Lady Alice

You were at your best with Simon despite the mess of it all.

It just felt so good to be in his arms, big fingers trailing from the bottom of your spine up your back, sending shivers through your body, to yhe back of your head. Holding you still while he slipping his tongue into your mouth and exploring it, molding your lips together until you both were out of breath, lost in each others eyes.

So hot—

Whatever, point is, you were Simons and he was yours. You were the first he called when he got off work, when he got back from a mission, the first to call when he wanted to see you.

Not that girl who talked too fucking much.

You didn’t think much of it.

Long as you got that call, long as he called you, his.

Well, up until you saw him laughing it up in some cafe with some girl as you passed by. Shouldn’t he be at work right now? And shouldn’t that girl be at work too? It was lunch-ish. A late lunch, you’d be having one too. But to have his eyes shining like that— it irritated something inside you.

You clicked your tongue. Nodding, don’t make a scene [+]. There's no reason to make a scene [+]. You just go about your day, go home, ask Simon about what happened in a very calm manner.

Something along the lines of, “what the fuck were you doing with a woman at xx cafe at 1:07 pm today?”

No. That’s definitely too much. You’d confront that man while the sun was out. He had to be fucking other people besides you. You’d be straight forward, polite, calm— like Simon taught you. Speak your mind like he knew you could.

You walked in the cafe, head held high, passing through the customers and finally, just barley passing the booth he was in, as if you were there for some other reason. Glancing over your shoulder and catching a certain someone’s eyes.

“Long time no see Simon~” You spoke in a sing-song voice. Enough to sound happy but it’s sharp.

Your eyes found the girl, pretty- no- stunning. You couldn’t deny it. A serious business woman for sure but she could’ve modeled if a scout saw her on the street.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there! Nice to meet you, I’m [+].” You were leering, drawing a line in the sand, daring her to cross it. The woman, all but confused, takes the hand that you stuck out. Shaking it with a genuine smile. Yours? Not so much.

“Georgina this is [+], who I’ve told you about. [+] this is Georgina. A friend.”

Simon deepened the line you made in the sand but yet, you're still hissing like a cat at a human who’s crossed too many boundaries. Not directly at her alone though, at the brute looking at you oh-so-casually with those pretty mocha brown eyes. A small glint in them.

“Well,” she gives an uncomfortable smile and clears her throat, “I’ll be seeing you Simon. Nice to meet you too [+].” He gave her a nod and she slips out of the booth, you taking her spot.

You looked out the window, an uncomfortable silence filling the space between the two of you, and that fucking pout on your lined lips.

Simon scuffed into a laugh, typical.

A look of distaste formed on you, like something bitter was on your tongue, “You fuckin her?”

Clock work. Even more laughter.

“I’m bein serious Simon.” You never take me serious, you wanted to add but you settled with looking the other way, into the cafe. College students, office workers and the latter bustling in line. The sound of steam from the expresso machine and clanging of objects, generic indie pop. So happy-go-fucking lucky— straight out of a movie— compared to how shit you felt at the moment.

You crossed your arms, your knee bouncing in annoyance, how cute.

“You don’t think I hear you?” Ghost doesn’t even want to acknowledge the question. Why?

He knows how you get. You like to build your anger up so you have all the more reason to throw a tantrum, try to run off, claw at the leash he’d so carefully tightened so you couldn’t get out. It’d only lead to you hurting yourself.

Simon takes a sip of his tea.

“I think you’re fuckin her. No need to hide it, she’s pretty. Straight hair too, very neat.” You spoke tightly. The woman looked so well put together in her office attire, black pointed pumps, a loose long sleeve, lilac blouse, short French tipped nails, black slacks, a shaggy yet perfectly styled blonde cut like Cameron Diaz in the 90s— Opposite of you.

Curly dark brown hair pushed back by a black headband, open denim fury coat, black mini skirt, tight white top, vintage denim healed boots to match, gold necklaces sitting pretty on your chest, ears full of peircings, a pair of black shades sitting low on your nose and long red acrylic nails adorned with gold jewels.

People saw you as just a good time, people like her ended up with the ring, the house and the loving family— the loving spouse.

What you should have. What you wanted from Ghost.

“So what? You think she’s better than you?”

You roll your eyes, “You see how I didn’t fucking say that?”

“But you're acting like it doll,” Simon simply hummed nonchalantly, “and what for?”

Your eyes snapped over to the brute, eyes squinting. As if he hadn’t given you the reason to act like this— jealous. Needy— greedy for something. Someone. Him. Ghost taught you to want him, his gaze, his time, his touch— everything. So why weren’t you the center of his attention?

It made your stomach flip. This wasn’t like you. But you’d try this one time, tug at the leash one more time.

“I don’t need to fuckin look like her for you to want me. Never changed for anyone, I’m not gonna start now.”

“Look at you, smart kitten. You puttin two and two together now?” A snickered condescendingly, you know that damn smirk is under his mask.

“Yeah I get,” you spit, sitting up straight, “You’re not fuckin her but you’re fuckin other people. I got it perfectly.”

And there’s a pause, just for a moment, and he looks at you like you’d said something so crude, so blasphemous— his jaw locks. You’d completely jumped ship instead of settling. Not what he wanted. And then he remembers— you're a kid- his to take care of. His kitten to set straight. His nose flare, gently taps the table with his finger, twice. “You’re bein fuckin daft [+].”

“For sayin the truth?” You cock an eyebrow.

“For talking out of that pretty arse ‘f yours!” Before you can refute, both of you notice the older woman a table or so away from you two, looking at you two as if you’re disgraceful for cursing in public. You both give her a look that gets her out of her seat in a shock. Probably because of Simons mask but it doesn’t matter anymore, she’s gone. Back to conversation, “Did you want me stop talking to women all together because you’ve got your bloody underwear in a fuckin bunch?”

Yes!

No. No you didn’t— you wanted him to tell you directly— show you he was yours. Only yours.

“Women come ‘nd go sweet ‘art. They get to your head too fuckin much? Ignore ‘em.”

“As if I can fuckin ignore shit when you’ve got bitches blabbering from their fuckin lips!— Ooooh, you know what!? Fuck you. Go fuck as many girls as you want for all I care!” You shove at the table, barely doing anything, and storm off. And then he says his parting words, says it almost perfectly so you can hear it before you touch the door a bell chimes while you open it—

“I will.” And he sips down the rest of his now stale tea.

You almost whip around and smack him, but your hands too shaky with angry nerves already, and the feel of your stomach recoiling at his words.

It hurt.

You’d went back to your crummy apartment that you hadn’t been back to in months.

Soaking in the loneliness and anger just like you used to.

‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻♱༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙

The first to call when Ghost gets called for a mission.

There’s no warning, or anything. No message between the week you’ve both been radio silent to each other. And maybe he’d intended on telling you a week ago, but you’ll never know now.

Simon called you the day— sorry— the night he was leaving. He got called in early to take care of some things.

Now that he had you, he wouldn’t leave without seeing you. Didn’t matter if you were angry. He would come see you, even if it was just for you to wave down from your apartment.

But you came down when the blonde called, curls covering your face, in a pair of oversized jeans, sneakers and cropped hoodie. You had two of your own duffles already packed, and threw them in the trunk.

You’d been so used to routine since you two got together. Watch the house, look after the dog, Slugger, take care of yourself, wash the car, water the flowers, wait for your Daddy to get back.

And you were good at it. Consistency kept you at your best, your happiest. The opposite of what you were now— tired, slightly stressed, quiet.

The drive is silent except of the 80s rock playing low, the turn signals blinking, and the engine of the truck roaring. Your eyes are out the window, toward the rolling hills and woods as you make the drive towards the base.

Ghost takes a glance at you, his left hand on the steering wheel, “You don’t have anything t’say?”

‘You gonna miss me?’

Your tongue pokes out of the inside of your cheek, holding whatever curse words you really want to say, settling with, “Nothin you haven’t heard before.”

Usually, you’d give him that sweet pout, smooshing yourself onto him with your back, curling your legs in the seat, huffing and looking out the passenger window, ‘Don’t want you to go though.’

The words wouldn’t leave his mouth, but he’d think ‘Don’t wanna go either.’ Oh, this must’ve been proof of him growing— aging. You were the anchor, a reason for himself to work to live and not live to work. Instead, his hand would meet your thigh, gently rubbing itthem, give your knee a light kiss just before you’d squeal and tell him to watch the road. The words unsaid, letting you know he was right there with you. Hanging off of every word you said.

He’d heard the ‘I’m gonna miss you’ or ‘I want to see you’— the longing, a thousand times over from his fair share of women whenever he got sent off somewhere. But had to hear it or something close to it at least once from your perfect lips before he left. Had to. Like an unspoken ritual, you a safe guard that he’d gotten used to that would always be there. You’d plopped yourself smack dab in the middle of his life. Though, he’s the one who put you inside the space there, you’re the one who decided to prance your way to the center. He preferred it this way. Thankful for your stubbornness.

But not right now.

You wouldn’t budge, what right did Simon have to push your further when he’s the one who got you like this in the first place? His jaw ticks, hand clenching at the wheel. He’s no irritated at you, but at himself.

You pulled up to the parking lot of the base soon enough, sooner than expected, Ghost cut the engine and let go of the steering wheel. He takes a beat before speaking.

“Your laundry is in the room, it’s not folded but it’s done. Slugger is in his cage, know you don’t like f’me put him in there cause you trained him well but- I didn’t think-“

“—yeah.” Cut him off. You didn’t think you’d be here either. But you still wanted to see him, see those scars that painted his face beautifully in your eyes, hear that deep and rugged voice, maybe even see the smallest smile before he left.

His hand slowly creeps from your shoulder to the nape of your neck, rubbing the baby hairs at the bottom of your neck. You can’t help but lean into him, closing your eyes at the gentleness.

Simon presses his lips to your forehead, firm, like he wants it to last. And then he pulls away, pulling that classic skull mask down the rest of his face. He gets out the car with a slam of the door and you immediately squeeze your eyes shut against the headboard.

You should’ve said something, anything. Soften the blow of the whole thing that already hurt. Get out with a scrape. But every time you opened your mouth, nothing came out. The rummaging in the trunk stops, and Simon circled around the car to your side. Your eyes never leaving him. You rolled down the window and Simon pointed to your shoulders, shivering and low from the cold air.

“Best if you put on a jacket, don’t wanna hear you got a cold.”

You wave him off, one side of your lips just barely curving up, “yeah, yeah. I won’t get sick. Swear it.”

“ ‘Nd drive straight home, it’s late.” Just a second more, just a little bit more.

You give him a thumbs up, eyes darting in the opposite direction, “Got it. See you later.”

There’s a deep sigh and then you hear his boots hit the pavement. You roll up the window with shaky breath.

As soon as you see Simons large form is 30 paces away it’s like everything you’ve been holding in crumbles. Boo-hoo tears falling down your face and dripping onto the dashboard you’d rested your head on. Why did it always have to go like this? Why did Simon always have to be so mean? Why did Simon have to leave before you properly made up? Why were you so hardheaded? And when did you become so- docile? So needy for him?

That bastard had your mind skewed. Dependent.

You were moaning as if you were in physical pain, sobs from the back of your throat pouring out, repeated mumbles of ‘Daddy’ and ‘come back’ stuck on your lips.

The passenger for clicks open, and you shoot up, Ghost standing right there, there’s a weak smile on his lips, “Look at you, didn’t think you’d be a fuckin cry baby.”

The man doesn’t say another word though, just manoeuvres you so you’re sat in his lap facing him in the passenger side before he shuts the door and locks it.

You were trembling, trying to contain the tears that were still warming your face.

His poor baby. Sweet girl.

“Made a mistake lovie. I’m sorry.” You look up at him with those big doe eyes, ‘for?’ So damn adorable.

He cups your face, wiping your tears with his thumb pads, “Should've told you sooner that I’m all yours doll. Only made sense you got jealous like that, yeah? I brushed you off when I should’ve talked to you properly. Ha, Gotta work on communicating more, because-“

I love you. The words almost stumbled out. Almost. Not yet.

His fingers brush your two tone lips, continuing, “—I care about you more than anything. You’re my precious baby. Shouldn’t be so mean to you. There’s no one else I’d rather be with than you. I’m sorry.”

Your heart melts completely, filling up all the way to the top in relief. You shake your head, heat building in your face. “I should’ve told you- h-how I felt, I was wrong for yelling. I was frustrated.”

Simon softly pecks your cheek, “Thank you for apologizing, didn’t have to,” another, “You forgive me?” Another. He continues till he leaves a nibble down to your jaw, leaving a hickey right under your chin.

“I-I guess this one time, it’s fine.” You moan but pull away. You turn your head, looking toward the security guard who’s a fair distance away, but Ghost turns you head back to look him with two fingers. His eyes low and dark. Tantalizing, drawing you near.

“It’s late doll, they’re probably sleep.” His face hovers over yours, his pink lips grazing yours that you could feel each others breath, “We’re makin up aren’t we?” You feel him grind up into you making your breath hitches.

“Once.” You mumble and he opens the middle console, pulling out a condom.

“Like we have a choice.” He scuffs, planting a fiery kiss on your awaiting lips. It’s sloppy, desperate, like you’ve been waiting decades to feel him on you, you can’t help but grab at the collar of his uniform. Trying to pull him closer to you.

It’s quick after that, both rushing to get as close as possible. Ghost grumbles something about you wearing stupid fucking pants while kissing your neck. “Mmph, fuck off— s-shit.” You moan while getting one pants leg off over your shoe (an accomplishment in your book). The blonde easily slid the condom on his hardening dick and your face makes a sour expression, dissatisfied. In the way, it’s in the way.

Simon snickers, fingers finding your swollen clit and rubbing it, rubbing his tip through your leaking folds, “Don’t make that face pretty, you know how it is.” Simon never likes his car messed up. Never. Almost never, there was this one time- “Earth to [+]? Gonna fuck me or am I boring you?”

“Noooo! I want- need it!” You whine, slowly sinking down on his length. Licking your lips, you slowly start to roll your hips, taking more and more of his hardened cock with each bounce. But it’s not enough, faster- more!

He grips your hips with one hand, harsher, “Take your fuckin time baby, Jesus, you want to hurt yourself?”

“You’re just so big Daddy, so much.” You mewl, full to the brim. You can feel him in your stomach, just grazing your cervix. Your head falls on his shoulder, taking a sharp breath before sliding up and then slamming yourself down on his cock. You let out a strangled moan with every movement, the car starting to rock as you move.

You eyes flicker down you where Ghosts cock was meeting your heat, your cunt greedily sucking him in to the point you can hear the schlick, schlick, schlick as he split you open with every thrust. Then you’d look back up to him, then back down, then back to him.

“What?” And the man doesn’t stop, pulling you closer and fondling one of your tits through your clothes. Teasing your hardened nipple the more you cry.

“No-“ you gasp, shoving at his clothed chest.

“—You’ve clearly got somethin t’say. Say it.” He grunts, giving your ass touch slap before fucking up into you.

“Augh- Daddy, Daddy I-“ you can’t think, it’s too much for you to form words, nothing but moans coming out. But you are thinking, about another girl, being in this exact position. It’s like a needle pricking the heart. You can’t help it. Simon let’s put a breath before kissing your scalp, he notices how your brain scrambles. That pained look you give, not physical, emotional. You’d be stuck in your head all night if he didn’t get it out of you. He’d have to force the reassurance into you.

“Don’t tell me your still on that sweet’art.” His voice right in your ear, sending shivers down your spine. Ghosts thrusts slow, but they’re consistent and you feel every ridge, every vein through the thin condom, rocking against him.

“I- but Si-“ you huffed, your lips pursing.

“Jealously’s got your cunny squeezin the life out ‘f me. ‘Nd- fuuuck me baby- ‘M supposed to be in someone else when you can barely lettin me go? Huh?”

“I just- I wanna be your first option Simon.” You hiccup. No, you wanted to be the only option. And maybe you were ruining the mood, letting your big brain get in the way of fucking Simon one last time before he went for god knows how long. But this had been on your mind since that bitch kept squawking about Simon, and he told you he was you. But what if? You let out a frustrated sigh, this was pointless—

“You’re my pretty girl, aren’t you?” Simon sits you up to look at him, his look stern, “Need an answer baby.”

“Yes sir.” You sniffle.

“You think I’m lettin anyone run around ‘ere, put their shit in my house? Hm?” And he takes the globes of your ass in his cold hands, slamming you down at the right angle to hit your g-spot.

You eyes roll to the back of you head, thighs trembling as he manhandles you to take all of his cock, forming a ring of cream at the bottom of his dick from how good you felt, “Letting you follow me all bright eyed and bushy tailed, just because you’re anyone? Buying you everything because you deserve everything.”

You keen, his fingers finding your sopping wet clit once again, tugging at it before rubbing it fast, “Too much Daddy! I can’t!”

“Too much? You’re the only one who can take it like this baby’s. It’s only you, princess. Only you I take care ‘f like this, only you that’s on my mind all hours of the day. Always you, no one else. Never been so happy to be yours [+]. I’m kittens loving Daddy aren’t I?”

Your back arches against him, his lips finding your neck and nibbling down as your writhe, legs trembling as you cum, hard.

Your walls squeeze him for what he’s worth, making his aching red tip twitch while he fucks you through your orgasm, his thrusts frantic. The blonde presses down on your lower tummy. Right where he can feel his cock with every move between your sticky pink walls “Come on, cum again kitty. Need it, So fuckin perfect, feel so good around me, god-“

Your walls practically mold around him, pulsing around him when your orgasm slams into you a second time just as Simons balls clench. Once, twice, filling the condom to full capacity. His chest quickly rises and falls against yours.

His tongue swipes from your jaw and into your agape mouth. Tasting and pulling away with a smack of your lips, “Made Daddy proud, good job baby.”

Simon loved you like beautiful shade of cool. It seemed so cold but it was so sweet, so soft despite the rough edges of it. Full of depth, always reliable— that’s what he was. And he’d give you that always.

“You alright?” He asks after cleaning up the mess you two made. Just a little mess, you’d clean it up later. Simon got you on the drivers side so you could get home.

You huff, “you’re leavin.” Your eyes take him in, one good time. Trying to remember every inch, every curse by memory. Thankful for the few pictures that sat in his office. You’d have to photo copy them before he noticed.

“I’ll be back,” He pats your head, leaving one last tender kiss on your lips, “Be good for me.”

“You got it.”

a/n: me and this have a love hate relationship. Lmk what you guys think, ily.

By the end of the bath your tired, chest to chest, your breath matching his, your head on his shoulder looking up at him. Hes handsome as ever, the scars going up his face and across his nose, to the ones on his body that hide beneath tattoos, cigarette hanging from his lips as his hand trail up and down your back. Simon admires you— well he never really takes his eyes off you, he’s more than enchanted by you— the likes the hickies he’s left behind. They all look like flowers coming to bloom. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t as rough with you, but he knows it’s just as good for him as it is for him. And you’d never hesitate to say your safe word if anything for astray. Your hand comes to the back of his nape, caressing him right where the blonde hair is.

He jokes, taking the cigarette from his lips and puffing it into the air. “Comforting your old man, hm kitten?”

You nod, gently leaving a kiss on his shoulder, “You need it too Pa.”

And his heart swells full, God he loves you, can never get enough of you. He hums, leaving multiple pecks to your forehead and temple, “thank you baby.”

You don’t remember getting in bed after that, or when Simon out the lotion and ointment on your bruises, but he’s holding you closes by he end of it, patting your back to sleep, mumbling, “love you my precious girl.”

He has you melting against him, your mixed fluids cum dripping out of your used hole. Tears rolls down your face. Simon hand has a fist of your curls in his hand, your back to his front, making you look at the complete mess you’ve made on his thighs. “ ‘S pretty innit baby?” his voice is soft against your neck, leaving a kiss at your naps. He holds your legs wide open with his large tattooed arms, you don’t even bother to look in the mirror. You know you look a disheveled mess.

“God, are you even fuckin thinkin, hm? Nothin in that brain. Just a good little fuck toy for daddy, yeah?” He huffs, muscles flexing as he slams you down on his cock.

You croon, eyes rolling to the back of your skull, “So- nnangh- so biiig Daddy!”

Every veiny inch of his veiny length filling you, your sloppy pussy still begging him to keep you stuffed. You hiccuped, slapping his arms, “Fuck- ‘s too much! I— oh my goood.”

“Don’t- shiiit baby— don’t bitch at me and then can’t fuckin take it [+]. Your such a god damn- brat.” He hisses through gritted teeth, flopping you up and down, his tip kissing your sweet spots as you get wetter and wetter. Your stomach tightens, pussy clenches around him. Simon’s hand comes down on your pulsing clit, so fuckin cute, he circles it with his thumb, rubbing it fast, “Come on, cum like a fuckin slut, allll over it kid.”

And you do, your foot kicking out, screaming bloody murder while you cream yet again all over his cock. Simon snatches you by the back of your neck, turning your head and smashing your lips onto his, sloppily kissing you till his spills into your tight pulsing pussy. His arm wraps around the front of your waist, working the last bit of his cum into your overstuffed and sore cunt.

“Such a good little slut for Daddy.”

You had no ill intentions when you sought Jack out on the beach. Truly. None whatsoever.

Your conscience was pristine. Clean enough to eat off of, if a person were inclined toward that sort of thing. And Jack would more than likely be inclined toward that sort of thing.

Which is neither here nor there and definitely not the point.

The point is that he happened to be the first available person you spotted who wasn’t elbow-deep in the cooler, manning the grill, hauling folding chairs closer to the water or otherwise occupied in some way that would’ve made your request an imposition.

He happened to be seated in the shade, sand-dusted calves stretched out and both hands conveniently free. You happened to wander over with your sunscreen and your very normal, very defensible need for help reaching the center of your back. 

Never mind that your eyes tend to find him first everywhere.

Your first choice, always. In the hospital, in crowded rooms, in Friday-night bars, and now here, on a stretch of beach sand full of towels, melting ice cubes and boozy coworkers.

If Jack is there the geometry of the universe settles. 

Noise levels drop. Potential catastrophe politely steps back in line. Statistically, things improve by, what, twenty percent when he’s within arms reach?

The only time Jack’s presence ever seems to tip from reassurance into danger is when Robby is nearby.

Your brother, his best friend, currently planted beside the grill with a pair of tongs in one hand and a beer sweating in the other, wholly unaware of just how intimately you know the man sitting a few yards away from you reading a book. 

No idea that you even know Jack beyond hospital stories and holiday small talk. No idea that you’ve counted the freckles on Jack’s torso the way other people count blessings. No idea you know the small mole just above Jack’s hip because you’ve watched it disappear beneath the push of his own thigh when he’s folded you open beneath him. No idea you know how his forearm looks when it flexes beside your head, that raised vein appearing when your heels hook into his back and he grunts your name into his mouth. No fucking idea you know the pale scar on his ribs that becomes your personal tactical obsession whenever he cages you against a doorframe and breathes against your ear, quiet, sweetheart, unless you want your brother to ask questions. 

You slip into the little wedge of shade cast by Jack’s umbrella, hip brushing the arm of his chair. 

It takes half a second for Jack’s gaze to lift. First to your face, because he is decent, or because he has spent forty-nine years perfecting the performance of decency and can probably do it under sedation.

Then his eyes dip lower, catching on your chest and the heroic and doomed labor of your bikini top, the poor thing doing its absolute best with limited resources and no meaningful administrative support, and for one brief, gorgeous second, Jack Abbot’s whole face goes blank. 

You unscrew the sunscreen cap with the patience of a saint and the moral character of someone much worse, pretending you don’t see a thing. It’s easy. You’ve been playing dumb your whole life, and Jack happens to make it especially rewarding. 

“Hi, Jack.”

He blinks as though dragged out of a dream he has no intention of describing in mixed company. 

The paperback folds around one finger; he swallows civility into a single neutral “Hey,” though his ears are flaming traitors. 

You bounce once on your toes just to watch his eyes track the up-and-down movement. “Mind helping me with my back?”

A phantom movement ripples down his arm, the muscle memory that usually ends with his thumb sliding up the tender inside of your knee.

Half-second later he remembers the clause you made him swear to the night before you left, the one you recited while sitting on the edge of his bed in nothing but your earrings and a very serious expression: no contact during this trip. Not in front of Robby. Not in private. Not even the little absent-minded touches Jack was so fond of giving and so terrible at pretending were accidental. 

He had listened with the patient, faintly amused face — oh, of course, let’s discuss boundaries — all while his hands were already easing your thighs apart, palm spanning half your quads. “That’s smart, sweetheart,” he had murmured, barely out of his mouth before he fucked you so hard you spent the first two days of this trip remembering him every time you sat down, crossed your legs, climbed stairs, breathed wrong, existed.

Day one started with Robby squinting at the careful, not-at-all-in-pain way you eased into the passenger seat. 

“Pull something?” he asked, suspicion crinkling the corners of his eyes. 

Jack, loading your suitcase into the trunk, had only said, “She’s fine — just overdid the beach volleyball warm-up.”

Now, beneath the umbrella, he eyes the bottle in your hand.

“You’re asking me to put sunscreen on you while I’m currently under express orders not to touch you,” he clarifies, mouth twitching. “Little contradictory, don’t you think?”

“It’s medicinal, Jack. Doctor-ordered sun safety. That puts it squarely under the ‘acts of basic care’ exemption we definitely agreed on.” 

There is, of course, no exemption. But you say it with such polished confidence, such gorgeous little liar convocation, and Jack’s eyes keep distractedly slipping to your cleavage, you figure you might be able to gaslight him into believing otherwise.

Jack tilts in, voice dropping to bedside-manner dark. “Preventive exams are also acts of basic care, sweetheart. I offered to give you one last night. Head to toe. Very thorough. You didn’t seem to keen on the idea. Funny how selective you are with these exemptions.”

He knows perfectly well keenness was never the issue.

Keenness had been present and accounted for, actually, sitting upright in bed with a racing pulse while Jack spent nearly forty minutes vibrating your phone off the nightstand at one in the morning, apparently deciding the no-contact was less a boundary and more a diagnostic puzzle he could brute-force with persistence, semantics, and an irresponsible number of filthy hypotheticals. 

How firm is the rule?

You had answered, Very.

Define very.

Jack.

I’m serious. Are we talking legally blinding or more of a strong suggestion? 

I can’t sleep knowing you’re down the hall.

I keep thinking about your ass in that tiny fucking bikini.

And your mouth.

And the noise you make when I’m tasting your pretty pussy.

So if "very" has any flexibility, now would be an excellent time to disclose it.

You had flushed at that, instinct dragging your hand south, fingertips tucking beneath the elastic of your pajama shorts, privately checking how much trouble you were in.

Spoiler: a lot. Still, you forced your breathing steady and tapped out the grown-up response you promised yourself you’d give him.

Too risky. Robby’s awake. 

Riskier to ignore symptoms.

You seemed flushed at dinner, baby. Could be heat exhaustion.

Standard protocol is immediate evaluation. Full tactical assessment of any sensitive areas.

Better I handle it now than you collapse tomorrow, right? 

“The walls here are paper thin. I just didn’t want everyone to hear you,” you murmur, eyes flicking toward the grill where Robby still holds court. 

Jack’s gaze drags over your face, patience fraying.

His head cants. “Me?”

An accusation rather than a question.

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning too hard.

It’s bullshit.

Jack makes sounds in bed, sure, these low rough little things he tries to swallow down into silence, but you are, historically, the problem. You are the one who forgets walls even exist, who gets whiny and breathless, saying his name too sweet and loud.

Still, riling him up is half the fun.

“Mhm. All those grunts you do? Very compromising. You really should work on that. I was just protecting your reputation.” 

His mouth tugs into that bare-bones smile, parched and cutting, like a fence post bleached under Georgia sun. 

“That’s interesting, doll, because I seem to remember you nearly getting us thrown out of that hotel in Atlanta.” He pauses, eyes steady on yours. “Had to clamp a palm over your mouth halfway through just so the folks next door would quit pounding on the wall.” 

You make a thoughtful, entirely disingenuous sound. “I don’t recall.”

Liar, you think, but only to yourself, because the scene is seared onto the backs of your eyelids: big palm, slick with sweat; your own pulse popping under his thumb.

“Convenient,” he says. “Concerning, too. Memory loss at your age.”

The urge to fire back — your age, grandpa — sparks under your tongue, but you swallow it, knowing you’ve already won.

He’s picturing that night, too. You can see it in the way his jaw resets, in the way his fingers flex like they’re aching to reprise the role of impromptu gag. 

“Memory loss and melanoma.” Your fingers skim your collarbone, then your shoulder, making a tiny show of your poor exposed skin. “That’ll be on your conscience, and you have so many sins already, Jack.” 

Jack’s glare fractures, concern muscling past amusement. 

“Turn around,” he orders.

His palm resignedly lands on your back and the first sweep of cool lotion is an instant balm, a hush in every raw, sun-tight cell that’s been screaming since day one of this self-inflicted separation.

Water to a dying flower. Oxygen after a held breath.

The peppermint chill kisses the nape of your neck, then fans outward in broad strokes, each pass ironing the ache right out of your skin. 

Three whole days without his hands, seventy-two hours of pretending you didn’t need this, and now his thumbs slip beneath your bikini straps like they own the territory, tracing the warmed skin that’s been begging for him with every salty breeze. 

“Missed you,” you murmur under your breath, words a little wobbly and petulant.

He huffs a soft laugh and bends to brush his mouth against your shoulder blade. “Yeah, missed you, too, angel.”

He smooths another cool ribbon down your spine.

You angle yourself towards the grill to allow him better access only to see Robby nudging the spatula at Mateo like a relay baton. Take over, man.

Mateo blinks, grabs the grill tools, and Robby wipes his palms on a dish towel as he starts striding across the sand.

Panic sparks hot in your belly. Abort, abort —

Jack’s fingers press reassuringly at the base of your neck. “Easy.”

Robby arrives, squinting against the glare. 

Jack doesn’t miss a beat, straightening just enough to greet him over your head, palms still settling the lotion. “Need a second set of tongs, man? You were talking about that pineapple glaze.” 

“Yeah, figured you could baste while I flip,” Robby says, oblivious.

“Sure thing.” Jack rubs the last of the lotion on your shoulder before flicking the cap back on the bottle. 

Robby tips his chin at you, hooks an arm around Jack’s neck like a big brother claiming turf. “And watch it, man. Give her an inch and she’ll have you painting her toes next.”

Jack shoots you a wink. “Wouldn’t put it past her, bit on the spoiled side, isn’t she?”

You don’t get to be alone with Jack again until later that evening.

After a twelve-hour gauntlet of being herded from one little duty to the next, karmic punishment apparently being less fire-and-brimstone and more Robby glued to your elbow, Samira asking about plates, Dana hunting for towels.

The house had stayed swollen with noise, doors opening, voices carrying, bodies constantly moving through every room, leaving nowhere private enough to breathe, let alone get a second with your secret boyfriend. 

And you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like torture, spending the whole day brushing past Jack close enough to catch bits and pieces of him but never close enough to keep it, catching his stare across the deck and breaking first because if you hold it too long, even for one more second, your face will say everything your mouth has forbidden to.

By the time you get into the shower, you’re wound so tight you feel one wrong move might split you straight down the middle. Steam flattens the bathroom, fogging the mirror in milky layers while condensation beads along the floor beneath your heels. 

The water comes down nearly scalding over skin still balmy from the sun, rinsing the day off you in slow, glittering streams. Salt, sunscreen, sweat, sexual frustration, little crescents of sand, all of it spiraling together toward the drain. 

You brace both palms against the wall and hiss when the spray finds the tender knot tucked between your shoulder blade and spine.

You don’t have time to decide whether the sting is pleasure or pain because suddenly the door latch is clicking.

You spin, palms crossing over your breasts, ready to apologize for… something (what, exactly? You’re not sure, because last time you checked you weren’t the person barging into an occupied bathroom.) 

But then the silhouette resolves into Jack and the apology dies on your tongue.

He shuts and locks the door with a soft snick, arching a brow through the haze.

You hiss under your breath, “What — Jack, what are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He just looks. His gaze drags leisurely, like a hand down your body, over your breasts, the water-glossed dip of your waist, the slick shimmer on your thighs, then hovering at your bare pussy before climbing back to your face. 

He looks utterly unhurried. A man content to feast with his eyes first and speak when the hunger becomes unbearable. 

Fire pools low in your belly and you shift, thighs pressing together in a useless bid for modesty. “Seriously, what if someone saw you come in?”

He closes the distance until your breath clouds a small circle on the glass pane between you.

“Just grabbing my razor,” he says, offhand, like you’re the one overreacting as he tips his head toward the shelf behind you. “Promise I’ll be two seconds. In, out.”

You give him a long, squinting once-over, as though you can spot the lie on his skin. He just wiggles his fingers — see? Harmless — so you huff a tiny laugh and shift aside. 

“Fine. Two seconds,” you mutter, watching him carefully.

You pull the slider door open.

The instant rush of cooler air leaves gooseflesh in its wake, and Jack’s shoulders seem suddenly much broader than you remember as he steps through. 

“Appreciate it, honey.”

He ducks under the spray, and the stall feels two sizes too small.

Jack plants himself in front of you, torso filling your peripheral vision, trunks plastered to powerful thighs.

He doesn’t touch you, but the warmth radiating from his body seems to crowd every spare inch of space.

When his chest rises you feel the ripple in each breath through yours.

“You okay?” His tone drips false innocence as he reaches around you for the razor, the damp fabric of his trunks gliding over the sensitive swell of nerves between your legs in a feather-light pass.

You suck in a harsh breath.

He straightens as if nothing happened, twirling the razor between his fingers, eyes glinting with pleased mischief.

Dick-Face.

Your vision goes momentarily starry, the lost friction leaving you empty.

You rally with a shaky grin. “‘M fine.”

“Mind if I shave in here, then? Better water pressure and keeps the sink hair-free. Know you hate that.”

You squint up at him, water streaking your lashes. 

“Jack…” One elongated syllable loaded with I know exactly what you’re doing. 

“Relax, angel. Two seconds,” he reminds, though the slight tilt of his hips say otherwise. 

He angles the razor at his jaw, drawing the first careful stroke. You watch the silver path he leaves on skin, the way tiny beads of water race after the blade. His face, stripped of stubble in increments, is almost too handsome. Straight nose, freckles you could count, lips made for kissing yours. 

He catches you gawking and smirks. “Gonna nick myself if you keep staring like that.”

You tilt your chin, droplets collecting at the curve of your collarbone, mustering your usual sparkle, “Then focus, doctor. I won’t be held responsible for self-inflicted injuries.”

He lets the razor dangle forgotten at his side as he studies you a beat longer. His hand slides forward, knuckles skimming the silky bloom of your hip, then dipping inward to follow the hollow where muscle meets bone.

A shiver flutters through you. He feels it and grins, this slow, predatory spread of lips.

“Focus is a tall order,” he says, thumb brushing a streak of water off your stomach. “Pretty as you are.”

Your breath stutters as his thumb skims lower, and you grab his wrist. “Uh-uh. Hands to yourself, remember?”

“Don’t make me beg, sweetheart.” The husk in his voice slips through you from head to toe. “Because I will, if that’s what you want — say please a thousand times, just to prove how badly I need you.”

Before you can answer, he sinks to his knees.

Once again he doesn’t touch, free hand splayed on the grout, but his mouth hovers near the crease of your hip, close enough that every exhale fans liquid fire over your pussy. 

His eyes flick to yours, desperate, waiting for the single syllable that will break every rule you set.

“I can keep my hands to myself, if that’s the rule. Just let me use my mouth, please. Need to taste you, angel.”

“I — Jack, we said —” 

Your grip on his wrist feels fragile, ceremonial.

“That a yes, baby? Gotta hear the word.”

Steam curls between your bodies and it’s almost suffocating now, filling up your throat and nose and ears until you start to feel a little dizzy.

Rules clang in your skull — not here, not now — but the week-long ache in your belly chants louder: need, need, need.

You bite your lip hard enough to taste copper, eyes slipping shut.

When they open again, the answer is already there, shining in resignation. “Yes. Please — yes.”

He doesn’t waste another second.

He dives in like a man reprieved from drought. Three days and three nights and water turned to wine in his tongue. He presses it flat, dragging through your folds until your knees threaten to buckle.

The first targeted flick to your clit punches a helpless cry out of your throat and the second has you clawing for purchase on the handlebar to your left.

Jack mumbles something that feels like so sweet against you, vibration sparkling up your spine, then seals his lips and sucks hard, alternating pressure in prodding intervals.

You don’t think you’ve ever gotten to that blissful edge so fast before, seconds away from splintering, vision tunneling as pink and blue stars flare behind your lids.

It all comes crashing down when a brisk tap-tap-tap cuts through your near-climax.

Jack freezes, mouth still full of you and hot on your cunt but now motionless, eyes snapping up to meets yours. Beautiful eyes with pupils blown.

Santos’s voice filters through: “Whoever’s in there, hurry up!” 

The pulse that was about to break erupts into silent, aching stasis instead. You bite your fist, whole body trembling on the cliff-edge he’s left you hanging from. 

You choke back a whimper and call, “Be out in a sec!” 

And like you said, you would find some sort of humor in it all if it didn’t feel like pure fucking torture.

Jack tries to remind himself that he has, by every measurable standard, survived worse things than this.

War, for one. Heat that cooked straight through the soles of his boots, nights sawn open by rotor blades and gunfire. The terror of deciding who needed his hands first when everyone needed them at once.

He lost a leg and learned how to walk again, then somehow went back to medicine because apparently nearly dying had not cured him of the instinct to run toward other people’s emergencies. He has cracked chests, led resuscitations, talked shaking interns through their first patient death, spent his free time embedded with SWAT because golf had always seemed both dull and something he wouldn’t thrive at. 

He knows pressure. He understands discipline. He has built an entire life around refusing to be governed by fear, pain, adrenaline, or lesser impulses. 

None of those facts seem to feel reassuring right now as he watches you from across the bar.

You’re burrowed into the center of a brand-new constellation of people you just met, telling one of your well-worn stories with the same sparkling conviction you gave it the first time, chin tipped up, bracelets chiming as your hands sketch the scene into the air.

Jack knows every beat.

Knows when your eyes will widen, when your mouth will pull into that scandalized little O, when you will pause just long enough to make everyone lean closer before delivering the line that sends the table into laughter.

And they do lean closer. Even the bartender’s polishing rag pauses mid-swipe.

That is the thing about you. You make strangers feel chosen. Make a whole room feel handpicked, lit from within, as if you opened the door just for them and meant it. Then you’ll drift away, leaving them there in the aftershocks, still facing the space you occupied like worshippers after the god has already one.

Jack knows exactly how dangerous that is because he has made that mistake himself.

More than once.

Sat across from you and read too much into every smile, every soft little lock of your focus, every gooey, honey-thick stretch of your attention. Mistook being seen by you for being chosen.

And then life, perverse as ever, let him be chosen after all. Let him earn the real thing. 

Which only makes watching other men bask in the counterfeit version feel worse.

The feeling metastasizes when one of the men catches the opening after your final line and moves into it, all expensive veneer-looking teeth and effortless posture, bending toward you as though the room has naturally made space for him there.

He says something Jack cannot hear over the bass, punctuates it with a small, self-satisfied shrug, and wears the expression of a person who thinks being near you is already a kind of accomplishment.

Jack studies him. 

Young. Smooth. Unscarred, at least where the world can see. A body that has probably never needed to be negotiated with before something as simple as walking barefoot across a beach. No prosthetic to strap on before dawn, no phantom pain flaring where flesh ends, no inventory of what still works and what must be accommodated. 

He looks right beside you. No one would glance twice, no one would do the math. Robby could clap him on the shoulder, laugh at his jokes, maybe even approve.

Certainly wouldn’t have to excavate a grave under the rental deck. 

Jack counts that as strike three.

“Jack.” Robby’s voice breaks across the table, dragging him back by the collar. “Tell ‘em I’m not making this up.”

Jack blinks, wrestles his gaze off you, and pretends he’s been part of the conversation all along. Dana and Baran blink back at him.

“You’re usually making something up,” he says and it earns Victoria’s laugh, though he hasn’t the faintest idea what improbable tale he’s just failed to corroborate.

It seems to be enough of an answer for Robby though, because he laughs too, his hand thumping Jack’s shoulder hard enough to slosh the liquor.

Jack drinks anyway, holds the bourbon like a tongue depressor to his worst instincts. Swallows. The burn chars every jittery nerve that wants to turn around and see if Mr. Linen Shirt is still siphoning oxygen out of your orbit.

But he wants to know. Wants to know whether the man has moved closer, whether you’re still smiling, whether Jack is about to make a decision that leaves the bastard sipping his own drink through a wired jaw. 

He shouldn’t go that far. Healing hands and all. But he can make exceptions.

He lets boredom rasp across his tongue as he clears his throat. “Your sister know those guys?”

Robby looks over on reflex. Jack doesn’t move. Doesn’t need to. Robby’s face will tell him everything. “What guys?”

“Dunno. Thought one of ‘em looked familiar.”

Robby squints past the crowd.

“Nope. Don’t think I recognize any of them.” Robby decides, pushing a tired breath through his teeth, knuckles rasping over two-day stubble. “She does this everywhere she goes. Draws attention like wildfire. I swear, half my blood pressure medication is because of her.”

Jack’s arteries would corroborate that, but he lets the confession smolder unheard behind the rim of his glass. 

“Well, can you blame ‘em? She looks like that.”

And Dana’s comment is the invitation he’s been waiting for. Lets him gorge on the sight without raising suspicion.

The little dress, the glossed-up lips, the endless stretch of your legs under the bar light. Your hair falling loose around your shoulders, your face animated as you talk, every feature sharpened by laughter into something almost indecently alive.

A cherry-red straw clacks against your teeth when you sip your rum punch, each drag leaving a perfect lipstick crescent on the plastic rim.

You are beautiful in every standard category and several highly specific ones Jack suspects may exist solely to inconvenience him. 

“Don’t mean she needs a swarm,” Robby grumbles, waving his bottle at the cluster around you. “She treats everybody like they’ve known her ten years, then acts shocked when half the room starts trailing after her. And somehow I’m the prick when I tell ’em to give her some space.”

“I don’t mind being the asshole,” Jack pipes up. Across the table, Dana’s attention narrows, and Jack realizes, half a beat too late, that he may have sounded a little too willing. So he adds, “If you’re tired of the job, I mean.”

Robby snorts. “You’d scare the hell of ‘em.”

“That’s generally the point.”

He lifts his bourbon before the thought can show on his face, lets the rim conceal the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth.

Robby, thankfully, is already smiling, visibly seduced by the prospect of outsourcing his least charming brotherly obligation. 

“Be my guest,” he says. “Tell her I sent you.” 

Jack tips his glass, drains what remains, then taps the rim against the tabletop.

Signal received. Assignment accepted. He doesn’t need to be told twice.

By the time he is halfway across the room, you’ve already noticed him.

Your eyes flare with a brightness he can feel from here, and whatever polished little nothing Mr. Smooth is feeding you dies unattended between one word and the next. 

He keeps talking anyway, poor guy, unaware that you’ve left the conversation without moving an inch. By the time Jack reaches the bar rail, your attention has funneled to one point, him, and nothing else.

It stirs something dormant in him, the same dark pull he felt in the shower, his pants suddenly tighter, less cooperative. He sees exactly what he would do without the table of coworkers and one eagle-eyed best friend behind him. 

He would hook a hand around the back of your neck, pull you flush to his chest, and kiss every little thought clean out of your head. Kiss you until the gloss smeared, until your lipstick feathered over his mouth, until your lips went swollen and every polished stranger nearby understood, without needing it explained, who had put that dazed look in your eyes. 

Instead, he leans one forearm against the bar and says, pleasantly, “You drinking enough water, sweetheart?”

“I could be persuaded to drink more.” Your lips curl around the straw again, eyes fixed on Jack with a private little shine.

The younger man follows your attention to Jack and gives him an affable nod. “Man, your dad’s on top of it. Mine would’ve let me dehydrate out of spite.”

Jack nearly coughs up his previously swallowed drink.

He can feel every one of his years arrange themselves in descending order between you. The gray at his temples. The scars. The apparently paternal concern over your fluid intake. 

Fuck’s sake.

He parts his lips to correct the record, a dry little execution already waiting on his tongue, but you beat him to the trigger. 

“Oh, he’s the best,” you gush, peering at him sideways. “Always checking on me. Sunscreen, hydration, curfew. Super over-protective.”

Jack gives you a long, level look, one that says he knows exactly what you’re doing and plans to deal with it later.

“She keeps me busy. Full time job, most days,” he finally says, playing along.

And it is a full-time job.

Just not remotely in the way this poor kid is imagining. You are a twenty-four-hour on-call position with no protected sleep and an astonishingly generous benefits package.

You need to be kissed before he leaves the room, touched whenever he passes within arm’s reach, listened to with grave concentration while you explain some internet drama involving some show he’s never watched and a man named Sincere he will never meet.

Then there is the other hunger, the one that wakes beside him already stretching toward his body, that has you squirming into his lap after dinner or whispering again against his mouth when any reasonable person would be asleep.

Jack is always on his toes with you, anticipating needs you have not articulated yet, figuring out whether a pout means hungry, horny, tired, or all three braided together.

It is exhausting in the way a life worth living is exhausting.

He has never minded work when the work matters, and taking care of you has become the most selfish labor he has ever loved.

The younger guy clears his throat, trying to recapture the momentum. “Anyway, like I was saying about the jet-ski tomorrow —”

“Actually,” Jack interrupts, “we’ve got to get back. Curfew, you know.” He aims a polite nod at the man, who now looks decidedly dejected, then drapes a guiding hand along the back of your stool in perfect over-protective-father form. “Appreciate you keeping her company.”

Your mouth twitches around the straw. Jack can already tell you’re going to make him suffer for this. The prospect improves his mood considerably. 

He starts to walk you back to the table, when he spots Robby, who’s laughing much too loudly at something the new intern just whispered in his ear.

The girl is angled toward him, smiling with that shy, pleased little tilt people get when they think they’ve successfully surprised him, and Robby, miracle of miracles, looks genuinely interested. 

That is information worth preserving. Worth interrogating later, too.

But for now he takes that opportunity for what it is and herds you into a corner out of view.

As soon as you’re tucked between a stack of surfboards and the dim EXIT sign, his fingers close over the curve of your backside, giving a quick pinch.

A startled “hey!” pops out, alcohol-loose and breathy, and you bat at his knuckles.

He catches your wrist, holding it against his chest as amusement darkens his gaze. “You’re testing me, angel. Missed me so much you had to start getting other men’s attention just to see if I’d come take you back?”

“Missed who? The pervert or the overprotective dad?”

Jack clicks his tongue and leans in until the tips of your noses nearly touch, crowding the joke right back into your mouth. 

“Hated every damn second of that. Couldn’t lay a finger on you while that kid flirted his ass off. And you knew exactly what you were doing. Wanted to see how fast you could make your old man lose his cool?”

“Thought you liked being challenged?” You tilt your chin, lashes dipping. “Besides, you’d been ignoring me all night. What was I supposed to do, sit there looking pretty for no one?”

“You know that isn’t how it is. I’ve been following the rules you set, angel. Your rules.”

“Yeah, well, last night kind of blew those up, don’t you think?” You lean closer. “The line’s already smudged. Seems silly to keep pretending we can still see it.”

“Trust me, sweetheart, I’ve got no attachment to that line. I’ve wanted my hands on you from the second I saw that dress.” He leans closer, voice dropping into something meant only for you. “But you’d better mean it. You don’t get to rile me up all night and then act surprised when I collect.”

Your eyes flick toward the neon Restrooms sign, then back to him, lashes heavy. “Meet me by the bathroom in sixty seconds. If you’re late, I’m starting without you.”

One quick sweep confirms the coast is clear.

“Bought and paid for, angel. Be there in fifty-nine.”

You giggle, turning on your heel with a bounce that sets your dress fluttering. He tracks every inch as you stroll off, head cocked like you know he’s staring; the last thing he sees is the curve of your ass rounding the corner.

He waits just long enough not to make it obvious, then starts toward the hall, pulse already ticking off the seconds.

Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.

“Jack.”

Shit.

Dana catches him mid-stride. When he turns, she is watching him over one lifted brow, empty glass raised loosely in her hand. “You getting another round?”

His gaze flicks toward the corridor before he can stop it. Mistake. Dana follows it, then looks back at him.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says.

“Could’ve fooled me. You look like you’re on a mission.”

And what can he say to that?

Yeah, Dana, good eye. I am on a mission to follow my girlfriend into a seedy beach-bar bathroom and fuck the living daylights out of her before Robby notices either of us are gone. By the way, she is his little sister and young enough that, from a distance, strangers apparently assume I helped raise her.

So Jack does what any sensible man would do under pressure.

He lies. 

“Just gotta take a leak.”

Dana lets out a low hum, the kind that says she believes exactly none of him. “Sure.” And Jack thinks that’s it, but suddenly she shakes her head. “Just do yourself a favor and be careful.”

“Careful about what, exactly?” Irritation flicks hot across his scalp, mostly because it coats the thin, unfamiliar ache of fear. 

She tips her chin, eyes dull with shift-long exhaustion, offering him nothing but that tired little smile that says You already know. 

“Don’t make me say it out loud.” Her gaze dips toward the restroom sign, subtle enough that anyone else would miss it. Jack doesn’t. “I don’t care about the sordid details. But secrets like this don’t stay contained forever. People get hurt when they come out.” Her expression softens by a fraction. “And she has more to lose than you do.”

He doesn’t get the chance to answer before Dana slips past him, already lifting two fingers toward the bartender and calling for another round. 

She has more to lose than you do.

Jack knows that. Or at least, he should’ve.

He is established. Difficult to shame in any lasting way. People already know who he is, have decided what sort of man he is, and most days he can live with that. 

You, meanwhile, are still being decided. Every room you enter is another jury, every mistake fresh evidence for peers and others alike. 

And men tend to survive a scandal differently.

Jack might lose Robby, take a hit to his reputation, become the subject of a few whispered conversations at work. Then the weeks would pass, another crisis would arrive, and people would remember he was useful. 

The world permits men to outlive their mistakes.

It does not extend women the same courtesy.

You would be remembered through it, reduced to it. People would search backward through every bright smile and short skirt as if the proof had always been there, call you foolish where they called him weak, promiscuous where they called him lonely.

Even the people defending you would talk as though you needed defending from your own decision.

Jack suddenly feels sick because Dana is right, and because somewhere along the way he let himself pretend the risk belonged equally to both of you.

Half his, half yours. Fair.

It never had.

Jack lets the sixty seconds expire and stays exactly where he is, rooted with his hands by his sides and the first honest understanding of what protecting you might actually require.

Tonight, when you go looking for Jack, your intentions are not merely ill.

They are terminal. Premeditated. Your conscience is nowhere to be found, certainly not sparkling, certainly not clean enough to eat off.

Whatever small moral voice usually lives in you has been smothered beneath a white-hot blend of anger and a bruised ego, two things currently holding hands and skipping merrily through your bloodstream. 

The house has only just begun to settle after several hours of drunk postmortems, everyone still riding the bar’s momentum and apparently determined to delay sleep through sheer noise pollution alone. Somebody had thrown up in the upstairs toilet, although nobody was admitting to it and Whitaker had somehow staggered into Jack’s room and passed out starfished across his bed, fully clothed, one shoe still on, leaving Jack exiled to the downstairs couch.

It’s almost completely dark when you creep down the stairs.

A small lamp glows beside the sofa, casting a little island over Jack and the book open in his hands.

The rest of the room dissolves into shadow, cluttered with the aftermath of everyone else’s good time: cups lined along the coffee table, half-empty glasses, plates abandoned with crusts and smears of dip.

You ghost past him without a glance, feet soundless on the hardwood.

Only when he murmurs, “Can we talk?” do you pause, but only long enough to throw a breezy, “Later — busy,” over your shoulder.

Jack pushes off the sofa, trailing you a step. “Busy with what, exactly?”

Busy making your life a living hell, you think, scrubbing dried food from a plate. Busy returning the favor. Busy ensuring he experiences even a fraction of the private humiliation you swallowed in that bar bathroom, standing beneath a flickering light panel while sixty seconds stretched into two minutes, then five, your invitation curdled into foolishness.

And when you had finally emerged, Jack was back at the table with the others, but every stiff line of him betrayed where his attention really was. Fresh drink in hand, barely touched. Shoulders set. Gaze locked on the corridor.

He had chosen not to come, but he had not stopped watching.

Jack would sooner lose his other leg than abandon you tipsy in a strange bar, and even furious, you knew that. He had been keeping vigil over the door, tracking who went in, who came out, waiting for your face to appear. But that garnered no brownie points from you.

When you approached, confused and annoyed and still stupidly hopeful, he had only leaned close enough to breathe, “Later,” against your ear.

As if it were of no significance. You were of no significance.

You snatch up another abandoned cup and tip its watery remains into the sink.

“This,” you say. “Some of us respect shared spaces.”

“Mm. At two in the morning?” Jack leans one hip against the counter, arms folding over his chest. When you dont stop, he adds, “All right. Scoot over. I’ll help.”

Jack has never encountered a mess, emotional or otherwise, that he did not believe could be improved by putting his hands on it. A wound, a crisis, a woman mad enough to scrub ceramic like she means to erase the glaze. Same instinct. Reach. Steady. Fix.

You turn before he can.

Dishwater slips from your fingers in clear little tracks, the oversized sleep shirt grazing high over your thighs as you square yourself toward him. 

“No, thank you.” Your gaze stays fixed on his. “I’ve learned I can manage without help.” 

He comes closer, and closer still, until your damp fingers have nowhere sensible to go except flat against the edge of the sink. 

“That’s very independent of you, honey,” he says. “Always loved that about you.” His hand lands beside your hip, bracketing you in. His gaze searches your face, lightening at the edges. “But I don’t think we’re talking about dishes anymore, are we?”

You tip your chin up, refusing to let the gentling in his eyes sand down your irritation. “No, we’re not. We’re talking about you saying one thing and doing another. Apparently promises are more of a loose suggestion when they’re coming from you.” 

“Give me a chance to explain, sweetheart.” The words slip out on a breath, softer than the rattle of the faucet.  “You can be mad after. Hell, you probably still will be. Just hear me out first.” 

You do not want to hear him out.

Explanations are unpredictable things, doors that open both ways, and you already have the sickening suspicion that whatever is waiting on the other side will hurt worse than not knowing. 

Because yes, objectively, Jack failing to follow you into a bathroom means very little.

No fidelity breached, no grand betrayal, no concrete proof of anything beyond bad timing and worse communication.

But the small flutter in your stomach does not care about what your mind tries to litigate away. 

It knows this feeling. Knows this small retreat before someone leaves, the subtle cooling, the moment affection starts becoming obligation. 

Maybe he has simply had his fill of you. Maybe the novelty wore off and now you are no longer the bright, entertaining little thing he wanted to sneak around with, only a woman who talks too much and needs too much and has begun expecting permanence from something built in shadows.

And maybe now he has seen enough of the real thing to know he cannot imagine building a life around it. 

So you do not give him the chance. 

“Nothing to explain,” you say, seizing the sponge and escaping the cage of his arms for the opposite counter.

You start cleaning with theatrical diligence, collecting bottles, stacking plates, wiping crumbs into your palm as though the fate of the rental deposit rests entirely on you. 

But you did not come downstairs to rescue countertops. You came because you need proof that Jack still wants you.

Any kind of proof. Emotional, physical, desperate, selfish. You would take whatever he gives you.

And if you cannot bring yourself to ask whether he still sees a future with you, then you can at least find out whether he still wants to put his hands on you.

So when you bend to retrieve a fallen fork from the ground, you let the hem of your sleep shirt climb unchecked over the backs of your legs until it bares you completely, exposes that you are wearing no underwear, your thighs parted just enough for Jack to see every soft, private inch you left uncovered for him. 

Cool air brushes your pussy.

His stare burns hotter.

“Jesus Christ, honey.” The words leave him rough and disbelieving, dragged up from the well below his throat. Behind you, the counter creaks faintly beneath the sudden weight of his hands. “What the hell are you doing?” 

You count to one before straightening. 

You turn with the fork still balanced between two fingers, arranging your face into its sweetest approximation of confusion.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Right,” he murmurs. “Must’ve imagined the whole thing.” 

You drop the fork into the sink with an accusing clatter. “Probably. Memory goes with age, remember?”

He steps in behind you before you can turn away, chest brushing your back, one palm flattening over your stomach while the other slides beneath your shirt.

His knuckles skim the soft inside of your thigh, then settle exactly where you’re naked. 

“Yeah,” he growls against your ear. “Didn’t imagine a damn thing.”

A whimper threatens and you bite it back so hard your jaw aches. In that stilled heartbeat the fight drains out of your muscles and your body answers him first, arching back, begging in the only language it trusts. 

But the panic bubbles back up in fiery waves.

“Please don’t,” you say, and the plea is not the one he expects.

Jack’s hand freezes.

You close your eyes. 

“If you’ve changed your mind about me, just say it.” Every word hurts your throat. You turn your face just enough for him to see what the anger has been hiding all night. Fear. “If you don’t want me anymore, then don’t touch me like you do. Don’t make it harder than it already is.” 

Jack’s hand vanishes so abruptly from beneath your shirt, your knees dip with the loss.

Then he’s turning you, big palms framing your cheeks, thumbs parked just under your cheekbones. Your own slick glosses his knuckles. He tips your chin up so you can’t look anywhere but straight into the brown storm of his.

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, baby?”

Your mouth opens, but what escapes first is a wet, hitching breath.

The tears rise fast, flood-waters breaching the levee before you can blink them back, Jack’s outline smearing into watercolor.

“I don’t know,” you hiccup, which is not true at all. You know too much. “You left me there. And then you acted like I was being dramatic for expecting you to show up when you said you would.” Your fingers curl around his wrists, not pushing him away, just holding on. “And maybe it’s not about that. Maybe it’s about how easy it would be for you to wake up and realize I’m not… serious-person material. I’m fun, I know that. I’m pretty and I make you laugh and I’m good in bed, but that’s not the same as being someone you actually want a life with.” Your lips tremble. “People always like me better at first.” 

Immediately his face caves, all the structure in it imploding: brows hitching, mouth parting, a stricken slackness that makes him look ten years younger and infinitely more breakable.

“Don’t say that,” he says, too sharp at first, then immediately dampens. “No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. Say whatever you need to say. I’m just…” He shakes his head, jaw tight, eyes shining with something close to a fear that matches yours. “I hate that I made you feel like that.” 

His hands slide from your face to your shoulders, holding you there as if he needs you to understand this with your whole body. 

“You are serious to me. More serious than anything I’ve let myself have in a long time.” He exhales shakily. “You think I don’t picture a life with you? I picture it constantly.” 

You just stare, lungs cinched tight, tears marooned mid-cheek as though gravity’s on pause. The room narrows to the pulse thudding in your ears. 

“You’re… you’re serious about me?”

Jack makes a quiet, wounded sound. His hands come back to your face, thumbs stroking the wet tracks beneath your eyes. 

“Christ, baby. Yes. Of course I am.” He bends closer, as though proximity might help drive the truth into you. “I don’t know how I let you believe otherwise… I didn’t follow after you tonight because I got scared for you, not of you. I should have told you. I should have found you, explained, apologized. Instead I left you alone with your worst thoughts. That was cruel, even if I didn’t mean it to be. Please let me fix it.”

Another hiccup rattles through you as you try to process the words at face-value. “Scared for me how?” 

“Because if this blew up, I didn’t want you caught in it.” He says it simply, like there is no question which of you matters more. “I don’t give a damn what people think of me, baby. I care what it does to you.” 

You shake your head inside the cradle of his hands.

“I don’t care what people think either. I don’t care about any of it.” Your voice snags, but you push through. “I love you, Jack. That matters more.” 

His eyes close for half a second, like the words are almost too much to take standing up.

When they open again, he kisses you senselessly soft, both hands still holding your face as though you might vanish.

He kisses you once, twice, a third time, each one a little messier than the last.

“Love you too, baby,” he whispers, lips brushing yours. “Love you so much it scares the hell out of me.”

The brine of your tears slick the seam of your mouth. Jack doesn’t flinch, drinks it in like proof of living.

You surface for one ragged sip of air, barely enough, your lips still grazing his, fists knotted in his shirt like ballast against weightlessness. 

“You mean it? You’re really serious about me?” you whisper again, softer this time, almost shy with it. 

Jack lets out a low, guttural sound and grazes the corner of your mouth. 

“So serious, honey.” Another kiss, deeper now, his hands sliding from your face to your waist, pulling you flush. “Want to put a ring on that pretty little hand. Want a house with your clothes everywhere and your shoes in places I’m gonna trip over.” His mouth finds yours again, swallowing your gasp before he adds, rougher, “Want a kid, if you want one. You want a baby with me, angel?” 

“Yes, please, Jack.”

The words are still warm in the air when he fits his mouth to yours, a groan vibrating through both of you.

His palms squeeze your waist, then lift, your stomach swooping as he sets you on the cleared stretch of counter. Cool laminate kisses the backs of your thighs, shocking against the furnace heat of him stepping between your legs.

Your sleep-shirt scrunches between his hands, creeping, creeping, until the hem gathers at your hips and you’re bared to him again.

“Yeah?” he murmurs against your lips. “You’d give me that?”

You nod so eagerly the room tilts, fists in his collar, yanking him closer. “Anything.”

“My perfect girl,” he breathes, kissing you again, softer now, as if the tenderness makes what follows any less filthy. 

His hand slips beneath the gathered cotton at your waist, fingers gliding south until one settles between your folds. He drags the wetness up in a lazy sweep, humming appreciation that burns brighter than the touch itself.

“And what’s all this, hm?” he asks, studying your face while his finger toys idly with your clit. His eyes darken, attention dropping to where his hand disappears between your legs. “You sittin’ here imagining me filling you up with a baby, sweetheart?” 

Your hips lift helplessly into his hand, chasing pressure he has no intention of giving you yet. 

“No teasing,” you whimper, breath breaking around the words. “Please, Jack. I need you inside me.” 

Jack swears under his breath, hand leaving your clit only long enough to undo his pants. The zipper drops. Fabric loosens. Then he is back between your thighs, dragging the thick head of his cock through your folds once, twice, gathering the wetness you have made for him.

The sight of him nearly makes you stupid.

It has only been a few days, which is nothing, really, barely enough time for a normal person to miss anything, but your body has become accustomed to him, used to the heavy stretch of his cock at least once a day, sometimes twice when neither of you has somewhere to be. 

You’re practically drooling, inner muscles fluttering around emptiness while he takes his sweet, sweet time wetting himself in what you’ve made for him. 

You shift on the counter, thighs widening of their own accord, a needy sound slipping free when the head catches against your entrance and pulls away again. 

“I know, honey. I know.” His voice roughens as he traces the head up your inner thigh. “Should’ve given you what you needed hours ago.” 

Then he finally does. 

He braces one hand at your hip and pushes forward in one long, steady stroke, the thick head breaching you first, then every heavy inch following.

Your cunt flutters, welcoming, molding around him until there’s no space left unexplored. 

The counter shudders with the low sound that tears out of both of you. 

The inexorable pressure sutures the empty ache that’s haunted you, stuffing it full until there’s no room for jealousy, no space for worst-case scenarios.

There is only Jack.

Your thighs cinch hard around his waist, heels gouging into the backs of his legs like spurs demanding more.

He doesn’t stop until pelvis meets pelvis, forehead thunking against yours while both of you gasp as if you’ve sprinted a mile in the sand. 

He retreats a heartbeat’s width and your walls seize around him, possessive. He curses under his breath.

“This tight little cunt missed me, didn’t it?” he asks, already driving back in.

He starts pumping into you at a saint’s tempo, each drag of his cock thick and thorough, his hips grinding flush against you at the end of every thrust.

Your arms lock around his shoulders as your body rocks with him, bare thighs trembling against his sides. 

Pleasure gathers everywhere at once, starting at your pussy and climbing until your whole body feels tuned to the rhythm of his hips.

You try to tell him that. Try to say yes, missed you, feels so good, but what comes out is a breathless spill of syllables, half his name and half a sound you would be embarrassed by if your brain were still capable of embarrassment. 

His hand slips between your bodies, two fingers finding your clit. 

“You’re mine, aren’t you? All mine,” he growls, cock still working inside you. “And I’m yours. Never gonna be anybody else’s, you hear me?”

Your answer is a helpless chain of nods and breathy mewls, but he isn’t satisfied with that.

He catches your jaw, thumb pressing your cheek until your eyes snap to his. 

“Look at me. Hear me.” 

“Y-yes, Jack… yours — love you, love you s’much,” you babble.

“Love you, angel.” He presses a kiss to your trembling lips. “Want me to fill this pretty pussy up? Want me to leave every drop inside where it belongs?” 

“Yes, please. Need it — need you — m’so close.”

The first warning licks up your spine. A trembling in your calves, nipples pebbling hard against your shirt.

Pleasure stacks in breath-stealing layers, so heavy it feels like quicksand pulling you under. 

Jack’s tells flare with yours. His hips snapping hard, hands tightening on your waist until his knuckles blanch.

Sweat beads at his hairline, drops down to your skin, and your walls clamp down in greedy pulses, each flex beginning for the flood he’s a second away from letting go.

“Keep looking at me,” Jack pants, curling a hand from your waist to the back of your neck. “Need to watch you fall apart.”

“Can’t — can’t hold it,” you whimper, thighs shaking.

“Don’t hold a damn thing,” he growls. “Give it to me, come on, baby.”

The quicksand finally liquefies and the world folds to white noise.

Jack breaks with you, a strangled — fuck — on your lips, thrusts turning short as he empties himself in thick bursts.

You cling to one another, quake for heartbeat after heartbeat, until the tremors fade into breathless, boneless warmth. 

When Jack’s breathing finally steadies, his mouth roams in slow increments. First your collarbones, up the column of your throat, over the quiver of your lips. 

He eases back only to reach for a paper towel, thumb already swiping at the mess seeping down your thighs. 

“Don’t,” you plead, catching his wrist. “Wanna keep it.”

Jack huffs a low laugh before moving to kiss away your protest. “Sweetheart, you’re not making it five steps up those stairs with that sliding down your legs.” 

Even as he says it, he dabs gently between them.

The light friction has your hips ticking forward, little whimpers breaking free. 

“Sensitive, huh?” he tuts. 

“Thought you wanted to put a baby in me?” you argue.

Jack’s thumb circles your thigh. “Oh, I plan on it — but not until there’s some extra hardware shining on your hand. One thing at a time, yeah?”

Old-fashioned as he is, you probably should’ve expected that.

Jack Abbot is the kind of man who still opens doors, calls restaurants instead of booking online, and apparently requires jewelry before intentional procreation. There is probably a proper sequence filed away in that stubborn head of his: ring, vows, house, baby. 

You find, to your own surprise, that you do not mind the order at all. 

You tap his chest with a teasing finger and dopey smile. “I can live with that. I do love shiny things, after all.”

What he does not tell you is that the shiny thing already exists, hidden in his sock drawer, waiting for the right moment. 

You won’t find that out for another two months, until after the two of you finally sit Robby down and tell him everything, until after Jack takes one clean punch to the face without even trying to dodge it, because fair is fair, and until after Robby’s anger burns itself down into something survivable. 

By the time Jack slips the ring onto your finger, his lip is healed, your brother is calling him Jack instead of Dick-Face (you can’t be sure where he learned that insult from), and the future no longer feels like something borrowed.

It is yours. 

MARIA NOTE this lowkey was supposed to be like 1k words and the ideas just kept flowing and it turned into a full psychological case study on why making ur brother's best friend jealous is both a terrible idea and, unfortunately, very effective. also jack saying ring first, baby later made me briefly black out. hope u enjoyed!! <3

He wraps himself on the thickened flesh of your bulbed-up clit, suckling wildly and coating his chin in you during his latch. His thicker scruff frictions right against the skin of your chubby and delicate pussy lips, before his tongue swirls hard, just once more, and retracts away from where you're spread. His fat, aged and freckled hands keep your soft thighs speared wide open, just to observe your desperate, aching hole. You’re beard-burned and sensitive, a soppy little cunt rubbed raw from his face; chafed up, creamy, and fluttering wetly around nothing. Jack's jaw is steeped in you, wet on the growth that shrouds the curve of his face and neck. He takes a long, rough breath, an open-mouthed aspiration to taste your sweetness through the air, swallowing the scent as his head lilts in working condescension. Silver curls, dampened with his own sweat, swath over his lined forehead with the tilt. 

“Aww, pumpkin… does she like it? Little pussy likes my scruff? I think she does…" Jack coos, his voice enough to make your legs quiver under his pinion. He inhales, puckers his lips, and effuses a jet of his hot breath, runneled right to your needy hole. His lips upturn, thumbs pinching deeper into your thighs.

"Look at her. She’s already clamping up – just ‘cause Daddy had his mouth on you…” 

A finger glides through the mess, thick and seeping down irritated, velveted flesh, clinging to the sheets below your puckered hole. Jack can't halt his hand, which lifts to press his thumb pad to the cleft of your ass, like he's surveilling the vicious throb of you through your puddle of arousal. 

“Is it all stingy, baby? Should Daddy shave so he doesn't hurt your little pussy anymore?” 

Your head shakes violently, writhing on the sheets, whimpering as you gush out more between your forcedly spread thighs.

“No? You like it? I can tell. My baby’s already too close…” Jack sighs with a sated grin, and his digits ascend back up to your throbby little hole.

“Should we let her, hm? Let your little cunt just cum – all messy on Daddy’s beard?” It’s rhetorical, plainly mean, and Jack completely rescinds a response from you when his jaw presses right up against where you're pulsing. He fucks his tongue inside, driving it in deep, without warning or clemency. 

Jack adheres his face and stubbly bristles to your soft, sloppy folds, prompting you to leak, fresh and hot, all over him. The strong muscle licks inside at inner walls, his fingers rubbing at your quivering clit to feel you grip onto him in tighter, cinching pulses. He pulls away just enough to watch your tiny hole cling to his tongue, his scratchy fuzz slick and sticking to your slit, and then he's lapping at you, from entrance to bud once more. He curves his lips onto your swelled clit, suckling and licking into the fleshy rift. Your whines crack open to sharp-pitched moans when your orgasm torments every nerve ending, muscle, and cell. Your belly swoops, warming in your release, riveting the heat through to your trembling thighs. Your eyes shimmer with tears through the cascades of pleasure and the prickle of his chin, which Jack rubs over your poor pussy well into the aftershocks. And he still doesn’t stop – his silver hair is lambent and streaked with your cum, and he strokes his mouth down you to elicit a shiver, patting your hip in coax. “That’s it – My good little girl. Daddy’s just gonna get you real clean now.”

◞ daughterbubs ⭐︎ 2026 ༝

The house was worse than outside.

This was the specific cruelty of a British heatwave — the houses, built for insulation, built to keep warmth in, became perfect traps for it.

The walls absorbed the heat. The ceilings held the heat. The air inside was thick and still and several degrees warmer than the air in the garden, which was itself several degrees warmer than any air a reasonable person should be expected to inhabit.

You had taken three cold showers so far.

The first at seven in the morning. The second at half past eleven. The third at two in the afternoon, standing under water so cold it took your breath, but by the time you'd dried off you were already warm again. Your body producing heat that the house simply stored, helpfully, indefinitely.

At half past three you had gone and sat in your car.

You were not proud of this.

You had sat in the driver's seat of your car in the driveway with the engine on and the air conditioning at full as your head tipped back against the headrest.

You had stayed there for forty-five minutes, which was simultaneously the most wasteful and the most necessary thing you had done all week.

The cold air had hit your face and your arms and you had felt, for the first time since the previous morning, like a person rather than a slowly melting thing.

Then the guilt about the engine and the petrol had gotten to you, and you'd turned it off.

You’d gone back inside, and the house had received you like a warm, enthusiastic relative who didn't understand personal space.

You missed the air conditioning at work with a physical, specific ache.

The office; your shitty office.

Your carpet-cleaner-scented, recycled-air, fluorescent-lit office that you had never once felt grateful for had proper climate control.

The kind that kept the temperature at a steady, glorious, life-sustaining twenty-one degrees regardless of what the atmosphere was doing outside. You had sat at your desk on Friday and felt the cool air on your arms and thought: I could stay here. I could sleep under my desk. Nobody would know.

It was Saturday now. The office was closed.

You had done what you could.

Every window in the house was open. Not that it helped, the outside air arriving with all its own heat and adding it to the existing supply.

You had frozen water bottles and placed them in front of the fans.

You had three fans; the big tower one from the bedroom, the desk fan from the spare room, and the small ancient oscillating one from the kitchen cupboard that Simon had looked at once and said needed replacing and then not replaced it.

All of them were arranged in a semicircle around the sofa, all of them on their highest setting, all of them doing their absolute best and making almost no discernible difference.

You had taken off everything except a thin t-shirt and your underwear, because dignity was a winter luxury and it was now thirty-nine degrees.

You had laid down on the sofa.

At some point, despite the heat and the fans and the general ambient misery, sleep had found you anyway.

You were asleep when Simon came home.

He smelled the heat before he opened the door.

The specific warmth of a house that had been sun-facing all day.

The smell of warm cotton and the faint electrical hum of multiple fans working harder than they were designed to. He opened the front door and it was, demonstrably, warmer inside than it had been on the pavement.

The base had air conditioning. He'd been comfortable all day, which he now registered as a kind of guilt.

The sound of the fans reached him before he'd cleared the hallway — the tower unit's low roar, the desk fan's higher whirr, the ancient kitchen oscillator doing its arthritic best — and he followed the sound to the living room doorway and stopped.

You were asleep on the sofa.

The three fans were arranged around you in a formation that he recognised, immediately, as something you had put genuine tactical thought into.

Angles considered, coverage maximised, the frozen water bottles sweating in front of each one. Your approach to problems, applied to the problem of existing in now forty degree heat.

You were in a thin t-shirt and underwear.

He could see your hard nipples through the sweat soaked t-shirt. Your legs were bare. You'd pushed the square sofa pillows to the floor at some point, presumably because fabric was an enemy today, and you were lying directly on the cool surface of the sofa cushion cover with one arm over your face and the other hanging off the edge, your fingers barely touching the floor.

There was sweat beaded at your hairline.

Simon stood in the doorway for a moment.

He was a man who had operated in desert environments. He had been in places where the heat was a physical force, a thing you moved through rather than existed in, where the air itself seemed hostile. He had acclimatised to those temperatures with the methodical efficiency he brought to everything operationally necessary.

This was different. This was you, in your living room, in your thin t-shirt, flushed and damp-haired and entirely, completely unaware of him in the doorway.

He set his bag down quietly.

He went to the kitchen. Filling a glass with cold water, the coldest the tap would give, which was not very cold, but colder than the air. He put ice in it from the freezer, the last of it, the tray almost empty. He looked at the freezer and thought about what else was in there, what could help, what you would need when you woke up.

He came back to the living room doorway.

You hadn't moved. The ancient oscillating fan turned toward you and then away and then back, doing its inadequate best. The tower unit pushed air across your legs. A small tendril of hair was stuck to your cheek, held there by the sweat.

He crossed the room, crouching beside the sofa and he looked at you the way he looked at you when you didn't know he was looking. Like you hung the moon in the sky. Like you were the best thing to ever exist.

He reached out and moved the tendril of wet hair from your cheek. Gently.

You stirred.

Your arm came off your face. Your eyes opened, slowly, the way they did when sleep had been deep rather than light. You blinked and the first thing you saw was Simon Riley crouched beside your sofa in the fan-stirred heat of your living room, holding a glass of iced water and looking at you with that expression. The one he kept for you.

"Hi," you said. Your voice was thick with sleep.

"Hi, sunshine."

He held out the water. You sat up slowly, your body registering the heat again immediately, the brief mercy of sleep evaporating and took it. The glass was cold against your palms. You pressed it to your cheek before you drank it.

"How long have you been home?" you asked.

"Few minutes."

"It's horrible," you said, with great feeling. Not at him. At the general situation. At England and its thermal inadequacy and its forty degrees and its houses that were essentially slow cookers. "I sat in the car for forty-five minutes this afternoon."

"The air con," he said with quick understanding.

"Don't judge me."

"I'm not judging you. Could never judge you love," he said. He was doing the almost-smile. You were too warm and too newly awake to be properly affected by it, but the potential was noted.

"The shower doesn't even work anymore," you said. "I mean it works but by the time I'm dry I'm already…” you sigh, “it's pointless. It's completely pointless. The house is hotter than outside. I checked. I stood in the garden and then I came back inside and the garden was cooler. Our house is generating its own heat. We're basically a radiator."

"I'll look at getting a unit," he said. Meaning an air conditioning unit. Meaning he had already, somewhere in the last thirty seconds, decided this was a problem to be solved and had begun solving it.

"It'll be winter by the time it arrives," you said. Which was probably true. British logistics and British weather and the specific comedy of their intersection.

"Probably," he agreed eyes tracking you and your movements. Something you’d had to get used to when you moved in.

You drank the water. The ice clinked against the glass. Outside, through the open window, the light was going golden in the particular way of a summer evening that would have been beautiful if you had any capacity left for beautiful.

Simon was still crouched beside the sofa.

You were in a thin t-shirt and underwear and you had been asleep and you had sweat at your hairline and your cheek still held the cold print of the water glass and your hair was doing something you were fairly certain wasn't its best work.

He was looking at you like you were the best thing he'd seen all day.

Which, given that base had air conditioning and he'd been comfortable, probably said something.

"Simon," you raised a brow.

"Yeah." He replied tilting his head to the right slightly.

"It's too hot," you said.

"I know," he nodded.

"Whatever you're thinking," you spoke carefully, "it's too hot."

The almost-smile became the real one. The rare one. The one that you had spent years of your life engineering because it was so completely, unreasonably good.

"Cold shower," he then said.

You looked at him. "What?"

"Cold shower," he said again. He stood unfolding from the crouch with the ease of a man whose body did whatever he asked it to and he held out his hand. "Come on."

"I've had three," you sighed. "They don't work. By the time you dry off—"

"You won't need to dry off."

You looked at his hand. You looked at his face. The real smile still there, and turning into a smirk. Certain and warm and very, very aware of exactly what it was doing to you even in forty degree heat.

"Simon Riley," you scoffed.

"Sunshine," his eyes tracked yours and damn it you gave in.

You took his hand.

He pulled you up from the sofa in the way he did everything; without effort, without ceremony, your weight nothing to him. As soon as you stood the heat hit you immediately, the brief mercy of the fans falling away as you moved out of their range.

“I’m sweaty,” you said. A statement of fact. A mild protest.

“I know,” he nodded.

“And disgusting.”

“You’re not disgusting.” He frowned.

“Simon, I’ve been lying on that sofa since two o’clock—”

“Sunshine.” He looked at you. That look. “Come on.”

He kept your hand and he moved and you followed, through the living room and into the hall where the air was slightly cooler, marginally, just enough to notice, and up the stairs where it was warmer again because heat rose and your house was committed to the bit.

The bathroom was stifling. The small window was open and doing nothing.

The mirror above the sink had a faint fog to it that wasn’t steam, just the heat, the ambient, inescapable heat.

You caught your reflection briefly and confirmed that you looked exactly as you’d suspected: rumpled and hair doing several things at once.

Simon reached past you and turned the shower on. Cold. The pipes took a moment and then the water came through.

He looked at you.

“Still too hot?” he asked.

“Still too hot,” you confirmed.

He reached for the hem of your t-shirt and you let him pull it over your head. It pealed away from you like a second skin.

Simon repeated his actions with your underwear, getting down on his knees, still in his uniform, pulling the damp cotton down your legs and chucking them in the washing basket.

You squealed hands pushing against his buzzed head, since he was called to his last mission he had to cut it again, as he pushed his nose right against your crotch.

“Simon! That’s gross!” You whined. He slid his hands up your ass and squeezed to keep you in place as he breathed you in.

Something you’d learned about Simon, living with him for the past year, is that he is a dirty man. He loves your slick, and sweat and spit. Loves anything that comes from you. Loves your natural musk, as he so calls it.

But right now, you’d been sweating for the last six hours since your last shower at 2pm. You knew your musk was definitely stronger than usual.

Simon didn’t reply to you, he simply moved forward and licked a strip up your slit and over your clit.

“Si get off! That’s dirty!” You pushed at his head, he moved away before looking up at you with a grin.

“Taste so fucking good Sunshine.” He squeezed your ass one last time then stood grabbing your jaw and placing a kiss across your lips, “Get in the shower love.” He ordered before unbuttoning his lieutenant jacket.

You moved on autopilot the way you always did with Simon and stepped into the walk in shower. The cold water hitting your overheated skin in the best way. You closed your eyes and let your head tilt forward against the cool tiled wall.

Simon had told you he’d had to get special guys in to make this walk in shower bigger than standard size so he could be in it comfortably with you.

The water against your back felt like heaven after being in the hot heat of hell all day.

You said a little prayer in your head that tomorrow would be cooler, unrealistically that it would rain or snow. That there would be a blizzard. As long as this humid heat went away.

Simon’s large hands slid around your body, over your waist and hips, down your thighs and back up to your arms until a shiver ran down your body.

“My poor baby,” he cooed in your ear, “stuck in this heat all day. Should’ve come to my office. Could have had lunch together in my air conditioned office-“

“Fuck you.” You scoffed.

Simon’s fingers curled in your hair and pulled your head back against his chest, too tall for your head to touch his shoulder. “Then I would’ve bent you over my desk and made you cum on my cock.” He sucked your earlobe into his mouth.

“Si!” You gasp, his fingers moving over your clit now in slow circles.

“Would’ve looked so pretty with your cheek pressed against my cold metal desk. Pretty slut for me. Fuck I love this pussy Sunshine.” He groaned into your ear, kissing up your neck. “Was kept from me too long.”

Your eyes fluttered close, the way his fingers moved around your clit and the cold water trickling down your body had you moaning. Your hand pressing flat against the tiles in front of you.

“Please Si, want you.” You try to turn round but he keeps you in place hooking his arm around your waist.

“Want you to cum like this first Sunshine.” His chest rumbles as he speaks.

“Fuck.” You gasp, your chest jutting out as your back arched, hips rolling and jerking.

“Yeah that’s it. Ride my fingers lovie.” He pressed firmer against your clit, from tight circles to rubbing side to side quicker just the way he’d watched you do to yourself last week when he came home from base to find you touching yourself. He acted accordingly by wrapping his hand round his cock and telling you to keep going until you both finished.

“Pretty girl fucking herself on my hand.” He groaned, his cock pressing against your lower back. “Love you so damn much Sunshine, always look so pretty when you cum. Can’t believe I was deprived of it for so long.”

“Simon!” Your hand grips onto his arm, the one between your legs. Your stomach tightens and then it’s gone. You don’t even have time to mourn the loss because he’s turning you, picking you up and his cock slides home with one roll of his hips.

“Oh Si! Fuck,” you moan head falling back onto the tiles, your eyes rolling back with it.

At this angle he is hitting that rough spot inside you straight away and he knows it. Simon is fucking you on his cock, moving you up and down like you’re nothing. Like you weigh nothing. You’re a feather to him.

His so big, like a mammoth, he surrounds you. His scent is in your nose, his hands are on your body, his tongue is on your neck, cock is in your cunt and it’s all too much with the previous build up too.

You cum hard, white flashing in your eyes, the edges of your vision going blurry.

He fucks you through it, thrusting until he’s wrung out every last wave of pleasure, then and only then does he pull out turning you around pushing back in, fucking you from behind. Your tits pressed against the cold tiles. The cool water washing down your back and going right between where your bodies meet.

“Fuck Sunshine not gonna last long.” Simon groaned bringing his fingers back to your clit and rubbing vigorously, “cum for me again, one more time lovie.”

“Can’t! Oh fuck Simon I-“ you moaned loudly, the sound echoing off the bathroom walls.

“Yes you can. You can do it, fuck so tight around me,” he groaned his hips snapping faster, “you can do it Sunshine, just one more for me.” His grip on your hips tightening as he sped up making you clench around him, your stomach tightening. “Yes! That’s it Sunshine, go on love cum for me!” He moaned stilling as his orgasm hit, cum spilling inside you just as yours hit too.

Your mouth dropped open, pleasure washing over you. You panted, eyes closing while his fingers pulled the last few tremors from you.

“Cooler now?” He laughed pulling out and placing a kiss to your hair.

“Not even close.” You grinned.

—