#all the glories of fortune

[marypsue]

I just finished watching the 1966 Hammer flick Plague of the Zombies, and I'm fascinated by it. The premise is that the squire of a small Cornish village, who was raised in the Caribbean before being called home to take over after his father's death, has turned to voodoo to try to get workers to reopen the tin mines that made the village's fortune.

The movie sits neatly in an uneasy horror space between the original horror of the zombie - of your will being overridden by another's, of continuing to be enslaved even after death should have released you from all earthly woes - and Romero's ghouls and everything that they spawned. A nightmare sequence features hands pushing up out of fresh-dug graves, dead faces closing in all around one of our protagonists - but in the end, the only person the zombies are truly dangerous to is the man who created them. The true horror of the story is the absolute power that the squire holds over the people of the village, made metaphorical as voodoo.

The tin mines were closed after multiple fatal accidents caused the men of the village to refuse to work there anymore, so the squire removed their ability to refuse by killing and raising them as zombies. At the end of the day, he owns these people, body and soul, and there's nothing that the police or the vicar or anyone else who is supposed to be responsible for the villagers' wellbeing can do, so long as the squire holds this position of absolute power.

If you feel you simply must transplant zombie horror based in voodoo into a white European context, I feel like using it to highlight the injustices of a system of government directly descended from feudalism is not the worst choice you could make.

[hyog-blog]

I love these dorks :D Best found family ever)))

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: my favorite 2024 reads

I read over 160 books this year. Let's fucking go.

Note: List excludes re-reads and sequels, I am however not above including franchise novels and tie-ins.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Dystopia. In a near future America, inmates on death row or with life sentences can choose to participate in death matches for entertainment. If they survive long enough - a rare case indeed - they regain their freedom. Among these prisoners are Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker, partners behind the scenes and close to the deadline of a possible release - if only they can survive for long enough. As the game continues to be stacked against them and protests mount outside, two women fight for love, freedom, and their own humanity. Chain-Gang All-Stars is bleak and unflinching as well as genuinely hopeful in its portrayal of a dark but all too real possible future.

Goddess of Filth by V. Castro

Horror novella. What starts as a drunken seance between friends ends with one of them chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Following that night, the formerly shy Fernanda has changed. While her family calls for priests, claiming her possessed by a demon, Fernanda’s friends believe what has taken up residence in her is something decidedly older. A quick read featuring female rage, desire and empowerment, this is a different twist on the typical possession story.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

Science fiction. A strange child lands on an isolated planet, scaring its inhabitants into handing him over into the hands of Nia Amani. As captain of a transport ship, Nia is not only the planet's only contact with the outside world, she is also a woman out of time, years compressing into months as she travels through space at high speeds. Now responsible for a child who doesn't speak and in a galaxy that wishes them ill, she must rethink exactly what she wants to do with her life, and what she's prepared to give up. Features multiple major queer characters.

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings

In an alternate version of our present, the witch hunt never ended. Women are constantly watched and expected to marry young so their husbands can keep an eye on them. When she was fourteen, Josephine's mother disappeared, leveling suspicions at both mother and daughter of possible witchcraft. Now, nearly a decade and a half later, Jo, in trying to finally accept her missing mother as dead, decides to follow up on a set of seemingly nonsensical instructions left in her will. Features a bisexual lead!

Cottonwood by R. Lee Smith

Science fiction romance. 20 years ago, aliens arrived on Earth, neither invaders nor diplomats but refugees. Now they are being kept in integration camps away from the human population, meaning Sarah has never met one before getting a job as a social worker in one of the camps, at which point the true treatment of the aliens at once become horrifyingly clear to her. Sanford, single father, has a decades long plan to flee the prison that is Earth, and maybe with Sarah's help it can finally reach fruition. Includes dark elements such as torture, sexual assault, and pet death.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Historical fantasy. Emily Wilde is a professor who prefers the company of faeries, dangerous but bound to rules she can understand, to that of humans, who she finds inexplicable. Working on her faerie encyclopedia, she travels on a research expedition to the faraway Hrafnsvik, hoping for some solitary months of study. Her hopes are dashed when Wendell Bambleby, rival scholar and possible faerie in hiding, arrives on her doorstep. But Wendell's aggravating presence is far from Emily's only problem, as the Hidden Folk of Hrafnsvik turns out to be far more dangerous than expected.

Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation by Catherynne M. Valente

In a ship carrying 20 000 colonists on a centuries long trip to the Andromeda galaxy, something has gone wrong. A small contingent of crew representing the various races on board has been woken up to find out why colonists are dying in their sleep, but the situation quickly gets worse. Soon a pathogen is spreading and jumping species, threatening the entire ship before it has even reached its goal. Tie-in novel for the Mass Effect games; while I love it a lot, you're unlikely to get the full experience unless you've also played the games.

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings

Two ships have gotten stuck in a rift in space, isolated outside of time. One of them is the Jonah, a ship dodging a generations long war against an alien species, carrying a small crew of smugglers, an unintended passenger, and a hijacker. The other ship is the Gallion, which arrived from 150 years in the future carrying an alien ambassador - and whose crew is awestruck at meeting the heroes of the Jonah, known to have ended the war. As the two crews struggle to understand each other's timelines, they must also work together to leave the rift before they're stranded forever. Multiple queer characters, however the main romance plotlines are m/f.

The Good Demon by Jimmy Cajoleas

Young adult horror. Clare has recently been put through a successful exorcism, but rather than help her, it has left her miserable. Clare's demon was her closest friend and had been for years, and without her Clare is left alone and lost. Set on getting her friend back, Clare starts seeking clues her demon seems to have left her, and in doing so starts finding dark, old secrets buried in the history of her home town.

Such Sharp Teeth by Kim Harrison

When her pregnant twin sister is left by her boyfriend, Rory decides to go back to her home town and stay with her for a time. But the town is also the home of old childhood trauma, and something wild is roaming the woods. When she gets attacked and mauled one night, Rory's successful life is changed forever. Lycanthropy used as a metaphor for female rage, trauma, and bad coping mechanisms.

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

Sherlock Holmes retelling, historical fantasy. After having been injured fighting a war against fallen angels, Doyle returns to London to survive on only a veteran's pension. To afford a place to live in the city, Doyle finds a housemate in Crow, an eccentric angel with a great curiosity for humans and a knack for solving crime. And London needs its protector - supernatural beings walk the streets, and a someone going by the name Jack the Ripper terrifies the citizens at night.

The Spider and Her Demons by sydney khoo

Young adult fantasy. All teenager Zhi wants is a normal life (and possibly for her harsh aunt to be a bit nicer), but it’s hard when she’s half spider demon. Every day she must conceal her true nature and hide in human guise. When she slips up and eats a man in front of her rich, aloof classmate Dior, Zhi thinks her life is over. But Dior has secrets of her own, and she is dead set on making herself a part of Zhi's life.

A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin

Urban fantasy. Two years ago, sorcerer Matthew Swift was killed. Today, he woke back up. And he isn't alone in his body, but rather in the company of the blue electric angels, who lived in the telephone lines and are now experiencing the world for the first time through him. Now, he seeks vengeance not only against the one who killed him, but also against the one who brought him back. Absolutely buck wild unique take on switching and merging pov betwen singular and plural.

The Fall that Saved Us by Tamara Jerée

Sapphic romance. Cassiel is of angelic heritage, raised to fight and kill demons alongside her family. But Cassiel has left the hunt and her family behind, wanting a normal life. For three years she's built a life for herself, cut off from her family, but now a demon has found her, sent to collect her soul. Except, the demon isn't any more interested in following the orders of her family than Cassiel is. Can they work together to free themselves from the expectations placed on them?

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Fantasy. A small band of heroes prophesied to defeat an evil king must follow the "spider's path"; to find the way they seek the aid of dangerous, man-eating giant spiders. As spiders don't keep maps, their mage turns one of the spiders into human guise, forcing it to lead their way if it is ever to return to its true form. Both dark and immensely funny, Spiderlight is at once a love letter to classical heroic fantasy quests and a deconstruction of the idea of 'evil races' in the fantasy genre.

Providence Girls by Morgan Dante

Sapphic horror re-imagining of several of H.P. Lovecraft's works from the point of view of the women sidelined as victims in the originals. Forced to abandon her not-quite-human children to escape a cult seeking to sacrifice her, Lavinia nearly dies from exposure in the woods. She's saved by the prickly Asenath, and they find themselves growing close as Lavinia regains her strength. But Asenath's own dark past is catching up, as she too begins to transform into something not entirely human.

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

Dystopia with especially creative world-building and a sapphic romance. In a vague past, something caused a group of humans to become trapped in an alien world, where the laws of reality themselves react in hostile ways to humanity's attempt at life and stability. To survive, strict rules and censorship are put in place, with harsh punishments for any overstep. Vanja is sent to the distant colony Amatka to do market research. In her research, she starts finding out the truth of the laws she chafes under, and begins to wonder whether life is really worth living if change isn't made.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Having grown up on the heavily militarized Gaea Station, Kyr has spent her whole life training to become a soldier, aiming to bring power back to humanity after Earth was destroyed in an alien war decades ago. But when she is relegated to the nursery to birth future sons and her brother is sent on a suicide mission, Kyr breaks the rules for the first time in her life. Breaking out an alien prisoner and working alongside her brother's asshole friend, she flees Gaea Station to save her brother and bring glory to humanity. But along the way she finds out there’s much she doesn't know, about Gaea station and her own family both.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

Alternate history. In 1952, history changes when a massive meteorite hits the Earth, killing thousands and kickstarting a global climate change that will soon make the planet uninhabitable. To save humanity from extinction, the world begins to come together to bring us to space before it's too late. Elma York, WASP pilot in the war and expert mathematician, is hoping to become one of the astronauts, but finds that she and her women friends have to work harder than anyone else to be given room in the mission.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Young adult fantasy. Anequs is a young indigenous woman in a land ruled by Anglish conquerors. When Anequs finds a dragon egg and bonds with the hatchling, she is forced to travel away to attend an academy for dragon riders as one of only two indigenous students. Pulled between the traditions of her family and the ideas of the conquerors - many of which want her out of the academy no matter what - Anequs must find her place in the world as a dragon rider.

What Doesn’t Break by Cassandra Khaw

Fantasy, character study. You’re unlikely to get the full experience of What Doesn’t Break unless you’re also a viewer of Critical Role. It follows the backstory of Laudna, undead sorceress and warlock with the ghostly presence of the necromancer who once murdered her keeping residence in her mind and tugging at her strings. For thirty years, Laudna wanders the outskirts of society, forced into a lonely existence by her visibly undead status, and tries to understand what she wants to do with her un-life.

[witchsabre]

❝ What would a coven even look like in Thedas?❞

( or A detailed breakdown of Faust's family, upbringing, the downfall and Faustian deal that suits their name, and why they consider themselves the main character in an action flick )

A tiny, home-grown cult, probably, though that sounds a little harsh and is a bit of an outdated way to talk about a group of skittish but well-meaning apostates. Certainly fitting into classic 'coven' aesthetics- witches in the woods, potions, candles, herbs, and wands.

Faust was raised by this small, tight-knit group of mages, most of them apostates, who found safety and salvation with each other in the outskirts of the Hinterlands. They were a generally happy bunch of woodland witches. Content with lot they had chosen and focused on taking care of the family they had created above all else.

Faust's mother, Vaya, brought them there as an infant and they grew to consider the seven other mages just as much their family as any blood relation. The siblings Lucia and Battista were the closest to Faust in age, though they were still both at least a decade older. Some of Faust's troublemaking spirit can be attributed to the twins' antics.

Tal-Vasharoth mage Aslit taught the little one how to spar with wooden swords, which were dutifully supplied by his husband and resident craftsman Yevriel ( or Yev, as designated by the toddler Faust and adopted by the rest of the household ). Yev built the cabin himself, as well as all the unique additions and expansions over the years.

Buona was their best ( and only ) contact to the outside world, as she had befriended a few of the smaller farms around the Hinterlands to trade with. Faust's only sanctioned excursion beyond the bounds was under her supervision and in the dark of night- Faust wanted to visit the druffalo for their birthday.

Still, they stayed secluded, safe, and this little adventure was not approved of by the others. Sumie was one of the most cautious about this isolation and the mastermind behind the wards that made a barrier around their home.

The coven's paranoia was not wholly unfounded, most of them wanted, all of them shunned and rejected from their homes one way or another. This isolation was a necessity as much as it was a choice. Heilwig was the storyteller of the family, and passed each of their stories onto the youngest, though always with the age-appropriate amount of flair and fairy tale twists. She's the one who initially sparked the young mage's interest in fantastical stories and a world full of grand escapes and adventures.

The Mage-Templar war only emphasized this group's desire to keep to themselves, to stay safe and out of the way. As the fighting in the Hinterlands grew closer, the bounds that they confined themselves to grew smaller. There was talk of leaving their home that the young Faust listened to through closed doors. It excited the curious child, who had no experience with the dangers of the world, and cautionary tales were hardly a match against a naive, restless spirit.

Sumie had suggested they move the barrier again, even closer to the safety of the cabin, when Faust threw their fit. They wanted to go on an adventure, they complained. They wanted friends! Stressed and scared, the child's whining was shut down harshly and without room for argument by their caretakers. Faust packed a small knapsack as soon as they were sent to their room. It was intended to be a short trip to one of the nearby farms, just a little ways out of bounds. Never mind that Faust didn't know how to get to these farms or that there were Templars and Apostates alike outside their doorstep. They were a child. A stubborn, restless child.

It was not adventure that Faust found. It was a Templar, searching for the witch that one of the nearby farmers had alluded to. Faust was caught by this Templar and played like a fiddle - they had never met someone else before! Maybe he could be a friend! His request was simple, really, he just wanted to know where they came from. If Faust told him, he bargained, then they could do whatever they want. They could go free! Faust was already imagining the impressed look on Heilwig's face when they returned with all kinds of new stories.

The cabin was found shortly after, the barrier having served its purpose for many years turning away strangers finally at its end.

Faust returned that same night to nothing but the burning skeleton of their home. There were bodies, but they were hard to recognize from the char and none of them responded to their cries. The Templar kept his promise. The perpetrators were long gone, and Faust went free, the only of the coven spared of a hunt.

Their life from that point on was made of stories and fantasies about what had happened to them. Once they stumbled into Redcliffe, they became little more than a tragic orphan who told tall tales about a monster that stalked the land making unfair deals and kind spirits that haunted the trees and took revenge on mean men.

Faust was undoubtedly an odd child- years behind in socialization and often frightening other kids with their stories.

Fantasy and escapism became their protectors against the world they suddenly found themselves in. It made things less frightening for the sheltered, lost child. They made up romanticized, idealized versions of everything that happened to them- these ranged from innocent white lies to a complete fabrication of events, much to the dismay of the adults and homes who passed them around until they were old enough to be on their own.

They aren't stupid ( in fact, they're fairly smart and would've excelled if they had the wherewithal to sit still in a classroom ), and they aren't so delusional to the point that they still deny their history today. But that coping mechanism sticks to them like a nasty habit, and they still tend to see their life as an adventure straight from a book, pushing them to pursue curiosities and belittle dangers for the sake of excitement. There is still a young child inside of them looking to gather as many stories and experiences as they can to bring home, to prove to themselves that they were right- or, at the very least, that their mistake wasn't for nothing.

[caesarclowningaround]

Fandom(s): Bloedlink, Trust, A Dangerous Fortune Rating: E Chapter(s): 3 Ship(s): Mickey Miranda/Rico, Primo Nizzuto/Rico Summary: The Lighthouse AU! Primo and Rico have come to the little island in the middle of nowhere to tend to the lighthouse, but as Primo continuously refuses to teach the new wickie in his charge, the more Rico finds his grip on reality beginning to slip. There's something Primo isn't telling him. Rico is determined to find out what it is or lose himself in the process.

Note(s): For the @marwan-simposium‘s Year of Marwan Event, for the May prompts: “Mermaid AU,” “Dub Con,” and “What did you just say?”

Thank you @pigsinablanketfort for being my beta for this!!! <33

PLEASE HEED THE TAGS!! and enjoy ;)

[woodcries]

i like a good romance but i also like when. a character gives up/puts a romance on hold for the sake of something that will bring them happiness like traveling the world. makes the yearning better and makes them more well rounded.

[prokopetz]

Something I love about The Far Roofs is how much of a swerve its premise is if you're coming to it uninitiated.

Okay, so there's these talking rats with a culture of swashbuckling heroism – basic Redwall/Reepicheep stuff.

Also, there's a magical realm called the Far Roofs which exists above every human community, and that's where the rats go adventuring; a little weird, but you can see the precedents in popular fiction. It's like wainscot fantasy taken to its logical-yet-absurd conclusion.

By default, the game wants you to play as a fictionalised version of your (presumably human!) self and go up onto the Far Roofs to have adventures with the rats. All right, now it's coming together: it's like isekai fantasy meets The Muppet Show, with you as the obligatory human character, right?

Then we get to the nature of those adventures: the rats have this whole culture built around questing against beings they call "the Mysteries" – beasties with names like Harpy and Goblin and Unicorn. So basically it's a bunch of muppety rats on the roofs fighting Dungeons & Dragons monsters, and you go up and help them do it. Great.

And then you get to what the Mysteries are actually like, and... well, I'm going to let the following excerpt carry the weight here. (This particular bit of text also appears in a previously published work by the same author, so I'm not giving anything away that's still under wraps.)

Unicorn, which is named Numinous, dwells three steps away and beyond the world, but most often in the Farthest Roofs, where the Steppes of the Sky come down to touch the Vast and Earthen Court. There it is stepping upwards from the world, as it has always been stepping upwards from the world, caught in a moment of transcendent glory that does not complete. It simply is. Melanthios heard the footsteps of Unicorn. Melanthios heard the ringing of Unicorn’s bells. So Melanthios chased Unicorn off to the Farthest Roofs, and Melanthios did not return. Anton and Karel, who were his sons, were wiser than their father. They heard the bells but they did not follow. Instead, they memorized the scent. They gathered swords, and ropes, and nets, and they went out. They brought food and water and all manner of gear. They clung to the roofs with all four feet wheresoever after Unicorn they went. It proved no good. Anton looked up, and Karel to his brother. The world came down— That’s what Karel said. He had time to look away. He had time to bury his head in his paws. He did not see the fullness of Unicorn’s presence. He only saw Anton his brother become unreal. In the light of the moment of the Unicorn, Anton became as a paper figure in the fire. His reality burned out. His shadow seared into the roofs behind him. Where he’d stood, for just a moment, the Steppes of the Sky came down to touch the Vast and Earthen Court; and Anton was gone away. So Karel ran and Karel ran and Karel ran from the Unicorn; and all his life, he envied but was more fortunate than his brother.

These are gods. You're going up there to kill God.

Like, it's still silly wainscot fantasy with funny talking rats, but there's that tension. It's like if Fraggle Rock occasionally took a hard turn to serious cosmic horror – Lord Dunsany by way of Jim Henson – and that tonal juxtaposition was treated as something unremarkable.

Basically what I'm saying is go back The Far Roofs.

[disregardcanon]

i've been reading catching fire for the first time this year and i don't, personally, think that the quarter quell was a "smart move" for snow and the capitol even if things went the way that he wanted them to and katniss and peeta and all the rest died and he got a victor he could control. sure, it would have taken out katniss. but taking out katniss wasn't actually going to be the quick fix he wanted it to be.

because even the capitol citizens were upset about all of this. the capitol citizens, who had grown so used to having pretty victors to smush together like dolls and gush over and show that people from the districts CAN do something and make their lives better. it's the american bootstraps ideal made hideously manifest.

yes, they've been fed this propaganda diet that the games are proper retribution for a crime that happened a lifetime ago, but they're also supposed to bring out these Ideals TM the capitol claims to hold to and then the Beautiful Shiny Model Minority winner gets fame and fortune and safety and a promotion into capitol society. because they beat the odds and they won all these things! they *deserve* this!

now all of the privileged masses have these strong parasocial relationships where they thought they'd see their favorite athletes become safe and glamorous and happy. the social contract says that the capitol citizens get to have these lovely dolls to play with and now he's taking their toys away in a way that shows the propaganda never held any truth in the first place. if we don't actually value these people and what they represent, then why do we actually do it? (it's the cruelty. but the average capitol citizen doesn't understand that the cruelty is the point, because it took snow years and years and years of building up that Capacity for Cruelty, and most people never get to that point. there has to be a pretty facade over this for it to run smoothly for those average citizens like the prep team. and now it's not there anymore.)

and that's not even mentioning the different sort of horror this becomes for the districts, as the idea that's been sold to the wealthier districts is that if these children win they get fame and fortune and protection for life. but you're dragging them back into the horror that was supposed to buy their eternal glory? the careers aging out this year don't even have their "chance" in the arena to make their mark and gain their fortune. they'll just be losing some of their mentors in a pointless rehash.

in the poorer districts, perhaps there is some relief because their kids are safe this year but that means their only victors are being shipped off to die instead. and then their kids who won't have a chance in hell next year! because the hunger games are a perpetual motion exploitation machine, and the only way people were able to be numbed to it was figuring out the rules and then gritting their teeth and living their lives. but the rules are out the window, now. those rules that were supposed to make this terrible system something they could navigate and grit their teeth and suffering through are being blown to bits because snow tried to stomp out the tiniest embers instead of letting them burn out.

[daydreamerdrew]

Iron Man (1968) #63

[ridingtorohan]

The Tulpar crew's reactions to walking in on you and post-crash Curly

𓇻 content warning. absolutely nothing explicit. can be viewed as dub-con given curly's circumstance, but I promise he consented. anya's reaction mentions sexual assault (jimmy to anya, but mainly she suspects reader did it to curly) and jimmy's mentions abuse (jimmy to curly) and a bit of voyeurism.

𓇻 enjoy! feel free to like, reblog, or send in asks!

Masterlist

Daisuke handles it like a champ. In the way that means he very much doesn't.

Absolute mess, apologizing profusely as he backs away, shielding his eyes dramatically. Hits the sides of the door on his way out. Both sides. He pin-balled.

Recovers fast but can't look at you in the eyes for a long time without picturing you like that.

"So how does it work when he's, y'know?"

So curious that it's not even funny.

Tries to get Curly to tell him the facts but Curly just does his laugh rattle

Honestly, he doesn't treat either of you differently, but he grins SUPER wide each time you go in to check in on Curly

"Get it, Captain!!!!"

May or may not time you just to tease you about it (gets so red if you tease him back)

Processes then immediately walks out

"Is this what kids do these days?"

Knew about you and curly's relationship/situation so he isn't surprised.

But you'll get his fatherly look of disappointment.

"At least make sure you're not snapping every last bone of his, alright?"

Doesn't tell anybody else because he knew it was consensual from the sounds you both made (he definitely asked Curly afterward just to make sure)

If you take a lot of shift work watching curly, he'll intercept and roll his eyes, "Jesus, let the poor guy rest"

Freezes, processes, then storms right up, eyes wild and voice high. "What are you doing?!"

She all but separates you from curly as fast as she can, tears in her eyes.

Curly sure as hell never protected her from Jimmy but she wouldn't let you abuse one of her patients.

Might be able to be coaxed down.

Shift work with Curly is outright canceled for everyone. At least until Curly conveys that no, he very much wanted that, (head nods go a long way, people).

Anya is still suspicious and weary. It's months before she stops hovering by the door, but a part of her is relieved, too.

The absolute last person you want walking in.

Stands there like a creep, eyes assessing. Memorizing.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He asks layer with a wrinkled nose, as if you're the one with the problem.

Honestly becomes kind of bitchy about the whole ordeal

Watches you a lot more intently that it becomes uncomfortable

Definitely imagines how you looked on that cot with the former captain

Passive aggressive with you afterwards, but fortunately, because nobody is really alone anymore, he can't do anything to you about it. If he had been attracted to you before and the crash never happened, you'd be in hot water.

Curly, however, gets the short end of the stick. Have you heard the audio of what Jimmy does to Curly the second time when giving him pills? Yep, he beats him more routinely

After all, how is it fair that Curly has doomed them all but still gets the glory?

[nostalgebraist]

I feel like I've had the same experience several times now: someone does a new translation of a non-English literary classic, and all the critics praise it to the moon, so I go and try to read it, and it's turns out it's just . . . bad? Like, really bad? And weirdly bad?

A while back, I wrote about the case of Pevear and Volokhonsky. Here's another example, which I encountered while doing background research for my novel Almost Nowhere.

----

One of my novel's major characters is a literary translator, famous for his rendition of the Persian epic poem Shahnameh ("Book of Kings").

To help me write this character, I tried to read the Shahnameh myself. I started out – where else? – with the translation that seemed to be the gold standard, and which was certainly the most critically lauded.

Namely, the 2006 translation by Dick Davis, in prose with occasional shifts into verse.

Here's how the Shahnameh begins, in Davis' translation:

What does the Persian poet say about the first man to seek the crown of world sovereignty? No one has any knowledge of those first days, unless he has heard tales passed down from father to son. This is what those tales tell: The first man to be king, and to establish the ceremonies associated with the crown and throne, was Kayumars. When he became lord of the world, he lived first in the mountains, where he established his throne, and he and his people dressed in leopard skins. It was he who first taught men about the preparation of food and clothing, which were new in the world at that time. Seated on his throne, as splendid as the sun, he reigned for thirty years. He was like a tall cypress tree topped by the full moon, and the royal farr shone from him. All the animals of the world, wild and tame alike, reverently paid homage to him, bowing down before his throne, and their obedience increased his glory and good fortune.

And here is the same opening, in the 1905 translation by Arthur and Edmond Warner (which I only discovered much later in the process of writing Almost Nowhere):

What saith the rustic bard? Who first designed To gain the crown of power among mankind? Who placed the diadem upon his brow? The record of those days hath perished now Unless one, having borne in memory Tales told by sire to son, declare to thee Who was the first to use the royal style And stood the head of all the mighty file. He who compiled the ancient legendary, And tales of paladins, saith Gaiúmart Invented crown and throne, and was a Sháh. This order, Grace, and lustre came to earth When Sol was dominant in Aries And shone so brightly that the world grew young. Its lord was Gaiúmart, who dwelt at first Upon a mountain; thence his throne and fortune Rose. He and all his troop wore leopard-skins, And under him the arts of life began, For food and dress were in their infancy. He reigned o'er all the earth for thirty years, In goodness like a sun upon the throne, And as a full moon o'er a lofty cypress So shone he from the seat of king of kings. The cattle and the divers beasts of prey Grew tame before him; men stood not erect Before his throne but bent, as though in prayer, Awed by the splendour of his high estate, And thence received their Faith.

Now, I can't speak at all about the source text. I have no idea how faithful or unfaithful these two translations are, and in what ways, in which places.

Still, though. I mean like, come on.

This is an epic poem about ancient kings and larger-than-life heroes.

This is a national epic, half myth and half history, narrating the proud folkloric lineage claimed by a real-world empire.

There is a way that such things are supposed to sound, in English. And it sure as hell isn't this:

What does the Persian poet say about the first man to seek the crown of world sovereignty?

Excuse me? That's your opening line? I thought I was reading a poem, here, not taking a fucking AP World Literature exam!

----

Postscript

Some of the critical praise for the Davis translation, quoted on the back cover of my copy (emphasis mine):

"A poet himself, Davis brings to his translation a nuanced awareness of Ferdowsi's subtle rhythms and cadences. His "Shahnameh" is rendered in an exquisite blend of poetry and prose, with none of the antiquated flourishes that so often mar translations of epic poetry." (Reza Aslan, The New York Times Book Review) "Thanks to Davis's magnificent translation, Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh live again in English.” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post) "A magnificent accomplishment . . . [Davis’s translation] is not only the fullest representation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece in English but the best." (The New York Sun)

[absurdthirst]

The Future of Rome {Marcus Acacius x F!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 16.6k

Warnings: Mentions of orgies, whores, cuckolding, voyeurism, oral sex (male and female receiving), cream pie, breeding, mentions of feeding kink, vaginal sex, pregnancy, betrayal, conspiracy, murder

Comments: When Caracalla is unable to father a child on you, his empress, he enlists General Marcus Acacius to be his proxy between your thighs. Needing his general's seed in his efforts to father the next ruler of Rome.

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

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|| MasterList || Marcus Acacius MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

Resisting the urge to roll your eyes, you watch as your husband, Emperor Caracalla of Rome, paces in the large room, screaming and shouting like an overgrown child. At times, it feels like that is what he is, a child. A man child who controls the largest empire in the world, alongside his brother Geta. The two of them engaged in squabbles that would have all of the citizens of Rome demanding new leadership if they knew of them. “You must carry a child!” He hisses, turning and glaring at you as if you are at fault for the monthly flow of blood that comes between your thighs like clockwork. “How have you not been bred yet? I fill you nearly every week.” His eyes narrow and he stops his stride to turn towards you. “Are you doing something? Taking some tonic to prevent a child from growing?” 

You sigh, shaking your head. “Of course I would not.” You tell him. “It is my duty to provide you with an heir. Before Geta.” You know your husband wishes to best his brother by having a child before he does. “You are still fucking your concubines.” You remind him. “None of them have fallen pregnant with your bastard. Perhaps your seed is bad.” You could be risking his wrath by telling him what no hippocrates would, but he has never sired one bastard and he indulges in orgies and women all the time. You have no love for the husband you had been forced to marry by your father in return for Rome not destroying your homelands.

Caracalla’s eyes grow wide and he hisses, striding over to you and you brace yourself as he hits you across the face with the back of his hand. You gasp and he looms over you, “you dare to insult me like that, uxor? I am divine. Ordained by the gods and you are? Some whore daughter of a King who wilted under the glory of the Roman army. You are fortunate I chose you to be Empress. An honor I bestow upon you and you have the gall to question my seed.” He rants but he knows you could be true. He longs to have an heir before his brother and even if he fucks you every day, you still bleed. He has never fathered a bastard. You cup your cheek, keeping your head down and he sighs, “we must seek a solution.” He declares, frowning as he considers his options to ensure he beats his brother to the heir.

You bite your lip to keep from crying, knowing that tears would only incense the man you are married to even more. Caracalla does not like to see you cry, even if he is cruel and cutting. When he punishes you for any perceived slight. Tears are a sign of weakness in his eyes and he will not have you shed them in his presence. “What solution would you have?” You know he cannot seek out a healer, the risk of rumor would be too great. Any kind of whisper about this would make its way back to Geta. 

He paces in front of the balcony, the linens flowing in the breeze. “I need an heir who will be strong, a fighter. I need a boy. I need you to give birth to the next heir. We need to ensure that you get pregnant as soon as possible.” He murmurs, speaking his mind and he finally turns to you. “We need to have someone else get you pregnant. We need - General Marcis Acacius.” He declares, eyes wide.

You frown, trying to recall what the man looks like. He has been away from Rome for nearly two years, since just after you had married Caracalla. “He looks nothing like you.” You point out.

“I don’t need him to look like me. I need a boy and he’s a strong fighter. He will give our child the characteristics he needs to lead Rome and her army.” He declares, “you will fuck him when he returns.” He orders and you swallow harshly, knowing you will struggle to have relations with a man that isn’t your husband but you have no choice but to do as he demands.

“I will gift you to him to fuck.” He continues on, a wild and honestly frightening smile splitting his face. “It will be an honor, for fighting so valiantly for Rome.” He isn’t talking to you, but rather plotting out what will happen. You can’t quite recall what Marcus Acacius looks like, but you hope that he will be quick to cum like Caracalla, or at least his seed will take root quickly.

****

Marcus looks up at the marbled entrance as he arrives at the palace to meet the Emperors and tell them about his success in person. He’s sent messengers but he must tell them of his accomplishments rather than be allowed to return to his home to relax. He sighs as he adjusts the white and gold tunic and armor that suffocates him. It’s for display, not ideal for battle, and he knows the Emperors will have a feast planned soon after his report and he’s expected to be on display. He scratches his cheek as he is escorted through the halls until he arrives in the grand hall where the Emperors are waiting. He strides to stand before them and bows his head, “Rome is in your hands.” He vows, “we have conquered Africa.” He announces, “for you and for Rome.”

Dressed in snowy white silk and gold, you are sitting off to the side, ignored by your husband and brother as they had waited for the general’s approach. You had heard the crowds outside the palace, the roars echoing dimly and you sat up slightly from the chaise when the doors had opened. Finding a much different man than you had expected walking confidently towards them. He’s older than you remembered, but his gray hair is still pleasant as it mixes with his darker locks. He’s handsome, not the sharp nosed beauty of your fair husband, but darker, broader. His nose is curved and his eyes are the color of night from where you sit. You want to see them up close. He’s large, larger than Caracalla and you wonder if you are the whore some have whispered you must be, for you want to see what this man would be like inside you.

Caracalla cannot let his brother know his plan. No one can know. Geta greets Marcus who bows his head and his dark eyes flick over to you for a moment. When you arrived at the palace you were reluctant to marry Caracalla. He remembers hearing the rumors of your attempts to escape, and the way Caracalla treats you from guards that he served with. He clenches his jaw, standing up straight and the Emperors sing his praises so he offers them polite smiles. He’s sick of war. He’s tired of fighting an endless battle for more land when the Roman Empire is struggling. People cannot eat. Men are dying. It’s an endless grab for power and the Emperors are not fighting for it themselves. “Tonight, we feast in your honor.” Geta declares, clapping Marcus on the back and he follows the Emperors to the head table where he will sit while the court and the senate celebrate his success.

When his eyes land on yours, a shiver races through your body. This is a man who has seen death. Dealt out harsh punishments and narrowly survived. He’s much more rugged, raw. So different from your spoiled and foppish husband. He should be a leader for Rome, rather than a man who has never seen war. You are ignored, so you undrape yourself from your seat and slowly stroll into the hall to join the festivities.

Marcus notices you as you sit down beside your husband and he’s taken back by how beautiful you are but he also sees the sadness in your eyes. The lifeless stare across the room tells him you’re lonely while your husband guzzles wine and cheers for the victory he played no physical part in. He does as is expected, eating and drinking his fill but he thinks about the starvation he witnessed, the poverty that the empire has caused from taxing too much and forcing more war on its people. “We shall acquire whores to pleasure you, General.” Geta insists, “you will be serviced until you feel rewarded for your victory for Rome.” The court cheers and Caracalla then leans in towards you, “return to your room. I want you ready to take the general.” He commands, whispering in your ear.

You don’t sigh, nodding and leaning in to kiss his cheek for show before you stand up and walk out of the room without looking back. Knowing the Emperor, he will want you nude and wearing some of the jewels that had been sent back to Rome as tribute. You have already been bathed and perfumed by your servants in anticipation of your husband fucking you tonight, but Caracalla always demands privacy in the wing of the palace you live in. His oddity will work in his favor for concealing who is planting his seed in your belly tonight.

Marcus is ready to head home when Caracalla whispers in his ear, “I wish to speak privately.” Marcus frowns as he pulls back to look into the manic eyes of the emperor and he knows he can never deny him. He nods and stands with the emperor. He bows to Geta even though the other emperor is busy with his tongue down a whore’s throat as the festivities begin. Caracalla dismisses his guards with a wave of his hand and he guides Marcus through the halls until he enters his private chambers. Marcus is anxious, wondering if the emperor is going to kill him even though the idea is laughable. He’s been a man of luxury. Only carrying a sword for show and never for battle. The emperor still doesn’t speak as he strides over to the doors and he opens them to display you on the bed naked and draped in jewels, a nervous look on your face. “What is the meaning of this?” Marcus demands, confused and wanting to leave to retire to his villa. Not to play games.

“I tried to imagine what kind of reward a man of your talents would enjoy.” Caracalla hums as he smirks victoriously. You are a gorgeous creature and he knows that the man will have no problem mounting you. “Whores are too boring, they have had too many men, been soiled by their pleasures.” He takes Marcus’s shoulders and turns him back towards you and the bed. “But an Empress’s cunt? She’s only had one other cock. She’s practically pure and it’s tight.” He chuckles. “My brother gives you a common whore to fuck, I give you a royal cunt.” Again, it’s a competition between the brothers and he’s determined to best Geta.

Marcus’s eyes widen at the Emperor’s offer and he looks over at you. His cock twitches under his tunic at the way you’re on display for him, but he wonders if this is some kind of test from the emperor. He swallows harshly and looks back at Caracalla. “You honor me but I am - I am satisfied with whores. I do not want to sully the empress with my - with my body. She is divine and deserves to be fucked by a man like you, a man chosen by the gods.”

You lift a brow, wondering what the Emperor will say to that. Would he admit that he has been unsuccessful in breeding you? That there is something wrong with him? Or will he blame it on you? There is no telling with Caracalla. You shift to your knees, spread apart on the bed so he can get a good look at your body.

Marcus’s cock twitches again, hardening as your breasts bounce and he swallows harshly, averting his eyes once again. “I don’t - I don’t understand.” Marcus admits, knowing that only the emperor can fuck the empress to get her with child. “I want you to fuck my uxor and I want to watch.” Caracalla confesses, “and I want you to spill your seed inside of her.”

His eyes slide over your body again and you can see the way his cock is starting to lift the fabric of his tunic. Your nipples are hardening because you are enticing this war-hardened general. “The emperor is very generous.” You tell Marcus, sliding a hand up to cup one tit. “He has never been one to share and yet he wishes to honor his general.” You don’t mention why he would want such a thing. “Do you not like cunt?” You ask, wondering if he might prefer the boys in the bath houses. You have heard rumors of some senators who often prefer the company of men than their wives. Perhaps the general is one of them.

Marcus shakes his head, “no. I- I do. It’s just -” He looks at Caracalla, “you’re the empress and I cannot - the heir cannot be from anyone but the emperor.” Marcus reasons and Caracalla reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, “you have to understand, General, I am asking you to fill up my wife. We have been unsuccessful in our venture to have an heir and I must beat my brother to it. I wish for you to spill your seed inside my empress…regardless of the consequences.” He declares and Marcus’s eyes widen slightly as he understands what is being asked of him.

You can see that Marcus Acacius is not a foolish man, he understands the danger he has found himself in. He cannot deny the Emperor, and he could never speak of it. “Maritus.” You murmur softly, bringing his attention back to you. “Tell the general what kind of son you wish to have.”

Caracalla senses Marcus’s panic and he smirks, “I want a warrior son. Someone who will be strong and fight for Rome, to protect our line.” He says even though he knows the child would not be his blood. “The name. My name must continue through him. I want a gladiator and you possess those traits. I wish for my son to have them. Do you wish to fill my beautiful wife with your seed and produce the next heir to the Roman Empire?” He asks even though he knows no one says no to the emperor.

You can see that Marcus is torn. He can’t say no, just like you could not run away from him when he had decided to take you as his empress. “He is handsome.” You coo. “Strong. He will put a son you will be proud of in my belly.” You tell your husband. “While enjoying himself by having an empress spread her thighs for him.”

Marcus knows he can’t refuse. He must fuck you and you’re a beautiful woman but he prays to the gods that the emperor doesn’t change his mind and punish you or him after the act is complete. “As my emperor wishes.” He nods and Caracalla claps, “excellent. My uxor will strip you. I wish to watch the act.” He says, spinning to make his way to the chair in the corner. Marcus is shocked that the man wants to watch but he doesn’t deny him, knowing that could be his head. He nods and walks over to the bed, waiting for your move.

Sliding off the bed, you stand straight, unashamed of your nudity. You might have only had Caracalla as a lover, but he often wanted you nude to just gaze upon you while you were together. You reach for the golden laurel on his head and remove it gently. “Tonight we will see if your prowess in battle is matched by your vigor in bed.” You smile at him, wanting to make sure he doesn’t change his mind. “If your cock truly is as big as your sword.” You giggle. “Some of the women you have fucked talk.”

Marcus’s cock is hardening with your words and your touch. You are one of the most beautiful women in the empire, if not the most, and Marcus is not immune to your beauty. You set his laurel down and Caracalla takes his place in the corner of the room. He flusters at his reputation and wonders what you will think of him. If he lives up to the rumors.

You try to forget your husband is watching, concentrating on the man in front of you. The gold wrist cuffs come off and you wonder if he would prefer the unadorned look. Rather than being weighed down by the ostentatious trappings of his role. You know you would rather live simply. “Relax, General.” You hum quietly. “The emperor has taught me how to please him. Hopefully I will please you as well.”

Marcus is nervous, anxious, and every emotion a man can be when he’s being used for his seed and watched as he pleasures the wife of one of the most powerful men in the empire. He keeps his hands by his sides until you reach for the hem of his tunic. He’s ashamedly hard, unable to be anything but when you are in front of him. You smell delicious and he knows he’d be diving into your cunt if you came to his home without your status and stature.

Biting your lip, you lift the tunic to reveal his hard cock and you moan softly. “Step back, let me look.” Caracalla demands and you turn to the side to show the emperor his cock. “He is very well endowed.” Your husband smirks. “Good. I would hate for my son to have a less than impressive cock.” He is very proud of his own, even if he is not as thick as Marcus. You reach down and brush your finger over the length as you pull the tunic over his head.

He hisses when your fingers brush his length and you smirk, tossing his tunic aside. Caracalla often indulges in men when he is in the throes of an orgy and he is impressed by the general. His shoulders are broad and muscular. Strong arms. Tapered waist and a full head of hair, albeit graying, even in his ripe age. This is the man who could sire him a son who would be legendary in Rome. “Kiss him.” Caracalla demands, wanting to be in control even if it is not his seed securing his lineage.

You lick your lips, leaning in and press your lips to the slightly chapped ones of the general. You sense his hesitation, knowing that he is unsure of the motives behind this. Instead of pulling back, you press your breasts against his chest, feeling the light hairs covering his skin tickle you.

His fingers flex and Caracalla chuckles, “you can touch her, General.” There’s the permission Marcus needs. His hands slide along your back, pulling you even closer and one hand slides up your body to cup your cheek, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. His tongue finds yours and you squeak, unused to such aggressive kissing. Caracalla likes softer especially when he’s wanting the opposite of his lovers or orgies.

Your husband hums, reaching for his wine with one hand and reaching down to squeeze his cock with the other. If it would not potentially ruin the chances of you conceiving a child, he would join you. See how Marcus kisses. Instead, he takes pleasure in knowing that the most powerful general in his army is following his orders even off the battlefield.

Marcus groans into your mouth, his hand sliding down to squeeze your ass while he grips the back of your neck. He’s relieved that he sought the company of a whore before arriving back in Rome. He would embarrass himself if he were pent up. He loves the way your fingers tangle in his hair and he is glad to see the empress is not shy about taking what she wants.

The emperor very rarely lets you do what you wish, so this is a new experience for you and you are greedy for it. “Get on your knees.” The order comes from behind you and makes you pull away. Aware that Caracalla will still try to dictate the way you are fucked. “Let the general see you on your knees before him and feel your mouth around his cock.”

Marcus inhales sharply as he watches you sink to your knees in front of him. His sandals are still on his feet while his cock throbs from arousal. Your eyes are sultry as you look up at him,  looking like Venus herself. He swallows and hisses softly when you wrap your fingers around his cock.

You squeeze him gently, feeling him throb in your hand and you roll back the foreskin. You have pleasured your husband like this countless times and he claims you are good at it, so hopefully you don’t disappoint the general. Leaning forward, you press your tongue flat against the tip and then curl it around the head as you take him into your mouth. The general has bathed, so he tastes clean and musky.

His fingers flex by his side as you take him into your mouth. He groans quietly but Caracalla shakes his head, "I want to hear how my empress is making you feel." He demands and Marcus nods, groaning louder when you take him deeper into your mouth. "Fuck." He curses, his hand finding your cheek as he looks down at you.

You hum at his rough praise, feeling the way his hips slightly rock, like he wants to take control and fuck your mouth. Taking him deeper, you moan when the first spurt of his salty seed hits your tongue, a little treat to tell you he is enjoying it.

His eyes flutter closed as he loses himself in the feel of your mouth around his cock. He can tell you’re not as experienced as the whores he has had but you are enthusiastic and he fucking loves that. “Open your eyes, Acacius.” Caracalla orders, wanting to see the pleasure on the man’s face.

You take him deep right as he opens his eyes and they widen in shock as he chokes out a sound that goes straight to your cunt. Pleased that you can make a man as strong and fierce as the general choke on his own breath. You start to bob your head quickly, wanting to hear more and to see his face screw up in pleasure.

Marcus groans, his chin resting on his chest as he watches you take his cock. “Fuck.” He grunts as your hands rest on his thighs as you take his cock in your mouth. His stomach clenches and he moans, shaking his head. “I am - I’m going to- shit. Stop.” He pleads, his cock twitching in your mouth.

You are surprised that he is already about to cum, but maybe he has been without the pleasure of a woman for too long. You pull off his cock, panting yourself as you wipe your chin. Your cunt is dripping and you are eager to see if his cock scrubs against your walls the way you hope he does. Despite your initial reservations about having sex with someone else, you now find yourself looking forward to fucking this man

He is shocked how quickly you worked him up but perhaps it’s because this is not a whore he’s paid for. You are the most coveted woman in the empire, a prize to your husband, and you’re on your knees for him. Caracalla smirks at the look on the general’s face. He looks worked up and the emperor smirks, “you need to spill inside her. Uxor, lay down on the bed and spread your legs for the general. Let him see how wet you get sucking a cock.”

You shift to your feet and turn around. Your eyes slide to your husband and you see that he is turned on, his own cock tenting his tunic. Laying down, you spread your legs. Bending your knees you run your hands down to spread the lips of your sex for him to see. “Soaked.” You moan softly.

Marcus’s eyes darken as he takes in the sight of your wet cunt. You’re dripping and he loves it. He reaches down to squeeze his cock as he shuffles closer. Caracalla smirks at the look on the general’s face. “You can fuck her, Acacius. You have the emperor’s blessing. Fill her with your seed and create the next emperor of Rome.” He demands and Marcus shifts to kneel on the bed. His free hand slides up your thigh until he’s pushing two thick digits into your dripping cunt.

Your eyes flutter closed on a loud moan, feeling the way his fingers stretch you out. His hands are rough, the skin scraping so deliciously inside you and making your legs shift and shake around his hips. This man will be so different from the only other man you have had sex with, you know that instinctively and for a split second, you pray to the gods that it will take more than one time for him to successfully fill you with his seed. 

He pumps his fingers, loving how wet you are around them, and he groans when you squeeze his digits. He wants you to cum like this. His thumb against your clit, he curls his fingers while your emperor watches you. His fingers squeeze his cock through his tunic while Marcus strokes his cock with his fist.

Your body responds to the sure, deep pumps of his fingers into your cunt. “Gods.” You whimper, watching as his dark, intense eyes watch his fingers move inside you. Completely focused on making you feel blissful before he mounts you. You won’t say that your husband hasn’t pleasured you, but it’s always been a byproduct of his own, rather than his complete goal. “It feels so good. His fingers are magical.”

Caracalla smirks as he watches your back arch and you moan as Marcus pumps his fingers into you. The room is filled with a squelch as you take what he gives you. “That’s it, Empress.” He coos, pressing his thumb harder against your clit.

You pant out your first name. “Call me by my name when you are inside me.” You order breathlessly, wanting to hear him say your name. Turning your head, you look to your husband behind you, seeing that he is actually enjoying watching you like this. You know he has attended many orgies and probably watched many people have sex, but his eyes are alight with glee, watching this general touch you.

Marcus watches you as you take his fingers and groans at the way you are fluttering around his digits. He says your name as a demand, wanting you to fall apart for him before he fucks you full of his seed. Caracalla watches and smirks, his cock now pulled out so he can slowly jerk himself at the sight in front of him.

Whimpering quietly, your body starts to react. Toes curling and thighs shaking as your cunt clenches down around his thick fingers. “Marcus!” Your gasp of his name is loud, almost surprised as the intense pleasure rips through you, his fingers pressing against something wonderful inside you.

He groans, cock twitching in his hand as you soak his digits and Caracalla chuckles, “she loves your fingers, General.” Marcus smirks and works you through it, pulling his fingers out after you start to whine. “You want me to fuck you, Empress?” He asks, smirking as he jerks his cock against your pelvis.

You moan, nodding as you try to roll your hips down. He looks confident now, like the general you know he must be on the battlefield. “I do, General. Fuck me full.”

He nods, shifting to position his cock at your entrance, swiping it through your folds as he groans softly when he notches himself at your entrance and starts to push inside you with a soft groan of your name. You’re so tight and hot, his eyes flutter closed at the way you feel around him. 

He’s thick. Thicker than Caracalla, stretching you more than his fingers did and pulling a long, wanton moan from your chest. You are taking another man. Having his cock inside you and you hear your husband groan as he watches. He sounds almost envious, but you can only care about the way Marcus fills you right now. “Fuck.” You whine when his hips are flush and his cock is pushed deep and kissing your womb. “Your cock is made by the gods.” You praise breathlessly.

Marcus looks down at you, his chest heaving at the way you are taking his cock and he shifts to his forearms so he can hover over you. Your legs lift to wrap around his hips and his face hovers near yours. “You’re so tight.” He hisses and Caracalla smirks, “I told you. She’s like a virgin.” He declares as he squeezes his cock in his hand, working himself as Marcus starts to move inside you.

That first thrust is a sharp snap of his hips. Making you scream and your nails dig into his biceps. Marcus freezes, fearing that he had made an error, but your thighs tighten. “More, move general.” You demand, wanting to see if he can make you scream like that again.

He loves the way you command him, reminding him of your status. He relaxes now that he knows he didn’t hurt you and he rocks his hips, pushing deep into you. “Empress. Scream for me.” He growls, leaning in to kiss your neck since he doesn’t know if kissing is permissible. His hips rock forward as he pushes against your cervix.

You moan softly, knowing that he will make you scream if he moves like this inside you. “Kiss him.” Caracalla orders, giving permission and you quickly turn your head to press your lips to Marcus's as his head comes up. He rocks into you steadily, your fingers tracing over the scars on his back and side as he fucks you. Mapping the wars that he has fought and the times he has survived to experience this moment. “So deep.” You whimper. 

He is lost in the feel of your hot cunt around his cock. Your body takes everything he gives you. His hips slap against your ass and he shifts his weight onto one arm so he can grab your thigh, pushing it back towards your stomach as he sinks impossibly deeper into you. His tongue sliding against yours to swallow your moan.

You don’t even think about Caracalla, although you hear the sound of him stroking his cock. Too taken by the way that Marcus fucks you. He’s rougher, harder than your husband and his pace makes your walls flutter around his cock every time he drills into you. It’s so wicked, forbidden and the people of Rome would be horrified if they knew that their Empress was being fucked like a common whore, but you love it. 

He groans into your mouth as you grip his shoulders and he rocks harder into you, wanting to feel you cum around him. His hand slides up your thigh until he’s rubbing your clit. He may have had many whores but he’s always prided himself on ensuring they were pleasured too. “Empress.” He groans against your chin, “want you to cum for me.”

You whine into his mouth when he comes back to kiss you. Rocking up against his fingers as you try to get as close as possible to him. One hand slides down to his ass, feeling it flex as he pumps into you. “Yes. Yes.” You chant, eyes closed in bliss.

Marcus grunts as he grinds into you, his fingers rubbing your clit faster as he wants you to cum for him. He kisses along your neck and Caracalla is invisible to him as he focuses completely on you. “Cum for me.” He demands and you cry into his mouth as you fall apart for him.

It’s good, better than any pleasure Caracalla has ever given you but you can never admit that. Your body trembles under his as your walls spasm around him. Making him groan as you gasp out his name. “Marcus!” You feel how you soak his cock and the sounds it makes as he fucks you through it.

He loves the way you squeeze him and he hisses your name, rocking into you. He knows he should hold off, make you fall apart again but he is wound up by the circumstances. “Fill her up, Acacius.” Caracalla demands and Marcus buries his face in your neck as he thrusts a half dozen more times until he’s pushing deep and filling you up with hot spurts of cum.

The hot splash of his seed makes you whine, eyes closed as you feel him ride out his pleasure, cock pulsing inside you. He doesn’t pull out of you immediately and you enjoy his weight on top of you. He is heavier, broader than your husband and you like feeling like you are at his mercy. The sweat slick skin of his back slides under your fingers and you stroke it and you sigh in bliss.

Marcus shifts to take his weight off you and he swallows harshly. He hasn’t cum that hard since he was with his wife. He kisses your neck without Caracalla seeing it and your emperor stands, cock in his hand, to stand at the foot of the bed. “Pull out of her. I want to see your seed drip out of her.” He demands and Marcus shifts to pull out of you. He lays beside you and Caracalla stands there, eyes dark as he takes in the sight of your dripping cunt.

You can’t really tell what your husband is thinking, his eyes wide and slightly manic. He’s not upset, that much you can tell. “What do you think, maritus?” You ask softly.

He smirks, jerking his cock as he kneels on the bed. “I want to cover you in my seed.” He says as he watches you while you lay on the bed, chest heaving.

You don’t dare look over at Marcus, keeping your eyes on your husband as he starts to buck into his hand. You can tell he’s already close from the groans. “Cover me.” You urge him, spreading your thighs wider. “Coat me and we will pray to the gods that they will give you a strong child.”

Caracalla doesn’t hesitate as he starts to cover you. Hot drops of his seed hitting your skin and covering your cunt that is still creamy from Marcus’s cum. “That’s it. It’s - our warrior.” He groans as he works himself empty of every drop while Marcus relaxes beside you.

You reach down and swipe your fingers through his seed and bring it up to your mouth. He loves when you taste him and he finally milks the last drops out of his cock as you moan softly, licking your digits clean.

Caracalla smirks, “perfect. Fucking perfect. You will be with child before we know it.” He says as he looks over at Marcus, “I want you here to fill her up every day until she’s with child.” He demands, “you will remain here in our quarters. No one will question you because we have no guards inside.”

You are surprised by the Emperor’s order, but you don’t question it. “Will you be present every time, or do you want him to fill me as often as possible?” You ask, looking over at the general to see what he thinks.

Marcus knows he cannot say no. He nods and shifts to sit up on the bed. “I shall do as my emperor desires.” He promises and Caracalla smirks, “you’ll fill her up every single day until it takes.” He demands and Marcus bows his head. “I will let you two decide the times. I cannot afford to spend too much time here and I don’t want people to get suspicious.”

“Of course, maritus.” You shift to your knees and press your lips to your husband’s briefly and he huffs before pushing you back down to the bed. “You must lay there.” He tells you. “Lift your hips so his seed isn’t wasted.”

Marcus reaches for his tunic, suddenly feeling awkward as he redresses while you lay down and keep your hips tilted. He possibly just got the empress pregnant and no one can ever know. The senate would have him killed for his treason, Geta certainly would. Caracalla tucks himself away and strides over to clap Marcus on the back. “I’ll show you to your rooms and we will have your things brought to the palace.” Marcus nods, letting the emperor guide him through the halls until he’s in an ornate room. “You have one job now, General. Fuck my uxor and fill her until it takes.” Caracalla says, his eyes a little manic. Marcus nods and watches the emperor leave. He looks around and sighs, wondering what he’s gotten himself into.

You lay with your hips for an hour. Bored and replaying your encounter with Marcus as Caracalla’s cum dries on your skin. He’s a better lover than your husband and you are ashamed of it, but you are looking forward to having him in your bed again.

Marcus looks around the room, unsure of what to do or say as he comes to the realization that his dream of enjoying time alone in his villa is long gone. He’s under the thumb of the emperor now and he must do as he says otherwise he will face execution.

****

The next afternoon, you find Marcus on the balcony, appearing deep in thought. “I am not disturbing you, am I General?” You ask softly, waiting by the pillar for him to acknowledge you. You wonder what he thinks about this, about being commanded to fill you with his child.

Marcus turns to look at you, reminded of how beautiful you are as the sun shines on your face. “Good day, Empress. You’re not disturbing me.” He promises, “are you well?” He asks, wanting to make sure he hasn’t harmed you.

“I am.” You smile as you walk out onto the balcony and look at the gardens below. “Sore, in a very good way.” You assure him, glancing over at him before looking back out at the neatly manicured hedges and plants. “I hope that you do not feed trapped here.” You murmur softly. “I am sure you are used to doing what you wish when you wish it.”

Marcus looks down at the olive trees and sighs, his hands wringing together. “You and I both know we have no choice but to follow the orders of the Emperor. I did not imagine returning from war to engage in the breeding of the empress. You are a beautiful woman and if you were not the uxor of Caracalla, I would be thanking the gods for letting me be in your bed, but the circumstances are…unusual. As long as you have need of me, I’m at your service.” He assures you, “it is not a task to fuck you but I worry for the day the emperor changes his mind.”

“Caracalla cannot have anyone know about his bad seed.” You murmur quietly. “Especially not Geta. He will not change his mind, but…..” you look around and lower your voice. “I do not trust that he might get rid of you once I have given birth to a son.”

Marcus turns to look at you again, “I would not be surprised but I’d rather have that issue several moons from now instead of being killed for not following orders. It will not be a hard task to put a child in you but you must tell me if you do not wish to take me.” He insists, “I do not want to fuck an unwilling woman.”

You snort, turning to look out at the gardens so he doesn’t see your embarrassment. “He would have my tongue cut out for admitting this, but you are better.” You admit softly. “I spent an hour with my hips tilted towards the gods, replaying what you had just done to me, imagining it happening again and again.”

Marcus turns to look at you, eyebrows raised, and he cannot deny that his cock twitches while his chest puffs with pride. “Is that so? Do you wish for us to…repeat the event soon to ensure the next emperor of Rome? I must admit that I have had many women, most of them whores, but no one has made me cum as hard as you did.”

That makes you straighten, pleased by the notion that you can bring this general to his knees. Making his core quiver in pleasure despite your lack of experience with partners. You bite your lip and turn towards him. “Perhaps we should retire and make sure that we have enough energy for our next session?” You ask, your fingers sliding along the smooth marble edge of the balcony to touch his hand. “The emperor was most insistent that you fill me often. I believe that we should obey his orders.” 

Marcus smirks, seeing the eager look in your eyes, and he leans closer. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint the emperor. Shall we convene in your quarters or mine?” He asks, his eyes dropping down to your lips. You’re forbidden to everyone except Caracalla and now…him. It’s intoxicating especially when you tell him he’s better. Even if it’s just to float his ego. 

“Yours.” You decide, wondering if it will be acceptable to him. “Unless you need to leave again as soon as it’s done?” You ask, hoping that he would not want you to leave. You spend a lot of time by yourself and you are curious to hear about his campaigns and the places he has seen. 

He glances back over the gardens, “I am here to fulfill an order from the emperor and I wish to do it to the best of my ability. Let us retire to my quarters and you are welcome to remain as long as you please.” He promises and he wants to speak to you about your former kingdom, your father, and the army who took you from your home to deliver you to the Emperor.

Nodding, you feel that same odd sense of giddiness that had overcome you last night. A forbiddenness that has been temporarily allowed, even ordained by the gods. A taste of normalcy, where you can pretend that you are not an Empress. Nothing but a woman that this handsome, virile man wants. “Call me by my name.” You ask, almost as a plea. 

His eyes meet yours and he licks his lips as he says your name. He loves the smile you give him in return and his hand brushes yours, “lead the way, empress.” He demands, saying your name again when you narrow your eyes at him.

“Do you prefer to be called by your rank or your name?” You ask softly, turning away from the balcony and walking back inside with him towards his chamber.

“You can call me by my name.” He says, following you as you walk through the hallway to his newly assigned quarters. It’s more than anything he’s ever had before. Even in his beautiful villa. He follows you inside and shuts the door behind you, “you are exquisite.” He declares when you turn to look at him.

“Do you claim those words for every whore you fuck?” You ask curiously, tilting your head as you smile at him, showing him that you are teasing. “Or do you save that for the special ones?”

Marcus shakes his head, “there’s usually no words when I have a whore in my quarters. I like to speak with my actions. Not my words.” He confesses, stepping over to you. He reaches up to cup your cheeks, “you truly are Venus herself.” He murmurs, leaning in to nudge his nose against yours.

“You are handsome.” You admit breathlessly. “Strong, fierce. Like Apollo.” Your hands run up the soft white tunic he is wearing. “I thought so last night when you were inside me. Riding me hard and yet-“ your lips brush against his. “Your lips were tender.”

His cock twitches at the soft contact of your lips and he can’t help it. He grabs the back of your neck and drags you closer to him, tilting his head so he can press his lips to yours. You’re so soft against him, pliable as his other hand grips your waist.

He’s so dominant, in control. You can tell this is a man who is used to being in charge, taking what he needs to take. You don’t resist, pressing yourself against his hard body, letting the kiss deepen as you open your mouth and let out a soft moan.

His tongue slides against yours and he groans you relinquish power to him. You’re so eager to please. He wants to taste you though, all of you. His mouth pulls away from yours so he can kiss along your jaw down to your neck, and he starts walking you backwards towards his bed.

You let him guide you, willing to do whatever he wants. Although it’s easy to see that he wants your dress off when his fingers reach for the ornate pin on your shoulder that keeps the material up. You wonder if it will be different this time since Caracalla isn’t watching.

He pulls on the pin and your robes fall to the marbled floor, exposing you to the cool breeze and he pushes you back onto the bed, loving the way your tits bounce as you fall backwards. He wants to taste you so he grabs your waist, lifting you higher up the bed, and he pushes your thighs apart, wasting no time before he dives in to slide his tongue through your folds.

You gasp in surprise, eyes widening as you lurch up. It’s not that you’ve never had this kind of attention, but that it’s rare. Caracalla prefers to have your mouth on him. Your fingers tangle into his hair and you moan loudly when he flicks his tongue over your clit.

He groans at the tangy taste of your arousal. His fingers dig into your thighs as he pushes them apart so he can slide his tongue against your clit. “Fuck.” He curses when he pulls back for a moment, spreading you with his thumbs so he can suck your clit into his mouth.

You whine his name, closing your eyes. “Marcus.” Your hips roll up until he throws one arm over your waist to pin you down. Holding you in place while he does wonderful things to your cunt with his tongue.

He laps at your cunt, wanting to hear you fall apart for him. There’s no rush for this. Caracalla isn’t watching and you are alone with the general. He approaches your cunt like a battlefield, using the best method to make you fall apart for him. He laps at your clit, his fingers digging into your thigh as he pushes it towards your stomach with a groan.

You pull your thighs back like he wants, reaching down and holding them so he can lick as deep as he wants into you. Moaning out his name again as he continues to feast on your cunt like a man who has been given his last meal besides an execution.

He groans into your flesh, loving the way you open yourself up for him, and he slides his tongue as deep as he can go, loving the tang of your arousal and the way you moan his name.

He groans in your flesh, vibrating it deep into your core and it makes you clench around his tongue. Pushing your hips down against his face, you want to grind into it. To ride his tongue. You’ve heard of such things, witnessed some of the orgies when you had been spying on your husband’s parties after you had been sent off to bed. “Marcus, oh fuck. I- it’s so good.”

He loves hearing your cry of pleasure and his nose presses against your clit. His hand on your hips slides up to squeeze your breast, wanting you to cry out his name again. At this moment, he doesn’t care about anyone hearing your cries even though the Emperor wants this to be your dirty secret. He groans and pinches your nipple, wanting you to fall apart again.

You shiver, your legs tremble as you climb closer to your peak. Feeling your body start to buck again as he pinches your nipple again. “Cum for me and I’ll fuck you.” He rasps out, pulling away from your cunt long enough to order you to cum before he dives back into it. Throwing you over the edge with another swipe of his tongue, your cunt starts to gush in pleasure as you clench around nothing.

He laps up every drop you offer. Like elixir, he greedily sucks at your folds and your clit, working you through your orgasm as his fingers grip your body to keep you in place until you push his head away, overstimulated. He’s aching, hard and pressing into the bed.

“Gods.” You pant, pushing to your elbows and looking down at him. “You are good at that.” You reach down and grab his shoulder to drag him up. “Kiss me.” You beg, not caring that your juices are on his mouth. “Then I want you to fuck me.”

He cannot deny you anything. Shifting onto his knees, his cock tenting his tunic as he leans down to press his lips to yours. He shifts his weight to push against you and he hisses when you reach for the hem of his tunic to pull it over his head, breaking the kiss.

“You are gorgeous.” You whisper, reaching down and wrapping your fingers around his cock. “Do you like to fuck away the heat of battle when you come back to your tent?” You ask curiously. “Do you prefer a softer touch then to counteract the violence of earlier?”

He groans, looking down at your soft hand around his cock, “it depends. Mostly it’s rough, fuck away the adrenaline.” He says and leans in to kiss along your jaw as he holds his weight over you. “Gods, you are - let me inside you.” He pleads, needing to feel your hot cunt again.

You spread your thighs wider, lifting a leg to hook onto the side of his hip. “Fuck me.” You order him, surprised that he had even asked permission.

You release his cock and he grips himself, pumping his length a few times, squeezing as he positions himself at your dripping entrance. He slowly pushes into you, wanting to feel how hot and wet you are as he gives you inch after inch of his cock.

It’s slower than last night. As if he is savoring every inch as he pushes inside you. You don’t rush him, enjoying the way his cock scrubs against your walls slowly, breaking you open and making your cunt fit him inside. Holding onto his shoulders, you encourage him with your sounds, moaning in pleasure and caressing his skin as he pauses halfway inside you.

He surges forward to press his lips to yours, his tongue sliding into your mouth as he pushes the rest of the way inside you. His cock twitches once he presses against your cervix, groaning at how you’re gripping him. His hand caresses your side as he slides his hand up to your breast.

His grip on your flesh is possessive, sure. Taking more liberties now that your husband is not directing his movements. “I’m yours now.” You murmur softly in encouragement. “Touch me. Explore me. Use me how you want.”

He knows you’re not his, can never be his, but you are in this moment, and he’s greedy. He groans, kissing along your neck, and he ducks his head down to take your nipple into his mouth. He bites down, sucking on the hardened nub, and he loves how you cry out at his touch.

You love your breasts being played with. Caracalla has a feeding obsession, wishing that you produced milk, but hopefully soon you will be able to. You wonder if Marcus would want to taste milk from your breasts.

He groans at the way your hand tangles in his hair and he starts to move inside you. “Fuck. You feel so good.” He murmurs against your sternum, turning his head to take your other nipple into his mouth.

You whimper his name, letting him rock you closer to pleasure as he suckles at your breast. “Fuck, you- I can’t describe it.” You admit breathlessly. “You are like a god.”

He chuckles, his breath washing over you, and he grabs your thigh, “you’re a goddess. Fucking - fuck. You’re Venus. I am merely here to worship you.” He declares, his voice is raspy.

It’s intimate, so intimate that it makes your eyes wet with yearning. He feels like he is speaking to your soul, even if it is just the moment. You aren’t used to such soft words and you turn your head to press kisses to his broad shoulder, not wanting him to see you choked up.

He shouldn’t feel like this, like this is right where he should be. You belong to Caracalla and he should still mourn his wife, but the way you take his cock has him groaning your name into your neck as he tries to conceal the way you’re making him feel.

Your body responds to him so easily, making every roll of his hips push you higher. The pants and moans grow steadier every time he pushes deep and the inhale of anticipation when he draws back. The rhythm is one that neither one of you questions, each pushing towards pleasure together. “Fuck.”

He wants you to cum for him, needs to hear and feel it. He grabs your other thigh, pushing it back towards your stomach so you are folded over. He groans your name, kissing along your jaw to press his lips to yours. He slides his tongue into your mouth and drops his hips to grind his pelvis against yours.

Your moan is sealed into your mouth with his lips, or maybe it’s absorbed by him. All you know is that your nails dig into his shoulders as he works himself deep into your cunt. Pressing harder and harder with every roll of his hips. “Oh gods!”

Your cry into his mouth makes him smile against your chin, rocking into you a little faster as you clamp down on his cock. His pelvis and balls are soaked with your release and he hisses when you squeeze him like a vice. “Fuck.” He grunts, eyes closing as he works you through it. He pulls out when you relax beneath him and he rolls over, your body on top of his. “Ride me, empress. I want you to take another wave of pleasure from my body.” He demands, smacking your ass.

Eyes wide, you sit up, your hands on his chest. “I’ve never- never been in charge before.” You admit, even though you would love to do such a thing. “I- help me?” You ask, grinding down on his length and wanting him inside you again.

He suppresses his chuckle at your wide, uncertain eyes, but he loves how you look on top of him and the fact that you haven’t done this before. He reaches down to grip his cock, telling you to lift up. You shift to lift up and he positions his cock so you can sink back down onto him. “Rock your hips.” He commands, wanting to help you ride him.

He feels different from this angle. Bigger. His cock pressing against different parts of your walls and you gasp in pleasure when you roll back down on him. “Gods.” Your eyes close and you lean back, enjoying the way his cock stretches you this way. “You feel even bigger. Like you are right here.” Your hand covers your stomach. “You are in my womb.”

“I will be. I will fill you until it takes.” He promises, his hands gripping your hips. He helps you start to rock and you moan, your mouth falling open and he loves the way your tits bounce as you start to get a rhythm together.

It’s so different, being in charge. If you slow down or grind down harder, Marcus groans and twitches inside you. Like he’s enjoying you using him. Your body moves eagerly, loving the sounds he makes as he digs his fingers into your hips. “Gods, your cock is made for my cunt.”

“That’s it, empress. Take what you want from me. Use me.” He demands, his hand slapping your ass while the other grips your waist. He watches you take your pleasure and he loves the way your chest heaves when you get the angle just right.

You squeal when he slaps your ass again, clenching down around him. He is so commanding, even when he is under you and yet he lets you control him. If you pulled off his cock right now, you know he would let you. It’s freedom, and you’re breathless when you collapse onto his chest to press your lips to his.

He groans, his hand grabbing the back of your neck to keep you close, his tongue sliding against yours. He loves the way you rock back onto him and he wants you to make yourself cum. He needs you to cum again for him.

You lean into the kiss. Continuing to work yourself on his cock. Whining softly when your cunt starts to pulse until you are locking down around him with a cry into his mouth.

He groans when you cum for him again, soaking him, and he wraps his arms around you. He hisses your name and starts to thrust up into you. He can’t hold off any longer as he works himself towards your orgasm. He pushes deep into you, his cock twitching inside you as he starts to paint your walls with his cum.

You turn and press kisses to his jawline and moans softly. “That feels so good.” You murmur, resting your head against his shoulder and feel him riding out his high.

He pants as he closes his eyes, trying to catch his breath. He’s never felt like this before. Like his soul is leaving his body. He caresses your spine, fingers lazily trailing along your skin as he breathes you in.

“Can I stay like this?” You ask softly, content to lay just like you are if he will let you. You reason that having his cock still stuffed inside you is even better than tilting your hips up. “Am I too heavy?”

He shakes his head, “no, not too heavy. You can stay like this.” He says softly, closing his eyes as he enjoys the weight of you on top of him. He feels tired, his eyes still closed as his cock softens inside you.

You don’t realize you fell asleep until you wake up. Still on top of him with his arms secured around you. Holding you in place as he breathes softly underneath you. He’s still sleeping, making you softly turn your head up and watch him. He’s beautiful when he sleeps and you hope that the child you have looks like him.

Marcus wakes up when he feels your stare and he offers you a soft smile, “wore me out.” His chuckles vibrate through you and he sighs, glancing over at the balcony to see the sun is setting. “The Emperor will be wanting your presence.” He says softly, “we must clean up and I’ll leave you to your peace.”

“The emperor is attending a feast tonight.” You hum, knowing that you should probably keep your distance from the general when you are not letting him fill you. “I will be presented and then expected to leave before the festivities begin.” You snort. “There will be an orgy.”

Marcus snorts, “I never understood the appeal.” He confesses, “I like connection. Even with the whores I bedded, I felt connected to them even if only for the night.” He admits before he bites his lip, “do you like your life here or do you miss your home?”

“I miss home.” You want to hope that he will not tell the emperor. He doesn’t like when you admit somewhere else might be better than Rome. “I don’t have many people who will talk to me. Or spend time with me. I’m lonely.” You sigh. “Only to be seen and to bear the emperor's children.” Your father had sent you to marry the younger brother in order to preserve peace for your realm.

Marcus sighs, “I’m sure you do. I miss my village. When I was a boy, my father was killed in war and my mother struggled to survive, to feed us. As soon as I was able, I left to join the army. I wanted to send coin back to my mother but by the time I returned home, she was dead.” He murmurs, brow furrowed because he hasn’t thought about this for so long. “I threw myself into the fight until I met my wife. She was the daughter of a noble and I never imagined I’d be able to ask for her hand, so I fought hard to rise in the ranks until I could ask her father for his blessing. When we married, I was so happy, and she became with child. Then the day of our son’s birth…she died. So did he.” He’s lost in the agony of the memory, swallowing harshly as he tightens his grip on you.

You sigh softly and reach up to caress his cheek. Even though their deaths weren’t recent, you can see the despair on his face. “My prayers to the gods that they are peaceful together in death.” You murmur softly. “You gave yourself to the army and to Rome after that.” You know what it feels like to have nothing to live for, you feel like a prisoner with a decorative chain around your neck. Leaning in, you press your lips to his in a kiss meant to comfort.

He sighs into the kiss, cupping your cheek as he kisses you softly. “And now I give myself to her Empress.” He murmurs, “I shall fetch us some wine.” He says and you nod, shifting off him and he moves off the bed so he can get you a cup of wine.

He moves easily in his own skin, unashamed by his nudity and the body he possesses. He is not as firm as he might have been in his youth, but there is a leanness to him still that makes the broadness of his shoulders and bulk of his muscles incredibly appealing. There is a strength in his frame that Caracalla could never possess. “Do you mind?” You ask softly. “Knowing that your child will be claimed by Rome?”

He pours the wine as he contemplates his answer, “I have no choice. Even if it is not my wish, I cannot say no. As for the child…I am a general. I will die in battle and I would wish for my child to be taken care of. I know this child will be taken care of to the fullest extent.” He confesses, “I can die in peace.”

It’s wise, pragmatic even, but you still feel a sudden wave of sadness thinking about this man falling in battle. “Then I must learn all I can about you.” You murmur softly, smiling when he walks back over and hands the cup to you. “So I can tell him stories about a man that he should admire.”

Marcus offers you a soft smile, appreciating you wanting to tell your child about him. “He can never know that Caracalla is not his father.” Marcus reminds you, “he must be the rightful heir. But if you wish to tell him about your friend, I am willing to share myself with you.” He offers, “but you must tell me more about his mother,”

“That sounds fair.” You smile and take a sip of the wine as you lounge in his bed, completely nude. This is the most relaxed you have been since you have been sent to Rome and you know it is because of him, “I will tell you everything.” You promise.

****

Marcus groans as you clamp down on his cock, soaking him again as sweat glistens on his skin. He grunts, jaw clenched as he rocks into you from behind, his hips hitting your ass so the only noise in the room is slapping skin. He's been fucking you for two months now, spending nearly every night in your bed. Caracalla has entertained himself with his whores and orgies, leaving Marcus to make you scream his name every night.

You collapse down to your elbows, face on the cool sheets as he fucks you through the spasms of pleasure. “Amor, cum for me.” You beg, losing yourself to the moment and slipping up. Calling him an endearment you have kept inside you for weeks now. You spend all day, everyday with Marcus. Falling in love with the general and wishing that you were free to be with him. You feel as if he cares for you, but that just might be the sex that he enjoys.

Your words send him over the edge and he pushes deep as he cums, painting your walls for the umpteenth time. You missed your bleed last month but no one announced a pregnancy, wanting to be sure that you are with child. Marcus is reluctant to have it declared, knowing that his duty will be done and he will be sent away back to his villa, away from you. You are unlike any woman he's ever known. Strong, smart, beautiful, and you are lonely. He senses how isolated you are so he has spent a lot of time with you, discussing his battles, your battles - different in their methods but no less weary - and he has fallen for you. You are not his though, you belong to Caracalla and if he even dared to think about you being his, he would be killed.

Whining in pleasure as he fills you, your legs slide out from under you. Bringing you down to the bed and knowing that he will follow you. You love how close the two of you are, how he loves to touch you and keep touching you. You catch your breath and start to giggle softly, feeling him twitch when your walls clench around him in the aftershocks. “I love how you feel inside me.” You hum, lazy now that your body has been used and satisfied equally.

Marcus follows you, keeping his weight off of you just in case you are with child, and he kisses along your back. “You take me so well.” He murmurs, resting his forehead on your lower neck as he hovers over you. “Do you think…do you think you are with child?”

“I should not say this, but I hope I am not.” You sigh softly. “I have become accustomed to you in my bed and between my thighs. I do not want to give such a pleasure up.”

Marcus pulls out of you and shifts to lay down beside you, “perhaps…perhaps we can continue this. Ask the Emperor if he will allow us to copulate until the babe is born. He may allow us to continue in each other’s company, saying it’s to ensure the baby’s health.” He ponders, reaching out to cup your cheek, “I do not wish to give you up just yet.”

“I do not want to give you up either.” You confess softly, leaning into his touch. “You have become important to me. I….care for you.” It’s dangerous to admit, but you have to tell him that much at least. “I will ask the emperor to continue spending time with you.” You promise.

Marcus knows the request could be easily denied but he wants to continue spending time with you. He nods, shifting to pull you into his chest, burying his nose in your neck. He's gotten lazy, not wanting to train when he could be spending time with you.

****

“Congratulations, empress.” The Hippocrates you had called to the suite beams at you as he packs away his tools and tinctures. “The emperor will be pleased and the empire will drink to the health of your child.” You cover your womb protectively and wonder how Caracalla will take the news. Even though he had demanded this, he could always have a different view now that it is done. “Thank you.”

Caracalla is beaming when you tell him the news, pleased that his plan has worked and he can tell his brother that his child will be the next in line. “If it’s a son.” Geta hums and Caracalla nods, “it will be. A strong boy.” He celebrates by holding a party and you are alone, needing “to rest and protect the baby” in your quarters when Marcus enters, his brow furrowed. “What is the occasion for the orgy?” He asks, not having heard the news yet as he was training with his men all day.

When Marcus comes in, you rush over to him, flinging yourself into his arms and pressing your lips to his. Now truly able to celebrate the baby since his father has come home. “I am carrying your child.” You whisper softly, “your child. Not Caracalla’s.” You bite your lip and reach down to cover your womb. “I do not feel as if this child is his. It belongs to the man I love.”

Marcus’s eyes widen at the news and he pulls back to look down at your hand on your stomach. “Our child.” He murmurs in awe, unable to believe it’s happened despite him spending every night in your bed. He grabs the back of your neck, dragging you to his lips, and he pulls back after several moments to declare “I love you.”

You close your eyes in relief, letting out a small sob. “I love you too, Marcus.” You whisper softly. “In another life, we would be together.” You hate that you are the empress, that you are Caracalla’s wife and not his. “I wish we could change our fate.”

Marcus nods, “me too.” He cups your cheeks and sighs, “I love you, amor.” He murmurs and kisses your forehead, “for now, let us enjoy our time together before I am sent away. Let me worship the mother of my child.” He declares, shifting to kneel down in front of you.

“I will talk to the emperor.” You hadn’t had a chance to talk with him in private before he was rushing off to plan a feast and orgy to celebrate ‘his’ virility. Reaching down, you run your fingers through his dark curls and pray to the gods your babe has those same locks.

Marcus lifts your tunic, exposing your body to his hungry gaze, and he leans in to kiss your lower stomach as you bunch your tunic up under your breasts. His hands caress the back of your legs as he kisses down to your mound, burying his nose in the curls at the apex of your thighs. “Want to taste you.” He murmurs against your skin, shifting so he can slide his tongue through your folds.

Marcus is very talented with his tongue. He has proven that over the past months and you moan in pleasure. He lifts a leg onto his shoulder and you feel so exposed. Like a god being serviced by a mere mortal. He makes everything good. “Marcus.” You pant, closing your eyes briefly before you look down at him on his knees. Wanting to memorize this moment in fear that you might not have it again.

He groans at the tangy taste of your arousal, sliding his tongue through your folds and lapping at your clit like he’s worshiping Venus. He wants to savor every second of being with you before he’s sent away. It could be any second Caracalla decides his job is complete and sends him back to his villa.

His hands hold you in place, keeping you upright while he takes his time to lick through your folds and making you moan his name loudly.

He squeezes your ass just as the doors open and Caracalla strides in, dressed in his robes and taking a moment from the party. “Ah, Acacius. You are taking care of the Empress. Well done on ensuring I have an heir.” Caracalla watches as Marcus doesn’t stop, his tongue lapping at you. “I heard that fucking during pregnancy ensures a boy. I want a son. You will remain here in the palace to make sure I have an heir.” He declares, his cock twitching at the way you moan and Marcus sucks on your clit.

Your eyes find your husband, his face filled with pride and lust. “Yes.” You agree quickly, since it’s exactly what you want. “You need a son, my emperor.” You moan. “He will keep filling me, making sure you get what you need. A strong son.” You bite your lip. “He has served his emperor well and will continue to do so.”

Marcus loves your praise, continuing to ignore Caracalla’s presence as he works you towards your orgasm. He wants to be greedy, to have you like this for as long as he can before he has to leave you. “Keep pleasuring her, Acacius.” Caracalla orders and spins in his heel, wanting to enjoy his evening at the party celebrating his heir. “Keep her cumming.” He shouts back before he shuts the door and leaves you and Marcus together.

You push his head away as soon as the door slams shut and you drop to your knees. Needing to kiss Marcus now that you know that he’s not going to be sent away.

Marcus whines into your mouth in protest but he can't deny you. He cups your cheek and deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding into your mouth as his other hand grabs your ass to pull you against him, his cock hard under his tunic.

You kiss deeply, thoroughly. Panting into his mouth and gasping for air when you break apart. “I love you.” You moan. “I need you inside me. Here, now.”

He grabs your thighs, lifting you so you are hovering over him as he kneels on the floor. "Take my cock and put me inside you." He demands, holding your weight over his body.

You fumble with his tunic, reaching underneath and pumping his cock before you line him up with your cunt. Moaning when he slowly lowers you down on him. “Fuck, amor.” You whimper, feeling him like it’s the first time all over again. You feel like you’re more sensitive but it just might be from the emotional turmoil.

Marcus inhales deeply when you sink down on him, engulfing him in your wet, hot cunt. "Fuck." He pants against your jaw as you grip his shoulders when he's fully inside you. "I love you." He murmurs against your skin, wanting you to know how he feels.

Your arms are around his shoulders, fingers tangling into his hair as he holds you up in his thighs. “I love you.” You promise him, knowing that even if your body belongs to Caracalla, your heart belongs to him. “You are my one love. Forever.”

“Fuck. I love you. Never thought - never imagined I could ever feel like this again. Fuck, I want you to - to take all of me and cum again.” He demands, starting to work you on his cock.

You moan in agreement, letting him take charge and control your pleasure. He’s so good at it. There’s only been a handful of times you’ve not cum on his cock and that was only because he was so worked up he came too quickly. However he had made sure he had pleasured you with his fingers and tongue afterwards.

He rocks you on his cock, wanting you to soak his cock again, and he grips your thighs. “Fuck, te amo, amor.” He rasps, leaning in to press his lips to your neck, tasting the sweat and salt of your skin.

Your eyes water and you wish for a split second that Caracalla was dead and you could celebrate your love. Holding him close, your walls are already trembling around his cock as he rocks up into you. “Yes.” You moan, loving when he uses his mother’s tongue.

He is lost in the feel of you, his cock twitching inside you as he rocks into you. He imagines for a brief moment, a life where he can be with you. A life together with your child. It's not possible though. The Emperor would have him killed, could still have him killed, and it's a dangerous game that Marcus has gotten involved in.

Your toes push off on marble floors, helping you bounce on his cock and you could stay just like this with him forever. You want to stay like this. “I love you. You are my love, my amor.” You moan in his ear. “I would be Marcus Acacius’s wife.”

Your words are treason but they make his cock twitch inside you, closer to his orgasm. He groans your name, pressing his lips to yours as he rocks a little faster, needing to feel you clamp down on his cock. “You’d be mine. I’d die for you.” He promises, “mine. Mine. Mine.” He growls against your lips.

You both are vowing things to each other that would have you both killed, but you don’t care. His next thrust pushes you over the edge and you cry out into his mouth as your walls soak him in hot waves of your pleasure.

His hand finds your ass, rocking you as you shudder through your orgasm, and he groans, thrusting a few more times before he falls apart. “Fuck. Fuck. Empress.” He pants, cock throbbing as he paints your walls, his hands squeezing you closer to him.

You cling to him, both relieved that he is going to stay beside you for the foreseeable future and desperate to never have him leave you at all. “You are perfect.” You kiss his neck gently, stroking his back over his tunic that he couldn’t be bothered to take off. Both of you are still dressed, but the moment had been perfect regardless.

He snorts, knowing he’s not perfect, but he wants you and he is going to protect you and the baby until his last breath. Caracalla wants him to stay and that is the best thing he can wish for right now. “Let’s get you cleaned up and settled. You need to rest for the baby.” He reminds you and helps you shift off his cock.

Grinning, you look down at him as he climbs to his feet. “You are going to be overprotective from now on?” You ask, already aware of the answer. He will be protective, he will take care of you. You are already in love with the baby in your belly and you feel like he is the same way.

****

"Fuck, amor." Marcus groans as you rock on top of him. Your bump pressing against his stomach as he rests his back on the wall while you ride his cock. Your knees dig into the bed beneath and his hands cup your sensitive breasts. He's been in your bedchamber for the past six months and he falls more in love with you with each passing day. It will surely kill him to leave you when he is ordered to return to war, but he will go. You can never be his. Caracalla will never permit a divorce and he will be killed for treason. He must go after the babe is born.

Caracalla hadn’t spent more than an hour a week with you, carousing and spending every night having an orgy. He claims he is excited for his child, but he only brings you out to brag about his soon to be born son before he leaves you in Marcus’s care. You are scared, because you know how precarious a position you are in. But you can only survive.

"That's it. Take what you want from me. It's yours. I'm yours." He vows, his dark eyes watching you as you bounce on his cock. Your belly is round and heavy with his child. It's something he never imagined having again after he lost his wife. He's addicted to you and he doesn't know how he's going to leave after the baby is born.

“Marcus.” You moan, leaning back and knowing that he will make sure you are comfortable and safe. “My general, my warrior.” You have been thinking about something dangerous, but you can’t think about it when he’s deep inside you. “I love you.”

He caresses your hips, leaning in to take a sensitive nipple between his lips, and he suckles lightly. He has gotten too comfortable being away from the battles the Emperors send him into, but right now, he doesn’t want to die like that. He wants to spend the rest of his life with you at this moment, no one else but you and him. His hand slides across your hip to find your clit, rubbing the bundle of nerves to push you over the edge.

Carrying his baby has made you so sensitive to his touch that it only takes a few strokes of his thumb before you cry out. Your body shaking and your hips grinding down while your cunt locks down around his cock and your juices coat him.

He hisses your name as you clamp down around him, his eyes fluttering shut for a few moments as he lets you ride your high, until he’s squeezing your hips and thrusting up into you.

“Cum for me.” You beg softly, burying your face into the side of his neck so you can breathe him in. “I want to feel you inside me. Carry you with me even more.”

He groans, rocking up into you with a hiss as he gets closer to his orgasm. “Fuck. Gonna - fuck. Shit. Empress.” He moans your name as he pushes deep inside your pulsing cunt and he falls apart, painting your walls with his seed as he clenches his eyes shut.

You hum quietly, stroking his neck as he catches his breath. Feeling the baby move slightly and biting your lip. “We need to use your favor in the Senate.” You lean close and whisper the treasonous words into his ear. “Stage a coup. Revolt.” You pull back and look into his eyes seriously. “Kill the emperors.”

Marcus inhales sharply, his head turning so he can look into your eyes to see if you are testing him or if you’re serious. When he sees your eyes, he knows you’re serious and he swallows harshly, “it won’t be easy. Trying to convince the senate without the emperors finding out.” He admits quietly, “and they could find out and kill me.”

“Set the meetings.” You had thought long and hard about it. “I will convince them, I will do the talking. If our plot is found out, Caracalla could not immediately put me to death. Geta would discover the child is not truly his and he will never allow that.” You caress his cheek. “I wish to have you installed to rule as proctor for ‘his’ child.” You know the senate could never find out that the child isn’t Caracalla’s but no one but you and Marcus know this truth besides your husband.

Marcus caresses your spine, knowing that you could risk everything you’ve created, your life, your child, it’s all on the line. “Amor…” He murmurs and you cup his cheek, “I will never be allowed to be my own person. I will never be allowed to love you freely unless you do this.” You tell him and he nods, swallowing harshly, “I’ll get it organized.” He promises, “we will see it done.”

“Thank you, my love.” You lean in and press your lips to his. “I fear for our child raised under Caracalla’s direction.” Even if you are the mother, the fact that the baby would be proclaimed the emperor’s heir would mean he would be guided by your childish and evil husband. “I want him to grow up to be like his father.”

Marcus caresses your cheek, knowing there is no choice. If he looks back, he knows that he had to make this choice at some point. He never truly wanted to let you or his child go. The next morning, he dresses for court and decides to start with the hardest senator to convince, Brutus. A man who struggled to watch the Emperors rule but had loyalty to Rome. Marcus approaches him under the guise of talk of war, and Brutus nods, wandering off into a quiet corner of the senate to speak. “I fear we cannot speak in these quarters. Come to my villa, we can speak freely.” Marcus says and Brutus nods, unaware that you will be meeting with the men.

You pace, nervous about what you should say, would say. This is the most dangerous undertaking you have ever attempted. Not even trying to run away from your fate was as dangerous as this. You are trying to change your fate. The senators could be allies, or they could stab you in the back.

Brutus enters the room with Marcus, his head held high but his eyes widen when he sees the Empress standing there, her bump protruding beneath her tunic. “Empress.” He greets you, bowing his head.

“Brutus.” You greet him cautiously, but with a gracious smile on your face as you rub the swell of your stomach, bringing his eyes down to the baby. You will leverage the child in your womb. For your freedom, and perhaps Rome’s as well. “I trust you are well?” You ask kindly. “Please sit. The wine has been especially good lately.” It’s been watered down for your use, but you nod to Marcus to pour the senator a cup. “I hope you do not mind the subterfuge, I needed to speak with you and did not wish to summon you myself.”

Marcus pours the cup of wine and hands it to Brutus who nods, thanking Marcus, before his attention turns back to you. "I trust you are well, that the future Emperor is well?" He asks, and you nod in response, "he is lively. Due any day now." You declare and Marcus clears his throat, "the heir is the reason why we called you here.”

You wait for Brutus to turn back to you curiously, setting his cup down. You take a deep breath and caress your stomach. “It is no secret that unrest in Rome is at an all time high.” You murmur softly. “People are starving and while General Acacious has not been sent off on another expensive and bloody campaign, he will be soon.” You pause and sigh. “I fear for the future of Rome, of my son’s legacy that he will inherit.”

Brutus looks at Marcus who stands there, spine straight and steely eyed as your treasonous words are aired. Brutus could go tell the Emperors and you would be killed as soon as the babe is born, Marcus would be hanged the next day. However, Brutus doesn't run off. He nods, setting his cup down, "it is true that the empire is on a precipice. It could be the fall of Rome or her glory continues. The Emperors are driven by lust and greed. Their actions are selfish and make the lowest Roman anxious for change. We will fall if we allow the Emperors to continue down this path."

“There is another solution.” You suggest, rubbing your stomach again. “In my belly lies the next emperor of Rome. Ready to be guided by wise and cautious men.” Your eyes slide over to Marcus briefly. “Men who know the true cost of war and would be able to teach our emperor those lessons without it harming Rome’s people.” You look back at Brutus. “Men such as our senators, you, nurturing a leader that will take Rome to an even greater height.”

Brutus frowns, looking over at Marcus, knowing that the man who will assist in raising the young Emperor will be him. "And how would we remove our problem?" Brutus asks, eyebrows raised. 

"I say we speak to the senators...establish a coup. My husband and brother-in-law would never see it coming." You say and Brutus takes a gulp of his wine before he says, "I will start speaking to the senators tomorrow."

“I hope that we can count on your discretion.” You add, pushing out of your seat and moving over to the senator. “We are on the cusp of change.” You murmur softly. “If it is the ruin of Rome or the brightness of her future, I leave that to your hands.”

Brutus nods, "if this gets out, it will be death for us all. We won't risk it." The senator promises and he looks over at Marcus, "you shall be the one who the senate turns to?" He asks and Marcus nods, making Brutus smile. "very well. I will do what needs to be done."

You nod to the senator when he leaves, Marcus walking out with him and you start to pace. Wondering if you have just signed your death papers or if you will be successful.

****

The senate is abuzz with chatter until Caracalla and Geta enter the chamber. The senators stand straighter and Marcus stands there, dressed in his official robes with the golden laurel wreath shining. He looks regal and the Emperors slosh wine across the marble floor as they greet the senators with wide grins. Brutus looks over at his fellow senators, his hand resting on his dagger. "Emperors." He greets them, walking towards them, and his eyes meet Marcus's for a moment. "The senate and I have been in discussions about the future of Rome." He declares and Geta hums, "and what a wonderful future it will be." 

Marcus sighs, "we aren't so sure. Romans are starving, you tax them more and more every day to fund your wars and your lavish lifestyle." Marcus declares and Caracalla spins around, his eyes narrowed at the accusations, "you dare to spit these treasonous words?" He demands and Marcus shakes his head, "you are draining Rome dry. Her empire will be no more." He says louder and the senators nod while Brutus steps forward, "your leadership has driven Rome to the edge and we want to save our empire before it falls." Brutus declares and he steps up behind Geta while Marcus moves towards Caracalla. It happens in a flash, the daggers pulled out and embedded in the lower backs of the Emperors who cry out, cups of wine falling to the floor. The other senators rush forward, daggers in their hands as they each take a turn stabbing the emperors until blood runs along the marbled floors.

Your cry from your chamber is loud and pained, servants rushing and whispering through the halls. The Hippocrates has been summoned and the labor seems to be quick. The new heir to the throne of Rome is insistent on being born today. It takes your mind off of your worries. Your waters had broken almost as soon as Marcus had left to join the senators. You know that they had planned to kill your husband and his brother today, but the pains had taken over all thoughts so you had not been able to fret over the hours as they passed. 

Blood covers the floor of the senate as Caracalla and Geta lay dead, blood pouring from their mouths. It turns out they betrayed a lot of senators, made promises they couldn’t keep. The senators didn’t take a lot of convincing to remove them from power. “It is done.” Brutus declares, “a new emperor shall be born any moment but we need someone in the interim. An emperor who will represent us, save Rome and her people from ruin. I nominate General Marcus Acacius.” Brutus declares and Marcus’s eyes widen. He didn’t expect to be nominated, feeling that Brutus would want to take control. “I second that nomination.” Drusus announces and one by one, the senate declares Marcus to be the next emperor. The General is speechless, knowing he could easily be taken down like Caracalla and Geta, but this means he gets to have you. “I accept. I will serve as Emperor for all, we will make Rome prosperous and safe.” He promises as a servant rushes in to announce, “the empress is in labor.” Marcus’s eyes widen and he rushes from the senate, running through the marbled halls in his mission to get to you. He doesn’t care that men shouldn’t be in the birthing room as he pushes through and stumbles to your bedside. “Amor. I’m here, I’m here.” He promises, blood still on his hands as he reaches for yours.

“Is it done?” You gasp out, scared for a brief moment that Marcus had been injured, but he would not have been able to come to your side if the plot had been foiled. “It is.” He murmurs, leaning down and pressing his lips to your forehead. You don’t even care that the servants can see, that the rumors will spread across Rome of your relationship with the General. He ignores the Hippocrates’s complaints about him being there as another pain rips through you and you scream, fingers crushing his own hand until the pain passes and you are panting for air. Your child is safe. Boy or girl, they will be free of your husband’s influence. “We need-” you gasp. “A ruler until the baby is older.” 

"The senate has voted. They have chosen me to be Emperor until the child is old enough." He confesses, "I did not want to become Emperor but I want to save Rome and her people from destitution." He admits just as another pain causes you to grip his hand.

Your hiss is low and almost animalistic, the pains feeling like you are being ripped in two, but you know that it is natural. Surprised that the senate had voted for Marcus, you can’t help but be pleased by that outcome. It would ensure that you do not have to be apart. He will have a large role in raising your child together. “The babe is coming.” The Hippocrates tells you from between your legs, frowning at Marcus as he looks down to see the head. “You must push, empress. As hard as you can.”

Marcus is suddenly taken back to the moment when his wife was laboring and after the silence that lingered in the air when the boy was born sleeping, he remembers his wife's cry of agony until she started convulsing. His grip on your hand tightens as his heart pounds, terrified that he is going to lose you in the same way.

Gritting your teeth, nodding as you sit up and start to scream as you bear down as hard as you can. Sweat is pouring off of you and for a moment, you want to give up and tell them that you cannot do it. The pressure on your hand makes you look up. Seeing the horror on Marcus’s face, you know that he is scared for you. For the baby. Closing your eyes, you push again, feeling the pressure suddenly release and hearing the Hippocrates exclaim happily, “a boy!”

Marcus is shaking when he hears the babe cry out and he knows he's alive. He looks at you, wanting to see if you are okay as the hippocrates cradles the crying baby who has a mop of black hair.

You hear the hushed whispers, but you don’t care. You don’t care if all of Rome knows that the baby that will one day be Emperor is Marcus’s. The Hippocrates cleans the baby up while the servants start to massage your stomach, making you wince in pain but it’s all forgotten when the babe is placed into your arms. Making you cry happy tears as you kiss his head softly.

Marcus stares down at the babe in your arms, his cries echoing in the room, and Marcus falls instantly in love. His son. He will never allow harm to come to the boy, and he will claim him as his. He is Emperor now, he can do as he wishes in regards to his personal life. He wishes to marry you and claim the child as his. “I love you.” Marcus declares, uncaring of anyone else in the room, and he leans in to kiss the forehead of the crying baby. “My son.” He whispers, wanting him to know how much he already adores him.

You beam as you look at Marcus and your son. The future is far brighter now that your love has done the impossible. He and the senate have toppled the emperors and restored order without needless bloodshed. “I love you too.” You promise, leaning forward and kissing him boldly. “Both of us do, my emperor.”

****

Marcus wraps his arm around your waist, the golden laurel on his head matches yours as you stand on the balcony. “Do you, Maximis Acacius, vow to dedicate your life to the Roman Empire and her people?” Brutus asks, his hair now greying like Marcus’s. “I do.” Maximus vows, his head nodding. Marcus is proud of his son who he has trained to be the emperor. He claimed him as his son after he was sworn in as emperor and the empire celebrated having a new emperor with a son to take over. Since that day, you and Marcus have had 3 more children who stand beside you, proud of their brother who is taking his rightful place.

You look out over the crowd, a smile on your face bright and proud. You have been incredibly lucky, Marcus has been a wonderful emperor. Rome has flourished under his care and now he willingly turns the reins over to Maximus like he had planned when he was born. “I love you.” You murmur as the crowd roars in celebration of the new emperor.

Marcus turns to look at you, older but no less beautiful. You are his world - you and the children. He leans in to nudge his nose against yours, “I love you.” He promises, pressing a soft kiss to your mouth. His entire world has changed thanks to Caracalla’s mad idea to have another man conceive the heir to Rome. In the end, Marcus is the one who won with his son as emperor and the empress as his uxor.

[majorblinks]

DOWNRIGHT ICONIC (aespa karina)

(smut, male reader, screenwriter you, stranger karina, public sex, rough sex [choking/slapping/biting/spanking/hair-pulling etc], oral, anal, facefucking, titfucking, facial, bondage, degradation, name-calling, other weird stuff, 26k words, it's been 1 million years..., BUT WE'RE SO BACK BABY <3)

Hey, turns out the critics really are onto something:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this.

You aren’t surprised when the nominations are announced. It’s all anyone’s been talking about. You’re this up-and-coming screenwriter, this newly-minted visionary, and - cue the applause - you’ve just made the movie of the year. Clips go viral everywhere; the reviews are calling it extraordinary. They all want to know how you - a relative nobody - managed to pull it off. What’s your secret? What’s your inspiration? Where’d you get this billion-dollar box office idea? 

And here’s one version of the truth:

“Well,” you’re quoted saying in every single interview: “honestly, it’s about a girl.”

Everyone eats this up, of course. It’s so fucking romantic.

You’ll tell an abridged version of this story for the rest of your life. A blip in time in early January - a certified slow-motion movie moment. You’ll say things like she was the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. You’ll say things like, I know it sounds lame, but that’s how it went. She took my breath away. She fascinated me. I saw her and I don’t think my life has ever been the same. 

You’ll never once say her name. 

“It’s weird, actually,” you’ll say in an interview after the news of the nominations drops. “Making this movie about her. She’ll last forever there, you know? She’ll always exist in this film, in this one moment in time. She’s in all of it, basically - every scene, every line. It’s all her.”

“You make it sound like she’s dead,” the interviewer will say, all open-mouthed melodrama.

You’ll laugh. “Oh, God, no,” you’ll say. “She’s alive and well.” As if it hasn’t been years since you last saw her face, watching you from down the corridor, looking lost and torn apart and very, very small. “She’s okay. I mean - I think - yeah, she’s okay.”

As if you’d know. 

Because here’s another version of the truth:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’re going to stand up on that stage and thank your family and your friends. You’re going to stare at all those faces until they swim together into one golden, glittering blur, and then all you’ll see is her - her dark eyes, her glossy hair, her wrist in your grip, her throat between your fingers - her in your sheets, her smiling in your doorway, her shivering in your shower, her sobbing into her hands, her bleeding in your bed, her walking away. Her, her, her. Immortalized forever in this perfect thing you made, winning awards off the reconstruction of a memory. Art imitating life; reality warped into something magnificent, and beautiful, and better. 

And the only thing you’ll feel like doing is throwing up. 

Sure, you’ll bask for decades in the thrill of it: the fame, the fortune, the glory; the adoration, the worship, the attention; the eternal, endless love. You’ll be able to look back on your life when you’re decrepit on your deathbed and know that you - brilliant you, utterly superior you - were divinely blessed with earth-shattering success, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you. You made your mark. You meant something. You were the best, for fuck’s sake, and you have the accolades to prove it - you really, really were. 

So here’s the full truth - the final bottom line:

You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’ll live the kind of life people beg God for. You’ll get everything you ever wanted. 

It won’t be worth it at all. 

-

First, though, there’s this. 

-

Disturbingly enough, you’re in the romance section of a bookstore when everything starts. 

This is really not your genre - that’s the funniest part. Historically, you’re bored to death by the cartoonish pastel covers; you don’t get your kicks from seeing the same delightfully quirky heroines fall for brooding bad boys, or whatever the fuck goes on in those books. You have your standards. You prefer your art a little gritty, a little fucked up, a little more interesting - the kind of thing that can leave you shellshocked in a movie theater, overcome with the sort of full-body, lightning-struck epiphany only truly good work can manage. It’s not a judgment call - you’re not trying to be pretentious. It’s just that you prefer something with some fucking bite.

The second funniest part is this: 

You’re pressed against the shelves, surrounded by the cutest, chastest love stories ever told-

“Are you serious?” 

-and Karina’s on her knees, about to take your cock down her throat. 

Maybe this is what your contemporaries call cinematic irony.

That’s gotta be the only phrase for it, really. The scene itself dripping with classless, crude, erotic filth - the way she ducks her chin to spit on her hand, the slow pump of her fist around you, the rough hum in her mouth at how achingly hard you are - nasty and irredeemable, too fast and too loud. The gross lack of subtlety in her sex appeal: all pale thighs and porn-star tits, the wet pink flash of tongue. Seductive in a way that screams at you. It’d be so easy to write this off as some deliberately controversial opening scene, gory shock value, horror-film suspense - starring you and the slut you’re about to ravage and ruin and potentially leave for dead. 

“Baby - are you sure?” 

It’d be so easy, if Karina didn’t look like an angel incarnate.

“I mean, you-” You’re stammering. You’ve got both hands in her hair, fingers sliding through the glossy black in petting, soothing motions - your clumsy attempt at reassurance. “You don’t have to, if you don’t - we’re in public - I’m not expecting you to - I don’t need it-” 

Karina’s fine, sculpted eyebrows twitch upwards. Her lips are a twist of scarlet, distinct and amused. She doesn’t quite smirk, doesn’t give a voice to the sarcasm, but the sentiment is the same - yeah, right. 

And then she lowers her mouth to lick. 

“Jesus fucking Christ-” 

Scratch that, then. This is the funniest part. The most inhumanly beautiful girl you’ve ever seen, debasing herself in public like some sort of desperate common whore - come on, bring in the laugh track. 

Not that anyone’s laughing now. 

You’re no poet - they’re a few sections over, Plath and Yeats and Dickinson - but Karina’s the kind of thing that makes you understand the motivation completely: only capable of being captured in metaphor, without context, painstakingly interpreted hundreds of years from now by people who will never get this right. All carved-out cheekbones, fluttering lashes; tight fuckable body clad in a little low-cut dress, feet tucked neatly behind her like she’s simulating worship. Dirty and religiously devoted in how she stretches her full glossed lips around your cock and lets your grip tangle in her hair and- 

“Karina,” you get out, but her only response is to blink sweetly up at you and suck. 

Well, who gives a shit about the poets, anyway? You doubt any of them ever got to fuck a mouth like this. 

There’s an unfamiliar caution to the rut of your hips, a wincing fascination every time she gags - and she gags loud, choking and heaving, saliva dripping slick around you and down her chin - that seems to both entertain and confuse Karina. A skeptical crease in her forehead, saying everything she can’t: you don’t wanna fuck me up? Ruin me? Cloudy spit falling in strands to her tits, seeping into the crimson fabric of her dress; she’s wearing a worn black sweatshirt that’s slipping off one shoulder, exposing the clean line of her collarbone. The hollow of her cheeks, the obscene painful sound of your cock clogging her throat - it’s subtext, explicit suggestion. A preternatural understanding. I know what this is. I know what you want from me. 

Which - she couldn’t possibly. 

“Baby.” You sound so wretched that it’s humiliating. Karina’s sharply lined eyes seem to flash with humor, smug and lazily self-satisfied. “You’re gonna make me fucking cum.” 

The thick, sloppy, choked noise she makes is the closest she’s gonna get to a laugh. 

Oh, sure, whatever, it’s not like you’re not thinking about it: digging your fingertips into her scalp and really fucking her face, relishing in the way those eyes would go wide and glassy with unshed tears; refusing to let her have control, to let her lick and lap and breathe. You’re scripting it in your head already. You’d strip her bare and make her sob. You’d wreck her throat and cum all over her face and force her to walk out like that: coated in the sticky, filthy evidence of everything you’ve made her - look at this, you’d say, look at what I have. Look at what I did - all this, all me. 

“God.” Your thumb braces against Karina’s temple, like the gentle stroke of a brush, like you’re painting her right into existence. “You’re just-” A harsh gag; a fall of dirty, drooling spit. “You’re really enjoying this, huh? Getting on your knees in public for a fucking stranger?” 

That’s why the fantasy of fucking her into brutal submission is actually so understandable. You don’t know her. You don’t owe her shit. You could destroy her and it’s not like she could do anything to fight back - not when she’s already below you, looking up. When she asked for this. 

Except-

“Karina.” You can’t stop saying her name. “You’re - fucking perfect.” 

And it’s true.

So you cum. 

Karina swallows it all with the same amount of sultry grace she seems to do everything - how she laughs and walks and talks and takes your cock like a fucking professional - languishing in the practiced bob of her throat, the preening flicker of her eyelids, her face shiny and pale. It tugs the same feeling out of you as a flawless shot in a film, a well-timed bit of dialogue: watching an expert at work, pulling out all their stops. One hand through her hair. Her nails the same rich color as her mouth and her dress. Nasty, slutty, impressive attention to detail - Christ, get this girl in front of a camera, get the moon to be her limelight - you’re breathless, you’re enthralled, you’re so fucking far gone. 

Then: the sticky retreating glide of her pouty mouth, lipstick smeared badly down her chin, stark and arresting as blood. 

“In my experience,” Karina says, finally, “being perfect’s never gotten me anywhere good.” 

She pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt up and wipes her face with her wrist. 

“You’re unbelievable,” you say, dizzy.

“Thank you,” Karina says, sweet like she means it, and sits back on her heels. 

You can’t help yourself; you’re petting back her hair again, cupping her face softly in your hand, caught on the dark glint of her irises. Angel was an understatement. She looks more than that - looks like something holy and all-powerful, something omniscient and blindingly beautiful, something who knows exactly what you need and knows exactly how to follow through. Something worthy of mythology. Something like a god.

And any sort of rough, ruthless, fucked-up fantasy - it’s never going to happen. 

You just can’t ruin a girl like her. 

“So?” Karina’s voice is a smoky bombshell lilt, like she’s just stepped out of some film noir from the 1950s. Hands folded primly in her lap, fingers interlocked like a lady. She could be a pop culture icon, an eternal sex symbol - a Marilyn, a Bond girl, a timeless universal beauty. “What now?” 

You think your brain actually short-circuits. “Sorry?” 

Head tilted, lids dropped low. Smirk still sharp and scarlet. “Are you gonna take me home?” 

You open your mouth to respond, but then a customer walks by the aisle. 

You’re a panicked flurry of motion - zipping up your pants, turning away, frantically patting down your clothes - but Karina just stays kneeling on the floor, little chin on an incline, utterly incriminating. It doesn’t matter. The customer passes you by. The world returns to the way it should be: just the two of you.

“Karina,” you say, flabbergasted by her composure. 

Karina’s lips quirk. “What?” 

You shake your head and offer your hand to help her up, but Karina laughs instead - actually laughs. It’s peculiar, beautiful: raspy like a chronic chainsmoker, as though there’s something foreign she’s trying to dislodge. The raw, gravelly aftermath of a skinned knee, a grisly scrape over skin. 

“Wow,” she says, and stands all on her own, tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her fingers. “That’s a yes to taking me home, then?” 

“What are you doing?” You’re laughing too - you can’t help it - reaching for Karina’s tiny waist to pull her in. “What are you - what do you want?” 

When Karina smiles, it seems to set her eyes aflame. Bright and dancing, lashes like a shroud of smoke. “What do you mean?” 

“You just met me.” It sounds feeble, somehow: a thin, useless excuse. Nothing against the way her body slots between your hands, a smooth effortless fit; nothing compared to how she kisses you between sentences, so quick and easy it already feels like a habit. “You don’t - you don’t know me.” 

Karina’s mouth puckers, coy. “No?” 

“No,” you shoot back, grinning, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all. “Come on, baby, seriously. What do you want?” 

There’s gotta be some motive, you’re thinking. There’s gotta be a reason. Karina is so still, so soft and pliant under your hands, all the carved porcelain perfection of a marble sculpture but with none of the cold stiffness. Spine curving under your fingertips, jaw tilting into your touch. 

A complete stranger, maybe - but every part of her body is begging to be known. 

“Don’t you get it?” Karina says. “I want whatever you want.” 

It’s so simple and earnest it takes your breath away. 

“I - Jesus.” You’re biting on the inside of your cheek, drinking her in. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want?”

Another rasp of a laugh, sound like the serrated edge of a blade. “I’d say fine, okay.” Karina’s voice is low, conspiratorial. “But I’d think you’re lying.” 

And here’s the thing you know for sure:

The very second you saw Karina you swear you saw the next hundred pages of a manuscript unfurling in front of you, lines and themes and gorgeous dark-eyed heroines, tragically beautiful endings and stunning cinematography - infinite narratives in the glossy sweep of her hair, in the seductive stretch of her legs, in the way she looked at you in a crowded room and smiled a lovely, secret smile and told you she’d follow you anywhere. She’s worth making art about. She’s worth devoting lifetimes to. The most honest thing you could say to her right now is baby, I’m writing a movie about this one day, and I think you’re really gonna like it.

Karina couldn’t possibly know any of this, but it still feels like she does - impractical knowledge in how she loops one arm around your neck and kisses you again, no hesitation. Like she actually knows you. 

“I want to fuck you,” you murmur against her mouth, because it’s the next most honest thing. “Is that enough for you?”

You’re a screenwriter. You know your horror movies. A small part of you recognizes that this is precisely how they start: fanged vampires, wicked succubi, femme fatales out for blood. Karina’s so gorgeous she can’t be human - teeth so sharp there’s no way her intentions are pure.

“Sure,” Karina says, smirk glimmering like starlight. “Then I want that, too.” 

It’s a murder plot waiting to happen. 

You take her home anyway. 

-

(Oh, and about your Oscar-winning script-

In theory, this is how it begins.

It’s classic. There’s a stranger and there’s a beautiful girl and they’re both sitting at a bar, talking for the very first time. The girl has a rose tucked behind her ear; it matches the crimson color of her lipstick perfectly. The stranger had asked her what the deal with it was, but she’d said something vague and nonsensical about it being a gift, so now they’re talking about normal, average things. Jobs, names, flirtatious pickup lines. It’s obvious because it’s meant to be, like a set-up to some predictable porn - everyone watching knows they’re going to fuck. 

She keeps getting closer to him. At one point he thinks she’s going in for a kiss.

Instead, all she does is pluck the rose from behind her ear, and hand it to him. 

It’s okay, she says. No thorns. 

He stares at the rich furled petals and the whittled-down stem. 

Thanks, he says, amused, charmed. He thinks there’s something odd about her. He likes it, though; if she were as beautiful as she is - which is very beautiful, exquisitely fucking beautiful - and she behaved like most people do, he’d find her terribly boring. 

He takes it from her. Turns over the rose in his hands absentmindedly as she keeps talking. She’s got all this hair: wild and glossy black, pouring over her thin shoulders, her ribs, her tiny waist. After a moment he feels the sharp prick of a thorn against his fingertip and releases the rose in surprise. 

You said there weren’t thorns, he tells her, laughing. Ow. 

Whoops, she says. Then: Did it get me too? 

She turns her head, pulls her hair out of the way. There’s a scarlet bead of blood trickling down the side of her perfect pale neck. He can’t quite tell where the point of entry was, where the thorn had dug in and broken skin. It’s bleeding a bit too heavily. Covering its tracks. 

She swivels, slightly. She sees the look on his face. Is it bad? she asks.

No, he says, though he can’t really tell. But - couldn’t you feel it, though? The thorn? 

The girl presses her hand to the side of her throat. It comes back bloodstained, a neat smear of red along the lifeline of her palm. 

No, she echoes, though this can’t possibly be true. Hey, you wanna get out of here or something? 

Alright, he says, smiling. They both stand. They leave the rose where it is. Let’s go. 

He cups her cheek instead of her neck when he kisses her for the first time, so he doesn’t have her blood on his hands.

It starts simple like that.) 

-

Karina’s so out of place in your apartment that it’s almost laughable - or it would be, if you were capable of thinking about anything but her mouth and her hands and her tits crushed up against your chest as you pin her to the doorframe. She keeps making these little sounds into your mouth: low and throaty, almost agonized. You swallow all her moans off her lips - oh, baby, you’re okay - and you only kiss her harder. She doesn’t belong, among your carpet worn-down from pacing and your laptop still open and idling and the mess of incoherent colorful post-it notes pasted to your fridge. She doesn’t fit here. Here kissing your mouth, here in your arms, here on fucking earth with the rest of you heathens-

“You wanna fuck me so bad,” murmurs Karina, chin on an incline, staring up at you, “then do it already.” 

She doesn’t squirm or fidget; she doesn’t get needy or start begging. She stays pinned down by your body, lips parted, and stands completely still. 

It’s like she’s telling you to make your move. Waiting for something inevitable. 

“What happened to patience?” you say, anyway. 

Karina’s mouth curls. She palms your cock through your pants. “What the fuck is that?”

You try to laugh, breathless and turned on, but all she does is kiss you again.

You’re a creative - you’re ready to attribute meaning to every movement - but there’s nothing so profound about it when you get Karina on your bed, all that thick black hair fanned out on your sheets, her hands grasping to get your shirt off - off, she murmurs, off. Even that comes out measured. She never shakes. She’s so sure. You kiss her everywhere you can reach, her face and her neck and her collarbone and her tits, drunk on the soft, humming sounds she makes when you do. You’re so fucking gorgeous, you can’t stop saying, and Karina keeps laughing that same raspy laugh, like it’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard. 

“You told me you already know that, right?” You’ve got her face cupped in one of your hands and your other one at the neckline of her scarlet dress. “So what’s so funny?” 

“Everything.” Her teeth glint the way fangs would, a deliberate trick of the light. She’d be villainous if she weren’t so content to be trapped underneath you. “All of it.” She presses her palm to the side of your neck. “You’re too nice.” 

“Fuck.” Your thumb accidentally digs too hard into her cheek. She doesn’t wince, but you feel it - the stomach-turning thrill, the possibility of leaving a bruise. Your hand drops low - lower, down her throat and her tits and her flat midriff - and slips between her thighs, up her dress. It feels safer, somehow. “How do you manage to make the word nice sound like an insult?” 

“It’s not,” she says, simply, and spreads her legs. 

And it must not be - because Karina’s so wet. 

She makes another low velvety sound when you first touch her, seems to melt into the stretch of your finger in her cunt - just one finger, and her back arches faintly, prettily, hips lifting to take more. “Jesus,” you mutter, but Karina’s not looking at you: her eyes are shut tight, lashes fluttering black, tits heaving in her dress with each draw of breath. You’ve fucked girls who’ve seemed unsure of themselves - embarrassed by their own wantonness, how wet they are, how bad they want it - but all Karina does is wrap her hand around your wrist and tug, once: a clear soundless plea for more.

For a second you’re actually, positively certain that you’ve lost it. 

It’s abject fantasy. It can’t be real. You in your apartment with the dream girl - the personal Aphrodite - the muse; God, if anyone was ever made to be a fucking muse, it’s her - underneath you with her ridiculous tits and her tight little pussy, face like a Hollywood dream. Ludicrous. Impossible. Bucking as she tries to fuck herself deeper on your fingers, all the way to the knuckle - slowing down only to say you wanna fuck my cunt open with your big fat cock or what? 

“I,” you try to say, strangled - her mouth’s so fucking filthy. “I was - I mean - we could take it slow-”

“How romantic,” says Karina - and this, too, sounds like a heinous insult coming from her - but she drags your wrist to her lips and sucks her own slick off your hand anyway. 

You choke on your next breath. “Karina-” 

She looks up at you, unflinching, tits half out of her dress and cunt dripping down her thighs. Lipstick worn-down, kissed-off. All over your mouth, or your throat, or your shirt. Mouth chapped from the cold and stained marvelously pink. There’s something in the way her smile forms slight and crooked every time you say her name, as if there’s some private joke you’re not in on. 

“You’re such a gentleman,” Karina purrs, all syrupy-sweet condescension. Then: “You really don’t have to be.” 

She licks the pad of your finger. She’s so completely shameless. You feel monstrous on top of her, in this sick, superior way, like she’s just too small to be so sopping wet and slutty and fuckable - too beautiful to be anything but treated just right. 

“If you want me to fuck you like a whore, baby,” you tell her, half-joking, “then just say that.” 

It’s a mistake the moment it leaves your mouth - a line crossed. Because all Karina does is cock her head, your wrist gripped delicately in her hand, her legs parted underneath you, and stares. Almost droll, bemused. Like you’re so goddamn predictable.  

“Didn’t you hear me?” That perfect face sears right through you. You’d nearly fucked that face. Not quite. Not yet. “I want whatever you want.” 

She’s even tinier than you originally thought she was. You only realize this now, tracing her stomach under your fingertips, feeling the sharp relief of each rib straining beneath her skin. You don’t know it until you touch her, but you can span the width of her thigh under one hand. It sends a strange shiver through you: mapping every jut of bone, every startling edge. She’s tiny. Breakable, practically. Men meaner than you have probably thrown her around, fucked her up against walls, used her like a toy. 

“So,” says Karina. “What do you want?” 

Your fist clenches tight in her grasp, right in front of her face, knuckles going horrifically white.

Like you - like you’re going to-

An accident. A primal sort of gesture, like you’re less than human, turned under her touch into some feral hot-blooded animal who can’t control itself: carnivorous, predatory. You stare at your own hand and then the sharp scythelike curve of her mouth and feel revolted embarrassment crawl straight up your spine. 

It’s abhorrent. 

It also doesn’t even seem to matter.

Karina doesn’t go wide-eyed and nervous; she doesn’t look at your wound fist like she’s scared of what it could do to her. She clicks her tongue, once. Like this, too, is something she already saw coming.

“I thought so,” she says, anyway. Maybe this is it, what does it for her; looking the devil full in the face and begging to be burned. “Then do it.” 

“I can’t do that to you,” you mutter, but you tug her dress up, and you fuck her anyway. 

-

She’s a stranger. This is the point of fucking strangers. To do things to them that you’d never do to anyone else - to take out your worst impulses and tell your best lies and know that none of it matters, in the end. Because they’re nobody, and because you’ll never see them again. 

But you just can’t. 

She’s too indulgent and stunning and soft, with her low moans and the addicting drenched heat of her cunt, hand gentle and careful on the nape of your neck so she can keep pulling you into a kiss. She’s made up of curves, delicate edges - those hips and those tits you can’t keep your hands off of and her lips in a dreamy smile - and you find yourself stroking her hair back from her face so you can drink it all in: the blush in her cheeks, the almost serene way she lets her eyes slip shut and her mouth drop open, slack and enticingly wet. So good, baby, you keep telling her, because she is, her entire body warm and wanting and so easily fucked open, little pussy swallowing your cock right up. She doesn’t fidget or plead. She’s so sweet, such a perfect fit, humming into your mouth as your cock eases her open; so wet you can hear it, the sloppy squelch of her cunt when you bottom out. Your voice comes out coaxing. You like that? That feel good? Taking my cock so nicely, huh?

“Mmm,” Karina breathes, in an exhilarating moan, right into your mouth, against your tongue. “Mm, mm-”

She never quite manages full sentences. Never finds it in herself to make any more obscene demands. Just gets all small and soaking underneath you, licks messily at your bottom lip, and lets you do all the talking - lets you draw a careful hand through her hair and drop your other one between her thighs, clenches tight around your cock when you rub at her clit, keens low in her throat and listens. To the good girl, to the I got you, baby, to the that’s it, there you go, this is what you wanted - I know, honey, I know, you just needed to get this cunt fucked right, you just needed to cum real bad. I know what this is. I know what you need. 

“Fuck.” She’s flushed pink to her chest, delightfully ineloquent. “Yes-” 

Well - good thing you’re decent with your words, when it counts. Let Karina blush and drool and slick up your cock with every stroke. That’ll work just fine with you.

It’s the kind of juxtaposition you’d really lean into - the kind of thing you’d write just to get so self-indulgent with, a personalized note to the director, a wink and a nudge to every audience member. Look at that. Look at her eyes like something straight out of poetry. Look at her body like a pornographic fantasy. Look at how she gets so tamed and docile and compliant when she gets her tiny pussy stuffed full, creaming all over that cock, huge tits bouncing - look, that’s art, isn’t it? What else would you call it? What else could it be?

“You gonna cum, baby?” She’s so fragile underneath you. Color staining her cheeks apple-red; lips swollen and begging to be kissed. Fictive little fairy tale. “You gonna cum for me?”

“Yeah.” It’s breathy and barely-there. Her chin trembles, jerks in a weak nod. “I’m - I - fuck-” 

See: you just can’t rough her up. It’d be blasphemous. Sacrilege. Taking one single look at the stained-glass windows of a church and tearing it all to the ground.

Still, you’re mesmerized by how utterly vulnerable she looks: the glossy shine to her irises; the way she inhales all slow and shaky, body slipping from some sort of precipice. Not just like she’s near-tears, but like she’s stunned - struck dumb from a violent blow, mouth wide open in the aftermath. And it’s just sex - and, fuck, you’ve said it, you see things the way every obsessive artist does; sex is never just sex. Every one thing means something more. A metaphor. An allegory. You get nasty and debauched and dirty because you know exactly what you can spin it into. Put the entire scene in a silent film and everyone can swoon about the things you might be saying to her, this impossibly captivating stranger in your bed with her graceful name, her dizzying moans, her shuddering frame in her orgasm. Don’t you get it? you could be telling her, hand brushing gently over her sweat-damp hairline. Don’t you feel that? You’re a stranger to me, baby, but you don’t have to be. There’s a reason we met. There’s a meant-to-be here, somewhere. I’m not a believer, sweetheart, but you could make one out of me - I swear you could, I promise-

But that’s the reason why these things are best left to the imagination, anyway. 

A million scripted sweet nothings - and none of them manage to make it out of your mouth. 

“Karina.” Your hips jerk hard. You sound half-possessed. “So pretty, cumming all over my cock like that. Such a perfect little cunt, baby - so fucking good-”

Her eyes suddenly shut tight; her body arcs into your touch, lips parted in a silent gasp. And for a second it seems like such a snapshot of innocence, like she’s brand-new to getting fucked quick and rough and dirty - though you know this can’t possibly be the truth, not with the way she flirts and whines and drips for more like she’s made for it - but she’s trembling under your fingertips, and you can dream. She’s your beautiful stranger, your pristine muse; you can pretend she’s whatever the fuck you want. 

“God,” Karina murmurs, so soft and weak it makes your head spin. 

Before you know what you’re doing - before you can even think twice about it - you’re pulling out, and cumming all over her stomach. 

You can’t help it. You shouldn’t have had that thought about innocence. Jesus. This is what you mean, about you and your own painful humanity; you’ve got all the same vile desires. When you see a pure thing - all that porcelain skin, all that thick glossy black hair, all those gleaming white teeth in her open mouth - your very first instinct is to fuck it up bad.

You’d do worse, if you were worse - you’d make a real fucking disaster out of her. 

“Baby,” you say, breathlessly. “Are you…”

And Karina, then, does something truly evil: 

Sighs luxuriously, stretches her arms above her head, eases those gorgeous eyes open, and smiles. 

As if she’s reveling in it. The scent of sex - the defiled tautness of her tummy - the way you’re not sure where her little red dress or her shoes or her panties are, how her cunt’s dripping wet onto your sheets, her hair a glorious mess. Grinning in the face of utter filth. 

“You,” you exhale, running your palm down her side. “You’re so…” 

Karina’s mouth pulls up at a corner, like she’s daring you to finish the sentence, but you never do. 

You can’t stop staring at the stretch of cum-covered skin before you. Coating her belly, pooling into her navel. You realize with a start that there’s a new bruise blooming on her chest, a vicious sort of bite mark. You can’t remember when you did that. You’d been kissing her - of course you kissed her - her mouth and her neck and her tits, but you’d been so gentle, sucking light and soothing her skin with your tongue after-

“You didn’t want to cum inside me?” Karina asks, hoarsely. 

You blink so hard your vision blurs. “What?” 

“Right.” Her eyeshadow’s smudged dark underneath her eyes, making her look deliciously used up. “You did want to cum inside me.” 

“Karina,” you warn - or, at least, you mean to make it sound like a warning - but her name comes out too faint. It’s horrific. Your hand traces her hipbone so reverently. You’re no match for her. 

Karina arches a brow in unhurried challenge, ghosts her hand across her tummy. Takes two fingers and drags them through the cum you spilled, pulls back with it clinging thickly to her skin. Drifts down, down, down. 

“Karina,” you try to say again, even more pathetic than last time. “Jesus-” 

But you saying her name holds no weight here; she’s made that more than obvious. Nothing to stop her as she smears her cum-slick fingers across her glistening pussy, gaze locked amusedly on your face, tracking your reaction. She’s still so fucking wet - she rubs your cum in circles across her clit - tossing her head back a little, chest heaving and falling, fingertips just barely dipping inside her cunt-

“I can’t.” Karina lifts her hand to pop her fingers in her mouth, sucks them clean. Pointedly flashes her too-sharp nails at you like she’s unsheathing claws. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

“You,” you say, though your hand’s already pressing hard into her ribs, “are fucking cruel, baby.” 

“And you,” replies Karina, head tilting, “just want to see my cunt all filled up and leaking your cum.” 

Oh, she hasn’t been wrong about you all night. She certainly won’t start now. 

“What?” A sly, languid smirk tugs at her lips. “Afraid you’re gonna knock me up or something?” 

Your breath halts right in your lungs.

You’d been right about her too, it seems. Succubus. Vampire. She must be; she’s bloodthirsty. Tits gleaming with sweat, the scarlet stain of that bite mark you can’t remember leaving, cunt all dripping wet and desperately empty - body like a fatal fucking blow. 

Karina’s eyes glint. I want what you want, she’d said. 

With the way she spreads her legs, she’s gotta be ready to prove it.

So you never stood a chance. You give in and scoop up cum with one finger and sink it deep inside her aching cunt, feeling as she clenches down, as she takes it so well; like a good girl, you tell her, letting me do whatever I want with this needy little cunt; that’s my good girl. Karina lifts her hips - goes so still and so obedient - and lets you repeat it over and over again, fucking into her with your fingers until the plane of her stomach is bare and sticky and her cunt’s dribbling your cum onto your sheets. It’s completely nasty. It’s hot. It’s Karina craning her neck back and shutting her eyes as you bury three fingers inside of her and fill her with your cum, every part of her in utter surrender, entirely at your mercy, breathing out hard through her nose until your thumb rubs at her clit and she’s cumming again, all over your hand. She gets this look on her face, afterwards - exhausted, every line of her face gentle and lax - staring up at you like you’re the only person still left on this planet. Adoring, almost. As if you’re something out of another world. 

It’s an expression too sweet for a scene like this - and it’s exactly what men like you make art about. 

“There,” you say, soft and mesmerized, wiping your hand across her chest. “Satisfied?” 

Karina laughs her strange, gravelly, gorgeous laugh. 

“No,” she says, shamelessly. “But that’s not your fault.” 

Your fingers curl around the curve of her jaw. “No?”

She barely looks like she belongs in your bed - she must be something divine, lit from within, god-blessedly gorgeous. She’s a fucking fever dream: stunning eyes and the bob of her throat and her tits and her curves and all that hair. Stay, you think of telling her. Let me see what I can make of you. I don’t know you yet but I could, baby, I really could. 

“Nope.” Karina smiles, and somewhere, soliloquies are writing themselves. “I always want more.”

“Okay,” you say, mouth hovering over hers. “Then stay.” 

-

So she stays.

-

(An update on your script:

The stranger and the girl are back at his place. They’re sitting on his couch. Nobody has cleaned off her neck. He’s been too busy pawing at her: at her face, between her legs, at her tits in her tight dress. I need you, he’s been murmuring to her, and it feels like he really means it: like he’ll die if he doesn’t get her desperate and whining underneath him, his cock stretching her tight little cunt wide open. He doesn’t feel too bad about it. She’s a dirty slut. She’s said as much. She’s got her own needs, too. 

What happened to your window? she asks, suddenly.

He pulls back from her chest, his spit clinging shiny to her skin. 

She isn’t looking at him. He has the sudden, unnerving feeling that she hasn’t been looking at him the whole time. Not like she’s had her eyes closed in blinding, overwhelming pleasure - but like she’s deliberately been trying to look at anything else. 

But his hand falls between her thighs, and he realizes she’s already wet. 

A bird flew into it, probably, he says. That happens, sometimes. 

They’re talking about the stain on the once-clean glass of his window. The backdrop of the night sky behind means it’s barely visible, but the suggestion of it is enough. Implicit gore. Tiny little black feathers, caked in blood from the impact, dark and dried. It’ll be scrubbed off soon enough, he knows. It’ll be all gone eventually. 

Oh, she says. She doesn’t apologize for potentially killing the mood. She hasn’t, anyway, not really. She’s still wet and small underneath him, begging for it. Poor thing. 

Yeah, he says. 

She turns back to him. Her hair’s everywhere, all over the arm of his couch, wayward strands beneath his fingers. She’s clearly expecting something - to be kissed, to be fucked hard, to be called baby and angel and good girl. It doesn’t really matter either way. Those are the only things he can give her. 

He stares at the blood on her neck. 

Let me clean that off for you, actually, he says, and goes to the kitchen to get a washcloth.)

-

Much, much later:

“I admire you,” Karina says, all tucked up in your bed, underneath your sheets, half-buried into your side. Moonlight bleeds into the room. Her eyes gleam like galaxies. “For showing some self-control.” 

“What?” 

Karina’s hair pours over your pillowcase. She takes your hand and brings it close to her face, working your fingers into a tight fist. 

“Fucking bitch,” you mutter, and then regret it immediately. It lands too harshly, too strange and serious. “Sorry. I didn’t - that came out weird. I don’t think you’re a bitch.” 

Karina’s lips brush your knuckles. “Not the meanest thing I’ve been called.” Her voice twists with humor. She shouldn’t be so comfortable curled up with a man she doesn’t know in the middle of the night. You think of kissing her hard, of scraping her neck with your teeth, of warning her about self-preservation - sweetheart, you could tell her, this is how people end up dead. “Not the meanest thing I’ll be called, either.” 

You shift. Your fist, unconsciously, goes tense in her hand. “What’s your deal?” 

Her mouth tilts. “What’s yours?” 

You huff out a laugh. “You’re unbearable,” you say softly, which feels much kinder than calling her a bitch. “What are you - what do you mean?” 

I’m not hard to figure out, you want to tell her. I’ll let you in if you ask me to. But you - you, you imagine saying, cupping Karina’s face in your hands and saying her name like you’re praying to her, drafting scenes in your head with each whispered syllable - you. Look at you. I’d fill a thousand pages trying to find a way to understand you. 

“If you want to hurt me,” Karina says, “then hurt me.” 

Your throat dries up. Your fist falls open. “What?” 

“I wouldn’t blame you.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. You see her tongue dart over her bottom lip, the slick glimmer of spit. “If that’s what you wanted.” 

You stare at her, hard. 

It’s not difficult to make out her silhouette in the dark; she’s illuminated so distinctly by the moon, like it’s her own on-set spotlight, professionally arranged - she’s got the cosmos calling her shots. You think about how careful you’d been with her: doing what she wanted and making her cum and kissing her like you have history and maybe fucking her like you love her, just a little.

You think about that bruise you left on her chest, her skin between your teeth, the feeling of biting down. 

“It’s not,” you say, and the lie tastes acrid in your mouth. “It’s - it’s not, Karina.” 

“You fucked my face in public within like an hour of meeting me. And fucked me and came on my stomach. And fingered your cum inside of me.” It’s far past midnight. She sounds more alert than she should. “You’re gonna start being polite now?”

It sends an odd knot to your gut, the way she puts it. Equating all of that to hurting her. Laughing in the face of your clenched fist - not because she thinks you won’t do it, but because she knows how bad you want it. 

Hurt me. She says it like it’s so easy. Fuck me. Let me stay the night. Hurt me; you’ve earned it. 

“I’m not polite.” The truth doesn’t taste much better. “I just have, you know, common fucking decency.” 

“Hm,” Karina says, a nonchalant little noise, and nothing else.

You brush her hair off her neck and your fingertips graze the hollow of her throat. You feel her swallow under your touch. You open your mouth, though you’re not sure what you’re about to say - Karina, like a chant, like she’s consumed you in a matter of moments, Karina - but she shuts her eyes delicately, and curls close to you, and just like that the moment is over. 

I have common decency, you’d said. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I can control myself.

So maybe you weren’t right about everything. You’re not the devil. That’d be a delusion of grandeur - the idea that you’d ever have that kind of power over a girl like her. 

Not for long, she’d replied, in the knowing tilt of her smile. Not if I can help it.

-

In the morning, it’s a picture of crime-scene proportions. It takes a little work to piece it all together.

Karina’s not in bed when you wake up, but there are traces of her everywhere - telltale, incriminating bits of evidence. Strands of her hair on the pillow. Blood-red lipstick stains on the fabric. Her crimson dress crumpled on your bedroom floor, sporting a tiny tear in the hem that you don’t remember leaving; you can still smell her perfume all over your sheets, like a calling card. If this was a TV drama - a clichéd police procedural - she’d probably be dead in your living room right now, blank-eyed and beyond saving, rigor mortis deforming her perfect body into something grotesque. 

This is also probably not a thought you should ever relay to Karina, but you do anyway.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she replies. She’s perched on your kitchen counter, dressed in one of your t-shirts, bare legs swinging. “I’m very much alive.”

“I was being dramatic,” you try to say, gesturing with your hands to set the scene - the lighting, the fake blood and the special effects, the potential pallor of her face. “I’m - I’m a screenwriter. It’s in my nature. I didn’t mean I wanted to find your fucking corpse out here-”

“It’s okay if you did.”

You choke. “What?”

“I’m right with you, babe.” Karina leans forward conspiratorially. There’s a sharpness to the dark glint in her eyes that kind of makes you think she really does understand: that she has the same tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions. A kindred, morbid spirit. “I get it. I’m pretty devastated that I’m still breathing, too.”

She says this all in a scratchy, sultry voice, hoarse as though she’s been sleeping for years instead of hours. Lashes fluttering like she’s just told you something very adorable and sweet.

“God,” you say, desperately charmed, and laugh until you feel light-headed. “You’re sick.”

Karina’s mouth curls. “Right.”

“I’m serious.” It’s surreal: her wearing your clothes and sitting on your counter like this is an everyday occurrence, indulging every fucked-up thing you say to her. Maybe you’re still caught somewhere in a dream, just waiting to wake up. “You’re, like - not normal.” 

“Hey.” A light, careless shrug; her palm rests over the back of her neck. “No arguments here.”

You rub a hand over your eyes, smiling like an idiot, and take a breath. 

It’s late January, and cool sunlight drips into the room, over your furniture and your floors and the angel right in the middle of your kitchen. It should wash her out, blur her at the edges; it doesn’t even come close. Turns her to a freeze frame instead, carefully color-graded, every hue just a bit too intense: skin ghost-pale, lips pouty and pink, hair jet-black and tangled to her waist. Your shirt hangs off of her slender frame like it aims to swallow her up. You thought you’d been stunned by Karina before, lulled by the late night, the electric rush of touching her - you’d assumed you could blame it on the alcohol, the slutty dress and the sultry makeup and the long-held habit of artistic romanticization-

But it’s nothing compared to seeing her now. 

Karina crosses one leg over the other, and waits as though expecting a rating: to be starred out of five like a film. 

Face scrubbed clean. Bone structure a study of faultless symmetry, delicate in a way that feels both inhuman and invulnerable. She’s so classically breathtaking - a miraculous second coming of a tragic, iconic movie star, a phenomenon back from the grave; jaw and nose and mouth all clean lines, aesthetically precise art - but God, those eyes. Enormous without the thick liner, suggestive only of impossible innocence. Like some darling baby animal, some long-lashed lamb to the slaughter - something pristine and completely untouched. 

The morning after, the direct light, the exposed behind-the-scenes - she’s still beyond beautiful. 

And somehow she’s still here with you. 

“That’s insane, by the way,” you say, unable to stop yourself. “That you stayed.” 

There’s a loud cracking sound. 

You squint, disoriented. “What-” 

Karina blinks at you, wide-eyed; her jaw shifts. The sound echoes again, startling and sudden. “What?” 

“Are-” You step closer. “Are you chewing on fucking glass or something?” 

“Or something,” Karina replies, smile’s tiny and closed-off. She gestures to the cup next to her. “It’s just ice.” 

She’s so calm watching you approach her. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the freakout, for the breakdown - or, at the very least, the scrambling excuses before the walk of shame. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t know you. Here’s an even worse truth: judging by her hickey that looks like you might’ve tried to rip her throat out earlier, she’d have every right to take one look at you and run. 

Karina doesn’t do any of it. Just raises her cup to her lips and tips it back, the arc of her neck so inviting. 

“That’s so fucking bad for your enamel.” You’re laughing again. You’re in front of her now, settled between her legs. “You’re gonna break a tooth.” 

Karina sets her glass down. Wipes the corner of her mouth with her wrist, eyes locked amusedly on yours - heavy-lidded enough to seem lazy, but pupils blown enough to be a siren call, a deliberate suggestion.

“Oh, no,” she says, all smoky sarcasm. “Who’d ever want me then?” 

She parts her thighs the second you touch them; her body’s so obedient under your fingertips, like a doll’s, something to be dressed up and posed and played with. Daring you to do everything you’re already thinking about doing. 

“You’re ridiculous,” you murmur, and give in completely.

So:

Look, you know exactly how the movies would frame this. Pandering to the wide-eyed teenagers and hopeless romantics; adding the swell of strings every time your eyes or hands or lips meet, each motion accompanied with unsubtle cues - there’s the meet-cute, there’s the moment, there’s the love-at-first-sight. It’s ridiculous to drag any of that into your real life, of course. It’d be like believing in God. Giving up logic to put your faith in something silly and mythic and implausible - to follow true love like a religion, expecting it to save your soul; to pray to the one like a healing property, a benevolent higher power. 

You can’t believe in that. You can’t. 

But-

Karina pulls back the barest amount, eyelids fluttering open like a new day dawning, and smiles when she sees the look on your face. So sweet and gorgeous; so struck and adoring. So comfortable wrapped up in your arms.

“Hi,” she murmurs. 

And - as though it’s some bone-deep instinct, saturating your bloodstream - you just have to kiss her again. 

Don’t you feel that? you think of telling her again, your hand slipping to cup her cheek - the sentiment always seems to come back around. You swear you can see scenes flashing behind your eyelids, the beginnings of a creative epiphany; it must be seeping through your fingers, staining her skin with ink, every possible action depicted neatly between brackets. A laugh, a look, a touch. A version of Karina projected across the silver screen to a wild, wanting audience. Don’t you see what you could do for me? What you’re capable of becoming? 

You can’t believe in any of this, but it’s gotta be something close. 

The feeling doesn’t end when the kiss does: only intensifies, made tangible somehow. Sculpted into the spit-slick curve of her lips, the flinty gleam in her eye. Like she feels it too. Like she knows. 

“And it’s not insane that I stayed,” Karina says, belatedly. “You asked me to.” 

For a moment you just stare at her, seconds from her mouth and speechless. 

It’s the truth without difficulty. It’s a confession with no strings attached. It’s the fucking dangerous way she says it - as if whatever you want extends to a lot more than sex. 

“And you don’t-” Your throat closes over a swallow; you find your eyes darting between hers, searching for anything but honesty. “You don’t think that’s insane? Doing whatever a stranger tells you to?”

Karina only laughs her strange laugh, gritty the way good music is, demanding to be heard.

“Nope,” she says, like this is all so simple. “That’s just what I do.”

It’s unbearably filthy in its implication - and it’s exactly what you need. 

The room seems to fill with potential, fantasies pouring in from the ceiling, enough to bloat any manuscript to its breaking point. You let out a breathless laugh, loud and unabashed. You think of pushing for even more, pressing your nails in and digging deeper - why me, why this, why now - but Karina leans in close before you can and slots her mouth to yours, and you’re no fool: there’s no line of questioning worth giving that up. 

Seems like you’ll have to come up with this character motivation all on your own. 

-

“Look at us,” she murmurs against your lips - meaning this very minute, the chemistry, how every glittering star must’ve conspired to get you here. “Kinda feels like this was meant to be, huh?” 

She’s clearly kidding, because it’s too soon and too fucking crazy, but-

Well, the way you kiss her then is absolutely your version of a yes. 

-

Here’s something people should probably know about artists like you:

You’re rather enamored with the idea of a magnum opus. 

It’s a natural thing to reach for, to visualize - the concept of your one great masterpiece. Something you can pour years and years into, water into roaring reckless oceans; time transforming the things you make into something worth remembering forever. Everyone you know - your sculptors, your songwriters - has their own version of this, somewhere. When I finally create this one perfect thing I’ll be - go on, fill in the blank. Fulfilled. Gratified. Happy. When I finally do this, I’ll feel whole. 

It’s strangely fantastical. A lifelong dream a kid would have - a childlike, storybook aspiration. 

Yours - as far as you’ve figured out - looks a little like this:

“It’s not as romantic as it should be,” you admit, now. “I’m not really into that as a theme. True love, I mean. Or optimism. Or hope. I want something more…” Something rougher, you mean. Something with pain. Something with blood and bruises. “Nuanced, you know? Complicated, messy.” 

“I get it,” replies Karina. She has her hands twisted in her lap, watching you very closely. You’re obsessed with the way she looks at you - like she’s drinking every word in with those smoldering dark eyes, greedy for more. For you. “All the best art is about pain, huh?” 

You snap your fingers, pleased to be understood. “Exactly.” 

Karina smiles, small and knowing, and gestures you on. 

In your vision, your magnum opus is always about a girl. Like you said, it’s the way it goes with all the best films ever made: not about love, but the futility of it lasting. Think of all the famed examples - think of the filmmakers and their obsessions, sneaking the great loves of their lives between each line: there’s something she said, there’s a dress she wore, there’s a conversation they had in the middle of the night, tangled up in sheets and whispering against skin. Your future muse will be just like that. A reincarnation of the infamous women who haunt all the greatest artists - an amalgamation of their bodies contorted into narratives and replicated in loving, graphic detail. Someone with skin like marble, a statue you could take a sledgehammer to. Someone who looks unfathomably pretty when she cries. 

Someone like-

“Uh-huh,” says Karina. She must’ve just gotten out of the shower before you found her, because her hair’s damp enough to have left wet patches on your t-shirt. She licks her bottom lip, once. “Sure.” 

Someone to be what you’ve always wanted: a flawless girl to fall from the sky into your lap. To fulfill your promise to yourself: when I meet her, I’ll know. I’ll be able to make this movie. When I meet her, everything will slip exactly into place. 

Karina cracks another ice cube between her teeth.

“So,” she says, low with insinuation. “When you told me last night that you found me inspiring…”

She doesn’t need to finish the question. She knows exactly what you want.

“You’re…” You shake your head. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I saw you and I just - I felt like I knew. I knew. I wanted you.” You shrug helplessly, smiling. “Do you think I’m nuts?” 

She should, probably. You’re a total stranger, a practical lunatic, an artist talking of your visions like you’re possessed. You don’t know her - that’s the reality of the situation. You don’t know her. 

But then there’s everything else.

The unbelievable sex, the staying the night; the way she lets you touch her, blinking slow and subservient, like you already have a claim to her body. You think muse and you think in abstract concepts, glittering stars, guiding lights; you think of skin cut up and sewn together, of creators and their finest monsters, of the implicit poetry in the undoing. You think muse and you think of the way Karina smiles at you now, full lips and frail bones, a painter’s portrait reference. Unmoving, unafraid. Too otherworldly for your day-to-day but just right when she’s in your arms, like a trial-run demonstration: this is what we’re capable of. You could make it happen. You could make me fit.

You swear you’ve been dreaming of someone like her your whole fucking life. 

You think muse, and now you can only think of her. 

It’s a sign. It must be. And this, the next one:

“No,” Karina says, easily. “I think you’re just like everyone else.” But she raises an eyebrow, so you know it’s a joke. “I think you’re all the same.” 

You laugh, delighted; Karina’s smile widens, shows her teeth. “Shut up.” 

Karina acquiesces immediately - claps a hand over her mouth like it’ll keep any other words from escaping. It’s so adorable that you can’t keep yourself from pouncing, suddenly all over her like an animal: wrenching her thin wrist down, fingers threading through her hair, tugging her lips to yours as if you’ve been starved and she’s something to devour. She’s so cold, ice still melting on her tongue; even her body feels glacial, more porcelain than real. It drives you wild - the stunning impossibility of her. The desire to see it all reworked, unwound, shattered. 

“So,” you breathe over her mouth. “I can write about you?” 

“Babe.” Karina’s dark eyes sparkle, frozen-over streets in the mid-winter sun. “You can do anything you want with me.” 

That’s the whole point of having a muse, after all. Everything they are becomes yours. 

-

“But,” you can’t help saying right after: “you don’t have to be, like - concerned. About what I said. About art and pain. I mean…” You falter. You’re standing in between her spread legs now, thumbing the sharp curve of her jaw. “It’s fiction. I’m not that kind of guy in real life - I’m not going to hurt you.” 

Karina just stares at you, sentiment clear and unspoken. 

“Not like - not seriously.” You roll your eyes, laughing it off. “Not like that.” 

“Not like that,” Karina echoes. The hickey on her neck seems to flush redder every time you look at it - a photograph in a darkroom, developing. “But in other ways.”

Your mouth opens, but whatever defense you might’ve had gets traitorously stuck in your throat.

Karina laughs hoarsely, lets you trace her bottom lip with a finger. She seems to get the picture - that you’d love to see it bitten and bloody, but only ever in the name of art. There’s a kind of sick, sadistic beauty in destruction, battles waged and lost. She leans into your touch like she’s seen all the war films and knows precisely why they’re so well-loved. 

“For the record,” she tells you, arms looped loosely around your neck: “I look very pretty when I cry.” 

“Jesus Christ.” You’re smiling. She couldn’t be more perfect if you’d dreamt her up yourself. “Then I guess I’ll have to make it happen.” 

-

It’s like fate, probably. 

-

(Up next in your script:

The girl is standing in the stranger’s bathroom. She’s turning a little glass perfume bottle over in her hands when he stops in the doorway. He’s perfectly content to watch her; she’s the kind of beautiful that deserves to be observed, like some exotic wild animal caged between four walls in an elaborate exhibit, mildly unaware of all the attention. Her hair is messy; her head is tilted down. Unseeing. 

Oh, he says. That was my-

Except he doesn’t even get the rest of the sentence out before the girl whirls around, and the bottle slips from her hand and shatters on the floor. 

Jesus. The stranger jolts back. Jumpy. He’s not too concerned about the broken bottle; it’s not his, anyway. Why the fuck did you do that? 

Sorry, the girl says. She’s leaning rather casually against the counter, observing the glass covering the ground, the sickly-sweet smell of the perfume sticking to the tile. Honeysuckle and the sharp note of alcohol, rendered unrecognizable. You scared me. 

He looks down. A crystalline stretch of tiny little shards - if she tried to move she’d slice her foot open. 

No worries, he says. Hold on. 

He ducks into the kitchen to get a broom and when he comes back he stops in his tracks. There’s something slightly off about the picture in front of him. She’s small against the background counter, frozen, barely blinking. Everything about her looks suddenly frail, fair skin ghostly underneath shitty bathroom lighting, cheekbones gaunt and sunken-in, hair pouring ink-black in endless waves. A vengeful spirit. An incorporeal haunting. 

Did you…? he starts to say, thrown. 

She blinks, finally. Did I what? 

He pauses, reassesses. She’s gorgeous. She’s art. She’s vibrantly alive. 

Never mind, he says. 

It seems kind of like she’d moved, but he can’t tell. He forgets about it. She’s still beautiful and she seems okay and so he steps forward and clears the worst of the glass out of the way. 

It’s silly, she says, watching him. I used to know someone who wore that perfume. 

It was my ex-girlfriend’s, he says. She left it here a while back. I think it’s a common brand or whatever. Hey, let me help you. 

He’s very chivalrous about it, sweeping her off her feet, cradling her bridal-style across the possible remnants of glass. She laughs all the while, playing into it - a princess out of a fairy tale, being carried to safety by some gallant knight. But then he sets her down and cups her ass and says, You gonna pay me back for the property damage or what? and she laughs harder, because there’s nothing funnier than that: sweet moments turned filthy, a startling hairpin turn in intention. 

Or - conversely - a revelation of the absolute truth. Because what else could he ever want from her?

So she says, Yeah, sure, take everything, and leans in to kiss him.

It’s a normal kiss, mostly. It’s just that it begins pointedly erotic but seems to turn strange after a second, like he might be gripping her hair too hard, like she might be corpse-limp in his arms, like at any moment he could unhinge his jaw and sprout fangs and swallow her whole, cannibalistic, viperous. There’s too much spit and sound. There’s too much teeth and selfishness. It stretches on too long and lingers where it shouldn’t and overstays its welcome terribly - the score seems to fall off-beat, the lighting seems to shift dark and discolored-

But then the kiss breaks, and it’s over. 

When he pulls off of her she looks like the perfect picture of flushed contentment. Eyes half-lidded and lashes fluttering, her pouty lips swollen and rosy. Smiling like she wants more, like she wants it so, so bad. 

It didn’t get you? he asks finally, looking at her neck, thinking of thorns and pinprick pain and the rivulet of crimson that’d decorated her throat. The glass? 

No, she says. Don’t you wanna fuck me now? 

Oh, God, he says, grinning, and every other thought melts away into nothing. He likes how she doesn’t play coy. He likes how she’s smaller and has to tilt her chin up to look at him. He wants to fuck her, so he does. 

It’s excellent sex. The blood on the tile doesn’t really matter.)

-

Before you really start writing, there’s just one singular problem: you don’t know anything about her. 

“That’s not true,” Karina replies, right away. 

You open your mouth, then close it, because - okay, she’s not completely wrong. 

For about an hour now you just haven’t been able to stop talking to her. About anything, everything: your start into screenwriting, your favorite novels, your greatest inspirations, your neverending passion for eerie, erotic art. You can’t seem to shut up. And it would be bad - would be making you feel self-conscious right now, if it were anyone else - but it’s just not. Because it’s, well-

It’s you, you told her, thoughtfully, watching as the sun climbed higher into the sky, golden light grazing each scalpel-sharp edge of Karina’s body. You’re easy to talk to. Has anyone ever told you that?

Karina blinked at you. Tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear and looked away, considering it. 

She has this way about her: this serene openness to her big eyes, her body language. Leaning back on her hands, humming and nodding and saying I get it, I feel that way too, I understand with such sweet sincerity that you can’t help but believe her. Like a Catholic confessional, a pristinely blank page - something you could pour hours and hours of words into that would never, ever complain. 

Yeah, Karina said, finally. She pulled one leg up to her chest; you could see the lacy black of her panties. I get that all the time. 

Just one of those people, huh? Her character was taking shape already. A vault for everyone else’s thoughts and ideas, cradling them between her fingers like something infinitely precious. A listener. Such a lovely trait; a perfect protagonist characteristic. An observer. 

Yeah. Her cheek rested gently against a knobby knee. Exactly. 

It’s something of an art study. You’ve been filing away these details about Karina since the moment you met her, unraveling her bit by bit.

She always seems to think deeply before she speaks, a sort of charming self-scripting, like she wants to make sure she gets every sentence just right. She makes silence seem like the most natural thing in the world. She doesn’t laugh nervously or blush or get embarrassed, ever. She’d mentioned offhand during one of your tangents about your most beloved movies that she tends to like films about gorgeous, dangerous, scarily self-possessed girls: Thirteen and Black Swan and Girl, Interrupted. She seems both intensely present and consistently lost in thought, there one moment and gone the next, her long-lashed gaze falling in and out of focus like a camera lens. A contradiction, you think to yourself. An enigma, even. Profoundly complicated. Not just a girl but something more. 

Art in and of itself, displayed deliberately on your kitchen counter, waiting to be understood. 

“No, you’re right.” Your fingers have strayed to your open laptop; you’re seconds from typing Karina’s name like a title, something you’ve created all on your own. “I know…”

You’re trying to think of something nonchalant to say and failing. I know you - the first instinct, somehow. I know you’re something brilliant and remarkable and new. I know I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I know there’s something here, I know what I feel, I know what I want - you, you, you. 

Karina stares at the ice melting in her glass. 

Then she says, mouth tripping up at a corner: “You know I’m a world-class fuck.” 

“Jesus.” You laugh out loud, surprised. “Okay, yeah. That.” A pause. “And, obviously-” 

“Obviously,” Karina echoes, like she knows where this is going. 

“I know that you’re, like - outrageously fucking beautiful.” 

Karina hums once, letting the compliment wash over her, and turns to look out the window. 

You bite down on your lip - bite back all the other too-soon things you could say about her, threatening to claw their way out of your mouth - and go in on your script instead. 

It’s shockingly easy to write with her in the room. The details seem to stitch themselves together on-page, the restorative aftermath of an autopsy: sealing the slit chest cavity back up, prepping a corpse for an open casket, making something disconnected whole and beautiful again. You’d pulled these specifics from her like pulsing, throbbing organs - her tits, her tone, her tiny waist - and now all you’re doing is repurposing them. You know her body now. You turn stretches of pale, bruised-pink skin into prose, the curl of her little fingers around her thigh into dialogue. You imagine taking that perfect frame and picking it apart again, bit by bit; not just undressing her but peeling back layers of flesh, familiarizing yourself with the stark scarlet of her bloodstream. Until there’s nothing to hide and you can finally say it - I know you - and it’ll feel earned, and real, and honest. 

All very melodramatic, of course. It’s just the process: the natural consequence of being a writer. 

Your eyes trace the jutting protrusion of muscle in Karina’s throat, and you think about fucking her again. 

“Also,” you say, as though your earlier conversation isn’t long over. “I want to know-”

Karina makes a huffy, half-impatient noise.

You grin, gaze flicking back to her face. “What?” 

“You want to know more?” Her brows furrow in exaggerated confusion; her smile is absurdly self-deprecating. As if there’s anything she could possibly be insecure about. “You already got the two most interesting things about me, babe.” 

“Stop.” Your mouth twitches. “No way.” 

Karina’s smile stills in place, expectant. “No?”

“Come on.” Your hand slips from the keyboard to trace her knee. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of interesting things about you I haven’t learned yet.” 

The laugh she lets out is quiet and nearly secretive, legs parting to let you touch her. You’re already half in some faraway daydream, wondering if you can bottle the color of her eyes and turn it loose on the page.

“Okay,” Karina says, easily. She nudges your laptop away, scoots closer to you, her sharp chin pointed down at you. “Come and learn them, then.” 

“God.” As if that’s what you’re doing. Memorizing her body as some private education; taking her apart in a classroom dissection. “Can I - I’m trying to write, Karina. I’m being productive. I…” You’re shaking your head as though you’re not already giving in, fingers slipping up her thighs - she’s smirking at you like she knows it. “You’re fucking insatiable, you know that?”

“Then satiate me.” Karina’s head tilts, lids heavy. “Fuck me. Use me.” She leans down like she’s telling you a filthy, sordid secret. “Cum in me like I know you want to.” 

There’s something surreal about how certain she is: never tripping over her words or waffling over intentions, the most practiced actress you’ve ever seen. Every move - her tongue wetting her bottom lip, her hand sliding gracefully through her hair, her mouth forming a sweet little pout - all clean, choreographed precision. 

I know you, she says - like it’s earned, real, honest. Inexplicable, but there anyway. I know you want to. 

“Karina.” Her name comes out embarrassingly strangled. You’re pulling her thighs further apart, toying with the edge of her underwear. “You’re such a fucking - you’re so needy.” 

Her smirk sharpens even as you tug her panties roughly to the side. “I’m what?” 

“Needy.” 

“No.” She’s so wet - she’s probably seconds from dissolving into a whimpering breathless thing, begging to be underneath you, begging for more. That damn smirk is probably seconds from shattering completely. “What were you going to call me?” 

“Nothing.” You drag a finger down the slick drenched heat of her cunt.

“A slut.” Her voice is a purr, gravelly and sensual. “You think I’m just this fucking slut who needs your cock all the time, huh?” 

But it’s the kind of question that you already both know the answer to. Karina takes your finger-fucking so well, hips raised and rutting, hair cutting across her cheekbones - seems to give herself over to desire so fucking easily, with her whole body, back arching and neck craned and hot little cunt a sloppy mess. Never puts up a fight, never demures or acts shy; never says wait or don’t or stop. Only spreads her legs, and drips down your hand, and waits to be fucked good and hard.

And - hey, there’s one dirty word for a girl like that. 

“Well.” You raise your eyebrows at her: a challenge. “Are you?”

It’s dangerous. This is all dangerous. Stumbling down a treacherous path, asking a stranger something like this. Are you what I think you are? Do I know you? Do I really? 

Karina makes a low, luxurious noise at the stretch of your fingers in her cunt, buried to the knuckle. 

“Sure,” she says - and the gleam in her eye tells you she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “I’m whatever you want me to be.” 

-

So, it’s possible this is really the most interesting thing about her: she’s the kind of girl who never says no. 

-

That scene goes down how all scenes should:

“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” 

Karina’s choking out curses like she can’t recall any other words, head lolling back to expose the pretty bob of her throat. You thrust deep right then and she lets out a sound like an aching gasp, like you’ve doubled down with a fist to her gut, like you’re knocking the the air right out of her; you might as well be - oh, she moans, like she could be in shock or awe or pain - with the way you’ve got one of her thighs pulled up so you can fuck deep into her tight dripping cunt. It’s not nice, not really. Her back keeps hitting your counter. You keep staring at her neck and her hair and her face: the faint flush of her cheeks, the flawless construction of her bones underneath - there’s so much unmarked skin - God, she’s so clean, it’s like she’s never been fucking touched-

“You gonna cum for me?” you murmur, voice coming out thick and half-animalistic. 

She has one hand curled around the back of your neck. She’s got those ridiculous clawed nails on her but she never presses down. Her pussy can’t stop clenching around your cock but she takes it so well, lets you make room inside her little cunt, shuts her eyes and trips over her own breath as you force her spine hard against your counter over and over again. 

“Karina.” 

“Yeah,” she exhales, raspy and strained, as your cock stretches her out. “Fuck, yeah-” 

“Cum for me, honey. Cum all over my cock - oh, there you go, good girl-” 

It’s hypnotic. The tiny bitten-off sounds spilling from her ice-cold mouth - that small pristine face and all that hair tangled to her waist, just available to be knotted and tugged and fucked all the way up - Karina clings to you when she cums, and you feel so much bigger than her when she does, like you’ve got her sloppy and open around your cock and you could do anything to her, that’s what she told you, and even if she hadn’t, it’s not like she could stop you - she’s gorgeous but she doesn’t have it in her - she’s just too fucking delicate-

It happens too fast to process. 

One minute you’re buried inside her pussy and the next Karina’s on her knees, on the ground, and you’re jerking your cock until you’re cumming all over her. 

It’s obscene. It’s fucking inevitable. Thick ropes of creamy cum coating her forehead, her cheekbone, her nose and mouth and getting all in that hair-

Her hair. You don’t realize how hard you’re gripping her hair with one hand - balled in a brutal fist at the back of her head - until you disentangle your fingers from it and Karina sinks to the floor like she’s just been cut loose from marionette strings, breathing fast and hard. She doesn’t even say anything: doesn’t comment on the fact that you’d just shoved her straight to the ground or complain when the head of your cock smears cum across her jaw. Doesn’t even flinch when your cock slaps heavy across her cheek, at the indecent sound of the impact. 

You’re staring at her, open-mouthed. At her gorgeous, breathtaking, defiled face. 

Karina’s not looking at you. Instead, she’s preening in the most lewd, pornographic way possible: swiping her thumb through the cum streaking across her forehead, popping it into her mouth to suck. Halfway through she seems to remember you’re still in the room - seems to recall the value of a performance - and she redirects her gaze up at you, lids heavy, and smirks. 

“Did I…” you start, without knowing how the sentence will end. “Did I - was I-”

Karina lifts a cum-covered eyebrow. Her mouth’s an arresting pink, puckering around her thumb like it puckered around the cubes of ice, how her lips formed a ring around your cock back in the bookstore yesterday. She lets it slip free, shiny with spit. 

“No,” she says. “You’re good.” 

You can’t stop looking at the cum caught in her hairline. She’d been so fucking clean. 

You glance down and realize there are strands of black hair broken off in your clenched fist. 

Karina’s looking at her hair in your hand too, now, but with a sort of amused detachment. She stands shakily, using the counter for support. There’s cum all over her. Her knees are red from how hard she’d been pushed down.

“You’re so cute,” she tells you, grazing the side of your neck with her fingertips. “There’s no shame in being rough with me, babe.” 

“Right.” There’s an unnamed pressure coiling in your chest. “But - but you-” 

“Hey.” The word comes out in a rasp, and then Karina laughs, pushing the low hoarse lilt of her voice to its limits. She steps closer, angles her little cum-stained chin up at you. “Are you really gonna tell me you don’t like seeing me covered in your cum?” She’s tonguing the corner of her mouth. “Turning me into a-” her smirk pulls wicked; your next breath hitches so badly- “messy fucking whore for your cock?” 

“God,” you get out, because she’s winding an arm around your neck, and her pretty face is still sticky with your cum. “I-” 

“It’s what you wanted.” Karina blinks, in a show of such doe-eyed naïveté that saliva begins pooling hot in your mouth - like you’re feral, like you’re rabid. “Isn’t it?” 

You’re looking down again. Her knees are going to bruise. Black and blue, as if someone’s bullied her in the schoolyard, pulled her pigtails and knocked her to the asphalt. An echo of something teachers could’ve told her years ago: oh, look, he’s mean to you because he’s got a crush. It’s okay, really - he only hurts you because he likes you.  

“You like me like this,” Karina murmurs, dangerously low. “All sloppy and slutty for you.” Her gaze is trained on your mouth. “Marking me up.” Her hair slips from your hand. “Owning me.” 

Her name clogs your throat, cloying and candy-sweet. “Karina-”

Karina’s head tilts. “Yes or no?” 

She’s too close to you. She’s so filthily beautiful she seems somewhat alien, some kind of foreign invention. Her jaw is smeared with your cum and her flawless teeth shine like jewels and she’s like every creative vision you’ve ever had cut in clips and playing back in a movie theater, made to be scrutinized. 

“Yes,” you tell her, winded. “You’re fucking - you’re unreal, you know that?”

You’re smiling like it’s flattery, like it’s an exaggeration. Like she’s not living, breathing, visionary art. 

She smiles back, like she knows just how much you really mean it.

“So I’ve been told,” Karina says, and taps your neck, lightly. “Go make breakfast.” She shakes her hair out; some of it gets stuck to the cum on her cheekbone. “I’m taking another shower.” 

“Right.” You bite into your bottom lip, hand skimming down her side. “Go get clean.” 

“Clean?” She steps back and flashes a disbelieving grin, gestures pointedly at herself - her creamy thighs, her porn star tits in your t-shirt, her body like sex itself. Dirty by design. “Never happening.”

Some cynical part of you keeps waiting for a slip-up, some mistake in a masterfully crafted script - no one can be that gorgeous and still be here with you. But Karina moves and your eyes are hopelessly drawn to the disheveled curtain of her hair spiraling down her back, the sharp distinct lines of her calves, the flex of muscle in her thighs. Her hands, balled into little fists. She’s alluring as if manufactured that way: engineered to be perfectly bruisable, ruinable. It defies logic. It’s movie magic.

“Well.” You snort with laughter, swat at Karina’s ass as she turns to go. “At least you can try.”

You don’t even think she can help it - that’s the thing. It’s just what she was made for. 

-

“What would you have done if I said no, though?” you ask after a moment, as she wavers in the doorway. “Like - what if I told you I didn’t like you like this?” 

Karina shrugs.

“I would’ve been something else,” she says, and closes the bathroom door behind her. 

-

(Next:

The stranger and the girl fuck and afterwards he promises her breakfast and then he realizes his cabinets are bare, his fridge painfully unstocked. Sorry, he says, as she pokes around his kitchen. I don’t know how that happened. I usually have something to eat here, I swear. 

I don’t mind, she says. Her fingertips sweep his shelves. She seems fascinated by the emptiness, admiring the vacancy. Oh, wait, look. 

She finds a half-eaten jar of honey that she ends up scooping up crudely with her fingers, dripping sticky amber down her hand. He’d tell her that’s disgusting but she makes it - as she seems to make everything - into a pointed seduction, her tongue pink and wetly visible, her skin gleaming as she licks it off. It’s funny. He’d never thought it possible to turn eating into some sort of sexual performance but she manages it anyway: meets his eyes, sucks loud and lewd, smacks her lips and wipes her mouth with her thumb, ill-mannered and stunning. 

I can’t imagine that’s very filling, he says, delighted by her commitment. 

Yeah, well, she says. It’s a good thing I hate feeling full. 

But it seems like a moment of hilarious irony when ten minutes later he’s got her bent over his kitchen counter, tits pressed punishingly to the flat surface, honey stuck to her neck and collarbone as she’s fucked hard again and again, stuffed with his cock, his fingers everywhere, like her own body barely even belongs to her - all mine, he keeps saying, and means it; you’re all mine. All filled up. Overfed. Bursting. 

Sex is a manner of consuming, it seems. He might as well be eating her alive.)

-

“Do you do this a lot?”

Eventually, it turns into one of those lazy Saturdays. An afternoon of sitcom plot points. 

It’s just so easy to fill the time, the space, the page - you tell Karina some inane story from your college years and she reacts in all the right places like your own built-in studio audience; she says something off-handed and enticingly vague and suddenly you have a new thread of dialogue to explore. You’re both sprawled out over your couch, Karina’s got her thighs tucked over your legs, wearing another one of your t-shirts, a fresh hickey bruising over her throat. There’s something delightfully domestic about it - like you’ve been doing it for a lot longer than you have, or like you could do it eternally if given the chance, holding all the silken comfort of an old routine. When you’d mentioned it - I kind of feel like I could do this forever - she’d laughed her scratchy laugh and said forever’s nowhere near as long as you think it is, babe. A perfectly cinematic line. You stared at her, leaned over, and added it immediately to your draft. 

“This whole…” You’re trying to elaborate now, staring at the blinking cursor on your laptop screen. Your knuckles skim her bare, bony knees. “You know.” 

“Eloquent.” 

“Shut up.” 

“I thought you were a writer.” 

“Karina.” You’re charmed by the drawl of her voice, the raspy roll of sarcasm. “I’m just wondering.”

Karina shifts in your lap. You’ve got one hand sneaking up the hem of her shirt - your shirt - skating up her tummy, her ribs. You’re probably about five minutes from snapping your laptop shut and pulling her on top of you and saying something crass about her tits and passing it off as a character study. 

“What do you mean?” She’s as close to clean as she can be. You made sure of it - licked the hollow of her collarbone earlier after she got out of the shower, tasted nothing but soap and skin. “Do I have a lot of sex with strangers? Or do I stay the night a lot after I have sex with strangers?”

“Both.” You think of taking her hair down, sifting your hand through it, wrapping the strands around your fingers. “All of the above.” 

Karina shoots you a look, fluttered lashes, suggestive understanding. You hear it without her having to say it. You want me to tell you that you’re special. 

“I’ve kind of been going through a phase,” she says instead, nonchalantly. 

Your eyebrows fly up. “A phase?” 

“I’ve been, you know.” She gives an airy sigh. “Trying to find myself in the big city. Running wild. Terrified of monogamy but being very brave and quirky about it. Sordid past with love and romance and general human connection. Doing the whole manic pixie dream girl thing.” Her eyes flick to your open laptop, abruptly too wide and innocent. “That sound about right?” 

“Fuck off.” It’s a complete non-answer. You run a hand past her stomach, laughing. “You’re fucking with me.”

“What?” Karina inches closer. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Your textbook rom-com love interest?”

You make a rather disparaging sound in the back of your throat. “Ugh.” 

“Oh, my bad.” Her mouth curls, contradictory. There’s nothing apologetic about her. “I forgot. You don’t believe in art about love. You wanna see broken people and broken people only.” 

“See?” You’re obsessed with her tone; all flirtation, some distorted version of come-hither charm. Talking of suffering like it’s a seduction tactic. “You get it.” 

Karina rakes a hand through her hair; her fingers fall to the back of her neck and linger there. She pulls herself out of your lap and turns, hooks one bare long leg over you until she’s straddling you. Your hands find her hips. You’re disarmed by her strange weightlessness, like she’s seconds from either shattering or taking flight.  

Then she asks, “Is that what you’re doing with me?”

It’s gotta be a very roundabout request to fuck her stupid, because she follows it up torturously: ducks her chin, parts her lips, rocks her hips down until you groan. You watch her throat, the way muscle works over bone, picturing unspeakable things: taking her by that pretty neck and pinning her to the wall, ripping your shirt right off of her with your fingertips leaving bruises - bending her over to fuck her fast and cruel until her cunt’s raw and aching and leaking your cum - until she’s begging pathetically, saying please, God, please - and you’re triumphant, victorious. Telling her you asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything. You said anything I want. 

“Depends,” you reply, when you can breathe again. “Are you a broken person?” 

Karina stops, moments from your mouth. 

“Depends,” she echoes. “Is that what you want from me?”

It actually takes a beat for the question to sink in. Then two, then-

“No,” you say, loudly. “Obviously not, Karina, Jesus. Why would I…”

You falter. 

Karina only looks back at you, patient, tolerant. Like if right now you said that’s exactly it: I want you broken, I want you ruined, I want you decaying and dead and buried, she’d smile and say do your worst. Flashing those white, white teeth, perfect like pearls, ready to be knocked right out and strung together. 

You blink the bloody vision away. “Why would I ever want that?”

Karina studies you for a second longer, expression indecipherable. 

“Okay,” she agrees, breezily. “Then I’m not broken. I’m just going through a phase, like I said. I don’t like being tied down.” Her shirt rides tantalizingly high up her thighs; her hand slips down to palm your cock. There’s a twist to her lips, a dirty sort of smirk. “You understand that, right?”

You stare at her.

“Right?” Karina prods, again, low and sultry. 

“Right,” you say, unable to fight your sudden smile. 

The pout of her mouth’s an inevitability; her little body in your lap’s a seductive form of foreshadowing. You dig your fingers into her protruding ribs, playful, and you don’t quite get the squeal of laughter you were expecting - all Karina does is curl closer, expecting more, expecting harder. She knows what you’re capable of. You’re both just biding your time until you cross the same line you’ve been crossing and you fall back into bed again.

“A phase,” you add, considering. It intrigues you, anyway - the casualness, the connotation. “So - I’m not special, then. That’s the moral of this story.” 

Karina’s fingers sift gently through your hair. “You wanna be special?”

“I mean, yeah.” Your palm falls to her neck, presses down. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Doesn’t everyone?” 

Her eyebrows rise in vague, unconvinced amusement. It makes sense: she’s the most special of all, a cosmic glitch, an angelic fluke. Someone like Karina wouldn’t understand the aching, clawing, consuming desire to be extraordinary. She’s already there. 

Your hand on her throat looks even bigger now, tendons straining from underneath skin.

“I think we all want to feel important,” you mumble, thumb grazing gently across her jaw. “Don’t you?” 

You’re pretty sure the wry, glittering smile that sits at Karina’s mouth is an answer in itself. 

-

Alright, forget your television metaphors - you’re not sure there’s any sitcom out there that goes quite like this.

“By the way,” you say, grinning against her hair as you pull her to the bedroom. “Did you say you don’t like being tied down?” 

Karina turns in your arms and doesn’t even flinch when you force her too hard against the doorframe and its edge smacks into her shoulder blade, digging in hard. You should apologize but you don’t; the possibility of her in pain seems laughable, a distant fantasy. This is how it goes, fucking a girl who looks like a god - your brain is convinced she’s wholly immune to hurt. The universe wouldn’t actually let someone so pretty bleed. 

“Oh, sorry,” she says, voice raspy with insinuation. “Let me rephrase.” 

“Karina,” you say, not really like a warning - more like you’ve got something to prove. This is real. You’re really here. You’re really this perfect, gorgeous, greedy thing. You’re really made for me. 

Karina only lets her lips tilt in a smirk, devilish and knowing.

“I meant that I don’t like commitment,” she says. “I love being tied down.”

She’s still smiling when you shove her through the doorway, across the threshold - across that same old fucking line.

-

Not that it makes a difference now, but one of the reasons you and your most recent ex-girlfriend broke up was because of what you’d both referred to as sexual incompatibility. Actually, there were about fourteen other things, too - she was a trainwreck and a textbook attention whore; you spent all your time writing and she took offense to the fact that you found your scripts more interesting than her - but the crux of the sex problem between the two of you was that she thought you wanted too much power over her. She seemed to assume that was the point of potentially tying her up and shit like that: to exert power. To put you and only you in control. To make her into this helpless little toy - and I hate that, she’d said, working herself into a fit, I hate feeling helpless. 

You hadn’t pushed her. You’d also tried to justify it in a number of ways. It isn’t about that. It’s not about control. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But it hadn’t made a difference and she hadn’t believed you and you’d come to the reluctant, inevitable conclusion that that particular dream would never actually get fulfilled. 

Until-

“Look at you, baby.” 

Until now, when you’ve got Karina stripped bare and tied to your bed, thighs parted as you kneel over her, pretty little cunt glistening wet and tits heaving with every breath as she waits, and waits, and waits. 

Eyes half-lidded. Utterly fuckable. A curated collection of every salacious desire you’ve ever had. 

“You’ve been looking at me forever,” murmurs Karina, her tone still humorous, like the reason her voice is run so ragged is because she’s holding back a fit of giggles. “You gonna fuck me anytime soon?” 

To Karina’s credit, the idea of tying her up didn’t seem to bother her one bit. She’d let you knot her wrists to your bedframe and only grinned sharply when you asked her if it was too much. She didn’t seem to care about feeling helpless or feeling bad. Actually - judging from the wetness that collects on your fingers as you rub two of them over her cunt - it all seemed to turn her on either way. 

“You’re so fucking mouthy.” You lift your hand only to ghost it over her stomach, leaving a lewd shiny streak across her skin. “It’s like you want to be punished.” 

“Well, you put in all this work.” Karina yanks at the ropes tethering her wrists to the bedframe until they bite so severely into her skin that it turns white. “I’d hate to see it go to waste.” 

“Not a waste.” 

“No?” She’s got that seductive little smirk on, legs spread shamelessly, head back and throat bared. 

“Nope.” Your eyes rove down her body. “It’s a great view, actually.”

You’re shocked by the sound Karina makes, then: harsh and derisive, scratchy and painful, like she’s choking badly around some injury in her throat. You’re half-expecting her to turn her face and spit blood onto your sheets - all murder-scene evidence, horrifically vibrant gore. Coughing up her own vocal chords. 

It’s so awful it actually takes you a minute to realize that she’s laughing. 

“Karina?” you say, perturbed.

“Oh, please.” Karina hacks out one more horrid laugh. “Cut the shit.” 

You draw your hand back uncertainly. “What are you-”

“Come on, man.” There’s a glint to Karina’s gaze as she looks up at you: bored, mocking, infuriating. Irises flashing like the darkest corners of haunted houses, set-ups for a summoning; lashes like cobwebs, self-spun and delicate. “Fuck me or leave me alone.”

For a second you just stare at her, unmoving, something caustic and furious threading up your spine. 

And then-

Look, none of this next part is on you. You can’t blame yourself. It’s her - her tiny hands in tight clenched fists, tummy so flat it seems caved-in, hollowed-out; her own glimmer of slick smeared on her belly, physical proof of how desperately slutty she really is. The bruise on her chest; the one on her throat. Her goddamn eyes. Her lazy, lilting drawl, the exact matter-of-fact casualness she’d had last night when she’d told you to hurt her - fuck me or leave me alone. 

It’s so obvious what she’s trying to do - provoke a reaction out of you. It’s gotta be the only reason she’s talking to you like that. Like, what else are we here for? Like, what else could I possibly want from you? 

So - no, God, it’s not your fault. 

But-

It’s over before you can even think about it. Before you’ve even rationalized doing it, before you recognize the sound ricocheting through the room as the perfect violent land of a blow, the hot whiplash of skin on skin, your palm connecting with its target. Before you blink, and recalibrate, and you take in the rapid reddening of her cheek, and her angled jaw, and her hair falling starkly past her chin - it’s too late. It’s already done. 

Because you’ve just slapped Karina clean across the face - hard. 

“Oh.” You’re babbling as if on autopilot, all your nerves on shutdown. “Oh. Oh, God. Karina-” 

Karina licks the corner of her lip, like she can taste the impact. 

“Jesus Christ,” you’re saying, panicking; you can’t shut up. You don’t know what to do with your hands; you find yourself kneeling carefully in front of her, cupping her face, stroking her temples with your thumbs like it’ll soothe the sting. You can’t believe you hit her. All the things you could do to a girl like that, and you - “I’m sorry. I didn’t - fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

Karina blinks up at you, expression placid and blank, porcelain-doll cool. 

“For what?” she asks. 

You freeze, her face still between your palms. “For-”

But the serene tilt of her mouth makes the words die in your throat. 

“Seriously.” Karina’s voice is softer now, a kind twist of mirth. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do with me this whole time?” 

Her features seem to fall out of alignment, occurring to you in cut, edited fragments - the baby-animal eyes, the bone-white glint of teeth, the pretty blooming flush of her cheek, blood rising underneath skin but never breaking through. No evidence of a limit breached; she doesn’t wince or wail or cry. She wears the hit so well. She’s smiling. A you-don’t-need-to-be-sorry smile, a you’re-forgiven smile: I’m strong, I’m good, I can take it. Whatever you need. Whatever you have to give. 

You blink and Karina reassembles, stitched up at the seams, beautiful and uninjured and intact.

“You want this,” you exhale, a wondrous revelation.

“Of course.” Karina’s shoulders rise as much as they can with her arms so tightly tied back. “You do, don’t you?” 

The panic recedes, and something else - something electric and brutal, visceral, intoxicating - takes its place instead. 

It’s the way she says it: rhetorical, all-knowing. As if she’s seen exactly what’s in your mind - what repulsive daydreams have settled right behind your ribcage, clawing to be set free - and she’s offering her own body in sacrifice. Saying here, put them here. 

So you do. 

She doesn’t even look surprised when you slap her again. 

“See?” Karina’s chin tips upwards in delicious, submissive invitation: eyes darkly pleased, pale skin a burning wildfire, curled mouth a beckoning. Like it’s been what she’s waiting for, all along. “There you are.” 

And when you’re finally able to catch your breath:

Oh, you think, in some exhilarating epiphany. Here I am. 

Every single reservation falls out the window. Karina’s smirk slants viciously and then you’ve got your hands all over her, on her shoulders and her tits and her hips and her throat and her face, thumb digging hard into her cheekbone. Any sort of gentle caution is gone when you’re getting on top of her and burying your cock deep inside the suffocating vice of her aching little cunt, half-drunk on the high mewling moans you’re forcing out of her, head swimming at the drenched audible sound of her pussy every time you fuck into her - at how tight she clenches down around your cock. Fuck it all, then, it’s not like it means anything - hurt me, she’d said, running through your head on loop; I want it so bad, I need it, hurt me - and so you do, wrapping a hand around her delicate neck and pressing down, slapping hard against her heaving tits, salivating over the marks that you leave. She doesn’t even struggle. Takes it like a good girl, an obedient girl: something meant to be hit and torn up and pulled apart. A hands-on art piece. A disassembling, made purely for audience consumption; a sign hung around her neck that says leave your mark, that’s the point. You’d been so naïve, thinking of being careful with her - like she’d ever even fucking want that-

“You like it like this.” Your voice sounds raw, almost unrecognizable; your fingers press into the base of her throat. “This is all you needed, huh? You just needed to be roughed up real hard.” Your hand trails up to grip a fistful of her hair, merciless. Karina shuts her eyes. “Like you’re just a slutty fucktoy-” 

Karina chokes out a small, wet gasp.

“Oh, baby.” You yank harder at her hair. “It’s okay to admit it.”

But in a way, she already is. Doesn’t fight against the restraints tying her wrists, doesn’t flinch at how rough you’re fucking her, doesn’t whine or blink back tears at the harsh graze of your thumbnail against her nipple. Like she’s a plaything, here in your bed for your pleasure alone. Like-

“Like you were just fucking made for this, yeah?” She comes undone so easily: cunt a wet sticky mess when you reach down to rub her clit, teeth pearly-white where they’re caught on her bottom lip - though nothing can hold back the anguished noise Karina lets out at your pace, the thick stretch of your cock, your palm smacking at her tits over and over. “Look at you. That face, these tits, this little fucking cunt-”

Like it’s her one and only purpose - to have all her fair skin turned searing red and bruised under someone else’s hands. Her cunt just begging to be split open and stuffed full, railed so hard she could break. It’s gotta be what she was created for. She’s more than mortal, so above the concept of imperfection; a nasty little fuckdoll of a girl, meant to be used hard and licked clean. She looks too irresistible all fucked-out and ruined. It has to be in her nature. Made for this, you keep telling her: to be fucked until she can’t walk. To be treated forever how you’re treating her now. 

Your ex-girlfriend couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not about power or control at all.

“You’d really just let me do anything to you, huh?” you murmur, awed, but you’re holding her throat too hard for her to reply. 

You fuck her, and fuck her, and fuck her. Rub at her clit until she clamps down and cums around you, until you can really get on top of her, force her to hold those huge tits together so you can fuck them. You can’t handle how tiny she is underneath you, her face and her mouth slack with lust, eyes glazed over entirely. She squeezes her tits around your cock. She’s hardly even human. It’s the best thing about her. 

“That’s how I know you’re a fucking whore.” Your grin feels wide and manic on your face. You’re gonna cum all over her - again. “None of this even matters.” 

And it’s only after - after you’ve painted her collarbone and chest creamy white and let up on her throat so she can fight for air; after you’ve groped her tits and grabbed her face after just to see your cum glistening all over her perfect slap-marred cheeks; after you’ve rolled off of her and you finally leave her alone - that Karina gives you a response. 

“No,” she says, hoarsely, staring up at the ceiling. “It really, really doesn’t.” 

-

Power just isn’t the right word for it. It’s something much more beautiful than that. 

Desire. You’re dozing off, halfway in a sleepy fantasy. You imagine rolling the word around in your mouth, using it in speeches, citing it as an obvious central theme. It’s about desire, you’d say, in interviews, at film festivals, patiently explaining your motivations to the masses. That irrational animal instinct. That innate human greediness. You’ll maybe even throw in some fun anecdote about how people in past relationships never agreed with you. It’s never been about power, though, you’d explain: how foolish, how crude. It’s about the ache of truly wanting something. Isn’t that so much more romantic?

So you’ll make a movie about this one day. So you tied Karina to the bed and slapped her hard and fucked her senseless. Actually, you picture yourself explaining, foggy and on verge of falling asleep: actually, it’s about hunger. Irrepressible, all-consuming hunger. That’s why I did this. That’s why I’ll keep doing it. You’re all like me; you get it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? 

And it will, to raucous, riotous applause.

Good. You’ll laugh so hard. You’re dreaming, now; you can’t tell if you’re talking about the sex or the hypothetical future movie. I’m glad you understand. Anyone would’ve done what I did. 

Because - honestly - what’s the point of starving yourself of something that’s right in front of you?

-

(Let’s pull back from your script for a second. Here’s a real story:

A few months back you were visiting a museum with one of your friends when you got into this conversation about performance art. He’d told you about a woman back in the seventies who walked into a gallery and laid out various objects and let the audience do whatever they wanted to her for six whole hours. Her as the artist, in title only; herself as the art. A free, untethered canvas. 

And what happened? you asked, morbidly curious. 

Your friend grimaced. What do you think happened? 

It was a rhetorical question. The performance had been a test of what the general public was capable of - a reflection of their moral compass, of what they’d do if left unchecked. The setup spoke for itself. You didn’t have to get all the gory details in order to understand. 

Seriously, though, your friend said, about the artist: I don’t know what’d compel someone to do something like that to themselves. He’d shaken his head, baffled. Like - I think it takes a deeply fucked up person to just give up their body like that. Like it doesn’t even matter to them. 

It’s strange. It’s an almost universally accepted fact that, at least on some level, artists are inclined to put pieces of themselves into the things they create. A memory; a feeling. Condensing twenty different emotions into a single acrylic painting, or a lyrical reenactment of heartbreak into a song - something personal and unique and lovely. Often inspired, sure, but yours. 

I think that’s what’s funny about it, you told your friend, before you realized that funny was a fucked up word to use here. There’s nothing personal about that. It’s so detached. It’s about the rest of the world, whatever they might make of her - it’s not about her at all. 

You were both quiet, thinking. Visualizing what it might’ve been like. To be there, one of many in the audience, watching this woman who had thrown herself to the wolves and asked to be ripped apart. 

She’s just - material for them to use, I guess, you said, after a moment. A blank page. 

Removing her own identity; becoming nothing, no one. A ghost. An empty vessel. A slab of clay, taking on the impression of everyone who’s ever touched her: the ridges of fingerprints, the half-moon cuts of nails, molding her into something new. Even if it took some force. Even if it hurt. 

Still, it’s what she’d asked for. 

You can’t imagine she’d ever expected anything else.)

-

There’s this fascinating complaint people have about films these days, you’ve found. It’s actually quite the phenomenon. You talk to your colleagues and scroll through social media and read comments on movie trailers trying to get a grasp on it all: market research. This isn’t realistic, people gripe. It’d never sound like that. She’d never look like that. This would never, ever happen - God, are you kidding? Who are they trying to fool? As if they’ve somehow missed the point of fiction - of a sweet, escapist fantasy. As if they’ve convinced themselves that the real world is better. 

Which is moronic, obviously. 

“So what’s the solution?” Karina asks.

Well, you’re no expert; it’s been a while since you’d finished your last movie.

“But you have an idea,” Karina interpets. She’s perched on the edge of your coffee table, nursing a new glass of ice. She’s watching you with her head at an angle, eyes shrewd. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me this.” 

As with most of her guesses about you, she’s right. 

“It’s all about the details,” you say, after a moment. “It humanizes a person. Having little bits and pieces about who they are - it makes them alive. Their likes, their dislikes. Embarrassing stories. Things that make them laugh. Diary entries, favorite foods - first loves, first heartbreaks. So on and so forth.” You’ve got one of Karina’s ankles between your hands; your thumb brushes against the bulbous protrusion of bone. “It’s what makes people real.” 

Karina’s mouth twists, sharp and strange; it takes a second for you to realize that she’s grinning. 

“Oh, right,” she says. “You want me to spill my guts to you.” She pushes her ankle further into your grip. Her legs are just like the rest of her: thin and pale, waifish. Like a nineties catwalk model. “That’s how you’re gonna make me real. In your movie.” 

You pull a face, letting her ankle slip from your hands. Spill her guts; what an ugly figure of speech. As if you’re doing something much more invasive and violent than just writing about her. 

“Basically,” you agree, anyway. “I mean, it helps that you’re already, you know - a real, whole, living person.” 

“Ugh,” says Karina, dry and amused. “Barely.” 

You wonder if she’s also thinking about this morning; you, stunned and staring at her cum-streaked hair, calling her unreal.

She’s got a point, in a way. There’s something slightly uncanny about her sitting in front of you, as if she’s been taken straight out of some wildly different scene - some spotlit stage, some movie set, some glossy high-budget existence - and haphazardly edited into your life. You reach out and press two fingers to the side of her neck, like they do on television if they think someone’s bleeding out. 

Karina tips her head to allow you access. Her pulse throbs hotly under your touch. 

“I don’t know,” you say, smiling at the swanlike line of her throat. “You seem pretty alive to me.” 

“Sure.” Her hair tickles your wrist. “But you want more.”

She says it like it’s this given - as if she’s always faced with people wanting more from her. You wouldn’t doubt it, little tease she is. You can picture her in motion so easily. Always running. Letting people pine and plead for more. 

“Yeah,” you say. It seems pointless to lie to her. “I want more.” 

Karina leans in closer. She reaches up and touches one of your knuckles with the pad of her thumb. Without makeup, you can see the shadows of dark circles underneath her eyes, but even those look painted-on, pre-planned; a study on the aesthetic allure of bruises. She lets her gaze drop to your mouth, then bites down on her bottom lip. Impish.

“Karina,” you say, grinning wider now. 

It’s one of those unspoken things: the translation of body language, the transcription of the tilt of her mouth. Then have me, she’s saying, almost certainly - like a swooning melodramatic heroine, throwing herself into your lap, wanting to be saved. You want more? You want me? I’m right here. I’m yours.

“Fine,” Karina purrs, and kisses you again, like sealing a contract. “Take it all.” 

-

You don’t fuck her again - not at first. There’s more than one way to take someone apart. 

Karina says she’s got a story for you and then she pulls out her phone. 

“This was back in high school,” she explains, scrolling back through her photo gallery. There don’t seem to be a lot of recent additions to it; you’d expected selfies, pictures of her with friends. There are more photos of food than anything: plates of pasta and donuts and burgers and pastries piled with whipped cream. It’s cute. It makes you laugh. “When I won prom queen.” 

You splutter. “When you what?” 

“What?” Karina gives you a bemused, sideways look. “Does that surprise you?” 

It floors you, actually. At first you can’t quite put your finger on why, but then you look at Karina again - at her intense dark eyes and pouty fuckdoll lips and the exaggerated pinup proportions of her body - and you realize you’re making that mistake writers often do: buying into archetypes. It just makes sense that she’d be some kind of brooding bad girl. Mysterious, promiscuous; in your creative vision she’s probably cutting classes and chainsmoking in the girls’ bathroom. A favorite of the rumor mill. A pretty little delinquent.

“Wow.” Karina makes a funny noise in the back of her throat when you tell her this. “No. I was - I did fine in school. Perfect attendance, almost. And I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.” But she doesn’t look offended, either; you imagine people make these assumptions about her all the time. “The prom queen thing - it wasn’t my idea, though. My best friend did all the campaigning for me.” 

“That’s sweet.” You watch as she reaches the year she’s looking for. Flashes of her in a sparkly dress with her arms thrown around another girl - a tiny doe-eyed brunette - slide by. In one of them, Karina’s got her head tipped back, clearly mid-laugh; in another, she and the girl have their heads bent close together as if they’re trading secrets, unaware that they’re being photographed. “Well - I think it’s sweet.” 

Karina’s fingers stall. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“I’m just saying-” You shrug. “It’s a nice gesture if it’s something you wanted, I guess. Seems like a lot of attention, otherwise.” 

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Yeah. It was - I didn’t get to go to junior prom, so it was kind of - this was - senior year. Senior prom.” Another pause. “Yeah. She did it to make me happy.”

“And did it?” She passes by pictures that fill up with more people: friends with big grins who stick close to her side, wrapping her up in an embrace. “Make you happy?” 

“Of course.” Karina’s thumb pauses on a video, the preview dark and unfocused. She says it like she doesn’t even have to think about it. “She was my best friend. She always knew what I wanted. Hey, look at this.” 

The video’s of her in the back of someone’s car, prom queen tiara askew on her head, satiny sash falling off one shoulder. She’s yelling, laughing; the sound isn’t on, but her mouth’s wide open and her dark eyes are crinkled to half-moons, creased underneath heavy false lashes and glittery makeup that’s begun to smudge and fade. It makes her whole face look very soft. Young, too - cheeks full and flushed pink with excitement, hair blown-out and everywhere, glossed black. As if she’s having the time of her life. 

“How old were you here?” you ask, in awe. 

“Eighteen. Just turned, I think.” 

“You look-” Like a baby, you almost want to say. It’s true, though. Big brown eyes, scrunched little nose - grinning like the rest of the world hasn’t quite dug its claws into her yet. Skin unmarred and infant-smooth. “You look pretty.” 

Karina doesn’t look at you, but you can see the slight, entertained upturn of her lips. All the nasty things you’ve called her - all the irredeemable ways you’ve touched her - and now, inexplicably, you’re going for pretty. 

“Thanks,” she says, and clicks the volume up.

“Shut the fuck up,” baby Karina is saying, delightedly. Her voice sounds high, childish and carefree. “You’re so dumb. It wasn’t - it wasn’t even like that, I swear!” She flaps one hand in the air, her nails all short and painted the same rich deep maroon as her dress. “No - you’re just saying that because you’re jealous, you idiot, I know you - you just-”

The person behind the camera says something that you can’t quite make out. 

Baby Karina presses one hand to her sternum, pearl-clutching, and gasps. 

“I would never,” she admonishes - over-the-top like an actress from a movie - before she throws her head back and laughs. 

It’s a startling, wonderful laugh. A little-kid laugh. A mess of wild, unabashed giggles, hiccupy and sweet, so loud and infectious you can hear the other people in the car start cracking up with her; out of frame, someone reaches out to interlace their fingers with Karina’s, waving their joined hands until they smack against the car window and Karina only laughs harder. With her whole body, shoulders shaking and all. Streetlights flashing across her face, making her look sort of blurry and surreal, like something out of a painting. 

“Your laugh,” you find yourself saying, stunned. 

Karina’s touching the back of her neck, completely engrossed in the video. “My what?” 

You don’t laugh like that anymore. That’s what you mean to say. That scratchy, almost painful laugh that she’s been gracing you with since the moment you met her - there’s no trace of that in how baby Karina wriggles with laughter in the backseat of the car until her happy, breathless blush spreads to her neck and her chest. Head tipping back against the seat, like she’s all tuckered out. 

“Um,” you say, voice caught in your throat. 

On the screen, her eyes fall shut, lashes fluttering so delicately. 

You can’t do anything but stare. Brilliant, past-life, prom-queen Karina - grinning at nothing, and sleepy from a perfect night, and laughing as if she’ll exist as this version of herself forever. As if she just doesn’t know any better, yet. 

“You,” you start to say, again-

Karina shuts her phone off, and turns.

And you’re about to say something - something about the gnawing, uncertain feeling you get when you watch this former self of hers. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You don’t laugh like that. Something happened to you. For a moment the whole image just seems off - like the way people make posthumous holograms of pop stars, superimpose faces of long-dead actors on stunt doubles. A kind of intense wrongness. A murmured, uncomfortable: that’s not really you, is it? It can’t be. I barely recognize her. 

“What?” Karina asks. Her smile reveals her teeth. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Then reality hits you, all at once. 

“Sorry.” Your hand finds her thigh. You laugh because you’re being ridiculous - how would you know who she really is, anyway? “I was just thinking - I don’t know. Never mind.”

She seems to take that at face value. You like that about her. How she seems to trust so easily - going home with you, winding up in your bed, staying when you ask her to stay. Giving you whatever you want: her body, her story.

“So,” you say, eventually. “I can put in my movie that you totally peaked in high school, huh?” 

Karina snorts. “Yeah,” she says, playing along, and taps her dark phone screen with a clawed nail. “Say it was the last time I was happy.” She pulls a face, like the thought of it is just unspeakably pathetic. “That’s a tragedy if I’ve ever heard one.” 

“Shakespearean,” you agree, and let her clamber into your lap. “It’s perfect.” 

But you know she’s kidding. You’d like to think that you understand girls like her. They live in a different world than the rest of you - the kind of world where every person on earth looks at them and falls to their feet, falls madly in love. You’ll write about it one day; you’ll feel out the narrative for her, a curious exploration. That rose-tinted life she must flourish in, closed-off and flawless like a snow globe, her spinning and protected in the glass.

“Perfect,” echoes Karina, and kisses you - like she’s proving she really means it. 

That’s the reality, here. That’s it. This is all there is. 

-

Well, almost.

-

Karina lets you scroll through the rest of her photo gallery, front to back. You take the opportunity, because you’re greedy for as much as you can get. 

There’s a lot of photos that are just her, funnily enough - selfies posed in front of the same full-length mirror, over and over again, clad in unholy outfits. Swimsuits, sports bras and little running shorts, lingerie: shit that makes your mouth water, eyes lingering, groaning out loud as she laughs at you. But it’s also her in faded old t-shirts, holding the hem up to expose her stomach. Body angled to the side in girlish sundresses. Hair pulled up, showing off her neck, her gorgeously sharp collarbone - in makeup or out of it, stare intensely focused and sultry. 

“That’s hot,” you comment. “Self-obsessed as fuck, but hot.” 

Karina smiles - her tiny private-joke smile - and doesn’t say anything at all. 

There’s one video in particular that catches your eye. It’s recent, relatively - the date reads late December, last year. Less than a month ago. Christmastime. You click on it, curious. 

Karina’s immediately recognizable in it, black hair winding past her shoulders, drowning in a large black sweatshirt. She’s smiling, but it looks sort of tense and tired - bags under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a while. She’s got both hands balled up into fists, held close and protective to her chest; her sharp chin rests on her pale knuckles. There’s a tiny smear of red across her mouth, lower lip bitten bloody. 

“You just got here,” she says. She’s looking at something behind the camera. “The first thing you wanna do is hear me sing?” She laughs once, scratchy and hoarse. “Why are you even filming this?” 

The answering strum of guitar strings, a pretty, perfect chord. An invitation, or a demand.

“You’re kidding.” Karina’s voice is flat.

Another chord - evidently not. 

“Wow,” says Karina. Her smile, out of nowhere, goes very soft at the edges. “You just do this because you know I can’t say no to you.”

“What?” you ask Karina now, laughing. “Is this - what is this? Do you - are you really going to sing?” 

And then - crazily enough - she does. 

“Oh,” you say out loud, adoring, and Karina turns her face into your shoulder. 

Her voice in the video is breathy, sweet. Shyly unpracticed, raspy from disuse, completely and utterly gorgeous; lids slipping shut and open again, laugh leaking into her melody line in lyrics about black eyes and kisses and wanting someone who’s just so, so bad for you. But what surprises you more than anything is the look that dawns on her blurry on-screen face - irises sparkling and smile bashful, hiding her mouth behind the sleeve of her sweatshirt, curled up with her knees to her chest. You see now that she’s wearing pajama pants, fuzzy and patterned with snowflakes. 

She looks radiantly pretty. She looks vulnerable. And not even in a sweaty, satiated, filthy post-fuck kind of way - actually, genuinely vulnerable. Soft and wide-eyed and tender.

Suddenly, you just can’t tear your gaze away. 

“Stop.” 

The song’s over. On-screen Karina’s fully grinning now. Porcelain-fragile, but undeniably happy, too. 

“I hate you,” she says. “Baby, I really do.” 

“You love me,” says the person behind the camera. “You’ll love me for the rest of your life and you know it.” 

And in the video - in vivid, fluid motion - Karina laughs. 

Whole-hearted, lovely. Familiar. For a moment, you swear she’s still that girl sitting in the backseat of a car with her prom queen tiara on, giggling free and uninhibited, unhurt, untouched. A month ago - less than that, even - looking like she’s coming back to life. 

That’s where the clip ends. 

It doesn’t change anything, if you actually think about it. It’s just another version of reality. A Karina from a whole other universe, laughing like a child, and so, so far away from whoever she is now. 

-

(Back between the lines of your script-

The stranger and the girl drink to get drunk and that’s about it. She reads the label of his wine; he makes fun of her for being a snob. She doesn’t really drink, she says at first, but he laughs like this is a challenge, and pours her a glass anyway. She flushes pink and fidgets around. She seems to shed hair like a cat and he thinks this is the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, picking up thin black strands off of the arm of his couch, teasing her about girls and how they really like to leave their mark, huh?

Leave their mark, she repeats. There’s some trick of the lens here, some sort of strategic camera work - he’s in the forefront and she’s in the background, and she looks so much smaller than him. Why do you say that? 

He still had his ex-girlfriend’s perfume in his cabinet. He probably still has some of her clothes in his closet. Not out of any particular emotional attachment, but sometimes this is just the way things are: when you spend years intertwining your whole existence with someone else’s, it’s hard to rid yourself of that connection. You’ve grown into each other’s spaces, tangling limbs and heart lines, putting down roots. It’s gonna take a little force to get them out. 

They’re just so much, he says, gesticulating with his hands. And they affect everything in your life, like a fucking infection. And then it doesn’t work out, and you - he makes a wide, sweeping motion here, attempting to encompass the wreckage. You have to fix everything they broke. Purge them from your system and all that. It’s so fucked up. 

It’s like this, he means to say - you love someone and then they leave you behind and you’re left staring at the blown-up decimated crater that used to be your life together. You love someone and they don’t love you back and all you have now is the debris.

They’re both drunk. There should be music here and there isn’t. It’s only eerie, too-still silence, suffocating the both of them with every passing second. 

Well, she says, laughing, and takes another sip. You and I can agree on that, at least.)

-

It happens like this:

There’s a monologue you want to write. 

You tell Karina this after you’re finally fucking her again, when she’s balanced on the edge of your glass coffee table with her legs spread and your mouth slick with her cum. Well - not after, technically. She’s between orgasms and you have your thumb on her clit, tracking the expression on her face, the split-second moment where she comes apart. It’s then when you realize so badly that you want to write some great speech for your heroine - something about the sweat beading on Karina’s midriff and her tits that you can’t stop touching and the jerky movements of her hips, trying to get your tongue back on her clit, panting and delightfully desperate. Something about desire. 

“Desire,” repeats Karina, voice halfway into a raspy, worked-up moan. 

“Yeah.” You’ve replaced your mouth with your fingers, fucking up into the obscene tight heat of her cunt. She’s trembling, dripping everywhere; she’s the very picture of what it means to want, probably. “But I just can’t figure it out.” 

Karina laughs roughly, and then she cums. 

“Is that funny?” you ask her, after, when you’re wiping your wet mouth with your wrist and she’s sucking on your glistening fingers, licking the taste of her own cunt off your skin. Her eyes big, lips all full and pink - slutty angel on her pedestal, perched above you. “Me writing about desire?” 

Karina lets your fingers free with a loud pop. She’s still clutching your hand close to her mouth, thumb dragging through the sticky gleam of her spit. “No,” she says, eyes distant. “It just reminded me of something. There’s this Anne Carson quote, about men and desire…” She shakes her head. Presses her lips once to your fingertips in a small, startlingly sweet kiss. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me more.” 

There isn’t much to tell, truthfully. Except that you’ve got this love for movie lines that are just so utterly quotable - things that make their way into the pop culture consciousness. That’s the kind of work you want to be doing: creating something that has an impact, something that’ll exist long after you’re gone. Everlasting. If you had to pull for an example, you’d say-

“You ever seen Closer?” 

“Yeah.” Karina drops your elbow into her lap. “Oh, I get it. He tastes like you but sweeter. Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off - et cetera.” She hums the melody line. “So you want an early 2000s pop-punk band to make a song about your movie? Ambitious.” 

“More or less,” you say as she shimmies her shirt back down, hem falling back over her midriff. “But like I said, I’m kind of stuck.”

Karina rolls her neck. Her hair is everywhere, sweet-smelling; snapped-off strands decorate your table, looking like cracks in the glass. 

“Any suggestions?” you ask, thumb skimming along the pale bruised inside of her thigh. 

She smiles, mischievous. “Maybe.” 

That’s how you both end up curled on your couch together with your laptop in front of you, Karina’s eyes glued to the movie playing on the screen, watching as the four main characters fuck and flirt and cheat on each other and scream at the top of their lungs. Melodramatic dialogue. How do you feel about him using your life? You’re lying; I’ve been you. This will hurt, which Karina laughs at - as if announcing the pain will make it better, playacting at exoneration. 

It’s also - predictably - how you end up fucking again. You barely make it an hour in, and then-

“Hey.” Karina’s breath tickles your ear. She’s already seconds from climbing in your lap already; her thigh is hooked over yours, bare and inviting. “Are you inspired?” 

You’re swallowing back a grin. “Sure.” 

“Oh. Great.” She’s no actress herself, clearly. She couldn’t be subtle if she tried. “Do you wanna be more inspired?” 

And - whatever. It’s a movie about sex. If anything, at least you’re sticking to the theme. 

The dialogue plays in the background as Karina rocks her hips down on your lap - you can feel how wet she is again, like she never stops wanting to be fucked. You’re telling her something about how she’s the most insatiable girl you’ve ever met; the sound of the film saturates the room, setting the tone like it knows its purpose. How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone? This big, infidelity-ridden confrontation. Did you phone her? Beg her to come back? Asking him why he falls for another girl, getting this ridiculous answer - it’s because she doesn’t need me.

“Huh.” You smile into the curve of Karina’s neck, already palming her ass. “That one’s funny.”

“Is it funny?” Karina’s sharp jaw brushes against your cheekbone. Her eyes are so dark, shadowed by her long lashes. “I think it’s pretty realistic. People don’t like needy girls. It’s a burden to be loved so hard.” Her tongue darts across her teeth; her smile’s somewhat caustic. “Too much to handle, I guess.” 

“What are you talking about?” This strikes you as fairly fucking ridiculous, too. “What men have you met who don’t like needy girls?” 

Karina just laughs and leans in for another kiss. 

It’s easy to let the rest of the film float away in the background, the lines coming disjointed, unconnected. A spoken-word soundtrack, tone perfuming the air: the angst and pain and eroticism seeping into your clothing. Once in a while you’ll pull back from kissing Karina’s neck or tits or mouth and see a thoughtful little quirk to her mouth. Like she’s genuinely listening, even as you’re taking off her shirt, slipping a hand back between her legs. Where will you go? Disappear. I can’t still see you - if I see you, I’ll never leave you. I amuse you, but I bore you. 

“I bet you’ve never felt that,” you say, half into the silk of her hair. 

Karina pauses. Her shirt’s on the floor; she’s gloriously naked on top of you. “Felt what?” 

“I amuse you, but I bore you,” you recite. You already sound sort of fuck-drunk, far gone. “You’re the farthest thing from boring.”

Back in the movie, the female lead sobs into her fists. Karina studies you, fingertips grazing the nape of your neck. You try to imagine it - her as one of those heartsick heroines, crying herself to pieces, begging a man not to leave her - but you draw an utter blank. Some people just aren’t breakable in that way. 

“You’d be surprised,” Karina says, after a moment. “People get bored of me all the time.”

“Oh, please.” Even when she’s the one top of you, you can’t help feeling so completely in control. It’s gotta be the look in her eyes, dying to be obedient. “I bet you have lots of ways of keeping guys interested in you.” You smack her ass hard just to make a mark. “I bet you let them fuck you however they want.” 

“Exactly,” Karina agrees, without missing a beat. She moves in close until your noses bump together. Lets her voice go all smoky and suggestive. “Wherever they want, too.” 

You open your mouth - probably about to say something very rude about what a dirty whore she is and how you should’ve realized it the second you saw her; I knew it, I know you - but then your hands slip lower and Karina presses her lips to yours and licks into your mouth, over your teeth, making you swallow your words. Filling you up until there’s nothing but her and the movie, playing on.

I think I’ll be happier with her. 

You won’t. You’ll miss me. No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough? 

“Romantic, right?” murmurs Karina, sweet against your tongue. 

“Shut up,” you say, and grab her by the hair, tugging her off your lap as you stand. “Bedroom. Now.” 

Later, you’ll take the time to consider the different ways filmmakers illustrate a power dynamic - it’s playing on your laptop screen right now. The heroine’s sitting on the arm of the couch, clutching desperately at the hero’s jacket. Gorgeously emotional and pleading for another chance, her tiny chin tilted up, eyes so large and watery. Made fragile and fearful by everyone: the protagonist, the narrative, the director, the audience beyond. By herself, even. It’s a stylistic choice - she wants to look that pathetic.

And you-

Well, you’ve got Karina’s long hair wrapped up in your fist, tits bouncing as she stumbles to her feet, ankle knocking hard and horribly loud against the leg of your table. Cute little ass all red from your hand. Thighs shimmering from how drenched she is, cunt dripping from how you’ve treated her. She hasn’t managed to work her mouth into a trademark smirk fast enough: when she looks at you over her shoulder, her eyes are abyss-dark and bottomless, crease between her brows, lips parted in pained surprise. 

The definition of pathetic, too - but that’s exactly the point. She’s just so much more fuckable like that. 

“Ouch,” you say, touching her hurt ankle with the side of your foot. 

“It’s fine.” Karina’s skin feels clammy and cold. Her smirk’s intact now, camera-ready. “I’ve been through worse.” 

Her ankle throbs under the pressure of your touch; you still haven’t let up on her hair. You’ll go through worse, too, you think of telling her: a sly comment about how rough you’re about to fuck her, what vicious marks you’re about to leave. How you’re gonna hurt her exactly like she asked you to. 

You don’t say a thing.

She must already know all of that, anyway.

-

So, Karina’s not breakable like the helpless, weepy, soft-hearted girls in the movies - but that’s alright. She’s breakable in much more enticing ways.

Case in point:

“Oh, get real, baby. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

Well, breaking someone down doesn’t really get better than this.

It’s all a scene of your own making, a perfect pre-arrangement. You on your bed, Karina limp and bent belly-down over your lap - you in control and Karina as the most impressive toy you’ve ever gotten your hands on, creamy ass and needy cunt and skin that turns bruises to artwork. You’re goading her and failing - trying to get her to just admit to what she is, what a filthy slut, what a nasty eager fuckdoll - but it’s hard to get a response when even breathing seems to be a chore for her right now. Every noise out of her mouth is nothing but a gasping, choked-out whimper. Her face is buried in her forearm, hidden. And through the shine of lube dribbling down your hand and her ass and into the sticky wetness of her cunt, you’ve got two fingers stretching out her little asshole - and you’re just getting started.

“I know you fucking need this.” Your other hand slides up her back, slips to tangle in her hair. “You’re just too good at it.” You pull hard, wrenching her head from the crook of her elbow. “Too good at being an obedient fucking whore for me, huh?”

Karina’s whole body stiffens when you fuck your fingers deeper, as if tugged taut on a string: the flex of her feet in the air, shoulder blades straining, neck craned back almost painfully. You pull harder. It’s a buzz at the base of your skull, live-wire thrilling: the knowledge that you can yank her into whatever position you want - fuck her anywhere, work her ass open with your cock, fill her up with cum - and she’s just going to have to take it. Like she’s this pliant, powerless thing. Like she’s yours. 

Your self-satisfaction seeps right into your voice. “Answer me.” 

You hear Karina gulp down a breath. “I,” Karina mumbles, but she can’t do anything but babble. “I - fuck-” All teeth-clenching nonsense; she shoots a baleful glance over her shoulder, desperation clawing its way into every word. “Please-”

Your fingers pause. “You want more?” 

Her cheeks are splotchy and pink; you swear there are tears wobbling in those big dark eyes. The heavy arousal in your stomach turns to violent hunger, as though your mouth could start watering at any second. You can’t help it. The thought of seeing her cry is fucking exhilirating. “You - oh-” 

“Answer me. You want my cock?” You’re waiting for the breaking point. “You want me to really fuck your ass?” 

“Fuck-” 

But that’s not a proper reply and Karina knows it, so she doesn’t protest when you pull your glistening fingers out of her and smack your palm hard across her ass. Once, then twice, and then you just don’t stop. She yelps like a hurt animal - trembles uncontrollably, her thighs and her shoulders and her quivering bottom lip - and makes a sound in the back of her throat that might be a sob, but she still lets you hit her: gives into the harsh crack of skin on skin, over and over again. Listens as you tell her that she deserves this, that she wanted this, that you’re making her into a good girl and this is what good girls get when they’re too cock-hungry to follow orders or answer a fucking question, you know that - you know I’m this rough for a reason. It should hurt. It’s so much more fun that way.  

“I’ve been too fucking nice to you,” you mutter, teeth gritted in an effort to hide your grin - as if you even need to. It’s obvious how much you enjoy this. It’s the point. “That’s the problem with girls like you - you never learned your fucking place, huh? Never really been punished for anything?”

Karina mumbles out something unintelligible, slurring from her drooling mouth to the sheets.

“Yeah.” Your hand comes down again - she flinches just before her body goes slack. “That’s what I thought.” 

And after you’ve spanked her so hard that her fair skin is ravaged and raised with goosebumps along the slope of her back - her whole body in revolt - you finally, finally stop. 

Karina doesn’t budge except to breathe, and even that releases shallow, unsteady. You read it all in the shaky lift and fall of her thin shoulders, her hands in white-knuckled fists, her face pressed to your sheets and hidden - her hair coats everything, all ink, all words written but left unsaid. She shivers beneath your fingers. Her cunt’s dripping all over your lap. She’s a masterpiece. She’s a wreck. 

You’re filled up with thick, swollen pride. “Karina.” 

Karina. Your own personal creation, transformed under your touch. Might as well have your name carved into her, too. A brand right across her back, slicing through tissue, scarring to seal her fate - this is who you fucking belong to. 

“Poor baby.” You follow the sharp ridges of her spine, tracking notches, keeping a tally: counting how many times you’ll hit her, how many days she’ll stay in your bed. How many movies she’ll let you make out of her, being your brilliant muse for decades. “It’s painful when you don’t listen to me, huh?”

But then - inexplicably - you think of her bruising ankle. Her twist of a smirk, detached and humorless. I’ve been through worse. 

You’re abruptly glad you can’t see the look on her face. 

“Come on, sweet girl.” You dig the heel of your palm into her lower back, half a warning. “Pull it together.” 

Between the strands of glossy hair tumbling over Karina’s skin and your sheets, you spot a reddish mark on the back of her neck. Like the impression of a thumbprint, small and round. Blurry enough in the dim light that your brain starts conjuring up strange theories; an old wound, maybe. A birthmark or a burn, a childhood injury.

You graze her shoulder blades with your fingertips, exploratory. She feels so small draped over you like this, a tiny wet wisp of a girl. A doll. 

She still hasn’t moved.

“Karina.”

Nothing.

“Karina,” you say again, suddenly uneasy. Your hand stops. “Are you-”

For a few terrible seconds, you can’t even hear her breathing. 

But then Karina shifts. Slow, sensual, deliberate. Pushing herself up off your lap, arching her back, the slick pucker of her asshole obscene from where you fucked it open with your fingers. Her bruised knees dig into your mattress as she straightens up, and her gorgeous pale face seems to glow in the midday light - heavy dark eyes, bitten-pink mouth, black hair curtaining her cheeks like a frame to a portrait.

“You,” you start to say, feeling suddenly like you’re looking at her for the first time. 

“I’m really sorry,” Karina murmurs.

She doesn’t look close to tears at all. She’s so unfazed, as if having her ass spanked punishingly raw is something that happens to a girl like her on the daily. A run-of-the-mill occurrence - a consequence of having a body like that, made to be brutalized. She’s already reaching towards the nightstand for the lube. 

“I just wanted it so bad I couldn’t think straight,” Karina tells you, with erotic-film certainty - reciting all the lines that’ll make her seem the most insatiably slutty. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her lips form a pout; she leans down to press them to the tip of your cock, all sweet and demure, like she thinks she needs to convince you. Eyes flicking up at you through her thick lashes, molten-hot. “I should’ve listened.” It’s only a breath, warm and torturous. “I deserved that, I know.” 

Your hand winds tight in her hair. You want to force your cock down her pretty throat, make her gag and choke over her simpering apologies, spitting up your cum until it trickles down her chin, her tits, her tummy. Both a game and a power play: prove how sorry you are. 

Karina pulls back before you can, and holds up the lube. 

“Babe,” she says, the term of endearment almost a singsong - a lilting reminder. “I thought you wanted to really fuck me now.” 

“Uh-huh.” Her tits heave as she moves, crawling closer, offering herself up. “And I always get what I want, right?” 

You feel drunk with power. You forget that this isn’t supposed to be about power. You watch as Karina coats her palm with lube and pumps your cock, her fingers slick and hot, her veins starkly blue at her delicate wrists. Expression delighted at how hard you are, pink little tongue poking out between her teeth - seduction down to an art form, meticulously calculated. 

“With me?” Her smile burns. “Obviously.” 

You pull her in by the neck to kiss the smirk off her mouth. 

It’s interesting. There’s this other thing regular critics and moviegoers have been saying about films these days: sex scenes need to have a purpose. Some sort of coherent motivation. Strip your lead actress down to nothing and get her keening and moaning and you’ve got to explain it away somehow. It forwards the plot, you could insist, pitching it to producers and directors. It does something for the character dynamics. It’ll draw in just the right audience, the ones dying to see their favorite celebrity debauched and getting dirty on-screen - they’ll see it over and over just to get a taste. Isn’t that enough? To satisfy the masses? Isn’t that why we’re all here?

Because otherwise all people are staring at is a play at pornography: useless half-convincing make-believe. The heroine can writhe and whine and arch her back all she wants. Everyone knows she doesn’t feel anything. 

“Tell me the truth.” 

Oh, if you two were a movie - you don’t know how anyone could justify a sex scene quite like this. 

It doesn’t matter what artsy angle you take. It all comes down to the same unforgivable details: Karina face-down ass-up on your bed, the perfect bowed curve of her spine, the depraved wide stretch of her asshole around your cock - the sweat shining along her shoulder blades, the hard smack of your palm against the red raw skin of her ass, your other hand at the crown of her skull with your fingers wrapped entirely in her tangled hair - her cunt fucking ruining your sheets, wet all the way down her thighs, each brutal shift of your hips sending her little body into full-blown shudders-

“Tell me that you fucking love it.” Your hand slips lower until you’ve got her pinned down by the back of the neck, fingers pushing down: a grip she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to. “Whoring out your slutty little ass like this for a stranger. Getting on your hands and knees for me just because you’re so fucking needy for cock, baby - don’t even try to deny it, you’re so wet, nasty fucking girl-”

You just can’t stop yourself. It’s so easy. She really is so fucking pathetic. Too fragile to get free - too easily manipulated and manhandled. Trembling and drenched and giving way as you make room inside her, forcing space. She’s just so tight - it’s godless, how you make your cock fit in her lube-slicked asshole, how she moans like a bona fide bitch in heat over it: needing faster, needing harder, needing more. Cheek pink and pressed hard to your mattress, sharp nails digging into the sheets rough enough to tear through the fabric. Giving herself up to be fucked cruelly and stupid and senseless. 

Like she’s a real-

“Natural fucking cockslut, huh?” 

Look, seriously - you can’t be held accountable for the things you say to her here. 

Because when you say shit like you’d just let me do anything - like you’d let me fucking tie you up and keep you here forever, be an eager fucking cumdump for me whenever I want you, I know it, I know you - that’s just the moment talking. The circumstances. The pretty arch of her back and the drooling wetness of her cunt and the indecent tightness of her ass, conspiring to make you lose your mind mid-fuck - that’s the whole reason you even tell her any of it. You think you’re good for anything else? Right at her ear, your body covering hers, your cock buried deep. You’re not. Just made to get this slutty ass fucked open, and your mouth, and your cunt - this is all anyone’s ever gonna want from you and you know it - better get used to it now, baby. This is all you got. This is all you are. 

It’s Karina’s fault, really. She just takes it - all of it. She doesn’t even try to fight it. 

“But that’s okay,” you murmur, as she gasps and squirms and cries out like you’re killing her. “I’m still gonna make you cum.” 

And with your cock filling her ass and your hand between her legs, slapping hard at her sopping cunt until she can’t do anything but collapse - shaking, shattered - her whimpers fucked-out and drool-soaked and bleeding into one big nonsensical mess, everything about her used and ruined-

“You’re mine,” you tell her, laughing as she falls apart. “You get that? You’re mine.” 

-then, you do.

When it’s all over, Karina rolls over to face the wall, breathing hard. She’s slick everywhere, sweat and saliva and lube, your creamy cum dripping out of her well-fucked asshole and trickling down her thigh. You trace her lower back and grin at the way her skin seems to give into you, turning pink with a press of your fingertips. You’ve come to realize you adore her like this, the fugue state after you fuck her: utterly dead to the world. 

Like she could become a permanent fixture in your bed. Too tired to move. Too tired to ever leave. 

“Mine,” you say again, softer.

Karina doesn’t argue. 

It’s basically all the confirmation you need. 

-

So, really, if you two were a movie-

It goes like this: life can imitate art, too. It happens all the time. The line between fiction and reality blurs together until it’s indistinguishable - until you can’t tell where the fantasy ends, or if it ever did at all. 

-

(It goes like this: the heroine smiles sleepily and tells the hero he’s the best she’s ever had. You’ve seen this film before. The movie stars with their fake on-screen fucks might not feel a damn thing, but at least it’s still fun to pretend.)

-

Also, the mark you saw on the back of her neck isn’t actually what you thought it was. 

“It’s a tattoo,” you realize out loud, drowsily awed, brushing her hair away so you can get a better look. You’re both tuckered out, an inevitability when you fuck like you do; you’re seconds from dozing off. Karina’s looking away from you, on her side to escape the soreness of her ass, sheets loose across her chest. She lets you touch her wherever. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before.” 

“You don’t know me,” mumbles Karina, half into your pillow. “It’s not your job to notice anything about me.” 

The tattoo’s crimson-red, all delicate linework. It really does look like it hurts: like someone painstakingly cut the shape into her skin. It’s of a heart, rendered in anatomical detail - valves and ventricles and arteries. It’s beautiful, you realize belatedly. Bright instead of faded, and obviously cared for. Lovely. 

The only permanent stain on her perfect body. You press your thumb against the ink, fascinated. 

“What does it mean?” you ask, but Karina’s already fallen asleep. 

-

(In your script, the girl and the stranger watch some gory crime show, except they don’t pay very close attention and he tugs her into his lap and makes her ride his thigh. The episode they’ve got on is about a serial killer who murders so-called sinners - liars, adulterers, the like. Slaughters them like sacrifices, cutting their throats with vicious efficiency. Fake blood drenches the screen with every crime scene: a form of fucked-up baptism, a psuedo-religious cleansing. 

The girl’s putting on an equally decent show on top of the stranger: head thrown back, eyelids fluttering, high-pitched little moans. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and keeps watching the TV.

Hey, he says, a murmur against her skin, a close-up on his mouth. You’re a sinner, right?

She’s got her hands on his shoulders, hips rolling. Sure am. 

How do you think this guy would kill you? 

He thinks this’ll shock her, but she doesn’t even pause. Like he kills all the rest, she says. Like an animal.

I think he’d be more careful with you, the stranger muses. You’re too gorgeous. He’d have to use, like - a scalpel, or something. Something cleaner. Something that’d keep you intact. 

It’s no use. Nothing he says seems to scare her. Her eyes are far-off, almost glazed in recollection. Like she’s thought about it too - her own untimely end. Her own vivisection, skin flayed and organs visible, viscera and bone. There, hold the shot: now the audience can consider it with her, ponder all the ways she could be torn apart, all the repulsive things they could do with her desiccated body. All the ways flesh can warp under a human touch: the blue-black yellow-green purpling of bruises, a whole palette on one tiny girl. There’s value in that, isn’t there? There’s something intimately, incomparably beautiful in suffering. There’s art. 

Isn’t that why everyone’s watching? 

I get it, the girl says, still soaking his thigh, smiling as if it’s an inside joke between them. You want me dead. That’s been obvious since the moment you met me. 

I don’t want you dead, he says, and grabs her by the jaw. I just want to fuck you. 

Okay, she says, uncaring, like there’s barely a difference. Fine. Whatever you want. 

They don’t turn the TV off. They let the characters scream and bleed out in the background; he fucks her like she’s got a death wish. It’s funny - he expects her to get louder the harder he fucks her, ruthlessly working over the tight clench of her cunt - but she keeps getting less and less responsive, as if he’s pushing her little body into some sort of trance: expression vacant and blank, body limp and lifeless, mouth open and speechless. It makes him angry. Give me something, he’s saying, frustrated, clawing at her hair: baby, it’s not fair, it’s no fun like this. The on-screen shrieks aren’t enough - he wants it from her. Actually, he keeps saying he needs it - as if fulfilling desire is on the same level as food or air, as if he’ll drop dead in seconds if he doesn’t get her sobbing. He gets his overlarge hands on her face and starts contorting it, pushing her mouth open, her eyes wider, his fingers down her throat until she spits and gags and chokes. Oh, the audience will love this one: it’s reminiscent of those filthy exploitation films with their cult followings, so cleverly referential. Look at her pathetic and pinned down. Look at her helpless and struggling. Think of your favorite on-screen murder scenes, and then think of this.

Anything I want, the stranger reminds her, yanking back her hair as she drools down his wrist. You asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything I want. 

Except now the girl can’t say anything at all. 

This moment will start rumors, invite horrified scandal the same way some purposefully marketed horror movies are passed off as snuff films - that really went down, they really died like that. This scene’ll get a similar response. Did he actually fuck her? Did he actually hurt her? Did everyone - the writer, the director, the crew, the captive audience - actually just stand by and let that happen? 

Sure. Or she might just be a really, really good actress.

There. The stranger’s murmuring to her now, watching her manufactured expression, watching the tears fill her eyes. There you go. There’s my girl. And she is his, she really is - transformed into something all beautiful and new under his clumsy fingertips, molded right into art. The camera will zoom in close on her gorgeous, cadaverous face, a perverse little gift for the audience: here, have this, take a look. She’s all yours now. 

There’s something to be said here about the manmade link between sex and violence - inescapable, brutal, primeval; bodies in all shades of red - but he forgets it the second he touches her, and she’s being fucked too hard to remember.

Maybe they’ll get to it next time.) 

-

AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!! <33333

all my luv ever to @capslocked @worldsover @passingnotions @braaan for beta reading my dumbass shenanigans and also for being the best ever I LOVE U!!!!!! AND ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS I LOVE YALL TOO.................. PART 2 COMING SOON!!!!!!!!!!!

[averagewriter-inthedark]

To Be Loved is To Be Seen 👑 | Gladiator II Imagine

My Masterlists

Characters & Pairings: Emperor Geta x Empress!reader

Content Warnings: fluff, mentions of violence and insinuated murder. morally ambiguous reader (They match each other's freak), slight NSFW—MDNI 18+, mentions of pregnancy, soft!Geta, historical refences and mythology (not completely accurate to the timeline) | female!reader (she/her) no use of Y/n | wc: 3.6k

Requested 📨 yes/no (rules for requests)

Premise: On the evening of their son's first name day, the Imperial couple of Rome find solace and comfort in the rare moment their afforded when keeping the order of the Empire on their shoulders. Basking in the genuine softness that is only reserved for each other, away from the preying eyes of their court who constantly test their patience and bring upon the wrath of Mars and Venus.

Note: my love for Joseph Quinn has returned full force and it makes me hate Stanger Things again for killing Eddie off.

---------------------------------------

Under the stars and Gods of the Roman night sky, the Empress stood on the balcony of the Royal chambers overlooking the beautiful city. A symphony of music and chatter from the people below, filling the streets as torches light the pathways and far beyond. The Colosseum, the battleground for Rome’s gladiators, once consumed by spectators to witness the blood and glory of her fighters now remained silent and steadfast as the day’s celebration came to an end. 

And the Empress, adorning in the comfort of her nightwear and robes, held the celebrations honoree in her arms. Pius Septimus Caius. The one-year-old Caesar, heir apparent to the Roman Empire, stared up at his mother with wide eyes full of wonder. Reaching up with a chubby hand to grasp her hair, freed from its braids, pins, and curls. 

“One day, this will all be yours,” she declared, adjusting the child so he was perched on her elbow, leaning his entire weight onto her side. Her mouth pressed to his head as she cradled him, “Everything the night touches, and what the sun shines upon when Sol comes to claim the sky from Nox, belongs to us.” Tiny fingers play with the seam of her robe, the young heir fixated on the gold detail. 

Down below the Empress heard cheers erupt, peering to find citizens by the gates of the palace dancing and waving to the ruler. “Blessed be the Caesar on his first natalicium!” “Empress, may the Gods bestow great fortune to you and his Grace!”

Grinning, she raised her hand, fingers cupped to wave at the crowd, who grew in size--all vying to catch a glimpse of the Empress and Caesar before they retreated into the chambers. The balcony stood high off the ground and yards away from the streets, but the guards stood firmly with their weapons ready for any threat. Caius mimicked his mother. Arm moving up and down, igniting more cheer from their subjects.

“And when you’re older,” her voice dropped an octave, despite no soul in proximity. A menacing shift in tone all while the smile remained on her face. “Your father and I will teach you the ways of ruling this great empire with an iron fist and the secrets to prevailing without bringing destruction onto yourself. Where the people of Rome shall adore you, worship the ground you walk on, and stay loyal to you even when their hearts scream at them to run.”

Giving one last wave and shielding the boy from the cool breeze, the Empress retreats inside, the smile dropping to a dubious smirk, reflected in the way her eyes seem to darken now she is away from prying eyes. “You’re too young to understand, my dear Caius, the lengths your father, uncle, and I have gone to keep the favor of the people while hiding the truth of certain matters they surely would spread fire to the streets if they discovered.” Her chuckle echoes with the sound of the doors shutting. Sealing the chambers from the outside world. 

“Gods be damned, the lengths I went to secure my position could bring upon ruin.” The bodies of the Senator and his daughter, who plotted to usurp her betrothal to the Emperor, now rotted to bone and dust beneath the Colosseum. “Not to mention the lengths your father went to ensure my hand.” At the bottom of the sea laid the box containing the man her father initially betrothed her to. Who’s life was forfeit the moment Geta laid eyes upon the woman he vowed would be his Empress. 

And any and all Concubines knew not to dare breach the boundaries of the Imperial couple. Certain actions and intimacies were reserved for each other. 

Do not kiss the Emperor or the Empress on thy lips.

The Emperor takes pleasure, he does not give. Only to her.

The Empress does not lay below, she remains above. Except for him.

The Emperor does not allow anyone on top of him, only her.

The Empress takes no seed but his. He releases in no one, but her. 

The one time a brave soul attempted, ended with their passage to the Underworld. 

Pulling back the duvet, the Empress settled into her side of the bed. Back pressed against the headboard and Caius tucked in her lap, she lit the candles on the nightstand for more the light the flames of the fireplace were unable to reach. 

“Let me tell you a little story, my son, of the love between two Gods that is not so far from your father and I. Mars and Venus.” Eyes full of intrigued, the boy babbled in approval and snuggled closer into her embrace. Warmth of the duvet and fire hugging him alongside her skin. “The tale goes like,” she began hoarsely, “there was once a beautiful Goddess. More beautiful than any Goddess in Mount Olympus and the lands below, who held the bounds of love like no other. Venus. And every man, God and mortal, wanted Venus to be theirs. But she was married to Vulcan, the blacksmith God, who relished in being the one to have secured her hand by the order of her father, Caelus.” 

The Empress’s jaw tightened, tone hardening at the last sentence as she thought of her father and former betrothed. The Senator twice her age whom her father agreed to marry her too once she reached marriage potential. Sentencing her to a life where the home he built would be her own personal prison. Hidden away from the likes of preying men, but would show her off as a prized gift from the Gods when he desired satisfaction from his peers.

Gods be damned he’d be her husband. She would’ve slit his throat on their marriage bed the night of the wedding. But alas, Mars rescued her. 

“Venus spent every waking moment planning to rid Caelus from her life. Leaving Mount Olympus to live among the mortals. Drown herself in the sea. Poison him little by little until his body could no longer put up a fight.” The Empress had been so lost in her rising anger, staring at the flames of the fire, that she forgot what she was talking about. It wasn’t until hands brushed her cheek, and she glanced away to find her son tilting his head, wondering why she stopped the story.

“But one day while attending a feast, just when the Goddess believed all hope was lost, she was visited by Mars, the God of War.” Caius’ awed expression made her smirk, falling to a whisper, “and in that moment Venus knew her prayers had been answered.”

The smooth surface of the pillar beneath her finger guided her with each step, the column the only thing between the two as they circled each other. Eyes locked, drawing out the voices of the guests in the dining hall yards away. Leaving them the only two, standing on the balcony as they welcomed the cool night breeze and allowed Nox to be their only witness to the instant connection they both met the others gaze.  

“You should not be without your guards, my Imperator. Tis a foolish thing to do when so many souls occupy your home.”

“Sounds as though you have plans to strike me down, my Lady.” His smirk indicated he did not feel threatened at all by her. Continuing to circle the pillar, he moved at the same pace as though not to lose sight of her face. Her entire being beckoning him like a siren luring their prey. 

“Oh no,” she purred, lips curling up to match his smirk. Sending heat up his spine as the air around them shifted. “I wouldn’t dare dream of striking the likes of you down. 

“No?” came his mock, like he didn’t believe her. “Is that not why you lured me out here?”

“Who said I lured you?”

“Ah, so it was luck you betted on that I’d follow you.” Geta suddenly stopped and turned to intercept her, the woman nearly running into his chest. But she made no sound of surprise, expecting him to eventually end their dance around the pillar. 

The moonlight shined against her eyes, mimicking the twinkle of the stars above. “I did not have to bet on luck. You’ve been waiting the whole night to have me alone.” 

Geta’s expression shifted to a mix of intrigue and lust, mesmerized by her confidence of speaking so freeling in front of him, knowing he’s killed men who’ve dared to do the same. “Is that so, my Lady? Care to enlighten me what assured you I’d leave the company of my guests to follow you into the night alone without my guards.”

Leaning closer, enough for him to feel the heat radiating off her body, she lifted a finger to trace the image of Mars on his golden chest plate. Smooth metal beneath her fingertip. 

“I’ve felt your eyes trail me the moment I stepped through those doors,” she spoke into the night, never straying her intense gaze from him. “You may be good at masking your thoughts, my Emperor, in front of your subjects and Senators. But when that man introduced me as his intended….” her head tilted, challenging him to reject the claim about to leave her lips. “You appeared rather displeased.”

Geta’s hand came up to her arm, trailing up until it reached her neck to cup her jaw, rather rough yet she showed no trace of fear. In fact, she appeared aroused. It enticed him.

“Any man would when they are in the presence of Venus herself.”

“I’m flattered by your kind words, my Emperor. And if I may, being in your presence feels as though I've been visited by Mars.”

“Does that frighten you?” He questioned.

“On the contrary, I’m pleased,” she didn’t hesitate, making his grin widen. 

“And like Venus, Vulcan has claimed you as his own.”

“He has not claimed me and never will.”

“You intend to kill him then? Before your wedding?” A trace of surprise laced his tone, but more so amusement.

Once again, she challenged him with her eyes, hand coming up to his own on her neck, “Would that please you, my Emperor.”

Geta’s eyes were as dark as hers, the tension between the two thickening as their goals of the night since the feast started finally came together. She was in his arms, and he was wrapped around her finger. 

He brought his head to hers, leaving his mouth roughly centimeters from hers, giving her the promise she prayed to the Gods in the image of Mars himself. 

“Very much so, but leave him to me, my Lady, I rather enjoy removing those standing in the way of what I want. And what I want, is you,” Their lips brushed together, sealing the vow in a single kiss, “Swear yourself to me, and I shall free you from him. You will be my Empress.” 

“Mars and Venus loved in the shadows until they finally could show the world they belonged together. Vulcan was indisposed, thanks to Mars,” The Empress’ finger was grasped, Caius attempting to take her ring that caught his attention. It made her grin, letting the boy take her hand to inspect the jewelry. “And Venus made sure the maidens and Goddess alike knew better than to tempt Mars with their seduction,” voice dropping to a murmur, she added with a smirk, “those who dared were removed with ease.”

A squeal left Caius when he was suddenly lifted in the air, waving his arms rapidly as giggles echoed against the walls of the chambers. The Empress stared up with adoration, “and born from Venus and Mars’ love was their son, Cupid. The winged God of affection.” 

Caught up in the moment, the little prince giggling as his mother continued to hold in the air as though he was flying, the Empress did not hear the chamber doors opening. The troubled expression on Geta’s face wondering why his son wasn’t in the nursery vanished upon his eyes landing on the scene before him. A sudden warmth filled his veins hearing Caius’ laughter, followed by the view of a beaming smile on his wife. 

“Make no mistake, Cupid was as clever and mischievous as his parents. They say that when struck by his golden arrow, one is gifted with uncontrollable desire. But when he sends his arrow tipped with lead, they flee with great aversion.” Returning the boy back down, the Empress nuzzles her nose against his. Giggles still falling from his mouth he nearly drowns her voice out, but Geta manages to hear her. “And let us not forget dear Cupid was known to steal honey straight from the hives of bees. The sweetness too tempting to resist.” 

The Empress swore she saw Caius’ brown eyes light up at the mention of honey. For he, too, loved the golden liquid. Especially when infused with bread or cookies. 

Geta, who’d been watching from a distance fondly, finally made his appearance known, “and when Cupid’s stung by the bees he’s stolen from,” the Empress does not even flinch by the sudden intrusion. Having felt her husband’s eyes on them when he entered the chamber. 

She turns Caius in her arms as her gaze shifts to Geta’s, smirking at the sight of him strolling to his side of the bed, robes clasping his figure and leaving nothing to the imagination. The light of the candles illuminated his gorgeous face, the vision of Mars, her Mars. 

Caius reaches out to his father. Escaping the Empress’ hold when Geta settles onto the mattress. Letting his son fall into his arms while he continued, “he ran to his mother Venus claiming no creature that small should bring upon such pain. But Venus did not consol the young God like he hoped, no…” Geta’s eyes fixed on his wife, who met his gaze, their expressions full of delight. “She reminded Cupid how he was not so different from the bee’s. He was small, like them, and he delivered the sting of love.” 

Of course, Caius was too young to understand the extent of his parents' stories. Just one year old and yet to speak his first words to the world. But he was captivated nonetheless, eyes big with awe and wonder. 

“Poetic justice at best,” The Empress whispered, smirk never faltering as she leaned closer, her lavender aroma filling his nostrils. Leaving little room between the two now that Caius laid claim to sitting on Geta’s chest. The Emperor held him upright with one hand under his armpit and the other on his side. 

“You gave me a fright, wife,” Geta remarked, tauntingly. “I went to the nursery, and imagine my surprise when I looked in my son’s cradle to find it was empty. Then I heard the guards chattering about how the front gates were flooded by citizens shouting their desire to see the Empress and Caesar.”

  Chuckling, the Empress returned his playful smile, “My apologies, husband. Caius and I were enjoying the view of Rome at night Nox has blessed us with. I was showing him what will be his one day.” 

Geta lifts a brow, “already preparing him for the throne? My dear, I thought you’d wait at least until his second name day.” 

A hand lightly taps his shoulder in offense, though it does no damage and Geta simply laughs at the action. Caius, the bold prince, reaches his chubby arm to swat at his mother as to protect his father, making the two gasp with grins etched on their visage. 

“Such loyalty, my son!” Geta lifts him up, causing giggles to erupt. “I shall dismiss my Praetorian guards and make you my sworn protector. No man shall harm the Emperors of Rome so long as the mighty Septimus Caius is by their side.” 

Laughter echoes along the walls of the Royal chamber that any passersby outside, servant or guard, stopped momentarily on their journey just to hear the joyous sound of their Caesar. Geta brought his son back down only to bestow soft kisses against his soft cheek. The Empress gazing upon the scene with deep reverence. 

Moments like these were rare. With the state of the Empire constantly on the shoulders of Geta and his brother and the Empress maintaining their facade of benevolent rulers to the public as to keep their favor, finding time to be a family proved rather difficult than they intended. Caius often got the attention of one parent at a time during busy days. Either Geta tucking him in at night before bed after a days worth of politics and scheming, or the Empress bringing the boy alongside when attending her duties. Hardly allowing the servants to care for him. Going as far as to refuse the wet-nurse when she birthed the child to feed him from her own breast. 

An action that appalled the Senate and ladies of the court, but garnered the affection of Rome’s people. 

Caius' laughter settled, the boy nuzzling into Geta’s chest as his mother brought her hand to caress his cheek. Lulling him to sleep. “Tis unfair you know,” she spoke softly, though Geta recognized the mischief in her eyes. “I held him in my womb for nine moons and he betrays me by having all your features and no trace of mine.” 

Melted chocolate for eyes, hair reddish golden like the setting sun, and skin light as peaches from their garden trees, Caius was the spitting image of his father. He had plump lips and freckles adorning his tiny face. The only attribute he took from his mother was her nose. Other than that, he could be mistaken for the offspring of a concubine had the servants not attended the Empress first hand during her labors and subsequently the birth. 

A chuckle left Geta’s lips, stroking his son’s hair as said matching eyes fluttered shut to find slumber. “He might have the likes of me physically, but rest assured wife, he’ll take on after you in every other way.”

“How so?”

“He’ll have your ambition,” he drawled, looking down at his son. “Your assertiveness and confidence. He’ll know to love no one but his family, and to remain loyal to them above all else. He’ll know how to sniff out traitors.” Geta’s voice is serene, his attention now toward his wife. “No one will ever deceive him. He will be the greatest ruler Rome has ever seen. All because he has you as his mother.” Tears pricked in her eyes, heart full of love and feeling butterflies in her stomach by his words. 

Hand coming to his cheek, the Empress pressed her forehead against his temple, her voice featherlike against his ear, “and with you as his father, he’ll prevail. He’ll know how to be a fearless emperor, a doting father, and devoted husband. And maybe…” she trailed off, biting her lip as a smile threatened to grace her face. “A loving brother as well.”

The air caught in the back of Geta’s throat. Eyes wide and moving down her figure to follow her free hand trailing to cradle her stomach. “Are you…you’re certain?” The Empress confirmed his suspicion, kissing his lips as the lone tear fell from her eye. 

“Yes, my love.” she whispers against his lips with a slight nod, careful to not wake the sleeping prince. “I have not bled in two moons. You’ve blessed me again with the honor of carrying your child.” 

Overcome with emotion, Geta carefully sits up, holding Caius against his chest as he pulls his wife up as well to crash his mouth against hers. The passion filled kiss made her head spin, enough to make her fall had his one arm not wrapped around her waist to keep her upright. The kiss was wet, sloppy. Full of love, full of devotion. A kiss actors at the theater could never accurately portray. As the feelings behind it are what truly brings it to life.

Pulling away after a minute, flustered and consumed with lust, Geta holds her gently by the neck, forehead pressed against her own. “The Gods have granted me you, my Venus, and I cannot thank them enough for the gift you’ve given me. Our son, and the child in your womb. I need not anything else in this world but you and our children.”

Cupping his cheeks in her hands, she uttered, “I love you, Geta,” kissing him again with the same amount of passion as before, which he met feverishly.

When they pulled apart once more, Geta let his lips trail to her forehead before leaning back to announce, “I’m going to escort our little prince back to the nursery. I’ll only be a moment.” Adjusting his body, Geta lifted himself off the bed, a sleeping Caius pressed tightly to his chest. The soft patter of his footsteps headed for the chamber door, his wife watching him depart. However when he was about to open the door, Geta stopped and turned back to face her, a lewd smile painting his features. 

“When I return, you shall take your place on top of me,” arousal flooded the Empress, his order producing the wetness between her thighs on command as it always did. Igniting the fire boiling within her stomach. Geta licked his lips, blood rushing to his groin by the predatory glint in her eyes. “Then I’ll have you under me after I’ve feasted upon your cunt. We have much to celebrate tonight.” 

“Much to celebrate indeed….” Sinking back into the cushions of the bed while teasing the opening of her robes, the Empress sighed in content. Pleasure forming at what’s to come in the next five minutes. “I’ll be waiting.”

[opbackgrounds]

This scene with Sanji is one of his most important moments in the series, and in my opinion also one of the most difficult passages in the manga to interpret, because to completely understand it you have to look at the manga holistically rather than this scene by itself.

The big question that needs answered is why does Oda let Zoro "win" here by having him be the sacrifice instead of Sanji. Both are equally willing and both are identified much later on as the Wings of the Pirate King, implying that they have similar importance (although vastly different roles) within the Straw Hat crew.

If we go back to Sanji's introduction on the Baratie, his big flaw was that he lacked the "spear of spirit" to pursue his dream. Since he's been a boy he's wanted to find the All Blue, but even when he had the opportunity to go after that dream he chose to stay on the Baratie out of a feeling of obligation to Zeff. Sanji put the continued existence of the restaurant over his own life, something Luffy rightfully called him out for at the time, and even at the end of the arc had to be pushed away by Zeff and the other chefs before he finally set sail for good.

On Drum, Sanji once again almost died protecting Nami and Luffy during the avalanche, resulting in a broken back that required surgury from Dr. Kureha. Luffy again calls him out (note the English translation here isn't entirely accurate, see here for a breakdown), and with his power there's a good chance Luffy could have gotten them all out of trouble without all the dramatics by Sanji.

Something similar happens on Skypiea, when Sanji puts himself in the way of Enel so that Usopp and Nami can be saved. This case is perhaps more justifiable given the extreme situation they were in, but nonetheless he was still quick to throw his life away.

Then on Enies Lobby Nami--while not criticizing his chivalry--calls out Sanji for simply not running away from Kalifa, instead just accepting that he's going to get the shit beat out of him, and possibly die.

So there's a pattern of self-destructive behavior. Sanji repeatedly puts his life on the line when he doesn't need to in order to preserve the lives and dreams of the people he loves. Even him constantly simping over Nami and Robin falls a little into this category, because if either of them told him to take a long walk off a short pier I have no doubt he'd comply. It's that same extreme willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for the people he cares for that we see in Baby 5, except Sanji was fortunate enough to not be surrounded by people that encourage these worst impulses of self-destructive behavior. As he says here in Thriller Bark, he's just the cook. Luffy can always just find someone else.

(The glory of Whole Cake Island being Sanji realizing, no, Luffy can't, and he won't).

And it is finally on WCI that get to the heart of why Sanji is like this with yet another episode of putting his own dreams and happiness aside for the sake of others, and not until Wano that we finally see him take the first steps toward asking others for help instead of passionately throwing his life away when he doesn’t need to.

When Zoro first offered his head to Kuma, the prominence of his dream was first and foremost. Notice that Sanji never mentions the All Blue. One Piece is a series that places the pursuit of one's own ambition above all else, even if that ambition is selfish. Sanji hasn't yet learned to be selfish, so Zoro knocks him out and ends up being the one to accept Luffy's pain. Sacrifice isn't sacrifice if the person doesn't value what they're giving up, and right now Sanji clearly doesn't value his own life compared to the rest of the crew.

Next chapter Oda will speak through Brook to confirm that Sanji's willingness to give himself up wasn't foolish or stupid. It's just that he's missing a piece of the puzzle, and that's not something he'll have for a long time yet.

[sorceresssundries]

Ruined

Pairing: Gale x Fem Tav

Summary: Regency Era AU! Tav is burdened by whispers of a cursed love life. Twice betrothed to promising men, only to lose them to tragic fates, Tav’s allure has become a point of fascination and fear. Intrigued, the recently arrived Mr. Dekarios pursues her despite the ominous rumours that surround her.

Warnings: Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Porn with Plot, NSFW

Word Count: 6K

A/N - this was written as part of a prompt challenge, the prompt was 'Let me ruin you.'

Tav was, yet again, compelled to endure the dreary monotony of another wretched ball. It was the seventh of the season, though indistinguishable from the first—or indeed from any that had succeeded it. The floral arrangements, while marginally altered, brought no true novelty. The pheasant, a substitution for last week’s goose, was hardly the culinary triumph the hosts had envisioned. Yet still, the gathered throng twittered and preened, as though this fête were the crowning glory of the season. 

It was not.

She often found her thoughts wandering from the oppressive glow of chandeliers to the untamed wilds beyond the manicured grounds. There, she imagined herself letting her hair and laughter fall loose, and riding bareback through the weaving woods she often drifted to, lured by wildflowers and birdsong. Or even further, to the ocean where the waves beat and pulled against the shore and promised mystery and new horizons.

Her daydreaming and lack of refinement had often left her labelled as preoccupied, unladylike, vexing.. To those throughout her life who had attempted to curtail her tendency to wish for the unobtainable. Corsets and etiquette may have done their best to pour her into a shape worth enduring, but there were no rules nor laces tight enough to bind the wild beat of her reckless heart. 

But here she was, bound again and bored again, at another repetitive show, for another repetitive year. Constantly torn between wanting to be wild and needing to be secure. 

This season, like the last, had brought Tav yet another marriage proposal - her third in total. She accepted it with the quiet resignation of one who had grown all too accustomed to the inevitability of such offers.

Offers which, so far, had ended in tragedy. 

Two seasons ago, she had been affianced to a fine gentleman of estimable rank and fortune. Their engagement was announced amid great fanfare, and society applauded the match as one of rare brilliance. Alas, before vows could be exchanged, her intended husband succumbed to a sudden fever, leaving Tav bereaved and pitied. 

The following season, she accepted another suitor, a baronet’s eldest son, whose devotion bordered on zeal. Yet fate struck cruelly again: he fell from his horse mere weeks before their nuptials, his neck broken in an instant.

After the second tragedy, the whispers began. They followed her like shadows, flitting from one fan to the next, growing more embellished with every retelling. Some claimed her beauty was too perfect, a snare set by the Fates to lure men to their doom. Others murmured curses, of misdeeds from ancestors long ago visited upon the innocents of the present.  

Whatever the tale, Tav was transformed in the eyes of society - from the most captivating of melodies, to the siren who used it to drown the besotted. 

She was hoping that the third time would, indeed, be the charm many claimed it to be. The only reason she had accepted the invitation to this particular ball was due to the request of Mr. Rowle, a solicitor who spent most of his time in London and was in search of a wife to keep in his large house in the countryside. 

He had asked for her hand, and she had accepted. It was to be announced later this evening. 

Mr. Rowle was the kind of man who could hardly be described as remarkable. He bore the vigour of watered-down wine, and his presence filled every room he was in the way a stale breeze might fill a drawing room. Still, he had taken a particular shine to Tav after realising, quite astutely, that she possessed both beauty and a good name, with very little competition standing in her way. His appreciation for her was pragmatic, driven by the efficiency of her family’s connections rather than any deep passion.

Tav had no illusions. She knew what marriage meant in this world. Mr. Rowle, for all his mildness, was no different from the fiancées who had come before him—well-intentioned, perhaps, but uninspiring. A man who would offer comfort and stability, if not love.

He was aware of the rumours that surrounded her, but Mr. Rowle was not a superstitious man, and so after only a couple of dances and several conversations about the weather and the local wildlife, he had visited her home and made her an offer of matrimony. It was swift, practical, and utterly devoid of romantic flourishes. He had no grand speeches, no sweet promises, only a proposal that seemed as casual as the conversation they had shared over punch.

Tav had felt nothing. Certainly not elation, nor disappointment, nor even relief. There was nothing in Mr. Rowle’s offer that made her heart race or her pulse quicken. His offer was as placid and dull as his presence.

And yet, she agreed. Not out of a sense of duty or obligation, but because she could not think of a reason not to. The prospect of becoming a solitary wife in a large, empty house with a husband she did not love seemed no worse than the alternative—more of the same, the same crowded balls, the same endless parade of unremarkable suitors, the same stale expectations.

“I shall make do,” she had resolved to herself, turning her thoughts away from her own desires. 

Not that she particularly minded being on her own. In fact, she found her company much more invigorating than any other person she had socialised with all season - save, perhaps, one.

Mr. Gale Dekarios was a recent attendee to the events of the county, and was the subject of countless fluttering eyelashes, timid stares, and whispered speculations. Wealthy, strikingly handsome, and possessing an education that was the envy of many, he had recently taken up residence in the county after parting scandalously from his lover in the capital. A member of the nobility, it was said - though no one dared utter whose name, precisely - with whom he had been an illustrious paramour until he had, regrettably, fallen out of favour.

Quick-witted, and perhaps a touch too clever for his own good, Mr. Dekarios had the uncanny ability to sharpen a room’s attention merely by entering it. Tav had disliked him instantly. She rolled her eyes at the chatter of scandal that clung to him, noting how it seemed to polish his reputation rather than tarnish it.

The same clucking mothers who had pecked at her name until it was in tatters, pushed their daughters towards him at every opportunity. Hoping that a dance or a conversation would lead to a betrothal between the rich, educated former lover of a noble and their insipid waif of a daughter.  

She certainly had no intention of tripping over herself to catch his eye.

Mr.Dekarios however, was not quite as sure-footed. 

He was intrigued by the woman of substantial beauty who often seemed to flitter, disinterested at the corner of the gatherings. Filling her own glass, and tapping her feet to the music as she sat in solitude, thinking no-one could see the rhythm of her slippers beneath her gown.

He had asked about her almost immediately. Discretion was paramount, of course, so he made his inquiries with care, approaching a variety of confidants and acquaintances. Their answers, though varied, all carried the same shadowed thread.

She was a beauty, they said, as luminous as she was mysterious. Yet her allure was whispered to come at a cost. Twice, she had been betrothed, and twice tragedy had struck before vows could be exchanged. Both men, hale and hearty, had perished suddenly and unexpectedly. Fever claimed one, and a fatal fall took the other. Another one, some solicitor , was apparently rumoured to be next in line. 

Some spun her tale with a touch of poetry, casting her as an otherworldly enchantress whose perfection ensnared mortal men. Others muttered more pragmatic warnings, hinting at curses, ill luck, or sins of her forebears.

Whatever the version, the message was clear: she was a woman to be admired from afar, not pursued.

And yet, after watching her, Gale found himself thoroughly unconvinced.

The first time he asked her to dance, she had declined with polite finality, offering no further explanation. It wasn’t rejection so much as dismissal, as though his request were little more than a passing inconvenience. He hadn’t been discouraged.

The second time, she wavered—her lips curving into a subtle smirk, her eyes alight with a glimmer of something that might have been amusement. Still, her answer had been the same. No.

The third time, however, her disbelief at his persistence had given way to reluctant acceptance. “I’m not sure this is wise,” she had said, even as she placed her hand in his and allowed him to lead her to the dance floor.

“Wisdom is overrated,” Gale replied, his grin laced with mischief. “But if it’s any consolation, I promise not to step on your toes.”

And so began the pattern that would define their every subsequent meeting.

Each time they danced, his hand held her waist with a touch that grew imperceptibly firmer, his dark eyes dipping lower, his gaze lingering longer. She told herself she imagined the faint stroke of his thumb against her gloved hand, yet each time the contact sent a spark rippling through her. For the first time, she understood the folly—and the wisdom—of feeling alight from something so small.

Unlike other partners, he eschewed the usual, droning topics of weather and the quality of the supper. Instead, he asked questions that surprised her. He wanted to know about her family, her thoughts, her opinions. 

She had flirted and bantered, and he had laughed - beautifully, richly. A sound that disarmed her completely and, more often than not, drew her own laughter from her lips until her corset protested against the joy.

But beneath the growing warmth between them, a shadow still lingered. Tav couldn’t ignore it. Surely Gale, for all his charm, was not unaware of her reputation, the whispers that followed her like a darkness even beneath the brightest chandeliers. Surely he, like everyone else, knew of the misfortunes that had befallen those who dared to come too close.

Her curiosity eventually overcame her. One evening, as the music faded and the final steps of their dance drew them close, he lifted her gloved hand to his lips. His touch, light and brief, sent a shiver through her even as his dark eyes locked onto hers, steady and full of something she dared not name.

“I would like to pay you a call tomorrow,” he said softly, the intimacy of it wrapping around her like a caress.

Bemused, and emboldened by their growing familiarity, she could not help but challenge him. “Have you not heard, sir?” she asked, tilting her head with mock gravity. “Any man foolish enough to commit himself to me meets a grisly end. I am the curse of the county.”

“I am well aware of your fascinating history.” His lips twitched, a grin threatening to break free. “It reminds me of certain females of the animal kingdom who are known to murder - and occasionally devour - their partners after the union is complete. It seems you either possess exceptional efficiency or lack the intelligence to at least wait until the marriage contract is signed.”

“Intelligence?” She arched a brow, her smirk sharpening. “Sir, I lack the patience.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding with exaggerated sagacity. “Then perhaps next time, you ought to choose a suitor whose company you can bear for long enough to secure the contract.”

“If I find such a man,” she countered with a smile, “I shall let you know at once.”

His laughter rang out, warm and unguarded, sending a strange ache through her chest. It had quickly become her favorite sound—a sound that made the rest of the world fade, if only for a moment.

But the following day, when he arrived at her home, she turned him away.

Not because she wanted to. On the contrary, she found herself hovering near the window long after his carriage had departed, her hands gripping the sill as though it might steady the tumult inside her.

No, she turned him away because she understood the danger of marrying for passion in a world where she was not allowed to express it. 

And somewhere deep down, buried beneath her rational mind and resolute exterior, there lingered a fear she dared not voice. The rumors, as wild and swirling as they were, had taken root in a corner of her heart. No matter how much she dismissed tales of blood curses and ancestral magic as foolishness, the whispers of society were insidious. If you are told something often enough, if you hear it echoed and embellished in every corner of every room, the ability to believe it burrows cruelly and stubbornly into the softer places of the soul.

It didn’t matter that no proof existed, nor that the very idea was absurd. The possibility, however faint, was enough to haunt her.

And the thought of such a fate befalling Gale—his dark, knowing eyes dimmed, his laughter silenced, his warm hand gone cold—was too cruel to consider.

She accepted Mr Rowle’s proposal the very next day. 

And so here she was, at the ball where it was to be announced, once again folded up into manageable pieces, and ended up feeling so confined it became difficult to breathe properly, let alone laugh or flirt or, god forbid, enjoy oneself. 

She thought once more of the woods and the ocean, of a freedom she would never find, and it all became too much.

She slipped from the crowded room, the clamour of prattle unbearable, and wandered aimlessly through a labyrinth of endless, identical corridors. The monotonous expanse seemed to stretch without end, until, at last, she stumbled upon an unoccupied alcove. With a soft, relieved sigh, she surrendered to the cool solidity of the wall, allowing herself the rare indulgence of slouching heavily against it. The breath she released felt as though it had been held captive not just for hours, but for the entire length of the season itself.

Her reprieve, however, was fleeting.

“Miss Taventon,” came a familiar velvet voice, “I was hoping to stumble into you.”

It was a cruel challenge, to maintain both eloquence and ire in the presence of someone so devilishly handsome. Yet, she resolved to rise to the occasion all the same. 

“A pleasure Mr. Dekarios,” she replied, her voice carefully even. Her eyes flicked down the corridor behind him, searching for signs of life. It was, to her dismay, empty. The usual din of aimless chatter was absent - ordinarily a blessing, but now a vexing reminder that to be alone with him, even for a moment, was to court the sort of scandal that clung like burrs to one’s reputation. She lacked both the energy and inclination to untangle herself from such a mess.

“Perhaps we may continue this discussion elsewhere,” he offered, wanting to protect her decency but not at the expense of losing the pleasure of her company. His interactions with her had become a sparkling rarity he would loathe to let slip between clumsy fingers. 

His eyes caught the faint light of the sconces, their gleam too knowing, his half-cocked smile far too disarming. Indeed, Tav found herself wholly disarmed. Her wits scattered like leaves in a strong wind, and she could scarcely think clearly enough to determine what she ought to do—or say. 

Before reason could intervene, her hand shot out, taking hold of his arm with a firmness that startled even her. She pulled him into the nearest room without so much as a word of explanation.

The door clicked shut behind them, and they found themselves within a study, low-lit and mercifully empty. Towering bookshelves lined the walls, the scent of leather-bound tomes mingling with faint traces of cedar and ink. An extravagant writing desk stood as the room’s centerpiece, the only witness to their impropriety. 

He was so close, gazing down upon her, the scent of plummy wine and heat simmering upon him. A dangerous thought flitted through her mind. If she so chose, she need only rise to the balls of her feet and kiss away the smile that played so smugly upon his lips. What might it taste like - that peculiar blend of arrogance and charm? Would it be sharp and bitter, like unripe fruit, or unexpectedly sweet, a slow trickle of late-summer honey?

The notion startled her, sending a betraying flush to her cheeks. To taste his superiority - to swallow it whole, to let it nourish her own fire - was a thought too bold, too improper. She stepped back abruptly, the motion breaking the spell his gaze had woven around her. The weight of his eyes remained upon her, unrelenting, as though he could divine the secrets she so desperately sought to hide.

Her lips parted, but no words formed. What could she possibly say to shatter the charged silence that hung between them? She felt unmoored in a storm she was unprepared for, swirling with curiosity, and something perilously close to longing. Yet even in her disarray, she knew that silence was a weapon she dared not wield for too long.

“I hear you are betrothed,” he said first. His tone was peculiar, sharper than usual, edged with something she could not readily name. “My sincerest congratulations.”

For a fleeting moment, she thought she saw the faintest flicker in his expression - hurt, perhaps, or resignation. But the mocking tilt to his words fanned her anger, quick and volatile.

“If your intention is to bait me with sarcasm or false pleasantries,” she snapped, indignant, “then I can assure you, your ire is wasted.” Her cheeks flushed with the heat of her temper. “You have very little appreciation of my position, and I will have no judgment from you, nor from anybody else.”

Her voice trembled on the edge of breaking, her hot-blooded nature betraying her as usual, and she felt the familiar sting of tears threatening to spill. She turned her face away, willing herself to regain control, furious that he could provoke her so easily.

“I apologise,” he said, gentler now. “If I have upset you, I assure you, it was never my intention.”

He reached out then, instinct overriding reason, his hand hovering in the space between them. He longed to trace the line of her jaw, to gently guide her gaze back to his. He lived for those moments when her eyes met his, those fleeting seconds when the world fell away and he could lose himself utterly in their depths. To be this close to her yet deprived of that connection felt like an unbearable cruelty.

But just as quickly, reason caught up with him. He hesitated, his hand faltering mid-air before he let it fall back to his side. He thought better of himself—of her—and allowed her the space she sought, even if it meant she kept her face turned from him, her eyes averted, her expression unreadable.

“If that was not your intention, sir,” she asked “then what is?”

He hesitated once more, caught between decorum and the desperate urge to speak the truth. If her engagement was to be announced tonight, as rumour suggested, this moment might be his last chance—his last opportunity to tell her what had remained unsaid for far too long.

In the silence, her eyes once more found him, too curious and impatient to be coy. 

“My intention… was to make you aware of my feelings for you. It is no use, I can hide them no longer, and if this is my final opportunity to make them known then.. I would be a fool not to take it.” 

If he expected her to be flattered, he would be disappointed.

“I see.” She said, whilst waiting for her thoughts to arrange themselves into a suitable order. “And you have decided to make this confession, alone with me? On the night of my engagement? How noble of you, sir. How thoughtful.”

He had the decency to blush a little, “I did not mean to.. I did not think..” “No, because you have no need of thought. You may act as and how you please with little to no repercussions upon your indelible reputation. What is one more scandal to the mystical and ravishing Gale Dekarios? It would surely only further your allure, to have talk of another lover notched upon your no-doubt dwindling bedpost.” 

“Now, hold on..”

“No. I shall hold no more. This is perhaps my final chance for a match, as limp and uninspiring as it is, it is still a match. I do not have the luxury of flitting my way across ballrooms and wearing scandal like the latest fashion. My name is muddied, and my future with it. This engagement is my chance at a comfortable and secure future, do you understand?”

“It is strange, my lady, as secure and comfortable are not words I would have associated with you, or your future.” For one so intelligent, Gale Dekarios often demonstrated the wit of a backwards ass.

“And what words did you associate with my future? Ruined? Destitute? Cursed? The only curse that has befallen me is the one that prevents me from charting my own course. You think I wish to marry that man? I assure you I do not.” 

“Stubborn is the word I would use! And infuriating!” His voice was rising to meet hers. “You ought not to worry about the match” he remarked, exasperated. “This time you are bound to vex the poor soul into an early grave”

“Yes, I am vexing! I have been told many times. And I am stubborn, I am glad of it. Because if I am not then I am meek, and if I am not curious then I am stale, and if I am not passionate  then I..” she could feel the words crack in her throat, truths she did not want to admit were being spilled from her like poisoned wine “then I am ruined. Not the ruin that this stagnant, monotone tribunal has decreed, but truly ruined. The kind of ruin that steals the sun from my skin and the fire from my soul. That straightens my curls along with my spirit and leaves me pale, faded, and hollow.”

She was blazing, alight, and so achingly, achingly tired of it all. 

“The ruin they speak of, the one they condemn with such piety - freedom, passion, love without boundaries or permission - that is no ruin at all. That is a privilege. One that you are entitled to, sir, but I am not and now never will be. I crave to be so ruined.” 

Her chest heaved as she finished, her final words hanging in the air like a dare. She was certain he would turn and leave her, that her outburst was too wild for a gentleman of his stature to bear. It would hurt her, for him to turn, but it would not destroy her. She was made of obstinance and wildfire. She would endure. 

But he did not turn. He stood there, gazing at her with an expression she could not read and a patience she did not understand. 

“Then let me ruin you.”

She was a match struck. 

Before she could form a reply - before she could even think - he crossed the small space between them in one deliberate step. His hand rose to cup her cheek, his palm warm against her flushed skin. The touch was surprisingly gentle, belying the fire burning in his gaze, and for a moment, she thought he would simply hold her there, suspended in this unbearable torment.

But then his lips were on hers, and the whole world tilted.

The kiss was no delicate brush of affection. It was a collision. His lips claimed hers with an urgency that stole her breath, leaving her reeling.

She should have pulled away, every rational thought in her mind screamed that she must. But instead, her hands betrayed her, fingers curling into the fabric of his coat, the only thing keeping her upright.

His hand cupped the back of her neck, strong and steady, his fingers threading through her hair as he tilted her head to deepen the kiss. When his tongue swept against hers, the shock of it sent a jolt through her, every nerve in her body alight. She met him with equal fervor, her tongue pressing against his in a rhythm that had been desperate to know. A low, primal sound rumbled from his chest, vibrating against her as he pressed closer, his body warm and solid against hers.

The moan sent a shiver through her, and she felt herself leaning into him, her fingers tightening their grip as though afraid he might pull away. But he didn’t. His other hand slid to her waist, strong fingers splaying across the delicate fabric of her gown as though he might anchor her to him.

She could feel the heat of his breath, could taste the faint hint of wine on his lips, and the sheer reality of it overwhelmed her. Her heart hammered against her ribs, each beat a chaotic echo of this is madness.

And yet, she couldn’t stop.

Her body betrayed her again, arching toward him. When his lips parted from hers, moving to trail a line of fire along her jaw, she let out a shaky breath, her eyes fluttering closed.

“Gale,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper, as though speaking his name might shatter whatever fragile spell had woven itself around them.

But he only paused for a moment, his lips hovering just above her ear as he spoke, his voice rough and low. “Tell me to stop.”

She opened her mouth, the words poised on her lips. But no sound came. 

His forehead rested lightly against hers, his breath coming fast and uneven.

“Tell me to stop,” he repeated, his voice low, rough, and trembling with restraint. “And I will. But kiss me again…

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, his gaze searching, as though he feared he had gone too far. But there was no condemnation in her expression, only a fire that mirrored his own.

He paused, as though steadying himself, “Kiss me again, and know that I am done. That I am yours. That I will ruin you for all others but me—and me for you.”

His words unraveled something deep within her, loosening threads she had clung to for far too long. She felt her breath hitch, her resolve wavering as she stood on the precipice of something she could not yet name.

“Yours?” she whispered.

“Everlasting”

The weight of his promise pressed against her, both a burden and a liberation. She knew the cost of stepping over this threshold, knew what it would mean to claim him as hers and to give herself in turn. And yet, in that moment, the world beyond the walls of the study—the rigid rules, the whispered judgments, the life that awaited her—seemed so distant, so inconsequential.

Her hand rose of its own accord, trembling as it brushed against the collar of his coat, tracing the fine fabric. She felt the sharp intake of his breath, and it emboldened her.

She kissed him, branded him, a kiss to end all others. 

A sound escaped him then, something between a sigh and a growl, and before she could say more, his tongue was against hers again. 

He broke away briefly, his lips hovering just above hers, his breath warm against her skin.

“There will be no going back,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“Good,” she replied, her fingers curling tighter into his coat. “I have no wish to.”

His hands were large and practiced upon her corseted waist. He knew that he would not be able undo her now the way he wished to. He wanted to rip the strings and restraints that bound together the softness of her body. What a waste, what a crime, to tighten and pull together someone as vivid and iridescent as her. To compress her heavy breaths and even heavier laughter into a space too small to hold it. He wanted to hear her, unbidden and unbound. Taste her, full and soft and naked beneath him. 

His eyes swept over her, lingering on the curve of her throat where pearls pulsed teasingly, the flush that painted her cheeks, and the slight parting of her lips as she fought to catch her breath. What need did a creature like her have for silk, satin, or pearls? They were dull imitations of beauty, mere adornments trying to mimic what she carried so effortlessly.

It was her—the way her skin caught the light, the way her hair fell in wild waves when she let it loose, the way her laughter could ripple through a room and silence even the most biting of whispers—that made those lifeless things shine. They owed their luster to her, mere shadows granted brilliance by proximity to the source. Just as he felt by being close to her. 

“Do you know what you do to me?” he murmured, his voice low and rough with longing.

She released herself from his grasp to a noise of frustration, before stepping back until the back of her legs met with the solid wood of the grand writing desk. It was covered in papers, books which held little interest. He wished to throw them all to the floor, nothing that lay upon that desk could ever possibly be as entrancing as even the thought of Tav laying splayed across it - spine arched and back rising. 

“Show me.” She said. 

She perched upon the desk, and his breath was ragged and eyes hungry as she lifted her skirts tantalisingly slowly, inch by inch, revealing her feet, her ankles, her calves. How hard he was, just from the sight of her ankles. He wished to kiss each part of her she was unveiling, parts he had imagined in his dreams night after night. Pushing his tongue against her insole, running along the delicacy of her ankle and up her calf. Further and further and further up until his teeth could grace her stocking clasps and he could finally indulge in the scent of her greatest intimacy. 

He fell to his knees before her, in lust-induced worship. He had found a Goddess made mortal, and he wished to venerate her with sermon and satisfaction until her divinity returned. He would offer his mouth - tongue and teeth and words, upon every altar she owned. Purl hymns and benediction into the slick heat of her sacred cunt until she offered him blessing after blessing in return. 

His hands gripped her thighs, lifting her closer to him as his mouth claimed her. He wanted her to fall apart against him, to know that no other would ever worship her like this, with such complete surrender. Her cries filled the room as he licked and moaned and devoured, and when she trembled beneath him, he knew he had her.

But the fire blazing between them refused to be sated.

He rose to his feet in one swift motion, his hands gripping her hips as he pulled her flush against him. Her skirts were rucked high, her bare thighs wrapping around him instinctively. She reached for him, her fingers fumbling with the fastenings of his trousers until she freed him, her hand wrapping around the hard, pulsing heat of him.

“We do not have to...” he groaned, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of proprietary, to throw a lifeline despite drawing himself. 

She needed no lifeline from him. Gasping, she positioned him against her, and kissed him hard as with one rough, claiming thrust, he buried himself inside her. She gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders, her head falling back as he filled her completely. The desk groaned beneath them. 

He drove into her with a raw, relentless intensity, his hands gripping her hips as he pulled her closer, deeper, with every thrust. The sounds of their coupling filled the room—her breathless cries, his low growls, the slap of skin against skin. She was everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever dreamed, and he would have her again and again until she knew it.

Her legs tightened around him, her heels digging into his back as her body arched against his. She met him thrust for thrust, her hands clutching at him as though she feared he might disappear. She was wild, untamed, and he was utterly at her mercy.

“Gale,” she gasped, her voice rippling with pleasure.

He kissed her messy and feverish, a clash of teeth and tongues as their passion spilled over. He swallowed her cries as her body tightened around him, her release ripping through her with a force that left her trembling in his arms.

He followed moments later, his own release crashing over him like a tidal wave. He held her close, his forehead resting against hers as their breaths mingled, their bodies still joined. The room was silent save for the sound of their ragged breathing, the scent of their lovemaking hanging heavy in the air.

She smiled up at him, her eyes alight with mischief and satisfaction. “And here I thought you were a gentleman.”

A chuckle rumbled from his chest, low and warm, as he pressed a tender kiss to her temple. “One cannot always be a gentleman,” he murmured, his voice thick with amusement.

Her gaze drifted over the room, taking in the disarray they’d left in their wake—papers crumpled and askew, books knocked from their orderly piles, and an inkpot that had tipped, its dark contents staining the pristine wood and smearing across important-looking documents.

“We’ve made a mess,” she said, her tone somewhere between scolding and delight.

“More than a mess,” he replied, his disarming smile lighting his face. “Ruined, I would say.”

Her laughter spilled into the room, bright and unrestrained, and he caught it in a kiss. His lips brushed hers softly at first, then with growing fervor as if he could never quite get enough of her. Reluctantly pulling away, he began the task of tidying her up, his hands reverent as they smoothed her disheveled skirts.

He knelt before her, fastening her stockings with a devotion that made her heart race. Each clasp was accompanied by the soft press of his lips to her thighs, a mixture of penance and unrepentant indulgence. When her hair pins were hopelessly scattered, he did his best to tame her curls, his fingers clumsy yet endearing as he pinned them back into something resembling order.

Satisfied—or at least as much as either of them could be—he sank into the grand leather desk chair, its creak breaking the quiet. With a gentle tug, he pulled her onto his lap, cradling her against him. His hands roamed her back and waist, languid and adoring,

“There is a packet ship,” Gale said, “Leaving from Falmouth in three days' time. We could be on it.”

She stilled, her lips barely parted, and her gaze lifted to meet his. “A ship?”

“Yes,” he replied, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, a smile that resembled a promise. “A fine vessel. A friend of mine—Wyll, a duke’s son—will be aboard. The Nautiloid. We could go together. You and I.”

Across the sea. How many nights had she stood at her window, gazing out beyond the carefully manicured hedges, imagining the vast, untamed expanse of the ocean? How often had she dreamed of a ship’s deck beneath her feet, the wind twisting her hair into wild hurricanes, no land in sight—only water, only freedom?

Her breath quickened, her thoughts racing, but he continued, seizing the moment. “I had planned to leave earlier. The tedium of society was wearing unbearably thin. I long for further study, for exploration.” He paused, his voice softening as he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm. “But I stayed. For fleeting moments in your company, for the hope of something more.”

Her heart swelled and twisted in equal measure. “And you are not afraid? That becoming my companion will pull you towards an early grave?”

He laughed softly, the sound rich and warm as he cupped her cheek. “Afraid? No. I could think of no better way to end my days than by your side.” His gaze grew serious, intense. “No supposed curse you bear frightens me. I think your suitors thus far were simply not of strong enough disposition to keep your wild flames stoked. And so, they burned out. As many would.”

“And you,” she asked, arching a brow, though her voice was edged with a smile, “are not at risk of combusting, I suppose?”

“I’d like to hope not,” he replied, his grin returning, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth as though to trace the smile that bloomed there.

“So, Mr. Dekarios,” she began “if I do board this ship with you, if I cast off everything I know and chart my own course, what will we find there?”

His smile softened, his hand falling to hers, their fingers lacing as though they had always belonged together.

“Adventure”