#Mail Order Plants

[greenwoodnursery1]

Mail Order Plants

Greenwood has a wide variety of plants across many different species, colors, sizes, and styles—all with careful consideration for the highest quality. Furthermore, because of our Mail Order Plants delivery times, we will get your plants to you faster than any other online store! Ensure all of your green-fingered needs are taken care of with Greenwood's online nursery, where shopping for plants has never been so easy!

[milkweedman]

Was enchanted by the way the lights on my wall reflect through the ivy bottle. At first I thought it was roots somehow glowing.

[botaniqueer]

When your seed order has been delayed multiple times this week ;=;

(I understand though, since the cold weather has put the postal system in disarray. Seattle wasn't too bad though thankfully since it stayed relatively dry)

[stone-cold-groove]

Sears Garden Book - 1959.

[guinevereslancelot]

planted all my plants for spring ☺️

[mycological-mariner]

I’m extremely impressed by the postman. The mail a lot is really tricky and hates being opened, most people just give up halfway through leasing to hundreds of folded letters. But this guy? He took one look at it, took a look at my package (The Surgeon’s Mate) and just went for it. When I came down to collect the mail this guy managed to get the book not just through the slot but 5 feet from the inside of my door.

[nishiyako]

After A Long Day (NSFW)

Paring : Kenji Sato x Reader

Tags : Doggy style, Vaginal penetration, Make outs, praise , after care, Fluffy ending, Reader has some type of long hair, established Relationship, Kenji has some sort of complex.

Summary : After a long day of work, Kenji comes home to his lovely girlfriend with a surprise, merch she got of his jersey. Seeing his name and player number on you does wonders to his already inflated ego.

Kenji Sato was everywhere, his face and name of hundreds of billboards and products, it dose something to someone's ego.

He loved the support from fans, the attention from media but most importantly, he loved coming home from a long day of interviews, events, and partiess to you.

Simple and lovable you.

He parked his bike outside before entering his mansion, placing his helmet and keys on the dinner table before seeing you sitting in the living room on your phone while the TV was running.

He made his way over to you, your eyes looked up from your phone screen to see him suddenlt infront of you, you can't lie that you got a little startled but you were more happy he was back before it got too late,

He bends down and plants a soft kiss on your forehead, tucking a stray strand of hair away from your face in the process. He sits beside you as he unzips his biker jacket, "whatcha' watching?" He asks, wondering what's got you so focused this late at night, throwing his jacket to the end of the couch promising himself he'll clean it up later, throwing his arm around your shoulder, pulling himself closer.

"It's a tie between the TV and my phone if I'm being honest" you giggled placing your phone down, you met his loving gaze, placing your hand on his chest, softly kissing his cheek "how was your day sweetheart?" You asked softly, almost as a way of apologizing on you being so voided.

"Good, busy as always." He said like he was waiting for that question all day, meeting your hand on his chest, moving it, holding it while it rests on his lap "Well, it was mostly interviews and shooting for promotions for the team, after that we had a few drinks."

You listened intently as he got into the details of his day, complaining mostly. Giving your thoughts and opinions whenever he asked.

"That's about it. What did you do the whole day?" He asked after wrapping up his day, "Nothing really, just watched TV and cleaned up here a bit, " you said plainly before you stood up from the couch.

"Something I ordered came in the mail though," you said with a smile on your face. "Yeah? What is it?" He asked, as your smile peaked his intrest.

You took his hand, pulling him over to the bedroom, perverted thoughts alredy entering his mind, thinking you probably ordered some slutty liengre and wanted to show him.

You sat him down on the bed as you escaped into the bathroom, asking him to wait for a moment as you closed the door.

As soon as that door shuts he alredy started imagining what you're gonna walk out wearing, probably wearing something tight and strapy, an idiotic smile alredy appearing on his lips from picturing you in something that small.

But he remembered you weren't the type to get something like that, maybe a new dress? Something light for summer. His past thoughts still lingering no matter how cute the dress would be, imagining just lifting it over your hips and fucking you dumb.

His hands covered his red tinted face from just imagening it, sexual frustration just from you keeping him in suspense, "Ken? You ready?" Your voice through the door snapping him back to reality "Huh? Yeah, yeah." He said, a slight stutter from his voice.

You creecked the door open, as he took a deep breath, he opened his eyes.

You wore an oversized jearsy with his team's name on it, it looked simple enough, He thought it was cute, swing you show support for his team, practicly his second family.

Until you turned around, moving your hair to the side and there he saw it, a big 7 and his last name on your back.

You couldn't miss it either, it was right there, black bold lettering on the thin white fabric. You walked closer to him as his eyes were fixated on the way it hugged your body and how your thighs were peaking of out of the fabric just bearly.

Straddling his lap as he still couldn't find the strength to move a muscle, until he did.

His shaky hand going under the jersey, rubbing your bare hip, as you kissed him, your hands running through his hair as his hands creeped up your thigh looking for some panties to pull down, truely a perfect way to end his day he thought.

A giggle exits your mouth as he pulled away from the kiss, a puzzled look on his face before he felt you push him down on the bed snapping him back to attention suddenly, your mouth alredy leaving marks on his neck eagerly, seeming like the both of you werent even on the same wavelength.

"You arnt gonna find something down there, I'm not wearing anything" you whisper nonchalantly before continuing to attack his neck with kisses and love bites.

Basically hinting the fact that you're weren't wearing panties.

"You planned this didn't you" he breathed out

Is eyebrows widen in suprise, he takes a mintue sinking it it before accepting his fate before he layed back with stupid smirk, enjoying the free hickies while he undid his jeans.

In a few minutes you found yourself under him, the jersey just slightly above your midriff, his eyes widened. Holy shit, you really weren't wearing anything under that.

His signiture grin on his face as he pulled down his jeans just above his thighs, he swore he saw hearts in your eyes when you felt him press against you.

He had a feeling you've been pent up for a while, he was just too busy to do anything about it, until now ofcourse.

You felt him pick you up and made you lay on your stomach, pulling your hips right against him, feeling him throb in-between your legs, so close yet so far from where you realy wanted it, you felt his hand grip onto the flesh of your hips.

He leaned down, closing the distance between you two, his chest right against your back and his lips millimeters away from your ear "Feel that? All for you babe." He said in a husky tone, right against your ear, a grin on his lips after hearing a whine come out of your mouth hearing those words.

Your body jolted, feeling something familiar prod inside you, His mouth still right against your ear, not changing a single thing. you heard his breath hitch everytime he gets deeper.

Your body shivered from the feeling, you've missed this. You've both missed this.

He held your hands over your head, pressing them against the bed sheets as he gently bucked his hips, moving carefully feeling how tight you were around him yet taking him so well.

He was taking it in, fucking his perfect girlfriend, having her perfect voice loud enough to echo around the house, thanking his perfect self he got a place far from anyone else.

He got to have you, all to himself, after a long work day, wearing a jersey with his name on it.

With his name on it.

He let's go of your hands remembering something, one of them holding you by your hips, rutting in and out of you while the other one tucks your hair to the side of your shoulder, revealing the back design of his last name and player number on your back.

Shit, he felt so egotistical and narcissistic but this was better than any kind of liengre or sundress you could ever buy.

Looked like a scene from a wet dream he could've had.

You felt him pick up the pace, started moving aimlessly yet his tip kept rubbing the perfect spongey spot inside you. Your voice started raising, getting louder than it always was, not like you could say anything from your fucked out state.

His muscles started to tense, getting lost into he feeling of being inside you, spitting out praise.

"You're doing great baby," or "you look so fucking good for me." He'd coo, with just saying how much he loves you, and parts of you like how your hair was a mess, how perfect it looked when his cock would disappear inside you, or just worshiping your ass.

And most importantly that desperate arch on your back, only making it easier for him to hit that sweet spot over and over again.

The room being filled with the sound of moans, skin slapping against skin and the creaking of the bedframe. Laser focused on the overwhelming feeling of your walls around him, fluids dripping down your thigh, staining the bed sheets.

"Fuckk, Kenji, Kenji!" you cried out, making him stutter in his thrusts, hearing his name escape your lips a few times.

Hundreds, thousands, even millions of fans have cried out his name but nothing was quite like that one.

He kept going, this time with quicker, more feverish thrusts making you start to babbel words, "Whyd you stop?" He teased "cmon, who do you belong to?" He said, a sinister laugh following his remark.

"You" you breathed out still being thrusted in and out to, "names baby, I'm gonna need names." He said in a faux pity tone, you didn't even have to turn around to know he had the biggest, dumbest smile on his face right now.

You melted in his grip, you moaned his name again with more passion, feeding that ego of his. Knowing only he was the one making you feel like this, the leg trembling, spot hitting, eye watering kind of sex.

With his player number and last name on your back, he was thinking of finnishing inside and starting a family alredy, making you really his.

But that would be a bit too much to baby trap you, he knew you weren't going anywhere.

Seeing his last name on your back just drove him crazy, sining in the thought that one place, one day, that's gonna be yours too.

He wakes up from his baby fever trance to your voice "Fuck, Kenji... I'm so fucking close" you curse out, your hand meeting his, his other one continually making you bounce against him.

His spare hand layers over yours, holding it against the bedsheets, as he closes the distance once more, his lips right against hers, "Go on, you've earned it." He says before buying his face into the crook of your neck.

At that moment, you started seeing stars

He feels your walls tightening around him and you moan out his name for the final time. Seeing your body tense up and legs shake for him was something he would never forget the feeling of, knowing how good he made you feel never gets old.

His thrusts slow down as you come down from your high. He pulls out stroking his shaft a few times to the view of your fucked out body, using the white opaque liquid as lube, spilling his warm seed onto your curves, some hitting the new jersey by accident.

"Shit, you might want to wash it now." He laughed, you were too tired to make a comment on him alredy cumming on your new jersey.

Minutes pass, maybe around an hour. You see your loving boyfriend bring you your favorite tea "still sore?" He asked, "just a bit.." you reply back.

Now in a new pair of clothes and him snuggling up to you in bed, turning on the TV and putting on both your favorite series.

Truley, the perfect way to end both your days.

●●●

A/N : Haven't posted in a hot minute, I know. Sorry to my followers, I know this is something new, but I swear the bnha fics r coming, there somewhere in my files 😭

A/N : Those who've read in in the first 13 hours actually pointed out there was a typo, so thank you for that <3. I'll try to spell check more diligently since I mostly only write late at night <33

[bi-writes]

can we have like a pov of like what MOB would do if something did happen to simon..? luv you!

mail-order bride

your tea is cold when you pick it up to drink it. it burns you, how cold it is, and you cough a little as you set it down, grimacing as you wipe your lips.

maybe it's just one of those days. the rain is hitting a little too hard against the window. the cats have been restless. the dark one shredded your yoga mat by clawing at it under a doorway, and the orange tabby managed to knock over all of simon's plants from the windowsill (which you frantically put back inside their little pots--would plant murder be his last straw?). you left a red shirt in when you washed the whites (you apologized to all of simon's white tees), and when you noticed holes in your favorite sweats in a pattern that matched a cat's claws, you called it a day and decided to make tea (another fail).

you rub your pounding head, taking a deep breath, but you aren't given long to count down from five when your phone begins to ring.

you pick it up, not recognizing the number, but you put it to your ear as you get up to boil more water.

"hello?"

a throat clears on the other end. "do i have mrs. riley 'ere?"

you frown, leaning your hip against the kitchen counter as you turn a burner on and put the kettle over it.

"uhm...yeah. this is she," you say finally. you look at the clock; it's late, much too late. "who is this?"

"this is john. ah...captain john price, ma'am."

you clench your jaw, closing your eyes. "um...i'm sorry, i...what can i do for you? simon's not--"

"we had to call for medevac," john says lowly. "ahh...should be headin' into surgery soon. i--"

"wait--what?" you cough a little, shutting the stove off, and you're scrambling as you make your way to the bedroom. he's talking again, you realize, but you can't hear what he's saying. your eyes are moving around the room, and you frantically start to pull drawers open, grabbing a sweater, jeans, actual clothes to put on. you shed your pajamas, hopping as you slide your jeans on, and he's still talking, but you still hear nothing.

you run into the dresser, the furniture rattling, and you let the phone go, realizing you can't see because there's tears blurring your vision. you wipe them away, looking around for your purse, and when you realize what this is, an emergency--right?--you head for the bookcase in simon's study.

you toss a few books down onto the floor, your hands shaking as your fingers curl around the spine of a leather bible. you set the book down on simon's desk, flipping through the pages before you find your prized paper nestled between the pages of the book of john.

you head back to the bedroom, picking up the phone again, and you shakily dial the number that's on the back of the card. you take a seat on the bed (because where would you go anyways?), and you close your eyes as you wait for someone to pick up.

it rings for too long. you gasp a little, clutching the phone tight, and you beg for someone to pick up, please, please, please--

"'ello?"

"johnny--" you hiccup, standing up. "johnny, he...he told me--"

"wha--who--" on the other end, johnny shouts at someone to get a move on, "--bleedin' christ, who is this?"

"it's me," you whisper. "i'm...simon's--"

"ach...fuckin' hell..." there's a long, deep sigh on the other end. "oi, lass, listen, he's alright--"

"he's...b-but someone said surgery."

"right, i..." he sighs again, and you hear a door shut on the other end. "ye sit tight, luv. i'll come get ye, okay?"

you sniffle, wiping your face, "just tell me he's gonna be okay. tell me i'm worrying for nothing."

johnny chuckles a bit, and the sound soothes you just enough. "gonna be alright. lad's fuckin' dramatic, i'll tell ye tha', big brick fuckin' stepped in front of--"

"okay, johnny, please don't tell me how simon almost killed himself and get your ass over here, okay?" you snap, and johnny halts his laughing.

"right, yeah, forgive me." you hear the rattle of keys. "'m coming."

"mrs. riley?"

your head lifts up. you blink the sleep out of your eyes, rubbing them gently, and there's a petite woman in scrubs smiling at you with her mask hanging around her neck. you have two sergeants at either side of you, captain price settled leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. you have a blanket around your shoulders, and when you slip it off, johnny takes it from you gently.

"you can see him now."

you get to your feet, and when you pass simon's captain, he tips his hat at you respectfully. you hurry and follow the doctor down the hall, and when you see simon's name scribbled on a makeshift sigh on the wall, you eagerly pick up the pace until the door is opened for you.

he looks peaceful laying there. the monitors beep quietly around him, little wires and tubes falling around him, and you let out a breath when you see him blink those dark eyes awake blearily.

"tha' an angel?"

you start to cry. "you're such an asshole."

you come close to the side of the bed, taking his outstretched hand, and you clutch his big hand to your chest. you curl his hand into a fist, pressing your face against the back of his hand, kissing his knuckles there gently. he uncurls his fingers and wipes at your tears gently, shaking his head.

"gave ya a right scare, didn't i?"

"yes, you dickhead," you sniffle, and simon chuckles lowly, wincing a little as he clutches his lower stomach. you use your foot to bring the chair behind you closer, taking a seat in it as you look up at him. he turns his head to face you, giving you a pained smile, and you let out the breath you've been holding since johnny came to get you. "what's the matter with you, simon?"

"shit happens."

you try not to roll your eyes, but the anger is not lost on simon. he squeezes your hand gently, his eyes flicking up to the clock, and he grimaces when he realizes it's nearly six in the morning. you must have been here all night, waiting for him.

"is this how it's gonna be?" you ask in a whisper. when he meets your eyes again, it's more difficult this time. what you're asking isn't predictable. it isn't a straight answer. and if he gives you anything that isn't the truth, it feels like a lie, and he can't do that to you. "w-waking up in the middle of the night? hoping that the call isn't...that...hoping that--"

"not that simple," simon interrupts gently.

"well, make it simple, simon," you say firmly. even through your tears, your voice doesn't shake this time. "make it very simple for me, then."

simon purses his lips, and for the first time since you've met your husband, he hesitates. he doesn't have an answer, at least a good one.

"don't wanna lie to ya, swee'eart," simon murmurs, and you stare right back at him.

"then don't."

he sucks on his teeth, looking away, and you tug on his hand, pulling his eyes back to you.

"look at me, simon," you say, and he looks sad. he's going to tell you something that you won't want to hear. he's going to tell you something that's been the truth since he enlisted, a reality that never bothered him until he realized he had a responsibility to keep a roof over your head. there's someone waiting inside of his house. there's a place that's waiting for him on one side of the bed he shares with you. there's someone else's shoes always next to his, and someone else's name that will always be beside his own.

family.

he has a family.

"i'll try and keep ya outta here," is all simon murmurs. you smile at that. it's a promise, but he won't lie to you. always honest, your husband. he tells you things as they are. he doesn't pretend. everything with simon is the truth as he presents it, and it's eerily comforting, even if the truth isn't one that you like.

"i love you, simon," you whisper, and when you touch his face finally, the sting of the gold of your wedding is a welcome distraction.

he vows to make this the last time you see him this way. nothing is worth seeing that face of yours like this--tired, disheveled, the angry crease in your brow. you're not meant for these things. for the waiting, the crying, the worry, it's not a life he meant to give you.

for a moment, he wonders if you'd ever ask him.

will you hang it up for me? will you leave for me?

the most terrifying part, he realizes, is that he isn't sure of what his answer would be. and he isn't sure of what you would do if he told you no.

[lemoncranes]

MY KNIPHOFIA SEEDS I COLLECTED ARE GERMINATING!!!

[eowynstwin]

Blackbird, Fly - One

Cowboy Gaz x mail order bride—only, not his. After exchanging letters for half a year with ranching man Hans König, you finally travel out west to marry him. You stand alone on a train platform, whole life in your hands, ready to promise yourself to a man you’ve yet to meet. masterlist ao3 next

You step off the train carrying every one of your earthly possessions clutched in both hands. In one a carpetbag, only half-full, and in the other, a stack of letters tied together with string. A paltry summary of a very small life, you thought months ago, but today you only see how much room is left over where happiness might take root.

It began with an ad in the paper—Widowed Ranch Owner Seeking Tender Companionship—and a mailing address to a livestock town out in the west. Hans König described himself as Austrian, unusually tall, and fair lonesome in a big ranch house with no woman to make it a home. He’d immigrated to the United States as a child, married very young, had no children, and was forced to watch his first wife perish to consumption.

After two years of mourning, he said in the paper, he finally accepted that she would not want him to live and die alone. And thus, if there were any kind-hearted lady willing to give an old widower a chance, he would promise to take very good care of her.

You’d replied as fast as you could get your hands on paper and pen. The fourth child and only daughter of a tobacco farmer, you hadn’t much else to occupy yourself with. And truly, you hadn’t expected anything to come of it. Proficient in the written word though you were, there was not much else to recommend you. You brought a tiny dowry, skill with a sewing needle, a general knowledge of plants, and mediocre cooking to the bargaining table; he was horse man tried and tested by the challenges of the frontier.

You were under no illusions that you were the most attractive candidate.

Still, you wrote your letter. Described yourself to him as honestly as you could—neither especially pretty nor particularly accomplished, but told by friends and family to be of gentle demeanor and useful intelligence. Forgave him preemptively if he never responded, and wished him the best of luck in his search for a wife.

You’d nearly fainted dead away when his response had arrived as immediately as the next mail wagon. Hans König had addressed you by name, as intimately as if he’d known you for years, and said,

I was very pleased to receive your letter, Miss, and am terribly excited to correspond with you in the future. Although you write that you cannot imagine yourself an appropriate wife for a man of my experience, I myself cannot imagine what more you must need to be such. While I will not do you the discourtesy of making any promises with only my first letter to you, I will tell you truly that I was glad of your introduction, and hope you will grant me the pleasure of knowing you further.

Your whole family had been so excited for his response that Pa had broken out his fiddle after dinner that night, rejoicing already that his little girl’s future was secure.

What followed was a whirlwind half year of romance over letters sent back and forth so fast that you kept running out of ink for your pen. When you’d related this problem to Hans, he’d sent not only an entire box of lampblack ink, but a new steel pen, blotter, and lap desk on which to write.

There is no greater misfortune I can imagine now than to lose the pleasure of your correspondence, he’d written.

Pa had cried that day. Your mother had drawn you close and kissed your hair, whispering a thankful prayer that her baby was going to be alright.

In every letter, Hans demonstrated himself to be a kind man, thoughtful and patient, and as the relationship between the two of you blossomed, you started to believe it yourself. You had long given up on the possibility of marriage, thinking yourself too old and plain by now to offer much to any man worth marrying.

Now you stand alone on a train platform, whole life in your hands, ready to promise yourself to a man you’ve yet to meet.

There are only a few people milling about the station for you to survey. The surest way to pick Hans out from a crowd, he’d written, was by height. He towered over most people, and expressed hope in an early letter that he would not dwarf you too much.

But as you look around, no one stands out above the rest. In fact, the people here aren’t much different than what you’re used to; their simple dress and slight grubbiness prove them to be working folk, the kind you’d expect in a town like this, stockyards visible from the station. Your kind of people—at least normally.

Anticipating this meeting, you’d put on the best dress you own, a light frock with little printed flowers all over it. Your hair is braided and pinned up as fashionably as you could manage early this morning, and you’d even dabbed a little rouge on your lips for the occasion. As far as you can tell you are the cleanest, best-dressed person in the vicinity, and you notice not a few people openly staring.

The thought would usually make you blanch, but right now you hope it will only help your would-be husband to catch sight of you. You still can’t find him—

“Mrs. König!”

You whip your head in the direction of the call. Relief trickles through you, soothing an anxiety you hadn’t wanted to acknowledge yet, and then you see that stepping onto the platform is the handsomest man you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Dark skin, warm as a summer’s day. Lips soft and full like a peach fresh-picked from the tree. A serious brow over serious eyes.

Strong and lean in build, with a loose, confident swagger in his step. He approaches, his large, long-fingered hands coming to rest on the buckle of his belt as comes to stand before you.

Tall, to be sure.

But not unusually tall.

This cowboy—profession evidenced by the worn state of his attire—is not your intended husband.

Something in you falls at that.

Swiftly you berate yourself for the betrayal. Your Hans is gentle, generous, kind. So what if this man before you is attractive? Marriages must be built on more, and Hans has already given you more. His looks shouldn’t—don’t—matter to you at all.

“Not as of yet,”you reply to the cowboy, “but soon. May I help you, sir?”

He fixes you with an intense gaze. Up close, you see thick, dark lashes framing even darker eyes—the color of which, you realize, is as black as fresh-turned soil.

The smell of humus fills your memory, powerfully earthy and fresh, such that you could be on your hands and knees with your face to the ground right now. You feel the phantom of it between your fingers; rich and cool, like at the start of the planting season before the rains. So dark and fine as to live between the grooves of your fingertips for days.

“I’m Kyle Garrick,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m a wrangler for Hans König, miss. He sent me to meet you.”

You blink. The fantasy you’d dreamed up on the train ride—of seeing Hans across the platform, recognizing him instantly, and running into his arms—finally crumbles into dust.

“Oh,” you say.

Kyle Garrick frowns. “You’re disappointed.”

“No!” you exclaim immediately. “No, he must be such a busy man, I couldn’t expect him to drop everything for me.”

The cowboy sucks his lips between his teeth, studying you for a heartbeat, then—“He is busy. Mr. König is finishing preparations for your wedding this evening. That’s why he couldn’t come.”

What disappointment had begun to sprout in your stomach immediately strangles down to the root. Joy surges in your chest like birds taking flight.

“A wedding!”

You didn’t need a wedding, you’d written to him—you were so happy merely to marry him, you couldn’t possibly ask for more. All you needed, you told him, were his hands in yours, promising before God to be your husband for the rest of your lives. You’d meant it, too.

But an actual wedding!

“Biggest the town’s seen in years,” says Kyle Garrick. “Folks haven’t talked about anything else for weeks.”

“Oh!” Then suddenly you despair. “Oh, I’m not dressed at all for a wedding. If I’d known, I would’ve worked on this dress more, I would’ve put my hair up better!”

Kyle surprises you with sudden passion. “You look perfect. You’re the prettiest thing that’s ever come into this train station, miss. This town, even.”

“Oh,” you say again. You flush hot up into the roots of your hair. Embarrassed, you avert your gaze, looking down at his worn roper boots. “I’m not, really. But it’s kind of you to say.”

His hand touches yours, the one holding onto your carpetbag. When you look back up at him, his expression is gentler.

“Mr. König will agree with me,” he says, “I promise.” He eases the handle from your grasp. Up close, he has a comforting smell. Leather, and sweet hay, and campfire smoke.

“You think so?” you ask, tightening your grasp on the letters in your other hand.

He nods. “I do. Now come on—I brought a cart. Let me take you home.”

-

[greenwoodnursery1]

We have a wide online selection of affordable fruit plants for sale such as blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry plants as well as blueberry bushes, goji berry plants & more. You may also like to check our catalog for Fruit Trees for Sale online.

[badaxefamily]

Reasons to play Palia:

Cozy, gentle farming/village sim a bit like a combination of Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, but online.

Most of the villagers are romanceable if you're into that. Either way they all have backstories that you learn by befriending them.

One time I went fishing and pulled up a charcuterie.

There's robots. One of them is romanceable because the fanbase demanded it in alpha.

You can't pet the dog but you can talk to him:

The fishing and bug catching systems are unique and fun.

When people find a rare/special resource like a Flow tree or palium ore, they'll call over zone chat to tell people where it is because everyone that hits a resource node will get the same reward no matter how many people are on it.

Crabs count as bugs so you can catch them!

Sifuu sent me a brick in the mail.

Cat people come from the moon, allegedly. Which moon? Probably the one that isn't on fire.

Concerned about too many people stripping the resources? The game is instanced and each instance only has a handful of players at a time. Even if they're all mining, or chopping trees, the nodes respawn fast enough to compensate. Plants and other things on the ground are not shared, so grab all those you want.

You can hunt for meat and leather, and there are a variety of animals that require different methods. Some of them teleport or clone themselves.

Speaking of hunting, you do so with a bow, and there's no blood or dead body. Bagged animals literally disappear and leave behind a bag which you loot.

You can climb and glide kind of like Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom.

The housing system is pretty robust, almost like WildStar. You start with a tent and then get a house which you can add rooms to. You can find, buy, and craft furnishing and sometimes villagers will gift them to you.

There's no HP and no penalty for falling, so feel free to yeet yourself from high places in order to explore!

[lunamugetsu]

House Husband Danny

(Remember this post I made: Danny is a househusband. Well I decided to make it into a story) Crossposted from AO3. Here's a link

Location: Unknown, Date: Unknown

Three figures emerged from a glowing pit of green water, gasping for air as they dragged themselves out.

A man with dark skin was breathing heavily and went to shake the pale man with dark hair that was still unconscious. He paused as another hand was raised motioning for him to stop. He looked over at the women with long black hair.

“He’s tired, let him rest.” She said

“What are we going to do?” the woman merely smiled as she turned to fix the damp hair that was covering the unconscious man’s face.

“Simple… Danny will rest and heal…and we will live like the rulers we are.” She turned to look at her other partner.

“Yes… we will,” he confirmed as they both smiled while looking at their love.

Present Day

Danny hummed as he put away the newly washed dishes from dinner.

Ah, how nice it was to be in a home where the food didn’t come alive and try to declare war on him.

One less thing to worry about.

Now that dinner was eaten and leftovers were put away. He could focus on the package that came in the mail, he had been waiting for it for weeks.

Tucker and Sam had called ahead to say that they were working late.

What a shame.

Danny sat down in the living room and turned on the tv while cracking open the package.

“This is Lois Lane reporting for the Daily Planet! Breaking news as the Justice League members Superman and Wonder Woman are fighting off villains in Metropolis! They have been identified as the new villains: Upload and Nightshade. They made their first appearance known to the world a couple months ago- JIMMY LOOK OUT!”

The camera shook for a moment before stabilizing showing Superman was holding onto Lois Lane and Wonder Woman was holding onto the cameraman.

“It’s not safe here, please evacuate to a safer area.” Superman said before speeding off with Wonder Woman following close behind.

“Jimmy get a shot! That’s Nightshade!” the reporter said pointing to a large plant-like monster made of vines and thorns that was the size of a skyscraper. The cameraman zoomed in on the figure that was currently sitting on the monster’s shoulder. A woman with long black hair that appeared as if it was almost floating in an ethereal manner. She was a pale woman wearing a black skintight bodysuit with matching thigh high boots, black bandages were wrapped around her forearms while her hands lit up with a neon green energy along with her eyes. Nightshade smiled, turning to look straight into the direction of the camera before saying some words that the camera couldn’t pick up before humongous vines started filling up the camera’s screen, the sound of screaming could be heard before the feed was cut.

“That doesn’t look good,” Danny commented before turning back to the open package.

Ooh, that fabric did feel as soft as it was advertised! He better try it on to see it fit. He knew he checked the measurements before placing the order but still, mistakes always happened. He was also still a little hungry, perhaps some fruit from the fridge would be good.

It was a couple of minutes before the for the news to come back on. Danny sat down on the couch, sporting a plate of fruit with a side of whipped cream to dip it in. He plopped one into his mouth as the tv started airing the news again.

The camera lens managed to stay undamaged as the camera man and the reporter were taking cover behind the corner of a building focusing on the figure that was currently standing in front of a fallen Superman that was grimacing as the green light from the glowing rock in the figure’s gloved hand seemed to intensify. It also didn’t help that there appeared to be a set of special cuffs that were encasing the superheroes hands, forcing them together.

“And here I was thinking that defeating you couldn’t be that easy… well then again. Can’t expect a superhero to just not react to their greatest weakness. Kryptonite wasn’t really hard to track down who had a stash of these, it was even easier to take it. ” The figure was a man with dark skin with long dreadlocks and was wearing a visor that covered hi eyes from view. He wore a long coat with short sleeves letting people see the robotic gloves that went up all the way up his arms. The camera picked up a hum emanating from the robotic arms and crack of electricity.

“Why? Why are you doing this, Upload?” Superman said as he made to force himself to stand despite his bound hands.

“Hmm, wealth, fame, power, pettiness, destroying all the buildings I want without needing to pay for it, or maybe I just don’t like people who call themselves heroes,” Upload said as he moved to the side as Wonder Woman was thrown into a building.

“Truly, I thought they’d give more of a challenge,” Nightshade commented as the plant-monster then slammed a hand down onto Wonder Woman encasing the superhero in vines  making it practically impossible for the woman to rip out of.

Danny hummed as he looked at the news.

He should probably help… he stuck a strawberry into his mouth.

“How do you think we should do this, Nightshade? Slowly and methodical, or fast and exciting?” Upload turned to look at Nightshade.

“Obviously, something with mo-“

RING! RING! RING!

The two supervillains looked towards each other. Upload taking out a phone from his pocket while Nightshade motioned for the plant monster to give her, her bag so she could take out her phone.

“Hello/Hello.” Thy said answering their phone in unison.

“You’re hungry?” Nightshade asked.

“We did say we were working late, you’re welcome to eat out if you want- huh? I mean, what are you wearing?” Upload said

The two paused and looked at each other.

“The thing you ordered a couple weeks ago?” Upload said, “the red one?”

“That’s made with silk?” Nightshade hands were clenching down onto her phone.

“And you’re eating,” Upload looked over at Nightshade.

“Strawberries and whipped cream,” She said.

Ding! Ding!

The two turned to their phone at having received a message. The villains looked at their phone  and then to each other.

“We’ll be there in ten!” they said in unison before putting away their phones.

It happened quickly.

With a wave her hand, all of the plants started retreating back away from the superheroes while saying some words that the camera couldn ’t pick up and a portal opened right next to her.

Meanwhile Upload placed the kryptonite into a contain while hitting some buttons that were on his gloves and the cuffs that were on Superman unlocked and fell off the man ’s wrists.

Nightshade motioned for the now human-sized plant monster to walk through the portal while Upload was walking up to her.

“Wait! Where do you think you’re goin-” Wonder Woman and Superman held their ears as a loud sound echoed out a tool that Upload threw on the ground.

“Oh no! How dare you heroes foil our evil plan!” Nightshade said in a dead tone before grabbing Upload by his collar, “c’mon we gotta go!”

The two ran into the portal, disappearing out of sight, leaving nothing but the aftermath of the destruction of the fight they had with the two heroes.

“I’m sorry, what the heck just happened?!” Lois Lane said, turning to look at the camera.

Danny hummed as he turned off the tv and took his plate of food with him as he got off the couch.

He needed to get upstairs, after all, Sam and Tucker weren’t going to be working late after all.

The man sat himself into the master bedroom, it had a bed that was an Alaskan King size. Largest size of bed they could find, could easily fit a whole family of four on it. He didn’t even know beds came in that size.

Danny continued humming as he settled himself down in the middle of the bed. The sheets were made of Egyptian cotton. Ethically sourced, of course. Sam wouldn’t stand sleeping on something that was made by a company that destroyed the environment while simultaneously overworking and underpaying their employees. Tucker had come to the rescue, buying a set of sheets on his last trip from Egypt. They had to custom order it especially since their bed didn’t fit the common dimensions that mass production usually went by.

But he wasn’t complaining, the bed was really… nice.

He laid back against the pillows, wearing nothing but the little red number that came in the mail that day.

He dipped a strawberry into the whipped cream and took a bite out of it. Giving a hum as he enjoyed the taste. It was so nice not to have to worry about anything. No ghosts trying to kill him, no government agency trying to track him down to vivisect and kill him, no parents trying to shoot, vivisect, and kill him- Danny wondered if that was a normal amount of people to have to want to kill him.

Whatever, it didn’t matter anymore.

He smiled as he heard the sound of the front door being slammed open and shut followed by a furious pattering sound of feet going up the stairs. He hoped they’d taken their shoes off when they got in. He just vacuumed the house that afternoon.

The door to the bedroom opened with a bang as he saw Sam and Tucker, wearing their civilian clothing that they had clearly just thrown on with no thought of whether or not they should straighten out any of the clothes or at least to check if they put on their shirt inside out. It was a rule though, never bring work home, it always brought trouble. They had enough trouble dealing with ghosts to last a lifetime, let alone the afterlife.

“I’m hungry,” Danny said while taking  a bite of a strawberry and licking off cream that caught on his lip. He could see them already looking at his mouth and trailing their eyes across the new article of clothing he was wearing.. The man curled his finger to motion for them to come closer.

“Come and feed me.” He smiled as his partners joined him in bed.

Ah, it was so nice when his partners didn’t work late nights.

[certifiedfreec]

i can’t stop thinking about neighbor!graves… 🤔

🏡 you’re new to the neighborhood, getting all your things moved in and seemingly drowning in all the boxes of stuff you have. you ordered some items to replace the ones that got damaged or lost during transit, so that only added on to the cardboard-ridden mess that was your new living room.

🏡 a few days after settling in, you finally notice one of your packages has a mysterious name on it: phillip graves. you suddenly feel bad; how long has this guy been missing his delivery?? you bustle out your door in your pajamas, looking for the house number that matches the one on the package until you finally find it. it’s a fairly large house with dark, sophisticated paint. it’s across and over from yours with a huge black truck backed into the driveway. very snazzy for a truck, you think, hurrying your way to the tall entry door and ringing the doorbell.

🏡 “hey, how can i help ya?” his slight twang is warm and uplifting when he opens the door, eyeing you with a keen interest. god, he’s pretty. he sees what’s standing before him in the cutest little pj set and he’s feeling like an angel was dropped at his doorstep. meanwhile, you’re freaking out- standing there in your scrubby pajamas in front of this ridiculously attractive man, who is apparently your neighbor, and you’ve been holding onto his package without him knowing. (you realize there’s another package of his you’d like to hold though- ba dum tss!)

🏡 you shyly introduce yourself, pointing toward your house and then handing him the box, which he accepts with a teasing “gonna have to tell the HOA about the new thief on the block,” and a quick wink. it nearly melts you, but we must stay focused brothers!! he thanks you and introduces himself as phillip, taking the chance to let you know that you caught him at a good time because he’s often out for extended periods of time with his work. the poor baby must exhaust himself with how busy he is :(

🏡 you hear what he’s saying and being the new, good little neighbor you are, you offer to swing by and grab his mail, check on his plants, and do some basic house upkeep whenever he’s gone. hook, line, and sinker- it’s just what he wants to hear. he accepts your offer with that pearly grin of his, but not without adding his contact info to your phone so he can let you know when he’ll be out of town :’) he’s just so handsome that you feel like you won the jackpot!

🏡 from that day on, it’s like you keep bumping into each other outside- how silly! you start to find some excuses to be out front, maybe to check your roof for any damage or plant some flowers along the side yard, and whaddaya know, neighbor!graves soon finds himself outside giving his big ‘ol truck a wash (you could swear it’s already spotless). god, those flexing muscles and the wet t-shirt clinging to them are much more interesting than your rhododendrons.

🏡 he’s such a friendly neighbor- he’s really taken a liking to you! <3 whenever he’s actually home, he’s got your grocery bags carried inside or he’s grilled some barbecue that you’d be “downright ridiculous not to try”- his words, not yours! it’s delicious, of course, and he credits all his skills to his old man and his “coworkers.” you decide to bake him some sweets in return, and he just about melts. you’re just so good, and so is your baking! he’d really like to taste something else though, too…

🏡 now, neighbor!graves is a pretty nosy guy, so he’s taken it upon himself to keep you in the loop on all the drama in the neighborhood. but really, can you blame him? it’s in his nature to find intel- someone in the community has to do it! this is also a subtle way of letting you know that he’ll be keeping an eye on you, too- because he’s gotta look out for his fellow neighbors, especially if they’re adorable ;)

🏡 eventually he’s away for a few weeks and you’re on deck to pick up his mail, water his indoor plants, all that good stuff. he gives you a key before he leaves and tells you “go ‘head and keep it, mi casa es su casa,” fully inviting you to get comfy in his space- and you do! his furniture is so sleek yet so cozy, his living room complete with a super plush leather couch and a ridiculously large tv. you gather from all his medals and badges decorating the place that he’s very accomplished at what he does- this guy’s the real deal. you also get a nagging feeling that you want to spend more time in his space- it’s just so comfortable, and it smells like sweet vetiver and crisp mint :’)

🏡 so… neighbor!graves, being the nosy guy that he is, has been tracking when you’ve been going over by checking his high-end front door camera from his phone. he can’t help but get flustered at the idea of you in his most personal space- god, he wants you in his bed- and he starts to remember your routine. when he’s finally finished with his operation, he may or may not schedule his flight so that he arrives home shortly after the time usually head over, and your entire body stills when you hear his garage go up. he walks in with some heavy-looking bags wearing an all-black outfit, and you almost swoon. he’s such a man.

🏡 woops, surprise! he apologizes for forgetting to mention when he’d be getting home. he’s so damn excited to see you in his house though, so cute and dutiful, having left his plants perfectly hydrated and not a speck of dust in the area. he has an inkling-no, a certainty- that you’d be an amazing housewife. he invites you to stick around for a drink since you’re already there anyway, and of course you accept since you’d be “downright ridiculous” if you didn’t!

🏡 after you fill him in on the neighborhood drama he missed over some scotch (he is loving your intel collection skills, by the way), he reaches for his wallet to get you some cash for all the trouble- this man was really about to give you a wad of hundreds for your menial house chores! unbelievable! you immediately shoo it away, insisting that it really was no big deal… well, now you’ve left him stumped, because how else could he ever show his appreciation for your hard work while he was away??

🏡 by eating your pussy, of course! it takes very little resistance on both your ends until you’re sprawled out on his luxuriously soft bed with his head between your thighs, moaning and mewling so loud from the perfect licks and swirls on your aching, needy clit that his front door camera can practically pick up on your noises :’) your slick is getting all over his satiny sheets, but he doesn’t even pay that any mind. a few sharp sucks to your sensitive bundle of nerves and the scratch of his light blond stubble along your inner thighs has you cumming so hard that you can’t help but chant his name- and he’ll be damned if that isn’t music to his ears! <3

🏡 he still doesn’t feel like he’s fully shown you his appreciation…maybe he needs to fuck the shit out of you too! he’s talking to you so nicely as he stretches your pulsing walls with his huge, veiny cock, reassuring you that you’re “such a good girl,” “lookin’ so gorgeous right now,” “takin’ me like a champ, baby.”… you’ve never felt so full, yet somehow you can’t get enough of him :( he decides to place a silky pillow under your hips so he can pummel into you from a deeper angle, and he leaves all kinds of purply marks along your chest as he tells you just how perfect your pussy is for him- god, he’s happy you moved here!

🏡 by now you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve orgasmed around his length, and he finally coats your insides with his warm, thick spurts of cum as he groans your name. you both collapse onto his sheets, exhaustedly drifting to sleep just to do it all over again in the morning ;) he gets a hot shower ready for the both of you before kindly requesting some of your amazing baking- he even offers you to wear one of his t-shirts so you don’t get any ingredients on your own clothes! of course, you’re more than happy to oblige. after all, he’s such a friendly neighbor <3

[kittenlittle24]

Guests

GIFs not mine, comments, likes and reblogs are appreciated

Masterlist

Your smile had never been wider as you stepped toward your boyfriend and took his hand.

His arms were wrapped around you, your head on his shoulder and his rested on top of yours, occasionally laying small kisses on your hair. You swayed gently to the soft melody that filled the air, you were dancing on the edge of the dance floor, actually right beside your table so you could easily escape and return to your seats.

You brought your head up and opened your eyes, your e/c locking with his clear gorgeous blue ones. You leaned in and planted your lips on his. He gently cupped your cheek and held you tight as he deepened the kiss.

You were at the wedding of one of your closest friends, you knew her since you were children and felt like you were sisters. You were excited when you got the invitation in the mail and begged your boyfriend of three years to join you and with surprisingly minimal amount of begging and bribing, he agreed to come with you. Your deal was you picked out a few dress options and he got the final choice. You ended up agreeing on a black halterneck dress with a side slit and he wore a dark blue dress shirt.

The beat changed to a faster one, but you only broke apart when one of your friends came to tug you back to the dance floor. Looking at him with longing, he shooed you with a hand gesture and a smile, “Go, I’ll wait here.”

Nodding you allowed your friends to pull you to the middle of the crowd.

Grabbing his cane from where it was hanging on his chair, he turned to the bar and ordered a glass of whiskey for himself and white wine for you, before he made his way back to the table.

He sat down and watched as you twirled around. The dance was fun, upbeat, and fairly sensual, it made him smile to see you act so freely, feeling his eyes on you winked and blew him a kiss, then turned to take shots with the bride.

Chuckling, he shook his head as he grabbed the water and an empty glass and filled it up for when you came back.

Feeling your arms wrapped around his neck from behind and you laying open-mouth kisses on his neck, he raised the glass to you, “Drink.”

Dropping your forehead to his shoulder dramatically, “Buzzkill.” You complained and sat down next to him.

Seeing the wine glass waiting for you, you were about to reach but he moved faster and switched it with the water, “First water, then more alcohol.”

Placing your hand on his thigh, you leaned closer so he could hear you, “The groom’s cousin asked me if you’re single, she thinks you’re hot,” you shared and took a big gulp of water, “I told her you’re also great in bed. Should’ve seen her face.”

Laughing he gave you back the wine glass.

“You ready to go home soon?”

Nodding, you grabbed your belongings and went to say goodbye to everyone.

On the drive home, you watched him as he drove the two of you, memorizing every hair and line.

“Did you have fun tonight?” You asked.

Raising his eyebrows and sneaking a glance at you, he trained his eyes back on the road, “I did.”

Turning your body as much as you could, “You’re not just saying that?”

He sighed, “I had a hot woman with a sexy dress escort me and got to take her home, we had a decent meal, I got to watch you dance, and dare I say I think I might even get lucky tonight.”

Pursing your lips, you patted his shoulder, “I like out of the hospital you. You’re much more pleasant when you don’t think about work.”

“Does that mean yes to the getting lucky part?”

[darlingdarkly]

Negotiations with the Devil

Danny Johnson x f!reader smut

14k words

DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

Look at me. 👁️👁️ I need you to heed the tags. I am going to tag the hell out of this thing and if you don’t read the tags then you’re throwing yourself into a mixed bag of whatever the hell and that’s on you. The tags are there for your benefit. Not mine. You have been warned.

CW: noncon!elements, dubcon!elements (honestly this things a consent rollercoaster, strap in), stalking, obsessive behavior, home invasion, death threats, bondage, knifeplay, violence, minor bodily harm, blood, blood consumption, coercion, consumption of drugs (weed), breathplay, fingering, unprotected pnv climactic intercourse, spanking, praise, drug consumption (without consent), Danny is a whole warning of his own lmao

He can tell by the way you mime along to the lyrics, the rhythmic pattern of your head bangs alone that you listen to the same playlist everyday while you sweat it out on the treadmill. People tend to be pretty ritualistic as it is, even if they don’t know it, but this was just too concentric to be coincidence. He was right though, in the end. It didn’t take much, slipping into your room at night while you’d been sleeping and unplugging your phone from the charger on your nightstand beside your bed. Stopping to look down at your sleeping form, brush an errant strand of hair away from the frame of your face, watch you twitch in your sleep. He wonders what you dream of. Peaceful, listless, little dreams while you believe no one’s watching.

He airdrops your playlist from your phone to his, technology is such a fickle thing, making our lives easier, making our info easier to steal. He won’t be malicious with it, no, not much. Just invasive enough to strengthen the bond between you, now he can listen along while he watches you run, queue up your playlist at the same time you do, watch you up the speed and take your first steps while the first notes begin to sound through your ears and his.

It makes the subtle rhythm of your hips make sense, the timing of your poses and moves fall into place. You kind of half-dance-half-run. Fucking adorable by the way, he’s got more than one snap of you striking that same cute little pose for that half second between steps every time your favorite song comes around. He knows it’s your favorite by the way you disrupt the normal flow of songs in order to play it over again, a luxury you don’t afford any other song in the mix.

Scrambling to keep up with the tread as you snatch your phone from the cup holder where it sits while you run to start it over. You don’t even have the patience to slow it down so you don’t damn near trip every time. It’s a precaution you skip, one among many others that’s led him to be able to keep as close of tabs on you as he’s able. You really should be more careful, it's another lesson, one among many others that he’ll have to teach you.

He doesn’t mind, it’s a bit of an honor really, though he doubts you’ll see it that way. It’s a miracle you hadn’t been singled out before now with the way you so carelessly choose to lead your life. Prancing around your house half naked, windows drawn but not quite closed, tease. The ADT sign you planted in the turf of your lawn was a nice touch, too bad a sign was all it was, those security plans sure are expensive. He wonders, if you knew now what you’ll know then, would you have forked it over.

You come home with a migraine, it developed somewhere between the stoplight outside of work and the small traffic jam in front of a four car pile up two blocks from your house. You took some excedrin when you were finally able to get in the house. But not before pulling the trash can up from the edge of the road, gathering your mail from the box and going back to the car three times to look for your purse which you set down in the bathroom for some reason, god only knows why.

While they normally kick in within the hour, by the time three had come and gone you’d given up hope. It was a ‘lay on the couch, watch shitty tv and pray to whatever deity is listening to please stop tightening the invisible vice around my head’ kind of evening. All fore-planned events and activities had been canceled in lieu of lounging around like a sloth. You couldn’t even keep your eyes open half the time anyway, it’s how you knew when you called it an early night that you’d need the little, black silk, travel mask you bought precisely for occasions such as these.

Light is evil, light is the enemy, only darkness is your friend. You climb into bed after double checking the locks on the doors and windows. You've heard about “Roseville’s Ghost”. It was all over the news and in the papers. Better safe than sorry, though you didn’t worry much about those things. It could never happen to you, of course.

Settled into bed with your brain still under a full frontal assault you promptly pulled the soft black material over your eyes and felt just an inkling of immediate relief. It was both minuscule and monumental. It wasn’t long before you fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Wake up.” Your eyes spring open only to be met with the same resolute blackness you’d been familiar with before opening them. You are certain you’d heard someone. At least fairly certain, you don't have any dreams staining the backs of your eyelids to have heard that voice from but you’re certain you’d heard it. You go to lift the mask from over your eyes, light a match in the darkness of your uncertainty and quell your fears but your arms won't move, neither your right nor your left. The first thing to spring to mind is sleep paralysis, you’d dealt with it a few times prior but never after a migraine, never with you unable to open your eyes. You’re unsure if that makes it better or worse.

But you are sure it’s sleep paralysis. You know because there’s that tell-tale heavy, immovable weight on your chest. The only difference being you cannot see the terror that preys upon you, suspending you in this half-asleep-half-awake nightmare spell. You wonder how long you’ll have to endure it. You don’t get to ruminate on it long before that voice speaks again.

It absolutely has to be coming from the thing on top of you, although when he does speak again you can feel it as well as hear it and that’s new. Perhaps, with one of your senses removed, your others have grown more keen. Or your sleep paralysis demon is becoming more evolved, feeding off your fear and manifesting into something more physical. Your terrified mind gets so lost in its own demented circles you don’t hear what it says the first time.

“W-what?” Your eyes widen behind the mask, you’re fairly certain you’re supposed to be unable to speak in these situations, complete paralysis. It’s in this split second, with this single, small epiphany that you realize this isn’t a dream, or a nightmare, or something in between, but real. Actually happening to you in real time, with a real man sitting on your chest whom you can’t see.

“I said, I’m going to take off your mask. Don’t scream.” You’re sure that won’t be much of an issue, since you've realized this is in fact not a nightmare but indeed a real ongoing situation your vocal chords have locked up tighter than a drum. You’re unsure you could have spoken even if your life depended on it, even if your screams were to be your only saving grace, you’re fairly certain you’re currently incapable of sound, bound to compliance by sheer terror, obedient against your will.

You feel fingers at your temples and your eyes automatically shut as the silken mask is removed. You should keep them that way, resist whatever sick curiosity tempts your lids to lift but you can’t, you have to know, you have to see.

You wish you hadn’t. The man striding your lower half is large, dressed in black he appears as a solid block that blends his outline with the shadows. The one thing you can distinguish is his face. Pale white and elongated into an unending scream. Sunken eyes and missing a nose, it seems to mock you with something akin to pity, though the man behind the mask seems anything but sorry to inconvenience you.

“Good.” He praises as you stare up into his lifeless face, wondering how in the hell you could possibly have let yourself fall into a situation such as this.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. When I say, you’re going to get up and walk over to that chair over there.” He motions to your computer chair, pulled front and center into the middle of the room. “And you’re going to sit nice and still for me and if you move I’m going to make you wish you hadn’t.” He pauses like he’s waiting for a response. “Do you understand?” Surely you’re dreaming, this absolutely can NOT be happening right now.

The answer to your internal question is answered promptly as you feel him lean down over you and press something sharp, sinister and cold against your neck, you don’t dare shiver against its chill. His next words are a whisper, the overwhelming stench of cheap plastic clogging your nostrils as he leans down close. “I said, do you understand?”

You nearly choke on the dried strip of leather that’s become your tongue trying to say yes, not daring to nod. It comes out a ghost of the word, a breathy pathetic excuse for speech but it must be good enough for him as you feel him pull the blade off your neck and you begin to feel like you can breathe again, at least momentarily.

He lifts off you and your brain insists that you should take some sort of initiative, be brave, strike back. But one look at the man before you once he’d risen to his full stature abated all thoughts of bravery. Tall and lean, his choice of attire did a good job of masking much of anything else discernible of his appearance and of course the mask completely covered his face, the hood pulled up over the edges of it even made it impossible to see any of his hair either. For all you could tell the man was literally a ghost, though one with weight and presence and deadly intentions.

You realize he’s watching you analyze him, racking your eyes up his body and trying to size him up. Normally, in movies and such, the bad guys are always trying to get you to hurry, get what they want and get out of there. Not him, there’s an odd quality about him, the absence of rush, almost prodding his way through this, like it’s more of a game than a strategic offense. But that’s not to say he seemed amateurish in any aspect, quite the opposite. It was clear he was fully in control, so much so in fact that he could afford the leisure of toying with you a little.

“Like what you see, doll?” You can hear the cocky smirk in his tone, feel him oozing with it as he goads you in jest. He watches your expression shift from confusion to alarm and then one of hastily tacked on offense. “What? No fucking way you-!” Your sentence falls away, left hung in the air unfinished as you realize you’ve momentarily forgotten you’re in a home invasion scenario and not dealing with some normal asshole from off the street and any snarkiness you may have been ready to serve back to him dissipates as you switch back into survival mode. “Please I-“

“Get up.” He cuts you off, firm and authoritative. Fear fills your legs like lead and makes them uncooperative but it only takes a flash of the blade at his side, the promise of pain in the glint of the steel to make you pull back the covers and try. He’s patient with you as you amble out of bed slow and jerkily. Even though you only make it to sitting up, legs thrown over the edge and eyeing up the computer chair he’d centered in the room like it’s rigged to carry electric voltage. You knew once you were tied to it it’d be your final destination.

A wave of his blade recaptures your attention, with two flicks of the tip he motions you to rise. You did as he bid, without much other choice. Standing across from him that instinctive fight or flight urge rises from the marrow of your bones and makes your legs twitch with action’s potential but ultimately you end up meandering to the chair and sitting, resting your hands in your lap pliantly as you await further instruction.

When you still he comes to life, moving around behind you and gently pulling your hands from your lap and around the back of the backrest. With this time you have nothing else to do but observe, honing in on his individual boot falls, glancing down to register his combat boot clad feet, as blacked out as the rest of his fit.

Forced to pay attention to the way his hands move over your skin, the heat radiating off of his body warming to your back. The even, repetitive, lulling quality of his breaths in your immediate space. Even the faint sting of cheap cologne burns the hairs in your nostrils, making you lightheaded in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant.

There’s the shift of fabric and the sound of him unfastening something you can’t see from beyond your peripherie. You feel his gloved hands glide over your skin before the cord wraps around your wrists, binding them. He’s surprisingly slow and methodical; not overly rough until he has to be, the knots require a certain use of force that leaves you wincing.

He stands and moves about the room, silently adjusting it to his liking. Closing your bedroom door, drawing the curtains tight, pushing open your bathroom door to throw a little more light into the room. While he completes these menial tasks you pick up on something unsettling.

Just the ease with which he traverses the room. This house has a runner seam, a raised board that rides the centerline of its entire length. After moving in it took you months to stop tripping over it, to mentally identify the mapping of this new space in your brain that allows for an extra inch of clearance automatically. Over the span of your occupancy you’d had a few boyfriends and none of them lasted long enough to get used to that seam. Not even your parents who’d been over the most, helping you unpack and make a few minor repairs had ever gotten used to it. Everyone you’d ever had over has tripped over that runner seam, but not him, not once.

He pulls one of your kitchen chairs up from out of the shadows, the legs squalling against your hardwood floor until he sets it in place right in front of yours and sits. Scooching up nice and close to you, your knees bumping against each other as he settles in. You try to avoid touching him but his legs are long and he spreads them out wide so both your knees are bracketed by his, his plastic face regarding yours with that same mock-pity expression as the cold fingers of fear rustle up your spine, making you shiver.

You need to get this man out of your house in any way you can. Your first instinct is to try and scare him away, maybe you are no real threat but perhaps the idea that there will be more people added to the equation will be enough to get him to reconsider.

“Please!! Please just go! My roommate’s gonna be home soon a-and she.. she’ll see you and scream and- and-“

His head cocks just so, like he’s staring at a picture frame that’s askew, off in a way he knows just at a glance is wrong. “Let’s skip over the bullshit, shall we? I already know everything there is to know about you, babygirl.”

“She works late but she’s gonna be back any minute now!!” You reaffirm, trampling over his unsettling comment.

“You don’t have a roommate. You’ve lived in this house by yourself since your last roommate moved out some… hmmm..” he pauses, you can almost see the numbers fly past the whites of his eyes as he, no doubt, flips through the calendar in his head. “14 months ago.”

Horror floods your veins but you push past it, insistent. “My parents, they’re coming over first thing tomorrow morning.” He chuckles, a knowing sound filled with humor like you’ve just made some kind of inside joke, but it leaves you nothing but bloated with dread.

“On a couples retreat to Acapulco. Left a month ago, won’t be home for another two.” Your throat tightens, it makes your next try come out less confident and more shriekish.

“My brother-“ You rebuff.

“Lives in Michigan.” He interjects.

“Sister!” You scramble to refute.

“Don’t have one.” He adds confidently.

“My boyfriend!” A last ditch effort, even you can hear the desperation leaking into disbelief as you say it.

“Oh, sweetheart. Stop. You’ve been chronically single for how long now? Nine? Ten months?”

Your mouth plops open like a fish out of water. Your eyes the size of saucers as he expertly thwarts every attempt to deter the inevitable. How could he possibly know? Oh my god! Who cares! You’ve got to get this guy the fuck out of your house and now! Fucking think! You’ve seen this stuff on the news over and over. What do they always say? Don’t fight. Just give them what they want. Give them what they want and they’ll go away. Now you’ve just got to figure out what it is he wants.

“I-I- I’ve got money. Y-you can have it. All of it. It’s-“

“Nine hundred and forty five dollars even in the little black Sentry fireproof safe. Hidden under your floor, under the board that creaks in front of the closet.” He says matter of factly and there’s a hidden smile in his tone, like he’s waiting for the praise that comes posthaste with answering a problem promptly and correctly. When he doesn't get his immediate gratification he antes up.

“It’s even because any change you have you save up in a jar for the end of the month when you carry it up to the bank and exchange it for bills, which you add to the safe after you pull out the board and put in your passcode. 974703.” Your mouth hangs open in speechless horror. How could he know that? You always go to the bank at the end of the month, you figure he could deduce that but your passcode? You’ve never even written that down. How would he know your passcode? “Ohhhuuhhhghh my god.”

The floor feels like it’s dropped out from beneath you. He’s speaking but you’re not really registering the words, lost in your own spiral towards insanity. This man knows you, he knows things about you, approximate information about your life, your relationships, your schedule. And yet you don’t have any idea who he is.

His voice is not familiar to you. He has no accent nor any unique qualities or lilts that you can discern or recognize. He’s well spoken and intelligent, cocky and in a way you won’t admit outside the safety of your own thoughts, oddly charming. He doesn’t want money, can’t be bartered or bought. There seems to be no clear motivator for this man’s actions. You’re running out of bargaining chips with which to trade for your life.

If you can’t tempt him then maybe you can reason with him. Perhaps it’s not too late to get him to change his mind. Part of you reasons that if he’s wearing a mask it’s because he wants to keep his identity from you, which must mean he plans to leave you alive. There’s all kinds of potholes and washouts in your theory but under the influence of fear the mind can bridge gaps in logic that rival the Mariana Trench. That’s when it comes to you and you’re almost giddy with the realization. Your reaction is animated, making you nearly jump up in your words’ enthusiasm to escape your lips. You laugh at the simplicity of it, a nervous little sound that’s half relief, half insanity. God why hadn’t you thought of that sooner!

“I haven’t seen your face! I have no earthly idea what you even look like! You can just go! Like for real, just leave! And we don’t have to do this.” There’s a rumble from his chest. A deep, dark laugh like a resounding rock slide from above and it means one thing and one thing only, danger. To your horror, one gloved hand begins to rise to the cusp of his mask and you wrench your eyes closed, titling your head back until your neck is jacked and your face lifts to the ceiling above, screaming all the while. “No! No, no, no, no, NO!” You feel one hand reach up to grasp your chin, pulling it down. You fight, but he ultimately wins, his leather clad fingers anchoring your chin to your chest. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

You chant no like a mantra. Like if you say it a certain amount of times fast enough, if you try and believe hard enough he will disappear from existence, like some kind of reverse childhood mirror game. You can not see him, therefore he cannot see you, therefore poof! Begone intruder! You shake your head back and forth, yelling it louder and louder all the while. He can drag your head down to his heart's content but he can’t possibly open your eyes for you. That’s impossible.

You feel the knife before you ever see it, slipping along the curved flank of your bare thigh. It’s steely edge biting just ever so slightly into the plush flesh, as if sampling an offered morsel of meat to determine its rarity.

Your eyes fly open of their own accord in reaction to the pain and stare right into his own dark, dark, brown orbs. There’s a sick warmth in them, something sinister masquerading as compassion, as if they don’t belong to the same man who’s digging a knife into your leg as your eyes lock, but rather to a man feasting his eyes upon his bride for the first time dressed in chiffon white. “There she is.”

You don’t maintain eye contact for long, yours sliding off his to register the huge knife he’s casually dragging the edge of along your exposed thigh, your first good look at it up close. It sports a wicked tip, glimmering dangerously in the diffused light shifting in from the bathroom.

He eases his downward pressure but your leg still stings like hell. His thumb finds the wound in the dark and laves over it soothingly, though it has no soothing effects, just leaving a dimmer, muted burn in its wake.

“Is it all falling into place yet, sweets?” He leans forward into your personal space, like the answer is just on the tip of his nose and you’re somehow still missing it, like this revelation should have been obvious from the start.

You can’t think, mind drawing blank after blank. You try to rationalize this crazy man’s actions in your mind. Why would he do this? Why me? Have I wronged him? Have you wronged anyone at all in the last week? Month? Year? How far back should you be retracing your every step? How long would a person sit on a grudge before exacting this level of revenge? What could you have possibly done to make this man angry with you?

But is that true? Your mind glosses over the fact that he seems anything but angry with you. Menacing? Yes. Threatening? Demanding? Absolutely. But angry? No. Not in the slightest, though you’re so worked up it leaves you blind to these facts.

It dawns on you then. How could you be so stupid? The killer. This is the guy behind all the murders. Your sleep clouded brain shouldn’t have been any excuse for you to oversee what was right in front of you all along. Your face instantly falls as you come to the second realization sitting just behind the first. You’re going to die, this is it.

You switch gears and immediately begin to plead with him, the individual words streaming out of your mouth so quickly they’re stumbling over each other. He watches you like that, watches as you crumple into a desperate subhuman right before his very eyes. You peer up at him from below, done attempting to form coherent sentences as your brain is unable to handle them, now reduced to the simplistic but hopefully moving enough, “Please.” Though repeated over and over and over in rapid succession.

You’re hoping to appeal to this mystery man’s better nature, if there’s one inside of him to speak of. But the next words out of his mouth make you really doubt it. “As much as I love the sound of hearing you beg, I need you to stop so I can speak.”

You’re unable to. It just keeps falling from your lips like someone left a faucet on in your throat and it’s starting to overflow, filling up the swell of your cheeks and beginning to leak out as hot, briny tears from the waterline of your over blinking lashes. He starts shushing you, oh so gently, until your tears begin to ebb and your sobs begin to hitch. You look up into his deep brown eyes, your chin trembling with the might of your fear as your hands wriggle against the cordage wound tight around them behind your back.

“Please.” It’s your last plea, begging him one last time not to do this. His head tilts as silence fills the space between you. “Please!! I don’t understand why you’re doing this!!”

“You want the truth, doll? Want me to just come out and say it?” No, not really. What you really want is for him to just disappear or better yet for you to simply wake up from this living nightmare to find you’d never even made it to bed, just fell asleep in front of the tv and the awkward position you’d fell out in on your lumpy couch plus the remnants of this terrible headache had given you night terrors so real they were beyond anything you’d ever experienced prior, vivid beyond your wildest imaginations.

But it’s not a nightmare because no matter how hard you try, you can’t wake up and he’s still here sitting in front of you and it just keeps on going. “I came here to kill you. But I couldn’t…” Now this is a turn. Did he just say he couldn’t?

“I’ll be honest, babygirl. I can’t decide.” He begins to explain it to you but as he goes on it becomes less and less apparent he’s even talking to you at all. “I watch all my intended targets before I make my design, it’s standard procedure. But the longer I watched you the more invested I became. And then three months came and went and I knew your schedules, your routines, your patterns.. you.” His tone begins to lighten as his eyes lift to meet yours, like something out of some twisted romantic comedy. At least you’re hoping for a comedy, anything other than a tragedy at this point would be just fine with you.

“But I was oddly conflicted.” He continues, dropping your eyes again. “Typically I get visions, increasing in intensity. It starts out mild. Breaking in when they’re isolated, sneaking up to them while they sleep, plunging my knife into their chests, watching their eyes spring open to meet mine before death consumes them. Then, as I watch them more and more, they get more violent in scale, more visceral in nature. The longer I watch, the stronger the blood lust gets, until I’m slicing them open by their stomachs and dragging their intestines out to hang from the ceiling.”

His fists clench and you catch a glimmer, just a passing glimpse of what this man is capable of. His whole body tenses as he’s briefly consumed by his afflictions as he recounts them. His shoulders tense and you can hear the squeaky protest of his leather gloves as he balls his hands into fists ever tighter. The fabric around his forearms bunches and tightens against the muscles straining beneath.

“Sometimes I think about really taking my time with it. Maybe I don’t go straight for the heart, maybe the first strike is less than lethal. Leave them alive a little longer so I can play around a bit. When their lungs start to fill with blood they become less and less capable of screaming and I do love a good scream.”

He smiles up at you with a sharp, toothy grin. The whites of his eyes burning into yours as you try not to look as horrified as you feel. Try and hide the disgust germinating in your gut. But as his eyes meet yours his expression changes. His smile remains but shifts from one filled with humor to one shy and adoration filled, almost bashful in its softening. Your ears perk as he starts to go into more detail regarding his experience with you.

“It was the same with you at first.” His eyes lose contact with yours as he appears to be diving headfirst into another daydream.

“Imagining myself slipping into your bedroom in the dead of night. Finding you deep asleep as I stand over your bed. Burying my knife into your chest.” The way he so casually describes to you his fantasies regarding your murder at his hand makes you short of breath and you wonder just how out of touch he has to be for him to not consider this to be, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable for you.

“But then it changed. Things took a more provocative turn.” Your veins flood with alarm and your eyes widen but he doesn’t look back up at you to catch it, too enthralled with the memories of it. “I saw myself walking up to the side of your bed and climbing over top of you, telling myself it was for a more intimate, close-up kill. Or maybe a better angle in which to plunge the knife into your chest.”

He looks distant, troubled as he speaks. “But that never happens. Now when I enter your room and climb up over you.. you always wake up and look up at me and it’s like I’m frozen. It’s like you see right through me, right through the mask. I know what I should do, I know what I have to do, but I can’t. So instead I always envision myself slipping off the mask and leaning down to kiss you.”

Your cheeks flare with heat at what he’s describing, it only gets worse as he continues. “And I thought it was a fluke and over time everything would go back to normal and I’d dream about killing you again. Except it never did, it just got worse. All I could think of, all I’d dream about was climbing over top of you and grabbing fistfuls of your comforter and ripping back your sheets. Running my hands through your hair and yanking your head back just so I can lean down and place my lips against your neck, finally getting a taste of your skin.”

Your wrists had begun to ache in your binds and it’s only then do you realize it’s because you’re restless in them, pulling at the cordage to distract yourself from the impossible. Your thighs squeezing together against the familiar yet unwelcome sensation of arousal. It’s not real, not a genuine reaction, this means nothing. It's the bizarre circumstances, the adrenaline, the way he’s vividly describing these incredibly intimate actions in such close proximity to you. It doesn’t make you some kind of degenerate, it could happen to anyone in similar circumstances. If anyone was to blame it was him, he’s sick, he’s obscene.

He stops living in his mind for a moment and comes back to you and for once you’re grateful for the distraction. It’s easier to fear him than process your body's reactions. He notices, because of the deliberate way he’d centered the chair so that the light from the bathroom would be cast upon your face, that your eyes are now slightly dilated. And while he knows, through research and personal experience, that the human eye certainly will dilate in response to fear, he also knows that the same reaction occurs when aroused. But the key difference between the two responses is that only one typically makes an individual rub their thighs together and now you won’t meet his gaze.

The thought thrills him, but he lets you keep your secrets a little longer as he continues. “I can’t kill you… but I can’t let you go…” Your brows furrow and you seem to be becoming increasingly distressed. “Why?”

“Well for one, you’ve seen me now. That part was all you. It wasn’t my initial plan but you tempted me and I couldn’t resist. But you see my dilemma, cupcake? You make me do things that are not in my best interest and I never act out of my own interest. Everything I do is planned, methodical, purposeful. But not with you, ever since I singled you out things have changed and they must go back to normal, do you understand?”

You don’t. None of this makes any kind of rational sense. You’ve already begged him to go, begged him not to do this. What does he want from you? Some kind of essay on why he shouldn’t kill you? Two pages front and back double spaced with standard margins? “No.” His eyes bore into yours as he imparts the task with which you’re responsible.

“I need you to convince me not to act within my best interest.” He flashes you a smile that’s meant to be winning as your ears try and fail to process what he's just told you. He wants you to convince him… not to kill you. He can tell it’s not setting well with you.

“You need to relax.” He says nonchalantly, like it’s as simple as taking one big breath and counting to three. Like he didn’t just dump this huge yet vague responsibility onto your shoulders. “Well excuse me if I’m a little riled by a fucking psychopath in my bedroom at three in the fucking morning!!!”

His mouth twists in an annoyed grimace. And for the first time you feel as though your foot has been lodged firmly in your throat. You’ve angered him and now you’re fucked. Way to go, in three seconds flat you’ve made his mind up for him.

“Firstly, I’m a sociopath, not a psychopath. Psychopaths are unable to form emotional bonds or even struggle to feel real, human emotion at all, and I think we both know that’s not true with me. Secondly, it’s midnight, not three a.m, silly. And lastly, this is exactly what I’m talking about, honeybun. You’re stressed out, high strung. I can fix that.”

You lean back as far as you can in your computer chair, the shittily constructed plastic and screws squalling in protest of your weight as he reaches for something your petrified mind can only conjure up worse and worse images of being.

You instinctively recoil and then dumbly relax as the flick of a lighter sparks to life a tiny flame in the otherwise dark of your room. It illuminates him for a moment, the whites of his eyes focusing on something other than you for a change. The dim light throws irregular shadows across the planes of his face. It’s the first really good look you get at him, though you know you shouldn’t. You should be taking every opportunity to forget you ever saw him, only a vague shadow in the dark if you ever wish to make it out of this nightmarish situation alive but you can’t help yourself. He’s just a few feet away and the lighter keeps drawing your eyes like moths, fluttering over his features in passing flight.

He’s got that smoldering, troubled look. Dark eyes, dark hair. Angular jaw, strong chin. There’s a fat joint precariously clenched between his plush lips that he brings the flame up to the end of, taking two quick puffs to light as the end blooms a cherry head and smoke begins to voluminously rise from.

He’s pretty, you begrudgingly have to admit. Naturally attractive in a way that unsettles you to say, the fact worms under the skin at your nape and stands the thin wisps of hair growing there on edge. Especially now that he’s imparted his great secret with you. It would be easier if he were revolting, but he’s not.

It makes you wonder how different the situation would be if he’d just approached you naturally. How easily you’d have fallen under the spell of this man’s witty charm had he had the good sense to try and court you normally. It horrifies you to think how easily you could imagine yourself falling in love with a man holding back a secret as dark as this, a man capable of this level of debauchery. He speaks and snaps you back to the present.

“I won’t untie you. You seem like the tricky type, my love. You’ll have to get your fix another way.” You glower at him to hide your disappointment. As much as you hate to admit it, you’d love a hit right about now. If you’re to die, there’s no better way than high.

“Don’t pout. You’ll get yours.” You instinctively pull your arm towards it for a pass but you’re stopped short by your binds. He must notice, letting out a dark chuckle you hate to admit sends chills down the column of your spine.

“Oh that’s fucking adorable. Hold still.” Before you can move he snaps up a camera you hadn’t noticed dangling from his neck and the bright flare of a flash momentarily blinds you.

When you can see again, he’s staring down into the screen of his, suffice to say, really nice ass looking camera, though you’re no tech expert by any means. His smile widens, flashing a toothy grin down at the image of your face and then up to your real and present one.

Satisfied with capturing the moment, he drops the camera back down to hang from his neck as he eyes you precariously before taking a long, slow drag from the joint. He pulls away and motions you forward with two fingers. You hesitate and get to watch his eyes darken in real time, watch him shift from being personable to something much less tolerant in an instant.

He exhales and a plume of smoke permeates the air in your vicinity, saturating it with the funky, pungent odor of bud. The space between you is noticeably thicker and not just from the smoke. His voice drops that cheerful quality and you suddenly understand that this whole time he’s been being nice to you. He drops your gaze and scoffs to his lap. “I lit this just for you. If you don’t at least indulge me you’ll hurt my feelings.”

When his eyes take hold of yours again they’re anything but friendly. “And you wouldn’t wanna hurt my feelings, now would you doll?” There’s an unspoken threat, an underlying message left unuttered but nevertheless fully understood by both parties.

You are now at a crossroads, humor him or face the alternative and the choice is yours, for him it seems, it wouldn't really be a bother either way. Ultimately you lean in, you’re not exactly in any kind of position to refuse.

He takes another hit, larger than the first, a punishment perhaps for your inhibitions the first go around. Though you know what you’re doing, he still takes a moment prior to coach you, a single word that sends a surge of need shooting down your spine, making you shiver in what you tell yourself is disgust. Without choking or sounding even remotely bothered he orders you around a lungful of smoke.

“Suck.” It’s all you get before his lips push up against yours. They're soft and warm and you feel his hand lift up to cradle your cheek. Intimate, sweet, in a way one could call almost gentlemanly, though you know better. It helps steady you in place before you feel his lips part slightly and blow warm, thick smoke into your mouth that you suck down deep into your lungs. His lips linger long after the smoke is gone, ghosting over yours in casual chase, almost like a lover’s would.

With the hit exchanged, he pulls back from you suddenly and lifts his hand to cover your mouth and nose, his thumb wrapping under the curve of your chin, the pad digging into the soft underbelly and locking your jaw shut.

Your mind can’t help but register the way he easily covers the bottom half of your face with the breadth of one gloved hand. A move that makes your eyes widen and gaze up into his own as he stares you down intensely. “Hold it.” He instructs as your lungs burn, it’s been a hot minute since you’d smoked and the hit is warm and stinging to your fresh, unabused lungs.

A moment passes.. and then two.. and you begin to internally panic. It’s then you realize he means to kill you like this, there’s no other explanation for such cruelty. He intends to asphyxiate you with one hand, force you to choke on the poisoned last breath he’d personally fed into your lungs. You hitch and nearly sputter behind the suction of his gloved palm but his eyes hold yours hostage as he watches you struggle through it, relishing in it.

You had angered him with your earlier comment, it seems. Made up his mind for him and now he’s going to end his issues single-handedly. You’d always heard the old adage “I wanna watch the life drain out of your eyes as you take your last breath.” You’d understood it before at face value, a thing said to provoke, to strike fear, to rattle. You’d never dreamed of the moment it’d happen to you, to experience it first hand, to stare into the eyes of your unmaker.

You’d imagined, in your last fleeting moments, the space behind your eyes would be filled with memories. Life’s intrinsic moments. People, places, family, friends. That’s what people always say. But it wasn’t like that. In those moments you believed were to be your last, all your brain could fixate on, all you could think about with the last of its magnificent power, in all its infinite wisdom was his eyes.

The deep sedentary shade of his twin orbs, the flecks and streaks of paler and deeper hues. A spectrum of browns infinitesimal in the pools of his irises. These are the eyes who’ll witness your last moments, the transfer of your consciousness from the here and now to wherever it is we go after this. These are the eyes of the reaper.

Just when you believe you’re on the cusp of passing out; your focus doubling and then tripling and then beginning to recede all together, to be followed close behind by the cold embrace of death, he releases and your lungs follow suit. Purging themselves in a last ditch effort for survival. The residual smoke puffs up from both your nose and mouth simultaneously, as you fight to expel it and drag in fresh, cool air.

It sends you into a coughing fit that doubles you over as far as your binds will allow. He catches your chin with his gloved hand and pulls you upright by it, keeping your head above your shoulders and shushing you through it as you are violently pulled away from the brink of death and after a minute, begin to quiet down. “That’s it. Breathe, doll.”

Your vision blurs around the edges, shadows drawing into shadows as you recover and there’s spittle on your lower lip from nearly coughing up a lung. He notices and swipes his thumb across the expanse of your lower lip, dragging the pliable flesh clean. You go to express your gratitude, for his chivalry, for his restraint, for your life. It seems there’s perhaps some humanity in him after all.

“Thank yo-“ It dies in your throat as you watch him, without even skipping a beat, bring that same thumb up to his lips and suck your saliva off his digit, a devious glint in his dark, guile-filled eyes. “So sweet.”

You’re dizzy, whether it be from the hit, or lack of oxygen or just him, you’re unsure. You’re at a loss for what to say next but it seems he isn’t finished. “I could fill a million SD cards with just your expressions, babygirl. You’re awfully photogenic, has anyone ever told you that?”

You’re unsure what to say, you’ve never been good with compliments in the best of situations, let alone one given under duress and you’re still reeling from, well, everything that’s happening to you.

It seems he still hasn’t decided what to do with you after all. Your head spins from the whiplash, it’s impossible, after all, to try and make heads or tails of the hairbrained decisions of the mentally ill and if there’s one thing this man sitting across from you is, it’s mentally ill. Though you have the comfort of saying so in the safety of your thoughts you won’t dare tempt him by saying it aloud again, unpredictable as he is.

“I love all your little marks and moles, birth or stretch, they’re all perfect.” You give him a look of violated disgust, you believe at this point you’re beyond surprised at anything he could say to you, it’s clear he meant what he said when he told you he’d been watching you.

“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t like, strip you bare and thoroughly examine you with a magnifying glass or something. You just toss and turn a lot in your sleep.” And he says it like simply ‘watching you sleep’ is somehow kind of tamer, more justified, noble even.

“At least.. not yet.”Just when you believe you’d collected your thoughts you feel the tip of the knife grazing your skin again, riding the curve of your thigh upwards towards their apex, not hard enough to cut, but just rough enough to keep your attention fixated upon its ascent.

You stiffen, taking all of the relaxed lean he’d cultivated out of your posture and pressing back into the cushion of the rigid computer chair. He skips up your abdomen, passing over the skin of your navel. The sharpened point catches momentarily on the silky hem of your nightshirt before tension meets drag and then it’s cutting, a brand new part ripping right down the center rising ever higher up towards your sternum.

For a moment, both of your focuses eclipse on the tip of the knife, yours erratically panicked, his lasciviously engrossed. The roaring purr of the fabric shearing apart is loud in the otherwise quiet room, the only other sound the backdrop mix of your combined, labored breathing.

When the sea parts, the thin straps of your nightshirt slip from the slumps of your shoulders as the fabric, now separated, falls away from your chest and comes to rest as a useless bunch around your waist. His eyes fixate on your newly exposed flesh, locking acutely on the swell of your breasts, your nipples pebbling at the weight of his heated gaze upon them.

You instinctively hunch forward, your shoulders and back contorting their best to cover as much of you as humanly possible. Without so much as tearing his eyes away, he brings the tip of his blade forth and presses it into the valley of your chest. “Don’t hide yourself from me.” The stabbing pain of it becomes too much and you bow back reflexively, effectively revealing yourself to him again.

When he pulls back, a dark red spot forms in the knife’s wake, lengthening into a slow, smooth trickle into the valley of your breasts. His mouth parts and as he leans in you lean back, until your back is straining against the chair, until you can’t possibly back away any more.

And then you feel it, the hot, stiff, flat of his tongue, trailing up your crimson streaked skin. He feels you stiffen and hears you whimper in what you want him to think is terror, but at the same time he feels the full body shudder that quakes through you, feels the way your back arches off the chair, bucking back into him, chasing the sensation. You want him to believe you’re opposed to this, but he knows better than that, he knows you better than that. It’s just about getting you to give into your urges and stop leaning on your morals. He shed himself of the burden of his a long, long time ago.

He hardly pulls away, speaking into your skin as your lungs heave air and you squeeze your eyes shut at the restraint you’re exerting, straining against the questions swirling in your head you can’t bear to answer. Why is this affecting you so greatly?

“I don’t want to kill you, sweetheart. I will if I have to but I’ll be honest, it’d be a real bummer.” He pulls back and your eyes crack open, hoping against hope that maybe he’s done. With an audience he makes a spectacle of pulling off a glove, slipping the tip of one leather finger in between his teeth to pull his hand free of it. While his eyes never leave yours, you watch as it closes the distance between you to finally make contact with the exposed swell of your hip.

“Give me a reason, babygirl.” A spark of something like electricity runs through you upon your first skin to skin contact and you inhale sharply at the sensation. He drags it up your body, mapping your curves and planes like he’s setting it into memory.

Up the lattice of your rib cage and over the swell of one exposed breast, your nipples harden under his palm as it glides ever higher. He passes over the expanse of your heart to feel it beat in real time, just as fast and as forceful as hummingbird wings under the surface of your skin. He continues over the structure of your collarbones and stradles the column of your throat, his fingers conforming to the contours and dips along your jawline. All the way up til his palm cups your cheek, his thumb resting softly overtop the pucker of your lips, brushing along their part and lathing over the soft, thin skin. When it stills your eyes flick to his again and there’s a searching, hopeful quality to them that makes your stomach twist up into knots. “Give me a sign.”

Your eyes read his lips as they mold and form around his words, soft and cooing. Your mind races, you don’t want to die, don’t really want these to be your last moments. Would it be so bad? One night stands aren’t a new concept to you, men the likes of whom you wake up next to without an inkling of their identities or even the circumstances behind your acquaintance. Is this really all that different?

As he leans forward you decide that it is and turn your head away at the last possible moment. He stops and his head drops, a little disappointed sigh sounding from between his lips and your eyes close as your insistence on survival quarrels voraciously against your rigid moral upbringing. Like he’s somehow read your thoughts he speaks them.

“Is that what’s holding you back? Cause I know you want this. But it’d be too… improper. too.. unladylike to let a stranger break into your cute little home, tie you to your cute little computer chair and be forced to admit to me that I’ve got you flustered, wouldn’t it? It’d be just downright shameful if I slipped a hand into these cute little sleep shorts..”

His words narrate his actions, as one bare finger slips the last few inches left between him and the heat of your sex, shifting past the hem of your crotch on one side and sliding against the soaked gusset of your cotton panties in a firm, exploratory sweep. You have to bite your cheek against the moan it threatens to elicit. Bucking against his hand, it’s unintentional but damning all the same. And the smile that pulls at the corner of his lips is predatory in its victory, prideful in your defeat.

“and found you absolutely fucking soaked for me.” The last of his sentence comes out in a growl, ground between the grit of his teeth and spat out in a rumble that does nothing to ease the burn between your legs, burning brighter as he pulls away and brings his hand up to the light, both of your eyes drawn to the way it glistens in the lowlight.

“I don't mind playing the bad guy, babygirl.” His voice coils around you like liquid smoke, wrapping warm around the base of your spine and pooling low in your belly as his head dips into the crook of your neck, breathing in the heady scent of your fear and sweat. “If that’s what you need from me.” You feel his lips grazing ever so lightly over your pulse point, feel him grinning wicked at the way your heart quickens just for him. “If that’s what it takes for you to keep that moral, good girl image that’s so, so precious to you in your pretty little head.”

He whispers against the shell of your ear and you have to squeeze your eyes shut against the heavy, lascivious weight of him. You fear you’ve read this one before and you’re fairly certain you know how it ends. Eve and the snake in the garden all over again, just a taste is all it takes, indulging sin.

“Does it make it easier for you if I force you into it?” He brings the knife to your neck where he just was, planting the blade firmly up against the soft, soft flesh of your jugular, less than an inch from your carotid artery. You stiffen against him, keeping stark still, not even daring to breathe.

His tone falls into a hush, words whispered closely against your thrumming flesh. “If I take away the illusion of choice?” You can feel the heat radiating off his skin even through the glove, the roiling coals in the palm of his hand as it rides further and further up your thigh, leaving trials of fire in its wake, closing in on where you weep for him. “If I just choose to make you mine?”

He’s leaned in so far he’s standing above you and with your back against the wall and his knife to your neck there’s little else for you to do when his lips close over yours than to just take it. It’s intense, no warm up, no gentility or ceremony, just overwhelming, sweeping desire that you feel in your bones. He’s done waiting, done giving you choices, he’s had enough of the games.

You move with him as best you can in fear of his control over the blade slipping. His tongue wants to lick past your lips but your jaw refuses to budge. He lets out a sound of displeasure against you before you feel the hand that had been resting against your thigh push forward again to rub roughly right over top of your clit and you gasp inwardly in response. An opportunity he takes full advantage of as his tongue breaches your mouth to gain dominion over yours, the knife slips in lieu of his desperation, much more eager to roam your skin than keep up the threat. You feel the blade pull free only to be replaced by his ungloved hand a moment later.

His palm wraps around the expanse of your neck and squeezes, just enough to make you lightheaded and pliant as he ravages you, not that you could do much to resist him tied to the chair as you were. His hand between your thighs grows bolder, slipping down to where you’re wettest and pressing inwards with the pads of two of his fingers as far as the fabric would stretch, pushing into your entrance. The sensation had you groaning into the kiss, a surrender he rewarded with a nip to your lip as he continued his onslaught against your senses.

He pulls away from you, leaving you flustered and short of breath as he drops to his knees before you, coming up level with your chest. You hardly have time to register his change in position before you feel his lips ghosting over one of your nipples, planting them over one of your stiffened peaks and pulling it into his mouth. You arch up into the sensation, hardly stifling the sharp cry in the back of your throat. With you distracted, he pulls his blade from his sheath once more and makes two quick cuts, sliding his knife between you and the fabric of your panties to cut them away from your body where they cling like a second skin without so much as nicking you.

It’s only when you feel the cool air, chilly against your warm sex that you realize you’re now completely naked in front of him, this stranger, this invader. He lives up to his namesake as you feel his fingers at your entrance and he wastes little time as you feel him sinking in with two up to the first knuckle. You can’t stifle your moan this time, it bubbles from your throat and out of your mouth like sweet siren song.

He’s cocky about it too, boisterous in his boasting. You can feel his smirk against your skin as he licks up your chest to tease your breasts once more, reveling in the way he can feel you tightening around him in response. “Mmm.. So fucking wet for me, doll.” He moves the fingers inside you slowly as he stretches you open for him bit by bit, gentle and coaxing. “I don’t know, baby. From where I’m sitting, I’d have to say it seems like you’re enjoying yourself a little.”

Your head tips back and your eyes squeeze shut as your thoughts reel, unsuccessful in forming a shred of any kind of coherent thought. No rebuttals or quick witty quips to refute his claims. His fingers are thick and he keeps nudging something inside of you with each inward thrust that scrambles your brain and leaves you blank. You see, even through the opaque veils of your eyelids, the telltale momentary glare of his camera flash. Taking full advantage of the opportunity to capture your fall from grace, searing it into palpable visual proof he’d left his mark on you. “Please.”

And worse yet, without any context he defaults to your original opposition and stops which you find is actually the opposite of what you were begging for. With the last of your resolve you smother the whine that threatens to spill from your lips.

Without the mind numbing distraction of his ministrations you finally have a moment to breathe. “Wh-wh-“ You squeeze your eyes closed, the only way you can manage to pull your thoughts into some semblance of order in such close proximity to him and after a shallow, shaky breath, begin again.

“What do you want from me?” When your eyes reopen his bore into yours, pupils blown from more than just the weed. “I want you to give in to me.” He dips below your line of sight as he brings the knife up to your throat again, preventing you from following his lower descent. You feel him where you can’t see, pressed up close and personal with your neck, speaking his words against your flesh.

“I want to feel your little.” Kiss.

“Fragile.” Kiss.

“Sense of reality.” Kiss.

“Fucking shatter.” Kiss.

“As I make you come.” Kiss.

“All over my cock.” Kiss.

He wages war on your holy shores with his sordid tides. Corrodes your resolve with his sulfuric touch and it’s working, you’re beginning to slip. Can feel yourself losing this long, drawn-out battle of wills he’d pushed upon you. You’d been on a downward slope since the start and you’re nearing your wits end when it comes to fighting him. A victory he’s pulling from you one kiss at a time. “I wanna fuck you til you scream.”

You gasp inwardly as he sucks hard against your pulse point, teeth nipping into your supple skin, staking a claim you’ll no doubt be able to see in the morning, if you live to see it. You have to stifle the moan that follows, pushing at the cusp of your throat like a bird bound to fly the coop. He moves you then, no longer content with your quaint little cat and mouse game. Taking the reins for himself and pulling away from you, it’s like an oppressing weight has lifted from your shoulders but by that time it’s much too late.

He’s already moved around behind you, strategically cutting away the section of rope anchoring you to the chair, making you able to move but keeping your wrists bound at the small of your back. He tugs on your wrists and forces you to rise, coming back around your body and towering over you as you’re helpless but to move as he directs you. His legs bump yours, bullying you back until your calves hit the bed and you fall backwards onto the plush surface.

You catch one last glimpse of his eyes, possessed by lust before he’s flipping you over onto your stomach and pulling you back by your hips until your ass is perched at the edge of the bed. Panic begins to set in, like a buzzing in the back of your brain you realize you’re nearing a point from which there is no return.

You squirm and writhe, trying to flip yourself back over or slide off the bed until you feel him socket himself between your legs and plant a knee into the cleft of your ass, stopping your struggles. He applies downward pressure and your legs are forced to spread to accommodate the girth of his still clothed knee, grinding your heated sex up the length of his thigh as yours part, until his knee meets the bed.

“Still resisting me, doll? After the show you were putting on for me earlier, I can’t say I’m convinced.” He talks but all you can focus on is the jingle of his belt as he undoes it as he speaks. You feel him pull his leg away followed by the rustle of fabric and you know he’s undressing behind you.

“Wait! No, no! Wait!” But it’s too late, you feel the head of him pressing against your lips, sliding the blunt head of his cock up your slick seam, getting it nice and wet. Your body betrays you, salivating at the thought of finally getting fucked after such a long and unforgiving dry spell.

“I don’t think you really want me to.” And with that he pushes forward, sinking in inch by slow agonizing inch. He’s thick and any quarrels, any kind of protests or reservations you may have had dissipate with each newly fed inch. Unfortunately for you, you’re coming to terms with the fact that he may be right.

“Goddamn, babygirl.” You take in a sucking breath just to immediately expel it as a broken moan. When he’s buried to the hilt he stills there for a moment, enjoying the feel of your walls twitching around him, silently begging him for more.

He obliges, pulling out halfway only to plunge back in, his hips slapping against your ass, driving his cock deep in one fluid thrust. He picks up a steady pace like that, slow methodical thrusts while you both adjust to the stretch. “For all the fuss you made for us to get to this point you sure are gripping me awful tight, sunshine.”

You bury your face into the sheets to try and save some last shred of dignity, he may have invaded your walls but he will not hear your cries. That is, until he grabs a fistful of your hair and pulls, hauling your head back and forcing your moans to be heard by the heavens. With each thrust he pulls a noise from you, punched out of your lungs by the force of his cock alone. “And all these sweet little noises, all this for me, doll?”

You whimper and whine but it’s true. He’s fucking you so god damn good, so toe-curlingly thorough that you’re barely holding on. You told yourself that while he was busying himself inside of you, you’d come up with some sort of a plan, some kind of brilliant plot to get loose or get away or just get back at him. Twist and writhe in your binds until they’d have enough wiggle room to maybe save yourself but since he’d penetrated you all thoughts of escape plans or revenge plots had been put on hold. It had been so long since you’d had a real man in your bed that you lost yourself to it a bit.

He was handsome and confident and he knew what he was doing and on top of all that he’d made it his personal mission to see to it that you succumb to this. You’d fought, and fought as hard as you believed you could have and still gotten away with your life, and you were tired of fighting.

He lets go of your hair to get a better purchase on your hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh and yanking you back into him on every thrust, forcing you to take every inch of him as he splits you open from behind. Your back is forced to arch for him like this, pushing your head back into the sheets, lucky for you because you nearly start to wail with the devastating pleasure this new angle provides him, to your chagrin. Though little it matters, you’re beyond the ability to hold back anything from him.

You groan out a low and defeat-addled “Fuck.” into the sheets and he knows he’s got you. He speeds up a bit as you feel a dark, victorious chuckle quake out of him and into you. “Yeah, doll? Just like that, hmm?” He pounds you into the mattress, the frame of it knocking loudly against the wall and you can’t comprehend how he’s still so damn cocky, how he’s even still coherent when in two seconds flat of being buried inside you he’s rendered you stupid.

If he’d meant for you to answer he’d be sorely disappointed, as all you could manage were a range of moans, whimpers and whines. It seemed to suit him though as he continued on without any response, taunting you while laying waste to you from above. “Just think, babygirl. We could’ve been doing this so much sooner if you’d have just given into me from the start.”

“All that resistance, all the fight and for what, doll? Just to end up cockdrunk beneath me in the end just like I knew you’d be.” You feel him lean down over you, dwarfing your hunched frame with his as his mouth hovers just behind the shell of your ear to whisper.

“I told you from the start, I know you. I know everything about you, I know the things you never tell anyone, things you’re too embarrassed to speak of. I know about the things you won’t even admit to yourself. Every filthy, depraved thought you’ve ever had. All your darkest fantasies, all your most shameful desires. And you know what else?”

There’s gooseflesh rising on your skin and you can feel it building, pooling low in your belly. His steady thrusts, the weight of him overtop of you, his silky deviant voice in your ear. He’s driving you insane and closer, ever closer to your impending climax.

He’s got you held raptly on the edge. Clinging to his every word, his every move, his every whim. He nips at the shell of your ear as he continues to fuck you while fucking with your head. “I can tell by the way your breathing is picking up, the way you’ve gone almost totally silent, the way you’re clenching down on me...” He groans in response to your body's immediate reaction, seemingly tightening on command as he speaks so obscenely of you, his voice dropping into a low, strained growl. “…that you’re getting so close for me, aren’t you, doll?”

You feel one of his hands sliding off your hip and snaking down your body into the crook of your thighs, your eyes widen as you feel the pads of his index and middle finger make contact with your swollen clit and start to make slow, tight circles. The contact has your already sensitive nerves sparking and you seize up beneath him as you careen violently towards coming, your eyes squeezing shut as you completely surrender yourself to him. Release the last of your resolve and give into the potent, raw euphoria that threatens to envelope you and swallow you whole. “Fuck, yes!!”

You arch up into him from below, pressing your hips up into his as you race towards the tidal wave of pleasure rushing towards you. “That’s it, babe, just like that. Fucking come for me, come all over my cock.” Your orgasm crashes through you, drowning in its intensity. Your hands tighten into fists, nails digging into the palms of your hands as your toes curl where they rest overtop of his combat boots. He fucks you through it, dragging it out and grinding into the hot, tight clutch of your spasming walls.

You vaguely feel him shifting behind you through the fog of pleasure. Your eyes open when he nestles in just beside you, one arm outstretched, his camera clutched in his grasp. You hardly have a second to register it before it blinds you with its flash. You turn your head to the side only to be met with the dark endless pits that are the eyes of his mask. At some point or another he’d slipped it back on, leaving you the only identifiable person in your impromptu little photo shoot.

“This one’s gonna be the best of the lot. When baby finally broke.” Humiliation swells within you, sobering the high you’d just climbed down from. The horror of what you’ve just committed to falls over you like a dark cloud and you begin to squirm in place beneath him, but still sheathed fully inside you as he is, there’s little you can do.

His arms clamp down on either side of you, restricting your range of motion as he pipes up confidently in your ear. “I never took you for a selfish lover, babe. You got yours, now it’s my turn.” He pulls off of you and you take the opportunity to flip around, it takes you a few tries before you’re facing him again.

The mask stares down at you with its sympathetic gaze, his shirt is rucked up and his pants and boxers are pulled down low, revealing his chiseled abdomen and toned waist. He looks deliciously devilish above you, the mask adding an all new element to the allure that you hate to admit stirs the remnants of your arousal, especially when you recall how hard he’d just made you come. No matter how hot you must admit he looks, you’re done playing nice with him, readying yourself for a fight as he looms overhead.

He drinks in the sight of you. He must have angered you, whether from his words or his actions or a combination of the two, somewhere between your sweet surrender and the flash of the camera you’d flipped the script on him. It seems to matter little as you glare up at him from your place on the bed, your arms still tied uselessly behind your back, your legs pulled up in a semi-fetal position, feet poised and ready to strike and kick and block him at a moments notice, from below he still gets peeks of your glistening pussy, still wet and glossy from your very intense orgasm only moments prior. But he can tell by the way you’re eyeing him up you’re not entirely offput.

He laughs cruelly from above and it shakes your spirits a bit but serves to only ground you in your defiance. You wanted nothing more than to claw his eyes out of his head. “Oh doll stop, I can only get so hard.” And he is, the hardened length of him, coated in a sheen of your arousal is still held in one hand, stroking it idly as he peers down at you from behind the mask. You bare your teeth up at him in anger.

“That’s the way you wanna play it then? Fine by me.” He strikes, grabbing onto your ankles with both hands and pushing them up towards your chest. You push back with all the strength in your legs, calves and thighs straining against his weight and there’s a moment where you do counter him, where you’re able to hold off his advances but it’s only momentary as he doubles his efforts and you’re forcibly rolled back until you’re laid flat on the bed and your knees are smushed into your chest. His mask leers down at you, sad as ever just inches away.

He’d bested you again, and it wasn’t much of a struggle, despite the might of your anger. You feel him at your entrance again, cold from the time you’d spent separated. “NO!” You yelled up at him from below, still intent on fighting a battle long lost.

And then he’s pushing inside you again, driving the air out of your lungs in one fluid thrust and just like that he’s balls deep in you again. Hovering over you, buried deep and still just to stare down at you as you adjust to the girth of him again, just to watch you keen around him as the light of your defiance burning in the flames of your eyes begins to dim. He starts to move, planting an arm along either side of you as he pushes you down into the mattress.

He watches your internal struggles play across the features of your face. Your lips part and your brow furrows as you fight to stave off the treacherous part of you that already wants to turn cheek and submit to him again. With your eyes scrunched shut you only realize he’s shed himself of the mask again when his lips crash back to yours, ruthless in their reclamation of you.

You know from experience this is how he’d pulled you under the first time. So this time you fight it, pulling back your lips from his in order to bite into them. He’s quicker though, pulling away just a split second before you’re able to sink your teeth in. But your actions have consequences and, still supporting himself with one hand, he lifts the other and smacks it down firmly on one of your conveniently exposed flanks hard with a firm, open palm, making you cry out.

“If you wanted it rough doll, all you had to do was ask.”

He does it again and then one more time for good measure all in the same spot, until you’re wriggling underneath him and letting out sweet little sorrowful pleas.

His lips find yours again and you don’t dare lash out a second time, letting him have his way with you. You’d imagine, after making such a show of force to keep you in line he’d be domineering in his control over you, brutish in his kiss. But he’s actually rather gentle, almost playful and coaxing with his teeth and tongue. A stark contrast to the nature of his thrusts, eager and unrelenting in the snap of his hips to yours. He’s once more driven all coherent thought away, reduced to nothing more than a passive pile of dough below him, able to be kneaded and shaped in his image.

He lifts up and pulls your knees apart, peering down into the newly made gap, his eyes glued to the spot where the two of you are joined. Watching himself pull out and then drive back home into your soaking wet heat, mesmerized by it. Your head tips back as his dips down, capturing a perky nipple in between his teeth and suckling it as he feels you clench down around him in response. He knows just how to touch you, months spent watching you do it to yourself to know just what you like and now he’s intent to use this litany of knowledge, his area of expertise, to break you into submission.

Your arms begin to ache where they’re pinned beneath you and you squirm and shift to try and ease some of the pain. He takes notice and trails kisses up from your breast to your neckline where he speaks softly. “If you promise to be good, I’ll untie you.”

Any thought of being good in any sense of the word has refusals gathering on your tongue but the thought of being let loose is rather enticing on its own, your arms and shoulder shriek at you to jump at the chance but you hold your tongue and twist away from him.

“Oh come on now, you can’t stay mad at me forever, doll.” You feel one hand slip down over your navel and press, applying pressure to both the bulge of him nestled deep inside you and the bulk of your wrists tied behind you. You groan low at the mix of discomfort and shooting pleasure that has your already fractured mind splitting at the seams.

Your mouth cracks open but reluctance keeps you quiet. “Say it with me. ‘I swear I’ll be good.’ Just five little words and I’ll make the pain go away.”

“I s-swear.” It’s a start, but not exactly what he’s looking for. He pushes down just ever so harder, rutting into you and making you howl out. “All of it, babygirl.”

“I swear! I swear I’ll be good! Please!” He ceases before wrapping one arm around you and lifts, pulling you up and against him. You’re pushed up into the warmth of his chest, your chin jutting out over the cliff of one broad shoulder, leaving you neck to neck. You can feel the heat of his skin against yours, the scent of his sweat mixing with his cologne fills your sinuses, pungent and stinging and intoxicating all the same, you find yourself breathing it in as he makes quick work of slicing through your binds.

With a final tug your arms are free and you immediately pull them back around towards the front of your body to alleviate the ache but somehow they wind up wrapping around him, almost clinging to him as he lets you down gently to fall back to the bed. You go, reluctantly and before you can come back to your wits to come up with what to do with your hands, he’s grabbed them, one in each of his. He presses them down into the bed as he resumes fucking you.

The pleasure starts to build again but as much as you detest it, there is no stopping it. You can feel him losing himself to it too. He becomes less watchful, less coherent as his head dips down next to yours and he plants kisses like flags, marking over the territory of your skin. He starts talking into your skin. Rumbling out sweet, nonsensical, outlandish declarations between kisses as he draws closer to his release. Promises made into the sacred altar of your flesh as he fucks you both senseless.

You hear scraps and bits, torn between being lost to the euphoria and coherent enough to make out his pleasure drunk ramblings. You hear him promise to never let you go, never to make that same mistake again, never to stray from the path if he’s granted just this one thing. It becomes increasingly clear he’s talking to someone or something, holding a conversation you can’t keep up with as you’re privy to only half of it, and only bits and pieces of that half are discernible in your present state.

You feel him pick up speed with a renewed vigor, thrusting in and out of you at a frenzied pace as you both near your release. You feel one of his hands slip from yours and the next time you’re aware of its presence it’s holding a knife to your neck for the umpteenth time of the night. No matter how many times you find yourself in this position you can’t get used to the shock of the blade, the feel of the edge of it so very close to the soft skin of your neck, that little leap your heart does in your chest.

“My name’s Danny. And I wanna hear you say it when you come, or you won’t live to come down from it, do you understand?” Your eyes squeeze shut as you draw closer to the edge, even despite the threat of death. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” He feels you buck up into him, chasing his thrusts at his praise and doubles down on it. “Such a good fucking girl for me.” Your head tips back away from the blade but also inadvertently exposing your throat to him in the process, a sight that only spurs him on. Like a sacrificial lamb you give yourself to him willingly and it’s almost too perfect for him to bear.

“Fuck me.” He growls, feeling his balls tighten as you start to clamp down around him. “Come with me, doll. I wanna feel you come again.” You do, his command pushes you over the edge and he follows right behind, just as soon as his name falls from your lips in a desperate, pleasure drunk whine. His hips stutter against yours as his climax rocks through him. Your eyes open in time to see his head tip back and his eyes glow a deep, ominous, crimson shade. Your mouth drops open as you feel his seed fill you to the brim, hot and heavy and deep in your belly.

You blink and it’s gone, his eyes are the same brown they’d always been, they fall to yours abruptly and a smirk as wicked as sin tugs at one corner of his lips. You blink again and then once more trying to replicate what you’d seen but you can’t. He bends down, still sheathed inside you but softening by the moment and recaptures your lips in a searing kiss.

One you give into, at this point you figure whatever hell you’d woken up to, whatever ill will you’d stumbled upon must be almost over, best to end it on good terms and leave this horrible nightmare scenario with your life intact. The sooner you get him out of the house the sooner you can get up and get dressed and run to the store. It’s unclear in his haste to have you if he’d stopped long enough to consider protection but you really doubt it.

He doesn’t make it hard to enjoy, the way his lips graze passionately over yours, his tongue slipping along the line of your lower lip teasingly before sucking it in between his lips. You get lost like that, intertwined and still falling from two of the best orgasms you’d had in well over a year.

You come to terms with that as he pulls out and climbs off of you, his knife still held in one hand. “You thirsty?” He asks politely and you find that you are, indeed, very thirsty. You nod at him and he points the tip of the knife in your direction. “Don’t move.” You nod cutely, hoping to stay in his good graces as he turns and heads into the bathroom. You hear the tap and after a moment he returns, glass in hand.

He hands it over as you slide to the edge of the bed, sitting up to accept it. You drink eagerly, it isn’t until the last drops slide down the back of your throat that you register the bitter aftertaste. Your eyes snap to his immediately, untrusting. “Sorry, doll. I couldn’t just leave you as is. It’s not something I wanted to do, especially after all the fun we’ve had, but it’s a necessary step to ensure our future.”

You drop the glass and it shatters on the hardwood, fragments of glass spreading far and wide in all directions and he quickly moves forward to catch you as you begin to fall. You fight him at first, intent on making good on your desire to see his eyeballs ripped from his head in your last breaths but your limbs soon lose their prowess as your body loses its strength.

You try to speak but only slurs come out, the room spins and tilts wildly. He shushes you and slides you into bed and under the covers. “Shhh, it’s ok. It’s just to help you sleep. We’ll figure everything out in the morning. I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”

As you drift off you feel him pulling the soft, silk mask back over your eyes just as he’d found you and hear the distant, dreamy call of him saying. “Sleep tight, babygirl.”