wine and women and wonderful vices

Much older than you were led to believe in the feeble, short few days you had to come to terms with the betrothal.

Fear chokes you, holds your lungs in terrible, tight fists, as work roughened hands lift your veil.

This is how you first see him, cloaked in lace quickly scrounged by your mother for this moment, fingers trembling in white sleeves that don't belong to you. You have avoided looking at him, until this moment, unsteady gaze on his shoes instead, the hem of his trousers, afraid that you might lose your composure otherwise. And you will not give anyone the satisfaction of your tears.

The veil softens his features, rubs out some of the lines from his face like charcoal smudged on a page. You tilt your face up as he folds the fabric back. His movements are surprisingly gentle, careful not to brush your face or hair.

You keep your expression carefully composed, stony. He might be your father's friend and peer, but he is certainly older. His forehead is lined; crow's feet bracket his eyes. His beard is mostly gray, and it looks as though his dark hair is following suit. A scar bisects the bridge of his nose, others mark the high points in his cheeks, faint nicks that could have been from shaving or something else entirely. Brawling when he was a boy, maybe, falls taken while drunk.

It's hard for you to pass judgment since you don't know him at all.

Despite that, his shoulders are broad. His chest and arms are thick. He looks strong and capable, and that could bode very badly for you.

Even so, even so much older, he is handsome.

That handsomeness means nothing for you know nothing of him, of what kind of man he is, how he might treat you as a wife.

The chapel echoes around you, empty but for your father and the priest. White winter light spears down from a window set high in the stone wall, cold, high wind whistling just beyond.

His eyes travel over your face, cataloguing your features like you have been memorizing his. Your eyes meet his for the briefest of moments. The touch is not warm; his brows lower over a hardened gaze. He looks to the priest and nods, who begins the ceremony without preamble. Apparently your looks have been found suitable enough to go through with it.

You will yourself not to cry, to keep the bile rising up the back of your throat in check.

The words pass over you in a torrent, meaningless and loud, vows and promises of obedience and faithfulness, humility and deference. All, it seemed, directed at you. Your husband, you gather, would be your shepherd, your judge and jury, your king, dealing out punishment as he saw fit for the mistakes you were guaranteed to make.

Like a child. For obviously you, a girl, a woman, needed such guidance. Your family would.

Your stomach knots at the thought. Children, which meant you would have to endure the act you'd been accused of in the first place to land you here, in this quiet church on a blindingly cold Saturday morning. In shame, in relative secret.

"You have been ruined," your mother had said when you were told of the arrangement, spittle flying in her anger and disappointment. "We have no choice."

"Mother," you had pleaded, "It isn't true."

Her gaze had been cold and hard by necessity, steeling herself for the fate that awaited you. All because jealous girls had condemned you. "The mayor's daughter has spoken against you. Would accuse her of being a liar?"

Bad enough, to have relations out of wedlock; terrible, wretched, that you had done so where someone could see. That you had been caught in the snow, against the side of her father's stables with a farmhand. Loud and unseemly, and, worse, unabashed. The picture of untrammeled lust.

"I did not—" You had protested, throat thick with tears. "I haven't spoken more than a word to the boy." Boy, because he was a few years younger than you. He'd eagerly taken up the story from the mayor's daughter, something swaggering in his voice, falsely humbled by his mistake for which he would not be punished. The only reason you were not being forced to marry him, was his engagement to the daughter's best friend. Though, she had not looked happy to be taking on the embarrassment of being attached to a man with a wandering eyes, something mean had glittered in her face too. "I wasn't even anywhere near those stables—"

"Enough!" Her voice had rung loudly in the kitchen. "It's been settled. You will be grateful anyone would marry you with those accusations hanging over your head. It's this or-or," she stammers over the words, "destitution."

It doesn't matter. You know nothing you could say matters. It's the mayor's darling daughter's word, and all her friends', against yours, and you have spent too many years being untamed for it to matter. You should have been married years ago, instead you disappeared into the forests surrounding the village for days at a time, read when you should have been pursuing the womanly arts of cooking or mending or weaving, argued when you should have practiced humility and silence, skipped Sunday service. Worn trousers only once, because you had received lashes for that.

You were accused of waywardness or sharpness of tongue and ill discipline. Someone, the whispers said, should have beaten it out of you long ago; that a timely marriage and children could have mellowed you out.

Too late for all that now.

"An old friend of your father's has graciously agreed to help us," she'd said casually, bustling about the washing. "You're lucky he is in need of a wife."

It froze something within you. "Mother, please—"

"You should have been married years ago, anyway," she says briskly. "Your father should have never allowed you such wildness and freedom. It does not suit a lady. Look where it has landed you."

Her scorn hurt, and your venomous tongue retaliated. "But to a man I don't know? You would throw me to wolves for this? He might be a brute—"

"You could do with a hard man," she'd said, not looking at you. "It might finally teach you your place."

"I would rather die—" you'd all but choked.

"By all means," she'd all but snarled, throwing down the washing in her hands, "drown yourself in the river if you see fit to. It would spare us the shame."

She had refused to come to the chapel, though she'd helped you dress, done your hair, that morning. She walked as far as the gate at the end of the yard, and you'd sworn as you walked away, through the encroaching blizzard, that you'd heard her sob.

You suspect your father is only present because it is his duty to present you, and give you away. Since the accusation, he hasn't been able to look at you. His darling daughter he'd always been so kind to, so proud of despite the way people spoke of you, your cleverness.

The thought makes your throat ache, that they could so easily lose their only child.

A hand touches yours and you jump.

Your fiance slides his rough palm around your hand and grips it softly in his, squeezing. He says your name, a question in his voice, and you feel faint, dizzy.

The priest clears his throat and you sense that you've been absent from the room for longer than you meant to be, lingering in memories that already seem a lifetime ago. The vows are repeated again, droning and long.

His hand is warm on yours, your trembling, icy fingers.

You are thankful you don't have to repeat the vows verbatim. Saying his name would rot something inside you, falsehoods hidden inside promises. I take thee, Joel—

No. You couldn't bear it.

All you have to do is say—

"I do."

You aren't sure it's your voice but who else could have said it?

Far away inside yourself, you watch in horror as his mouth repeats the same.

"I do."

A deep voice, like his mouth is cave.

You brace yourself for his kiss, his touch, his head bowing over yours, but he only squeezes your hands again and releases you.

Like birds with broken wings, they fall limp at your sides.

The men gather themselves, leave you at the altar along as the descend from the pulpit and cross the chapel.

You hear warnings as you stand there alone in the pale shaft of light that grows fainter with each passing moment, the storm worsening outside, the sun already sinking on this terrible December day.

Headstrong, you hear of your character.

Willful.

Stubborn.

Needlessly reckless, sharp tongued, sly.

A tricky little thing.

"She may require a firm hand," the priest says, "I know her temperament well, have known her since she was a child. But she's a good girl and will learn her place, with the proper corrections. She can learn to be an obedient wife."

Your father doesn't dispute this as help from the church is offered, if needed, to assist you in learning the place and pace of an obedient, good wife. Spending time with godly women, instead of among the trees. "And mother," he adds. "Of course." He chuckles, "Winter is very long here. And she is nearly past childbearing years."

It's bullshit, of course.

It should not be possible for your stomach to knot itself more, but something sours and you have to press a hand to your stomach to keep the empty maw yawning open inside you at bay.

You still stand at the head of the church, listening to this, thinking that the icy water of the river might yet be an option. Maybe you can fling yourself off the wagon as you pass over a bridge.

The priest calls your name sharply, and makes an exaggerated gesture toward your husband. "Off with you, girl. Your husband is waiting or did you not notice?" His expression, when he turns back, says, see? this is the obstinacy I tell you of.

Joel doesn't comment and you can't yet read the expression on his face .

He pushes the church doors open and disappears into the worsening storm, the coming night.

You are not even afforded a wedding band.

.

.

.

Though his home is supposedly only a half day's ride west from your town, it is full dark by the time you arrive.

You have never really left your village before, and to you it seems a world away and terribly lonely. Isolated. A cottage at the edge of the world, hemmed in by bristling fir trees, whispering snow drifts.

You're glad to be there, if only to get out of the snow and wind, away from his body next to yours on the wagon bench that you want to curl into just to warm yourself for a moment.

Joel offers you a hand which you reluctantly take, helps you down from the wagon. He ushers you inside and says something about the horses before he disappears back into the storm, leaving you there alone. The space is small and cold, the hearth only ashes after his day away from home.

Though you're freezing, you can't make yourself stoke the fire.

Although, maybe if you did and he could warm himself, he might not want to warm himself with you. On the other hand, maybe warmth would encourage him, would tempt him.

In either case, you're a wife now and you watched your mother long enough to know what that means. Aside from the rest of it, he will expect cooking, a hot meal when he comes back inside.

But, the priest and your father had called you stubborn, and so you would be. You might as well be all the things they accused you of.

Something petulant pulses in your belly.

Swallowing your anxiety, you perch at the table and decide to wait. You don't want to serve him; you don't want to be his wife. And, besides, you don't know what provisions he has, where the larder is. He may beat you for poking around where you don't belong while trying to find it.

Every choice seems worse than the last, so you refuse to make one. You sit at the table, freezing slowly as the snow on your shoulders melts and bleeds into your coat. You feel a distance from yourself, as though you are literally frozen to the chair, mind pulling apart from your body like sticky caramel leaving looping threads behind. Time crawls by and you aren't sure how much of it passes before the door bangs inward in a swirl of white.

When he comes in, his eyes flick to the cold grate, to the empty stove. He does not berate you. He doesn't look at you at all.

Joel merely passes you at the table and builds up the fire, a process that takes longer than it should because the wood is wet. He hadn't any by the stove and had to bring some in, snow flecked and iced over.

You don't offer him any conversation, and he leaves you to your thoughts until quietly coaxed meek flames sputter into a roar.

It's only then that he speaks to you for the first time.

"You're cold. C'mon over here and warm up."

You're terrified to approach him, and hesitate to buy time. "You've been working so hard," you offer demurely as you can. These are some of the first full sentences you've spoken to him. "You should warm up."

He eyes you for a moment. "You're shiverin'."

There's no denying it. Tremors rack your shoulders, the thick wool of your coat soaked and weighed down.

You clear your throat and stand, steeling yourself to stand next to him at the grate, to surely have his hands press against you. You're his wife now, sold like a pig to slaughter, and he will want to touch you. You might as well stop being prudish about it and get over it. As far as he's been told, as far as your reputation is concerned, you are versed in this anyway.

You smooth out your skirts and approach.

To your surprise, he moves out of the way, giving you a wide berth to stand at the fire alone.

"You can take your coat off," he offers.

"Must I?" You ask, a tad snarkily, without thinking.

"No," he answers, and you swear his mustache twitches, like he is repressing a smile, "might help with the cold, though."

It weighs heavily on your shoulders, cold and wet. You know he's right but shedding it feels like peeling off your skin, all that's beneath is that thin, hurried, second-hand wedding dress.

Even as unconventional a girl as you were, as opinionated and strong willed, you'd always dreamed of a wedding. A love match, in a dress sown by your mother's hands, witnessed by your friends and family, merriment, so many flowers you could drown in them. Instead, this. A fist closes tightly around your heart, squeezes until it feel like something might pop.

Joel opens cabinets, pulls out provisions you hadn't dared to look for earlier. His hands are rough and red from the cold, the brutal weather. The knobs of his knuckles are swollen. You sense he's keeping his back to you, moving slowly, so that you can observe him uninterrupted. Snow is peppered over his shoulders and hair, still unmelted for how cold the room is.

Despite it all, you find you'd like to touch that fine snow, curl a lick of dark hair around your finger just to see if it was as soft as it looked.

You unfasten the buttons and let the coat slip down your shoulders. The warmth is sudden and hot against your back through the thin material of the dress. You turn into it and close your eyes, try to imagine you're by the hearth at home, flames flicking hungrily behind your eyelids.

Joel clears his throat, nearer than you expect, and you start. "I'll hang that up to dry," he says, holding out a hand. "You hungry?"

You clutch the coat to your chest before releasing it to him, careful not to touch his hand. "No," you answer, sure that putting anything in your body would come straight back up. "But please, you should sit," you plead. You hate how simpering you sound, your voice an unrecognizably anxious animal in your throat. But he wields so much power over you, will always now, and should be decide you weren't fit to be his wife he could cast you out, or correct you as he saw fit. You are now this, forever. Nothing but this. "I'm your wife," you continue, the word hot and dry in your mouth, "and it's my duty. Let me fix something for you. I'm a decent cook."

You are a terrible cook. You never had the patience, which had made your mother click her tongue. But there are a couple things you learned to make.

Joel, to your surprise, waves you down, after hanging your coat on a hook by the door. "That's all right. I've been feedin' myself for awhile; one more night won't hurt nothin'."

You hover awkwardly and only sit when he insists that you do, warming yourself by the hearth while he rummages around.

The wind moans outside, rattles the shutters and the panes of glass in their window frames. The front door creaks, like someone is leaning on it, trying to get in.

The sounds are lonely but you don't break the silence of his quick dinner.

He clears the table and then sets about filling a warming plate with hot coal from the grate.

You heart stutters a nervous tattoo in your chest when he disappears with it through a door behind you. Your mind had skimmed over it, not let you contemplate where it might lead.

All the stories you've heard from the many girls that married before you told of pain, that it was just something you endured for your husband's pleasure. It feels okay, you'd heard from one blushing friend, whispering just outside the belfry on summer afternoon, once you get used to it. But it's awful to start.

It does not help matters, that your mother made the man out to be a brute, that he might be the man to cure you of your willful ways.

What wilfulness, you have to wonder.

You simply did as you pleased, which, you suppose was the point. Women were to be obedient and meek, led not leaders. You took your own counsel, spoke your mind. Look where that had landed you. With the mean daughter of the mayor jealous and telling tales of all that time you spent alone.

It had all ended with a husband twice your age, that you did not know, that might be a strict disciplinarian. Your world had always been small, but you were free to roam it. Now it has shrunken to the size of a pin. To this room and this man and nothing more.

And, you are terribly afraid of violence.

Your parents were never strict with you, had hardly ever used corporal punished. You don't know how to endure that kind of pain. Better to be cautious for now, follow each of his whims, bow to any request or demand. You can push later, find the weak spots later, you only have to bear him for now.

Joel returns twice for more pans of coal, lids snapping closed with a metallic clang, before he carries your little suitcase through.

You stand when he gestures you within.

The room is spare and clean, and you have to tramp down the instinct to turn and run, fling yourself into the snow and run until your legs gave out.

The door closes behind you with a soft snick. To contain the heat of the room, you think desperately.

Something rustles and you turn to find him undressing.

You have never seen a man's nude body before, aside from the time you and a friend has spied on boys at the river once when you were young, seeing nothing but murky water and thin, veiny chests, and the curious part of you just wants to watch, to discover it. Instead, you reach for the buttons on your dress and follow suit, fingers shaking.

It seems odd, you think, that he isn't touching you, tugging the fabric loose himself, but maybe this is how it's done. Maybe this is how he does it. Perhaps you should be helping him.

You glance up to find him still not looking at you, redressing in warm underclothes.

You falter, unsure, and let the buttons hang loose at your chest.

The uncertainty is making you feel like a caged animal.

What does he want with you? You can take it into your own hands.

They had called you brave and determined, let that be true.

You let the dress slip off your shoulders and pool on the floor. You step out of the ring of fabric, approach him slowly, presenting yourself to him in your underthings, shoulders bare, nipples perking against the fabric in the bone-deep cold.

His eyes travel the length of your body, eyes eventually landing on yours.

His gaze doesn't seem aggressive, but men are good at hiding it when they liked to. Maybe you're seeing what you need to, to reach for his hands.

Joel curls one hand around both of your wrists, stops the trajectory of your hands toward his chest. "We don't have to."

A confused combination of rejection and relief rushes through you. "I'm your wife. You don't want to have me?"

He exhales, his warm breath ghosting over your lips. "It ain't that. I know you didn't choose to marry an old man," he says, tongue soaked with a bitterness turned inward. He releases your hands, steps back. "I'm sorry I don't have nowhere else for ya to sleep."

"Oh," you murmur, a tight fist clenching around your throat.

You had been prepared for anything but consideration, but this.

None of this is how you imagined marriage, a husband, this long night.

He nods, doesn't seem to expect you to say anything else. You close your hands around one of his. "Husband," you say softly, saying his name feels too intimate. "I can't bear the uncertainty. Please, I would rather have it done."

Joel watches you, his eyes flicking between both of yours. He covers your hands with his free hand and pushes them down. "Nothin' to be uncertain about. I won't touch you."

He moves away, seeming to mean what he said.

The candles are blown out, the room plunged into darkness and you settle in the blissfully warm bed together, a wide space between your bodies.

The coverlet smells of sweet summer hay, at odds with the chill in the room, freezing your nose. It smells of something deeper too, a heady scent of salt and skin and cotton.

You don't dare sleep, despite his words and supposed kindness.

It could be a trick, a test, something to make you loosen your guard, for you to fall asleep only to wake with those rough hands on your body, pulling you apart in ways you can only guess at.

You lie in the dark, missing something you never even really had.

His breathing evens and deepens in sleep, but adrenaline and distrust and worry won't let you follow. You do not want to follow. You watch his shoulders lift through the dark, the line of his nose, the part of his chapped lips.

Eventually the world lightens to a gray muteness beyond the shuttered windows, and only then do you let yourself cry.

Mourning, but relief, too, that at least the first night is over.

.

.

.

While the blizzard abates over the next few days, the snow does not.

It continues down day after day, making the already perilous, winter weathered roads, completely impassable. You are stuck, trapped, an animal with it's foot caught in a snare.

For the first three days, you don't sleep at all, forcing yourself to stay awake and vigilant by any means, pinching your skin until you bled to forego sleep. But eventually exhaustion forces you to, shepherds you into dreams where it's warm, there are no men, no churches or mayor's daughters, and you walk unmolested through green forests alone, only a leather-bound notebook and leaping fish for company.

You wake and mourn something that will never be.

The land is beautiful, at least, iced white like the little cakes you sometimes saw in the baker's window just down the road from your home, but brutal and harsh, unforgiving.

You become aquatinted with Joel's house and the keeping of it, and feel quietly relived when he spends most of the day tending to the land, the horses, the other animals in the stables you've yet to see. You sense that he doesn't know what to make you of either, what to do with you, how to interact with you, how to fit together now that you're condemned to be stuck that way.

Loneliness infects you like a sickness, an unattractive melancholia that's only broken in the evenings when you warm yourself at the grate and eat dinner with Joel. Even though you don't speak the company is welcome, just the presence of him buoys you a little, shields you from the cold. Your fears that he would be a terror to you pass slowly, though you haven't had the opportunity to do something that might require his retributive, readjusting hand, stuck inside as you are.

A guiding hand, the priest would call it, towards the just path of being a good wife.

You mend clothes, cook to the best of your ability, sweep and scrub and wash until your hands are raw and stinging from the pervasive cold. You yearn to wander as you used to, to walk among the swaying, frozen trees, to at least go outside. You tell yourself that you are working toward asking him, that you won't neglect tasks for it.

As long and terribly lonely as the days are, the nights are worse. You ache with homesickness and betrayal. You are without even the comfort of your own things, since passing the roads are impossible, you only have the small suitcase you'd been able to carry. Your father had been set to deliver your things the next day. You have no way of knowing if he even attempted the journey.

A different feeling has joined that cacophony of confused familial hurt, something like lust and shame.

Joel washes before bed at the basin on the dresser, and you are often subject to this display though he turns his back to you. You are the one to lie out the cloth, the soap, and warm the water he uses to wash away the stink of the stables. Musky leather and hay and heady sweat, replaced with the clean scent of soap and skin. Often, water drips down his broad shoulders, pools at the base of his spine, curves over the thick, twisting muscle in his biceps and forearms.

He is no boy at a river, but neither is he your contemporary. His chest hair is gray as the hair of his beard, wrinkles tucked into curious corners of his body. It fascinates you, so different from your own body.

Betrayal of yourself pulses between your thighs, an ache that you want to reach beneath the coverlet and touch away, though you don't dare.

Each night, you expect to be the one where he reaches for you, claims you and seals your marriage but he never does.

You remember your friend's words. It would hurt and then be okay. You want to know for yourself what okay feels like.

It makes you wonder what it would be like, a curious daydream.

One horrible night, your usual dream of freedom morphs into that want, only it's not your hand massaging away the want, but Joel's. Those rough, broad fingers between your legs. You had to roll out of bed and gulp down water at the pitcher in the corner of the room, feeling stupid and wretched. Silly, even. For what would he get out of touching you there? Nothing, just your own desire run amok.

The closest you get to touching him, is bandaging his cold ruined hands, standing between his legs where he sits at the table, looking and not looking at him, his eyes raking over you. He had said thank you so earnestly, it had made your face warm.

Weeks pass into more than a month and a half in this way, one cold, dark day bleeding into the next, the soft humiliation of feeling unwelcome and unwanted and terribly alone, like a butterfly with it's wings pinned. For all your intrigue, he seems profoundly uninterested in you. He leaves you to your own mind, to your own lonesomeness. You are, maybe, just a girl that did his cooking.

You long to stretch your legs, take a walk, explore uninterrupted as you used to, report what you saw in the journal you haven't dared to take out in front of Joel, buried in your case beneath your clothes. You're already trapped, what if he didn't like you to write? Trapped by body and mind might really drive you to drown yourself in a river or go seeking a length of rope.

Things change when he finds you crying one evening, from the ache in your chest, from the caged wounded-ness, from the fear that still occasionally lurched to the front of your mind, for all the cruelties he could inflict so suddenly, if he chose.

You don't dry your eyes quickly enough and the next sleepy afternoon, eyes drooping from boredom, Joel slips inside in a burst of cold, snow peppered in his hair. Before you have the chance to offer him supper from the stove, he's saying your name and giving you pause.

"You want to come out to the stables? Maybe it'd do you good to get out of this house." If you didn't know better, you'd say he sounds worried.

"Are you—"

"I ain't puttin' you to work just yet," he says with a smile. It's a joke, and you find it disarming. "Just to stretch your legs. See another living thing that ain't me."

"Yes, okay," you agree, maybe too quickly and eagerly, because he laughs. You let him hold out your coat so you can slip your arms into the sleeves.

Joel holds the door open and offers his arm for you to balance on as you cross together through the thick icy drifts of snow to the stables. His arm is sturdy and strong beneath your fingers, warm even through all the layers you're both wearing. Fat flakes of snow sticks to your lashes, white flurries drowning your vision of Joel. His strong jaw, the tight squint of his eyes against the white glare of the world.

You glance away, feel that tightness bloom in your belly.

It feels good to walk, to cross a distance instead of pacing the cottage floor in circles all day long. He pulls back the stable door. It's surprisingly warm within, from the combined heat of the animals' bodies and whatever work he'd been sweating over. There are two horses and a cow, a smattering of chickens with their own little coop at the back.

You can't help but rush to them, patting noses, feeling hot breath on your face. The chickens squawk something terrible, but a spotted one rubs against your leg and let's you bend at the waist to pet it.

Joel fiddles around at a bench in the corner, breath puffing before his face. You see the flash of a pairing knife, wood shavings fluttering to the ground.

You tentatively creep closer, trying to peer over his shoulder at what he might be making. You would have never guessed he was creative.

"We only have goats," you say as you stroke the face of the mare whose stall is nearest Joel, as near as you can get without being obvious. "Very mean and terribly stubborn."

He chuckles, puts down his work and leans over the side of the stall. "Well, none a' those here."

It's silent for a long time, the plunk of snow against the roof, the quiet sound of the animals breathing. Joel clears his throat awkwardly after awhile and you stiffen. "Listen, I know we ain't had the best start with the weather and all. That and I'm not exactly the husband anyone looks for."

You turn to him, meeting his eyes, and feel something between you soften. "You've been kind to me. Kinder than I deserve," you answer. "Considering that marrying me will have hurt your reputation."

You wonder what he was promised in return for this. You assumed it was a child, that he was getting older and wanted to continue his line and so needed a young wife. But, he hasn't attempted to touch you at all.

"Ain't really got a reputation to speak of anyway," he chuckles. "Never cared about it neither."

How you wish you had the luxury of not caring about it. You glance away, smooth your fingers down the horse's freckled nose. "Were you ever married before?"

"Once," he answers. "Long time ago."

"When did she die?"

Joel shifts. "Hasn't," he grunts. "Far as I know. One mornin' she was gone, never came home."

You feel your eyes go wide. "Oh. I didn't know."

A runaway wife.

A vast thing you did not know possible.

"It's all right." He shakes his head. "I'm guess I'm askin' what I can do to help you feel better about this whole mess. I shouldn't have—" he waves a hand toward the direction of the house, "just left you on your own for so long. In the house. I figured it was better. That you might not. . ." He doesn't continue and you don't need him too.

He thought he was making you more comfortable, that you wouldn't have liked his company.

You don't correct him, because it's true. When you first arrived it was very true.

"Oh." You think for a long moment, of all the silence and tiptoeing around each other. Maybe there's a better way than that, if not the way of a married couple. "They lied about me, you know. The mayor's daughter and her friends and that boy. I didn't do anything wrong."

He looks a little embarrassed to be hearing talk of your supposed sin of the flesh so bluntly. "I figured," he answers, rubbing his chin.

You blink. "You did?" He nods and you continue. "She was jealous, I think, that I did as I pleased. I guess that's what could help me." You hurry to continue, because he'd only just told you of his first wife disappearing without a trace. "Of course, I would keep up with the work, and I can help here, too," you gesture around. "I'd like to help with the animals. . .But I'd like to roam, too."

He thinks on it for a long minute. "I'd maybe even appreciate work out here more. I can milk the cow, if it's anything like milking a goat. I can chop wood. If you'd allow it."

That earns you a chuckle. "You want to chop wood?" He asks, a little amused.

"If you'd allow it," you cast your eyes down. "Of course I don't want to disobey you."

You aren't expecting him to take your hand and jump when he does. You'd both removed your gloves when you entered the barn and his skin is warm and calloused against your own.

His jaw works as he contemplates you, a fascination in his eyes. "Forget all that nonsense about obeying and whatever else that priest was goin' on about." He shakes his head, "I'm too old to think any of it means anything."

You aren't sure what he means by that, but nod all the same.

"So, how 'bout this. We'll start takin' it all on together. I did my own damn housework for years so I ain't completely useless. And you can help chop wood, if it suits you to."

It sounds too good, so you contain your enthusiasm and nod. "A fine idea. We might know each other better then, to spend some time togeher."

He nods, and something pink rises in his cheeks. "And," he shuffles his feet, squeezes your hand in both of his. "that's enough. Understand? You're might be my wife, but I'm no fool."

You understand what he means. That this thing is more partnership than relationship. It soothes you, if it also disappoints you a little. All those parts of him you think of exploring, suddenly out of reach.

"I understand."

"Good, come spring, when it's warmer, we'll figure something better for sleepin'."

You nod and then dare to ask, "And wandering? If the work is finished and I'd like to walk alone?"

He touches your cheek for the first time, the barest brush of his fingers, a tentative affection. "Always home before dark. That's all I ask."

"I can do that." You cradle the hand that had touched your face against the mare's stall, daring to hope.

You feel like you can breathe for the first time since the mayor's daughter stood and pointed her finger at you in church all those weeks ago.

.

.

.

Spring comes late in the year this far north.

The roads turn to mud that sticks the horses' hooves in place, bogs down the wagon.

Joel watches you lift the ax above your head and bring it neatly down on the splint of wood balanced on the stump in front of you, just the way he'd shown you months ago, in the dead of that terrible winter. If you wanted to chop firewood, who was he to tell you not to?

The shawl around your shoulders flutters in the breeze as you retrieve the fallen logs, reveals the strength in your forearms.

He glances away. You are the most unsettlingly pretty creature he's ever set eyes on, and much too young for him. Much too good for him, much too good for anyone. All the warnings he'd been given on your temperament had sounded only like compliments to him, and he'd been proven right. And now that you'd loosened, he appreciates your unflinching opinions, your sharp pointed tongue.

And, Joel doesn't necessarily mind being bossed all that much. You're usually right, anyway.

If he is worried sick right up until the moment when you return to the cottage when you roam about, no one is the wiser of it. You always return before dark, and he never tells you not to go.

Some creatures just didn't need caging; they'd come home all on their own if you let them.

Preventing you from walking alone, taking time to yourself to explore would be akin to clipping a bird's wings. He's sorry for all those weeks at the start when he left you inside, hadn't realized you thought you couldn't leave the cottage, not even just outside.

It's still cold and your breath unspools in front of you in a pale cloud as you work, sweating and breathing hard through your teeth.

He feels a longing for you that he probably shouldn't. He had made a promise to you and he intended to keep it, wife or not. You content now, at ease, in his presence. The longer he keeps that vow as the days grow longer, the more you'll settle.

Soon, the roads will clear and you can go into the village for supplies that are bitterly needed after such a long winter. He thinks you'll like the town, less haughty and judgemental than the one you grew up in.

The afternoon sun dapples over your skin, makes the sweat on your brow, at the base of your throat, shimmer. He glances away, his thoughts already spiraling toward what you will smell like that evening, coated in a day's hard work. Lying beside you each night in bed is a sweet, unending torture. You dream often, murmuring in your sleep, occasionally pierced with a cry, sometimes a grunt and moan. Mouth parted, chest heaving. He wonders what or who you dream of, and goes to great pains to hide how hard he often is in the morning.

It feels sort of like a betrayal, how quickly his mind conjures up your bare skin, waiting and open, unfolding just for him, the imagined taste of you on his tongue, the plush part of your lips, little pink tongue pressing against your teeth.

He could only endure it. Once summer came, he might be able to take care of it elsewhere and not risk you overhearing, or worse, catching him.

Aside from the torture of sleep, everything else is fine. You're clever and quick; a better chess player than him by far. You best him nearly every evening you plat. You write and draw in a little notebook that you once squirreled away like he might take it. Now, you leave it on the table, let him read little bits of stories, thumb through your drawings of animals you come across. You only have to hear something once to be able to repeat it verbatim, reciting poetry or stories not in your notebook for him when requested.

You've improved his life, the cottage and farm, in way he wouldn't have been able to picture before. This isn't what your father had meant when he came begging him to marry you and save their reputation, said Joel could use a woman's touch, a kind of helper.

It was bullshit, but maybe the loneliness finally got the better of him. After his wife disappeared, he hadn't thought of remarrying. Clearly he's the type you leave.

He continues watching you, brushing the mare, when the sound of an approaching wagon meets his ears. Joel glances up to find the ax abandoned against the stump, you hurrying quickly toward him in the mouth of the open stable.

"Someone's coming," you say, brow creased with worry, reaching for his sleeve. "Joel, I thought the roads were too—"

"Me too," he answers, checking the revolver at his hip. "Let's see who it is." He pushes his hand against your spine and feels your body loosen as you walk together toward the distant road.

The wagon plodding up the road eventually pulls to a muddy stop just at the fence line, a man jumping down from the driver's seat. "Father," he hears you murmur, before starting across the yard without waiting for him.

Joel follows, watches his old friend wrap an arm around you, murmuring your mother's sent greetings. You face folds at the mention of your mother, but you brighten quickly.

Joel hadn't even known your father had a daughter, until he appeared like a wraith at the edge of his land all those months ago, begging a favor.

Joel had told you of his own daughter one late evening when neither of you could sleep. Feeling your comforting warm attention across the mattress as he spoke to the dark ceiling. How his wife leaving, had also been a mother leaving.

Sarah had died very, very young, and though he'd never know for certain, he can't imagine selling her off the way your father had you. A wad of cash offered like you were goods to be traded in service of their name. It had soured his opinion of the man, and any leftover good will he felt toward him when they were younger.

Soiled, now that Joel was a hypocrite, finding comfort, among other feelings, in you, even if you were his wife. You're young, and you've placed immeasurable trust in him that he'd had to very carefully earn.

Joel joins you and shakes your father's well meaning hand as you say, "Stay for dinner, please. We'd love to have you and hear any news from town. We've been alone all winter."

"Of course," he answers jovially, glancing over you. "I thought for sure you'd have a spring chicken on the way, my dear."

It takes you a long moment to realize what he's getting at. A complicated knot of feelings writhes over your face before hurt dominates.

He clearly expected to find you pregnant.

You smile and don't answer, leading them toward the house instead.

.

.

.

The afternoon air is already below freezing again when your father finally leaves, wagon disappearing back down the road, unloaded of your meager things that you haven't missed in months. An odd anxiety has taken hold of you, and though you have too many chores to get done, you tell Joel you're going on a walk and leave without waiting for an answer.

You feel like a lamb put out to slaughter, though what else should your father have expected than to find you a pregnant wife, muted and different than you had been before marriage. It stings that he hadn't even asked after your well being, if Joel was treating you well, was good to you. It didn't matter you suppose, you aren't his problem, and if your husband saw fit to be cruel to you, that was that man's right.

He'd sat at the table and talked only to Joel where once he used to look to you, find pride in his clever daughter's conversation.

Now, you are silent, talked about like you aren't present, about how well you are or aren't fulfilling wifely duties. Clearly you'd failed in at least one respect since you were not pregnant. Never would he guess that Joel had never even stuck you, left the marriage unconsummated. It makes you feel adrift, all the easier to discard, since he could easily nullify the marriage for something like that.

You couldn't read how Joel felt about the whole thing as your father threw out childhood anecdotes about your petulance and reluctance to learn from your mother without care.

Humiliating. It made you seem frivolous and silly. Worse, many times over he implied thanks to Joel for the purchase of damaged goods, your supposed fling with the farmhand referenced repeatedly and only thinly veiled by polite convention.

Joel, apparently a damned martyr for marrying you. He was suffering so greatly by taking your hand in marriage.

Though, your father had said, wiping his chin of the grease spilling down it, good to have a woman's touch, as I told you before. It's no good for a man to take on duties of the home, or be, ah, alone all the time. I don't know how you stood to be without a wife for so many years.

It was a humiliating, punishing few hours. Clearly, your family had not thought of you beyond gladness that your indiscretion no long sullied their name.

You feel foolish too, for the affection you feel for Joel. When you are only a little help mate to him. That is why he draws no closer, doesn't really want to know you as a husband would know you.

You walk and walk, head down, alternating between seething rage and despair in turns. You don't notice the shadows creeping in at the edges of your vision, how quickly the sun has sunk behind the mountains. A horrible shame traces up your spine, making you shiver.

The world is still icy and cold, snowbanks piled high between muddy ruts cut into the earth. You don't notice how close you've strayed to the rushing creek, swollen with melted snow runoff spilling down the mountainside. Your boot catches on the edge of a slick stone.

You grasp at a low hanging tree branch to keep upright but fall into the water heavily, spluttering as it sweeps you into it's rush. Your lungs feel frozen as you gasp and flail for anything to find purchase on. All those times you thought of throwing yourself to a river's mercy, here was God doing it for you, for your ungrateful hardness, a nasty little girl that wanted too much and had no good sense.

Maybe God thought you had sex with that farmhand too.

Or maybe it was the sins of the flesh you imagined with a husband that did not return your desire.

It's almost easy to stop fighting the current and let it drag you down instead. You can't swim and maybe this is fate. No one would miss you, people would sigh and say maybe it was the most decent thing to happen to you, a blight scorched off the town's good name.

The water closes over your head, darkness swims at the corners of your vision.

You aren't sure how long you're under when something hard catches under your elbow, hauls you coughing and spluttering to shore.

A face looms above yours as you try to draw breath into your frozen lungs, coughing until you turn on your side and throw up, first water and then the little dinner you'd been able to stomach. "Breathe," a voice murmurs, which you only belatedly connect to Joel. Then, angrier, "What the hell were you thinkin'?"

You can't answer him just yet, feeling faint, still hiccoughing into the dirt, lungs still spasming from the shock of the cold water.

"Before dark," he growls suddenly when you finally manage to suck in a full breath of night air. "Come home before dark. That is the one goddamn thing I asked from you."

A new fear steals into you, that you will finally find out what happens when you disobey, and on the heels of your father, Joel's good friend, reminding him that you were dirty and used, beneath him in almost every way.

You cower, waiting for a blow on the black soil of the creek bank. "Joel, please, I'm sorry—" The word sicks in your graveled voice.

It doesn't come right then. Instead, his arms fit beneath your legs, around your back, and lifts you from the ground. "Jesus, sweetheart, no—I got you," he says softly. "Just breathe."

"Joel—"

"'s all right, now."

"Please don't—"

"We're just goin' home, or you'll freeze to death."

Your mind sways in and out of consciousness as he walks, dark branches wheeling above your head in a dark tangle, the world silent and near pitch black by the time you return to the cottage.

He sets you on your feet in the bedroom, yanks your coat down your arms. "Help me here, darlin'," he says, his voice softly desperate, that sweet little pet name a suspected accident. "You might lose fingers if you don't."

You help him wrestle with the fastenings of your clothes. "I didn't mean to."

"I know."

Only a muted embarrassment and helplessness reaches your mind, that he is seeing you nearly naked for the first time like this. His hands seem far away.

Joel tugs the blankets around your shoulders and hastily fills a pan with coal from the hearth. "Too damn cold," he mutters, and you wonder how long and far you'd gone if the fire from dinner was already spent. Distantly, you realize he is peeling himself out of his own clothes. "You'll get warmer faster," he explains. You nod, feeling very tired. "Don't close your eyes," he says, voice suddenly harsh. "Keep lookin' at me."

You struggle to follow his command, watching as so much skin is revealed, then pressed against yours.

His body is so hot, when your skin touches his, that it feels like being set aflame, touched by a scorching fire.

You whimper and he shushes you, presses you closer, head tucked beneath his chin. "You're all right," he murmurs, though it sounds as though he is trying desperately to convince himself. "You'll be all right, sweetheart."

For a long while he holds you in silence, scratchy lips against your forehead, beard pressed against your temple. You feel every part of him pressed against every part of you, the hair on his legs and chest, the muscle of his biceps and forearms, chest and collarbones and feet. The first time his hands are on you this way, because you'd been a little too emotional and nearly drowned yourself.

His broad palms splay over your spine, cradling you as shivers start to rack your body again. You hadn't realized they had stopped.

A relieved sigh climbs out of his throat.

"Were you trying to leave?"

You don't know how he means it, like his first wife had, or like you were trying to die. "No," you answer, "No, I fell in. I was upset." Your teeth chatter, click together so violently you're afraid you might bite your tongue. "I didn't realize how late it was. I'm sorry, Joel."

"Scared me, is all."

"I'm sorry," you whisper against his throat. "For all of it. I'm so ashamed."

He shakes his head. "Should be your father that's ashamed."

"I'm being punished," you continue. "For something I did not do."

Joel's hand pauses in its path down your spine, for just a moment. "Yeah," he agrees quietly. "I'm sorry for it."

"Not you," you nest down against him. Maybe if you were more coherent, you'd feel nervous about it, but it just feels good, his arms around you, his body against yours, finally. "I don't mean you, Joel. You are not my punishment."

"All right now," he mutters. "Enough a' that."

You are sure you move first, though if asked, Joel will say he did. You tilt your chin up and press your cold mouth to his.

Stolen little girlhood kisses amount to nothing compared to this. His heavy hands, his scratchy cheeks against yours. Full and warm blooded. Cradling and caressing and sighing just like you. His breath is yours.

It's all consuming, like a star parting the night sky.

.

.

.

Summer arrives quietly, softly.

You visit your family as a married couple, and Joel holds your hand through the Sunday church service you attend together even though some of the congregants eye you with stony, judgemental stares. You take pleasure in the burning gaze of those girls on you, angry that you don't seem uncomfortable with the man they'd indirectly sentenced you to.

As quickly as is possible, you leave again. It's hard to be there, among the stares but also among a village that used to be your home.

"Sure you wanna go so quick?"

"Yes, Joel."

He mulls it over, hands on his hips.

"What?" It occurs to you that maybe he isn't ready to leave. He has no family; you've only spoken to each other for months and months aside from that visit from your father and once from Joel's brother, who had been taken by surprise at your presence. Maybe he was craving company other than your own. "Would you like to stay longer?"

"No, I don't want you to feel like we're in any rush to get back."

You blink, taken aback. "I don't. I'd like to. . .go home."

His face softens. "All right, girl. Let's get a move on then." Joel helps you onto the wagon bench and starts to climb up when the priest, who Joel had managed to avoid earlier, passes by your parents' house.

"Mr. Miller! A moment?"

"What's he want, I wonder?" He asks, leaning his arms against the side of the wagon, his face close to yours. "I ain't his parishioner. Technically."

You roll your eyes. "Go see what he'd like," you say tenderly, touching his cheek just to nettle the other man. Indecent touching! You can hear the sermon already forming. Lusts of the flesh! Good thing you no longer attend to this town's church and will not have to hear it.

"Yes, ma'am."

Despite the intimacy, he has not touched you, not really, since that day you nearly drowned. You long for him to kiss you again, just once, but fear it may have been an accident borne of your stupidity, his fear of loss.

Joel steps back down from the wagon and approaches. You watch the robin's egg sky instead of the men, counting the crowding of little white puffs on the horizon, pretending that you can't hear every word being spoken, of being tamed, cowed, broken. How is he faring with his new wife?

You mean to hear Joel's answer, but your mother is suddenly laboring onto the wagon bench beside you. You had not heard her approaching and had avoided speaking to her at church and lunch, Joel dutifully standing between you.

"We didn't get a chance to speak."

"Should I have something to say to you?"

You mother catches up your hand, holds it between both of hers. "I didn't want to send you away."

"And yet you did, for something you know I did not do. To a man you knew nothing of."

She huffs. "What's done is done. We did it to protect you, to save your name." You nod and tug your hand away. "Never mind all that," she says gently. "Tell me, how is he as a man? Does he treat you well?"

"I think," you start, watching Joel and the priest. "He might be the best man I've ever known."

She peers at you curiously. "He doesn't hurt you?"

"It would be much too late for your guilt if he did," you answer, "but no, he doesn't."

"You listen to him." Your mother sounds amazed.

"He listens to me. Let's me be." You shrug, "So I do the same."

She seems bewildered by that, that by not holding you down, forcing you to something else, you were better for it.

Your mother doesn't get to give an answer, because Joel is approaching.

She kisses you goodbye and he helps her down from the wagon. "So," you say when the village is finally behind you. "What did you tell the Father? How did you break my restless spirit?"

He chuckles. "I told him there wasn't anything to break."

It warms you to think he believes it. "Even when I fall into creeks in the cold?"

"I think your spirit is what kept you from drownin' so—"

"Oh, ha ha, very funny."

You want to lean into him, but wait until you're on the final stretch of dusty road when the evening sky is beginning to darken at the edges to do so, heavy against his shoulder.

You work together to curry the horses and stable them for the night, exhaustion aching in your bones by the time you turn in. Summer is as bright as winter is dark, and the sky is only just starting to darken, blushing pinks and smouldering orange over the trees.

Joel is saying something about a book, something about chess. He talks so much, now. Even when he's quiet, you know the language of him.

"Why don't you kiss me again?"

He blinks and meets your gaze, looking like a fish out of water. "I, uh—"

"If the first time was a mistake," you say. "It doesn't offend me. I like things as they are."

He clears his throat and bows his head, approaches you slowly, all the time looking down at his feet, brows tilted together. "I didn't mean for it to go like that," he admits. "That's true."

You meant it when you said you like things as they are, but disappointment still burns hot that his affection had been unintentional. "Okay," you agree when he stops in front of you. "That's just fine."

He shakes his head. "It ain't that I don't want that. But I promised you, I wouldn't. Our, uh, marriage vows didn't mean shit. But that, sweetheart, it meant something. I meant it."

"And if I said I wanted it?"

"You don't need to feel like you have to," he says quietly but firmly. "I wouldn't be able to stomach it."

You push your palm against his cheek, stand nearly chest to chest with him. "You have never made me feel like I needed to do or be anything at all for you." You lean against him, "I'd like it if you kissed me. And if, um, you'd like to—" Long held shame, years of hearing about how women were lustful temptresses comes creeping in. "Well, the rest of it—"

"If I'd like to what?" He teases, something wicked in the grin that pulls at the corners of his mouth. "Touch you?"

"I suppose," you say haughtily, flustered.

"Where?" His hot hands press to your sides, over the curves of your hips where no one has ever touched before. You startle and fall against him, your skin alive beneath his hands. "Here?"

You cover his hands, guide them boldly over your body, to your ass and waist and just beneath your breasts, back down to your hips. You lean in so your mouth just brushes his. "You should make more vows to me. New ones that say you promise to never stop touching me."

"That could be arranged."

"Oh wonderful. I should hate to have to hunt down another husband."

He's pulls you toward the bedroom, the bed beyond. He hasn't kissed you again, but he intends to do something to you, that much is clear.

"Hunt one down, huh? I think I fell into your lap."

He fell into your lap. The thought is a nice one.

You nod, bum hitting the edge of the bed. "I should think so. Had those girls witnessed even this behind that barn, I would have been killed where I stood. A happy accident that they didn't and I was given you instead."

His laugh is like a bark. "Ain't you somethin'."

He tilts you back, looks at your coiled body and hums. Your knees are pressed together out of habit, arms folded across your belly now. Still fully clothed and you feel naked as he looks down at you with a reverence and devotion you have only before seen in a pew. You settle your heels at the edge of the bed."Tell me again," he requests.

"I want you," you say quietly. "I want you to touch me."

Just as in your dreams that you thought frivolous and unrealistic, he peels your thighs apart and pushes his hand between your legs. You gasp and fight not to skitter away from his touch, to keep your hips against the mattress. If that's how warm only his hand felt through your clothes, you can't imagine what it will be like without.

He leans over you, moves his hand to tilt your chin up instead, finally presses his lips against yours again after so long.

"Joel," you sigh against his mouth, scratchy cheeks that you cup in your hands. "You'll be gentle with me."

It's not a question.

"Mm." His nose draws a line down your cheek to your jaw, mouth pressing against the underside of your jaw. You gasp when his teeth scrape along your skin, just a little. You tangle your hands in his hair, tug at the graying strands that slip through your fingers until he grunts against you.

Joel settles between your parted thighs, lost to you, apparently. "Joel."

"Sweetheart," he answers, lifting his head to look at you.

"I know it will hurt. Please make it easy on me."

He leans on his forearm, placed above the crown of your head, his other hand yanking the skirt of your dress up. "I will do everything to make it easy on you."

"Okay," you breathe, smoothing the worry. He wouldn't hurt you on purpose, of that you're sure.

He works you out of your clothes as you pull at his. There's only one part of him you haven't seen, one part of him you've never seen of any man. You tug at his trousers until a button pops open and you can push your hand down.

You gasp at the feeling of him in your hand, hard and warm, his skin soft and damp. You aren't sure what to do, not the way he moves with such certainty, thick fingers slipping beneath your underwear, parting the folds of you.

You watch his face as you move your hand, circling your fingers around him seems the natural fit of things, sliding your fist up and down his length. There's friction though and you wonder if it feels good for him.

He is signularly focused on you though, and for a moment you forget his cock in your hand because he touches something that makes your back arch off the bed, a moan yanked from your chest.

"There she goes," he coos, still moving his fingers over you, not even inside you yet.

That will go inside you, you remember suddenly. It feels too big for your hand, let alone your cunt. You squeeze his cock and rub your thumb along the head where you feel something leaking, helping your hand slide around him.

"How does that feel—"

He groans, and you turn your gaze to him, repeating the action, watching him shudder. "Am I doing okay?"

It gives you no small satisfaction to literately have him in the palm of your hand, giving to him. You stroke him slowly, tightening your grip as you reach the tip. "Jesus, girl," he murmurs, and then thrusts into your hand.

"Am I?"

"Little too good," he grunts. "I ain't gonna be much use to you if you keep that up."

You don't know what he means, especially since you want to keep making him sound like that forever. But you trust him, so you release him and kiss him instead, nipping at his bottom lip, feeling like an aching wound as his slips a finger inside you.

There's a little pressure but it doesn't hurt. You can feel how damp you are, easing the passage of his fingers, a second and third following, stretching you to almost the point of pain, but mostly it feels good, his hands working some kind of spell over you in tandem until your world bursts with pleasure.

Waves of it crash over you, slicking your skin with sweat in the warmth of your bedroom. He helps you out of the last bit of your clothes, nude body bared to him, hands scooping your breasts in too warm palms, brushing tentatively over your nipples.

So many thngs that you did not know could feel good.

Your mouth goes dry when you finally see his cock, aching from your attentions, the head an angry red. You have the most bizarre desire to out him in your mouth, that is only vindicated as not odd when Joel puts his head between your legs and makes you come again without his fingers even entering you.

"Please," you whine, beckoning him toward you, so open and vulnerable and never so safe. "Please just do it. I'm ready."

"You are, sweetheart," he coos. "Best I can get you anyway."

He lets you grip him and guide him to your entrance, pushing inside you in increments. You wonder at what brutes the men in your village must be like to have all the girls saying this is only something to endure. For though it hurts a little, it overwhelmingly feels good. Like stretching a sore muscle. He is heavy and warm, your bodies locked together in a way you will mourn when it parts.

Joel holds you close, pushes his forehead gently to yours, breath ghosting over your lips, so warm and present it makes something deep inside you sigh in satisfaction.

Here you belong, you are sure, here you are understood and wanted. You touch him wherever your hands can reach, marveling at the plains of his body as he ruts into you, skin slapping against skin.

He grunts against your neck when he comes and you follow only a moment later, panting into the dark of something that is now yours, clutching him tightly to your chest.

A new vow kept.

.

.

.

He wakes you in the middle of the night with gentle prodding.

The night is a soft sweet song outside your window, the low sounds of the land around you. "Joel?" you ask, pressing one hand over your eyes, rubbing away sleep. "What's wrong?"

"Nothin'," he assures. "There's just somethin' I wanna show you."

"Now?"

"If you're willin'."

Well, you are always willing, with him. Wrapped in only your dressing robe, he leads you outside, across the yard to the stables by lamplight.

He is shirtless, and you are close enough that you can see the flex of muscle in his arms when he rolls the doors open, and the cratered parts of him you finally got to touch.

"Joel—" You complain. "What—"

"C'mon, now," he motions you inside, the red light flickering over his features comforting instead of eerie.

"I'm sore you know," you grumble. And you are, a pleasant kind of pain that accompanies the pleasure he had given you. It's nothing like the girls had described to you. It had only been good. He had only been good.

He just chuckles, no small amount of pride in it, and leads you to the workbench that you can never quite tell what he does at. "You feel okay?" He asks, sincere.

"Okay," you scoff. "You very well know what you did to me."

"All right," he says softly. "Enough of that."

"Show me."

He clears his throat, and nods, pulling you near him at the bench.

There among the softly snuffling horses, he presents you with a tiny wood carving of a woman that looks just like you. You gasp and take her carefully from his hands, holding her up to moonlight and then lamplight, the exquisite detailing of her.

She has your nose and eyes. The shape of her body in movement, the exact way you hold your hands in miniature. An expression on her face of determination and muddled anxiety. Afraid, but getting on with it.

He has adored you, you see, from the moment he met you. He studied you as closely as you studied him. "It's beautiful."

"Yeah," he agrees, hand on your spine, "suppose I've got a good muse, though."

Your face feels hot, your whole body alight. "When did you—" just to confirm what you think you know.

"Morning after we married," he says. "Somethin' about the way you looked, I just. . .I had to get it down somewhere."

You rub your thumb over her silhouette. "She is missing her wedding band."

Joel's eyes flick to your hand, empty. "I suppose she is." He takes your hand and kisses it's fingers. "As you are."

“You look at me like you ain’t ever gonna stop,” you whispered, a teasing smile playing at the corners of your mouth.

Joel didn’t smile back. Not exactly. His eyes flicked over your face, then down your body like he was drinking it in, slow and thorough. “That’s ‘cause I ain’t,” he muttered, voice low and rough from the hour, from whatever thick emotion had coiled in his chest. “Don’t wanna miss a single fuckin’ thing about you.”

Then his hand slid lower.

You’d thought you knew his touch. After all the nights tangled together in that bed, the lazy mornings and the needy evenings, you thought you understood how Joel moved, how he kissed, how he claimed. But this—this was different. He wasn’t in a hurry. There was no urgency, no grinding desperation like the first few months when you both couldn’t get enough. This was slower. Darker. Hungrier in a way that didn’t need to rush.

“You trust me, baby?” he asked, his lips at your throat, his voice so close it melted right into your skin.

You nodded before the question even finished leaving his mouth, your body already arching toward his like instinct. And that was all he needed. His hand slipped between your legs, spreading you open like it was second nature. And it was, now. He knew your body better than anyone. Better than you did, sometimes. But tonight, he was focused. Intent. Not just giving you pleasure but searching for something—like he knew it was there, buried under the layers of control you didn’t know you had, and he was hell-bent on dragging it out of you.

His fingers were slick with your arousal in seconds. He groaned when he felt it, dragging the sound out like it physically hurt to hold it in. “Christ. You’re already soaked for me. You been thinkin’ about this all day?”

You whimpered—barely a sound, more like an exhale caught between his fingers and the way your hips rolled into his hand. “Always thinkin’ about you,” you whispered, because it was true. In Jackson, where the world had softened just enough to let you breathe, Joel had filled every space. Every thought. Every ache.

And maybe he felt it too, because his mouth found yours in that moment, hot and slow, full of teeth and breath and hunger. He kissed you like he had to, like if he didn’t he might lose his mind, and all the while his fingers moved with unrelenting precision—circling, pressing, teasing that spot just inside you until your thighs began to tremble.

But he didn’t stop. Didn’t let you squirm away or catch your breath. If anything, he doubled down.

“You feel that?” he murmured against your lips, dragging the pad of his thumb up to circle your clit while two fingers curled inside you. “Right there. That little flutter?” He punctuated it with another slow press, curling just so. “You’re close. Real close. But I want more than that from you tonight, sweetheart.”

You clutched at his shoulders, gasping as your body twisted under the weight of sensation. “Joel—fuck—I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he growled, gripping your thigh and spreading you wider. “You will. Gonna get you there, baby. Gonna make you fall apart for me in a way you never have before.”

Your body was clenching around his fingers now, wet sounds filling the room with every pump of his hand. It was too much. Not enough. A pleasure so sharp it started to scare you—but Joel was there, anchoring you, talking you through it in that low, gravelly drawl like he’d been waiting for this.

“You feel like you’re gonna lose control?” he rasped, his voice like gravel and smoke. “That’s it, baby. That’s what I want. Let it happen. Let go. Don’t hold back from me—don’t ever hold back.”

Your back arched and your hips jerked, and you felt it snap. Something inside you broke open, a dam giving way, and then—

It was everywhere.

You cried out—loud, shocked, almost tearful—as your body spasmed, liquid gushing out of you, soaking his hand, the sheets, everything. You tried to close your legs, tried to pull away in the aftermath, but Joel wouldn’t let you. He held you there, eyes wide with awe, lips parted like he couldn’t fucking believe what he’d just seen.

“God damn, baby,” he breathed, his voice caught somewhere between reverence and raw lust. “You fuckin’ squirted for me.”

You turned your face into the pillow, mortified and overwhelmed, but he didn’t give you a second to spiral.

“Hey,” he said, gripping your jaw gently, tilting your face back toward his. His pupils were blown wide, hair sticking to his forehead. “Don’t you dare be embarrassed. That was the hottest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen. You hear me?”

You nodded, blinking through the daze, your heart pounding like it might leap out of your chest.

Joel grinned, dark and wolfish and downright feral. “You’ve been holdin’ that in all this time? No one’s ever made you come like that?”

You shook your head.

His expression twisted into something possessive, something primal. “Good. I want it to be me. Only me. No one else gets to see you like this.”

He dragged his soaked fingers up your thigh, up your belly, smearing slick against your skin before bringing them to his lips and sucking them clean with a groan that made your core pulse all over again.

“Jesus, baby,” he said, voice rough. “You taste so fuckin’ sweet when you come like that. You’ve got no idea what you do to me.”

You whimpered as he leaned over you again, pressing his thick length against your still-throbbing core.

“Think you can give me one more?” he whispered, already lining himself up, already kissing the sweat from your collarbone like he’d never get enough. “Wanna see it again. Wanna feel you soak me while I’m buried deep inside.”

And you knew, right then, that Joel wasn’t going to stop until he wrung every last drop from you. Until you couldn’t remember your name. Until the sheets were ruined, and you were wrecked, and he was satisfied that no one could ever come close to what he gave you.

And you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Your period was always a thing of force -  heavy and physically taxing, the cramps making you curl in on yourself and unable to stand up straight as they pulsed through you in waves. It was four days of suffering, and you refused to take any of the painkillers Jackson had to offer, not wanting to deplete supplies when there was already a shortage of everything. 

You would just have to ride it out, as you always did. 

Joel hated your period. Not because it was something that grossed him out, but because you always withdrew from him when it was that time of the month. It seemed like you were almost ashamed of him touching you, cutting him off when things shifted from an innocent kiss to heavy petting on the couch, when his fingers would start to dip into the waistband of your pajamas. It was a week of not being able to shower with you, not being able to dive between your legs after a long day of patrol, and he could feel his frustrations and desires simmering under his skin. 

The window of opportunity presented itself when he overheard the town doctor telling you that you should “try making yourself feel good. Orgasms can help loosen up those cramping muscles. Don’t shy away from it.” You had broken off from him on your morning walk to the mess hall, eager to find a natural solution to your pain. Joel had lingered, refusing to go anywhere without you, and those words buried into his head, nestled deep into his mind. You couldn’t refuse doctor’s orders. They looped through his brain as you settled in for breakfast, barely releasing their hold on him when you asked him what he wanted to do on his day off. He shrugged noncommittedly, muttering something about a new project or helping the town as he pushed his eggs around on his plate. 

“Joel. Joel.”

His head jerks up. You’re staring at him, head tilted as you frown from across the table. 

“Are you even listening to what I’m saying?”

“‘M sorry, darlin’. Just tired.”

He isn’t though, and he almost feels guilty for zoning out while you were trying to talk to him. Eyes softening, you reach across the table to brush against his knuckles. 

“Why don’t we just spend the day in bed then? I don’t feel too hot anyway. We can just… exist?” 

He turns his hand over, palm sliding under yours, thick fingers wrapping around your wrist to squeeze gently before releasing you. 

“Sounds good to me.” 

Your meals were tucked away quickly, the promises of warm sheets and warmer touches making you eager to get home and into bed. You can feel the dull ache of your cramps creeping in, shifting in your lower back and sitting there, heavy and present. Your shoulders curl inward and Joel automatically pulls you into his side as you make your way back to your home, his thumb rubbing circles into the base of your spine to try and alleviate the ache. 

The silence that blankets both of you is gentle as you enter your home. The kind that comes with knowing that there were no responsibilities calling your name, the world still turning even if you weren’t an active part of it. Your coat slips off your shoulders, Joel hanging it up next to the door as you toe your boots off and shuffle into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The pain in your back flares and you wince, one hand shifting to cradle your lower stomach. 

Joel is hovering.

His presence is large, taking up the kitchen as you exhale slowly, watching you work through the twinging in your abdomen. His hands drop to your shoulders, kneading at the muscle as you try to settle yourself. 

“Let’s lay down,” He offers, and you try not to melt when his thumbs catch on the knots of your muscles, meticulously working them out. He guides you out of the kitchen and up the stairs, still hovering over your shoulder as you slowly ascend to the top level of your shared house. He ushers you into the bedroom, gentle and firm hands peeling your sweater off, leaving you in your camisole and jeans before he’s settling next to you on top of the covers. You watch him rake his fingers through his hair as he sits back against the headboard before dragging you into his lap. 

“Joel…”

He shakes his head, refusing to hear your protests as he brushes his hands through your hair, moving it out of your face before cupping your jaw and pulling you closer. 

“Jus’ wanna kiss you. Been missing you lately.” 

You can’t help but smile at his softness. It’s a side to him that rarely peeks out, tucked so deeply away that when you first started seeing him, you didn’t think it even existed. Now it shines every time you’re in the comfort of your home together, where the outside world can’t touch the quietness you two built. 

“Alright, one kiss and then we nap.” You grin, leaning forward to brush your nose against his. His mouth quirks into a barely-there smile before he’s dragging you flush against his chest, knees drawing up to bracket you in against him. You slot your mouth against his gently, a whisper of a kiss as your hands land on his chest, fingers twisting in the soft material of his shirt. He lets out a quiet groan, lips immediately parting against yours, the kiss deepening as one of his hands curls around the back of your neck to hold you in place. He licks into your mouth, needy sighs dripping out of you as he pushes further, teeth nipping at your lower lip. You cant your hips down, feeling his growing arousal underneath you as he continues to kiss you senseless.

Joel’s hand glides down the curve of your hip, shifting to your front as he toys with the button of your jeans. He feels you tense above him, can feel your withdrawal before you vocalize it, and pulls back to look up at you. You’re pliant in his lap, cheeks flushed and lips swollen from kissing, eyes glazed over with need. 

“I–  we shouldn’t–”

“No.”

You frown. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

He frowns back at you, hands moving back up to grip your hips. “I wanna make you feel good, sweetheart.” 

“You are, I’m just on my… it’s okay. I don’t–” You flush, and he can’t help but smirk. 

“‘M not afraid of a little blood, baby. Just let me take care of you,” He purrs, gently moving to lay you down on the bed. He shifts onto his elbows, hovering over you as he leans down and presses a kiss against your forehead, and then against your mouth. 

“Doctor’s orders,” He adds, adjusting his weight to smooth a hand down your chest, your stomach, hitting the top of your jeans and flicking open the button. Your eyes flutter closed as he works his mouth against your jaw, your neck, thick fingers hastily shoving the waistband of your jeans down. 

“You don’t have to do this just because the doctor said it’ll help,” You breathe, and he fervently shakes his head. 

“Been thinking ‘bout doing this since the first time.” 

Your thighs clench at his words, hips tilting up so that he can strip you easier, faster. You can feel yourself growing slick from want, your arousal building slowly in your lower belly as his mouth continues to shift down the column of your neck and over the tops of your breasts. He doesn’t bother with taking your camisole off, his impatience leaching into his actions as he pulls the front of your top down and under your breasts, lips greedy as they move across the unveiled softness of you. He works his mouth over your nipples, one hand coming up to pinch and pull as he sucks on the other. There’s a haziness clouding your head, half-formed thoughts dancing around as your desire builds. 

“J-Joel, a towel, we need a towel,” You sputter as he yanks your jeans down your calves. He sits back on his heels, greying curls mussed, cheeks pink, his breathing heavy as he drinks you in. His eyes are dark, pupils blown as they rake over your chest, the way your tank top bunches at your stomach, your underwear that’s hiding your arousal from him. 

He licks his lips and your heart stutters in your chest at his unabashed want. Your eyes flit down, taking in the tent of his jeans, his erection straining against the fabric before flicking back up to his. After a brief staredown, both of you unwilling to interrupt the moment, he sighs. 

“Don’t move,” He growls out, shuffling off the bed and disappearing into the hallway. You listen to him banging around in the linen closet as your breathing slows, eyes focusing on the chipped paint of the ceiling. Your nipples tighten against the cold of the room and you shift, thighs rubbing together in anticipation. It takes him a minute before he’s back, looming over the bed with one of your lesser towels clutched in his fist. 

“Hips up, baby,” He murmurs, spreading the towel out underneath you before nestling himself back between your legs. “Let me take care of you, yeah? Doctor said it’ll feel better, lemme make you feel better. Missed the pretty noises you make when you cum.” 

He’s looking up at you, fingers poised at the waistband of your panties. He’s waiting for the go ahead, you realize, and you reach down to card your fingers through his messy curls. 

“Okay…” You breathe, and Joel spurs into motion, yanking down your underwear and tossing the pair behind him. He groans at the sight of your cunt, glistening pink with the mix of your arousal and blood, his hands coming up to grip the insides of your thighs as he pushes them further apart. 

“Fuck… missed this sweet thing. Making me go a week without tastin’ you, driving me insane. Bet she’s real needy for me too, huh?” 

He slides one hand off your leg, bringing it up to trail a finger through your slick. You twitch, hips jerking from the touch as he watches it cling to his skin, pearlescent and sticky, before bringing his hand up to his mouth and licking it clean. 

“Tastes good, baby. Don’t know what you were gettin’ all shy on me for.” He grins, draping an arm across your stomach to hold you down as he presses his nose against the top of your pussy, inhaling deeply. His tongue darts out, catching on the hood of your clit and you jerk against him, a whimper spilling out of your mouth. 

“Joel, please,” You whine, eager for him to get his mouth on you. Your cramps are still slowly rolling through you, though the weight and warmth of his arm keeps them at bay. He hushes you, pulling back to meet your eyes. 

“You’re gonna let me take my time and enjoy my meal, alright, sweetheart?” His voice is low, rumbling in his chest as he stares you down unwaveringly. You swallow, nodding. 

“Good girl.”

His mouth is back on you before you could get another word out, licking a stripe up your seam as you shake beneath him, fingers curling into his hair and pulling as he works on you. He's a man starved, moaning against your cunt as you tug on his locks, tongue slipping into your weeping hole before moving up and flicking against your clit. He latches on and sucks, the feeling making your back arch off the bed and your toes curl. The hand that isn’t holding you down trails against the inside of your thigh before one finger dips in, pushing and curling to hit the spongy spot inside you that makes you see stars. 

“Fuck…” You moan, writhing against his mouth.

“Yeah?” He breathes, before latching back onto your clit and working a second finger into you. Your eyes squeeze closed, your orgasm building as he curls his knuckles in tandem with his mouth. “Y’gonna come? I wanna see you come, baby, please, let me hear it…”

He sounds as broken as you, voice ragged with need, hips subtly grinding against the mattress as he continues to fuck his fingers into your squelching cunt, the mix of your arousal and blood coating his beard. Your grip on his hair tightens when he crooks his fingers just right, sucking on your clit particularly hard. 

“Joel–!”

Your orgasm rips through you, gasps and moans spilling out of you as your thighs clench around his head. He coaxes you through it, murmuring praises against your cunt. So good, so sweet, so pretty when you come on my tongue like that. He's lapping up your juices as you tremble under him, white spots swimming in your vision, your chest heaving from the sheer force of your orgasm.

Fingers withdrawing, he plants a gentle kiss on your skin, right above your pussy, a soft red print of his lips left behind as he pulls back to look at you.

“Good, baby?” 

He’s a mess, small streaks of blood visibly clinging to his beard and mouth along with the pearly sheen of your come. There’s a visible stain on the front of his jeans where his pre-cum leaked through from him rutting against the bed. You swallow a shaky laugh, nodding as your body settles into a soft hum. A heady feeling nestles in your bones, and you realize that your aches have fully ebbed away. 

“It worked,” You murmur, dropping your head back against the pillows, blissfully fucked out. He grins, pride and satisfaction written across his face as he takes in your satiated appearance. 

“Good.” You hear the familiar cling of his belt buckle, and your breath catches. “Because I’m still not done with you, sweetheart.”

You even look up if there’s such a thing as a permanent fertile period, because none of this feels normal.

And of course, Joel confronts you about it.

On your father’s birthday night, he invites a few close friends over for a small cocktail party, followed by dinner. When you walk down the stairs, Joel is there, sitting in the living room armchair with a glass of whiskey in his right hand.

He’s listening to something your father is saying but glances at you. You immediately turn your back and head into the kitchen to see if your mother needs help.

Yesterday, you found a movie where Joel played a DEA agent rescuing a drug lord’s wife. He said so many filthy things to her while fucking her inside a police car that the words stuck in your head like Play-Doh in hair.

And maybe the area between your legs feels a little more sensitive too, which only makes you feel worse.

After the cocktail and dinner, spent tensely avoiding Joel’s gaze, you slip out into the backyard with a glass of wine in one hand and your Kindle in the other.

Inside, the party goes on, your father having opened another bottle of whiskey, and you can hear them from here. You need to stay out of your bedroom to keep yourself from typing "Javier Peña" into that damn search bar again, so for the next few minutes, you sip your wine and read.

“Finally, a place where you can’t hide behind the toilet paper aisle.”

Joel sits down on the chair next to you, holding his own whiskey glass. You lose your words because, yes, you actually did hide in the personal hygiene aisle yesterday when you saw him.

You play dumb.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. You went all puritanical after you found out what you found out.”

“I told you it’s weird.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t need your approval. My life and career are my own. I said I would help you with your thesis, and I will, but if you keep running from me, someone’s going to think there’s something wrong between us.”

You take another sip of wine in silence, staring at the lawn like it’s salvation. Joel’s gaze burns into the side of your face before he asks:

“Have you watched any more?”

“For the thesis.” A lie.

“May I ask which one?”

“The DEA one.”

“Hmm.”

He finds your eyes as he sips his whiskey. He’s sitting with his legs spread, making his jeans stretch tight over his groin and thick thighs. And you know exactly what’s under those jeans.

You can’t resist your curiosity:

“Do you miss acting?”

“My ego does,” he says, like he’s thought about it a thousand times. “Not gonna lie, there’s a certain masculine pride in being a porn actor. It’s easier for men. But personally? No. Especially because of Sarah.”

“She knows?”

He shakes his head.

“She does. I told her when she turned fifteen because I’d rather she hear it from me than stumble across it online.”

“How did she react?”

“Well, I guess.”

You shake your head and cover your face with your free hand, groaning a little.

“I can’t stop wondering if my mom knows about you.”

“I hate to break it to you—”

You cut him off. “Shhh.”

His laugh is low but genuine. Your eyes meet again, and this time, you could swear his gaze dips a little lower, to the neckline of your dress, where a bit of flushed skin is showing thanks to the wine.

But he disguises it and gestures toward your Kindle:

“What are you reading?”

“Some articles to help with my research.”

“Have my films led you to any conclusions?”

“Um, definitely,” you say, staring at the lawn. “You cussed a lot. And you seem very interested in my opinion of your movies.”

“I'm curious.”

You internally roll your eyes. Men.

“You want a performance review? Aren’t the comments on XVideos enough?”

“I want yours.”

You ignore him, because your evaluation of his performance was made perfectly clear when you got yourself off twice in a row thinking about his voice.

Instead, you ask:

“Did the DEA girl really come? Because it looked real.”

Joel stays quiet for a while. When you glance at him, you notice a small smirk playing on his lips as he taps his fingers against his glass. His whiskey’s almost gone.

“Do you really want to get into that?”

“Why not?”

A few more seconds of silence. Then he seems to say "fuck it" internally and answers:

“I liked making the other actresses come. Some directors didn’t like it because it took longer, and ‘who cares if they actually orgasm if they can fake it,’” he says, making air quotes. “But I liked it. Not all of them, of course, and sometimes they’d tell me they were fine without it, but it was a preference of mine.”

“And the DEA girl?” you press.

“Was that your favorite?”

You shake your head.

“Which one was?”

You shake your head again, indicating you won’t tell him.

“The DEA girl was my ex-girlfriend,” he says.

“So it was real.”

Joel shrugs, and that's all the answer you need. The porch light behind you highlights his graying beard and the glint of whiskey on his lips. Your throat goes dry.

“How did you get into the industry?”

Joel clicks his tongue.

“Very personal question.”

“Okay, what made you leave?”

He glances at your wine glass and ignores the question, asking another instead:

“What wine is that?”

You consider not answering out of petty revenge, but your parents raised you better.

“Barefoot. I know it’s cheap, but I like it,” you swirl the red wine in your glass. “Even though I know I’ll wake up with a headache tomorrow.”

Joel rolls his eyes and stands, leaving his whiskey glass behind.

“Come on, bring your glass. I’ll give you some real wine.”

He starts walking toward the gate between your houses, and you have no choice but to follow, leaving your Kindle and the party behind. Joel’s broad shoulders guide you around the side of his house and into the kitchen.

It’s silent and dark, except for a single hallway light. Quietly, because Sarah is probably asleep, you pass through the kitchen and head to a door leading to the garage, where the lighting is dim at best. His truck takes up almost all the space.

Unsure of what to do, you hover at the door, watching as he enters a small room off the garage. It’s a little wine cellar, concrete walls lined with slanted mahogany shelves.

Joel comes back out with a bottle in hand. You recognize the label and freeze.

“You’re not about to open a Rockford Flaxman.”

“I am,” he says, brushing past you just enough to close the door behind you, locking the two of you in the garage. His scent hits you, and you fight the urge to bury your face in the crook of his neck. “Just closing the door so Sarah doesn’t wake up. Hand me your glass.”

“Joel, that bottle’s expensive.”

“Hand me your glass,” he repeats.

You give it to him. Joel pulls a corkscrew from a drawer you hadn’t noticed and pops the bottle open effortlessly. He fills your glass halfway and, as he hands it back to you, asks:

“Mind if we share the glass?”

You shake your head.

From another drawer, he grabs his truck keys, disables the alarm, and turns on a tiny, terrible-quality radio. Duran Duran starts playing.

Joel gestures toward the truck:

“Come on. We can sit inside.”

Heart pounding a little faster, palms sweating, you climb into the passenger side. You settle into the leather seat and finally take a sip of the good wine.

It tastes fruity and oaky, almost sweet on your tongue. You let out a long, contented hum.

“Really good,” you say after swallowing. “Best way to end the night.”

His fingers brush yours as he takes the glass. You watch him savor a sip before handing it back.

He speaks as he does:

“I left the industry because the doubts about real consent started eating at me,” he says, answering the question you asked earlier.

Joel leans back in the seat, legs spread, head resting against the headrest, eyes closed.

“And I’m not just talking about explicit consent. I mean about the people who were there because they had no other choice.”

“I can’t imagine anyone doing porn unless they had to,” you murmur.

“I get it, but some people genuinely like it,” he meets your gaze as you sip more wine. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious.”

“Maybe for men...”

“It’s more common among men, true.”

You offer him the glass. He drinks and gives it back.

“The agency that managed my films didn’t like it when I started giving interviews about that stuff. They gave me fewer scenes or scripts I’d never agree to do, and I had to start turning them down. When they began sabotaging me, I left.”

“Scripts you wouldn’t accept?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” you accept the short answer. “No other agency made you an offer?”

“They did, but when I left, I didn’t want to go back.”

“And yet, you defend the industry.”

“I don’t defend the industry—I defend the work I did, because I know how it was done. I don’t like when you generalize.”

“You know that sounds like ‘not all men,’ right? Of course not everyone was bad, but the industry itself is terrible. So when I criticize it, it’s the majority I’m talking about. And you were exploited too.”

He exhales deeply. There’s more you want to say, but you sense it’s a sensitive topic, so you change the subject:

“Can I ask what you do now?”

“I invest,” he says simply. “I made a lot of money back then and wasn’t stupid enough to blow it on parties and drugs. I invested in public and private construction companies, and now they pay me back.”

“Didn’t expect that.”

Joel gives you a look.

“Male privilege. I got into a lot of good deals just because I was Javier Peña.”

“That wouldn’t happen to an actress,” you guess, and he nods.

“So now you just live off your investments.”

“Pretty much.”

The wine in your glass runs out. Joel notices, grabs the bottle, and this time drinks straight from it. You mimic him, putting the glass in the back seat.

“How was it, being an actor?”

“Fun. Lots of parties, admiration, glamor, L.A., and sex all the time,” he says. “The downside was the strict diet, weekly waxing, and almost daily health tests. I probably have a permanent hole in my vein.”

“Did you only date people in the industry?”

“Not a rule, but it was easier, so mostly.”

“Sarah’s mom—”

“No, she wasn’t in it. She was a friend.”

You figure she’s not around anymore, considering you’ve never heard Sarah mention her.

“If someone offered you two million dollars today,” you start, trying to lighten the mood, and his face softens, “for a solo film. Just you, just masturbation. Would you do it?”

“No, because of Sarah. Okay, my old films are still out there, but they existed before she was born. It’s different.”

Another sip of wine. Joel continues:

“I don’t think I’d even know how to behave in front of a camera anymore.”

“That’s not the spirit of the Longest Cumshot Award winner.”

Joel’s eyes widen in shock, and you burst out laughing at yourself, raising both of your hands.

“I didn’t look it up, I swear. It’s just one of the first pictures that comes up when you search your name.”

“Tell me your favorite film,” he insists.

You think about refusing again, but the wine is warming your face and your throat, and the atmosphere is too cozy.

“The title is ridiculous,” you start, and he grunts for you to hurry up. “Something like ‘Lust Lives Next Door.’”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Where he’s the neighbor?”

Keeping a neutral expression, you sip more wine, feeling his gaze fixed on you.

“Why?” Joel asks.

“It felt so real. You looked so...”

You lose the words. He prompts you:

“So...?”

“I don’t know. You looked like you really wanted her. Sure, you always looked like that—you were an actor—but with her, it was different. At least to me.”

Joel studies you a moment longer. Then asks, seriously:

“Did you touch yourself watching it?”

Your cheeks burn.

“It’s normal,” you defend. “Inevitable.”

“Only with that one?”

“Joel.”

He exhales long and slow.

“If you’re uncomfortable, we’ll stop. I’ll walk you home.”

You open your mouth to joke about how ridiculous it is for him to walk you home when you’re literally neighbors, but the seriousness of his question leaves you speechless.

“I’m not a porn actress. I’m not used to this,” you murmur.

“Then just nod,” he suggests seriously. Your silence is taken as agreement.

He asks:

“Did you touch yourself to any other of my films?”

A pause, then...

You nod.

He breathes deeply.

“Did you watch my films only because of the thesis?”

You shake your head no.

“Do you imagine me doing those things to you?”

You feel like you’re standing on the edge of a cliff. One step back, and you’ll be safe, intact but with a pounding heart. One step forward, and you’ll fall, jump, dive into whatever awaits below.

The blood in your ears almost drowns out the start of “Glory Box” by Portishead playing from that shitty little radio.

You take a step forward.

You nod.

Before he can ask anything else, you’re the one who speaks:

“Do you want to see?” you ask, fueled by all the liquid courage from the wine. You clarify, “How I touched myself.”

The answer comes immediately:

“Of course I do.”

You glance at the garage door, then at him, hardly believing you’re about to do this. Before shyness can take over, you close the passenger door, slip off your sandals, and adjust yourself on the seat so your back rests against the door and your legs stretch across the console. You place your feet in Joel’s lap, and you can’t help but notice the hard bulge pressing against his jeans—you have to fight the urge to abandon everything and just beg him to take you to his room and do whatever he wants with you.

Okay. You take a slow, steadying breath to calm your racing heart. Joel’s hand settles around your ankle, his thumb brushing the bone there, and that small point of contact anchors you.

The dress you’re wearing is short, so it only takes a small tug for the fabric to bunch around your waist. With bare legs, goosebumped skin, and heavy breaths, you hand him the wine bottle.

Joel accepts it without taking his eyes off you.

“I’m not as confident as your porn actresses,” you say, but to your own ears your voice sounds pathetically breathless.

His touch trails up to your shin and back down, his hand wrapping around your left foot. He says:

“If you knew how many times I imagined myself between your legs, you wouldn’t feel insecure right now.”

Your breasts ache against the thin fabric of your dress as you spread your legs. You slide your hand into your panties, and Joel doesn’t look directly at it—he watches your face instead. He studies your reaction when your lips part at the feeling of your fingers touching the sensitive, wet spot between your thighs.

The knowledge that he’s wanted this just as badly as you makes you bolder.

You tilt your head back, resting it against the car window, and look at the ceiling while you speed up your fingers. Everything feels so sensitive that you have to bite your lower lip to keep any sound from escaping.

“Fuck...” Joel murmurs, his touch sliding up your thigh. “I can hear how wet you are.”

“Give me your hand.”

Joel takes one last sip of wine and sets the bottle on the ground outside the truck before offering his hand to you. You barely manage to meet his eyes as you pull your panties aside and guide his rough fingers between your legs.

His fingers glide easily over your clit, so wet that it’s almost slippery, and the feeling is so good—his fingers are larger, different textured than your own—and he lets you use them like a toy.

Joel’s gaze finally drops to where your bodies meet. With his free hand, he palms himself through his jeans, starting to rub.

It’s too much for your mind to process.

You squeeze your eyes shut again, using both your hands to guide his and spreading your legs wider. You have to breathe through parted lips to stop yourself from moaning as he rubs that almost painfully sensitive spot over and over.

“Does it feel good using my fingers like that?” he asks, voice hoarse. You nod. “Then let me fuck you with them.”

You whisper your agreement, guiding his fingers lower after making sure they’re slick enough. You press down gently, and his middle finger sinks inside you with a wet sound.

“Joel…”

“Hearing you moan like that and it’s not even my cock yet,” he mutters, fucking you slowly with his middle finger. “Let me add another one.”

You nod. He adds another finger, and you barely manage to hold in the moan, especially when he starts moving them in a slow, delicious rhythm, dragging the strokes out rather than speeding up.

It all happens so fast. One second Joel is pulling you lower, sliding your ass almost onto the console, and the next, he’s bending down and putting his mouth on you—his tongue tracing a quick, hot path from your entrance to your clit.

You clap a hand over your mouth and grab his hair with the other, the graying strands slipping through your fingers. The position can’t be comfortable for him, half off the driver’s seat and bent over you, but he doesn’t seem to care. His lips close over your clit, sucking and licking, while his fingers keep fucking you. His beard scrapes the sensitive skin of your thighs and the slick heat between your legs—and somehow, that only makes you hotter.

You tug his hair harder, pulling him closer into you, and you swear he’s smiling against you, his mouth opening over your clit.

The third finger teases your entrance, and just that promise is enough—you come with a muffled gasp, both hands buried in Joel’s hair as you ride his face. His beard will definitely leave marks on your skin.

Joel waits patiently until your body stops pulsing around his fingers, even though his occasional licks don’t exactly help. Then he pulls his mouth away and sits back in the driver’s seat, wiping his beard with his hand to clear the mess you left behind.

You barely have time to catch your breath before he grabs you with one hand and, steadying your hips with both, pulls you straight onto his lap.

“Hi,” you whisper, still breathless.

“Hi,” he says back.

“You kiss?”

“What?” He smiles, brushing a lock of hair off your forehead. “You asking if I know how to kiss?”

“I’m asking if you have any rules against it, because I really, really want to kiss you.”

“You do?” His thumb brushes over your lower lip, the crease between his brows soft and nearly invisible. “I’m all yours.”

With that permission, you wrap your arms around his neck and move closer, trying to control your ragged breathing. You keep your eyes locked on his as you kiss his bottom lip, then his top, tracing them with the tip of your tongue, pressing your thumbs under his jaw to coax his mouth open.

You run your tongue across the opening, and Joel fists your hair at the nape of your neck, finally taking the lead and kissing you back.

You’re consumed by the taste of expensive wine, a kiss you’d only ever imagined through a computer screen—and you realize the actresses hadn’t been faking their moans, because when Joel sucks your tongue into his mouth for the first time, the sensation ripples right through the core of you, and you whimper softly into his mouth.

“Take off your panties,” he murmurs against your lips as he trails kisses along your chin, your jaw, and down your neck. You move with him, adapting to the pace and hunger of his kisses.

As he reaches your collarbones, Joel tugs the thin straps of your dress down and pushes the fabric until it bunches at your waist. Your breasts are exposed to the cool garage air—and to his hungry mouth.

“Joel…”

His tongue laps at your nipple, and he grows impatient. He slides a hand between your thighs and yanks your panties down with little care. You hear the lace tear but you can’t bring yourself to care, not when seconds later Joel is maneuvering you onto your knees so he can pull the ruined panties off completely.

Then he balls the fabric in his left hand and brings it to his nose.

It should feel ridiculous—like some cheap porno move—but it doesn’t.

He isn’t doing it for show.

He’s doing it because—

Joel grabs your hair again, keeping you firmly in place, and lifts the panties to your own nose. His mouth hovers at your ear as he says:

“See?” Joel’s lips skim down your neck. You catch the unmistakable scent of your own arousal, and your cheeks burn. “You’ve been dripping wet since the moment you walked into this garage.”

“You’re wrong,” you say, pressing his arm to press the panties harder against your nose. You inhale loud enough for him to hear and murmur, “I’ve been wet since the moment you sat next to me in the backyard.”

Joel looks at you, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He stuffs the panties into the front pocket of his worn jeans before unbuttoning and pushing them down along with his boxers.

You probably stare at his cock like an idiot, because seeing it on a screen was one thing, but seeing it now—right in front of you, the subtle changes from age only making it better—hits you hard.

“You’re smiling. What, is my dick funny?” Joel asks.

You shake your head.

“Your dick is practically a shrine to me.”

Joel rolls his eyes, wiping the corner of your mouth with his thumb.

“I’m real fucking close to come just looking at you,” he mutters, and you feel a flicker of disappointment, but it seems to be true, especially given how hard he is.

Joel shifts you into place on his lap, adjusting you like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

He leans back against the seat, partially reclining, and grips his cock with one hand.

“Come here,” he says lowly, pulling you by your thighs. When his thick cock nestles between your legs, you realize what he wants.

You brace yourself on his shoulders, biting your lip to keep any sounds from escaping as you lift onto your knees just enough to start sliding yourself against him.

The slickness between your legs makes it easy—wet and slippery—and Joel groans, tipping his head back against the seat.

God.

He looks huge beneath you, between your thighs, in the way his hands grip your hips and travel along your waist and back up. The rigid heat of him rubs directly over your clit with every glide, and you wrap your hand around the base of his cock to press him even harder against you as you move.

Joel’s hands grip your hips so hard you wonder if you’ll have bruises tomorrow. He glances down between you, where your wetness has coated him, and mutters a filthy curse between his clenched teeth.

“These tits…” he growls, lowering his mouth back to your breasts, drawing you even closer. “Can you come like this?”

You nod, tugging his curls at the nape of his neck, moving faster when he sucks a nipple into his mouth, leaving a trail of wet heat on your skin.

“Turn around,” Joel orders, licking the corner of your mouth. “I want to come on your ass.”

You obey instantly.

He helps you twist around so your knees stay on the seat but your back is pressed against his chest.

Joel runs his cock through your soaked folds, nudging your clit with the head.

He gathers your hair in one hand, pulling it aside so he can kiss the sensitive skin at the base of your neck.

“Rub yourself on it,” he says, voice rough. Your only support is the steering wheel in front of you, which you cling to as you rock your hips back and forth, grinding down along his shaft.

“You’re gonna fucking kill me doing exactly what I tell you,” he mutters against your ear.

“I like when you tell me what to do,” you whisper, barely able to form the words with the way that familiar tension is building fast in your stomach.

“Yeah, baby, I can tell by how soaked you are.”

You don’t answer, focusing only on your own pleasure now, shifting so the thick length of him is perfectly aligned against your clit.

Your leg trembles, your mind blanking with the focus on your orgasm, and you have to bite down on your sweaty arm to keep from crying out his name.

“Feels good?” you ask, panting.

“Jesus Christ, sweetheart,” Joel rasps, his hand tightening around your throat just enough to tilt your face toward his so he can kiss your jaw, your cheek. The slick sounds of your bodies are filthy, but it only pushes you closer. “Been holding back this whole time not to fucking come inside that sweet pussy.”

And that’s all it takes.

You come with a silent scream, clinging to the steering wheel, shuddering against him as your orgasm rips through you.

“Get up,” Joel says urgently, and, trembling, you lift yourself on wobbly knees.

He pushes your dress up your back, squeezes your ass—and you know exactly what he wants.

You brace yourself against the steering wheel, arching your back for him, and Joel lets out a rough, desperate sound.

Between heavy breaths, you hear the slick noises of him jerking himself off, and it only takes a few seconds before you feel it—hot spurts of cum hitting your ass, dripping down the backs of your thighs.

After what feels like forever, Joel slaps your ass gently and wraps his arms around you from behind, pulling you against his chest.

You let yourself collapse into him, feeling his heart pounding just as hard as yours.

You stay there for a moment, quiet, your lips dry when you finally whisper:

“Good wine.”

He laughs.

“Knew you’d like it.”

You close your eyes, tangling your fingers with his over your waist.

When you wake up the next morning, it’s to persistent knocking on the door.

Startled, heart racing, you open your eyes. At first, you don’t recognize the room you’re in, but then you feel Joel’s arm draped over your hips and everything from last night comes rushing back.

You two had cleaned up the garage as best you could, wiped down the seats of his truck, and then gone upstairs to his bedroom to shower together. You couldn’t bring yourself to leave, and he asked you to stay, so you texted your parents saying Joel needed you to sleep over (not a lie) because of Sarah, since he had to rush out for an emergency (a complete lie).

“Dad,” Sarah knocks again, and you have to replay last night’s events to make sure Joel actually locked the door before you both passed out. “Daaaad.”

He opens his eyes, still half-asleep, and pulls you closer against him. Sarah knocks again, and Joel grunts softly before calling out:

“Is the house on fire?”

She laughs.

“No, but you must be sick if you’re not up yet. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just got in late last night.”

Quietly, you trace your fingers over his beard. He meets your gaze and catches your hand, kissing your knuckles before hugging you closer, and you’re reminded that you’re both still naked under the covers—every inch of his warm body pressed against yours.

“Hangover?” Sarah asks.

“Sort of.”

“I left you breakfast. The school bus is about to get here.”

You watch his expression soften.

“Thanks, baby girl. Have a good day. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye, Dad.”

You hear her footsteps fading down the stairs, and you smile at Joel.

“That was so sweet,” you murmur sincerely. “You call her ‘baby girl’.”

“She used to hate it when she was younger, but she gave up fighting me on it,” he says, his voice raspy from sleep, making something in your stomach flip. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” you whisper back.

Joel brushes his thumb over your cheek and temple, then asks:

“Do you regret it?” You frown, not understanding right away. He clarifies: “Last night.”

“Of course not. Are you crazy?”

“You fucked a porn actor,” he says conspiratorially.

“An ex–porn actor,” you correct. “And we haven’t even fucked yet. Why would I regret that?”

Joel shrugs.

“Aren’t you the one who hates them?”

“Joooel,” you groan, flopping onto your back. “We already talked about this. I hate the industry. I could never hate you.”

“If you say so.”

You turn your face toward him when you feel his hand sliding over your stomach, your hip, your breast…

“Well, now I have a very subjective perspective for my thesis,” you tease.

Joel smiles, raising an eyebrow.

“Imagine explaining that when someone asks how you gathered your results—you’ll have to say Javier Peña showed you personally.”

You barely manage to suppress the shiver that runs down your spine.

“Our little adventure would make a good movie,” you say, but instantly regret it, shaking your head. “Forget it. Just the thought of any image of me out there makes me sick.”

Joel stays silent, but there’s a stupid little smile on his lips as he props himself up on his elbow, lying sideways. His other hand, which was resting on your belly, slides lower. Past your hip, past your thigh, and back up again.

“What’s with that smirk?” you ask.

He licks his bottom lip.

“Remember when you asked me what my favorite kind of movie was?”

That’s the sentence that leads, twenty minutes later, to you lying on your side, your back pressed against Joel’s chest, the morning light streaming through the thick curtains.

He holds you firmly as you reach between your legs, guiding his cock inside you. You almost melt in his arms, feeling the thick veins pulse against your fingers.

“A little more,” Joel murmurs into your ear, sliding an arm under your thigh and adjusting your position to help you take him. You reach behind you, grabbing his hip. Inch by inch, he fills you.

You look down between your legs, watching the way you stretch around him, and it feels like the bed is dissolving under the weight of it.

“Joel.”

“I’m right here, baby,” he says. You see him licking three fingers before reaching down to your clit, just as he starts moving his hips.

The next few days in Lake Placid pass exactly like that.

Some nights, you sneak across your backyard to Joel’s house, and he usually meets you halfway, catching you on the stairs with a kiss before carrying you to bed.

Other times, he sneaks into your house and fucks you on your bedroom floor, because your bed makes too much noise.

You keep working on your thesis and stop watching Javier Peña’s old movies. You don’t need them anymore—not when Joel Miller is texting you saying he needs you in his bed.

On your last few days at home, your parents throw a barbecue. Among the guests are Joel and Sarah.

It’s Joel who finds you in the kitchen as you’re finishing seasoning the potato salad.

He leans against the counter across from you, holding a can of beer. You glance up from the potatoes to meet his gaze, and flashes of last night hit you—when you two had sex in a ridiculous roadside motel because Sarah was having a sleepover with her friends at home.

“And when you go back to New York?” he asks, and you immediately understand what he means.

You shrug.

“I’m not going to pressure you into a long-distance relationship. We don’t have a relationship anyway. And I don’t want a long-distance thing.”

“But I want you.”

You stab a piece of potato with your fork and bring it to his mouth. He accepts it, chewing slowly while waiting for your answer.

“I want you too,” you confess. “But I know you have other priorities.”

“So do you.”

You nod. “So do I.”

Somehow, it feels like a goodbye.

Two months later, back in New York, you type the final period on the last sentence of your thesis.

You stretch your arms over your head like you just won a marathon and then slowly slide to the floor, lying flat on your back like a starfish.

Your spine cracks, your wrists protest after three straight hours of typing, but you can’t wipe the huge, satisfied smile off your face—you’re free.

You grab your phone and text your friends:

“Thesis done. Beer to celebrate?”

You end up doing a full bar crawl, treating it like a birthday or something equally ridiculous.

All it takes is a low-cut top showing off your cleavage, a sweet voice, and the line “Do I get a prize for finishing my thesis?” to score free drinks all night.

You flirt with a few guys, but none of them make you want to drag them home. None of them have a Texas drawl, a graying beard, and the smirk of a retired porn star.

Actually…

You open your chat with Joel.

The last message from him, sent yesterday, is a photo of the same wine bottle you two opened that night in the garage. You had texted back “wish I was there,” and he’d replied with a kiss emoji.

He’d mentioned he was attending some adult film award ceremony as a presenter or something, but he didn’t say where.

He must have been busy all day.

Tonight, you type:

“went out drinking with some friends to celebrate finishing my thesis and can’t stop thinking about you. swear if you were here, i’d be blowing you under one of the bar tables.”

You put your phone away.

You down a tequila shot and laugh when your friend toasts to the end of grad school.

At three in the morning, you still haven’t gotten a reply from Joel.

You call an Uber after making sure your friends are safe, pulling your leather jacket tight around your body. The ride sobers you up just enough to make you crave a whole bottle of water.

That’s exactly what you do when you get home.

You peel off your pleated skirt and jacket, leaving yourself in just a wool turtleneck sweater, and you’re about to jump into the shower when your intercom buzzes.

You glance at the microwave clock: 3:54 AM.

You answer.

“Hello?”

“Delivery from Javier Peña.”

You gasp and immediately buzz him in.

Your heart is already racing as you open your apartment door, standing half-hidden behind it since you’re not wearing any pants.

You practically bounce with anticipation at the same time you convince yourself you’re not dreaming.

When Joel appears at the top of the stairs, it’s like all the blood in your body rushes to your head. He’s wearing glasses and has that stupid, cocky smile, dressed in a black T-shirt with two simple words printed across the front: adult content.

“I can’t believe you’re actually wearing that shirt.”

“The name of the studio that sponsored the awards ceremony,” he says, stopping in front of you.

He smells so good it makes you a little self-conscious about the sweat clinging to your neck from the night out.

You smile as you step out of the Jeep, the door creaking behind you, and breathe in the cold, clean air rolling down from the mountains and the lake that wraps around the village where you were born. Your parents’ house sits above Mirror Lake Drive, right at the edge of the hill on the northeast side of the village, and from your bedroom window on the second floor, you can see the lake and the distant peaks of the High Peaks.

A far cry from the view outside your New York apartment: nothing but gray swallowed up by buildings. It’s the perfect setting to finally finish your thesis.

As you grab your two suitcases from the back seat, your eyes wander to the house next door, which had been empty for the past three years, mostly because the previous owners were asking too much for it.

Buying real estate in Lake Placid takes careful thought, since turning a profit is unlikely even with upgrades and expansions – the village is just too isolated. So if you’re buying here, it’s not for the money. It’s because you want a life far away from the city.

The house in question is a larger and more luxurious version of your parents’, made of gray stone, with cute white-framed windows, and for the first time in months, you see the lawn freshly trimmed and a new pickup truck parked in the driveway.

Probably the new family your mom mentioned.

The house is empty when you walk in, but you can hear laughter and voices drifting up from the backyard. You head the opposite way, climb the stairs to your room, drop your bags, take a shower, and spend a good while debating whether to sink into sheets that smell like home for the first time in ten months or go downstairs and find something to eat.

Hunger wins.

You throw on a warm sweater and go down. When you open the back doors, six pairs of eyes turn toward you, but it’s your mother’s squeal that makes you smile, followed by the tight hug she and your father give you.

“There’s our girl,” your father says to the others, wrapping an arm around your shoulders as he says your name. You give a small wave. “She always comes home for the holidays.”

The couple sitting together you recognize. They’ve been friends with your parents for years.

But you don’t know the woman who smiles sweetly at you, and you definitely don’t recognize the man, at least twenty-five years older than you, who keeps a neutral expression as he sips from a beer can. He doesn’t seem particularly friendly, but maybe that’s just the impression left by the slightly graying mustache and broad shoulders.

Two minutes later, you’re settled into a lounge chair with everyone in the backyard, a warm burger on your plate and a cold beer in your hand.

“I told Joel he’d have trouble with the house,” says the sweet-smiling woman to your parents, continuing the conversation they were having. “But he really wanted a place here, so I just supported him.”

“What kind of trouble are you having with the house?” your mom asks Joel — the mustached man, now officially identified.

“Nothing major,” Joel replies in a deep, firm, polite voice. “Had to redo the plumbing in two of the bathrooms and fix the heating in the kitchen sink, but it’s all fine now.”

“And are you liking it here?” you venture. You glance at the woman. “You and... your wife?”

Joel gives a faint smile.

“Tess isn’t my wife. And yeah, I’m liking it. It’s peaceful. Not too many teenagers. Feels like paradise.”

“What’s with the teenage hate?” you ask, half-joking, half-serious, silently filing away the Tess isn’t his wife detail.

“Fewer teenagers means fewer cell phones.”

Your response is a light laugh that earns a slight eyebrow raise from Joel, but you go back to your burger and let him be.

The conversation between the adults shifts to Fleetwood Mac, Lake Placid families, suggestions for places Joel should check out, and gossip about someone’s daughter who apparently got knocked up by the neighbor’s grandson, or something like that. You listen in, partly because you’re curious about the latest news (true or not) in the town you grew up in.

Your parents mention that you’re staying longer this time to get a change of scenery and finally work on your thesis, and that’s when the dreaded question comes. From Tess.

“And what’s your thesis about?”

Your mother holds back a laugh, because despite the seriousness of the topic, the initial reactions are always the same.

“I study anthropology,” you say. “My thesis is about the influence of pornography on male behavior over the years.”

That’s because the way men acted around you had always bothered you. When you were ten, wearing a cute chiffon skirt to the grocery store, they stared. When you were fifteen, walking home from school in your uniform, you heard disgusting things shouted at you on the street.

It wasn’t until you got older and realized that behavior like that isn’t natural (and why would it be, if women don’t do it?) that all your anger turned into the foundation for your research.

Tess raises her eyebrows and smiles slightly while the older couple gasps in surprise. Joel doesn’t react at all, except for rubbing the condensation on his beer can with his thumb.

“That’s a very interesting topic,” Tess comments, glancing at Joel, who briefly looks at her, then back at you. “Do you have any conclusions yet?”

“A few,” you say, though you already know the core of your research is the objectification of women’s bodies for the industry’s gain. “But I don’t want to bore you—”

“What’s your research method?” Joel cuts in before you can finish.

“Sorry?”

“Your research method. The system you’re using for the thesis.”

“Mixed methods,” you say, but you sense something more behind the question. Something slightly aggressive that you can’t fully pin down. “I did some fieldwork in New York.”

“Did you interview anyone from the industry?”

You shake your head.

“No one agreed. At least not the newer actors and actresses. The more established ones charged absurd fees just to answer ten questions.”

Joel says nothing, and the silence is broken when your father makes a joke about the topic. Everyone laughs—including you.

The barbecue lasts another hour at most before people start saying their goodbyes. Your mom wraps up two burgers for Joel, and he thanks her sincerely.

Then he turns to you and says:

“Good luck with the thesis, sweetheart.”

You nod, and you could swear you catch a faint smirk at the corner of his lips before he waves goodbye and walks off.

You run into Joel again at the market three blocks from home, standing in front of the fruit display, looking stuck between red grapes, green grapes, and oranges.

Joel’s voice comes suddenly from your left.

“What deep philosophical truth are you hoping those grapes will reveal to you?”

You startle, turning toward him with your hand over your heart as if that could slow it down. Joel raises one eyebrow as he begins placing seedless green grapes into a plastic bag.

He’s wearing worn jeans and a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt. Thin-rimmed glasses rest on the strong bridge of his nose.

He smells like pine and something expensive—you guess it’s aftershave.

“Hi,” you say first, then quickly add, “I was trying to decide between grapes and oranges.”

“Grapes are sweeter this time of year.”

“But I like sour fruit.”

“Then go for the oranges.”

“But grapes are easier to eat. More practical.”

Joel gives you an impatient look, and you answer with a laugh. You grab a plastic bag and start selecting oranges.

After a short silence, while Joel ties off his grape bag and begins picking oranges too, you ask:

“Are you liking it here?”

Joel murmurs:

“There are some interesting things. Sarah likes it.”

“Your wife?” you ask quickly. Too quickly.

“My daughter. Just turned fifteen.”

Oh. Great. He’s a dad. You glance at his hand but see no ring. Joel notices.

“What’s with the marriage obsession?” he asks, although not rudely.

You shrug.

“I’m just curious. And you’d better brace yourself. The older ladies in Lake Placid are going to eat you alive with questions about your relationship status.”

“Really? Why do you think that?”

You freeze with your fingers wrapped around a particularly juicy orange. Without meaning to, you basically confessed that you think he’s a catch: attractive, polite, middle-aged, apparently wealthy, and tall. What other reason would the ladies have to shift their attention from their knitting?

You avoid his eyes.

“You bought the house that had been on the market for years. They’ll want to know who the buyer is,” you say, a half-truth.

He grunts, as if to say he doesn’t care about any of that, ties his orange bag, and places it in the cart. He glances at your basket, scanning the hygiene items (specifically the pads) and the chocolate bars.

“Did you drive here?” he asks.

You shake your head. He does too.

“Then let’s go. I’ll give you a ride home. It’s raining.”

His tone doesn’t invite objection and you don’t want to argue. Silently, and after grabbing a bag of green grapes too, you follow him through the market. He picks up a box of chocolate cereal, milk, kale, and oats, and then you both head to the checkout line.

You pay for your items first, so you end up waiting under the automatic doors, arms crossed beneath the blasting air conditioner.

People come in shaking umbrellas, mumbling about how unexpected the rain is or how cold the drops feel.

Older women walk in, spot Joel, and start whispering to each other with that smile every woman — no matter her age — immediately recognizes. The universal woman-smile.

He, seemingly unaware to all of it, pays with his card, grabs the bags with one hand, and walks over to you.

“Need help?” he asks, motioning toward your three bags.

You shake your head. He nods once and tilts his head toward the door, signaling for you to follow him across the crowded parking lot.

His pickup truck is parked near the exit—big and sturdy. You both get in at the same time. The inside smells good but feels stuffy from the rain, so he turns on the A/C and runs his hand through his graying hair to shake off the water.

“It rains a lot here,” he mutters as he starts the engine and buckles his seatbelt. You do the same. “Not sure I like this humidity.”

“Where were you living before?”

“Los Angeles.”

Your eyebrows rise. You can’t picture him with the stereotypical California vibe. It doesn’t fit.

So you ask the million-dollar question:

“What did you do there?”

The sound of the windshield wipers is your only response for a few seconds. Long enough for you to wonder if you crossed a line.

“A bit of everything,” he finally says, and you understand that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Yeah. You were being nosy.

Weird. Joel is weird, and everything about him makes you feel like you should think he’s an assassin, or a retired California mobster, anything that would kick your survival instincts into gear. You probably shouldn’t be sitting in a closed space with him like you’ve known him for years.

“Nothing illegal,” Joel adds when your silence starts to stretch.

That makes you laugh.

“Very reassuring.”

He smirks. At a red light, his fingers tap lightly on the leather steering wheel.

“How’s the thesis going?” he asks.

“Honestly? I haven’t opened the file since I got here.”

“Procrastinating?”

You hum in agreement, resting your head against the seat.

“I think I’m stuck.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“I need to watch some films to move forward.”

He freezes. Then he lets out a low chuckle. You defend yourself:

“I’m serious. I need to understand which narratives work best and why, and connect that to how they influence real-life behavior.”

“Makes sense,” Joel says.

“It does,” you reply, a little proud. You glance at him. The shape of his nose, the mustache, the gray-streaked beard. Then you add, “But it feels weird watching porn in my parents’ house, even if it’s for educational purposes.”

“Porn isn’t always for educational purposes?”

You gasp in horror.

“No!” you exclaim. “Porn is not educational. People don’t have sex like that in real life.”

“Hm…”

“You disagree?”

“I do,” he says plainly. “People do have sex like that.”

“I didn’t mean physically, Joel. Sex is easy: a good position, one thing inside the other, and done.” You catch yourself, because not all sex involves penetration, and something about Joel makes you think he wouldn’t mind sitting through a lecture on inclusivity if it came to that, but you add: “What I meant is that sex doesn’t happen like that. It’s not normal to open the door for the pizza guy and two seconds later be bent over the couch.”

“Says who?”

The frustrated growl that escapes you seems to amuse him. You know he’s teasing, and his grin proves it, but you can’t resist continuing.

“Not to mention the incest plots or the underage fantasies. Do you really think sex happens like that?”

His smile disappears instantly.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No, I’m not. You can’t separate porn genres like some are less harmful than others, because even the ones that seem ‘harmless’ fuel the same industry that writes those sick scripts.”

“We’re here.”

He cuts you off with that simple phrase, and when you look out the window, you realize he’s right — you’re in front of your house. You turn your gaze back to him, and he meets it firmly, returning all the intensity you just threw his way.

You swallow and reach for your bags.

As if you hadn’t just delivered a monologue on the ethics of pornography, you simply say:

“Thanks for the ride.”

He doesn’t respond. You step out of the truck and walk to the door of your house, feeling like a kid who just got scolded, which is ridiculous. But even more ridiculous is the fact that Joel only drives away after he sees you walk safely inside, even though he literally lives next door.

You meet Sarah — Joel’s fifteen-year-old daughter — the next day.

After running along Mirror Lake Drive, you get home with your lungs burning and your body drenched in sweat, the elastic band of your pink sports bra stuck to your back. As you’re kicking off your sneakers at the door, you spot a pair of pink Converse, way smaller than anything anyone in your family would wear.

In the kitchen, there’s a skinny, unfamiliar girl sitting at the counter, two open books spread across the marble, her curly hair pulled up into two puffs.

She lifts her head, and her brown eyes hit you with a soft echo of familiarity.

“Hi,” you say, as if it’s totally normal to have a stranger in your house.

She waves back. Before you can ask “who are you?”, your mom walks into the kitchen and calls your name.

“This is Sarah, Joel’s daughter. Sarah, this is my daughter I was telling you about.”

Sarah gives you a shy little smile, and you smile back, a bit frozen by the fact that you’re standing face-to-face with Joel’s daughter. You’re not even sure why it freezes you.

“Joel had to spend the night out because he needed to go to New York, and he asked if Sarah could stay with us,” your mom explains.

“I’m old enough to stay alone, but my dad’s crazy,” Sarah chimes in, and you laugh.

You don’t think she’s old enough to stay alone, especially in a new town, but you don’t say that.

What you do say is:

“So, Sarah... what are you studying?”

Sarah needs help with her social studies homework, so after you shower and change into something comfortable, you sit down next to her and go over the assignments together. That’s when you realize she’s ridiculously smart and funny, slipping little jokes into the conversation, blending internet memes with historical facts, and talking to her turns out to be genuinely easy and fun.

Your mom serves dinner, you both eat, and then you settle onto the couch with your Kindles, each of you leaning against an end and your feet meeting in the middle of the cushions.

You’re in the third chapter of Ghost Radio when she calls you.

You peek over the top of your Kindle to let her know you’re listening.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Twenty-six.”

She looks up at the ceiling as if doing mental math. Then, reaching some conclusion, she raises her eyebrows.

“Why?” you ask.

“No reason,” she shrugs, turning back to the book she was reading. Another question follows, this time without looking at you. “Are you dating anyone?”

“No. I ended my last relationship six months ago.”

“Was he older?”

“No,” you say with a laugh. “I mean, yes, but only by about three years. Why do you ask?”

Sarah wiggles her feet like she’s a little too excited about something.

“Just scientific curiosity,” she says, but her tone sounds more like a villain plotting something mischievous.

The next morning, Joel comes to pick her up at eight o’clock. You’re the one who opens the door since your parents left early to go to the farmers’ market to buy honey and vegetables.

He’s standing on the porch, wearing a thick leather jacket, jeans, and heavy boots. He looks exhausted, and the two-day beard growth makes him even more intimidating.

“Good morning,” you say.

Joel looks you up and down in your pajamas: heart-printed pants and a tank top. You realize too late that you’re not wearing a bra.

“Good morning,” he replies, lifting his eyes back to your face. “I’m here to get Sarah.”

“She’s finishing breakfast. Come in.”

Before he can protest, you turn on your heel and walk away, leaving him no choice but to step inside and follow you to the kitchen. You hear his slow, hesitant footsteps as he returns to the room filled with the smell of butter and coffee.

Sarah is sitting at the counter, devouring pancakes. Joel walks over, presses a kiss to the top of her head, and they exchange a few quiet words before he says something that makes her nod and hop down from the stool, leaving the kitchen.

You hear her going upstairs, probably to grab her things.

“How was the trip?” you ask, filling a mug with coffee and placing it in front of him on the marble.

Joel stares at the pink mug like it’s a threat but eventually wraps his big hands around it. You take a sip from your own cup and look at him over the rim, just the counter between you two.

“Good,” he says simply. He gestures toward the coffee. “Thanks. I needed that. Drove back and forth without stopping to rest.”

“Just thinking about it makes my back hurt.”

“I want my bed.”

You watch him over your cup, blowing on the surface of the coffee. You imagine him in the silence of his own house, in his bedroom, in his own bed. You wonder what color the walls are, what the sheets look like, and whether he sleeps clothed or not.

“Sarah’s really smart,” you say, pushing away the mental images.

That earns a small smile from him.

“She’s fantastic, my girl. But she’s cocky, so don’t tell her that.”

“She takes after someone.”

“I’m not cocky.”

“I’m joking,” you say lightly, offering peace because you don’t want to relive the animosity from the last time you saw him. “Is the coffee good?”

“Very.”

“Want to take some pancakes? Bet you’re hungry. I’ve eaten, Sarah’s eaten, and my parents always grab breakfast out when they leave early.”

Joel drums his fingers against the ceramic, looking like he’s fighting an internal battle, as if accepting food from you would be a terrible crime. Still, you take his silence as a yes and start stacking the remaining pancakes into a thermal container.

When you’re done, you walk around the counter and hand him the container with both hands.

“Here.”

Joel takes it with his left hand. With his right, he reaches out and gently pinches your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he says quietly, and you freeze.

He walks past you, saying something to Sarah, who apparently has come back downstairs. Feeling a warm flutter deep in your belly, you turn and follow them to the living room. You hug Sarah goodbye, promise to send her books for her Kindle, and then walk them to the door.

You smile when Joel thanks you for looking after Sarah and asks you to pass his thanks to your parents as well.

You watch them cross the lawn between your gardens, and just before Joel enters his house, he turns to look back at you.

You could swear he deliberately and slowly sweeps his gaze over your body—from your feet to your head.

And then he goes inside.

And you have to mechanically force yourself to close the door.

That same night, you start watching the films.

As you work through your research, you put together a report listing the names of the ten most famous stars from each decade between 1970 and 2020, five male, five female.

You already have a pretty clear idea of what defined the main point of pornography in the ’70s: the start of structured scripts and absurd, fantastical narratives that, one way or another, tied a woman’s pleasure directly to a man’s. Like in Deep Throat, where they came up with a story about a woman whose clitoris is located at the back of her throat. You can already guess what the most "effective" method of stimulation would be.

Porno chic was created to make adult content more palatable to the general public, especially as debates about the legality and morality of filming started to gain traction during that decade.

Sitting on your bed with your laptop open in front of you and your tablet resting on your lap for notes, you watch the films at 1.5x speed while eating green grapes.

You knew you might get aroused watching them, because dopamine responses are inevitable, but apparently there's nothing about '70s pornography that even remotely stirs your body. It feels like you're watching a National Geographic documentary.

You can't push away what Linda Lovelace wrote in her autobiography about the most famous film of that time, the one that made millions of dollars: There was a gun pointed at my head the entire time, she said.

You swallow hard and return to your notes.

By the end of the first week of this stage of your thesis, you finish watching the films from the '90s. You note the radical shift in the female body ideal — all the actresses with breast implants — and the peculiar aesthetic of VHS tapes, since this was the era when films started being widely distributed in that format.

What stands out most, though, is the shift in perspective. Gonzo-style pornography centers the camera exclusively on the man, making him the sole focus, and by extension, reducing women to mere tools for male pleasure. The camera's focus on women's bodies is restricted almost entirely to their genitals, which explains a lot about the birth of violent pornography during that time.

If women exist solely for male pleasure, then it’s no problem if they’re violated, right?

And just like that, the normalization of male domination in pornography begins, which, of course, spills over into social behavior.

You shut the laptop in front of you and lie down on the bed, closing your eyes. You doubt even a sixteen-year-old boy has seen as much porn as you have in the past few days, and there’s still so much left to do.

You reach for your tablet and pull up the list of male stars from the 2000s.

Tyler Cross, Javier Peña, Max Thunder, Ryder Grey, and Clint Fury.

Is there someone in the industry whose only job is coming up with these ridiculous pseudonyms?

You get up, leaving everything behind, and head toward the kitchen to find something to eat. It's already past eleven at night, your parents are asleep, and the only light in the living room comes from the lamp. On tiptoe, you’re halfway to the kitchen when the doorbell rings.

You freeze like you're in the middle of a crime scene.

A doorbell ringing at eleven at night in Lake Placid? Something must be on fire.

When you open the door, it’s Joel standing there on your parents' porch, looking anxious.

“Hi,” he says. Another meeting where you're in pajamas and he's fully dressed. “It's dangerous to open the door in the middle of the night like that.”

“Great way to start a conversation. I'm calculating how many seconds it'll take me to get to the kitchen and grab a knife.”

You get a somewhat tense smile.

“I’m still not used to these small-town habits.”

“I get it. I would never open the door for anyone after eight p.m. in New York, but here it’s normal.”

He nods, then asks,

“Were you sleeping?”

You wrap your arms around yourself as a cold breeze sweeps by.

“No, I was studying. Is everything okay?”

“I need a favor,” he says bluntly. “Sarah’s asleep, and I have to head back to New York. Can you stay at the house tonight?”

“Is everything okay?” you repeat.

“My brother’s wife just went into labor. He asked me to be there. I should be back tomorrow night.”

Your eyes widen, and Joel nods as if to say, “Exactly, got it?” You hold up a finger to ask for a minute, then run upstairs to grab your slippers, your robe, and your phone. When you come back, Joel is still on a call but waits patiently until you close the door before leading you to his house.

He lets you step inside first, and even with the urgency of the situation, it feels a little like you’re a twenty-year-old girl walking into a guy’s house for the first time, especially when Joel shuts the door behind you, finishing up his call.

The house is warm, clearly lived in by a family. There’s a big rug in the living room, a brown leather couch, and pictures of Sarah hanging in the hallway: lifting a soccer trophy, carrying a skateboard, the two of them at the beach. A line of photos shows her growing up, from a baby all the way to now.

The last photo is of her at Jewtraw Park, right here in Lake Placid.

“You can sleep in my room if you want. If that’s too weird, the couch is really good too. I left some blankets and a pillow right there,” he says, pointing to the armchair. Then he adds, “Everything’s clean. The guest rooms aren’t ready yet.”

You roll your eyes.

“I know, Miller. Relax. I’ll manage.”

“Okay. Give me your number. I’ll text you so you have mine. And if you need anything, call me.”

You say your number, and he types it into his old, barely-hanging-on iPhone.

“Thanks,” Joel says, genuine. “Really.”

You smile and give his arm a quick rub without even thinking about it.

“No problem. Just let me know if you need anything.”

After showing you where Sarah’s room is, where the extra blankets are, and telling you about ten times you can eat whatever you want, he leaves. You quickly text your mom, explaining the situation and letting her know you’re staying at Joel’s, then settle down on the couch.

Little signs of Joel are scattered around the house. The reading glasses forgotten on the coffee table, the suede jacket hanging by the door, the boots by the entryway, the faint smell of the same lotion you caught on him at the store.

You feel a little like a criminal as you get up and start quietly wandering through the rooms.

The kitchen is beautiful and organized, but there are a few dishes left in the sink. Since you’re still awake, you start washing them.

You move on to the dining room, all wood furniture and a classic chandelier, and then to a small office off to the side. It feels almost too empty except for the bookshelves. Just a desk with a laptop sitting on it, making you think it doesn’t get much use.

You head upstairs.

Sarah’s door is closed, but you walk softly down the carpeted hallway to the room at the end.

You push the door open, heart pounding like you’re about to find a monster—or Joel sitting on the bed saying, “Snooping where you shouldn’t be?”

Instead, you find a huge bed neatly made with gray sheets, dark curtains, and matching desks on either side. There’s a closet and a door leading, you assume, to a bathroom.

It’s empty in the way you’d expect a fifty-year-old man’s bedroom to be.

You almost give in and crawl into his bed but force yourself back downstairs, turn off the main lights, and curl up on the couch, which really is pretty comfortable.

It takes a while to fall asleep in a strange house, but when you finally do, your dreams are filled with gray beards and gray sheets.

You wake in the middle of the night to the ping of your phone. You rub your eyes, still dazed from sleep, and grab the phone from the pillow beside you.

4:47 a.m.

It’s a text from an unknown number:

“Hi. Joel here. Sorry for the hour, I hope you’re sleeping. I just got to New York. Please let me know when Sarah wakes up. I’ll need to call her.”

A sleepy smile tugs at your lips at how formally he writes, no abbreviations at all. You save his contact as Miller.

You type back:

“hey. don’t worry. I’ll let you know. everything ok over there?”

“Why are you awake?”

You don’t tell him it was his text that woke you.

“New place… light sleeper.”

“I see.”

An “I see” with a period and everything. Then another message:

“Yes, everything’s fine. I’m in the waiting room, and Tommy’s with his wife. She’s been in labor for seven hours.”

You type: “ouch. hoping all goes well. lmk if u need sth”

“What kind of vocabulary is that?”

“don’t you have bigger things to worry about, grumpy?”

The impossible happens: Joel Miller sends you a smiling emoji.

You reply with one sticking its tongue out.

His next message comes in text again:

“Tell me about your thesis.

“you’re really curious about it.”

“It’s an interesting topic.”

“sure… men and their obsession with porn.”

“I’m not obsessed with porn. I don’t even remember the last time I watched it.”

Your fingers freeze over the keyboard—it sounds way too intimate.

You type back:

“last time I watched was this afternoon.”

You get a single question mark in response: “?”

You clarify:

“for my thesis. I’m at the stage where I have to watch films.”

“Oh. How are you doing that?”

“picking stars from each decade and watching two movies for each. starting with the 2000s tomorrow.”

Joel reads your message but doesn’t reply right away, which is odd. He had been responding immediately. You wonder if something’s happened at the hospital, if everything’s okay with his sister-in-law.

You stare at the screen until it goes black. Three minutes later, his reply pops up:

“Who are the stars from the 2000s?”

“looking for suggestions?”

“No.”

You open your report from iCloud and copy the list of male and female stars from the 2000s. You send it over.

He reads it. Another little pause.

“I see.”

Then another question:

“And how are you watching? Like a documentary?”

“yeah, pretty much. I put on the films, watch them critically, and take notes.”

“And they don’t affect you?”

“in what way?”

He reads the message but doesn’t answer. After ten minutes of staring at the ceiling, you take a deep breath and type courageously:

“are you asking if I get turned on?”

Again, no response.

Still, you type back:

“i do. it’s inevitable and natural. but only starting with the '90s films. the ones from the '70s and '80s were way too gross for that.”

This time, a reply comes.

“Gross?”

“yeah. the men were really disgusting. it’s obvious they had no idea how to have sex to actually please a woman.”

“I see.”

You picture Joel Miller, tall and broad-shouldered, sitting in a sterile hospital hallway, texting you about porn while waiting for his nephew to be born.

The thought makes you smile to yourself. You burrow deeper under the blanket and decide to be a little bolder.

“do you have a favorite genre of those movies?”

“To watch?”

You frown. What else would it be for?

“yeah”

“I don’t watch them.”

“okay, but if you were going to watch one today, what type would you choose? one with a storyline, straight to the point… what? help me out for the research.”

You almost chew on your lower lip as you watch the little “typing” bubble appear and disappear three times. Finally, he sends a simple response:

“No storyline, not a lot of talking. Something filmed in the morning, in bed, right after waking up.”

“morning sex?”

“Yes.”

Before you can stop yourself, your mind fills with images of Joel’s bed, the same gray sheets now rumpled and tossed aside. The cold morning light pouring through the window, the scent of him still on the fabric, the warmth of sleepy skin, the scratch of his beard against the sensitive part of your neck.

A big hand adjusting and lifting your leg into the right position, low, sleepy moans filling the space.

You snap your eyes open wide.

“got it,” you type back, heart racing.

“Do you have a favorite genre?”

“i hate porn,” you reply.

“Okay. But if you were going to watch one today, what would you pick?”

He’s throwing your own question back at you, meaning you can’t dodge it.

You type the whole answer at once but hesitate a dozen times before finally pressing send, knowing Joel will understand exactly what you mean and exactly what you like. It’s probably not right to tell your parents’ neighbor, who’s at least twenty years older, but you don’t take it back.

“in the car. an age gap where he looks a little older than her, slightly graying, and he’s desperate for her, desperate to do things to her in the backseat.”

“Things?”

“you know what I mean.”

“Say it clearly.”

“desperate to go down on her.”

And again, he responds:

“I see.”

Your cheeks burning, you turn off your phone screen.

But another message buzzes through:

“Good choice.”

You cross your legs and lock your phone again.

The next time you wake up, it’s to Sarah poking your cheek with an insistent little finger. She’s standing over you by the couch, looking at you like you’re a science experiment.

The sunlight pouring through the living room windows makes you wonder if it’s already past ten.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, still poking your cheek.

Yawning, you answer,

“You’re about to have a baby cousin.”

Sarah squeals.

Joel calls her twenty minutes later, right after you text him—carefully avoiding rereading the messages you sent each other during the night—that she’s awake.

Afterward, you eat breakfast together, and Sarah gets ready for school, where she’ll stay until six in the evening. You wait until the bus picks her up before going back to your house, crawling into bed, and sleeping a little more.

When you wake up again, it’s time to log onto a video call with your boss, even though you’re technically on vacation.

You help your mom with some work in the garden, bake muffins, and by late afternoon, you lock the door to your bedroom, find a cozy spot in bed and open your laptop again.

2000s.

Now all the actresses definitely have implants, bleached hair, heavy makeup, thin eyebrows, and elaborate hairstyles: exactly the fantasy for any guy with a DVD player and one hand free.

But it’s also the beginning of the internet era, meaning access to all of it is even easier than it ever was with VHS tapes.

Roleplay everywhere. Boss and secretary, student and teacher, best friend's mom, best friend's dad. A fantasy world that definitely fried a lot of men’s brain circuits.

You start with the male stars.

First up is Tyler Cross. He's a tall actor with spiky, gelled hair, a tribal tattoo on his left bicep, and a defined six-pack.

You watch a POV movie, new at the time, and another where he plays the older brother’s best friend. It’s set in a girl’s pink-walled bedroom, teddy bears thrown to the side, and it’s all absolutely disgusting.

You glance at the clock after finishing Tyler Cross’s films. 5:55 p.m. You figure you’ve got about fifteen minutes before Sarah gets home, so you decide to at least start Javier Peña’s movies.

You type his name into the search bar.

The results flood in. One of the first titles you see: No Overtime for the Babysitter: Daddy Comes Home Early!

You roll your eyes. Great, now they’re coming for babysitters’ labor rights too.

You click the movie. It takes a moment to load.

The cover stares back at you while the loading icon spins.

The actress is gorgeous, with breasts you immediately envy and long black hair. Her lips, glossy and slightly open, look like she’s mid-moan. She’s one of the first actresses you’ve seen who isn’t drowning under a pound of makeup.

The scene starts with her dusting some furniture in the living room.

She’s wearing a mini-skirt and a light blue crop top made of thin fabric that shows her stomach. Definitely very appropriate attire for her job.

The sound of a door unlocking fills the room, and then it swings open.

The actress sighs:

“Oh! Mr. Peña! You’re home early!”

The camera pans to Mr. Peña. You blink at the screen.

Javier Peña has that classic '80s kind of handsomeness. He’s tall, lean but broad-shouldered, his dark hair messy in a way that somehow suits him. The thick mustache above his tight lips and the long sideburns give him the look of an old-school movie star, and you have to double-check the release date of the film. 2002.

He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a loose tie, his gray blazer slung over his left shoulder. But it’s his brown eyes that catch you — because they’re familiar. It feels like you know them.

“The meeting was canceled,” Peña says, tossing the blazer onto the couch. “My daughter’s asleep? You can go now.”

The gasp that escapes your mouth is quickly muffled by your hand when Javier Peña’s voice fills your ears through the headphones, because you immediately realize where you know it from.

The voice is a little softer, younger, with more of an accent — but it’s the same voice.

Joel Miller’s voice.

“She is,” the actress says sweetly, crossing the room. Javier looks her up and down — from her bubblegum-pink painted toes to the way her chest strains against her top. “Are you sure, Mr. Peña? You seem really stressed out. Can’t I help you with something?”

You freeze where you are, heart hammering against your ribs. Holy shit.

“Help how?” Javier asks, raising an eyebrow, pretending to be disinterested.

She smiles, grabs his hand, and leads him to the couch, urging him to sit.

You’re almost ready for her to drop to her knees in front of him, because that would be the obvious next step, but that’s not what happens. The actress — Mila, her name — circles behind the couch, leaning over him to start unbuttoning his shirt.

“You’re so tense, Mr. Peña,” she says, pouting as she undoes each button. “Taking care of the house by yourself, your daughter…”

The shirt falls open, revealing a firm, broad chest.

“So responsible… No one to help you out…” She leans in and whispers against his ear: “No one to suck your cock.”

The shocked laugh that bursts out of you is immediately covered by your hand again.

Javier’s shirt falls completely open, and he takes Mila’s hand, guiding it straight to his pants, her long red nails vivid against the gray fabric.

“I’ve got you for that.”

“Mmm…” the actress moans, massaging him through the fabric. She runs her hands back up his shoulders. “That’s right. You do.”

She moves to kneel in front of him, but Javier clicks his tongue and says:

“Take off your clothes.”

You feel a pulse low in your stomach. The actress smiles and obeys.

Once she’s fully naked, she starts to kneel again, and Javier spreads his legs wider, tossing his shirt aside.

She massages him through his pants for a few more seconds before tugging the zipper down and pulling his pants down with both hands. He’s not wearing underwear, of course he isn’t, and suddenly, you’re staring straight at Joel Miller’s cock.

Large, hard, slightly veiny, every inch of it.

Javier shifts on the couch, gathers all of Mila’s soft hair into one hand, and with the other, guides himself to her mouth, and—

Someone knocks on your bedroom door and you nearly slap the laptop closed.

“Honey, I think Sarah’s getting home from school. Aren’t you going to greet her?” your mom asks.

“I am,” you say, but your voice comes out too soft. You clear your throat and try again: “I’m going, Mom. Just a second.”

“Okay!”

Your mom leaves you sitting there, staring at the wall with wide eyes and a racing heart, so much slick between your legs you have to stand up, clean yourself, and change panties before going downstairs to greet Sarah.

She gets home, you both go into Joel’s house, you make her a sandwich, and she heads upstairs to shower. You stay on autopilot, your head still completely full of Javier Peña... and Joel Miller.

Holy shit.

The man was a porn actor.

And apparently, a very successful one, because you distinctly remember seeing that his films topped the charts for years. Is he still doing it?

You rub your eyes and fight the urge to shove your fist in your mouth and scream.

The irony is almost too much. Fate is throwing a former porn star into your lap when it knows all too well the thesis you’re writing, and all your hatred for the industry.

You order pizza for you and Sarah. You eat while watching a cheesy teenage romance movie that keeps her glued to the TV. When she’s yawning hard, you ask if she has any homework (she doesn’t) and send her off to brush her teeth and get into bed.

She hugs you goodnight and heads upstairs. You hear her brushing her teeth, then the door to her room closing.

You take a deep breath. Pull your phone out of your pocket. You type in the search bar: Javier Peña. The image results flood the screen.

Joel Miller in a thousand different styles. At industry parties in clothes that scream early 2000s, at photoshoots with other actresses, even holding up a trophy that reads—

You lean in closer to make sure you’re not misreading it.

Longest Cumshot of 2006.

Wow. Congratulations.

The Google summary confirms it: Joel Miller, born in 1981 in Arlington, Texas, to Chilean parents. Porn actor, best known as Javier Peña. Joel Miller became an advocate for porn actresses’ rights, one of the main reasons he left the industry in 2010.

One of his last public appearances as Javier Peña was in 2016, co-hosting an adult film awards show alongside Tess Servopoulos, his former career agent. Since then, very little is known about Joel Miller, though several producers have tried to lure him back with massive paychecks, even for solo work.

You hear the key turning in the lock.

You lock your phone at record speed and sit up straight on the couch, eyes wide open. Joel will probably think that you’ve been doing cocaine on his coffee table.

He walks in, shrugging out of his coat, and looks at you.

“Hey,” he says, kicking off his boots. “Everything okay?”

You nod, then try to use words:

“Hey. Yeah.”

Joel gives you a strange look, glancing up the stairs.

“Sarah’s asleep?”

You nod again.

Oh, Mr. Peña. You must be so tired. Can I help you? My God. You’re the babysitter working overtime.

“Are you really okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Um… I…” you rub your hands over your thighs. “I’m just tired. That’s all. Is everything okay with your sister-in-law?”

“She’s fine. I’ve got a nephew now,” Joel murmurs, collapsing onto the couch across from you, legs spread, hands over his eyes. “And he’s so small. I almost didn’t have the nerve to hold him. I don’t even remember Sarah being that tiny.”

“Ha ha.”

At your awkward laugh, Joel drops his hands and studies you carefully, narrowing his eyes. He watches you for a moment, like he’s seeing right through you.

Joel says,

“You found out who Javier Peña is.”

You freeze, hands clenched in your lap. Joel rubs his temple with a heavy sigh and sits up straighter.

“Which one did you watch?”

You swallow hard.

“The babysitter one.”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that, sweetheart.”

“The film’s from 2002. I think the actress’s name was Mila? She was trying to comfort you about being a single dad.”

Joel raises both eyebrows.

“I know the one,” he says with a dry, humorless laugh. “Right. Here it is. I was Javier Peña for ten years. I guess I still am, when the paycheck’s good enough. I made porn movies. They’re out there.”

“Still are?”

“Not for films. Just for appearances or special gigs at awards shows.”

“Oh.”

He says your name firmly.

“That industry — it’s your thesis. You know those actors and actresses are real people. I’m one of them. Are you going to stop treating me like a normal person now?”

“It’s weird,” you say softly. “Sorry, Joel, but it’s weird seeing you like… that… and then coming here and seeing you being Sarah’s dad, being… Joel Miller.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not,” he sighs, collapsing back onto the couch. “I’m way too tired to be mad, honestly. We can talk more about it later if you want. I’ll even help you with your thesis if you need. But not tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for staying with Sarah, seriously,” he says, shifting back into Dad mode. “Let me pay you.”

“No way,” you say quickly.

He opens his mouth to argue, but you cut him off:

“You said you’d help me with my thesis, right?”

He just looks at you. You explain,

“I’ll take that as payment.”

Slowly, he nods. And just like that, you have a deal.

That night, you head upstairs again and lock the door.

You open your laptop, type Javier Peña into the search bar, and scroll through the films. One title catches your eye: Neighbors: The Lust Lives Next Door.

The irony.

The title is ridiculous, sure, but the movie isn’t. He’s the married woman’s neighbor, and when her husband goes out of town, Javier shows up at the door asking if everything’s alright because he heard a noise and got worried.

He’s wearing tight jeans and a short-sleeve, light pink button-down shirt.

They head upstairs to check the bedroom.

She sits at the edge of the bed while Javier kneels down to look under it, but when he straightens up again, he sees the actress isn’t wearing any panties. Of course.

Two minutes later, Javier spreads her legs and goes down on her for a good while, his dark eyes locked on hers. And you could swear the moans are real. Either that, or she’s a damn good actress.

It’s when Javier starts whispering in her ear — loud enough to be picked up by the mic, but low enough to sound private — that your own fingers hover at the waistband of your pajama shorts.

He grips her thigh firmly, legs wide open, about to sink into her, both of them watching where they meet.

“Like this?” Javier asks.

She nods.

He licks his fingers and touches her clit. Her left leg trembles slightly.

“Sensitive? You’re not gonna come again for me?”

You swallow your shame and remind yourself that no one will ever know about this.

You slip your hand into your panties.

He moved the guitar to make space for you when you came to sit between his legs. His lips pressed a tender kiss to your temple before he trapped you close to him with the instrument over your lap.

‘Right where you belong.’ he murmured into your hair before continuing to pluck that unfamiliar tune again, his chest vibrating against your back as he hummed along. 

‘You keep saying you’re gonna teach me.’ After the song he was playing had come to an end you traced your fingers along the smooth wood of the instrument before turning your head to look up at him.

‘I will. You wanna learn now?’

You nodded, a soft smile playing on your lips, and he started to show you the basics. He showed you how to hold the neck, how hard to press down on the strings, and then he showed you the chords. He showed you the easier ones first, the ones you would remember easily, to prepare your inexperienced hands for the more difficult ones. 

‘This one’s a G chord.’

His fingers wrapped naturally around the neck of the guitar, then strummed the strings, creating a clear note that echoed through the warm evening air.

‘You wanna try?’

You let him take your hand, and he delicately positioned your fingers on the strings. What looked so simple for him was harder for your unpracticed hands, and your fingers stretched unnaturally to find the right placement. When you strummed the strings, the note was quieter and more blunt but still sounded the same as Joel’s.

‘This one’s hard.’ you mumbled.

‘Yeah? S’cause you got little hands.’

Joel pressed down on the same strings and instructed you to strum. When you did, the same sound rang out clearly again, and you looked down at his rough, calloused fingers, your mind wandering at the sight of their length.

‘Daddy’s got big hands. Makes it easier.’

He took your right hand in his, completely engulfing it, and brought it to his lips to press a soft kiss to your knuckles, his soft brown eyes locked onto yours.

“You wanna try the D again?”

‘…The what?’

‘The chord, baby.’

‘Oh… Sure.’

You carefully placed your fingertips as he showed you earlier. This time it was easier, your fingers didn’t need to stretch too far, and the vibration was smooth and loud when you strummed.

“Good girl. You’re a natural.”

It all seemed innocent enough, Joel was only teaching you how to play. But from your position you could feel his length hardening against the base of your spine. While he let you strum at the chords he had already taught you, his hands found your waist and gently squeezed it while he rested his chin on your shoulder, watching your delicate little fingers pick at the instrument. His breath fanned against your neck as he observed your movements and the stubble of his beard grazed your skin, sending chills down your spine that pulled your thighs together tightly to soothe the heat that was brewing in between them.

‘Try the G again, sweetheart.’ He murmured softly, his voice low in your ear.

You tried to remember what strings to press, and on what frets, and your fingers strained uncomfortably. 

‘Don’t like this one.’ 

Joel’s lips rasped against the shell of your ear, his voice gravelly with the lust that was thickening his cock. 

‘You get it right, I’ll give you a lil’ reward.’

You pulled your lower lip between your teeth as his hands trailed from your waist to your hips, giving them a light squeeze as he watched your digits, his touch raising goosebumps on your skin. Your fingertips carefully found their place and pressed down, and the note sang out loud and clear when you strummed.

Joel’s hips rocked slightly against you, his arousal now undeniable. One of his palms travelled up from your hips to your chest and grasped your breast lightly through the fabric of your nightdress, while the other rested on your hip.

‘That was good.’ He pressed a light kiss to your neck. ‘Gettin’ good, ain’t you?’

A smile tugged at the corners of your lips. ‘Got a good teacher.’

Joel’s lips curved into a smirk against the skin of your neck while his hand crept into the lacy neckline of your nightdress. ‘Show me C again, baby.’

You took a moment to remember how to, the feeling of his hands all over you making your brain start to melt inside your head. But the promise of a reward guided your hand, and when the strings vibrated, the note sounded practiced and true. 

‘Good girl.’ Joel’s lips found that sweet spot right under your jaw while his hand moved from your hip downwards and under your hemline. His middle finger traced your wet seam through your soaked panties, eliciting little gasps from you. ‘Now do A.’

Soft whines fell from your lips, frustrated by his teasing. ‘Daddy...’

‘What’s a matter, sweetheart? Need me to show you?’ He started to slowly redact his hands from where they touched you, and the loss of sensation spurred your memory- you quickly found the chord and played it hastily, desperate to keep his hands where they were. A soft laugh escaped Joel’s lips while the echo of the sound quietened. ‘Needy girl.’ His fingers returned to where they once were and resumed their gradual, teasing strokes. ‘Fast learner when you want somethin’, ain’t you, baby?’

Your head fell back against his shoulder with gasps of pleasure as his hand found its way into your panties and stroked lightly at the sensitive bud. His grip on your breast grew firmer as your hips squirmed under his touch, desperate for more. Joel’s breath grew ragged while he watched you writhe under his agonizing touch and he pushed his hips against you, wanting you to feel exactly what you were doing to him. 

His eyes scanned the surrounding houses for any sign of watchful eyes, but only saw the windows dark, covered up by drawn curtains. He rested the guitar against the bench and gently draped your legs over his knees, holding you wide open for access.

His middle finger slid down and soaked itself in the arousal that pooled at your entrance and teasingly pushed at the hole. ‘You deserve this, don’t you, baby? Been so sweet for Daddy.’ A muffled whine escaped you as he slowly pushed his long digit in, your arousal letting it glide easily. Joel shushed you and decorated your neck with feather-like kisses while his finger curled inside you just how he knows you like.

Soft whimpers fell from your lips as Joel’s finger gradually worked you open, preparing for the second one that dampened immediately with your juices when it slid inside. Your walls clenched around his digits while they stretched you out little by little. 

‘She’s so tight, darlin’,’ his breath warmed the skin of your neck. ‘Daddy ain’t been givin’ her enough attention?’ You shook your head and looked up at him while you gripped his forearms, your eyes desperate and needy.

Joel read the look in your eyes, your silent request and slid his free hand from your breast downward until it met your core. ‘Gotta fix that.’ His middle finger traced your clit lightly and slowly, his eyes locked onto yours as he watched you react to the added stimulation. Your hips squirmed more at the teasing sensation, backing into his clothed erection that strained against his jeans. He let out a low grunt and added more pressure until your legs began to shake where they rested on his thighs.

He watched you fall apart. His jaw was tense as he watched your brows furrowing and your mouth hanging open in the throes of ecstasy, your little body trembling as you came down from the high he had given you. You made him so hard it hurt. His lips grazed your ear as he murmured, ‘Up a minute, baby.’

You stood up from his lap, and turned to see him tugging at his belt buckle, the look in his eyes bordering on predatory while he watched you watch him shoving his jeans down to his knees hastily and motioning for you to sit back down. You arranged your knees on either side of his lap while he pushed his boxers down. His tip was wet with precum and he curled a fist around the base of his length, pumping it a few times while he gazed up at you.

‘You gonna be a good girl ‘n keep quiet for me?’ His voice was low and rough with lust. ‘Don’t want nobody else seein’ you like this.’ 

You bit your lip and nodded absently, distracted by the sight of him stroking himself. His other hand tipped your jaw, forcing eye contact, demanding a verbal answer.

‘Yes, daddy.’

Joel hooked his fingers into the seam of your panties and pulled them to the side, then gripped your hips and guided you, lining you up. When you slid down on his length, your head fell back. Although you’d taken his fingers, it was nothing compared to the way his cock always managed to stretch you out. His hold on your hips grew tighter, growls of pleasure vibrating from his throat as he forced himself to stay still to let you adjust. It wasn’t easy. The juices of your earlier orgasm dampened the coarse hair that surrounded the base of his shaft as you impaled yourself further down on it.

Again, Joel glanced around the quiet neighborhood cautiously, but the only sign of movement was the branches of surrounding trees swaying in the soft night breeze. He started to move your hips, pulling them into him and then pushing them back out, urging you to move, and you started to rock against him. Your already swollen bud brushed against his skin, sending sparks of pleasure through your body that elicited small whines each time. 

Before long, Joel was thrusting his hips up into you, desperate to relieve some of the pent up lust that had been building from the second he saw you standing in the doorway. Growls and grunts fell from him pursed lips while his hands glided from your hips to the hem of your nightdress and slipped underneath the light fabric to knead your breasts. His breath was ragged and laboured. He was obviously holding back, but each of his thrusts became more forceful as they met yours, until you cried out louder than you had intended at the feeling of the tension steadily rising below your hips. 

He clasped a hand over your mouth, his eyes dark and dangerous and his voice low. ‘You want everybody in the damn neighborhood to hear you?’ You shook your head. ‘Want everyone to know what Daddy’s doin’ to you right now?’ Neither of you stopped moving despite his cautionary tone. The sound of your skin slapping against his echoed off the porch, and you were certain that if somebody was listening, it wouldn’t just be your moans that gave it away. Joel growled lowly and wetted his lip, you knew he could feel how close you were from the way your walls gripped him tightly, and the way you gushed around him. ‘You gonna let it go for me?’ Your eyes were desperate as you nodded, your sounds muffling under his hand.

Your eyes pinched shut as Joel’s hips thrusted up to meet yours with more vigour. ‘Then let it go for me, baby girl. Come on.’ Your eyes rolled back behind your eyelids and your nails dug deep into his biceps as waves of pleasure crashed over you. His hand did little to mute the sweet moans of overstimulation that wracked your body. Joel fell over the edge at the same time, his thrusts grew sloppier and his head fell back while you felt his warm release fill you up from the inside. 

After coming down from your peak, you wrapped your arms around his neck and leaned into him, resting your head on his shoulder. Joel’s hands delicately rubbed circles your back, keeping you impaled on his length that was slowly softening inside you, and he had no intention of withdrawing it. His lips pressed tender kisses to your forehead and cheeks while your breathing returned to a normal pace, and you felt the peace of the aftermath take over your body. 

‘Did so good for me, baby.’ He whispered as he watched your eyes close, and your nose nuzzle into the soft fabric of his flannel. ‘Such a good girl for me.’

Fourth time this week you had him in his room, half naked after dry swallowing one of those small, baby blue pills to get his dick up. First time doing it midday, sun shining in from his bedroom windows, curtains wide open. Shamelessly, he liked it– the thrill he got from the thin chance of someone seeing the real reason you’ve been walking with a limp, a certain shake in your knees all week. 

“Quit teasin’, Sweets. He’s all ready.”

You weren’t blind, just patient. He should be glad your own hormones weren’t constantly leading your mind. Unlike his. Though, spotting the writhe beneath the fabric, that dark spot blooming against the grey cotton. You’d be mad if you didn’t feel the sight, like a punch straight to the ovaries. 

‘May I?”

Joel almost laughed, you were never keen on formalities. It sounded unnatural. 

A nod was all you were given, eyes meeting his which were currently kept guarded by the lenses of those red framed bifocals. 

You leaned in, brushing soft, careful lips over the strain in his briefs, over the curve of seven-and-a-half inches compacted into a forced bow against the fabric. You knew what was to come once the fabric was down to his thighs, a sinful slap against the thick of his belly. Though, that being said; your index still trembled as she went in, curving around his waistband and–

THUMP.

Chest first into the tempur-pedic. 

Your jaw slacked as you felt the wind knocked out of you, briefly. Like the time you fell off your bed back first when you were six. Though this time, instead of a cry it was a moan. Deep from your gut. 

You weren’t as exhibitionistic as Mr. Miller, here. The thought of someone hearing– particularly someone you know. A face you have to see and god forbid greet every day, that’s what made your cheeks red. Your nose pressed down into his duvet, a heady smell of unwashed sex and every-day musk radiating through every stitch. Hoping to Christ the heavy comforter would be able to muffle the pornography shrilling out from your throat. Unlike Joel, shame weighed heavy on your conscience, especially when he was making you whimper just from broad hands with a firm touch, which was currently following the wave of your hip. Thumbs pressing into the gives between the bones, making you–

“Fffffffffffu–huccccckkk.” 

In other words, your tummy hurt. 

Your hips tilted out, his hands palmed your ass through your underwear– white, lace. It boggles his mind to even think where the fuck you found them. Tugging them down to the backs of your knees. It was all he needed.

Joel Miller knew he had you cryin’ every time he did this. Thrusts harmonizing with creaky hips that weren’t shy of sounding like they needed a fucking oil change. You’ve gotten used to it. Began counting them to see how many audible snaps of Miller’s pelvis will it take to cum this time? 

“‘Gonna take care of you today, sweetpea.” He murmurs. 

It was always more- how do you put it, mutual? If it wasn’t the headboard slamming, cervix kissing sex it’d be you on your knees, cheeks stuffed full’a cock after Joel’s been out all day. Thick cum riding the slippery slope down your throat. It wasn’t that Joel hadn’t ate you out before, made you into a proper meal. Though, there was a genuine excuse: this man’s sixty-one year old knees couldn't be put under stress. 

And lucky for you, you liked the taste of spend and the smell of musk as your face buried into his pubes. You liked the sore jaw, shaky knees. You liked doing it in his study, looking up to find fogged lenses of his bifocals. Resting your head on his thigh with a bitten cheek before placing the final kiss to his belly. 

It was fun. Made your pelvis boil and your head fog. As a real man’s cock should.

Broad hands now held around your thighs, one loosened, giving the back of your leg, the soft spot directly under your ass-cheek a lovely pat-pat-pat. 

His tall finger delved forward to the back of your folds, right at your entrance where he can feel the leak that had sprung by his touch. You hummed, wriggling your hips back into the touch. 

“Mm, m’ready, Joel.” 

“Mm-mm” He shook his head. “Need’s some more o’me.” 

Tsk-ing at your advance. You weren’t in the mood for his relentless teasing. Feeling, touching, carving heat into every inch. Though, even so it was hard not to enjoy. You breathed into the plushness of blankets, scooting yourself an inch- two inches further back. Your ass pressing against the palm of his hand. 

“So wet here.” He rubbed that finger through your labia, that build up of slick and arousal coating age-spotted skin. You pouted.

“Need’ya wet–” He paused, trailing a slick digit between your cheeks, tapping it against that foreign spot, the tight, clenched ‘o’ of muscle. “-Here.” 

You sucked in a breath, a sharp one. Fingers, on instinct, curling around the comforter. Not in your wildest fucking fantasies. –Well, yeah, but not the one you thought would come true– Miller’s finger pressed against a pure hole for the first time since you’ve started fucking. You almost forgot it was an option. You almost forgot old fuckers like Joel got off on that shit. 

This shit.

“S’been a while.” Joel drawled, the pad of his finger tracing a circle around the live rim. Nerves finally picking up on the vulgarity. You whined.

He couldn’t believe you whined. A moan, a cry, a chant of his name from panting lips from deep within your heaving chest– but a whine. Like a puppy begging for a treat. 

“You like that?”

He applied the smallest bit of pressure, just enough for your ass to draw a kiss to his fingertip. Joel grinned, mean.

“Barely fuckin’ touched you, babygirl.” 

Your stomach sunk, cunt throbbed and swelled with no finger, nothing to relieve all that tension. All before his middle finger– the same one slicked and lubed with juice bubbling from your pussy into your lips, now pressed in, just enough to invade that virgin ring. Your back arched, you wanted to scream. Gnawing on the rolled foldover of the duvet. 

Your legs twitched and your hips bared down. It was too tight, It didn’t even compare to your cunt, even before Joel- an unpopped cherry, freshly chewed fingernails and a dream. The dream of you making yourself cum on your own fingers. Spoiler alert: sitting there, pumping fingers two inches in, stopping because you’re too scared to go deeper isn’t the way to get off. Especially not with stress in your belly and the constant thought of “Holy fuck, I can’t wait for the real thing.” Looped and singing through your mind. 

Now you had the real thing. In-and-out and successful every time. Joel did that. 

And Joel was doing this too–

A more violent breed of butterflies fluttered in your tummy. Joel felt your hole pulse around nothing. Nothing more than a pressing fingertip in which he slowly pulled away. You whimpered. 

“Dirty girl, huh?” He drew. “Should’a told me you liked this sooner. Would’a been glad to play with ‘er.” 

Oh, fuck him.

The problem was he would’ve, you shouldn’t be surprised, honest. His body curved over your own, the bare, firmness of his chest pressed up against your back. Skin-on-skin, tummy slouched heavy to your lower back, rocking against your lumbar. 

The sudden weight and comfort of your old man made your body relax, slightly, less tense. Though, those eyes were still wide, pupils shaky, jaw slacked against the bed. You hissed this time as you felt it again. This time, a dry, thick thumb.

An assumption that the slick dragged from your pussy to your ass would be enough, it was dumb. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Tsk.

“No, that won’t do, Pretty.” He tapped against the knot, “‘Less she’s plannin’ on easing up, ‘ere.” 

“Joel.” You heaved. 

“‘Less she wants my tongue.” 

If a single finger wasn’t pure sin already, this was. 

He started to slink his body down, broad palms massaging their way down from your ribs, to the inward curve of your waist, hips. Thighs. All the while his body traveled with, nose drawing a line down the divot of your spine. His thorny, greying beard prickled down sensitive skin. 

Then, a weighty kiss was planted against your lower back. His pouty bottom lip reaching your tailbone all before his knees hit the ground.

Too. Fucking. Hard.

“MotherFUCKER–!”

Not only had the feeling shot into his lower back but once his shins joined the hardwood there was a painfully rhythmic snap, crackle and pop that came from his joints. 

It was his body’s kind reminder, he was far from twenty-one. 

“Jesus Christ, Joel.” 

You had breathed, body still in tremors though for a split second you had been transported outside of your haze to check on your old man. Head straining over your shoulder only to see the top of his grey curls peaking over your ass– at least, from your point-of-view.

“Not a word, Kiddo.” He couldn’t help but grumble, turning quickly into a drawn groan as he strained to stand back up. One foot back flat onto the floor, then, slowly came the next. He fisted the mattress, stabilizing himself as he got back on stiff legs. 

He was so fucked.

Your chest would swell against the covers, before releasing a breath. Still involuntarily twitching, shuddering every time you heard an uneven breath, a grunt as he stood. You felt your insides convulse. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” There was a subtle pause, chewing on your bottom lip before–

“old man.” 

He blinked. 

And in a sigh, he shifted close once again. One hand would raise as if to wave before landing a heavy hit to your ass.

“Fu– fuck!”

Once was enough.

“Jo–el–!” 

 Especially after hearing you squeal as you did. His name falling between the cracks of your wail.

“What’d I tell you.” He’d tut. Palming the reddening skin, tingling as it flushed. “Stings, don’t it?”

Instinctively, your back arched into it. The burn was fucking nice. The calloused palms of his hands almost apologetically soothing over the blushing area of flesh. You don’t cry, you moan, deep and hearty like you fucking mean it. 

“Move. On the bed, Pumpkin. You’re drippin’.” 

Dripping would be an understatement. 

Though, obeying Joel’s words, you find yourself hiking a knee over the side of a bed. Then the other, elbows being your way of travel as you heeded on all fours. You were sickeningly willing. Always and forever, for your old man. 

Once you made it to the middle of the queen you allowed your body to rest up on your shins. Keeping an as-picture-perfect-as-you-could posture. Curving your spine, sitting, perched like a cat, silently waiting for her treat. 

Joel, meanwhile; tugged down his boxers, letting them rest around his thighs, heavy balls hanging over the hem. Cock standing against his tummy. A river of cloudy obscenity dribbling from his slit. His brows would pinch together with each step, lips pursing as he let himself drop into his bed. The comfortable cradle where his body lays every night– the slight imprint his body has left in the mattress from five years of settling in that same spot routinely. One-thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-six days. 

His thighs would spread ever-so-slightly, almost to coax you. When he realized you were waiting for a vocal command, he allowed his head to fall against his pillow. Worn with musk- smelled dry. If, that made any sense. 

“Still wanna taste you.” He stated. 

There was a beat.

“Sure you’d just fuckin’ love to do the same f’me.” 

He was right. In fact, he’s never been more correct in the full sixty-one years his presence has graced this putrid earth. And fuck him for that. 

A grounding breeze gently pushed through the window that Joel had opened earlier- a slit. Barely that. The mattress would give against the palms of your hands as you crawled over to him. Almost out of instinct going to straddle over his thighs, but then, rectified yourself quickly. 

Your hands would cup over his shins to get the right pose on him. You feel a familiar, warm palming against the back of your thighs. Feeling, examining. Pathing a calloused digit from the pit of your knee up to the fattiest part of your thighs. Right underneath your buttcheek. 

“Don’t be shy.” He presses. 

And you’d reiterate, once again. Fuck him.

He was lucky enough you chose to spend your days and nights adulterating with him. Wasting time that could easily be spent meaning something. Though, who could be bothered with productivity at times like these. Especially as with every orgasm the weight of the world seems to ease up as well. 

A better mood, a better day. Though, more strenuous for Joel’s joints. Shame. 

You arched back, hips up as you pushed the plush of your ass against his face, his facial hair ticklish against the pillowy skin. Your stomach fell. Your breasts squished against his lower belly, hands finding purchase on the meat of his thighs, breath coming out in slow, balancing puffs. 

The tip of your nose pressed against the grey, wiry curls that laid a crown of thorns around his base. Nostrils flaring as you inhaled the heady– fuckin’ dizzying smell that came within. 

Your parted lips would ghost over the thick vein that ran along the underside of his shaft. The tip of your tongue cautiously laid flat against his cock. Slowly, running up, tasting the salt of his skin. In return, Joel’s teeth nipped at your ass cheek. His own tongue began seeking the taste of you, slacking his jaw the slightest, sinking between your crack once delved past his lips, lapping a stripe from the pink-ish pucker his finger had prodded earlier, down to where you needed him the most. 

One single lick. 

One single lick and your hips involuntarily pushed back into the warmth of his mouth. The wetness of his tongue. It all felt so–

“GOOD–!” 

A loud shrill of that pretty word was consequence of Joel’s tongue flicking against your overly sensitive, all around deprived folds, and a solid thumbing against your rim. You thought he’d be done with her by now. 

One problem: his window. Still open a crack, though we all know a crack is enough. Well, how do we know? Maybe last week, you were walking down the road to get to Miller’s to drop off supplies he had asked for. The window cracked, noises that’d you’d think to only hear coming from a hormonal sixteen year old boy’s bedroom as he jerks off to an old Playboy. 

“Sh–shut up, baby.” He’d murmur, vibrations of his softened voice tickling at your cunt. “Don’t wanna be the talk of the town, now do we?” 

Good point. Great point. Because of course, you definitely would love for that to happen. 

You wanted to sob.

One of his hands slithered down to your stomach, rubbing over the flesh as he pulled you back some.

“Now, why don’cha try stuffin’ those pretty cheeks so there ain’t a worry ‘bout no outburst.” 

A weak ‘mhm’ hummed through the air as you pushed lower, instead of palms the sides of your forearms were keeping you up. The warm light of the afternoon casting a glow onto his head, you savored this sight, taking a moment to wet your lips once more before you’d strike. 

The heaviness of his dick lugged forward against your lips, a kiss was pressed gently, all-too lovingly against his tip before you opened your mouth, flattened your tongue and glided him inside warm, comforting walls. It was just the head at first, suckling sweetly upon the flushed cap of his girth– tentative and teasing, though, his hips rutted up, forcing himself back another inch. 

Your hand wrapped around the base, squeezing him with no real mercy behind the pressure. It was his fault for being this size, your fingers couldn’t even fully meet on the underside. And you’d say it a third time for good measure: fuck. Him. 

Fourth, fuck him for being so big. And fifth, fuck him for tasting like a drink of heaven every time. 

Miller’s mouth hadn’t fell short either, curling his tongue between the swell of your folds, still, impossibly soaked. Never-been-kissed sorta wetness.

 Or, a kiss to a secretive place after you promised your parents no man will ever touch you before two ‘I do’s

Your hips rocked back against his face as he gave you the stimulation that made your knees kick, stomach tense. Walls clench, empty without the fleshy muscle of his tongue. You whined, you missed it. You were all achy for it– he knew that. 

He was the one fuckin’ feeling that. 

A searing kiss captured your cunt, upper lip soft against the tender bridge of skin between your pussy and your ass. The tip of his tongue flicked against your entrance just like it would your mouth, same way he’d turn a soft kiss into an invasion. His tongue delved as far as he could reach, two, just barely teetering three inches. 

You’d moan again, it’d be louder if it weren’t for the fact his cock was stuffing against your left cheek. The tip of your own tongue traced around a bulging vein. For a breather– you were drowning, after all– you’d pull back with an obscene ‘pop!’. Breathe. Watch the long, sticky string of precum connect from his head to your swollen lips, admiring how it’d glisten in the sunlight like the prettiest of silk. Then, slowly bare your mouth back onto his needy, old dick. 

There was a violent twitch against the hollow of your tongue, another moan into your hole. Your arms were shaking as you supported your weight, feeling his thighs twitch beneath your elbows. Though, it still didn’t seem like enough. Every grunt, breathless hum into the mound of swell he was eating like a five-star meal should tell you just how pleasurable it really was. 

You wanted more. 

So, you’d give him ‘more’. 

You remembered what had stuck from your friends ramblings of what-they-don’t-teach-in-sex-Ed. Relax your throat, ease up. Breathe through your fucking nose most of all. 

Joel had been too distracted to notice the feeling of his cock sheathing further into your mouth, stretching your lips into a wide gape. Up until he felt a spasm of your throat, a sickly squelch from the back of your throat before he felt the tightness. How your belly stopped rising and falling– for the time being, you couldn’t breathe.

“Motherfuck– Oh–!” He had to fall back, his nose still inhaling the sweet scent of slick as he let out that throaty, deep moan. 

“Ssssssssss–lut” He hissed.

You swear you paused for a moment, movement haltering. 

Slut? 

Looks like it had finally found a way past his lips. 

And fuck, was it delicious.

You hummed around the length, eyes squeezed as the watery build up that had been pricking your eye finally slipped down your cheekbone, past the flush of your face. Cruelly, your gentle touching fingertips tapped against his balls, they were full, undeniably warm. You traced a fingernail up the seam–

He was supposed to be the cruel one.  

“Stop.”

A single command muffled into your pussy, burying his face further into you. It was killin’ him and it was sure as hell killing you. 

“Focus.” His thumb moved between your slit, tapping firm against your clit before speaking yet again:

“Focus. Focus on my cock, Honey. He’s needin’ you.” 

His voice almost sounded pained. He was right there. ‘Few more bobs of your head, almost wishing he could just reach and tug your hair, shove your head down til’ you got your throat filled, voice breaking once he’s done from his head kissing against your voice box.

He was horrible. That should be a well known fact by now. 

It was all growing stronger now, the feelings– all that god-sent, mutual stimulation making thighs twitch and knees kick. Joel’s tongue swirled your opening, thumb rolling back and forth, up and down ‘stead of round and round over your erect clit. Back arched like a cat in heat. 

Body returning to tremors. Neither of you could deny the inevitable. 

You felt that now too familiar feeling in the low of your stomach. Every shift of his thumb against the bud making you spin, those butterflies bit now. Or, maybe they had tiny cowboy hats and lassos to tie your insides up into a tight knot. 

Your tongue laid one last desperate lick flat along his inches, allllllllll the way up to his head where your lips settled for the last few sucks. Now, he was just rambling. All fingers. Mouth slick with juices, beard glistening with that clear, slightly bubbly substance:

“Gonna cum for daddy again? Fuckin’ greedy little girl, slobberin’, makin’ a mess’a me.” 

Babbling.

“I feel it,” He began. “Feel you pulsin’. Body’s begging for it, baby. Let ‘er go.”

Toes bent, eyes squeezed as you felt that numbing beat throughout your cunt, legs, even arms going that ticklish kind of numb. Things went quiet for a moment.

Then, you released a profane wail against his cock. Eyes squeezing as you POPPED! Yourself off the length, watching it flop back, standing straight as your hips fell down onto his chest, the warmth of the muscle soothing your crying cunt as you road it out. The soft skin felt like a warm kiss to soothe that ache that made you sweat. 

His hands gripped your waist, adjusting and sliding your body down to his thick middle, watching your hips grind from behind, lower back arch. Your heart painfully hammered against your ribs as you desperately tried to catch all the oxygen lost within the last twenty-five minutes, dwindling throughout the heavy air in the room. 

“Thas’ it. Good girl.” He cooed. “Ride ‘er out.”

Sixth, fuck him for soft praise afterwards. 

The hand attached to his person moved to his pulsating cock, gripping it firm right in the middle as he tilted it back, sliding his fist up and down the slick skin. Rubbing his thumb angrily through the split. 

His tummy heaved beneath your recovering cunt. Still weak, still shaky. You swore your eyes had only been closed for a minute until you heard him– 

“FUCK.” 

Until you felt him. 

Warmth painting your belly white, dripping down your navel, down to the sweet, pretty skin of your pussy. Your hand ran down to smear it, rubbing his spend into your skin like it was healing. Like it was something sacred. Fuck this, to you, it was. 

You could always count on the patter of the shower to drown out any thoughts of regret. Not that you had many, anyway.

The warm water cascaded down your bodies. Relaxing aching muscles, comforting on your buzzing body. Joel’s hands softly but greedily palming your tits before slipping down to your stomach, feeling over the spot where his semen had laid just thirty-minutes ago. 

“Could’a had you ride me.” He murmured. “Would’a looked prettier in you.” 

He nipped against your earlobe, inhaling the scent of freshly shampooed hair. 

It was more than foolish to think about children whatsoever in the state of this godforsaken earth. You weren’t even sure you were cut out to be a mother anyway– it wasn’t on your mind much. Unless Joel was behind you liked this, muttering sweet daydreams about it against the side of your neck. 

“Oh, stop it.” You’d giggle, impishly. 

God help him. Thinking with his dick ninety-nine percent of the time. 

“Besides, don’t you think you’re a little too young for kids, Miller?” 

You’d jab, in return he’d lay a much more gentle tap to your ass with his palm, a silent fuck you. His first, as of today. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve had enough of you today, y’know that?”

His touch was tooth-rottingly sweet. Kissing down your neck, nibbling down your shoulder. Each freckle worshipped individually. The thick of his gut was smooth against your back, he was so close. All it was– him, you,

If old!joel miller was my husband we'd fuck all day. He has to take viagra every day to keep up with a young thing like me.

Waking up with his dick in me and minutes later he fucks me dumb with it. It's the only time he can fuck me without that little blue pill.

When I make breakfast he takes it along with his other pills for blood pressure and his heart cuz he's a fkng old man. I wear one of his big shirts while making scrambled eggs when he suddenly rams his cock into me, making me almost drop the pan on the floor. I'm going hazy on his cock and grip the counter top and when I finally cream on it, the eggs are burned. His finger picks up my juices and he brings it to his mouth. "Guess my breakfast isn't fucked up after all..."

He's working on his plans to help jackson out with his slutty old man glasses and it turns me on so badly, I start sucking his cock under his desk. It's so warm and heavy in my mouth, and I lick his thick vein slow and deliberate and his hand grabs my hair. "Don't tease me slut, just suck it like a good girl, you are one right?" He says and I nod as he forces his cock down my throat.

It turns me on so much. I'm so thankful to be his personal fucktoy. My panties are always soaked around him. I'm not on birthcontrol so when I'm ovulating, I'm BEGGING for his seed but he doesn't wanna give it to me because "I'm grandpa age, not dad age" as he fucks me dumb. My cunt clenches at his words and he says "fuck that turns you on? Fucking a grandpa? You're such a dirty young thing. Fuck I'm so lucky" i keep begging for his cum and eventually he gives in and fills me up soo good. "Aren't you embarrassed? That everyone will see your swollen belly and know that you fuck such a dirty old man. You're such a fucking whore."

At the new years eve party I wouldn't keep my hands off him. I'd wear a short skirt with no panties and bend in front of him. Even tommy can see my throbbing wet pussy and he gets hard and joel notices and drags me to the toilet where he fucks me so hard, i scream. But joel didn't lock the door, he wanted people to come in and see me cream around an old veiny cock with pigmented spots and grey pubes. All because of that damn pill.

And it's not over. We go back home and as soon as he locks the door he bends me over at the dinner table and fucks me hard again and smacks my ass. He turns me around and rips my dress to get acces to my boobs. I didn't wear a bra either and he sucks my nipples and bites them so hard they start to bleed but it's fine cuz he can do whatever he wants to my body.

As we go to sleep, I sleep in my cute pink top with little bows on it with matching underwear. I'm so tired from all this fucking all day but he isn't. Oh no he took that viagra and will make use of it as much as he can. "Why are you wearing underwear? Thought I said I need acces to you all time. Whenever I want." I was so sleepy but managed to nod and say a soft sorry. "I'll show you how sorry you'll be." He says as he enters his big girthy cock inside me again. He fucked me like a sexdoll. I was just laying there, letting him use me. I couldn't do anything, just be a good girl for him.

His stamina was crazy. "You're 40 years younger than me and can't keep up? You're so useless." He said as he grabbed my one leg and put it over his shoulder, hitting my spot so right I screamed. "Good girl. Cum for me now." He said and my voice broke "i-i can't joel" and he chuckled and rubbed me clit hard and faster "you dumb slut, that's not my name." Tears began to form at my eyes and I came with a heavy cry "D-daddy I'm so sorry." But he didn't stop, no he fucks me like an animal till I squirt and pass out. He still didn't stop. He fucked my unconscious body till he squirted all his load in me. His balls are empty at this point. He pulled out and gave me a kiss on my temple before he laid down next to me.