a strangled moan against your mouth, like he can’t believe he’s actually here, inside you, touching you like this.

When he pulls back, his eyes flutter open, watching you with a mix of shame and awe.

“I… I didn’t mean… I just…” He tries to pull words out, but fails.

Instead, he drops his head awkwardly, tucking it into the crook of your shoulder, small puffs of hot, uneven breaths fanning against your neck. For a moment, he just stays there, not moving. Just breathing.

Like he doesn’t know what comes next. What to do now that it’s over.

“Hey,” he mutters finally, voice hoarse. Softer now. Almost small.

“You alright?”

It’s a little too late to ask that.

But it’s the first time he’s sounded like he’s actually looking at you, instead of through you.

You don’t answer. Your gaze stays fixed on the ceiling, unfocused. Your mouth feels dry. Your body doesn’t want to move. Everything feels distant now, dull and unreal.

He shifts slightly, lifting his head just enough to look at you properly. You don’t meet his eyes, refusing to look at him, but you can feel him watching—trying to read something in your face, and not liking what he sees.

“I didn’t mean to—” he starts, then stops himself again. Swallowing hard.

“…I just… got carried away.”

His thumb brushes your shoulder, awkward, almost careful now. A poor imitation of gentleness.

“You’re okay,” he says quickly, like he’s deciding it for you. “Yeah? You’re alright.”

Then, quieter, more intent:

“You’re mine, yeah?”

It doesn’t sound like a question. Not really.

He shifts his weight just enough to ease the pressure off your chest, but not enough to fully move away. His hand slides back to your waist, resting there.

“I don’t want you around him anymore,” Simon adds, voice tightening just a little. “Nathan. I don’t like it.”

His jaw flexes. Eyes flicking over your face again, searching.

“You don’t need him,” he says. “You’ve got me now.”

Another pause. Softer this time, almost uncertain:

“…Right?”

His hand moves, rubbing slow circles around your shoulder again, like he’s trying to soothe you, but it feels more like he’s reassuring himself.

Then, after a moment—awkward and almost shy in a way that doesn’t match anything that just happened—he huffs out a quiet breath and glances away.

“Hey…” he starts, voice dropping. Hesitating.

He scratches lightly at the back of his neck, not quite meeting your eyes.

“…next time—”

He falters, like he’s debating whether to say it at all.

Then he forces it out anyway, quick and almost embarrassed: