meanderingcaptainswanmusings

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

CLINT! 🫠

Clint x Reader fic

I fell in love with Clint after watching Freaky Tales and wrote this little AU following his canon backstory where Reader is his wife, and giving them a happier ending.

AO3 link

Rated M - there's sex but it's not explicit.

Collateral

You meet Clint for the first time when he shows up late one night to collect the collateral your shithead boyfriend promised to a loan shark after blowing his whole paycheck at the track, again.

Turns out, the collateral was you.

He’s a big man with scars on his face and large hands that he shows off when he showily cracks his knuckles. You should be intimidated by him but you’re too busy hurling insults at your boyfriend’s face like the local kids hurl water balloons at strangers who pass through the neighbourhood before giggling and speeding away on their bikes.

“You son of a bitch!”

“You what, you pawned me like a fucking watch?”

“Thought you could pick a winner? You can’t even pick your fucking dirty socks up off the floor, you lazy bum!”

“Fucking piece of shit!”

Clint just stands there while you yell and scream, not saying a word or moving a muscle until your boyfriend finally tells you to shut up and raises a hand like he’s going to hit you. Then he’s as quick as a snake unfurling to strike, pinning your boyfriend to the wall with one of those large hands around his throat before you can even blink. Your cheek faintly stings with the phantom slap, but it’s nothing compared to what Clint is currently doing to him. His eyes bulge and he claws inefficiently at Clint’s wrist while thick fingers squeeze his windpipe until the only sound he can make is a faint wheeze. Clint studies him silently for a moment before he turns dark eyes to you.

“That bike parked out front, is it his?”

His voice is surprisingly soft for someone in his line of work.

“Yeah,” you say, your arms wrapped protectively around your middle. The motorcycle is his pride and joy, his baby.

Your boyfriend’s face is a purple as grape Hubba-Bubba when Clint turns his attention back to him.

“Change of plans, I’m taking the bike instead. Keys?”

“He keeps them in his leather jacket,” you tell him, grabbing your purse and booking it for the door with a few more choice words thrown over your shoulder at the man who’d offered you up so he could bet on a “sure thing trifecta” that turned out to not be such a sure thing after all. Clint makes no move to stop you, he even gives a tiny wave with his free hand with the other still wrapped around your boyfriend’s throat when you take one final look back.

You just miss the bus, seeing it pull away from the curb as you sprint down the sidewalk waving your arms and calling to the driver to wait, please, fucking wait! You hope he sees you giving him the finger in his mirror when he drives off, leaving you to wait for the next one. Thankfully your cigarettes were in your purse, you go through three matches before you finally get one to light and take furious drags that ring the filter fuschia with your lipstick.

Clint rolls up to the bus stop on your now ex-boyfriend’s ex-motorcycle, wearing your ex’s leather jacket over his own plaid shirt,

“Need a lift?” he asks.

You should say no, but the next bus isn’t for another thirty-seven minutes so you grind out what’s left of your cigarette under your heel while imagining it’s your ex’s face and hop on, sliding your arms around his waist. The bike roars to life underneath you and you feel him pat your hand before he takes off into the night.

It’s more reassuring than you expected.

He takes you straight home, no detours, no funny business, and you watch him leave before you go into your apartment. He gives you that little wave again, and this time you return it before he drives off. Once inside you kick off your shoes and make straight for the fridge, taking the phone off the hook as you go so your ex can’t call. You leave the handset dangling by the cord and the dial tone fills the silence while you rummage around for ice cream or alcohol or both.

Fuck. You were all out of Rocky Road.

A while later there was a knock on your door and somehow you just knew. When you open it you see Clint has come back. The bike is nowhere in sight now but he’s still wearing your ex’s leather jacket.

It looks better on him.

Much better.

“Hey,” he says. “Wanted to stop by and make sure that dickhead hasn’t come over to bother you.”

You shake your head. “No. He blew his whole check at the track, he doesn’t even have bus fare left and it’s not like he’s gonna walk his lazy ass all the way over since he seems to have lost his wheels somehow.”

That was the first time you saw Clint smile, the corners of his lips lifting with amusement.

(you find out later that after you left he’d threatened your ex with much worse than the loss of his bike if he came near you again and knocked him out cold, so he knew damn well that he hadn’t “come over”, the sneaky bastard. He gives you that smile again when you learn the truth and you think about being mad about it and making him sleep on the couch, but you settle for sending him to the video store to rent your favorite movie instead.)

“Still,” Clint drawls, hands shoved deep in his pockets and giving you the same look as a stray dog sniffing around for a bone, “maybe I should hang out here for a bit. Just in case.”

“Hang out for a bit” turns into sharing a joint he pulls from the jacket that had also been your ex’s along with the bike (and you) while you sprawl on the rug and play records to drown out the dial tone still coming from the phone. Clint starts out sitting on your couch, before he joins you on the floor to pass the joint back and forth more easily and eventually (inevitably) he winds up naked in your bed.

The sex was better than the drugs. Your ex always bought shit weed though. Clint has faded tattoos on his arms and fresh bruises on his knuckles, he eats you out and then he fucks you from behind with his large hands on your hips and his knees keeping yours spread apart. You expect him to leave immediately afterwards with some bullshit excuse that you’ll pretend to believe, but he lights up two cigarettes from the pack in his discarded jeans instead. One for himself and one for you, lying back against the pillows with an arm behind his head and filling your bedroom with a blue haze that hangs in the air like the question you ask him.

“Did he really put me up as fucking collateral?

You hate the way your voice breaks just a little bit when you say it, anger leaking into sadness as your eyes burn from something other than the cigarette smoke.

There’s a long pause, and then a sigh from beside you. “Yeah. He did. I’m sorry, baby.”

You take a deep drag on the cigarette Clint gave you and blink away the tears. He’s not worth it.

“Asshole.”

A large hand closes around your free one where it lays between you on the mattress and gives it a squeeze.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees.

You didn’t know it then but it was the same for him, only in his case it was his father who traded him for debts he couldn’t pay when he was too young to understand what that meant and by the time he did, it was too late.

************

  Clint shows up again the next night, late, knocking at your door with a bag of greasy takeout and really good weed. The sex was still better though. He fucks you on your couch this time, face to face with his jeans around his knees and a dark lock of hair falling on his forehead as he thrusts between your legs. When Channel Six signs off for the night and the Star Spangled Banner starts to play he’s still on top of you, TV turning to the only snow you get in Oakland and his soft breath in your ear while you lay under him and run a hand up and down his sweaty back. He’s heavy, but you don’t mind the weight.

He was the heavy, the muscle, the guy sent by “The Guy” to collect debts and break fingers when they welched on the payments. You don’t mind that either. Everyone has to hustle to survive. Clint never asks you out on a date, never asks you to be his girl, you just are. He keeps coming by, with food and weed and videos from the place on the corner, you toke up and have sex and watch movies with your head resting on his shoulder. Soon he’s dropping you off and picking you up from work in his car so you don’t have to take the bus, keeping a toothbrush in your bathroom next to yours and his favorite beer in your fridge.

You prop your feet up on his dash when he drives you to get late night milkshakes, or to the schlocky double features at the old drive-in just outside the city limits where you give him head in the backseat and ignore the movie. He smiles and slings an arm around your shoulders when you walk down to the video place together, you take cigarettes from his pack and he lights them for you, and the catcallers and the gangbangers in the neighbourhood all steer clear when they see you coming cause no one messes with Clint, and word has spread that you’re Clint’s girl now.

His girl, his baby, he never calls you by name, it’s always “baby” when he knocks on your door with takeout or picks you up from work, when his dick is in your mouth and when you’re arguing over what to rent at the video store.

“Baby, I’m here.”

“Baby, you ready to go?”

“Baby, yes, fuck yes.”

“Baby, no, not fucking Back to School again.”

He’s not really much of a talker though and listens more than he speaks. Unlike previous boyfriends like your asshole ex who got tired of your voice and told you to shut up and be quiet, Clint actually likes it when you go on about movies and music and read articles from the magazines he buys you out loud in the car while he drives. You casually stuff the latest Cosmo into his glove box alongside his gun and kiss him goodbye when he drops you off at work. When he picks you up again after your shift he might have new bruises on his knuckles, a fresh stain on his shirt that you have to wash in cold water when you do his laundry at the Supersuds next to the video store, but he also always has a smile for you.

Clint doesn’t even actually ask you to marry him, doesn’t do the whole “down on one knee” thing, he just drives you all the way to Reno on your day off and stops the car in front of a wedding chapel. It looks like a real church with a steeple and everything, except you’re pretty sure real churches don’t have signs out front offering a bottle of champagne and ten dollars in free slot play with every ceremony.

“What the hell?” you sputter, turning in the passenger seat to look at him. “Clint, you’re not serious.”

He fishes a ring carefully out of his pocket and gives you that smile again, the one that always makes you weak. It’s the one that got him into your apartment in the first place and was definitely responsible for your current predicament.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t make an honest woman of you, baby?”

The doctor had told you three days ago, after you puked every morning for a week straight and thought you just had the flu.

Clint reaches over and places his hand gently on your stomach. You don’t see the bruises on his knuckles, all you see is the man who knocked you up and didn’t run away screaming, who already bought a teddy bear with a big bow tied around the neck.

“Okay,” you nod, your laugh filling the car. “Let’s get hitched then. You know that means you’re stuck with me forever though, right?”

Clint grins. “No baby. That means the both of you are stuck with me forever now.”

He marries you in the little chapel that same day, and trades the champagne you can’t drink now for a 2-for-1 buffet coupon instead.

“You’re eating for two so it’s really a 3-for-1 coupon. Much better deal,” he says with a wink.

**********

  One last job.

That’s what he calls it, the guy with the grey hair and pale suit.

The Guy.

He shows up and says he’s got a job for Clint, one last job for him to do and then he gets to walk away, clean slate, all debts paid in full. He smiles but it’s not like Clint’s smile, it’s cold and sharp as a knife when he glances over and adds that he’ll stay and keep you company while Clint is gone.

It’s not an offer.

You’re the insurance policy.

You’re the collateral.

“Oh,” he slyly adds with a pointed glance to your swollen stomach, “and congratulations.”

You both are.

Clint has no choice, he has to leave you there and take the job, with your dog-eared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting in his glove box as he drives off. You’ve been reading it to him on the way to and from Lamaze class at the hospital. He goes to the corner market to get you Rocky Road ice cream whenever you get a late night craving, rubs your achy feet, and rents your favorite movies without complaint every Saturday night.

You taste something sour in the back of your throat and almost puke right on the guy’s polished shoes.

He tries to make conversation like he didn’t just send the man you love, your husband, the father of your child, out on a job that could get him killed or sent to prison for the rest of his life. This isn’t a standard beat-down, this is something big, something serious, and the sour taste doesn’t go away. It only gets worse. The guy finally gives up with a shrug and a, “suit yourself, sweetheart,” turning the TV on. He laughs uproariously at Cagney & Lacey even though it’s not particularly funny, while you watch the clock on the wall instead, waiting for Clint to come back. Through the news, and Carson, the minutes tick by somehow both too fast and too slow. You rub your stomach, and wait.

He’ll come back.

He has to.

When he finally does he’s got a duffel bag over one shoulder and blood dripping down his face. It fills with relief when he sees you, only to harden again when he looks at the guy.

“You tried to set me up. Take the fucking fall for you,” he spits.

The guy gives him that switchblade of a smile. “Like I said, one last job. It’s just business Clint, you’ve been getting sloppy lately. More of a liability to me than an asset. Probably cause you’ve got your head so far up her cunt now.”

He jerks his chin in your direction while smoothly pulling out a gun. Clint’s gaze darts to you again with sheer panic in his eyes.

“Nothing a little murder-suicide won’t fix. You’re still gonna take the fall.”

The sour taste is flooding your mouth and the baby suddenly kicks, hard. You go all Linda Blair in a blink, projectile vomiting everything in your stomach right at the guy. He flings his arm up to try to avoid the spray and his gun goes flying. Clint dives towards the floor, and a moment later a single shot rings out.

“Baby!”

Clint is at your side, one hand sliding protectively over your belly. His now ex-boss is on the floor, covered in half-digested Rocky Road with his brains splattered against the wall. If you had anything left in you, you’d probably puke again at the sight. The baby kicks again, a smaller one this time. Clint feels it too.

“She’s a little fighter,” he smiles.

“Just like her daddy,” you say.

He grabs the duffel bag on the way out, slinging it over his shoulder and wrapping his other arm around you to guide you to the car. You can see the cash peeking through where the zipper isn’t fully shut, enough to finally get out for good.

You leave Oakland with Clint the next morning, heading east. He packs the essentials in the trunk, including the teddy bear he bought when you first told him you were pregnant, the one with the big pink bow tied around its neck. When he pulls onto the highway you pull What To Expect When You’re Expecting out of the glove box. A receipt from the video store sticks out to serve as a bookmark, you never did return that last movie you rented and you’re going to get one hell of a late fee on your account.

Not that it really matters now.

Clint has one hand on the steering wheel, wedding ring flashing in the sun. The other rests on your stomach.

“You good, Baby?” he asks, rubbing against where his daughter is currently kicking against his hand.

“Yeah,” you say, covering his hand with yours. The bruises on his knuckles will be gone by the time she arrives in a few weeks. “We’re good.”

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

Season 2 premiere tonight!! Im not ready 😭

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

PEDRO PASCAL as Joel Miller The Last Of Us | 2.1 Future Days 

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

ultimate male fictional characters i fell in love with // a thread 25/?

25. Pedro Pascal: Joel Miller (The Last of Us 2023-)

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

She’s done it again!

Soft!Jackson!Joel is so swoon-worthy.

Joel Miller x Reader

Everyone in Jackson knew that if you went to the Tipsy Bison for a drink on a Wednesday night, it meant you didn't want to leave alone. It's been a long cold winter, and a long time since there was a man in your bed to keep you warm. You knew you'd find one at the Tipsy Bison on Wednesday night, but you weren't expecting it to be the newest resident in town, Joel Miller. While there isn't much left in the world, there's still music and liquor and one night stands.

AO3 link 5,196 words, rated M

Soft!Joel, smut, Reader was an adult when the outbreak happened but there's no exact age given and isn't physically described. Set in Jackson at some nebulous point not long after Joel and Ellie have settled down there.

Everyone in Jackson knew that if you went to the Tipsy Bison for a drink on a Wednesday night, it really meant you didn’t want to go home alone.

You weren’t really sure how Wednesdays had become the town’s unspoken hookup night, the day of the week to wear the one lace bra you owned and leave your hair down loose instead of pulled back in a practical bun when you went to the bar. Not that you went every Wednesday, you hadn’t, actually, in over two months. But it had been an especially cold winter this year, and your bed felt colder still on the long, dark nights without anyone else in it to keep you warm.

So Wednesday night at the Tipsy Bison it was, with your hair down, lace bra pulled from the back of the drawer for the first time in months, and an ache between your legs that needed to be eased with something other than your own fingers. There wasn’t a lot left in the world, you knew you’d never see Hawaii or Paris now or even your own hometown ever again, but you were still a woman and there was still a bar with alcohol and music where you could find a man for the night to take home.

There were a few people already there when you stepped inside, shaking off the cold while all heads turned to check out the new arrival. The first few times you went on a Wednesday instead of another night you were incredibly self-conscious, feeling like there was a neon sign flashing above your head when you walked in the door. COME AND GET IT, or HORNY AND DESPERATE, maybe. Now, you just hung up your coat and took a seat, long past any embarrassment about what you needed to stay sane in an insane world.

Jackson was small, you knew everyone in the bar. Jenna, which meant she and Eric were in the “off again” stage of their perpetual on again, off again soap opera of a relationship. Grant was a few seats down, which was no surprise, he was a total man-whore every day of the week and a Wednesday night regular. Andy, which made you pause for a second because wasn’t he only sixteen like five minutes ago? How could he be old enough for Wednesdays at the Tipsy Bison already? You felt suddenly ancient in a blink and you quickly moved on, shifting your gaze to the man sitting with his back to the far wall, a glass of amber liquor in his hand.

Joel.

Tommy Miller’s brother. The one who’d come clear across the country to find him, a quiet, taciturn man who mostly kept to himself in sharp contrast to the teenage girl he showed up with who swore like a sailor and talked to anyone and everyone. They were new enough in Jackson that you wondered if Joel even knew what Wednesday night meant or if he had just come in for a drink and nothing more. You took another glance, his hair was neatly combed and he was wearing a dark, button-up shirt that wasn’t fancy but also wasn’t one of the plaid flannels that were practically the winter uniform in town.

He knew.

And he looked good.

You’d washed your hair with the good shampoo you saved for special occasions, the stuff Casey made that was scented with lavender. You’d plucked your eyebrows and shaved your legs. Not to get laid, lord knew none of that stuff mattered to the men in town, you did it all for you. To feel like you did before, at least a little bit. Some Wednesdays you hadn’t bothered, just needing to forget everything for a few hours with a man between your thighs fucking you into oblivion and there was always someone there willing to oblige whether your legs were shaved or not. Tonight you’d wanted the anticipation, the ritual of playing music in your bedroom while getting dressed, to remember a time when things like getting that perfect arch to your eyebrows was important and the worst thing that ever happened to you was your parents getting a divorce when you were ten and not the whole world going to shit in a single day.

Music was playing in the Tipsy Bison, not the kind of music you actually liked, but there was music, you had your hair down loose while lace cupped your breasts under your sweater and your legs were smooth and ready to hold a man between them. Not Grant, you’d been there, done that. More than once. Certainly not Andy, who was way, way, way, too young. No one else really appealed to you, except for-

-your eyes flicked over to Joel again, still sitting by the wall with the same glass in his hand that was now almost empty. You hadn’t seen him approach anyone since you arrived, not Jenna, not Louise….

He met your gaze with dark eyes, holding it for several long moments while neither one of you looked away until he downed the last of his drink and stood up. Something fluttered low in your belly, something warmer than the alcohol as he weaved through the tables and came closer, until he was standing next to the empty chair across from yours with one hand resting lightly on the back.

“This seat taken?” he asked.

You smiled up at him. “It is now.”

This was just what you wanted, to flirt with a cute guy at a bar and see where it led. Joel pulled the chair back and sat down with a decent amount of grace for someone who was so broad in the shoulders.

“Not sure if we’ve ever been properly introduced. I’m Joel.”

You hadn’t been, but everyone in town had known who he was within ten minutes of his arrival.

“Tommy’s brother,” you said with a nod.

A wry smile twisted his lips at that, or maybe it was more of a grimace.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Our whole lives it was always the other way ‘round. Everyone used to call him ‘Joel’s little brother’ when we were growin’ up and here everyone calls me ‘Tommy’s brother’ instead. Takes some gettin’ used to.”

It was clear from his expression that he wasn’t used to it yet.

You leaned forward and held out your hand across the table, introducing yourself and adding, “it’s nice to meet you properly, Joel.”

This time you were sure it was a smile as his warm palm dwarfed your own.

You didn’t leave with him immediately even though you’d already made up your mind that Joel—not Tommy’s brother, he was just Joel to you now—was the one you would be going home with tonight. While you’d long since gotten over any hangups you might have had once about one-night stands and casual sex, you did want to learn a little bit more about the man who was going to be inside you later. So you had another drink each and talked for a little while, not about anything serious because you were clearly both here to forget about everything serious for a night, just light, inconsequential small talk. You told him about the last book you read, the movies you grew up with, the kind of music you did like. The female singer-songwriters of the 90s, mainly, Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Fiona Apple, basically anyone who could have performed at Lilith Fair. Joel listened more than he talked, and when he did speak his voice was laced with a Texas drawl like a drizzle of warm honey on fresh-baked bread.

He admitted his taste in music was a little different than yours, which made you laugh, cause, yeah, he didn’t strike you as the type to listen to the Indigo Girls or Juliana Hatfield. He did say he’d check if Jackson’s small library had any of your faves in their collection he could borrow, which both surprised and pleased you at how sincere he seemed about it. He told a silly joke about mermaids, and grinned over the rim of his glass when you laughed again.

It was getting late and people started to drift out the door in pairs. You saw Grant leave with Louise, and Andy, after what looked like some painfully awkward flirting, beamed as he walked out with his arm slung around Erica.

Joel saw it all too, and when the door closed behind yet another makeshift couple he turned back to you with a pointed little cough.

“So…..what Tommy told me about Wednesdays was true?”

You tilted your head and narrowed your eyes at him. “And just what are you implying by that?”

He immediately leaned back in his chair and started to sputter out an apology, you were pretty sure he even called you “ma’am”. You couldn’t keep up the stern facade for long, not when he looked so sheepish, so you silenced him with a hand laid on his sleeve.

“Joel. I’m kidding. Yeah, it’s true. Wednesdays here are, well, exactly what Tommy told you.”

You gave his forearm a reassuring squeeze and the shoulders that were up around his ears relaxed a fraction, although you could see a deep flush had crept up his neck when he reached a hand to scratch behind it.

“Wasn’t sure if he was pullin’ my leg or not,” he mumbled.

“He wasn’t.”

Joel leaned forward again, scooting his chair closer to yours and asking in a low voice, “So, then what he said about Mondays is also true?”

That brought you up short and you felt your brows knit together in confusion. Mondays? What in the world had Tommy claimed happened on Mondays?

“The fuck did he say about…?“

Joel’s lips twitched and that gave him away. You swatted him lightly on the arm as he broke out into a full grin.

“Tommy didn’t say a damn thing about Mondays,” he admitted.

“Ha ha,” you deadpanned with a roll of your eyes. “You got me, Miller.”

Your eyebrows were perfectly arched, your legs were smooth, the liquor was warm in your belly and a man you wanted was flirting with you in a bar. The world outside Jackson didn’t exist, not tonight.

Joel held the door open for you when you left together by unspoken agreement, cause it was Wednesday, and you’d both come to the bar for the same reason. It was even colder now than when you arrived, and when a particularly icy gust of wind swept through on the short walk to your house he immediately wrapped you in his arms and stood between you and the direction it was coming from while your burrowed your face against his broad chest with a muffled, “Fuck!”

There was an amused noise from above you while one of his hands rubbed your back. You could feel it even through your parka, and you snuggled in a little closer. When the wind subsided again you stayed tucked into his side the rest of the way with one of his arms around you, your boots crunching through snow and Joel holding you steady so you didn’t slip.

“Careful, the handrail’s loose there,” you warned him once you reached the stairs to your front porch. Joel glanced at it, then up at your front door.

“You invitin’ me in?”

You were already halfway up the steps just assuming he was going to follow and you turned to look down at him, standing with his shoulders slightly hunched under his jacket even though the wind had died down now. It wasn’t another flirty line, he’d asked it quietly, sincerely, like he really needed to be sure that you wanted this. Wanted him. In your home. In your bed. The joke you were going to make about how you didn’t shave your legs for nothing died on your lips at the uncertain look on his face.

“Yeah, I am. Would you like to come in, Joel?”

He carefully climbed the steps without touching the loose handrail and you opened the door to the small house where the walls were painted colours you didn’t choose and filled with furniture someone else picked out. You’d picked him though, chose him, a little bit of control you still had over your life. The two of you stood close to each other in the tiny entryway unzipping your coats, Joel’s hair wasn’t as neatly combed anymore, not after the wind and you could feel the burn in your cheeks and lips from it as well. He stared openly at your reddened mouth, his dark eyes fixed firmly on it and you saw his throat bob with a heavy swallow.

Then you were kissing, a little awkwardly at first with the bulk of half-unzipped coats in the way. His lips were dry, chapped, but you didn’t care, not when you felt the kiss right down to your toes. Joel tasted like the liquor and he kissed like a drowning man looking to steal the air from your lungs. You gave it to him gladly, fumbling blindly with the zipper on his coat to finish pulling it down. He caught on quickly, doing the same to yours and soon both were puddled on the floor. As soon as your arms were free of the sleeves you had them around his neck and he had you pressed to the wall. As gasp escaped your lips that was loud in the quiet of a Jackson night as his body caged yours and an answering sound came from the man who clearly wanted this as much as you did. He had your leg hiked up by the knee with one hand and the other was shoved under your sweater, you could let him fuck you right then and there with his boots still on, get your itch scratched enough to keep you going for another day, a week, maybe a month.

It wasn’t enough.

“Joel?”

“Yes, darlin’?”

“Take me to bed.”

You whispered it against his mouth, wanting more tonight. Needing more tonight. He made another low noise that echoed right between your legs, where he’d slipped one long, denim clad thigh to press against where you burned the most. You mourned the loss of it when he pulled back even as you took him by the hand to lead him up the stairs to your bedroom, where you’d added a few touches to try to make the space more your own. Swapped out the curtains, banished an ugly lamp and put a vase in its place that you’d made with your own hands because you’d thought pottery could be your thing now. It wasn’t, the vase was somewhat lopsided but you kept it anyway and filled it with wildflowers in the summer.

Right now it stood empty on the dresser waiting for the flowers to bloom again while Joel pulled you to him, large hands curving around your waist. He wordlessly tugged off your sweater, lifting it over your head and revealing the bra underneath. Black lace barely covered your breasts, your nipples firm points against the delicate material that ached to be touched.

“Fuck,” he muttered at the sight, his voice a low rasp. “Fuckin’ gorgeous.”

He trailed his hands up your ribs and then he was cupping your breasts, thumbing over your nipples through the lace and making them ache even more. You went for the buttons on his shirt, undoing them with eager fingers to reveal the hard planes of his broad chest.

“You ain’t so bad yourself, handsome.”

Your piss-poor attempt at a Southern drawl made him huff, shaking his head even as his ears flushed crimson at the compliment. Accent that was as bad as your pottery aside, you weren’t lying. His chest wasn’t the only thing that was broad, he had shoulders for days and hands that spanned your entire ribcage. The shirt quickly joined your sweater on the floor and Joel let you push him backwards towards your bed, sitting down heavily on the mattress when it hit the backs of his thighs. It squeaked, loudly, and he gave you a knowing look with a raised eyebrow and a hint of a smirk.

“Good thing I live alone,” you said with a shrug.

With him seated and you standing you could look down at him, brush your fingers across the freckles and marks on his shoulders to trace imaginary constellations while his hands slid up your back and undid your bra with easy dexterity. The lace fell away and left you fully bare from the waist up, breasts at the perfect height for his mouth. Joel obviously had the same thought because his lips immediately closed around a pebbled nipple, tongue flicking over it and making it go even more taut with need. You ran your fingers through his greying hair, a reminder that while he was new in town he was definitely the older Miller brother.

Joel glanced up at you with those molasses-dark eyes of his before he switched to the other breast, licking and sucking and swirling and driving you crazy. His hands were as busy as his mouth, popping the button on your jeans and tugging them down your hips. Your underwear didn’t match your bra, plain cotton instead of lace, but you're pretty sure he didn’t notice with his face still buried in your breasts. Once you’d stepped out of them and kicked the last of your clothes aside his arms tightened around your waist and he lifted you onto the bed in one smooth motion, rolling you neatly onto your back. The mattress squeaked again in protest but you didn’t care, not with the way Joel was hovering over you. His mouth was hot on your skin, trailing along your neck, your collarbone, the valley between your breasts, and a hand slid even lower to find you already wet and so, so ready.

“Oh darlin’,” he groaned. “I could just slip right in, couldn’t I?”

It had been way too long since you had anything except your own fingers to ease the burning need, too long since there was a man in your bed to make it (and you) squeak. Joel was braced above you, belt undone and his jeans hanging open. There was a line of silvered hair that ran down his stomach and disappeared into dark boxers already tented with his erection. He didn’t make a move to finish undressing, too busy teasing you with fingers so much larger and thicker than your own. Your hips rolled into his touch and you spread your legs shamelessly wider, chasing more of the sensation that was building under your skin into a fever pitch. Joel watched your face with an intensity that made you shiver even though you were anything but cold, still ignoring his own obvious need and staying out of reach of your hand when you tried to touch him too. He slid down the bed and took a nipple back into his mouth instead, right as he pushed two fingers deep inside you. They stretched you so deliciously, pressing and curling against your inner walls while he ran his tongue around the tight peak of your nipple. You were writhing under him now, hands fisting in the faded comforter and soft cries falling from your lips as your head tipped helplessly back into the pillow.

Joel found your clit with his thumb and rubbed it, just the right side of rough and it wasn’t long before you clenched around his fingers and came in a hot rush that washed over you like the tide on a beach you’d never see. He stroked you through it, drawing it out and when he finally pulled back you opened your eyes just in time to see him pop his damp fingers in his mouth and a rapturous expression cross his face like he’d just tasted a delicacy he hadn’t had in a very long time. Your own hand drifted absently across your bare stomach, legs splayed open wide while he knelt between them. Joel finally shoved his jeans and underwear off and you saw that his fingers weren’t the only thing about him that were thick and long. His erection slapped against his palm with a loud thwack, filling his hand as he gave himself a few quick pumps from root to tip. Then he was on you again, body braced above yours in the bed someone else bought, in a house that still doesn’t really feel like your home.

“Invite me in,” Joel said, asked, begged, his nose bumping against yours. He was holding himself back, the head of his cock positioned right at your entrance without slipping inside. You didn’t know what drove him to the Tipsy Bison to find someone tonight, but it was clear that he needed to be wanted, needed to be desired, and fuck, you did. You would gladly give him what he asked for tonight.

“Joel, I want you inside me. Now.”

He made a choked sound like he wasn’t expecting it, even though you were naked and spread underneath him. You lifted your hips in another invitation, a silent one this time, and his forehead pressed to yours as he entered you at last. Now you were the one gasping, clutching at his shoulders while he pressed in deeper. There was almost no resistance despite just how fucking big he was and yet he still moved with such care, taking his time to work himself in until he was buried all the way to the hilt. Your soft exhale was met by his sharp inhale, and you both stayed like that for several moments before you dug your fingers into his skin and he started to move. Long, deep rolls of his hips, his cock gliding across every last nerve ending inside you when he pulled out and filling you where you’d been so empty and alone when he thrust back in.

You weren’t alone now.

Joel found an angle you particularly liked and the noise you made in response was almost embarrassing in how needy and desperate it was. He smirked at it, driving into you with another deep thrust and leaning down to brush his mouth against yours.

“You like that?” he asked, tugging your bottom lip between his teeth and worrying it gently.

“Yeah,” you moaned, still holding onto his shoulders while he moved above you. “Do it again!”

“Anything you want, darlin’.”

You wanted so many things you couldn’t have, things you tried not to think about most of the time because it hurt too much. Now you just wanted this, burying your fingers in the damp hair at the nape of his neck to hold him close while he flexed his strong hips and picked up the pace. The bed did more than just squeak now, the headboard banged against the wall and threatened to fall apart completely from the force of Joel’s fucking and still he didn’t stop.

“Fuck!” he swore, looking down at you with his face contorting in pleasure and the cords on his neck and arms starting to pop. “Feels so fucking good.”

You wanted to make it even better, so you clenched your inner muscles around him tight on his next thrust. Joel’s movements finally faltered, his eyes falling shut and his breath coming in harsh pants.

“Christ,” he ground out, “squeeze me, darlin’, squeeze me just like that.”

He held himself still inside you as you worked and squeezed his cock, and you would have sworn he went even harder in response. Fuck, you were going to feel him all day tomorrow.

Good.

When he started to move again it was even more frantic, his biceps bulging with the effort and his sweat-slick skin meeting yours in a hot slide when he shoved one arm under you and lifted your hips clear up off the bed. You wrapped your legs tight around him and kept squeezing on each of his thrusts as best you could while he hit your sweet spot over and over and over again at an even more devastating angle than the first.

“Oh God,” you moaned, hanging on for dear life and so close to falling apart again. “Joel…Joel!”

“Right here, darlin’, I’m right here.”

He felt like he was everywhere, his chest against your breasts, long legs between yours, his lips finding patches of skin on your jaw, your neck, your shoulder and pressing hotly against them. When you came again he was locked tight in your body, his rough groans mixing with your wordless cries as you shook underneath him. If the bed was still squeaking you couldn’t even hear it now over your heartbeat pounding in your ears. Joel fucked you through it and drew the pleasure out with deep, grinding thrusts.

“Oh fuck, fuck,” he finally gasped out. “Squeezin’ me like a godddamn vice. Wanna….fuck, wanna come inside you.”

You burned even hotter at the utterly wrecked tone in his voice as his hips pressed into yours. It was safe to let him, you took care of that years ago. So you wrapped your legs even more firmly around his waist, not letting him pull out to finish anywhere except where you both wanted him to so badly.

“Yes, fuck, yes!”

That was all Joel needed to fall over the edge, his jaw clenched and his forehead tipped to yours while you felt his cock throb and pulse with his release. He flooded you with warmth, enough to keep the cold at bay. So too did the weight of his body when he finally softened and collapsed down into your arms, pillowing his head on your breast with a sigh.

“So,” he mumbled, after a few minutes of not uncomfortable silence where you’d caught your breath and your heart rate had gone back to normal. “Why Wednesdays?”

You lifted one bare shoulder in a shrug. “Don’t know. It’s as good a day as any, I suppose.”

“Tommy said it’s because Wednesday is hump day.”

That made you snort. “Seriously?”

“You see why I didn’t fully believe him.”

You looked down at Joel, naked and sprawled half on top of you with an arm flung across your waist. You believe him now?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t telling him that,” he said.

Brothers. You rolled your eyes even as you stroked your fingers through his hair.

He didn’t leave immediately afterwards, nor did he stay the whole night. You watched him dress, buttoning up his shirt and pulling his jeans back on while you lounged on your side in the rumpled mess of sheets with one hip bared and made no move to get up. You felt like you should throw something on and see him out properly, but you were just too comfortable. Plus you weren’t sure if your legs would even support you at the moment.

The decision was made when Joel pulled the comforter over you and said a quiet “goodnight, darlin’” before he was gone. You heard him go down the stairs and the sound of your front door opening and closing. No one in Jackson really bothered to lock their doors.

Not when the whole town itself was locked up tight.

There were only a few hours left to try to get some sleep before you needed to get up and head out for your work assignment. You were definitely in for a rough morning, but as you rolled over and closed your eyes with the echo of Joel on your skin you regretted nothing.

It was worth it.

*******

Thursday passed uneventfully. You were only a few (okay, maybe twenty) minutes late for your shift. Stable duty, filling water buckets, hauling hay and mucking out stalls. It didn’t smell great, but you didn’t mind.

You’d smelled way worse.

Besides, you had the memory of the night before replaying in your mind even as your hair was tied up in a practical bun and the lace bra was tucked away in a drawer again. You kept picturing the look on Joel’s face when he first sank inside you, remembering the broad expanse of his bare back under your hands, the heat from his mouth on your neck, your breasts…..

Thankfully the horses were more interested in their feed than the blush on your cheeks when you tossed hay into their stalls.

After your shift was over you stopped by town hall and filled out a request form for the handrail on your porch to be fixed, had something to eat in the communal mess cause you couldn’t be bothered to cook tonight, and finally headed home. You hadn’t seen Joel around all day, and while you hadn’t gone looking for him, you also weren’t trying to avoid him either. Jackson was too small for that, at some point you were gonna run into him again. He might pretend like it never happened and while that would certainly sting, you’d live. It wouldn’t be your first one-night stand.

Cold air filled your lungs on the solitary walk back to your house, hands shoved deep in your pockets and your boots crunching along the snow. Spring was still at least a month away, maybe more. Until then you’d have to make do with other ways to stay warm. Coats. Hats.

A dark-eyed man and the blazing heat found in his arms.

When the little house with its painted shutters and the wide front porch came into view you hurried the last few steps and were so eager to get inside and out of the cold that you reached for the loose handrail out of habit, realizing your mistake a second too late.

It didn’t wobble.

You gave it a little shake, and it stayed firmly in place. That’s when you noticed the gleam of metal from new screws, the fresh marks on the wood from where rough edges had been sanded smooth. You frowned at it, the work request you put in wouldn’t have been done this quickly. A single loose handrail was hardly urgent with everything else needed to keep Jackson running, you weren’t really expecting anyone to even come look at it for at least a week.

Joel.

It had to have been him, coming by at some point when you were out to fix it. And not sloppily either, when you gave it another, harder shake it stayed firmly in place. The porch steps were swept clean of snow, the walkway had been shovelled too. Sometimes you just didn’t bother, only making enough of a path to get in and out instead of clearing it all away.

For some reason, the simple fix made your house feel a tiny bit more like home.

You’d be sure to thank Joel, the next time you saw him. Jackson was small, it wouldn’t take long to run into him somewhere, at the library, the mess hall, the town square. Maybe he’d like to come over again when you did.

It didn’t matter what day of the week it was, you would invite him in.

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

For all the Marcus Acacius lovers out there. This is perfection (as always)! I am permanently in swoon mode.

Marcus Acacius x Original Female Character

General Marcus Acacius is the great hero of Rome, and weary of being sent to fight another war after the victory at Numidia. Before he must depart again and lead more young men to die for the glory of the empire, he steals away in the night to visit the temple of Fortūna to make a secret offering to the goddess of fortune and fate. An offering received by none other than the Sacaracirix Fortūnae, the High Priestess herself.

I had this idea for a Marcus/High Priestess fic before the movie came out and even though I loved his relationship with Lucilla, I still wanted to write it. This is an AU, he's not married and there's no infidelity involved. Many thanks to my partner in crime, @meanderingcaptainswanmusings, who helped me work out some of the details in this and brainstormed with me!

Word Count: 7,027, Rating: Mature

AO3 link

......................................Fortunate One........................................................

No matter the lateness of the hour, the city at the very centre of the world was never fully quiet.

Rome was the capital of an empire that stretched from exotic lands to the east of spice and silks, all the way up to that barbaric isle in the north where tin to make bronze and rain that could soak you right to the skin were both in plentiful abundance. As the capital, it was a metropolis full of senators, citizens, soldiers, traders, nobles, and slaves all drawn from across the great expanse, where torches burned all hours for illumination and business was as brisk at midnight as it was at midday in certain quarters. When a lone figure slipped unnoticed from the opulent Imperial palace that ruled over it all into the streets below it was late, very late, and yet people still milled about under the watchful eyes of the ever-present Praetorian guards. Men of all ranks, even women of the lower classes, out running errands and seeing to more personal needs. They visited the bathhouses to perform ablutions for a reduced fee from the daytime rates, filled the taverns to overflowing to eat, or more commonly, drink, and packed the brothels to slake other thirsts behind the distinctive red doors that marked the many houses of pleasure from more reputable establishments.

Amidst them all Marcus Justus Acacius, general and commander of the Imperial army, muffled himself in a hooded cloak to avoid being recognized beyond the palace walls and melted unseen into the crowd. Rough wool hid his tunic from inquiring eyes and concealed the blade he carried in case of thieves or assassins as he made his way across the city in the back of a tradesman’s plain cart. It was a far cry from the gilded chariot he had ridden to traverse the same streets in triumph only a few days prior, blessed by the gods themselves with another glorious victory. It was a far bumpier ride too, jolting along with no adoring masses lining the route and tossing flowers to soften his path tonight. There were only drunkards gone too deep in their cups staggering about, whores with painted faces beckoning from dark alleys where one was far more likely to find a cold knife waiting at the other end instead of a warm cunt, and slaves scurrying around on illicit errands for their masters. With his face hidden behind his hood Marcus saw hollow eyes and sunken cheeks on many, more than he ever remembered seeing before in a city rich with Egyptian gold and silver from Hispania. He’d watched the twin emperors let entire feasts rot uneaten back at the palace while they played their juvenile games of constant one-upmanship in front of a captive court and spend lavishly on whatever nonsense had caught their fancy that day, and his own fine meal sat heavily in his stomach as the cart lumbered past beggars with empty bowls and urchins looking for scraps.

The people needed bread, not battles.

He gave the owner of the cart another coin when they arrived at his destination, enough to buy food for both himself and his horse even at the current prices. As it rolled away Marcus looked up at the face of one of the temples that were as abundant in Rome as trees in a forest, each dedicated to a god or goddess. Neptune. Venus. Apollo. Just like the oaks and the beeches and the spruces, they all tried to stretch closest to the heavens and eclipse the others with their splendor. He’d already made the expected and very public visit to one of the large temples devoted to Mars, bringing extravagant offerings to the god of war. All soldiers worshipped Mars and Marcus had been a soldier since the age of fourteen. It was his destiny since birth to serve Mars, named as he was in the god’s honour and Mars had blessed him generously over the years in return. He’d risen to command the Imperial army on campaigns across the known world and brought back glory and honour for the empire. New lands conquered. Spoils of war. Rival dynasties crushed to dust. All for Rome.

The temple he stood in front of now under the cover of his cloak was not dedicated to Mars, or even his father, Jupiter, at whose main temple wealthy Romans competed with each other to offer the most ostentatious gift to the king of the heavens. He had not come to make a showy display of devotion for a gossipy audience as General Acacius, he was here in secret for reasons of his own. With his face still hidden he made his way up the steps and found no bar to the door despite the lateness of the hour, the temple welcomed any and all, day or night. Marcus pushed his way inside and found himself alone in an empty chamber, it appeared he was the lone worshipper tonight. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous room as he crossed the distance to the main altar, where a marble statue with the form of a beautiful woman presided over it to receive her due.

Fortūna

Goddess of fortune, luck and fate.

He glanced up at the sculpted face from under his hood before kneeling down on the stone floor and bowing his head. The altar was laden with gifts, a small jar of honey, a length of cloth dyed a rich ochre yellow, a bundle of dried herbs carefully tied with a bit of twine. Offerings left for the goddess in hopes she might bestow good fortune in return, during harvest time, at the gaming tables, in a marriage bed. He placed nothing on the altar, waiting on his knees with the patience that had seen him through marching endless miles across the empire with the army and listening to grandiose speeches by the emperors that seemed to last even longer. Fortūna watched him from behind her stone eyes until she saw fit to send one of her priestesses into the near-empty chamber, a woman in a stola the pale green of a new leaf and as young as a sapling herself. He sensed her regarding him for a moment and kept his head bowed, looking down at the floor.

“What do you seek?” she asked. “One who has come to the temple of Fortūna at this hour?”

“I seek an audience with she who speaks directly to her, Fortunate One.”

“She does not receive most who wish her to intercede with Our Lady,” the priestess warned.

Marcus looked up at her. “She’ll receive me.”

Whether it was the conviction in his voice that commanded five thousand men or because the priestess could tell he would stay kneeling on the floor all night if she wouldn’t take him beyond the public area of the temple, she finally nodded and gestured for him to follow. He rose to his feet with less grace than he would have preferred, silently thankful his joints wouldn’t have to take any longer on the unforgiving stone. He wasn’t a brash young soldier anymore who thought himself as invincible as the gods, his bones ached now when it was damp and there was more and more grey in his hair with each passing season.

At least he’d lived long enough to see grey hair. He’d known many who hadn’t been as blessed by the goddess of fate.

The priestess led him past a heavy drape hung behind the altar and further into the temple. While the building was narrow when viewed from the front, it was surprisingly long and they passed through several of the inner chambers before she finally stopped.

“Wait here,” she instructed, not pausing for a response before disappearing through a door and leaving it open just enough that Marcus could make out the murmur of feminine voices inside without hearing what was actually being said about the late-night visitor. Only women were allowed to serve Fortūna directly, to reside in her temple and perform sacred rituals in her name. No men could join their ranks, not even eunuchs, while their worship was welcomed and their offerings accepted, men were forbidden from joining the goddess’s inner circle, her Fortunate Ones.

The door opened a fraction more and the young priestess came back out, followed by others in identical dress. The handmaidens of fate, chosen from across the empire because they were born with Fortūna’s gifts, the second sight, prophetic dreams, could read palms and see what was to come in the lines and grooves and he could feel their eyes all on him as the lone man in their midst. His rough wool cloak was in sharp contrast to the light stolas that fluttered so gracefully when they briefly surrounded him as they silently moved past as one, like butterflies alighting from a bush.

“You may enter, Citizen,” the priestess said, either not realizing who he was or choosing not to address him by his name or title. He suspected it was the former rather than the latter, it was far from his first visit. “She will receive you now.”

Marcus knew what the priestess meant, and yet there was a lump in his throat as if the goddess herself was waiting for him on the other side of the door. In a way, she was. He didn’t hear the rest of them depart fully, melting back into the deep shadows on silent feet so that he found himself alone in the temple of fate. He raised a hand and traced the shape of a wheel carved into the wood, the Rota Fortunae that the goddess spun and changed the fortunes of kings and plebeians alike. None were spared the turn of the wheel. He gave a slight push to the centre of it and the door opened fully, while his hood slid back seemingly of its own volition when he stepped into the chamber within and left his face fully exposed.

There was no need to conceal his identity before her. Both Fortūna, and the Sacaracirix Fortūnae, the High Priestess who ruled over the rest of the Fortunate Ones and served as keeper of the goddess’s temple.

She was arrayed as finely as any queen of the lands Marcus had conquered for the empire, in a close-fitting robe embroidered all over with more symbols of luck and fate and trimmed lavishly with snow-white fur. Large gemstones adorned her ears and her vermillion-stained lips curved in a smile while her ringed hands reached out for his in welcome. Marcus went to her and took the offered hands in his own, bending his head to press his forehead to the backs in supplication. In the presence of the emperors he barely even dipped his chin anymore, offering only the most token homage to that pair of spoiled children in their ill-fitting crowns. With her, he kissed each hand in turn with reverence, closing his eyes and inhaling the scent of sweet perfume on her skin.

“General Acacius,” she said, her tone formal and without a hint of familiarity. “I greet you, on behalf of Our Lady.”

She’d greeted him thus when they’d first met, during the annual mid-summer festival honouring the goddess. That year the festival was a special one, when the former High Priestess had chosen her successor from among the women who served in the temple. A larger than usual crowd watched as the choice was made and the rest of the Fortunate Ones surrounded the two women, one old and one young. They raised their arms high in the air, joining their hands and panels of cloth attached to their shoulders and wrists unfurled like wings to conceal the two in the centre from view while the crowd clapped and cheered. Once they lowered their arms and stepped back again they knelt down to reveal their new mistress, who was dressed in the attire of the old while the woman she’d succeeded had vanished entirely as if by magic.

Marcus had watched it all from the prime position he’d secured on the temple steps, entranced by both the spectacle and the woman at the heart of it all. He wasn’t a general then, just an ordinary soldier newly returned with the army in time for the festival thanks to a favourable wind that had seen them arrive back in the city a day earlier than expected. He had brought an offering for Fortūna to thank her for the luck she’d brought him during the campaign, a small but brilliant blue gem that was like a drop of ocean turned to stone, plundered from the once independent kingdom that belonged now to Rome.

“I greet you, on behalf of Our Lady,” she’d said when it was finally his turn, shoved forward by the press of the people behind him so that they were standing closer than decorum allowed. His cheeks were warm with drink, or at least that’s what he told himself when he placed the little jewel in her palm.

“And who has brought this gift from such a great distance?”

“Marcus Acacius, my lady.”

Her skin was as soft as a rose petal when she rewarded his offering with the touch of her free hand to his cheek, looking up at him with a smile far more brilliant than any gem.

“Marcus Acacius,” she repeated, as if committing it to memory so not to forget him. “Thank you.”

When he raised his head from the hands that were still as delicate and soft as that day so long ago she lifted one and touched it gently to his cheek.

“You have returned again from a great distance, or so I hear,” she said. “Fortūna be thanked.”

“I have, my lady.”

He didn’t know the name she was given at birth or the name of her family, all priestesses gave up both when they left home and pledged themselves to serve in the temple. As Vesta had her Vestals, the eternal virgins who tended her sacred flame day and night, so did Fortūna with her Fortunate Ones. They were forbidden from marrying, couldn’t bear children, they could do nothing that took away from their duty to the goddess. In return they answered to no one, not their fathers or brothers, not a general like him, not even an emperor could command one of Fortūna’s priestesses. As one beholden to the whims of not one, but two emperors, he considered that privilege a very fortunate one indeed.

She moved to a table already set with a jug of wine and goblets, pouring the sweet gift of Bacchus into two of them. Marcus accepted the drink when she held it out to him, waiting until she murmured a brief incantation of thanks before he lifted it to his lips. The wine was honeyed on his tongue, the words he spoke next were not.

“Caracalla and Geta have declared war.”

One of her arched brows lifted even more, though there was no surprise in her voice. “Again?”

What was spoken in the temples was sacrosanct, meant only for the gods. But that didn’t stop mortal ears from listening, and in Rome information was as much a trade good as salt or silks. He wouldn’t speak freely in any temple of Mars, or Jupiter, and trust that it wouldn’t be repeated halfway across the city within the hour. Here though, Marcus was in the one place where he didn’t have to guard his tongue so carefully and the words flowed like the wine.

“It’s not enough. It will never be enough. They have designs on India, Persia, more cities to be brought to heel no matter the cost. I am to lead the army on another campaign while the blood spilled during the last one has barely dried.”

“For the glory of Rome?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“For the glory of Rome,” he echoed, in a hollow voice. Glory bought with death and destruction, children orphaned and wives made widows so that the most glorious empire the world had ever seen could sink greedy, grasping fingers into another bit of stained earth and take it for its own. The wine soured into vinegar in his mouth and he set the goblet aside, finished with the pretense of the hospitality required by their ranks.

The High Priestess followed suit, facing him with her small hands folded in front of her. ”Why have you come here tonight?” she asked quietly. “Do you want me to tell your fortune? Assure you of another grand victory?”

Her eyes were fathomless pools in the flickering candlelight, skin turned golden as if Fortūna herself was now speaking directly to him through her chosen vessel. Perhaps she was. He answered them both.

“I seek Fortūna’s blessing, to ensure victory for the glory of Rome and a safe return home for me and my men.”

Please, let them come home. No more dead soldiers for Charon to ferry into the afterlife, please, Lady Fortūna, spin your wheel and bring them back alive.

Her expression didn’t change as she considered his request. “You ask much of the goddess, General Acacius. Not one gift, but three…and if you had to choose just one turn of the wheel? Which would it be?”

Marcus felt his shoulders slump under his cloak. He knew the answer he should give, the one expected from the commander of the empire’s grand army. He knew the answer he wouldn’t give, as selfishly as he wanted to. If he could beg only a single boon from the hands of fate herself, then there was only one answer.

“I ask for the safe return of my men.”

If he could even call most of them men. He’d thought himself a man at fourteen, old enough to fight and fornicate alongside the other soldiers on the battlefields and in the brothels. Poorly, in both respects, far more lucky than skillful back then. Now, he looked at so many under his command and saw that they were still children, barely grown and yet considered old enough to die for the greed of those who had anything and still thirsted for more.

He met the High Priestess’s shadowed gaze and said it again, so that the goddess lurking behind her eyes would have no doubt.

“My only request of she who spins the wheel of fate is to watch over my men and guide them back home.”

“And what will you give in return?” they asked. Both the priestess, and the goddess.

One did not ask favours from the gods without offering something in return. When he’d knelt in his full armor before the towering statue of Mars he’d brought magnificent gifts for the God of War. A pair of newly forged blades with gilded hilts thickly studded with jewels. Quivers full of arrows fletched with the feathers of exotic birds. A bull in its prime to be slaughtered in Mars’s name, worth the cost of half a dozen slaves. He had presented the gifts and asked the god for victory in a booming voice that all who crammed into the temple to watch could hear, soldiers, senators, and ordinary citizens who came to see the spectacle for themselves.

He had anticipated this, and he had a gift for the goddess too. Something that had cost him no coin, and yet was the most valuable thing he could offer.

“Me.”

It came out as barely more than a whisper, far from the near battle cry he’d given Mars when laying the blades on his altar. To the God of War he brought an army of a crowd to worship him, to the Goddess of Fate he gave over himself with no audience save one.

“I pledge myself only to her, for the rest of my life.”

He spoke softly and yet the words seemed to echo against the stone walls, repeating over and over again. Or maybe that was only in his own mind. It was as solemn a vow as he’d ever made, and an unbreakable one. The gods were greedy, avaricious, and didn’t let go of what was theirs.

“General, are you-“

“Will you accept, Fortunate One, on her behalf?” he interrupted before she could finish the inevitable question. Are you sure? He was. This time when she reached out and touched his face he turned his head and placed a rough kiss on the inside of her palm, his eyes closing as she began to speak.

“General Acacius,” she intoned, “you shall join the blessed of Fortūna tonight. May you bask in her light and find shade in her shadow, always. Reveal yourself, and receive her blessing.”

He reached blindly for the clasp on his cloak and let it fall to the floor with a thump, leaving him in the simple tunic he’d worn underneath. That would ordinarily be all that was required but it wasn’t enough, not tonight. Not for either of them.

The tunic quickly followed the cloak, he pulled it over his head and tossed it aside too. The room was warm enough that he felt no chill as he stripped everything off until he was as bare as a newborn babe. He had worn no jewellery, no adornments, had not applied any cosmetics to his face or body. Standing completely nude, he offered himself exactly as he was to the goddess and her priestess. His arms hung loosely at his sides and he made no attempt to conceal anything with his hands, though they twitched a little against his thighs. Still in her rich finery, the High Priestess began to make a slow circle around him while assessing his offering like he would inspect his centurions. He stood in place like a good soldier, eyes straight ahead, hearing a faint rustle from behind him that made his hands clench into fists and other parts of him twitch in anticipation. When she appeared again on his other side she had shed her outer robe and was clad in nothing but the sheerest of drapes that clung to her body like the seafoam clung to Venus when she arose from the waves and gave glimpses of the rosy tips of her breasts and the dusky triangle of hair between her thighs through the filmy material.

He couldn’t stop the blood from rushing straight to his groin at the sight, thickening his flesh with the vigour of a far younger man. Like the one he’d been the night of the festival all those years ago, when wine flowed like the Tiber and out of all of those who’d come to honour Fortūna and her new High Priestess, she had chosen him. Fate and luck had both been on his side then, to the envy of his fellow soldiers when he was pulled from the crowd by the Fortunate Ones to join their mistress in a much more private celebration. While the revels continued on without them outside the temple they had worshipped together amid the sheets until the break of dawn.

On this night she chose another vessel next to the wine from the table and spoke an incantation over it before removing the stopper. It was filled with oil, slick and fragrant when she dipped in her fingers and began to anoint him with it. Her thumbs pressed first to his chest, drawing lines and symbols on his skin that marked him as the goddess’s own. He stood as still as the statue by the altar while she carefully worked the oil into his shoulders, his arms, her touch delicate and gentle yet sure and true. She went down his stomach next, still muscular but perhaps a little less firm then it had been the first night he was invited into her bed. First, but far from the last. It flexed under her touch and he couldn’t stop his smile and slight noise of mirth when she found the sensitive spot to the left of his navel. His amusement was mirrored on her face, as her serene expression melted and she failed to stop her own girlish giggle.

“You always were touched by the humours there,” she smiled, poking him again.

“Only when touched by you, my lady.”

He was no stranger to taking lovers, Roman noblewomen, concubines, foreigners with whom he shared a pleasant night while quartered with the army in distant lands and never saw again afterwards. Yet he always found himself returning to her over and over, after other affairs and dalliances were over and long forgotten.

Her eyes met his at the admission, small hands still pressed to his skin. The anointing was finished, her duty as Fortūna’s chosen one to mark him for her was done. As High Priestess she could choose to dismiss him now and he would leave without protest, ever the obedient soldier.

As his lover she chose to draw the tips of her nails across his stomach and he inhaled sharply, the urge to laugh again at the sensation mixing with the far stronger urge to tear the drape from her body and have her right there on the floor. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either. His face must have shown his thoughts, or maybe it was the way his cock was twitching at the prospect because she took a step back. Not in fear or trepidation, merely to put the stopper back in the oil. It had left a gleaming trail on his skin, burnishing it like armor polished to a high shine. Even when it faded away the other gods and goddesses would be able to see the claim laid on him, and he swore he could almost feel unseen hands tracing possessively along the lines. Though there was no breeze in the stone chamber, the candles all suddenly flickered as one.

Fortūna making her presence felt while she spun her wheel.

Light melted into shadow and silk whispered against skin when she beckoned him to follow her to the waiting bed. Her soft hands wandered over his chest again, this time in a different ritual while he grasped her by her shapely hips and stroked his thumbs along the curve of them. The silk whispered even more when he pulled it off completely and left her as bare as he was. She stood in front of him unabashedly nude, just as she had that night as the newly crowned High Priestess with a young soldier still a bit clumsy and unsure with a woman. He was neither of those things now, slipping a hand behind her neck and tilting her head back to kiss her. It was far sweeter than the wine to press his lips to hers, feel them part under his mouth as his chest met her breasts and his hard cock pressed hot to her belly. A low groan rumbled through him at the contact and he lifted her from under her thighs with her arms around his neck, climbing onto the bed and settling her down against the sheets. Marcus greedily drank in his fill at the glorious sight underneath him, her skin was as fine as a noblewoman’s and unmarked by scars like the ones scattered over him like cities on a map. Lutetia. Londinium.

She reached up and touched one on his shoulder that hadn’t been there the last time, tracing over the marred bit of flesh with gentle fingers.

Numidia.

He pushed that memory aside in favour of making a much more pleasurable one, stroking along the curve of her waist so that the shadowed dip of her navel was framed perfectly between his thumbs. Then he went down to the gentle rise of Venus’s mound and lower still to the curls that concealed her most intimate place. The skin there was even more delicate, and already as slick under his exploring fingers as the oil. His blood flared hot and he urged her legs apart, spreading her thighs to fully reveal her sweet cunt to his gaze. His cock throbbed at the sight of it, as pink as the rose petals that had lined the city streets in his honour and damp with the dew of her arousal.

“Marcus,” she whimpered, when he teased against her entrance with the tip of his finger. Not General or Acacius, he could be Marcus here, with her, in the sanctuary of her bed.

“Patience, sweetling,” he urged, wishing not for the first time that he knew her actual name. It belonged to Fortūna but this was all his, the graceful arch of her back and the gasp that escaped her lips when he slipped his finger in to the second knuckle and added another to press along the velvety inner walls. He wasn’t going to rush the ceremony of this, preparing his lover for his cock and he took his time until he finally knelt before her and pumped a hand along his shaft to whet himself to full readiness. Anticipation shone in her eyes, looking up at him, and thrummed hot under his skin as he positioned himself and began to push in. He may not know her name, but his body knew hers and hers knew his, taking his full length in a hot slide with only the barest resistance. Marcus rested his forehead on hers for a moment with his eyes closed, sheathed to the hilt in her warm depths while her hands wandered up his arms and her fingers buried in the hair at the nape of his neck. It was only the experience of his years that kept him from spilling immediately like an overeager youth, gritting his teeth and fighting that baser urge to merely take his pleasure with no regard for hers. A low curse fell from his lips as he held himself still, he was still a common soldier at heart and he swore like one. Far from being scandalized at his coarseness, he felt her clench deliciously around him while her legs wrapped tighter around his waist

“Move…please!” she urged in a breathy plea.

Like any good soldier he followed the order, drawing his hips back until he was almost completely withdrawn from her slick heat and then plunging back in. Her breasts bounced with the movement, while a cry tore from her throat as her head fell back to the pillow and put the long column of her throat on display. He did it again, and again, and again, drawing more of those intoxicating sounds with each drive of his hips. She clutched at his shoulders as tightly as she was clutching him from the inside and he’d wear the marks from her nails more proudly than his armor while leaving the echo of himself behind as his thrusts grew harder, faster, deeper. He sucked his own livid brand into her neck, uncaring what the other priestesses would think of it in the morning. It bloomed dark on her skin and he was proud of his handiwork, while he still held back from finding that final satisfaction, desperate to make what could be their final coupling last as long as possible. Fate had led him here, and fate would take him away again, the gods were petty and cruel.

Their lips met again when he buried himself to the root and didn’t withdraw, sharing each other’s breath as he held fast against the waves of pleasure that crashed through him like sea meeting shore and tried to pull him under. It wasn’t enough, not tonight. He needed more. With battle-hardened strength he reared up and brought her with him, lifting her with an arm under her back as she let out a startled squeak. The one who told fortunes hadn’t seen that coming, and he grinned in smug satisfaction.

“Domina mea,” he grunted. My lady, my lady. Mine! “So beautiful, to watch you take your pleasure on my cock like this. Want…want to make you drip with me.”

He was still inside her, and the flex of his hips had her head falling back as her body arched into a perfect bow and his name was shouted for all the gods and goddesses to hear.

“Marcus….Marcus….don’t stop!”

Her breasts thrust as high and proud into the air and he couldn’t resist ducking his head to capture a pebbled nipple in his mouth, as hard as a pearl and even more precious. It made her gasp again, fingers digging into his hair to hold him close and her fine skin flushed all over and bearing his marks. His own hands moved to the flare of her hips, working her up and down his cock to meet his thrusts. Each plunge into her silken heat was almost enough to undo him completely, she took him so deep. He knew he wasn’t going to last much longer and he reached between them to brush his thumb against that swollen bud just above where they were joined while holding her flush to his groin. The effect was immediate, her whole body shook as she tried to both pull away and get closer at the same time. Her hips pressed closer to his while her head tipped back and her thick curls finally tumbled free of the pins holding them up to spill down like a waterfall. He held on as long as he could, until the unrelenting siege of her cunt squeezing and rippling along his cock finally forced his surrender. This was a battle he was happy to lose and he emptied himself in hot pulses with a deep groan against her sweat-slicked neck until there was nothing left to give. Part of him preened with smug satisfaction, while the rest was ready to collapse.

His lover looked down at him with hazy eyes like fog on the distant horizon. Instead of a poised and regal Fortunate One she looked more like a debauched follower of Bacchus now, lips swollen from his kisses, her skin flushed and his release still warm between her thighs. Marcus knew he probably looked the same, he could feel his hair sticking to his forehead, the sting where her nails had dug into his back and the taste of wine and woman in his throat to carry him through the days to come. A gift, and not one from the gods. From the woman whose name he could never know, and would never see again.

They fell back to the rumpled bed in a heap of tangled limbs, still joined in the most intimate of ways. It didn’t last, nothing ever did, and soon he softened and slipped out. He needed to get up, find his discarded clothes and leave while it was still dark so he could return to the palace before his absence was noticed. He belonged at the head of Rome’s army leading the way to another victory, his place in her bed had only ever been, fleeting, temporary, and fanciful wishes that it could ever be more were just that. Dreams that would never be.

Gentle fingers brushed the hair back from his brow and trailed along his cheek while a soft voice whispered in the dark.

“Sleep, Marcus Acacius. Sleep.”

He knew he shouldn’t, but his eyes were already closed and he could feel Somnus, the God of Sleep, tugging at the edges of his mind and pulling him under. It was too strong to resist, or he was too weak to give up the comfort of her touch just yet, and he drifted off into the netherworld to the feel of his lover stroking his hair.

************

The stone floor was cold and rough under her bare feet, there were no plush rugs here in the small room to cushion them like the ones in her own chamber. The whole room was empty and unadorned save for a niche carved in one wall, and what it contained made it the most sacred in the entire temple. She knelt down in front of it, dressed not in her own rich satin robes but in one of the thin linen stolas worn by the youngest and newest priestesses.

“I have given you everything my lady. Everything. My service….my name….my devotion. My life.”

The little figurine was nothing like the grand statue that presided over the temple’s public altar for worship and admiration. It was much older, passed down over the years from High Priestess to High Priestess and was said to have been given by Fortūna herself to her first worshipper, the very first Fortunate One. It was chipped in places, the features were smudged and indistinct as finer details had been lost to time. Still, it was more precious than any jewel and was hers to guard and keep until the day came that she too would pass it down and bestow the mantle of High Priestess to another.

“Please, hear me and grant what I ask.”

Marcus was still in her bed, locked deep in slumber. Once she was certain he was fast asleep she’d carefully maneuvered out from under the arm draped possessively over her waist and slipped from his embrace. He mumbled something she couldn’t decipher and buried his face back into the bedclothes, never waking fully. It was so tempting, to stay wrapped in his arms for the small amount of time the goddess had granted them. The Fortunate Ones were not forbidden from taking lovers, it was even expected for the priestesses to choose a bedmate during the festivals from among those who flocked to the temple in celebration and share their good fortune for the night in the most intimate of ways. But that was all it could be, they were bound by their vows to serve the goddess above all others and none more than her as the most fortunate of them all.

“Bring him back to me.”

One did not need the gift of second sight to see what was coming. The two emperors might rule as one, but they had already made twice the declarations of war as their father did and as the leader of the army, Marcus was the one to carry them out. It was inevitable that he would have to leave again so soon after his triumphant return, only this time…..

This time….

“Spare him.”

It came out as a sob, begging on her knees to the one who could alter the course of fate. When Marcus had first pressed the little gem into her hand with a shy smile his fortune had been bright and shining, she knew then and there that the young soldier in front of her with the dark curls hanging on his forehead was bound for greatness. That foreknowledge was her blessing from Fortūna, and her curse. To look at a radiant new bride and see her dead in childbed within a year, to know which of the children who ran and played outside the temple would be taken by illness before their lives even truly began….to watch soldiers leave who would never return.

She couldn’t read Marcus’s fortune at all anymore, and that scared her more than anything.

As High Priestess she was not meant to interfere or intercede directly with the turn of fate. Perhaps it was the goddess’s way of ensuring that she couldn’t warn him, or maybe Fortūna was being kind, sparing her the knowledge of what lay ahead.

His very first offering was clutched tight in her palm. The blue gemstone wasn’t the largest, or most valuable jewel given to her in the goddess’s stead. Those decorated the bracelets and the earrings and the necklaces she wore in public and to receive those who came to beg for favours from fate, displaying the wealth of Fortūna’s temple to show how worshipped and adored she was that she was showered with rubies, diamonds, amethysts, gems from across the whole empire and beyond. It was all Fortūna’s, none of it was hers, and yet she’d always kept the little sapphire to herself.

Marcus wouldn’t ask on his own behalf, so she would do it for him. He was far less selfish than she was.

She set the gem down carefully in front of the figurine, whispering more prayers and pleas. There was no response from the goddess, no omen or vision, good or bad. There was only silence, and the ghost of his touch on her skin.

When she returned to her private chamber Marcus was still asleep, sprawled across the sheets with his thick, greying curls in complete disarray and his face looking younger in the light from the small oil lamp she carried. Without the weight of his station creasing his forehead with worry and pulling his lips into a frown he could almost be that young soldier again, the one with the glorious fortune that awaited him. She’d thought of him as her gift that night, bestowed by the goddess to her new high priestess in celebration. There were other men she could have chosen to share her bed, more suited to her new station. Men who were more polished, more practiced, who could recite Greek poetry from memory and held illustrious positions at court or in the senate. Marcus wasn’t poetic, but he was so eager, practically ripping off his clothes in his haste with a boyish grin and nearly tripping over them when he reached out with those large hands to touch her. He was both wonderfully rough and surprisingly gentle in turns, using his powerful body instead of pretty words like the soldier he was.

When she discarded her stola and slipped back into bed he found her in his sleep, his body curving around hers. Broader now, than it had been, and not cut quite so sharply around his stomach as it was in his youth. Still eager though, his passion never waning with time. She’d known he’d come to her tonight, had dressed and prepared for him.

Marcus Acacius was still her gift, and she wasn’t going to give him up.

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

I feel so spoiled, she’s done it again! Please read this everyone. You’ll end up loving Frankie as much as I do.

Frankie Morales x Reader fic

A little "friends with benefits" Frankie fic for my partner in crime @meanderingcaptainswanmusings - who loves Frankie Morales like I love Dave York!

Summary: You and Frankie are friends. Just friends and nothing more. But after a bad breakup with your dickhead ex and a failed attempt at a Tinder hookup, you find yourself on Frankie's doorstep one Saturday night in a bodycon dress and fuck-me heels. Turns out, Frankie is more than willing to oblige. After all, what are friends for?

8,221 words, rated E for general sexytimes and Frankie's skill with his mouth. AO3 link here

Hope you Frankie fans enjoy!

Frankie With Benefits

You step out of the Uber, muttering your thanks to the driver while closing the door with your phone already in hand to give him five stars and a good tip despite your foul mood. It wasn’t his fault that your date was such a disaster after all, plus he didn’t try to make small talk and played good music instead of some douchey podcast. You can still hear the faint Cuban rhythms as he drives off into the sultry Florida night, it’s both hot and humid as per usual and the contrast between the ice-cold AC in the car to the nearly triple-digit temps outside is a shock to your system that distracts you from noticing something is off until it’s too late.

”Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

While the building in front of you is very familiar, it’s decidedly not your apartment complex. Your plans of changing out of your tight dress and fuck-me heels into some ratty old pjs and killing the bottle of wine chilling away in your fridge while you delete Tinder for good because men fucking suck has just been thrown a major curveball. You open Uber back up to check your ride history and squint at the screen through the false eyelashes that took forever to put on, realizing with a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that you must have tapped on the wrong destination when you left the bar in such a rush while telling your date where to shove it. That’s the only explanation as to why you’re not currently looking at your front entrance.

You’re looking directly at Frankie’s house instead.

Fuck.

Standing at the end of his driveway feeling very self-conscious in your bodycon dress with your driver already long gone, you go to book a new ride so you can slip away before any of Frankie’s nosy neighbors start to wonder about the woman loitering on their quiet little street in an outfit that’s decidedly not “family friendly.” Or worse, before Frankie sees you. A minute ticks by, then two, and no drivers pop up, not even with ridiculous surge pricing that you’ll gladly pay just to get home.

“C’mon, c’mon. Ugh!”

You finally give up as the streets nearby stay frustratingly empty on the little map, stuffing your phone into your purse with a sigh and turning to face Frankie’s house. His living room light is on so he’s obviously home and not out with the guys tonight, you can see the soft yellow glow through the curtains like a beacon offering safe harbor after a shitty evening.

It’s Frankie. If you can’t be alone in your apartment drowning your sorrows in grocery store wine, there’s really nowhere else you’d rather be.

“He needs to resurface his driveway,” you mutter under your breath as you carefully pick your way up the asphalt towards his front door. You’re certainly not wobbling with every step because you wore stilettos that make your butt look great but you can’t actually walk properly in. That’s your story and you’re sticking to it. You manage to make it all the way without breaking an ankle, knocking and wondering if it would be less embarrassing to head barefoot to the bus stop at the corner instead of admitting why you’re here. But before you can kick them off and make a break for it Frankie answers, blinking in confusion when he sees you standing on his doorstep in a dress with a neckline that plunges more than an Olympic diver and shoes that cost half a month’s rent, feeling like a complete idiot.

“Hey,” he says, reaching up to scratch behind his neck as he takes you in with those dark, expressive eyes of his. “Um…did we have plans tonight, or something?

He stares openly at your cleavage for a moment before his gaze snaps back up to your face with a sheepish look. If it was any other man you’d be annoyed, but Frankie has never ogled or leered at you in all the time you’ve been friends, and you did just show up unannounced at his door with your tits on full display, after all. You don’t mind if he takes a peek, someone might as well get to appreciate them tonight.

“No,” you reassure him. “Can I come in? I just bailed on a shitty date and must have accidentally picked your address when I ordered an Uber instead of mine. I tried to book another one to take me home but there’s no drivers around right now.”

Frankie nods. “Sure, sure, of course,” he says, shuffling aside to let you in and closing the door behind you with a soft click. You kick off your heels with a sigh because it would be rude to wear them in his house and not because they’re absolutely killing your feet, letting them tangle with his sneakers and already feeling a little better.

“Mi casa et su casa,” he adds with a gallant sweep of his arm once you’re safely inside.

You’ve spent a decent amount of time at Casa Morales since you first met Frankie a few years ago and quickly became friends with him, coming over for everything from backyard BBQs with his Delta Force buddies and their families, to movie nights on his couch just the two of you, to hauling your laundry over in his truck when the machines in your building went out of order again and he insisted that you use his instead of spending money at a laundromat. You know your way around his place. His house is small, but it’s bright and airy just like the ones you sigh over while browsing Zillow in your apartment, and while Frankie’s life can be messy at times (mainly thanks to said Delta Force buddies, Santiago Garcia in particular) he keeps his home neat and tidy and welcoming. When you go into the living room there’s nothing out of place, just a half-eaten bowl of chips and a bottle of beer on the coffee table. On a coaster, no less. The TV is still on, he was obviously enjoying a quiet night in for one when you crashed his evening in a dress that revealed more than it covered and shoes your credit card and arches were both still recovering from.

He follows you in, his presence at your back familiar and comforting despite your current “men fucking suck” state of mind. Frankie’s the lone exception at the moment.

“I’d drive you home but I’ve already had a few beers tonight. Wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

You wave off the apology in his voice. “It’s fine, I’ll just give it a few minutes and book another ride.”

“Uh, about that….”

You turn and look at him, confused. He gives you a “don’t shoot the messenger” look with both hands raised and nods towards the TV.

“The game just finished. All the Uber drivers are going to be down at the stadium by now.”

“Son of a bitch,” you swear, closing your eyes in frustration. You couldn’t have picked a worse night to get stranded without a ride, everyone within a twenty mile radius of the stadium knows it’s impossible to get an Uber after any big event. Frankie knows it, you know it, you just didn’t plan on your date being a lying asshole and having to compete with twenty thousand sportsball fans for a lift home. That’s it, you were done with dating apps for good, if you hadn’t downloaded Tinder again you could be at home in bed right now having a threesome with your wine and your vibrator and as a bonus your feet wouldn’t hurt.

Yeah, you’re pretty sure you have a few blisters. The damn shoes were just like men, looked so great at first and then rubbed you in all the wrong places.

“Sooooo,” Frankie drawls when you flop down ungracefully on his couch, eyeing you carefully from his tactical position behind the coffee table. “You were on a date tonight? I thought you said you’d given up on dating after Dickface McDickhead….oh fuck, please tell me you’re not back together with that asshole again?”

His nickname for your ex always makes you snort. Frankie was never his biggest fan. He wasn’t Frankie’s either, hating the fact that you two were such good friends. When you finally broke up with him for good, Frankie threw a BBQ the following weekend and grilled you the best steak you’d ever eaten with a huge smile on his face.

”What are we celebrating?” Santi asked when he arrived, putting down the beer he’d brought and eyeing the streamers and balloons decorating Frankie’s backyard in confusion.

“The fact that I won’t go to jail for throwing trash out of my helicopter,” Frankie said.

Santi stared blankly at him. “The fuck are you on about, Fish?”

Frankie just grinned at you over Santi’s shoulder while you rolled your eyes and grabbed one of the drinks. He even had a party hat perched jauntily on top of his ballcap, and a piñata hanging up in the yard, “for the kids”.

You took a few good swings at it with the bat he handed you while picturing your ex’s face on the paper-mache.

The mere thought of getting back with Drew, aka Dickface, makes you shudder. “No, I’m not back with him, and I’m still done with dating.”

You swipe some chips out of the bowl and tuck your legs under you, ignoring how high it makes your dress ride up your thighs with only a token effort to tug it back down.

“You’re done with dating, but you were out on a date? Little confused here.”

Frankie sits down on the other end of the couch, muting the post-game recap on the TV and turning so that he’s facing you. He’s all casual in jeans and a faded T-shirt that stretches over his broad shoulders when he twists, hair falling on his forehead in a mop of messy curls without his usual hat to cover them. You should feel out of place in your sexy little dress, full-glam makeup and the “effortless beachy waves” that took you an hour, three different tutorials and a whole fucking lot of effort to achieve, but you’re far more comfortable here with him than you were with the man you ditched back at the trendy bar full of wannabe influencers with insanely overpriced cocktails. Comfortable enough to tell him the truth, with a little help from the tequila in the deconstructed margaritas that you drank.

“It was supposed to be a hookup,” you mumble, feeling your cheeks go warm in a combination of embarrassment and alcohol.

His eyes go wide at that and he lets out a little cough of surprise. “That explains the dress,” he says, glancing down at it again before quickly looking back up at your face.

You wave a hand up and down yourself. “Dress, shoes, lip gloss,” you list off, not mentioning the rather skimpy new underwear that you’re one wrong move away from flashing him with. “I was tired of sitting home alone on Saturday nights, you know?”

”Hey!” he protests, and you duck your head with a wince. It’s Saturday night and he was sitting home alone until you showed up.

“Sorry. No offense, Frankie.”

“None taken, cariño. But only because it’s you.”

The casual endearment makes you feel even warmer, or maybe it’s just the Patrón you downed before leaving Mr. Talk, Dark, and Liar Liar Pants on Fire back at the bar hitting your system.

“Deconstructed margarita” your ass, it was a shot of triple sec and a shot of tequila with a hideous up charge, and they didn’t even include the lime.

You could leave it at that, suggest watching a shitty Netflix movie to pass the time until you can finally book an Uber and go home to change into something that isn’t squeezing your ribs into new and interesting positions and drink the finest chardonnay Publix had for under ten dollars. Frankie won’t push, won’t judge, you’ve been friends long enough to know that. You’ve seen each other through various highs and lows over the years, he was the first person you called when you got a promotion that you’d worked your ass off for, and when he found out his ex-fiancée was getting married you were the one who picked him up at the bar where he was drowning his sorrows and brought him home to drunkenly cry on your shoulder until he passed out.

If there’s anyone in the world who you can trust with this, it’s him.

“Those last few months with You Know Who,” you start, meaning your ex and not Voldemort despite their many similarities, “we were fighting like all the time. I knew deep down our relationship had become this flaming dumpster fire, but for some stupid reason I kept splashing water on it trying to put it out instead of walking away. And then we had the worst fight ever, and he said…he said-”

You could really do with another shot of tequila for some liquid courage right now. You settle for drinking the last of Frankie’s beer instead while he watches you carefully, tipping the bottle back to get every drop and then setting it down on the coaster with an audible thump.

“-he said I was a frigid bitch in bed and he would have better sex fucking a blow up doll instead of me. That’s what finally did it, I told him we were over. He tried to apologize and begged for another chance, but I just kept hearing it over and over again in my head and I was done. Finally done.”

A muscle ticks in Frankie’s jaw like the countdown clock on a bomb, you can see it even through the scruff of his patchy beard. He glances away for a second and you see his eyes close while he mutters under his breath in Spanish too soft and too fast for you to understand before his gaze snaps back to yours.

“I take it back, he’s not a dickhead,” he says, sounding completely calm. “That’s an insult to actual dickheads. And he’s going to be lucky if he can still run his mouth like that once I’ve knocked out all his teeth.”

Even though he’s ex-military Frankie has never been one for that bullshit macho posturing, which is one of the things you like so much about him. He breaks up bar fights, he doesn’t start them. To see him now, so calm and collected but with such an intense expression and not a hint on his face that he’s kidding or exaggerating, it sends a jolt right through you. His threat to your dickhead of an ex-boyfriend shouldn’t be so sexy, but….

Damn.

You reach out and flick him lightly on the shoulder. “He’s not worth it, and I really don’t want to have to bail your ass out of jail at three in the morning again, Morales.”

“Hey, that was one time!” he protests, adding in a mumble. “And it was Santi’s dumb idea.”

His annoyed pout just makes you laugh, shaking your head at how closely he resembles his namesake when he juts his lower lip out like that. Cutest catfish ever.

“So,” he drawls, after you stop chuckling, “since you didn’t go back to that asshole, thank fuck, then who was the lucky guy tonight? Or unlucky guy, since you ditched him for far better company.”

You shrug, plucking idly at the fabric of your dress. “Just someone I matched with on Tinder. I really wanted to prove Dickface wrong, you know? That I wasn’t uptight and sucked in bed. Swiped right on someone who didn’t have a douchey shirtless mirror selfie in his profile, we met for drinks and everything was going great until a text popped up on his phone while he was showing me a picture of his dog. From his wife.”

Frankie winces. “Seriously?”

The notification lingered on the screen while he frantically tried to swipe it away, not that it would do any good. You were a fast reader, you’d already read the whole thing.

“Yeah. Letting him know there were leftovers waiting for him in the fridge when he got home from work, with a bunch of kiss emojis and a ‘love you babe’. He tried to do the whole, ‘it’s not what you think, we have an open marriage’ bullshit, which sure, I bet he does, so I told him to call his wife and put her on speaker so we could clear that right up.”

“That’s my girl,” Frankie grins.

The praise flows through you like the tequila, remembering how your date went pale as a ghost while you stared him down and his immediate attempts to backpedal.

“Obviously he suddenly had a million reasons why he couldn’t, so I stuck him with the bill and left. Hope he had the decency to tip, at least.”

You let your head fall back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. The adrenaline rush you’ve been riding since you told off Dickhead McDickface the Second and stormed out of the bar on your fuck-me heels is wearing off. You got fucked all right, fucked over.

“I really can pick em, can’t I?” you ask, a rhetorical question if ever there was one. “Went from one asshole to another. A married asshole, no less.”

There’s a rustle of movement to your left and a touch to your shoulder that makes you turn your head to see Frankie has shifted closer to you on the couch and tilted his head to match the angle of yours while he brushes his knuckles lightly down your arm.

“Hey, do you remember that woman I went on a first date with last year who brought her fifteen year old brother along? And we were supposed to see Poor Things? Who brings their brother on a date, let alone to a movie with that many sex scenes? Really, really, explicit sex scenes?”

You do remember, thanks to the texts he sent you with increasing speed until he was blowing up your phone and you’d barely finished one before the next popped up.

She brought her kid with her?

Wait, not her kid, it’s her brother.

Dude’s like 13, what the hell?????

Okay, apparently he’s 15 he’s just “short”. THAT’S NOT THE POINT!!!!!!!

WE’RE SEEING POOR THINGS??!!!!!

WHAT?

WTF?????????

PLEASE TELL ME THERE’S ANOTHER MOVIE WITH THE SAME TITLE THAT DOESN’T HAVE NAKED EMMA STONE IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fuck, what do I do?

This is so fucking weird!!!!!!!! SHE BROUGHT HER BROTHER TO THE WEIRD NAKED EMMA STONE SEX MOVIE!!!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

His bewilderment came right through the screen with the increasing number of exclamation points and the memory makes you giggle. You still can’t think of Poor Things as anything except The Weird Naked Emma Stone Sex Movie thanks to Frankie.

“See?” he says with a smile, “I can’t pick ‘em either. First date was over before the movie even started and I’d already spent like fifty bucks on popcorn and drinks. Still follow her brother on Instagram though, he’s cool.”

You laugh even harder at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “Dating suuuucks,” you whine in your best angsty teenager impression.

“It sucks so much,” Frankie agrees. “Fuck that married guy. Wait, no, don’t fuck that married guy.”

Now you’re both laughing, so close to each other on the couch that you’re practically touching at the knees. You think to yourself that Frankie has such a nice smile, none of that closed-mouth, thin-lipped thing some guys do as if smiling is an affront to their manhood. Frankie’s smile takes over his whole face, his eyes going squinty and crinkling adorably at the corners.

“I promise I won’t fuck that married guy,” you swear with mock solemnity, crossing your fingers over your heart like a Boy Scout when you finally stop laughing. You let your hand drop to the cushion in between the two of you and close your eyes with a sigh. “Even though I really, really, really need to get laid.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth you freeze, scarcely daring to breathe even as you’re sure you hear a sharp inhale from Frankie at the unguarded confession. He’s so close to you on the couch. So close.

When you gather the courage to open your eyes and meet his dark gaze the air around you has changed, heavy with the weight of what you just said. Neither one of you moves to put a platonic distance back between you like so many other evenings on this couch when you get too close, sharing pizza and drinks and conversation for hours.

Maybe it wasn’t such an accident that you ended up here, with him, tonight.

“You know I’d do anything for you, right?” he asks in a voice so low and thick with promise that it makes your stomach flip and a sharp throb hits you even lower down.

“Anything?” you repeat, your own voice higher than normal. Is he really offering that?

Frankie picks up your hand from where it lays on the couch, lifting it and keeping your eyes locked while he raises it to his mouth and brushes a slow, deliberate kiss along the back that makes you shiver as every last nerve ending rises to attention and begs for more.

“Anything,” he murmurs against your skin. “Say the word.”

His large thumb strokes over the fluttering pulse in your wrist, back and forth, back and forth, while his heavy-lidded eyes stare into yours.

You can’t say you’ve never thought about it, because you definitely have. Frankie’s stupidly attractive, with those thick curls that always escape out from under his baseball caps and his Roman coin profile. But when you first met he was still with his ex, and then he was single but you weren’t, the timing never quite working out for anything between you except friendship and nothing else. Hell, by now he’s pretty much your best friend, the one you would call if you needed to bury a body knowing he’d bring the shovel. There’s no one else you trust as much as Frankie Morales, and there’s no one else you want as much as you want him, right here, right now.

“Kiss me,” you whisper, saying the words you always wanted to say to him.

He shuffles closer, his other hand sliding behind your neck as he brings your lips together. It’s a little clumsy at first, your nose bumping his before he fits his mouth to yours. You feel his fingers press to the nape of your neck and the brush of his knee against your while he kisses you carefully, so soft and sweet and gentle.

At first.

Heat washes over you and it’s all because of Frankie, his kiss turning hot and hungry and demanding. You gasp into his mouth and kiss him back just as eagerly, hands fisting in his T-shirt to pull him closer. He makes a low noise in the back of his throat that you can practically feel, a sexy cross between a groan and a grunt, and pulls away from your mouth far too soon. But before you can protest the loss with more than a pout and pull him back, he’s dusting more kisses under the hinge of your jaw and along your neck, mapping a hot trail down the wide swath of bare skin your dress reveals between your breasts and nuzzling his face right into your cleavage. His hands go to your hips, bunching the fabric and pulling it up impatiently to your waist as he moves even lower. Everything happens so fast that it makes your head spin far more than the tequila and you lean back on the couch for support with your chest heaving and groping for any part of him you can reach. Frankie kneels on the floor, pulling your new underwear off as he goes and you lift your hips to help with anticipation pooling low in your stomach at the realization of what he’s planning to do.

He spreads your thighs apart and looks down between them at where you’re now completely bare and practically dripping with a rush of arousal. His gaze is dark, hungry, a look like nothing you’ve ever seen before on his face replacing his usual easygoing expression.

“She’s fucking gorgeous,” he says in that low voice, staring straight at your pussy. “All pink and perfect and needy for some attention, isn’t she? Don’t worry baby, I’m gonna take very good care of her.”

The breath catches in your throat at that, more than a little shocked by the filthy promise in his words. No man you’ve ever been with has ever said anything remotely like that. Your nipples are firm points against your dress and you must be glistening with how wet you already are. Frankie kisses your inner thigh and mumbles, “lie back a little more for me,” while pulling gently on your hips to position you the way he wants. You’re not about to refuse him anything at this point and you slide lower, feeling your dress ride up even more as you do. While you’re not fully naked yet you feel so exposed, lying with your legs wide open on the same couch where you’ve watched so many bad movies and argued over words while playing Scrabble, because military acronyms don’t fucking count, Catfish! Now he’s nestled between your bare thighs with his wide shoulders wedging them apart and you wonder dimly why you spent all that time not doing this, his insanely kissable mouth so close to your pussy that you can feel his warm breath when he exhales. It makes you tremble with anticipation and Frankie looks up, his eyes meeting yours with an unspoken question behind them. You nod, answering without words. You want this.

He licks you, a slow, broad swipe with the flat of his tongue that has your head falling back and your legs spreading shamelessly wider. Then he does it again, and again, and again, burying his face so deep that you wonder vaguely how he’s even managing to breathe. He doesn’t come up for air anytime soon, holding you firm against his mouth with his hands wrapped around your thighs and seeking out every last spot that makes you writhe and grind against him with moans and cries that you can’t hold back spilling from your lips. It’s loud, both the noises you make and the wet sound of him eating you out like you’re a feast and he’s been starved for days. Frankie makes his tongue a firm point and thrusts it inside you while keeping you spread, the feeling so intimate and erotic that your clit throbs and you absently cup a breast to ease the ache in your stiff nipple. He fucks you with his tongue a few times before he gives you another one of those long, slow licks that go the full length from bottom to top and he zeroes in on your needy clit as if he had a map leading him right to it. You feel his lips close around the swollen bud with a hard suck that has you squeezing your breast with one hand and sinking the other into his messy curls.

“Oh fuck,” you manage to gasp, “Frankie, it’s so good. So good.”

He finally pulls back long enough to rasp, “I want you to come all over my face, baby,” before diving back in. You feel the prod of a thick finger against your dripping entrance, slipping in easily and soon it’s moving in tandem with the flick of his tongue over your clit. The dual sensation makes you whimper, tugging on his hair to urge him closer and rocking your hips. Another finger joins the first, stretching you even more and pressing along your velvety inner walls until he suddenly curls them and hits that spot, the one you almost forgot was there. He strokes it and it’s nothing but bone-melting, toe-curling pleasure that builds and builds relentlessly under your skin until there’s nowhere else for it to go.

You cry out, your climax hitting with the force of a tidal wave and crashing over you. Frankie groans, a low rumble coming from his position between your legs as he clearly feels it in the squeeze around his fingers and the rush of more hot arousal that makes you even wetter and slicker. He rubs it all over his face just like he wanted, his fingers pumping in a lazy rhythm in and out of you until it’s finally over and you’re left limp and boneless on his couch with your dress bunched to your waist and one strap hanging off your shoulder. You’re not sure exactly how you ended up like this, from knocking on his door ready to swear off men forever less than an hour ago to half-naked and panting from the best orgasm you’ve had since….ever. When you manage to lift your head from the cushion to look at him his expression is just as dazed as yours must be even as his lips gleam and his cheeks and chin are damp with you.

“Fuck,” he breathes, his chest heaving under his T-shirt like he just ran a marathon. “Fuck, are you okay? Was that okay?”

Even with the AC blasting there’s still not enough air in the room, it takes you a moment to find some so you can answer him. “Yeah….yeah, I’m okay. It’s okay.”

Okay is an understatement, you don’t even smoke and yet you’re ready for a cigarette now. You don’t even make any move to tug your dress down and cover yourself, one leg still loosely propped on Frankie’s shoulder. He rubs a soothing hand on your thigh and carefully dislodges it so he can stand up, revealing the prominent bulge in his jeans that’s now perfectly at your eye level. Your pussy clenches and throbs at the sight, he got that hard just from going down on you? He follows your gaze and smirks a little when he sees where you’re looking, brushing his hand against his fly.

“All for you, baby,” he says, and reaches to pull you to your feet. “Not on the couch though. Bedroom. I want you in my bed.”

Bed, couch, floor, you really don’t care and you’re already fumbling with his belt buckle and tugging his T-shirt out of his jeans. You drag your nails along the sensitive skin of his stomach right above his waistband and relish the way it makes him shudder, the muscles contracting under your touch. When you look up again he immediately swoops down and kisses you, this time with the taste of you still clinging to his lips and your scent all over his face. It’s raw and messy, tongues and teeth and the little sound of triumph you make when you finally get his belt open. You feel him smile against your mouth while he starts to walk backwards and you have to follow him to work on your next goal, getting his T-shirt off. He’s leading you towards his bedroom, and thank God his house is a bungalow so you don’t have to waste time going up stairs. All that’s between the two of you and his bed is a hallway, and it might as well be one of those funhouse corridors at the county fair with the way you’re both bumping against the walls and tripping over your own feet trying to navigate it. Frankie unabashedly gropes your ass with those large hands of his while he kisses you, not paying attention to where he’s going and knocking pictures on the wall askew with his shoulders. You keep tugging and pulling at his T-shirt, trying to get it off and thwarted by the fact that he won’t let go of your butt long enough to lift his arms.

“Frankie,” you whine against his mouth, shoving fistfuls of cotton up his back, “off!”

He finally pulls back and yanks the shirt over his head with enough force that you’re sure he just completely stretched out the neck, tossing it aside without bothering to see where it lands. The warm expanse of his broad chest presses against you almost immediately, with what feels like miles and miles of bare skin under your exploring hands. His lips fasten to your neck and you tilt your head back, holding onto his shoulders for dear life while he sucks hard enough to leave a mark. You’ll have to cover it before work on Monday, but, fuck it. That’s what concealer is for. If he wants to cover you in hickies like you’re teenagers having their first makeout session, you’ll let him. You’ll let him do whatever he wants at this point.

“Hang on.”

“It’s the only warning you get before he hauls you up with his hands under your thighs, your legs automatically wrapping around his waist. He carries you the last few steps into the bedroom and closes the door with a kick of his foot that makes it slam shut. The sound makes you start before you grin down at him.

“Impatient, much?”

“To have you in my bed at last?” he says, matching your grin with his own goofy smile. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

You can take the man out of the military but you can’t take the military out of the man, Frankie’s bed is made with such sharp precision that it seems a shame to mess it up.

Almost.

The mattress dips when he sets you down, knocking a pillow aside and the duvet no longer perfectly crisp at the edges. You go up on your knees while he stands next to the bed, reaching for where his belt hangs open and using it to tug him closer. It doesn’t take much work to pop open the button on his jeans and pull the zipper down, the sound of the metal teeth parting shockingly loud against the quiet of the room. You reach a hand in and feel the heat of his skin even through the soft material of his underwear, while he stands as still as a statue except for the rise and fall of his chest. He lets you touch and explore and you trace the very long and thick outline of his erection as it twitches and presses eagerly against your hand. Fuck, Frankie is big. The kind of big that’s going to stretch you so deliciously. The kind of big that you’re going to feel the day after. Maybe even longer.

And it’s all yours tonight.

His jeans are quickly joined on the floor by your dress, as you go from bodycon to full frontal. You might have been nervous about finally getting completely naked, if it wasn’t for the unexpected sight of the pattern on his boxer-briefs.

“Frankie,” you laugh, “you actually have fish themed underwear?”

Sure enough, there’s several different types of fish swimming around on the fabric, including his whiskered namesake. When you look back up from the cartoon catfish smiling jauntily across his groin you can see that his ears have gone bright red in embarrassment.

“It was a gag gift from the guys,” he mumbles, not meeting your eyes, “they’re really comfortable, and well, I wasn’t exactly expecting to take my pants off in front of anyone tonight, you know.”

You rest your hands on the waistband and trace a nail along the bare skin just above, trying and failing to stifle the urge to giggle.

“Wanna put your pants back on then?” you ask, teasing the sensitive spot below his navel.

“Fuck no.”

His lips crash back down on yours again, his arms circling your waist. The Finding Nemo joke you were about to make is immediately forgotten as you blindly peel the boxers off, letting the school of fish puddle at his feet and immediately get kicked away. You wrap a hand around his cock, so long and thick that it makes you ache with the thought of having it inside you. God, you need this. You need him.

Frankie lets out a deep groan against your mouth when you start to stroke, dragging your hand up and down the length of him from root to tip and back again. You rub your thumb over the sensitive head and twist your fingers under the crown, teasing out all the sensitive spots and figuring out what he likes. A hard grip, bordering on rough, has his chest heaving and his hips jerking while his cock throbs in your hand.

“Jesus Christ,” he bites out. “Like that, baby, just like that.”

The sheer unguarded pleasure on his face gives you everything you wanted tonight with your dress and the heels and the lacy underwear. You feel sexy. Desired. Powerful. Able to bring a man to his knees with your touch. Literally, Frankie’s legs start to buckle and he has to brace himself against the bed to stay upright. You keep stroking him until he finally pulls your hand away gently and kisses your open palm before joining you on the bed. He practically jumps onto it in his eagerness, making you bounce with the movement.

“Condom?” he asks, twisting towards his nightstand, “I have some-“

“I’m good,” you interrupt. You want to feel him inside you without that barrier. “I’m on the pill.”

His arm drops from where he was reaching for the drawer. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all month.”

You never would have fucked your Tinder date without a condom, but this is Frankie. Your Frankie. You trust him. He rolls on top of you and your trust only grows when he hesitates, looking down into your eyes.

“Are you absolutely sure about this? We can always stop.”

He pushes a lock of hair out of your face with a gentle touch and you know without a doubt that if you wanted to stop he would without complaint even though he hasn’t come yet. You run your hands up his arms and feel the tension in his biceps, the strain of holding himself back. He’s braced above you, his hair a complete mess, gorgeously naked and hard as a rock, and you are one hundred percent sure about this.

“I don’t wanna stop.”

You wrap your legs around his waist, a perfect fit between your thighs. Frankie angles his hips while he leans down for another kiss and you feel the hot slide of his cock as he finds your entrance with that pilot’s accuracy of his, then the press of the blunt head as he starts to push inside. He moves slowly, carefully, giving you time to adjust to the stretch and burn. And it does burn, in the very best way. It’s been months since you’ve had sex, and far longer since you’ve had good sex, your frustration had built to a fever pitch under your skin and Frankie just lit a match. You both feel it when you open for him fully, that final slide is smooth and easy and he buries himself right to the hilt.

“Fuuuck,” he bites out. “Took me so fucking good, perfect fucking pussy.”

His dick is pretty damn perfect too, in your opinion, filling you up and creating the most delicious friction when he starts to move. You pull his head down for another kiss before he buries his face in your neck and rocks his hips into yours, gradually building the rhythm while you run your hands along his back and feel the muscles ripple and flex with each thrust. It’s everything you needed and more, the thick drag of him inside you has you arching your back and crying out and it only seems to spur him on even more. He plants a knee on the bed and lifts your leg, shifting his hips so that he can go even deeper. You clutch helplessly at his sheets when the tip of his cock finds your sweet spot and make a noise you don’t even recognize, a throaty moan pulls from your throat while your toes curl and your pussy throbs.

“Frankie,” you manage to gasp, clutching both his shoulders and gripping him even tighter from the inside, “oh god, there! Right there!”

“That’s it baby,” he murmurs into your skin. “Come all over my cock.”

He leans over you, thrusting hard and balancing on one hand to reach down with the other so he can work your swollen clit. The first swipe of his fingers on the sensitive bud sends a jolt through your entire body that melts into sheer unadulterated pleasure. With a few more you’re teetering right on the edge, and then Frankie grinds especially deep on his next thrust and presses down hard with his thumb. It grips you and doesn’t let go, your second climax of the night is even stronger than the first and has you squeezing him as if you’re trying to drag him even further inside, contracting along the length of his cock while he grits his teeth and fucks you through it. When the aftershocks finally stop and you relax back into the mattress with a sigh Frankie pulls out, leaning down to press a sweet kiss to your lips and laying down next to you.

It takes you a few moments in your post-orgasmic haze to notice that he’s still hard, his cock is practically flush to his stomach and glistening with your arousal.

“You didn’t?” you ask, confused as you glance down.

He follows your gaze with a strangely bashful look. “Not yet. I want…I want you to ride me.”

That sends another hot rush right between your legs, suddenly wanting it desperately too. You’re not sure if you’re going to be able to walk afterwards, especially not in those stupid heels, but it’s going to be so fucking worth it.

Frankie stretches out fully on the bed, those long legs and broad shoulders taking up so much space on it. Luckily there’s more than enough room for you right there on his lap. You swing a leg over, hands pressing down on his chest for balance while he looks up at you with that crooked grin he always gets when he’s especially pleased about something. A sinful roll of your hips along his thick erection only makes his smile wider when he feels how wet you still are.

“Take me in,” he begs shamelessly, hips moving under you and hands roaming over your skin. “Please, baby.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

It’s another delicious stretch, sliding down his thick erection and feeling him rub you in all sorts of interesting new ways from this angle. Once you’re seated fully you give yourself a moment before you start to move, his heart racing under your palm and his cock held snug and warm deep inside you.

Frankie’s done so much already for you tonight, this is for him. You want to give him just as much pleasure as he gave you, make it just as good for him when you start to roll your hips again to take him in again and again and again. His hands find your thighs and flex against them while he watches with a rapt expression, eyes glued to where you’re joined before looking up to take in the full sight of you riding him just as he wanted.

“Good?” you ask, gasping the word out.

“So fucking good,” he groans. His hips lift under you right as you go down on the next stroke and it’s even better, the way you just fit. You use muscles you didn’t even know you had, increasing your pace and riding him hard. The cords on his neck pop when he throws his head back against the pillow, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring with each exhale of breath. He has to be close, you can sense it in the increasingly desperate noises he makes and the way his fingers dig into your skin as he holds you steady on top of him. Your breasts bounce and your thighs are burning with the effort of maintaining the rhythm but you don’t stop, can’t stop, you need Frankie to fall apart just like he’s done for you twice already. You want to see the look on his face and hear the noises he makes when he comes, adding a circle of your hips that makes his eyes close and his body jerk under you. He feels even harder now, and your legs aren’t the only thing that’s burning. Frankie is hitting every sweet spot inside of you, filling you so deep and full that the familiar prickle and spark is starting again. You weren’t expecting to come for a third time, but then again you weren’t expecting anything else that happened tonight and it’s definitely happening. Frankie thrusts up with a growl, yanking you down on him with the same motion and holding you there while you feel him pulse hot and he lets out a long, loud moan like no other noise he’s made all night. The sound and the sensation make you molten, almost there and even deep in the throes of his own pleasure he reaches for your clit and gives it a pinch that’s all you need to fall over the edge with him. With your hands braced on his chest you throw your head back and let it wash over you while you keep rolling your hips to draw out more and more of those gorgeous sounds out of him until he finally starts to soften. You collapse in a heap on his chest and his arms immediately wrap around you, lips brushing against the top of your head while you bury your face against his sweaty chest and your heartbeats slowly go back to normal.

It’s nice.

It’s more than nice.

You could get used to it.

You can’t. You shouldn’t. You’re just friends.

Friends who just fucked rather spectacularly.

Fuck.

After a few moments you slide off of him to lie on your back, looking up at the ceiling instead of at him. Now things are going to be all weird and awkward and as amazing as the sex was, it wasn’t worth the inevitable end of your friendship. Silence stretches between you and creates more and more space in its wake.

“There’s probably Ubers available now,” you say at last, keeping your gaze away from his face so you don’t see his expression shift from lover to stranger. By the time the driver gets here you’ll have your dress back on and your feet shoved into your shoes and you and Frankie can start pretending this never happened. Maybe that will work.

There’s a snort from next to you. “Yeah. That’s not happening, I’m driving you home tomorrow. After we sleep. And shower. And stop at that diner on 53rd cause I’m gonna need one of those giant lumberjack breakfasts to recover from this.”

You feel yourself flush a bit, as ridiculous as it is considering you’re naked in his bed with “this” still sticky on your inner thighs.

“I’m not going to a diner in that dress,” you say, still looking at the ceiling and adding silently, “or those shoes that could double as torture devices.”

“So you wear one of my T-shirts or something,” Frankie’s voice trails away into a jaw-cracking yawn before he continues, “we’ll figure it out in the morning. Fuck, you really did a number on me.”

Yawning is contagious, you can feel one building and you’re suddenly on the verge of falling asleep thanks to the number he did on you and the incredibly comfortable bed that you never want to leave. Best sex you’ve had in….ever, all thanks to Frankie. But you don’t give in to the urge to just close your eyes and go to sleep, as tempting as it is, turning your head to look at your best friend instead and finding him looking back at you in the dark.

He’s still Frankie. You’re still you.

You’re still friends.

“Frankie? Will we figure…this out in the morning?”

His fingers lace with yours under the blankets and he gives you a soft smile.

“Yeah. We will, baby, I promise.”

When you fall asleep you’re on your side with Frankie plastered to your bare back, his arm firm around your waist like he’s afraid you might try to sneak away in the middle of the night. The thought had occurred to you, to escape all the morning after awkwardness. Frankie isn’t just a hookup or a one-night stand though, he means so much more to you than that. So you lay your hand over his and relax into his embrace with a sigh, wondering as you drift off if he’ll let you borrow his prized vintage AC/DC T-shirt to wear home…..

….and if he’d be up for another round in the shower in the morning.

The answer to both turns out to be a resounding yes.

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

This is the best belated birthday gift ever! Alex, you are the brightest of gems! Nothing like a pervy threesome to pass the time in the jungles of Colombia, amirite?

Grounded

(Frankie Morales/OFC/Javier Pena)

For my partner in crime, @meanderingcaptainswanmusings - a very belated birthday fic featuring Javier, Frankie, and the lucky OFC who gets stuck with them in an abandoned cartel safehouse for the night. Whatever will the three of them do to pass the time?

(hint: they're going to do her. this is porn wrapped in some semblance of plot. all 11,000 words of it)

Rating: E

https://archiveofourown.org/works/50894950

grounded

“We’re leaving. Now.”

Agent Peña practically spat the words, hands planted firmly on his hips and standing almost toe-to-toe with his opponent in the argument that had been going on for the better part of an hour now to an audience of one. As if on cue, immediately following the words there was a clap of thunder from outside that was so loud it made her teeth rattle, and the machine-gun retort of the rain started up again.

“No we are fucking not!”

Captain Morales almost had to yell to be heard over the downpour, his arms crossed over his chest and his easy smile replaced with a heavy scowl. “I don’t know about you, Peña, but I sure as shit don’t have a goddamn death wish. Trying to take off now would be suicide.”

They glared at each other some more, two stubborn mules practically pawing the ground and breathing hot out of their noses. She almost expected them to start head-butting each other. Neither one backed down in the silent stare-off until Agent Peña finally said, “We’ll take a vote then. Majority rules.”

Two heads immediately swiveled to look at her then, the third person on this failed mission and therefore the tiebreaker who would make the decision to stay or to go. Two pairs of dark eyes as thunderous as the storm outside fixed on her face and she could practically feel each of them silently willing her, “Pick me.” As fellow DEA, she should be on Agent Peña’s side, as someone who also didn’t have a death wish, she was leaning more towards Captain Morales.

Peña was going to be pissed, but everyone in the agency knew that was his natural state anyway and she was no exception.

“I’m with Morales,” she said at last, gaze sliding away from the betrayal on Peña’s face. “He’s the pilot, if he says it’s not safe we should do what he says and wait.”

“Ha!” Captain Morales crowed, moving to stand next to her. “Thank you, Agent, that’s exactly right, you should do what I say. And I say we stay right here. Majority rules, right, Peña?”

Agent Javier Peña had the look of a man who knew he’d lost but was unable to admit defeat. Without saying a word he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and jammed it into his mouth before stalking off without a backwards glance. Not that he could go very far in the two-roomed house with rain coming down so hard outside that it was enough to wash away any sin and leave you stripped bare and clean as the day you were born.

“Dick,” Morales said to the retreating back, rolling his eyes. If Peña heard him, and he must have, he didn’t stop. Once he’d disappeared into the other room Morales pulled off his baseball cap and raked his fingers through his hair, still wet from when he went outside earlier to check on the condition of the runway. He’d already shed his tactical vest and the shirt underneath was damp too, clinging to his broad shoulders and plastered to his chest. She admired the view, considering there was fuck all else to do at the moment. The raid was a bust, the rain had made both leaving and communications impossible, and she hadn’t exactly brought along a book to pass the time. Outside there was nothing but dense Colombian jungle in all directions for miles and the pounding against the ramshackle building grew even louder, it had to be absolutely pouring out there. The weather had turned on a dime and turned on them, from clear skies to a Biblical deluge in a matter of moments.

“We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Morales answered her unspoken question while attempting to wring out the hem of his shirt and revealing a sliver of bare stomach over the waistband of his jeans in the process. She admired that too. It wasn’t very professional of her, but after almost two years of undercover work where she had to give up everything, her name, her friends, her family, her whole life, in pursuit of the greater good, she wasn’t going to turn herself into HR over some harmless ogling. Captain Francisco Morales was a good-looking man and she was a DEA agent, not a nun.

“If you say so,” she said, giving him a little two-fingered salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

He chuckled at that, looking amused instead of his earlier annoyance. Peña’s absence probably helped.

“We’re basically off the clock now. Please, call me Frankie.”

The request was accompanied by a wink. She hadn’t known Morales long, but it was enough to know he was a bit of a flirt. Not in a gross way, though, and nothing she couldn’t handle, as a woman stationed in Colombia surrounded by men who viewed flirting as much the national sport alongside tejo.

“Well then, Frankie,” she drawled back, dragging the name out. “I guess I’m stuck with you, huh?”

His smile grew wider, as if being stuck in an abandoned cartel safehouse in the pouring rain for God only knew how long with her (and Javier Peña, a little voice in her mind helpfully reminded her) was exactly where he wanted to be.

“Lucky me,” he said.

Lucky her.

********

The cigarette did absolutely nothing to calm the rage that was simmering under his skin, threatening to boil over like an unattended pot left on the stove. It burned right down to his fingers in only a few deep inhales, leaving behind a long, unbroken snake of ash that fell to the floor in one piece. He ground it out under his boot, the dark smear matching his darker mood.

Javier swore under his breath and lit another, swearing even louder when he burned his thumb on the lighter thanks to his own carelessness. He blew out a lungful of smoke and stuck the thumb in his mouth, trying to suck away the pain like a small child coming down from a tantrum, a comparison that was probably a bit too apt at the moment. As much as he hated to admit it, Morales had been right. It was clearly too dangerous to try to take off in such bad weather, no matter how much he wanted to run away from this utter clusterfuck of a mission.

His utter clusterfuck.

The intel had been good, he would have bet his damn badge on it. A cartel safehouse hidden deep in the jungle that was only accessible by plane, used to stash drugs, guns, cash, anything they wanted to keep away from both the DEA and their competitors. He’d received the go ahead after some lobbying⸺aka being a giant pain in the ass about it until he received grudging permission⸺to put together a strike team and conduct a raid. Warrants had been signed, equipment requisitioned, all requiring even later than usual late nights at the office and careful planning to ensure the cartel didn’t catch wind of it and clear out beforehand. A team of three, the maximum that would fit in a plane small enough to land on the makeshift runway hand-carved from the underbrush like a scar carved into the cheek of a snitch. Two DEA agents, and a pilot who could also handle a gun, just in case. That meant borrowing one from the military through some backdoor channels.

Captain Francisco Morales, call sign “Catfish”, of all things, was the pilot. He’d flown them to the painstakingly acquired coordinates and landed on the barely visible runway, lining up the Cracker Jack prize of a plane with clear skill and a baseball metaphor about sliding into home at the bottom of the ninth. Javier had mostly ignored him, too focused on the sight of a building that had been hidden under the tree canopy, right where his informant had said it would be. The safehouse. He’d taken the point position once they exited the plane, all sweating under their tactical gear, guns drawn, running through every possible scenario of what lay behind the rusty door except for the two things they’d actually found.

Jack, and squat.

The house had been empty, no drugs, no guns, no cash. All that was left were some marks scored deep in the floor where things had clearly been moved in haste, an empty shipping crate, and a scattered deck of cards that must have been used to kill time along with a dog-eared porn mag that Morales poked with the toe of his boot, both eyebrows raised under his decidedly not military-issue baseball cap.

“Looks like we missed all the fun,” the pilot had said, clearly bemused by the whole situation.

Javier had grit his teeth so hard he could still feel the ache in his jaw even now, like someone had socked him one. Clearly all that meticulous planning and late nights had been for fuck all, the house had been emptied of anything useful unless they wanted to play Go Fish or jerk off to Miss September and while he definitely wanted to throttle something at the moment, it wasn’t that.

Then the rain had started.

Morales had bolted outside as soon as they heard the first drop hit the roof and when he came back in again with water dripping from the brim of his hat he insisted it was too dangerous to take off again until the weather cleared and they would just have to wait until then, however long it took. Javier had argued with him about it for over an hour, more out of annoyance at the failed bust than actual disagreement. If Murphy were here he would probably have his own completely unhelpful opinion to add, but his usual partner was stateside at the moment so he had to bring in another agent instead on the op who was now an eyewitness to what was sure to be the talk of the DEA when they returned empty-handed. Javier Peña tilting at another windmill, the Don Quixote of Colombia.

He didn’t know if not having Steve here to serve as his Sancho was better, or worse.

The agent he’d chosen had done a stint undercover and knew the cartel, understood how they operated as well as anyone at the agency. Better than most at the agency, the paper-pushers who never left their cubicles and clocked out every day at five on the dot. Undercover assignments were dangerous for any agent, and even more so for a woman. He’d brought her in because he was genuinely impressed with her work every time one of her reports crossed his desk and wanted her insight, despite what anyone else might think about why he’d handpicked her specifically. Like all undercover agents she was only referred to by a code name within the agency in case of moles or leaks, never her real name or the false identity she was given. One was “Lobo”, the wolf, one was “Escorpión”, the scorpion, it went without saying that both of them were men. Hers was Cariño, a backhanded compliment to demean her accomplishments in the field by reducing her to nothing more than what a girlfriend or mistress would be called. Darling. Sweetheart. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Cariño.

Javier never thought he’d wish he was stuck in the jungle for who the fuck knew how long with Steve Murphy, but that thorn in his side of a partner would be far preferable at the moment to a woman who’d more than held her own against the cartel for so long and wore her code name as a badge of honour instead of an insult. If Murphy had taken Morales’s side over his, sure, he would have been pissed, but there wouldn’t have been the sudden churn of jealousy deep in his gut like there was when she did. They were both DEA, they were supposed to stick together, goddammit. The fact that Morales had spent the entire mission prep sneaking interested glances at her whenever she wasn’t looking sure as shit didn’t help matters. Javier wasn’t sure if she’d noticed, but he certainly did. Fucking flyboy. And now thanks to his childish hissyfit they were cozying up together in the other room because he’d dragged them both here and left them alone before he did something even more stupid than think with his dick, like punch Morales in the face.

And the absolute cherry on the shit sundae of a mission was the fact that he only had a half pack of cigarettes left. Less than half, he realized, peering into it with a grimace.

He exhaled the last of the one he was currently smoking, watching the cloud of smoke dissipate into the empty room. From the other he could hear the murmur of voices, the lower tone of Captain Morales mixed easily with hers. Agent Cariño. Darling. Sweetheart.

Not your sweetheart, Javi. Not yours.

*******

Contrary to what Agent Jackass Peña clearly believed, Frankie hadn’t been exaggerating the danger of trying to take off in the pouring rain on that joke of a runway. If anything, he’d been downplaying it. He’d seen longer driveways, for fuck’s sake.

Luckily there’d been a hanger, or, more accurately, a shed with a sheet of corrugated metal painted green to serve as a roof that was clearly meant more to hide a plane on the ground than to protect it from the elements. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and with his plane stowed away there was nothing to do now except wait out the rain with his two teammates once Peña had finally accepted they weren’t taking off until Frankie said they were, goddammit. And with the way it was still pouring, that wasn’t going to be anytime soon. He hadn’t said it out loud, but they were probably going to be grounded here all night. That was going to be a treat, with that chip on Peña’s shoulder currently about the size of a 747.

As if she knew what Frankie was thinking, the other agent chimed in with, “Cut him some slack,” from where she was currently sitting cross-legged and serene as Buddha on the dusty floor. He, by contrast, was sitting with his back to the wall, legs akimbo, in defiance of his military training. This wasn’t a military op so he decided he was allowed, just like he’d gotten to wear civvies instead of uniform since officially he was here in a private capacity to cut through the red tape.

“I stand by my earlier assessment. He’s a dick.”

She didn’t argue with him, merely lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “He’s a dick who’s trying to bring the most powerful drug lord in Colombia to justice. You can’t do this job and not be a dick.”

“You aren’t,” he pointed out.

“I’ve frequently been called a bitch.”

Frankie wasn’t surprised by that, but he didn’t like that he wasn’t. “By insecure dicks, I bet.”

“True,” she agreed, cocking a finger at him while her gun stayed holstered at her side, “but never by Agent Peña.”

He glanced in the direction Peña had left, feeling his estimation of the man go up a notch. Then it went down again. “Wait, didn’t he call you honey or sweetheart earlier? That’s not better.”

“Oh, the Cariño thing? That’s not really his fault, it was my code name when I was undercover. I still get called it all the time at the agency. When I’m not being called a bitch, that is.

Frankie felt his eyebrows shoot up on his face. “Your code name is Cariño?”

Who the fuck came up with that? Must have been another one of those DEA dicks, it sounded like a delightful place to work.

She looked amused. “Isn’t your…callsign, right? Isn’t your callsign Catfish?”

“Yes,” he sputtered, “it is, but, seriously, Cariño?”

“Yes, seriously, Catfish.”

She had a lovely smile, another point in her favour over her dick of a partner. Frankie wasn’t sure if the man was even capable of smiling. Other points that he’d noted over the last few days while preparing for the mission were her laugh, her face, and most recently, the fact that she’d sided with him over Peña. That last one might be a little petty, but Frankie didn’t give a shit.

“Fine,” he agreed. “I’ll cut him some slack. But only for you, Cariño.”

He said the endearment with as much exaggeration as possible, rolling the R like he was trying to start a propeller with his tongue. His reward was a full laugh as she stood up, brushing the dust from her thighs. The pants she was wearing were utilitarian, almost military, and shouldn’t look that good on anyone.

“Don’t worry about Peña. I can handle dicks like him, I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Frankie kept his mouth shut despite all the retorts that immediately sprang to mind. While he sure as hell wouldn’t mind being “handled” by her, he also wasn’t stupid enough to actually say that out loud.

“C’mon,” she said, holding her hands out to him. “Let’s go raid the kitchen, since there’s nothing else here to raid. Maybe we’ll have better luck finding something to eat.”

He let her help pull him to his feet, even though he didn’t really need the assistance. Still, it would be rude not to accept the offer. When he stood up to his full height he rocked forward a bit on the uneven floor, thrown off balance and taking her with him thanks to their joined hands. She instinctively grabbed his biceps to steady herself as they regained their footing, standing close, so close to each other, an unnecessary apology on her lips.

“You okay?” he asked, his own hands hovering in the air around the vicinity of her waist just in case he needed to catch her. She was shorter than him, he had to look down to meet her eyes while she looked up, her head tilted back, making his mind wander down a road that it definitely shouldn’t take on an op. Like how easy it would be to bridge the gap, close the bit of distance that was left between them.

So easy.

But Frankie Morales wasn’t that kind of a dick.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.”

And if it took them perhaps a moment too long to step away from each other, what was the harm? The mission was over, unofficially, anyway, and there was no one around to witness it.

Except there was. Frankie sensed eyes on his back and his hand drifted towards his gun out of habit as he glanced over his shoulder. Agent Peña was there, arms crossed over his chest and a deep frown under his carefully groomed mustache. How long had he been watching? How much had he seen?

“Catfish?” she called, when he didn’t follow.

Now Peña was looking at him.

“Coming, Cariño,” Frankie replied, unable to resist.

Peña’s frown deepened even more. Frankie knew that look now and it gave him a moment of pause as the implication sunk in.

Jealousy.

**********

The safe house kitchen, if it could be called that, since the slapdash building lacked such upscale amenities as electricity and plumbing, consisted of a camp stove, a five gallon bucket, a few canned goods that were thick with dust, and some decidedly unwashed dishes. They were decorated with a rather incongruous floral pattern, as if a hardened drug smuggler had taken them from his grandmother’s house.

None of it looked very promising.

Until she found the bottle of whiskey.

The unopened bottle of whiskey, seal still intact.

“Oh Cariño, you’re breaking my heart,” Frankie said to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecilia when she showed it to him, one hand pressed dramatically to his chest. “Can’t drink and fly.”

“Suit yourself.”

They both turned at Javier’s voice, drawn to the promise of alcohol like a good Catholic looking for something to feel guilty about. That was another thing about the job, the guilt. You couldn’t do it and not carry some of that around too. He almost shoulder-checked Frankie when he walked past him to snag the bottle from her and squint at the label. Frankie rolled his eyes and mouthed, “Dick,” behind his back.

“Luckily,” Javier continued, “you and I don’t have that problem, right Cariño?”

He smiled then, with a clear challenge in the curl of his lip as he effortlessly broke the seal and opened the whiskey with a twist of his wrist. Clean glasses were another non-existent amenity, so he took a healthy swig right from the bottle as easily as if he was drinking water and then held it back out.

The liquor numbed her lips and burned her throat, it was strong. The kind of thing you drank when you wanted to forget what you did with a nose full of coke and a gun in your hand. Javier took the bottle back and his second pull was even longer than the first. If even half of what was said about him around the agency was true, he definitely had a few things he probably wanted to forget.

So did she. Undercover work did that to a person.

“You puke in my plane, I’ll throw you out of it mid-air, don’t think I won’t.”

Frankie directed it at Javier, not her, which didn’t go unnoticed by the sharp-eyed agent.

“I suppose she gets a pass, huh?” Javier asked, more a statement than a question with a clear edge in his voice.

“She didn’t drink half the damn bottle in one go.”

“I can hold my liquor, Morales. Maybe you can’t, but I can.”

He took another healthy swig to punctuate the jab, long throat bobbing as he swallowed, while Frankie looked to be about a heartbeat away from punching him despite his earlier promise to cut him some slack. Not that she blamed him, Javier had taken all the slack and then just had to give the rope another tug. The tension between them was palpable, two very different men stuck together with nothing else to do but argue.

Two very attractive men with nothing else to do, a less than helpful part of her mind chimed in. She blamed the whiskey.

It went down much easier the second time, when she swiped the bottle back from Javier’s unresisting hand and took another pull of her own. They both fell silent as she did, and even though her eyes closed when she tipped her head back and bared her throat to let the amber liquor slide down it she could feel them watching. When she handed the now considerably lighter bottle back to Javier he took it without a word, still watching with an intensity she could practically feel against her skin. They both were.

It was kicked up a notch when she started to open the clasps on her tactical vest, two pairs of dark eyes widening in surprise as she loosened the straps and pulled the damn thing off. It was heavy, not really designed for a woman, and the weight of it along with the damp heat had left the shirt underneath plastered to her body so that it clung to every line and curve.

“There now, that’s better,” she said, setting the vest aside.

“I agree.”

It was Javier who spoke, in a whiskey soaked voice that burned more than the liquor.

“Me too.”

Frankie clearly wasn’t going to be left out and she smiled at him, not minding the appreciative look on his face at all. She’d admired him, so fair was fair, after all.

“At least there’s one thing the two of you agree on.”

They gave near identical amused snorts in perfect unison at that and it made her grin go wider.

“Cariño,” Frankie said, his tongue rolling deliciously over the endearment she also didn’t mind coming from him, “I think most men would agree on you. Peña?”

“He’s…not wrong,” Javier admitted with a bit of a cough, like it cost him something to agree with Frankie but he wasn’t going to deny it completely, giving the tiniest of nods towards the other man.

This wasn’t how she expected the night to go, but after days and weeks and months of pretending to be someone else, giving up her own needs, her own wants, even her own goddamn name, in service of the greater good, she was more than ready to slip back into her own skin. To drink whiskey without fear of getting drunk and revealing too much to the wrong set of ears, to flirt with the man (or men) she wanted to flirt with instead of whoever the agency told her to bat her eyelashes at next, to not have to guard her tongue or watch her own back in the field, constantly on edge and constantly feeling alone.

She wasn’t alone now.

The rain continued to lash against the safe house from the outside like a spurned lover demanding to be let in, clearly not about to end anytime soon.

Frankie moved first, crossing the distance between them and standing so close that she had to tip her head back to look up at him, just like earlier.

“Was it good?” he asked, voice low and intimate. “The whiskey?”

She held her hand out without looking and Javier silently passed her the bottle.

“Why don’t you taste it for yourself?”

With that she took another healthy swig, coating her mouth with the smoky liquor and pointedly not offering Frankie a drink. His gaze dropped to her mouth, her invitation clear. A hand curled around her hip, pulling her closer to meet the long line of his body. Her free hand went to his chest, spreading flat and feeling the broad expanse of muscle that lay hidden under his shirt. Frankie dipped his head and tasted the whiskey from her lips, from her mouth, demanding entrance with his tongue to chase every last, lingering drop. She felt more than heard him groan low in his throat, whether from the alcohol or the kiss or from both. The hand on her hip tightened and pulled her closer, leaving no space between them, her breasts pressed to his chest and the clear evidence of his desire against her stomach.

“Fuck,” he muttered against her lips when they finally had to break apart for air. “Wanted to do that all fucking day, you have no idea.”

Her own voice was high and breathless, “Yeah?”

There was the sound of a throat being cleared somewhere behind her and she twisted in Frankie’s arms to see that Javier was just standing there watching them make out like teenagers at a party and thinking God knew what about the little display. Or maybe only el Diablo knew just what was going on behind those shadowed eyes at the moment. Frankie traced a slow, deliberate circle with his thumb on the jut of her hip that was incredibly distracting as she looked at Javier, but he said nothing.

“I can leave if you want me to,” Javier offered at last, “Well, not leave,” he added, since none of them could, at the moment, “but I can give you two some…privacy.”

Javier had watched her kiss Frankie, a kiss that was still clinging to her lips more than the whiskey. The burning desire in his gaze hadn’t been doused by watching her embrace another man, if anything it was fanned even higher. Before undercover work, before the agency, it would have been unthinkable, too depraved, too forbidden, an unspoken sin. But she’d seen too much to still cling to those old beliefs, Javier had as well. You couldn’t do this job and stay the same person you were, before.

“You can stay if you want to, Javier,” she said. Stay, she thought. Both of you.

“That’s not what I asked. What do you want, Cariño? Do you want me to leave so Morales can fuck you in private the way he’s clearly been itching to ever since the two of you met? Do you want me to stay and watch him fuck you? Or, do you want me…”

He moved then, silent and lethal, like the raid was still on and he was moving into position to strike at his chosen target. Maybe he was. Javier was so different from the more laid-back Frankie, so intense, so driven, and she could only imagine what it would be like to have all of that focused solely on her. May God have mercy on her soul, she knew with absolute certainty what he was going to ask and what her answer was going to be.

“…to join you,” Javier finished, his gaze dragging along the length of her body like a pour of the amber-dark whiskey and heavy with promise.

The pound of the rain outside was barely audible now over the thump of her heart in her chest and the almost painful throb of need and want between her legs. Undercover work had taught her how to lie more easily than telling the truth, but she couldn’t deceive herself about this. What Javier was offering—what they were both offering—or were they? Frankie’s hand had stilled on her hip, though he hadn’t moved away and his body was warm and solid against her back. As if he knew what she was thinking Javier looked over her shoulder, at the third person in this possible equation.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Morales?”

The stupid rivalry between them was clearly far from over, there was a clear challenge in Javier’s tone as he stared Frankie down, one corner of his lips hitching up in the tiniest smirk. Not about to be outdone, Frankie slipped his fingers under the hem of her shirt, stroking the skin just above her waist.

“Whatever the lady wants is more than fine with me, Peña,” he said. Then he leaned down and spoke directly into her ear, she could feel the warm breath and the faintest graze of his mouth as he added, “it’s up to you. Say the word, baby. Say the word.”

What did the lady want? She wanted Frankie, with his easy smile that made her feel sixteen again and that deft navigator’s touch all over her body. She also wanted Javier, with his single-minded drive and that slow, sinful grin that promised pure satisfaction. Say the word and they would both be hers. Say the word and she would be theirs.

For however long they were stuck here, that is.

When she held her hand out to Javier and beckoned him closer he took it, letting her pull him forward until she was pressed between them. Frankie dipped his head and kissed her neck, his scruff rasping deliciously against the delicate skin. Javier was more clean shaven, cheeks and chin bare, only the mustache that tickled her lips when he cupped her cheek in a broad palm and kissed her too. His kiss was harder, rougher than Frankie’s, like he wanted to drink her in as voraciously as he’d drunk the whiskey. His free hand fell to her other hip, opposite of where Frankie’s hand still rested so that she was being held by both of them, swaying back and forth against the press of two hard, thick outlines, one to her ass, the other to her stomach. Clear, physical evidence (she was a DEA agent, she always needed evidence) that both of these desirable men wanted her and wanted her badly enough that they were willing to share despite the animosity between them. It made her more light-headed than the whiskey, knees going weak enough that she wrapped an arm around Javier’s neck to keep herself upright. Their strong hands guided and coaxed her, as pliable as a rag doll between them while they both marked themselves on her skin.

While there wasn’t much in the way of furniture, there was a makeshift bed comprised of some cots that had been left behind, and Frankie had brought in blankets from the plane after it was clear they were spending the night. It would do. They started stripping off her clothes together, Frankie unbuttoning her shirt while Javier slid her pants down her legs, hands roaming over her back and thighs as more and more of her was exposed to them. When she was down to just her bra and panties, plain, boring, get the job done underwear because she sure as hell didn’t get dressed for the mission this morning thinking that anyone was going to see them, Frankie laid her down on her back on the cot. He knelt between her legs and rubbed a thumb on the edge of his lips as he looked her up and down, her already rosy skin flushing even more at the scrutiny.

“Now these,” he said at last, sliding his hands up the outside of her thighs to where the waistband of her panties sat at her hips, “definitely need to come off too. Don’t you agree?”

It was directed at Javier, not her. He had lost his own tactical vest and his shirt was half undone, tempting hints of chest and stomach peeking through that made her mouth water.

“Si,” Javier agreed. “She’s still far too dressed.”

“She is. Let’s fix that, shall we?”

Hearing them talk about her like that was a much bigger turn on than she expected, like she was theirs to do whatever they wanted with. When Frankie hooked his fingers in her panties to pull them off she lifted her hips to help, while Javier watched from where he was standing. Frankie was already shirtless, his bare shoulders pushing her thighs apart as he lowered himself down and hooked her legs over the broad width of them. He placed an open-mouthed kiss just below her navel, and then another one a bit lower, mapping out a trail until he reached his destination with the same unerring accuracy as he did in his plane.

Fuck. He was good. Really good. Some men were as perfunctory about this as a child grudgingly eating their vegetables to get dessert, Frankie was not. He dove right in, spreading her with his thumbs to open her fully to his eager mouth. Long, broad strokes with the flat of his tongue were alternated with using the tip to tease her clit, making her gasp and jerk against him as he kept at it until it was almost too much to take. She glanced down and saw he was staring up at her even as his mouth stayed busy against her cunt, and then the bastard actually winked at her and gave a particularly devious swipe that had her head falling back against the scratchy airplane blanket and her eyes screwing shut. One hand sank into his hair, twisting in the curls to keep herself tethered to something, anything, as a high-pitched cry was pulled from the back of her throat and echoed in a deep groan from where his face was buried between her legs. Frankie was obviously enjoying this too.

The cot dipped as a weight settled on it and she opened her eyes to see Javier had joined them, shirt gone and jeans unbuttoned but still zipped. His erection was straining against the denim, she wanted to reach out and cup her hand over it, feel the shape and the weight in her palm.

“Does it feel good, Cariño?” Javier asked, as casually as if they were discussing the weather and not Frankie eating her out like she was a five-course banquet. He ran a finger delicately down the slope of one breast and just brushed the nipple under her bra, making it stiffen even more. “Is he making you feel good?”

“Yes,” she managed to gasp, “Fuck…yes.”

“She tastes fucking incredible,” Frankie mumbled, barely lifting his head long enough to get the words out before diving back in. He was using his fingers now, pumping two in and out in a steady rhythm and flicking his tongue over her clit. Javier leaned down and kissed her again, swallowing every moan, hand on her breast. She could feel the wave of pleasure about to crest, riding the sensation Frankie was drawing out with his mouth and hands until he pushed those two fingers deep inside while curling his wrist just right and sucking hard on her swollen clit. They might be grounded for now, but he made her fly straight into bliss, soaring high for long moments until she came down at last. Frankie looked incredibly smug about it, crawling up her body in a prowl and sharing the taste of herself in his mouth like she’d shared the whiskey with him, weight braced on his arms and caging her underneath him.

“Your turn, Peña,” he said after another kiss that was a sweet peck, in sharp contrast to how he’d just had his mouth pressed hotly between her thighs. He rolled over to the side and propped his head up on his hand, clearly intending to also take his turn as the observer. “Show our girl a good time.”

The part of her that had fought her way up the ranks in the DEA against a veritable wall of patronizing men who’d nicknamed her darling should absolutely hate that, but that part was drowned out by sheer, voluptuous satisfaction at the way he’d both claimed her and offered her up to Javier on a silver platter in one fell swoop. Still, she wasn’t just theirs tonight, they were hers and before Javier could climb on top of her she pushed him onto his back instead and moved to straddle him with a leg slung over his hips and her hands on his chest. He didn’t protest, skimming his fingers up her ribs and roaming across her back to blindly undo the clasp of her bra. It was the last bit of clothing she had on, but any attempt at modesty was long gone by now and she let him tug it down her arms and toss it aside. He immediately cupped her bare breasts, she could feel the calluses wrought by long hours at the firing range to blow off steam and the endless reams of paperwork that still had to be filled out by hand. His touch was just the right side of rough against her tender skin, the wide palms and long fingers working in tandem to roll and weigh and knead.

“Did you enjoy the show?” she asked, looking down at him. A corner of his lips lifted in amusement while he rubbed her nipples with his thumbs and made the tight points even tighter.

“What do you think? Watching a beautiful woman getting pleasured, knowing I’m going to make her scream even louder next, what’s not to like?”

There was a snort from Frankie at that little bit of one-upmanship, but he didn’t say anything in response and only settled his head more firmly on his hand. She’d give Frankie something he’d enjoy, watching her take Javier down a peg first. Her hands spread flat on his chest, holding him down as she shuffled backwards and dipped her head. She placed a kiss to the plane of his sternum, swirled her tongue around a flat nipple and was rewarded with a clear hitch in his breathing, and then started to make her way down the expanse of golden skin with more licks and kisses and little nibbles. When she reached the line of hair that ran down his stomach from his navel and disappeared under his jeans she nuzzled her nose into it, finding it to be surprising soft instead of coarse. There was another hitch in breath from above and the muscles in his abdomen contracted when she ran her tongue down the downy line. His jeans were peeled down his thick thighs with a little difficulty since he wore them tight enough to count the spare change in his pocket, and once he was laid out naked underneath her something else she’d long since suspected was revealed at last.

Agent Javier Peña packed considerably more than just heat.

And from the shit-eating grin on his face as she just stared, the bastard knew it. No wonder he was such a dick.

“Like what you see?” he asked, putting one arm behind his head and sounding way too satisfied. That was clearly a rhetorical question.

Payback was a bitch and half the DEA thought she was one anyway, so she kept her gaze locked with his while she leaned down and let her tongue dart out to just barely graze the swollen tip, gratified to see his smile flicker a bit. After a few more kitten-licks that were more suggestions than actual contact to build the anticipation, she opened her mouth fully and swallowed him down in a hot slide. Javier let out a noise like someone had just punched him in the stomach as she took him deep, a sharp inhale that melted into a low groan while he went even harder and throbbed against her tongue.

“Dios mio,” he swore. “Fuck!”

Javier Peña was a dick, and an asshole, and an assortment of other unflattering sobriquets that he wore proudly around the office alongside those ridiculously tight jeans, just as she owned her thinly-disguised insult of a code name, but he was putty underneath her now. He let her set the pace, not trying to guide her with rough hands pulling at her hair or thrusting up to fuck her mouth despite the want she could practically feel thrumming under his skin. She went over him like an ice cream cone on a hot day, swirling her tongue over the blunt head of his cock and licking all along the thick shaft as if she was chasing errant drops, before swallowing him down again as deep as she could. Eventually he couldn’t hold back any longer, letting out a string of curses as his hips started to jerk upwards.

“Your fucking mouth. Take it, that’s it, fuck baby, take me deep, just like that. So good, fuck, so fucking good.”

A quick glance up revealed that his head was thrown back against the cot, his chest heaving and the cords on his neck starting to pop as she drew him closer and closer to the edge. Frankie was still watching, one hand shoved deep into his jeans and obviously stroking himself to the show. When their eyes met he winked at her and pursed his lips in a kiss. Having him watch while she sucked Javier off made her burn even hotter, to have not just one, but two men so obviously turned on was making her positively ache between her thighs like nothing else ever had. Getting off once thanks to Frankie’s talented mouth wasn’t nearly enough, she wanted, needed, both of them to fuck her before this was over.

Javier clearly felt the same because he suddenly pulled her off him, his hard cock slipping from her swollen lips and slapping against his stomach with a wet thwack.

“Not done with you yet,” he muttered, voice edged like a knife and sitting up to manhandle her around until she was on her hands and knees. Frankie slid under her as he did, so that she was looking down at him while Javier knelt behind her. There was the unmistakable rip of foil and somehow it wasn’t a surprise that he had condoms, it was probably as much a habit for him to carry them as his gun and the ever-present pack of cigarettes. Maybe she should be offended that he brought them on the raid, but it would be pretty damn hypocritical of her in her current position.

“Didn’t peg you for the Boy Scout type, Peña,” Frankie called over her shoulder. “Always prepared, huh?”

“You should be thanking me, Morales. And you probably were a Boy Scout, so fuck off.”

“Nah. I’m quite comfortable where I am, thanks.”

She couldn’t believe they were still bickering with her naked between them, knees spread on the outside of Frankie’s, ass in the air, being served up to Javier on a fucking silver platter.

“Do you two really need me to be here or do you just want to argue with each other instead?”

A large, warm hand ran along her back, pressing down a bit to make her hips tilt up even more.

“So demanding, Cariño,” Javier tsked, “when this is all for you. Now pay attention, Morales, and watch how it’s done.”

Still. Fucking. Bickering. Men. She looked down at Frankie with a scowl that wasn’t entirely mock. He didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest by it. If anything he was clearly enjoying himself, grinning and pulling her down for a deep kiss that made her annoyance melt away. The man and his mouth were a devastating combination.

“Brace yourself against me, sweetheart, while he takes you for a ride,” Frankie murmured against her lips before giving her another kiss that made her toes curl and her clit throb. “I’ve got you.”

“We’ve got you,” Javier corrected, starting to push inside. Her eyes fluttered shut, he was thick and hard and as wet and ready as she already was, his sheer size gave her body pause for a moment as if it didn’t know whether to accept or reject him. She groped blindly for Frankie with a gasp, feeling him hold her with sure hands.

“Fuck, so tight,” Javier muttered through gritted teeth, his hips stilling and fingers digging into her skin. “Baby, are you-”

“Do it,” she interrupted, wanting to feel this, feel them, for days afterwards. “Fuck me, Javi.”

Whether it was the order or the fact that she’d just called him “Javi” for the first time, he cursed again, low and filthy, and thrust forward in a hot, hard slide that had her clutching Frankie’s wide shoulders while she opened for him. A desperate sound pulled from her throat at the sensation of being filled at last. Javier didn’t stop until there was nowhere else for him to go, buried so deep that she could feel the brush of his pubic hair as his hips went flush with hers. Her back arched, pushing back against him and keeping the entire thick length of him locked in her body. She could hear him breathing, harsh, ragged sounds, the hands on her hips holding her in place as neither moved for several moments.

“Eyes on me,” Frankie coaxed, hands running up and down her arms. His face swam back into focus when she blinked down at him, looking up at her with his hair still a mess from when his head was buried between her legs. “Look at me, baby, look at me while he fucks you.”

They held her between them as Javier finally started to move, long, deep strokes that echoed right down to her bones. She was going to feel this alright, especially after she had Frankie too. He cupped her breasts, thumbed the hard points of her nipples, touched every part of her he could reach while Javier fucked her from behind. It was loud, drowning out the rain with the slap of skin on skin, the desperate sounds when she bent to kiss Frankie, her moans in his mouth and Javier’s own rough grunts mixed with the wet slide of his cock into her over and over again. All three of them moved in tandem, Frankie, the anchor, still bracing her with his arms while Javier chased his release, hands also roaming her body as he continued to thrust. A particularly hard one had her digging her nails into Frankie’s skin with a sharp gasp.

“Oh!”

“So gorgeous, watching you get fucked,” Frankie bit out. “My turn next, you’ll let me fuck you too, won’t you, sweetheart? You’ll let me slip right into that delicious pussy and make you come on my cock just like you did on my tongue.”

All she could get out was a desperate whine at the filthy words because, fuck, she wanted that too. So, so much.

“Say yes,” he urged. “Please, baby, say yes.”

She nodded her head, lips forming the word even though she couldn’t get enough breath to actually say it out loud. Yes, he could have her too. He could have anything he wanted.

“Not done with you yet,” Javier practically growled, bending over her back. One arm went around her waist and the other around her chest to pull her up, away from Frankie with her back pressed to Javier’s front. The movement wedged him even more firmly inside her, right against the sweet spot that had her nearly limp in his arms as her head lolled back against his shoulder. He lifted her so that her knees went clear off the cot, taking her entire weight and the sheer display of his strength was almost enough to send her hurtling over the edge again.

“Javi!”

His mouth pressed right by her ear, hips still thrusting up to bury himself deep inside over and over again. The hastily pushed-together cots swayed and squeaked madly with the motion, it was a wonder it hadn’t all collapsed already with the combined weight of the three of them. Even if it did, she still wouldn’t want to stop.

“Look at him,” Javier muttered, voice harsh, as harsh as the battering ram of his cock currently demanding her surrender. “Look at him, desperate to fuck you too. Got us both, didn’t you, you greedy little thing? Fuck, you feel so good riding my cock dulce niña, I fucking knew you would, fuck!”

The arm around her waist dipped lower and she felt his fingers slide down her stomach, over the rise of her mound to just above where they were joined so intimately. He quickly found her swollen clit, rubbing it with sure, swift strokes that had her arching against him with a cry. Javier’s strong thighs held hers apart, unable to do anything except shudder

in his arms and take everything he was giving her. Frankie watched them, his hips moving to the same rhythm as he openly fucked his fist to the sight. He must have been close because he suddenly yanked his hand away and twisted it in the airplane blanket instead, his chest heaving and his head tipping back with a grimace as he fought the urge to finish. He was holding off until it was his turn.

The thought sent another rush of heat between her legs and, coupled with the unrelenting press of Javier’s clever fingers, she clamped down hard on his thick cock as her orgasm washed over her in a wave of sheer bliss.

“FUCK!” Javier swore as he got caught in the riptide too, both arms wrapping around her tight and holding her in a vice grip against his broad chest as he fucked her through it almost savagely, making sure she would still feel him afterwards.His own groan of satisfaction was a deep rumble, his hips stuttering as he came with a throb and pulsed while she kept squeezing him tight and holding him deep inside. She reached back and threaded soothing fingers through his hair, damp with sweat, while his head dropped to her shoulder and his heart raced against her back. Javier’s arms loosened a fraction, his hands stroking up and down her own sweat-slicked skin to help calm them both as they came down.

Her eyes had closed of their own volition and when she opened them the only thing she could see was Frankie, looking nearly as wrecked as she felt. Jesu, he was still hard, still ready, he’d waited for her and she still wanted him too, just as much if not more. He sat up and she reached for him while Javier let her go, his softening cock slipping out with the motion. Frankie kissed her, needy and with the faint taste of herself still clinging to his lips.

“That was so hot, baby,” he said between kisses. So fucking hot.”

Behind her she felt Javier move away, giving them more room as Frankie eased her down onto the bed. He cupped the back of her head in one hand while the other was all over her, gliding over bare skin that was flushed a deep rose and extra sensitive to the touch now that she’d had not one, but two spectacular orgasms. It made her shiver despite the fact that she was anything but cold, shaking uncontrollably in his arms as he pulled her close to his chest and soothed her with his gentle touches and whispered words.

“Holy shit,” she managed to gasp, clutching desperately at his biceps as she tried to get her bearings back, feeling that same sensation that she’d experienced in the tiny plane after takeoff of being untethered to the Earth.

“Too much?” Frankie asked, peering at her with concern. “Is it too much? We can stop-”

She shook her head before he could even finish, leaning in to kiss him again. It was too much, but God, the last thing she wanted was to stop. The rain and the whiskey and the two handsome men orbiting around her like she was the sun had awakened a bone-deep craving that wasn’t fully satisfied and wouldn’t be, not until she’d had them both. Frankie was still erect, cock hard and flush with his stomach, and the noise he let out when she reached down and wrapped her hand around him was practically a growl.

“I want you,” she whispered against his plush mouth, feeling him shudder as she pressed a line of kisses along his jaw, grounding herself in the solid weight of his body and the heat from his skin.

Frankie’s dark eyes bored into hers, practically burning with lust. “You have me baby,” he promised, “you have me.”

He was thick and long, like Javier, velvet wrapped over steel in her hand. She gave a twist of her wrist on her next stroke, just under the head, and his face contorted in sheer, unguarded bliss before he pulled her hand away from his cock, kissing her palm in apology.

“Not gonna last if you keep doing that.”

Javier decided to remind them both that he was still in the room, letting out an amused huff. “Can’t keep up, flyboy?”

Frankie didn’t spare a glance in his direction. “I can keep my plane and my dick up, don’t you worry about that, Agent.”

That got a snort of derision in response, though a moment later a condom landed on the cot, almost hitting Frankie in the face in the process. A peace offering from Javier Peña, the night was full of surprises. Frankie put the foil packet in his mouth to hold it, giving her a cheeky wink while he stripped his pants the rest of the way off. Naked, he was just as mouth-watering as Javier, broad-shouldered, long legs, a waist that would fit perfectly between her legs and a cock that would fill and stretch every inch of her. Frankie grinned around the condom when he saw where she was looking and tore it open with his teeth.

“Ready?” he asked, quickly rolling it on. “Ready for me now, Carinō?”

The stupid code name sounded a lot better coming from him than the assholes at the DEA, it was an endearment again instead of a not so thinly veiled insult. She spread her legs in clear invitation, more than ready for him. Frankie settled himself on top of her, cock in hand and rubbing it up and down her still-slick entrance without pushing inside. Her breath hitched in anticipation, her soft inhale mixing with his sharp exhale when he eased himself in at last with slow and careful movements.

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, once he was seated all the way inside, “fuck, you feel so good.”

“Worth the wait?” she teased, wrapping her legs around his hips to hold him there so that she was deliciously full again. Gluttony was supposed to be a deadly sin, and here she was greedily enjoying her second lover of the night without a hint of guilt.

“Definitely worth the wait.”

Frankie leaned down to nuzzle his nose against hers, pressed a sweet kiss to her lips, and started to move in slow, deep rolls. Despite the wait and how close he’d been already, it was clear that he intended to take his time. A hand ran along the outside of her thigh and under her hip to lift and position her so he could slide in that final little bit and now there was no space left between them.

Frankie held himself there, buried so deep with his forehead resting on hers while she ran her hands up the broad expanse of his bare back.

When he started to move again she gripped his shoulders, holding on as he started to build her up again. It wasn’t as frantic as it had been with Javier but it was equally as good, Frankie grinding deep on each stroke before pulling back again and stealing more kisses, a benefit of being face-to-face. She buried her fingers in the damp curls at the nape of his neck with the weight of his body blanketing hers while he never stopped thrusting. It was a hot, heavy drag that made her toes curl and fanned the fire under her skin licking at every last inch, but none more than where she and Frankie were joined.

He nipped at the underside of her jaw and buried his face in her neck with a groan as he continued to fuck her and she saw Javier watching them from over Frankie’s shoulder, still naked, not having bothered to put his clothes back on yet. She could still feel the echo of him even with Frankie inside of her now, it somehow amplified the sensation and she arched up into it with a bitten-off moan while their gazes stayed locked on one another. When it had been Javier’s turn she’d been facing Frankie, looking at him as Javier thrust into her from behind, and now that it was the other way around she couldn’t look away, didn’t want to look away from the searing heat in that gaze as dark as midnight.

“You were right,” Javier said in a slow drawl that betrayed a hint of his Texas roots, looking at her but talking to Frankie, “she’s gorgeous when she’s getting fucked.”

Frankie didn’t answer him directly, he just pressed a kiss under her ear and whispered into it, “Let’s put on a show for him he won’t forget.”

He went up on his knees then, dragging her up his strong thighs so that she was spread wide with her legs draped over his elbows. On full display again for both men, her breasts bounced with each of Frankie’s powerful thrusts, so deep that it took what was left of her breath away. It wasn’t much. She could hardly make any noise now, holding on to the blanket for dear life while Frankie let out rough groans with each stroke. The angle was the exact opposite from the one Javier had fucked her at and yet both of them hitting that perfect spot.

“One more,” Frankie bit out, clearly hanging on by a thread. “Give us one more, baby, please. Squeeze me.”

His thumb found her clit as he stilled long enough to rub it, swollen and hot and only needing the barest touch before she was there, squeezing him tight as she came again. Frankie cried out as she practically strangled his cock, helpless to stop herself, not that she wanted to when it made him sound like that. He held her steady throughout with only the barest tremble in the hands gripping her hips, holding out as long as he could before he fucked back into her still quivering depths as he frantically chased his own release. He came a handful of thrusts later with a shout, his whole body shaking, tipping forward and catching himself on his arms at the last moment so he wouldn’t crush her before resting his head on her breasts with a sigh. They lay like that, his long legs tangled with hers on the cot, sweaty and sated and a part of her wondered how she’d ever go back to not having this.

Was it still considered a one night stand when there were two men?

A hand brushed her tangled hair back from her brow and it wasn’t Frankie’s. Her eyes had drifted shut and she opened them to see Javier, looking down with a faint smile. A rare thing, from him. He leaned down and pressed his lips gently to her forehead, lingering for a moment before pulling back.

“That was-“ Frankie mumbled, face still pressed to her chest and muffling his words, “-damn.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, running her fingers through Frankie’s hair while looking up at Javier, wondering if he felt the same. His lips quirked up again at the unspoken question and he nodded.

“Very eloquent, Morales,” was what he actually said, dry as a desert.

Frankie lifted a hand enough to give him the finger before curling it possessively under her side and she shook with silent laughter.

Men.

***********

She hovered on the edge of sleep, never quite falling over it. Even the unexpected bout of marathon sex with not one, but two men, wasn’t enough to fully knock her out. Another parting gift from undercover work, it was difficult to fall asleep.

You were the most vulnerable when you slept.

Frankie and Javier must have thought she’d drifted off, she could hear them talking to each other in low, careful voices, clearly trying to keep it down so as not to wake her up.

“I don’t know how it works in the DEA, but I’m guessing it’s not too different from the military and if this gets out every other jackass in the agency is going to think she’s fair game. They’ll have a much worse nickname for her than Cariño, tell me I’m wrong, Peña.”

Javier answered him in a clipped tone. “You’re not.”

“So you’re going to keep your mouth shut then.”

“What, you think I was going to go back to the office tomorrow and brag to everyone about it? Just how big of an asshole do you think I am, Morales?”

There was a long, pointed moment of silence and she could picture the looks they were undoubtedly giving each other, Javier with that heavy scowl that he wore more often than those ridiculously tight jeans and Frankie with his arms crossed over his chest, glowering under his baseball cap.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Frankie finally said.

“I’m not-“ Javier started, his voice rising in annoyance. Frankie shushed him and he shut up, then she heard the unmistakable sound of a lighter sparking to life and imagined Javier was smothering the urge to argue with a cigarette.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” he stage-whispered. “There, satisfied? Want me to pinky swear? Cross my heart and hope to die?”

Maybe the urge wasn’t smothered out completely.

Frankie didn’t take the bait. “Just as long as we’re on the same page.”

“We are.”

There was silence again for a while after that, but at least the animosity in the air seemed to have faded somewhat.

It was Javier who spoke again next, without any vitriol or sarcasm, just matter of fact as he quietly said, “The rain stopped hours ago.”

Did it? She couldn’t remember exactly when it had stopped pounding against the roof, was it while Frankie had his head between her legs or when Javier was sliding into her from behind?

“Yeah, I know. But the ground needed to dry out enough to get the speed necessary for takeoff, unless you wanted to crash into a tree.”

Javier didn’t argue with Frankie this time. “It’s your call. You’re the pilot, Captain.”

“Glad we finally agree on that, Agent. I’ll go check, we may be good to go now. Back to civilization.”

There was the rustle of movement, the sound of footsteps, and when Frankie’s voice came again it was from further away.

“Oh, and Peña? Just so you know I’m giving her my number when we land.”

“You can do whatever you want, Morales. I’m not going to try to stop you.”

She noticed that he didn’t say the same. Javier Peña wasn’t the type to turn a one night stand into anything more.

It was quiet again as Frankie presumably went outside to see if they could finally leave the little safe house that now held another secret within the ramshackle walls. But would it stay a secret? Frankie was right, if this got out at the DEA then the years of work she’d put in wouldn’t matter, she’d forever be the agent who’d let two men fuck her on an op. The whispers that already followed her around would turn into something far uglier and she’d go from sweetheart to slut in a heartbeat. It should concern her, Javier choosing her for the raid had already raised a few eyebrows and set tongues wagging among the “insecure dicks”, as Frankie would say. But despite Javier’s reputation at the office for sleeping with anything in a skirt, she believed him when he said he wasn’t going to spread it around. It might be foolish and naive of her, both traits that never lasted long in undercover work and she would have said she’d lost forever.

Maybe she wasn’t that far gone, yet.

If they were going to leave soon then she should get up, find her boots, try to turn her bedhead back into something respectable and figure out what the hell to say to the two men with whom she’d just spent the night.

She did none of those things.

Javier muttered something under his breath, too low for her to make out. Probably something rude about Frankie. She sensed more than heard him come closer, and a moment later the blanket that had fallen to her waist was pulled back up into place.

She smiled unseen against her makeshift pillow—Frankie’s discarded tactical vest—at the gesture. You couldn’t do this job and not be a dick, or a bitch, if you were a woman, but it wasn’t all you had to be.

Even for Javier Peña.

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

DAMN YOU, DAVE!

Also. Everyone should read this because what’s not to love about CIA co-worker enemies to lovers? and boring frumpy-dumpy Carol doesn’t exist, which allows Dave to be cool.

Neither Confirm Nor Deny (Dave York x Reader)

Dave York has taken over my life. I dived headfirst into Pedro Pascal fandom and this asshole caught me (among others, looking at you Commandante Veracruz). 7k of self-indulgence later, here's Dave x Reader as CIA agents and partners - AU, Dave went into the CIA after the military and never became a contract killer. Oh, and Carol and the kids don't exist in this.

Rated M for smut and vague mentions of bad people doing bad things

https://archiveofourown.org/works/50244982

You're a CIA agent on assignment in Europe caught up not in enemy crossfire, but in the love/hate relationship you have with your asshole of a partner, Dave York.

You hate how much you secretly love how good he is not just at his job, but between the sheets as well. He drives you up the wall most of the time (and fucks you up against them even better), but when your own agency betrays you at the end of an op, he's the only one who's still got your back.

You can never confirm what he really is to you, but you can't deny it either.

neither confirm nor deny

You practically fling the door to the safe house open, making the rusty hinges squeal loudly in protest as if to remind you about the need for stealth and discretion. Normally you’re the very model of both during a mission, but right now you don’t give a shit. Let the damn place get compromised, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing fucking matters.

You’re met on the threshold by the barrel of Dave’s gun, aimed for a kill shot and immediately withdrawn when he sees it’s you. Protocol when entering the safe house was to knock first with two taps to announce your entry and that everything was fine.

Everything isn’t fucking fine.

“Jesus Christ,” he swears, because you never break protocol—except, of course, when you very much do—and he almost just shot you in the face for it. “What the actual fuck…wait. What happened? What’s wrong?”

Dave York is infuriatingly good at reading your moods. He knows when you’re happy and he knows when you’re angry, which is far more common and usually directed at him. He also almost always knows when you’re horny, which isn’t uncommon, especially around him, but is dead last right now on the list of emotions you’re currently experiencing. Murderous is first, and he’s familiar with that one too because it’s also frequently directed at him. It’s infuriating because you’re a highly trained CIA agent with a highly trained poker face you could easily clean out Vegas with, but at the moment even the most oblivious person in the world could tell that you’re on the verge of a volcanic eruption and not just your asshole of a partner who knows you all too well.

“They’re letting the bastard walk,” you practically spit.

Dave blinks, “What?”

“Yeah,” your voice is more bitter than the ridiculous amount of espresso he drinks like it’s water. “Apparently he cut a deal, and they’re letting him walk.”

Dave is many things, slow on the uptake isn’t one of them. “They flipped him,” he says, matter of fact. “He’s an asset now.”

You’d spent months trying to bring down Andrei “the Crow” Morozov, arms dealer, sex trafficker, Eurotrash asshole extraordinaire. Hours and hours of sorting through the mountains of intel for the nuggets of gold, late nights, shitty safe houses, getting two ribs cracked in Düsseldorf and not going to hospital because you would have been pulled from the mission, just dealing with the pain because you were so close, so close, to finally catching the slippery bastard and putting him away for good. It was all for nothing, Morozov shot you a shit-eating grin as the cuffs were unlocked and walked out of custody a free man.

“Give Irina’s mother my love,” he’d said with a wink, and three agents had to hustle you out of the room with his mocking laughter following you lest you go after him with your bare hands. The things he’d done to the poor girl, barely more than a child. You’d promised her mother, you swore to the woman that the monster responsible would be brought to justice. Instead, you watched him walk away free and clear with the blessing of your own damn agency.

“It makes sense,” Dave says, setting his gun back down on the battered coffee table that was scattered with nicks and cigarette burns courtesy of the many nameless, faceless agents who’d sought sanctuary for the night. “He’s connected to all the major players in Eastern Europe, with the amount of intel he could provide if they keep him in place it’s no wonder the plan was to flip him all along.”

That brings you up short as a new, hotter fury starts to burn under your skin. “It was? You…you knew?”

He gives a shrug with a broad shoulder that you may end up dislocating depending on what he says next. “Officially? No. But I suspected. Didn’t you?”

You…didn’t. Fuck, you one hundred percent didn’t expect the CIA would stab you in the back and worst of all, Dave did. He shouldn’t have put his gun down, because you have a new target now.

“And you didn’t fucking tell me? After all that fucking work to catch the son of a bitch? When I didn’t shoot him in Germany despite having a clear shot because I thought he was going to be locked up for the rest of his life, not let out to keep ruining lives because he’s a fucking ASSET to the CIA now?

When I was making promises I couldn’t keep, you think, but don’t say.

“The CIA has gotten into bed with much worse than Morozov when it serves their purpose. You know that. What makes this different?” Dave asks, the infuriatingly calm eye in your raging storm.

It was different because…because…

Because of Irina and all the others. The ones whose names you knew. The ones whose names you didn’t and would haunt you forever. Because you’d looked Andrei Morozov right in the eye in the underground club in Düsseldorf where he sold girls as easily as shots to asshole men and swore to yourself that you’d make him pay.

Because it was personal.

You couldn’t do this. Not now, running on no sleep and barely any food and the ash of your own failure in your mouth. Tears start to burn behind your eyes, but you’d walk barefoot through a minefield before letting Dave York see you cry.

“You should have told me. We’re supposed to be partners.”

You could almost handle being betrayed by the higher ups, the ones who sat in windowless rooms looking at names and numbers on reports and decided which was more valuable, some teenage girls or the man who’d sold them to the highest bidder. The CIA made deals with all sorts of devils, dictators, terrorists, lowlife arms dealers. You couldn’t handle being betrayed by Dave

, who was by your side the whole time you were on the ground putting faces to the names on those reports. Anna. Olga. Irina.

He calls your name when you leave, your real name, not the one you were given for the mission with a passport and credit cards to match. He’s been calling you by that fake name for months, or, when you push him onto his back in a safe house or a hotel or wherever you’re holed up for a few hours and take him inside, he calls you baby or sweetheart in a voice that gets increasingly more wrecked with each roll of your hips into his and you pretend to hate it.

The sound of your real name from a man who rarely uses it almost makes you stop on the narrow stairs of the ancient building before you reach the outside.

Almost.

You’re in Paris, the city of lights and romance and the final stop on this farce of a European tour now that Morozov’s been caught and released in pursuit of bigger fish. The station chief said to take a few days to decompress before heading back stateside. Do some sightseeing, or some shopping. Patronizing jackass. You almost stabbed him with a pen. As if you were in the mood for museums or boutiques after Morozov walked, like this was a vacation and not your life’s work. You find the French equivalent of a dive bar instead and speak the international language of alcohol to the bartender, drink until it’s too dark to see the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or anything except the bottom of an empty glass before ordering another. A man sidles over at some point between drinks three and four and tries to pick you up, a local with an accent you would have swooned for once upon a time. He’s attractive enough and you’re tempted, there’s more than one way to forget your absolute shitshow of a job. You’re definitely no stranger to this one, but not with anyone else since…

Fuck.

You’re not dating Dave York. He’s your partner, because you did something terrible in a past life and this is karma biting you in the ass for it. And it’s not that he’s a bad agent, far from it. He’s one of the best in the agency. He’s also smug, and irritating, and you want to punch him in the face on a near day basis. He’s fucking good at his job, and that means he knows with pinpoint accuracy just what buttons to push to drive you up the goddamn wall. He also knows just what buttons to push when he’s fucking you against a wall, which happens on an alarmingly regular basis. He understands the adrenaline rush at the end of a successful mission and the helpless frustration when a target skips through the net instead, he’s the only one who knows why you currently have a large bruise across your ribs and the unseen marks the work leaves on your soul.

Parisian sights and a pretty Frenchman offering a turn in the sheets both hold no allure, you go back to the safe house once the bar closes, far drunker than you should be. Not drunk enough to forget the smirk on Morozov’s face, for that you need to fuck Dave until everything else fades away. Only the small garret apartment is empty, his gun isn’t on the table and the air already feels stale, like no one’s been there for hours. Maybe he went out looking for you, although if he did, he would have found you. Maybe he went to find someone to spend the night with, someone who doesn’t throw things at his head and threatens to strangle him with his own tie when he’s being a dick. He’s seen you do it too, so it’s not an idle threat. The mission in Monte Carlo. The second one. Where the two of you posed as a wealthy businessman and his mistress, and caught the target’s eye in your cut-down-to-the-navel dress with no room to hide a gun and had to improvise. Dave fucked you from behind on the balcony of your hotel room afterwards, still in your dress and heels, and he wasn’t the slightest bit turned off by the fact that you’d just killed a man with your bare hands and a length of deceptively strong silk from Hermès. If anything he was even harder than usual, quickly unzipping his suit pants with one hand as he shoved your dress up with the other and whispering all sorts of deliciously filthy things in your ear as he buried himself to the hilt over and over again with the lights of the city glittering below like a fortune in precious jewels.

The Paris safe house is a lot less lavish than a five-star hotel, the hot water in the tiny bathroom can be described as only slightly less icy than the cold tap and the floors are so uneven that if anyone did break in they’d probably trip over their own feet before getting a single shot off. It’s extra hazardous when drunk, even for a highly trained agent, but you manage to navigate your way to the sink to splash some water pulled from the frigid depths of the Seine on your face and stay upright long enough to strip off your clothes, leaving them in a heap where they fall. You grab a T-shirt from the back of a chair that you think is yours in your inebriated state, until you slip it on and realize the shoulders are far too wide and the hem is too long. It’s one of Dave’s, well worn and soft and you drank way too much alcohol tonight to bother trying to pretend that you don’t like the way it feels to wear his clothes. He’s not here anyway (where the fuck is he?) and you’ll take it off before he comes back.

You fall into the empty bed that’s not really big enough and yet it feels like it stretches on forever without someone else there to hog the blankets and tangle your feet with his. Your own gun stowed under the lump of a pillow and the taste of failure in the back of your throat more bitter than the booze, you close your eyes and drift off in a sea of regret that a monster walked free and innocents suffered, all because of you.

Your fault.

All your fault.

********

“Bonjour. Or should I say bonsoir, Mademoiselle.”

You’re awake at once, reaching for the gun under the pillow and closing your fingers around it just as the voice registers through your bitch of a hangover.

Dave.

Sitting up is made an Olympic sport both by your not full healed ribs and whoever’s playing the drums behind your eyes like a headliner at a death metal festival. Someone you manage it and crack open a lid to find your dick of a partner sitting in a chair next to the bed. It’s too small for him but somehow it doesn’t look awkward, he sits easily, comfortably, as far as you know he could have been there for hours. As you blink stupidly at him he leans forward and taps a fingertip against your lips.

“Open up, sweetheart.”

Taken completely off guard and too hungover to argue, you do as he asks without thinking. He pops two white pills on your tongue and hands you a glass of water.

“Drink,” he instructs, like he’s talking to a child. You resist the urge to scowl like one and swallow the pills down, chasing them with the water.

One secret about the CIA is that it has access to some really good drugs. Those weren’t aspirin, and it doesn’t take long for your headache to go away and the twinge in your ribs to fade so you can feel human again. Two things then happen at once, you remember why you were hungover in the first place and that you’re still wearing Dave’s T-shirt.

Three things, you clock what he just said. Bonsoir.

Not good morning. Good evening.

“What time is it?” you ask.

“Almost 1800 hours, Sleeping Beauty.”

Fuck. You slept almost the whole fucking day. You have a vague memory of stumbling to the bathroom again at some point and then falling back into bed afterwards, still alone with no sign of Dave anywhere. It’s probably not surprising that you crashed so hard, you’ve been running on nothing but coffee and sheer rage since Düsseldorf, but it feels wrong to have been sleeping when you should have been doing something, anything, to get justice for all of those girls.

Dave is watching you carefully and while his words were sarcastic, his tone wasn’t. He knows what you went through to bring Morozov in. He was right there the whole time, pouring over intel and CCTV footage with you, staking out meeting sites and infiltrating the underground clubs and back rooms where business was conducted by men who would have killed the both of you and not thought twice about it if there was the slightest hint of your cover being blown.

“They let him walk,” you say, more to yourself than him. “He fucking smiled at me, and he walked.”

Dave tosses a phone onto the faded comforter that offered no comfort the night before, without him in the bed beside you. “You have a message,” is all he says.

It’s not the burner phone you’ve been using for the mission, it’s your real phone. You pick it up and when you check the lock screen it shows a text notification. Your heart stops when you see it’s from Irina’s mother. You gave her your number, your real number, when you swore to get justice for her daughter, not the burner one that would be discarded and forgotten as soon as the job was over.

The flash of guilt that you failed them both is a gut-punch on an empty stomach that makes bile rise in your throat, acrid and sour, and then you see what she wrote.

Thank You!!!!

You look up from the message in sheer confusion and meet Dave’s eyes. He’s still watching you with what would look like nothing but cool detachment to anyone else, but you can see the laser focus of a sniper behind that dark gaze.

“Check out the BBC’s homepage,” is all he says.

That answers nothing until you go online and see the top story staring up at you from the screen.

SUSPECTED ARMS DEALER ARRESTED AT ST PANCRAS, accompanied by that same photo that’s clipped to the dossier you read over and over again every night like a fucked up bedtime story. A quick skim of the article reveals the important facts, Andrei “the Crow” Morozov, wanted by Interpol and half a dozen countries for a variety of crimes, had been found on the Eurostar when it arrived at St Pancras station in London from Paris a few hours prior, thanks to an anonymous tip received by the Metropolitan Police. He’d been discovered barely conscious and handcuffed to the pipes in a toilet that had been marked out of order. Morozov had been taken to an undisclosed hospital, where he was currently being treated for multiple broken ribs and other injuries while under reported guard by MI6. A list of his alleged offenses followed, including the trafficking of vulnerable women and girls from Eastern Europe into the sex trade.

You look up from the screen. “Multiple broken ribs?”

Dave’s face is perfectly calm, placid, his expression betraying no remorse for what he did. It was him, you know it in a heartbeat just as you know that he can put a bullet between someone’s eyes from a quarter mile away and what he looks like when he comes undone inside you.

“At least fifteen. Maybe more, it’s hard to be sure after the first dozen. One for Irina. One for Anna. One for Olga. One for all the other girls. The rest for you.”

Morozov had cracked two of your ribs, Dave had broken most of his in return and turned him over to MI6.

“They won’t let him walk too, will they?” you ask, fingers tightening around the phone. If the bastard walks again….

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. There’s not a speck of blood on his clothes, he could have just come back from a day playing well-heeled tourist at the Louvre instead of stuffing an internationally wanted criminal into a train car bathroom after breaking over a dozen of his ribs. Hiis expression is as serene and unaffected as the Mona Lisa’s, keeping his own secrets from everyone except you.

“Unlikely. Even if they wanted to his arrest was public thanks to the cops sending out a press release, it would make them look bad to just let him go. It also makes him completely worthless now as an asset, since if he did walk everyone would suspect he worked a deal to get out of the charges.”

Dave York is very, very good at what he does.

“And if they do,” he continues, unconcerned by the prospect, “well, he won’t get far.”

You know it’s true, because you know him.

“Everyone must be pissed,” you say, imagining the utter chaos that must be going on in the upper ranks. To catch and lose Morozov in the same day, publicly, no less, and to have him end up in custody of MI6. Publicly the CIA and MI6 were allies…privately they each had their own agendas that didn’t always align.

Dave’s facade cracks at last and reveals his amusement. “Oh, they are, baby. I was there when the call came in from London. The station chief was already on thin ice, he’s going to get demoted for this and sent to a far less desirable posting where he won’t be served fresh croissants for breakfast every morning. Thought he was going to have an aneurysm when he was on the phone to D.C, serves him right too, the fucking prick. Everyone else is scrambling to avoid the fallout.”

You cross your arms over the soft cotton of Dave’s T-shirt, annoyed that you forgot (didn’t want to) take it off. “Don’t call me baby. Do they have any suspects?”

Translation: Do they suspect you?

He shrugs again, still completely unconcerned. “Sure. Do they have the right suspect? No, and they won’t. Now as good as you look in nothing but my shirt, go make yourself pretty. We're going out for dinner, I worked up an appetite today and I’m not eating alone.”

Go make yourself pretty? He’s such an ass. You ignore the burn in your cheeks at his casual acknowledgement that the only thing you’re currently wearing is his T-shirt and throw a pillow at his head with deadly accuracy.

“Clock’s ticking, partner,” he says, catching it easily in one hand.

Well…you could go for some actual food to eat after the liquid dinner you had the night before. That’s what you tell yourself, anyway. You’re a CIA agent, you’re an excellent liar. Especially to yourself.

You don’t visit the Eiffel Tower or hold hands on a famous bridge or do anything soppy and romantic. You’re not dating. You’re two CIA agents who caught a very bad man, have barely eaten in the past week, and who fight like mortal enemies and fuck like rabbits. Sometimes both at the same time.

Dallas. The conference where you were chasing down members of a suspected South American terrorist group. You had a screaming argument while you were riding him, his large hands tight on your hips guiding you up and down even as he said you wouldn’t recognize good intel if it slapped you in the face and you called him a self-important jackass who thought he was God’s gift to intelligence and he could take his intel and shove it. You only stopped yelling at him when you came.

Three times.

Dave leads you to a nondescript restaurant off the tourist path, tucked away down a narrow street. The service is French, otherwise known as indifferent, the food is excellent, and while you’d sooner stab yourself with one of the steak knives than admit you made yourself pretty for him, the dress you pulled from your cover identity’s wardrobe is pretty by any objective definition of the word. It may not be a date, but it is dinner in Paris and you’re supposed to blend in while on assignment. It’s not for him.

Another lie you tell yourself.

Dave likes the dress, you can tell. He pulls your chair back like the gentleman he most definitely isn’t and his hands brush over your bare shoulders when you sit down, lingering for a moment against your skin. When the waiter finally deigns to appear Dave orders the braised short ribs without bothering to look at the menu, saying with a wink across the table that he’s got a craving.

You order them too, because fuck men who hurt women and enjoy it.

They’re fucking delicious.

You don’t feed each other dessert or stroll along the Seine afterwards looking at the lights. You do duck into an alley, because Paris is for lovers and for two CIA agents who got paired up unwillingly and drove each other crazy fighting before falling into bed and doing the exact same thing while fucking instead. Dave doesn’t kiss you when he presses you against an ancient wall that’s probably seen its fair share of forbidden trysts over the centuries, instead he sucks a mark into your neck that’ll bruise like your ribs from pleasure instead of pain, one hand shoved under your pretty dress and the heat from his body keeping you warm in a cold, unforgiving world.

“Here, baby?” he asks in a voice that echoes right between your legs, nuzzling and nipping at your skin with one hand at his belt ready to unbuckle and unzip. You’ve fucked him in alleys before, buzzing with adrenaline from a mission and riding high on success while riding each other hard. But not tonight, as easy as it would be to wrap your legs around his narrow waist and muffle your cries in his shoulder while he fucks you against the wall.

“No, not here.”

Not the safe house either, with its shitty mismatched furniture and the ghosts of CIA agents past lurking in the shadows. You find a hotel instead on a cobblestone street, the kind of thing tourists would book for its classic Parisian charm without considering the lack of an elevator. You don’t have any suitcases to lug up the stairs to your room, where Dave presses you against the door as soon as it’s closed, caging you in with both arms. You feel anything but trapped.

“You should have told me,” you say, hands flat on his chest and looking into those dark eyes. You should have told me those girls didn’t matter, you should have told me they were going to stab me in the back and make a deal with the devil, you should have told me!

“You should have known,” he retorts. You should have known they didn’t, you should have seen the knife before it struck, you should have known.

You’ve seen Dave flatter, flirt, and charm to get what he wants, but with you he doesn’t placate or sugarcoat his words. He’s also right, which you hate, you should have known and you would have if you hadn’t let it get personal.

“But,” he continues, head tipping down with a sigh, “yeah, I should have.”

“Me too.”

His admission deserves yours. You’re still going to be salty about it for a while though. Maybe until your ribs fully heal. The bruise is a sickly yellow now, the edges starting to blend back in with the surrounding skin. It’ll disappear eventually but you’ll always remember where it was, a souvenir of your trip instead of a fridge magnet or a keychain. Dave will remember too, he’ll remember examining it in another hotel room when it was the purple of overripe fruit, before winding an ace bandage around your middle with his mouth set in a thin line. His fury had been silent, as quiet as the moment of calm before the storm, while his hands were careful, gentle even, for a man who could and did kill with them his touch had been delicate and feather-light.

Yours hadn’t been, when you jerked him off afterwards with rough strokes that made his silence turn to deep groans as his hips rolled with the movement of your hand. It wasn’t quid pro quo, you just needed to do something to deal with the frustration and that always ended with doing him. He couldn’t reciprocate, not then, not for a while, couldn’t make you come with his fingers or mouth or cock, not when it hurt just to breathe, let alone have an orgasm. Or three.

Now though, he strips the pretty dress from your body with far too much efficiency for a government employee and grazes fingers across the still-marred skin. Somewhere in London there’s a man lying in a hospital bed with his whole torso turned black and blue because he did this to you. You know the only reason Morozov isn’t dead at the bottom of the Seine is because you wanted him to rot in a cell for the rest of his life instead. Dave would have killed him otherwise. Fifteen broken ribs was him showing restraint.

You lift his hand to your mouth and suck on his finger, wrapping your lips around it. The backs of his knuckles are faintly bruised, a match to yours. He’s still fully dressed in charcoal trousers and an army green sweater. The man wears clothes beautifully, something you used to find irritating. He looks even better naked, something you also used to find irritating.

Dave replaces his finger with his lips, reaching down and hoisting your legs around his waist to carry you to bed like he carried you in Düsseldorf after Morozov caught you in the side with a tire iron. You fall back to the mattress and he stops kissing you only long enough to yank the sweater and T-shirt underneath over his head before he’s on you again, nipping the underside of your jaw while his hands roam the length of your body and push your thighs apart. You’ve been wet and ready since the alley, since dinner, since you made yourself pretty (for him) and his fingers find no resistance between your thighs despite how long and thick they are. Just the slightest touch has you trembling, clutching at his arms and legs widening in silent invitation.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, quickly shoving his pants and underwear both down with his other hand so that he’s wonderfully, gloriously naked. “What do you want? What do you need, baby? My fingers? My mouth? This?”

He’s got his cock in his fist, rubbing it up and down your slick heat without letting it slip inside. It’s difficult to breathe, but not because of your rib this time.

“Yes,” you moan, lifting your hips to try to line him up with where you need him. It doesn’t work, the bastard keeps himself just out of reach.

“Hmm,” he chides, breath hot against your skin as he trails his lips down your neck and across the tops of your breasts. “Even I’m not capable of using all of them at once on your lovely pink cunt. You have to choose. Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you.”

You want his smart mouth to eat you out, and not just because he’ll finally stop talking. You want his long fingers pumping deep. You need his thick cock to fill you, to fuck you, to find every last sweet spot the way only he can and absolutely ruin you.

“Dave?”

He looks up and meets your gaze. “Yes, baby?”

“Fuck me with that big dick you’re so fucking proud of until I can’t fucking walk, and then do it again.”

He smiles, showing his teeth. It’s the smile of a man who just got handed exactly what he wanted on a silver platter and you’re too needy and desperate to care. He leans down and presses a kiss to the tip of your nose, a sweet gesture from a man who’s capable of such shocking violence. But then again, so are you.

“There now, was that so difficult? All you ever have to do is ask.”

It’s getting less and less difficult, with Dave. He’ll give you what you want, what you need, you know he will.

His hips thrust and his aim is as accurate as it is with his sniper rifle, precise and true. He buries himself inside of you and adjusts his trajectory as he goes to follow the arch of your back and the tilt of your hips as you take him all the way in a hot slide that pushes the air from your lungs as he fills you with him instead. Your nails dig into his shoulders to carve your name into his skin in cuneiforms of lines and half-moons, an encryption only the two of you can decipher. He rests his forehead on yours, weight braced on his arms, breathing more heavily than he ever would while sighting a target, giving you both a moment to adjust before he does what you asks and fucks you. It’s hard, it’s fast, it makes your toes curl into the hotel sheets and your pulse race under his mouth when he presses it to your neck and whispers hot against your skin.

“That’s it, baby, taking me so well. So fucking deep. How? How is it always this fucking good, drives me fucking crazy.”

You wrap your legs tight around his waist, tug on his hair, run your nails down his back and scrape your teeth against his jaw like you’re lighting a match. All the things that you know drive him fucking crazy. He lifts you with an arm under your lower back like you weigh nothing, changing the angle to that one that’s like gasoline on a flame and pulling a high-pitched cry from your throat that he echoes with his own deep groan. You hate that he’s the only one who’s ever done this, fucked you like it would be a war crime to stop. His hips move in a rapid-fire tempo, unrelenting, cock a piston, impossibly thick and hard as it drives into you again and again and again. You can’t stop any of the noises that escape you, the cries, the moans, the desperate pleas, the yes, yes, more, please, more and your only consolation is that neither can he with his grunts and growls and fuck, yes baby, yes, take it, fuck!

Dave yanks you against him with those large hands, holding you flush to his hips, and grinds instead of thrusts. The effect is immediate, your thighs tremble, your stomach tightens, your nerves sing as he hits every sweet spot inside you at once and lights them all up like Times Square. You clutch at him helplessly, jaw dropping with a silent scream that he hears nonetheless.

“Let go, baby, let go.”

It’s not an order, it’s a plea from a man who wouldn’t beg for mercy under torture and it breaks you instead. You let it all go and fall over the edge, keeping him locked tight inside and bringing him with you.

You’re partners, after all.

He groans, giving a final, dirty grind of his hips. A lock of dark hair falls on his forehead and his broad chest is covered with a faint sheen of sweat as he shudders through his own climax until he finally collapses down

Dave groans, giving a final, dirty grind of his hips, a lock of dark hair falling on his forehead and a faint sheen of sweat on his broad chest as he shudders through his climax and collapses down into your arms. You run fingers through his damp hair, his weight pinning you to the mattress and holding you fast. You’re not going anywhere, not this time.

Afterwards he lays next to you with his long limbs stretched out on the bed, naked, skin marked in places from his time in the service. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. At what cost though?

“I can hear you thinking, baby.”

You flick him on the shoulder. “Don’t call me baby,” you say, but there’s no bite to the words. He never does in front of other agents or contacts. A cocky young field agent called you “sweetheart” once in a briefing and lived to regret it. Dave had watched you sharpen your tongue on the man and run him right through with it as you tore his piss-poor interpretation of the data to shreds. Then he told the analyst to get you a coffee and to take notes silently for the rest of the briefing.

That night in bed with him you were sweetheart and baby and darling and sugar, each ridiculous endearment teased into your skin and whispered in your ear, until you finally shut him up with your mouth and ignored the point he was making. No one else gets to call you those things, only him.

In another bed you stare up at the plaster ceiling with its graceful antique fixture and feel his eyes on you. I can hear you thinking. Even the sex wasn’t enough to quiet the thoughts in your head tonight.

“How do you-“ you start, and stop, not sure if you really want to go down this particular road. Dave waits with a sniper’s patience, going even more silent and still beside you. “How do you make it not be…personal?” you ask the one man who won’t lie to you.

Irina. Anna. Olga. You would have shot Morozov through the heart despite the orders to take him alive if you’d known they were going to let him walk, and ruined your career in the process.

“Who says I do?”

Dave puts his fingers under your chin, turns you to face him and brushes a thumb over your lips. His eyes are dark and hooded, the eyes of a trained killer, a man more dangerous than any two-bit arms dealer and the one you let into your bed. He looks at you and sees what other men would miss, that even though you’re naked and flushed you’re still so, so angry.

“If you take nothing else from me ever again, take this piece of advice. Don’t work for the CIA.”

“Kinda late for that,” you interrupt with a roll of your eyes.

His thumb presses back against your lips. “Hush now and listen. Don’t work for them, make them work for you. The intel, the equipment, the slush funds, take it all and use it. Put men like Morozov in prison when they won’t. Because you’re not the kind of agent who won’t let it become personal.”

From anyone else you would have taken it as an insult, the first rule of intelligence work is compartmentalization. It can’t be personal. It’s just supposed to be names on a list and numbers on a page. Let bad men walk to catch worse ones. Collateral damage is a given, whether it’s a few cracked ribs or some broken girls.

“That sounds…” a number of different things go through your mind, starting with the fact that it sounds very much like treason, but you settle on one word, “…dangerous.”

Dave drags his thumb along your jaw. “The best things in life always are. Now, I believe you told me to fuck you with this big dick I’m so fucking proud of until you couldn’t walk, and then to do it again. And you know I always follow orders.”

You know he doesn’t, Dave York gets results like no other agent, but that’s not the same thing as following orders. He only follows the ones he wants to.

He rolls easily on top of you, making space for himself between your thighs. He’s making space for himself in others places too, something you wouldn’t acknowledge under torture. This is all you’ll allow yourself, to run your hands down his broad back to where it narrows at the waist, muscles rippling and flexing under your touch while the rapidly hardening line of his erection is hot against the crease where your thigh turns to hip.

“Is this what you want?” he asks, voice low and rough. One hand goes under your knee, pushes it back, opening you up. You’re still aching, still needing more, as wet as he is hard, and while his fingers can drive you crazy and his smart mouth never looks better than when it’s fitted snugly between your legs, what you want, what you need, is for him to break you into the mattress again until you shatter completely.

“Baby-“

You pull his head down to kiss him silent, kiss him deeply, kiss the man who’s gone to hell and back with you and would do it all again tomorrow. He pushes inside with a grunt, not making you beg any more than you’ve already done. This time he sinks down into you, warm and thick like honey, chest against your breasts, face buried in your neck, and fucks you with steady rolls golf his hips that you feel all the way down to your toes. It’s slower this time, less frantic, a more gradual build under your skin. Dave’s pace never falters, you feel that he would do this all night long if you asked. A hotel bed in Paris, an alley in Boston, in the back of a car, in a field, Dallas, Monte Carlo, Düsseldorf, Jakarta, you’ve fucked and fought your way around the world with Dave. You’re not dating, you don’t go to the movies on Saturday nights or argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes, there’s just this. Mission completed, Morozov file closed, new assignment in the morning.

What happens in the hours between stays there. It has to. You’re already compromised enough.

Dave groans, his hand finding yours and lacing your fingers together against the mattress. You keep your legs locked around him, thighs wrapped tight over his hips. Everything else fades away, there’s nothing except him on top of you, inside you, doing what you asked and fucking you until you tighten around him and cry out, shuddering through another orgasm. He doesn’t stop, the bastard just keeps going with a quick kiss to your temple as he fucks you through it and starts working you up again.

“One more,” he pants, shifting his hips. “Need you to come on my big dick one more time for me.”

You let out a huff of a laugh that turns into a bitten-off moan as he finds that blissful angle again, because his big dick is doing a hell of a job getting you there. The thick drag of it is more delicious than any fancy French dessert, sparking across over-sensitive nerves and hitting that spot buried deep in you on each stroke. You gasp and clutch at sweat-slicked skin, Dave fucks you and fucks you and fucks you, until you can’t take it anymore and fall apart in his arms. Even then he doesn’t give in immediately, drawing it out like the final note as he plays you as expertly as a concert pianist. That part of you that secretly wonders if he’s just been playing you the whole time is silent, drowned out by the hot rush as he floods you with warmth while you’re still quivering, pulsing hot to the same rhythm until you’re both fully spent.

After a few long, blissful moments where neither of you move or speak, Dave stirs first.

“Can you walk?” he asks. It’s not a rhetorical question. Fuck me with that big dick you’re so fucking proud of until I can’t fucking walk, and then do it again.

You’re tempted to lie, you’re so tempted because the absolute last thing Dave York needs is an ego boost. You’ll give him this, though, he earned it tonight.

“No,” you mumble, and wait for the inevitable smug, smart-ass remark. It doesn’t come, there’s only a quiet hum from him as you stroke fingers over his damp hair. His large hand splays over your ribs, covering what’s left of the bruising. It could have been worse, you could have run into that building and not come back out again. You got off easy with two cracked ribs, relatively speaking.

This job, this life, is dangerous. It wasn’t the first close call and it won’t be the last. You know it. Dave knows it.

Sleep is a luxury now, alongside regular meals, relationships that aren’t built on half-truths and lies, and downtime. It steals up on you, eyes closing against the anonymous room that you’ll never see again after this night, in a city that’s just another name on a map. There’s a faint rustle of sheets, and a warm body that settles next to you with a brush of lips to your cheek.

Whatever comes next, Dave York will be by your side.

Your partner.

(yours)

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

Bellie & Pedge

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Francisco Morales.

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

drowning in his eyes

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

God bless us everyone

White Henley Pedro // 2014 - 2023

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

#I’m just an actor and my back is killing me + achy bones

PEDRO PASCAL talks about training for the Gladiator sequel 💪🏻 May 3rd | Los Angeles, California 

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

walk walk fashion baby

Pedro at the Met Gala

[meanderingcaptainswanmusings]

Well it’s almost midnight and we have the early shift.  Should probably be responsible. Go to sleep. 

SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS (2021)