#bryan kneef fanfiction

[thatesqcrush]

Alright, making plans, making plans. Send me a request for any* REE characters & a #/prompt

Note: I reserve the right to not write for some characters/requests/prompts.

Kinktober 2024 Prompt List

Please feel free to share and use the list below. Or the header! This is only for anyone 18+ years of age, minors - please do not interact. Please feel free to tag me in any and all Kinktober stories that you post, I’m eager to read them. Have fun and have a wonderful Kinktober!

Handjobs // Temperature Play // Breast Worship

Piercing // Double Penetration // Voyeurism

Sixty-nine // Public Sex // Pet Play

Sensory Deprivation // Leather or Latex // Watersports

Rough Sex // Anal Beads // Bondage

A/B/O Heats or Ruts // Sadism-Masochism // Anonymous Sex

Bruising or Bitemarks // Virgin // Ice Play

Flogging // Swallowing // Cock Warming

Anal // Praise Kink // Food Play

Face Sitting // Lingerie // Overstimulation

Gags // Shaving // Knife Play 

Sex Toys // Dirty Talk // Breath Play

Pregnancy // Aftercare // Roleplay

Gangbang // Collaring // Candle - Wax Play

Hair Pulling // Glory Hole // Teasing

Nipple Play // Cock Worship // Lactation 

Squirting // Dom - Sub // Period Sex

Cockring or Plugs // Foot Fettish // Massaging

Suspension // Fisting // Mirror Sex

Infidelity - Cuckolding // Cunnilingus // Threesome

Gun Play // Monsterfucking // Shower - Bath Sex

Deepthroating // Thigh Riding or Fucking // Choking 

Licking // Degradation // Breeding 

Glove Kink // Masturbation //  Somnophilia

Pussy Slapping // Non Con - Dub Con // Titty Fucking

Pegging // Edgeplay // Seduction 

Lap Dances // Hate Fucking - Angry Sex // Breast Worship

Fucking Machine // Phone Sex // Impact Play

Branding // Hunter - Prey // Uniforms

Weight Gain // Object Insertion // Sex Pollen 

Free For All 

[storiesofsvu]

Journey to the Past Ch 23

Bryan Kneef x reader

It was very safe to say that the next week was one hell of an awkward one. You were irritated that you weren’t able to get into a doctor right away, wanting to get this sorted out as soon as possible but the earliest appointment you could snag was Friday at four in the afternoon. The pessimist side of you was certain that the tests had been flukes, that this was a warning sign of something worse going on in your reproductive system, another bad cyst or something of the like. Maybe the tests had been expired, you’d forgotten to even check until you were sitting in your office on Monday pretending to work. You were thankful at least that you still had your apartment, able to spend some extra hours in the office and blame the late night and not wanting to drive across town to avoid Bryan, not wanting to let him know and thus panic before you had confirmation. You hated it, having to spend a full week in limbo, but your hope wasn’t very high considering your history and none of that was affecting anything positively.

You were even more thankful with just how patient he was with you, giving you the space without asking too many questions, accepting the excuse of a long hard week of work, overwhelmed with cases. He still went out of his way to drive up to your firm, making sure you had lunch (and a fresh coffee you pretended to sip at while he was still there) and were taken care of. You knew that he loved you no matter what and was just hoping that would extend to your current stipulation. You’d spent a couple of nights at his place (that was now both of yours), but retired to bed early, the exhaustion setting in heavily being a nice excuse to avoid the nightly wine.

Which is exactly why on Friday Bryan had left work early to make sure the apartment was not only clean, but as close to spotless as he could get it. He knew he’d been lagging in that department this week and felt bad about it, so he did as much as he could. Laundry was tossed into the machines, sheets were changed and refreshed, the living room was tidied and vacuumed and the pile up of coffee mugs in the sink got put in the dishwasher and ran through. He’d stopped at the grocery store on the way home, picking up things for a lavish dinner including appetizers and a pricey bottle of Argentinian wine. He knew you’d had a long stressful week and wanted to make sure you were well taken care of, and he figured you probably wouldn’t want to go out tonight after it all. The appetizers were easy to take care of, setting the display up on the kitchen island so he could start on the main course, wanting it to be ready as close as possible to when you got home.

Once the chicken was in the oven he poured out a glass of leftover wine from the previous night for himself while he waited, retreating further into the house to change into something more comfortable before swapping over a load of laundry. A case file lay open on the island that he was going over when he heard the front door open and the tell tale sign of your heels on the hardwood. You rounded the corner of the hallway and let out a small sigh, a tiny smile on your cheeks when Bryan’s eyes met yours.

“Hey.” He greeted with a warm grin and you hummed in response, dropping your bag and blazer onto the couch, practically kicking off your heels before letting out a groan at the shoes no longer pinching at your feet and making a beeline to Bryan.

“Hi.” You murmured into the crook of his neck, appreciating the way his arms tightly wound around you, letting you rest in his embrace for a few moments as you let out a couple of breaths, his lips brushing against your hairline.

“Long day?”

“Long week.” You replied, finally letting go, accepting the gentle kiss he gave you.

“Well, here.” He reached around you, pouring a glass of the lavish wine out for you, handing you the glass and you let out a little sigh, turning in his arms to face the island.

“What is all this?” You asked, your brow furrowing. You could smell that he was cooking dinner from the moment you’d set foot in the apartment but hadn’t taken into account the platters set up on the island. Bryan let out a soft chuckle, wrapping you in his arms from behind, his lips kissing at your neck gently.

“I felt like you were having a bit of a rough go this week.” He murmured, his words broken up by kisses, “wanted to treat you but I figured you wouldn’t want to go out, so why not bring the fancy restaurant to you?”

“You’re too sweet.” You picked up his hand in yours, brushing your lips across his knuckles and he gently squeezed at you. Your eyes glided across the island and you couldn’t help but let out an ironic laugh at the sight, Bryan had set up a plate of oysters, a homemade charcuterie and cheese board beside it and of course, the wine.

“What?” He asked, teeth nipping at your skin, “you already knew I could cook, is this that much of a surprise to you? You know I love you.” His lips trailed across your skin as he spoke.

“I don’t know how you managed to fucking do it, but I can’t eat any of this.” You stifled another laugh, Bryan still distracted in nuzzling against your skin.

“Oh c’mon.” He chuckled, “you love oysters.”

“I do.” You nodded, “doesn’t mean I can eat them.”

“You know they’re an aphrodisiac?” He muttered, finally turning you half in his arms so he was facing you, your sides to the island as he cupped at your cheek, lips chasing after yours.

“You really think you need an aphrodisiac to get me in bed?”

“No but figured it couldn’t hurt.” One of his hands vanished from your waist, drizzling some hot sauce onto an oyster that he then sucked back, “they’re fresh, and fucking delicious.”

“Bry…” you laughed, unable to keep the grin off your cheeks at the devilish look in his eyes as he continued to tease you, shifting you in his arms again so you were facing the island and all the bits and bites.

“Try the cheese, that lavender honey goes fantastically with the blue.” He nuzzled into the crook of your neck again, “it took me an hour to figure out the fucking salami roses.” His hand started to reach out for the soft cheese and you finally found your words again.

“Give me the gruyere.”

“Knew I’d get you somehow.” He chuckled, picking up a cube and guiding it to your mouth before he shifted again to face you, his hip resting against the island, “it pairs perfectly with the wine.” He picked up your glass and your fingers gently pushed it back to the island and he let out a scoff of a laugh. “What?”

“Out of the things on this island, there’s approximately five things I can eat and that includes the pickles.”

“Did you eat already?” His brow furrowed, “Larissa said you’d left work early for something.”

“No. I—”

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he smiled, pecking your cheek softly, “settle in, have some wine, trust me, it’s a good bottle.” He slid the glass toward you again and you let out a small laugh,

“Bry, I can’t.”

“You had rough week, let the past be in the past, have some incredible wine.” He laughed, stepping toward the stove when the timer went off to move a pot off a burner. “it’s what you deserve.” He moved back to you, an arm winding around your waist while he took a sip of his own wine, “I’ve got to be able to spoil my girl, that’s all I was trying to do sweetheart.”

“I know.” You smiled softly, accepting the kiss he left on your lips.

“I’m fine if you ate without me,” his lips started to trail across your jaw, “I can eat later… cause I can definitely think of something I’d rather eat right now instead.”

“Bry!” You laughed, hands attempting to grasp at his body as his mouth began to make its way down your neck.

“What’d’you say, have some wine and relax then let me make you even more relaxed? Hmm? Enjoy the food later after you’ve worked up an appetite again?”

“Bryan…” you nudged at his chin and all he did in return was attempt to hand you the glass of wine again before burying himself in the crook of your neck, “Bry…” you couldn’t help but giggle at the sensation of his beard scratching against your skin, “Bryan, c’mon.”

“Take a sip and I’ll stop.” He murmured, his tongue soothing the spot he’d just bit and your fingers threaded into his hair in a very unsuccessful attempt to tug him off you.

“Bryan…I’m pregnant.”

The words slipped from your lips; it wasn’t exactly how you’d been planning on telling him but it seemed to be the only way to gain his full attention. Even then it took a few moments for him to actually hear you, his lips continuing to kiss at your skin before you finally felt his body tense for a second before he pulled his face from the crook of your neck.

“Wait… can you seriously not eat cheese while you’re pregnant?” He asked, a worried look on his face and you couldn’t help the bark of a laugh.

“Is that seriously your first question here?” You asked, watching the way his eyes suddenly darted from yours down to your stomach and back up. He felt the all too familiar sensation suddenly burning in his gut and start to creep up his throat as he scrambled through his thoughts to try and form proper words.

“You’re pregnant?” He asked quietly and you nodded, he felt a pang within him at the fact that you didn’t have an excited smile on your face, nor did you look like you were panicking, you were stoic, nearly unreadable in the moment. “Are… are you sure?”

“Yeah.” You let out a small breath, “Kim was freaking out last week ‘cause she was late, I took a test with her to help calm her nerves.”

“You’ve known all week?” Bryan stilled in front of you, a moment of irritation flashing over his features and you gave him a knowing glance as you let out a huff.

“No.” You shook your head, gently squeezing at his hand “I was certain it was a false positive. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure. I didn’t want to freak you out for no reason and I mean, there might still not be any reason to freak out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I may have cleared the twelve week mark but considering my age and history, who knows how things’ll turn out.” You watched as his brow furrowed, the wheels turning in his head, “what?” Your voice suddenly soft, timid as it left your lips, worry etching its way across your face before Bryan glanced back up at you.

“You’re three months along?”

“Almost four.” You replied, wringing your hands, “listen…” your hand met his lapel gently, “I know there’s a lot to unpack here…” you felt the butterflies building in your gut, terrified that you were about to lose the man you loved because of your decision. “Even if I wanted to, it’s too late to terminate. But this is what I’ve always wanted, a baby, a family… I thought I’d lost that opportunity nearly a decade ago.” Tears began to blur into your eyes, “but sometimes life kicks our asses in the greatest way and gives us the second chance we never thought we’d have. I’m having this baby. And I know that might not be what you imagined for your future, so I understand if this is the end for us.”

Bryan looked up at you with an unreadable expression on his face, you could see the slight pain deep in his eyes but weren’t sure exactly where it was coming from. He on the other hand saw nothing but worry in yours, knowing just how many things you were probably terrified of right now. His hand shifted to cup at your cheek, thumb stroking at your skin gently before he spoke.

“I told you I wanted a future with you.” He said gently, his voice impeccably soft as his chest swelled, “no matter what kind of future that is, I still want it.” He felt you let out a breath, your shoulders sagging in relief as your body relaxed in front of him, “I may have a lot of reluctance in myself as a father but I know you’ll be the most incredible mother in the entire world. It may take some baby steps on my behalf but I know you’ll be able to help me become the parent our baby deserves.”

“Our baby…” You nearly whispered, looking up at him with a happy smile.

“We’re having a baby…” He let out a bright laugh and you shrieked as he suddenly pulled you to him in a tight hug, lifting you up off the floor as you laughed. He only let go of you when the timer for the oven went off and he let out a quiet swear, reluctantly stepping away from you to pull the tray from the oven and grab plates from the cupboard as you crossed through the room. You grabbed your purse, crossing back over to the island.

“Smells amazing.”

“Oh fuck.” Bryan swore, his head shooting in your direction, “can you have cream cheese? It’s cooked?” You couldn’t help but laugh at his sheer innocence on the subject at hand considering just how brilliant his brain was when it came to the legal world.

“Yes I can.”

“You said almost four months…” Despite being calm Bryan also felt his mind going a million miles a minute as it raced through everything he did know about babies and pregnancy, “isn’t that when people start telling people?”

“Yeah,” you let out a small sigh, “but I’d really rather not do that yet.” He noticed the shyness in your voice, the way you nearly wrapped around yourself as you leant against the island and he stepped toward you, tilting your chin up to find a misting of tears in your eyes, a frown tugging at the corner of your lips.

“Hey… hey…” he assured softly, a hand resting on your hip, “I thought this was supposed to be a happy thing, why the melancholy face?”

“I’m scared.” You admitted after a minute, your voice doing its best not to shake, “I’m in my forties, I had a huge struggle getting pregnant before…this probably isn’t going to be an easy walk in the park or anything… all the risks are higher, I swear I got a bigger stack of brochures about the risks than the positives.”

“Are there any they’re particularly worried about right now?” He asked and you shook your head, “was it just a pregnancy test today?”

“It was the one thing after another. I explained the test I took, my history, they did another test, a blood test and then rushed me for an ultrasound.” You reached out, grabbing at his arm, “I’m sorry I didn’t call you I just didn’t have time and didn’t know how to explain everything over the phone, I would’ve much rather had you been there.”

“They did an ultrasound?”

“Yeah…” your hands slipped into your purse, flitting through until you pulled the small black and white photograph from within it, placing it down on the island in front of Bryan, “so far it’s one happy healthy baby…”

“Oh shit…” he almost timidly reached out for it, picking it up off the counter before his eyes flitted between it and your stomach, finally meeting your gaze as his hand reached out to stroke at your cheek, “and mom?”

“Healthy.” You nodded, the smile unable to be restrained as you nodded and Bryan let out a sigh of relief, kissing your forehead before he turned around, pinning the ultrasound to the fridge with a magnet and turned back to you, cupping your cheeks.

“Then we take the rest of this one day at a time.” He kissed you softly, “I’ll do everything I can to catch myself up to speed, but in the meantime we’ve got the money, we’ve got the connections, you’re going to have the best doctors in the country, we’ll run every test that’s safe for the baby and we’re going to do this.”

“Are you sure?” Tears began to blur into your eyes as a tiny laugh escaped your lips, “you really want this?”

“I do.” He kissed you gently, “you’re my future. And now this little bean is too.” One of his hands dropped to your stomach, resting gently there for a moment before your hand curved over top of his, fingers slipping between his.

“We’re having a baby….” You whispered, pure adoration pouring from your eyes up to his as he smiled back down at you, feeling his chest about to explode with the total and complete love wrapping around the two of you in that moment, only able to press a tender kiss to your lips before he replied.

“We’re having a baby.”

_____________________________

@detective-giggles @plaidbooks @thatesqcrush @witches-unruly-heart @beccabarba @bisexual-dreamer02 @amelia-song-pond @madamsnape921 @whimsicallymad @mrsrafaelbarba @mysticfalls01 @ssaic-jareau @caracalwithchips @barbasbodaciousbeard @alwaysachorusgirll @beardedbarba @michael-rooker @rafivadafreddy @lustvolle-liebe @anlin2058 @fandom-princess-forevermore @tinyboxxtink @alexusonfire @xovalliegirlxo @somethingimaginative17 @momlifebehard @misscharlielulu @fighterkimburgess

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

Bryan Kneef:  Breaking Point, Part Nine

Word Count:  6786

TW:  Angst (job loss; DUI; family estrangement); fluff (reconciliation); smut (PiV, unprotected).  18+ only.

AN:  Part nine of a nine part series.  Other parts can be found here.

The night of the STR Laurie holiday party, you had asked Bryan Kneef if he had a rock bottom.  The implication in your tone was that no, he didn’t have one.  But that wasn’t true.

Bryan Kneef had a rock bottom.  In truth, he had been working his way to it for years and years, but the real, final skid started only a few days after your disastrous hookup the night of the party.

He had thought that it was odd how no one in his group chat had mentioned the plans for St. Kitts for the year.  The morning after your hookup, he sent out a few texts as feelers.  It was a day or two later when he got a reply – a halting series of texts from his stepbrother, gently explaining that everyone would prefer if he didn’t come this year.  

“Maybe next year?” Kyle texted.

Bryan didn’t respond to that.  He managed to cobble together a last-minute trip to Maui, but it was lonely.  The spectacular sunsets, the sea breezes all reminded him of you now, and you weren’t there.  No one was there but him.

Kyle’s gentle rebuff around St. Kitts was just a precursor.  Bryan’s stepbrother met him for lunch early in January, and over seared bay scallops, he informed Bryan that unfortunately, he wasn’t invited to the spring nuptials between Kyle and Jessa.  

Normally Bryan wouldn’t care, since weddings were just bullshit anyway.  He was still hurting from St. Kitts, though, and honestly – Kyle was an only child too, and Bryan was the closest thing he had to a brother.  Why wasn’t he invited?

“Jessa is really close with her cousin,” Kyle said after hesitating a moment.  He glanced up at Bryan and took in his blank face, then sighed in exasperation.  “You took her home after the engagement party.”

The memory was a little hazy; Bryan had been mostly tipsy and a little drunk.  “Oh.  Yeah.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kyle mimicked.  “Jesus, Bry.  You don’t even remember, do you?  You had sex with Jessa’s cousin and then kicked her out immediately like a complete douche.”  Kyle shook his head.  “I’m sorry about the wedding, but Jessa doesn’t want any drama.  I don’t want any drama.”

-----

If that were the end of it, Bryan would have been fine.

So he was mostly estranged from his remaining family.  Fine.

So he had grown apart from his oldest friends.  Fine.

It wasn’t the end of it, though.  Bryan had a long way to fall to hit his rock bottom, and because he was an asshole who drove everyone away from him, he was alone for all of it.

*****

When you got home after the disastrous night with Bryan, you took the weekend to give your life a long, appraising look.  Ever the planner, you wrote out a list of things you wanted to achieve in the upcoming year, and at some point on Saturday night (after you finished off half a bottle of Moscato), you made a snap decision.  When you woke up on Sunday morning, late, your email was full of confirmations – airplane tickets, vacation rental.

It wasn’t the worst thing you could have drunk-bought.

Everything else with Bryan Kneef aside, the trip to St. Kitts got into your bloodstream and never left.  It was the travel bug, for a woman who had never traveled further than Missouri her entire life before.  You had been born and raised in Chicago.  You attended college there, and you found a job there.  But St. Kitts had reminded you that the world was big and diverse and beautiful, and if that was the lesson you took from your interlude of madness with Bryan….there were worse lessons to take away from it.

You spent you holiday break in Rincon, Puerto Rico which felt fitting.  “Rincon” meant corner, and it felt like exactly the right place for you to see out the old year.  You found a small studio apartment that overlooked the ocean, and because Bryan and his too-cool-for-school friends were absent, you did everything.  You snorkeled.  You tried surfing, and you discovered that you did not have the balance for surfing.  You went for hikes and got your first massage.  You went horseback riding.

And when you got home to Chicago, you got to work on the rest of your new year’s to-do list.

First thing was first:  find a new job.

The truth was, STR Laurie bought out your firm years ago.  It was fine as a company, paid well enough, but there were too many inconsistencies between departments.  Some groups got bonuses, plenty of days off, the occasional catered lunches….other groups, not so much.  The senior litigators seemed to do whatever they wanted with little more than slaps on the wrist from H.R.

There was something deeply unsettling about your work.  You had somehow fell into a corridor of the law where you helped the very rich defend themselves and their money and property, as if they couldn’t spare a hit to their outrageous fortunes when they behaved terribly.  It made you uncomfortable.  You had grown up in that hazy place of working class and lower middle class:  your mother had been a housewife, and your father a carpenter.  You had attended public school.  Your college career had been funded by Pell grants and a generous scholarship.

So you left STR Laurie after securing a coveted role with the Exoneration Project.  Your new boss never sneered at you and called you just a paralegal.

Second thing:  find a new place to live.

You had been living in Wicker Park for a while now, and you always rented because you were holding out on the hope of finding someone, getting married, buying a place together.  So much of your parents’ unequal marriage had seeped into your subconscious without you even realizing it.  You’d been waiting on a man before you allowed your life to really start.

You were limited in what you could afford in Chicagoland with your salary, but when you found the place in Ravenswood, you knew it was the one.  It was love at first sight.  You had been waiting on a person, but it was a house instead – a well-sized place that had been stripped to the bones by an ambitious amateur house-flipper before the mortgage caught up to them and it went into foreclosure.  But it had a nice, small backyard and everything was updated – electric, roof, plumbing.  

And you had been your father’s little helper for all of your childhood, so you knew how to hang drywall and install tile.

You made an offer, and you were stunned when it was accepted.

By the end of summer, you had a new job, a new house.  The house wasn’t done, of course – most of it was still torn down to the studs – but it was livable.  You had a functional bathroom and kitchen, and you were camped out in a guest room while you worked on your bedroom.

In September, with the shortened days and the chilly nights, you got lonely.  Instead of going out and finding some broken asshole to try and fix, you just adopted a dog.  A dog, you found, was infinitely more trainable than a man and far more loyal.  You named the scrappy mutt Joey, mostly because you loved how confused people seemed to get about a dog with a human name.

You weren’t sure how much of your life overhaul was organic and how much was caused by Bryan.  Certainly, you had been drifting through life since your mother died the year after you graduated from college.  Your dissatisfaction – a growing frustration with your life – had only grown every year since.  But it was something about that awful final night with Bryan that seemed to spark the change, and by the start of October, your anger and frustration at the man had burned off like fog rolling off of the lake.

If you ever saw him again, you might even thank him.

*****

STR Laurie let Bryan go in March.  “Let go” was a polite euphemism for “fired unceremoniously,” which is to say:  Bryan Kneef was marched into H.R. one morning, read a list of unforgivable sins, and then marched out of the building with a security detail.

On the list of sins was one glaring omission – blackmailing an employee into a holiday vacation – so he knew that secret was safe.

In the end, it came down to his abrasive behavior.  Lawyers – especially really good ones like him – got away with a lot.  Other industries wouldn’t entertain an employee like him:  the casual cruelty and the more intentional cruelty.  His department had bled personnel until he was completely staffed with people like him, namely, douchy frat boys.  It was fun at first, but the lesson came too late to save Bryan’s job:  people like him were fucking exhausting to deal with.

Bryan wondered if you’d gloat once you heard, but he didn’t think you would.  You were, at your core, a kind person.  A thoughtful person.  At worst, you’d shake your head knowingly at the news of his demise.

It was harder for him to find a job than he realized.  He used to be pursued by headhunters; now he was calling people in his alumni network for crumbs.  There seemed to be millions of lawyers in Chicago, but the legal community was still tiny.  Everyone knew he’d been canned by STR Laurie.

He got the DUI in April. ��

To be fair, he wasn’t drunk.  Not drunk drunk.  He’d only had a few drinks, but they had been on an empty stomach, and when he blew through the red light on Michigan Avenue, he had been a prime target for the cop sitting there.

But those were excuses, and as part of his plea deal, he had to deal with his problems.  The chirpy little ASA wanted him to commit to AA, but Bryan negotiated for a private therapist instead.  He had thought, incorrectly, that he could charm his way through therapy.  

No chance – he ended up with an older man who looked like a kindly Santa but who fucking tore through all of Bryan’s glib snark within the first ten minutes of their first session.

Here was Bryan Kneef’s rock bottom:  unemployed, friendless, estranged from his family, with a suspended driver’s license.  He had a failed engagement because he’d been a cheating bastard, and after that, all he had was a string of failed affairs and half-relationships.  Anytime a good woman made him feel something, he pushed her away.  You had been the latest, but you certainly weren’t the only one.

The nice thing about rock bottom, however, is that there is nowhere to go but up.  Sure, it was a cliché, but Bryan Kneef was sufficiently humbled now.  A little cliché was fine by him.

-----

It was almost the end of October when Bryan saw you again.  He had found a job – finally – with the state attorney’s office in Cook County.  Ironic, that.  Bryan used to represent the rich and powerful of Chicago.  Now he prosecuted them as an ASA.

He was at the courthouse, loitering around the lobby.  It was one of the more difficult moments; he always wanted to celebrate a victory with a drink, but he knew it was dangerous to celebrate alone.  Bryan wasn’t dry by any stretch, but he had identified (with his therapist’s help) harmful patterns.  He had rules now – never drink alone aside from a glass of red wine before bed.  Never drink more than two drinks in one sitting.  And so forth.

Never get so blindingly drunk as to drive away the one woman who seemed to enjoy being with him.

It was stupid, but when Bryan won a guilty verdict, he always wanted to reach out to let you know.  He thought that you, out of everyone he knew, would be pleased by his sudden shift to the right side of the law.  

It was like a scene out of a movie.  He stood in the lobby, fiddling with his phone uselessly, and thought of you.  And like magic – there you were.  It was so unexpected that he had to do a double take.

You looked beautiful in a vaguely-retro looking tweed suit – the skirt hit right at your knee, and the coat was perfectly cut to your form.  In the biggest surprise, your feet were clad in a pair of patent leather pumps instead of your usual colorful flats.  You looked like a lawyer, but Bryan knew the timeline wasn’t right.  You couldn’t have graduated from law school and sat for the bar all in the span of ten months.  You hadn’t even showed interest in becoming a lawyer.

You were standing and talking with an older woman that he didn’t recognize.  Did STR Laurie acquire a new firm?  Whatever you had been at the courthouse for had ended well, judging by the broad smile on your face.  

When you worked for him, you could feel him staring at you about half of the time.  You must have felt the weight of his gaze now, because you turned your head and scanned the lobby – and saw him.

It wasn’t that your smile fell, exactly.  It was more like it receded a little, like the outgoing tide.  The smile left your eyes, but stayed on your lips where it hardened just a fraction.  The woman with you caught your gaze, and she said her farewells and left you standing there.

*****

There was no good reason for you to get a drink with Bryan, but you weren’t the same person you had been a year ago.  From the looks of him, Bryan wasn’t the same person either.

He looked much the same – maybe a shade thinner, but nothing extreme.  His expression was markedly different.  When he walked over to you, there was no sneer or frown on his face.  He looked….happy to see you.

There was a nearby martini bar that was a favorite of the courthouse set, so that’s where you went.  Surprise number one:  Bryan ordered a mineral water.  In the entire time you’d known him, you had never seen him drink something that wasn’t alcohol.  You had always just assumed he stayed hydrated by the miniscule amount of water that melted from the ice in his whiskey.

Surprise number two:  he was charming, and not in his usual asshole way.  He was…nice.  You wanted to reach out and touch him, see if he was real and not some android replacement.  For all the time you’d spent with him, he had never once showed an interest in your life.  Now, he was asking you a ton of questions.  He seemed genuinely interested, so you told him all about your new job, your new house.

Surprise number three:  Bryan told you about his life.  He was probably hedging a bit, but he was shockingly honest.  He had been fired.  He had gotten a DUI.  He was in therapy.

The final surprise of the evening was when he apologized to you.  It was a genuine apology, not the half-assed sorry’s he gave you at the holiday party.  He looked you dead in the eye and apologized.

“I treated you terribly,” he said.  “And there’s no excuse for it.”  He glanced down at his glass of water, toyed with the wedge of lime on the rim.

It was weird seeing him so uncharacteristically humble.  “It’s okay,” you replied.

“It’s not okay,” he said with a firm shake of his head.  “I blackmailed you.”

“It wasn’t blackmail.”

“It was though.  I weaponized your kindness for your coworkers to force you into a holiday with me.  Forced you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”  He slumped a little, his shoulders rounded in apparent shame.  “Forced you…” He trailed off and didn’t finish the sentence, but his intent was obvious.

“Hey.”  You reached out and tapped the back of his hand.  “You didn’t force me to do anything.  I could have gone to H.R.  The vacation to St. Kitts felt like a mutually beneficial thing.”  You paused until he looked up at you, and you added, “and you definitely didn’t force me to sleep with you.”

It made him smile.  It was a small smile, but probably the first real one you’d ever seen on his face.  

“You’re too nice for your own good,” he said.

He was probably right in that regard.  When you both went to leave and stood out on the sidewalk in the chilly autumn evening, he hesitated a moment and then reached for you.  You stepped into his outstretched arms and let him pull you into a warm hug.  His behavior was completely different, but he smelled exactly the same – the cologne that smelled like an expensive, musky wood fire.

“I’d like to call you sometime,” he said once he finally released you.  Bryan Kneef probably never looked uncertain in his life, but he seemed almost shy now.  Shy-adjacent.

“I’d like that too,” you told him.  

*****

Bryan knew he didn’t deserve anything from you – not your time, not your forgiveness – but you gave him both.

It was strange, dating a woman.  Dating in his previous life meant buy them some drinks, then fuck them, then repeat until someone got bored or found greener pastures.

Bryan knew he could likely charm you back into bed, but he had spent too much time in therapy picking apart his relationships with women.  How he focused on shallow encounters.  How he fled from connection, feeling.  How it all traced back to his mother’s untimely death from cancer in his childhood.

He eased into things with you now.  It was the most difficult thing he ever had to do, delaying intimacy, but he did it because he wanted intimacy.  He didn’t want to just fuck you.  He wanted what he almost had in St. Kitts.

For the rest of October, he kept everything in first gear.  There were a few lunches during the workweek and a few dinners.  One Sunday night, he was feeling especially low – his bad feelings stirred up in anticipation for Monday afternoon’s therapy appointment – so he called you.  You took his call, and you talked with him for two hours, listening to everything he spewed at you, offering support.  Your mother had died from cancer too in the year after you graduated from college, and Bryan felt a warm (albeit sad) kinship with you over it.  Both of you, motherless.  Both of you with fathers who remarried too quickly and ignored their children’s needs.

By November, you were the one who moved things forward a little.  You invited him to your house, and the old Bryan would have openly mocked you for how unfinished it was.  New Bryan could see the potential, and more than that – he saw the gleam you got in your eyes as you showed him what you’d done already and what you planned to do.  

He wasn’t even jealous when the two of you sat on your couch and your mangy mutt crowded him out and got between you.  It was a first for him – a shelter dog cock-blocking him.

By the end of November, though, he was invited to spend the night at your place, and you shut your bedroom door firmly in your dog’s face (but only after handing him a huge rawhide bone in apology, and promising him an extra-long walk the next day).  

And then when you turned to face him, to step into his waiting arms, there it was – that fucking smile like he was the only person in the world that you wanted to see.

*****

Before, the two of you had fought:  the snowball fight, his drunken rant on New Year’s Eve, your own emotional raging at the STR Laurie holiday party.  Your first fight as a couple came in December.  You hadn’t realized that you were a couple now, but the fight revealed the fact to you.

You had started the tradition of traveling for your holiday breaks.  Your father had remarried a full month into his widowerhood years ago and started a second family, and neither you nor your sister really fit in with them.  Your sister was married with a kid, and she spent her holidays with her in-laws.  With no one to spend the holidays with, and after the thrill of going to St. Kitts, you traveled.  

Last year you had gone to Puerto Rico on a whim, but this year, you had planned a little better.  You had chosen the Maldives all the way back in June.  The plane tickets were booked, the little rental on the beach was booked.

When Bryan broached the subject of the holidays, you told him about the Maldives, and his face got that stony quality you remembered from working with him.  Before you knew it, the fight was upon you.  He wanted you to cancel your plans and join him in St. Kitts.  You wanted him to get real – why would you go back to St. Kitts and relive that?  No infinity pool was that good.

The real issue wasn’t St. Kitts.  The real issue was that he wanted to spend the holidays with you.  It didn’t matter where.  That fact hit you like a load of bricks.

Therapy wasn’t lost on the man.  You’d give him that much.  You watched him as he physically took a step away from you, and you swore you could see his therapist’s words rolling through his head as the silence descended between the two of you.  You gave him all the time he needed.

When he finally stepped back towards you, he took a deep breath and held out his hands in a conciliatory motion.  In a move that probably pained him – the man who never needed anything or anyone – he looked you dead in the eyes and asked if he could join you in the Maldives.

“Bryan, I…” You hesitated to answer him; you had to get the right tone.  “I’d be happy for you to join me, but – “

“But,” he echoed, and his face looked set and stony again.

“But…the place I rented is not…not some villa on the hillside.  It’s just a small little cottage.”

“So?”

You stared at him a long moment.  This was the man who had deep and strong opinions about the top notes of his whiskey.  This was the man who once dressed down a paralegal for having a four-in-hand tie knot instead of a half-Windsor.  This was a man who openly sneered at any cut of beef that hadn’t been hand-massaged from womb to slaughterhouse.

This was the man who mocked your glee and wonder of the world.  Sure, he seemed different now, but how would he feel when he saw the vacation you had planned?  The tiny cottage with no infinity pool, no waterfall showerhead, no giant Viking range in the kitchen?

Bryan must have read the expression on your face and understood its source because he snorted and gestured around him.  “Baby, you don’t even have walls in half of your house.  Whatever you rented in the Maldives is fine.”

You crossed your arms.  “I don’t believe you.”

Some vestiges of the old Bryan remained.  He was still a smarmy bastard sometimes, and he fixed you with a fully vulpine smile that only softened once you uncrossed your arms and let him pull you into an embrace.  It seemed like it was easier to talk to you sometimes when he didn’t have to look at you, so you weren’t shocked when he muttered against your head, so low that you nearly missed it.  

“I just want to spend the holiday with you,” he mumbled softly.  When you joked that he sounded like he was veering into boyfriend territory, he tightened his arms around you and replied, “would that be so bad?”

Sometimes you wondered if you had really drowned in St. Kitts and everything that followed was some sort of purgatory-based test to gain entry into heaven.  It made your head spin, the unreality of the situation.  At this time two years ago, you were so furious with your asshole boss that you drilled him in his smug, handsome face with snowballs.  Now he was holding you tight to him and asking you in a roundabout way to be his girlfriend.

You heaved a sigh of mock-weariness and extricated yourself from his arms.  “Fine,” you told him with a forefinger poking him in his sternum.  “But the minute you start complaining about the accommodations, you’re getting slapped.��

You had always suspected that Bryan had some pain or humiliation fetish.  You hadn’t missed how his eyes had darkened in lust, for example, the time you slapped him in his office.  He verified your suspicions now – his deep green eyes narrowed a little, and his voice dropped a quarter octave.  

“Promise?” he asked.

*****

What a change from two years ago.  Bryan remembered your first airplane flight, how icy your hand was in his and how you had huddled against him involuntarily.  Now you breezed right down the plane’s center aisle and ignored the flight attendants’ safety demonstration like a veteran traveler.

You were nervous though.  Bryan could feel the tension radiating off of you, and he felt a sting of shame about it.  He was the cause.  You mostly only knew him as an irredeemable snob and a consummate asshole, and your carefully planned vacation seemed shabby in your eyes now that he was tagging along.

He couldn’t tell you otherwise.  He just had to show you.

The private cottage you had rented was small, but it was lovely.  There was no pool, but there was a Jacuzzi and a huge bed and it was right on the beach.  You watched him look everything over, and judging by the way your jaw was set, you were just waiting for criticism.  Hell, your itchy right palm was practically twitching to deliver a blow.

“Seems small,” he said casually, and sure enough, you lifted your arm and hit him.  It wasn’t hard at all, just a light pat to his cheek, and you held your hand there to cup his face.  The look on your face – the soft smile, the hopefully rise of your eyebrows – was irresistible.  Bryan stepped forward and dipped his head to kiss you, and even though you had been traveling for over a day, he didn’t stop for quite a while.

-----

You and Bryan seemed to have different philosophies surrounding vacations. Bryan wanted to lie on the pure white beach and stare at the ocean that was so blue it made his eyes ache.  You had an agenda.

It was just your zeal for life, and after a bit of grumbling, Bryan leaned into it.  He skipped from island to island with you, went snorkeling, rode on horses, chatted with the locals.  It was refreshing to experience the world with you, since you were so unabashedly in love with the world.  At your side, Bryan shed a little more of his tough outer shell.

If the days were fun, the evenings were magical.  It was the same sort of spell from St. Kitts, only more honest.  You weren’t his fake girlfriend – you were his real one.  He wasn’t trying to make anyone jealous – he was only trying to convey how much he cared about you.

How much he loved you, even if he couldn’t quite say the words out loud.

You were both settled into the jacuzzi for the evening after a light dinner.  You had been shipwreck diving that day, an endeavor that revealed how out of shape Bryan was.  He lowered himself into the jacuzzi with a tortured groan, and you followed him a moment later with a pair of glasses and a bottle of wine.  Over the past few months, he had taught you the complicated calculus around what and how much he would drink, so now you both sipped at the shiraz and watched the sun sink in the west.

There was one similarity to St. Kitts, and it was how you got a little melancholy at sunset.  You still got that faraway look on your face, and you still sighed a little.  Bryan asked about it once and you seemed surprised and unaware that you did it.  He didn’t press – he only watched you, and if you seemed a little sadder some nights versus others, he only held you a little closer to remind you that he was there.

That’s what he did tonight as the sun set – he took your wrist and tugged you over to him until you were nestled against him.  He drew his fingertips up and down your arm until you gave an involuntary shudder against him.

The swimsuit you were in was familiar.  It was the same one you practically lived in during St. Kitts, which was fortuitous – Bryan already knew how to get you out of it.  As the sun set and as darkness settled over the island, he toyed with the knotted straps behind your neck, letting his fingers slip into your damp hair until your breathing was uneven and you were squirming against him.

The water gave a bit of buoyancy, and it was easy to maneuver you into his lap.  It was his favorite position, you sitting on his lap with his cock buried in you, you just a fraction above him so that he could access your face or your tits just as easily.

After his awkward foray into asking you to be his girlfriend back in Chicago, the hard conversation about birth control ensued.  You were still hurt by his accusations, rightfully so, and Bryan had to sit and listen to all of it.  Then, haltingly, the real truth came out.

“I don’t think I want kids,” you had told him, and you looked terrified once the words were out of your mouth.

“That is not a deal-breaker for me,” he had replied.  “At all.”

Then, because he hadn’t snapped at you or called you a monster for lacking maternal feelings, you admitted that it wasn’t that you didn’t think you didn’t want kids – you knew you didn’t.

Bryan admitted as much to you, and it was the most honest either of you had ever been with the other.  Or with anyone, possibly.

For now, in the Maldives, the box of condoms in Bryan’s carry-on luggage remained untouched.  You had an IUD, and Bryan already had an appointment in Chicago for a vasectomy for when he returned.  The difficult conversation was behind you, as well as a heartfelt apology for the St. Kitts blow-up, so in the jacuzzi, you wriggled out of your swimsuit bottoms and resettled in his lap.  His cock was rock-hard, straining against his trunks, and it twitched against your hand when you reached down to free it from its constraints.

You pumped his length in your hand almost lazily as you lined yourself up to him.  You notched the tip of his cock against your entrance and removed your hand.  You placed a hand on each side of his face to hold him firm, kiss him deeply, as you lowered yourself onto him.

Fuck, it was romantic bullshit like this that Bryan always avoided in the past, but it killed him when it was you doing it.  It was sensory overload – the feel of your fingertips against his bearded cheeks, the feel of your tongue licking into his mouth, the feel of your slippery cunt taking every inch of him until your ass was settled on his lap.  You moaned into his mouth when he finally bottomed out and the crown of his cock nudged against the end of you.  You moaned again when he wrapped his arms around your waist and drew you down another fraction onto him.

He let you set the pace, and you went slow.  The pace in Chicago was always a bit more playful, more frenetic, but island life slowed you down in your love-making.  You rode him at a languid speed, the look on your face dreamy at the sensations you were feeling.  For Bryan, it was like heaven being buried in you.  He fit you perfectly - the analogy of a lock and a key came to mind like a damned cliché.  He loved how your arousal coated his intruding length the closer he brought you to orgasm; he loved how well your feverish flesh gripped him when you finally did come.

Over and over, he brought you to the edge and pushed you over it.  Bit back his own release that threatened at the edges of his vision like an impending blackout.  Once he made you come once, he found it was easy to bring about a second, a third.  You got so sensitive – your swollen clit dragging against the root of his cock, your quivering cunt never recovering from its aftershocks before coming again.  Even your tits got more and more responsive, until all it took was a brush of his lips – a bit of friction from his beard – to make you arch against him.

“Are you close?” you panted against his neck.  You had come a third time and then collapsed against him, your head nestled in the space between his head and his shoulder.  Your tits, tipped with diamond hard nipples, were pressed against his chest.  You had stopped riding him, completely exhausted, so Bryan pressed his hips up into you and smirked at the tortured little whine in your voice, the shaky, uneven way you were breathing against him.

“You’ve got one more,” he told you, and you laughed weakly against him.  When you tried to protest, he took one wrist and then the other into one of his hands.  He held them behind your back, a tame move of possession to remind you that while you may be on top, he was still in control.  A fact you happily agreed with, judging by how hard you always arched against him when he did it.

Bryan slid down in the jacuzzi a little, just enough to stretch his legs out and press his feet against the opposite side.  It allowed him to thrust up into you – one hand gripping both of your wrists behind your back, the other wrapped around the back of your neck.  His hand was big enough to cup your entire head, and he pressed the tip of his thumb into your soft cheek, kept you from turning your face away from him.  

Your eyes had that unfocused, fucked-senseless quality to them, and Bryan usually preened when he saw them like that.  It meant he had fucked you so well that he had completely short-circuited your brain.

“Look at me,” he ordered, and he had to turn your face back to him when you tried to look away.  Sometimes – since St. Kitts – you turned away from him when you were feeling too much.  He didn’t want that anymore.  He wanted you to look right at him and feel everything.

“Fucking look at me,” he repeated.  He was rewarded a moment later when you finally did, and he pressed his hips up into you and watched as your mouth fell open at the thrust.  It was something about your face – so open and so beautiful, especially in the afterglow your orgasms – that made Bryan feel suddenly sick, like he couldn’t draw a breath.  His throat felt tight and he swallowed hard.  It had been a terrible start of the year.  Cut off from his family, cut off from his friends. Unemployed and with a DUI and all his own doing.

But fuck was it all worth it to be here with you now.  It wasn’t just the sex, though that was certainly part of it.  It was the connection with you, the way you looked at him now.  Bryan Kneef openly sneered at love, at bullshit like soulmates, but damned if he didn’t think he’d found the one person for him in the entire world, and she was perched in his lap right now.

And not just that:  she had extended her forgiveness to him for the unforgivable.  She had let him back into her life when anyone else would have moved on and left him out in the cold.

“I love you,” Bryan said, and he said it so defensively that your eyes widened at both the words and at his tone.  He saw you open your mouth to reply, but he shifted his hand and covered your mouth.

“Don’t fucking say anything,” he continued.  “You’re too damned nice.  I don’t – don’t want you to say it back to me because you think you have to.  Just….just keep your mouth shut.  And know that I love you.”

He felt your lips curve into a smile against his palm, so he removed his hand and pulled you in so that he could kiss you.  He still felt sick – his heart was pounding in his chest – but he could discuss it with his therapist when he returned to Chicago.

Bryan never got that final orgasm out of you, but you never complained about it.  You held his head firm in your hands and kissed him, your mouth slanting against his with an intensity that stole his breath away.  That, paired with his confession and the incredible heat of your clenching cunt, made him unravel completely.  He felt that delicious tension in his gut, felt the moment it snapped.  His hips jutted up into you on their own accord, and he groaned your name into your mouth as he gave one, final thrust and filled you with his release.

You were silent as you nestled against him afterwards, and you were silent when you dismounted him.  You allowed him to lead you inside, and you showered together before bed.  Bryan was exhausted from the day’s activities, but more so from the confession.  It drained him to even admit to himself that he had feelings, let alone say them out loud.  Your silence wasn’t helping.

You put your hands on his shoulders and turned him around, and you scrubbed his back for him.  Such a simple gesture, but it made him want to cry.  

Maybe you sensed his inner turmoil.  You reached for the shampoo and gestured for him to bend down a little, and you lathered up his hair.  That did make him tear up, your gentle fingers massaging his scalp, over and over until all the sea salt and sand was out of his hair.

“Am I allowed to speak now?” you asked quietly as you rinsed his hair for the final time.  Bryan wiped the water out of his eyes and looked at you.  You were smiling at him, a little teasing.

“You are allowed,” he replied with a regal wave of his hand, and you feigned that you were going to smack his hand out of your face.  But your smile faded, and you looked at him with a solemn expression that made his heart sink.

“I love you too,” is all you said.

It made Bryan just as sick to hear you say it, but with enough therapy, he eventually would learn that the sick feeling – the tightness in his throat, the racing pulse – well, that was love.  It only felt like an illness to him because it was so foreign.

But all that insight was months and even years away.  All in the future, with you by his side – your house in Ravenswood finally finished, Bryan’s condo sold as he moved in with you.  You would eventually add to your family – another shelter dog, one for Bryan this time because Joey would always be your dog and never quite his.  When the second dog drifted more to you, Bryan wouldn’t even be hurt by it.  

Of course they loved you best.  You were the best.  

But that was in the future, and right now, you were watching him carefully in the shower of a Maldives guest cottage, and it was all only the beginning.  Bryan barely had the language to express his feelings (he’d eventually learn it, though he’d never quite be fluent), so he just gave you a nod of acknowledgement.  

And then kissed you.  When he tilted his head to capture your mouth with his, he caught that usual happy smile etched across your lips.

He only hoped you could see the same smile mirrored on his own mouth, just as happy to kiss you.  Like you were the only person he wanted to be with because, it had to be said, that was the honest truth.

[melk917]

Wet Hot Summer Bingo Round Up... so far

I have been terribly behind on reading and sharing and writing... I will get there! But for now, a masterlist of all the amazing creations people have posted so far....

@thatesqcrush

@storiesofsvu

[tinyboxxtink]

I love this shit. When people tell you that you got X character "wrong".

Dude, it's FANFICTION. Whoever I'm writing, they're MY version of that person.

People are ridiculous. 🙄🙄🙄

you didn’t get Paul’s personality correct but the smut was done to perfection , but it did feel like it was more for Rafael or Bryan more than Paul?

Hmm. Oh wise Paul expert, do enlighten me so I can correct myself next time. What say you @melk917 ??

[itsjustmyfantasyroom]

I've been BURSTING to post this little teaser for a fic I have written cause I'm so excited for it!

Two Worlds.....will be posted next week 🤭

[lannister-slings-and-arrows]

I FINALLY GOT TO THIS. OH MY GOD I JUST. PLEASE RIFLE AWAY IF THIS IS THE RESULT. I LOVE DICKFACE AND I'M NOT EVEN A CAT PERSON. (also i love another fic of yours where we get canonical bisexual sex god Bryan.) (bc really.) (he totally is.) (and of course, as previously discussed, even just cuddling with that thicc broad beast would be immensely satisfying lolol)

A Cat Called Dickface

Written for @storiesofsvu’s Fall Bingo, filling the Fireplace square. 

Dickface stolen from discord headcanons & plot inspired by @lannister-slings-and-arrows​ and @pascalispretty​ I’M SORRY I’M RIFLING THROUGH YOUR ASKS ;_;

Warnings: NSFW discussed (no smut), secret soft cat dad Bryan. You came for smut but got fluff instead oops. 

1,170 words

Your one-night stand with Bryan Kneef was not going anything like you had imagined.

First, there was Dickface.

The anticipation of pleasant soreness ached between your thighs the entire ride up the elevator to his swanky Chicago penthouse. On your modest salary as a legal secretary, you could only dream about affording a place like the firm’s top litigator, but tonight you were more interested in the legend between his legs. You’d seen the outline of his massive cock pushed up against the front of his slacks as he swaggered through the office, snapping at interns, and he wasn’t even hard.

Bryan had a reputation: heartless toward coworkers, ruthless in court, and an absolute god in bed.

There would be no feelings, no phone call the next day, and that was OK. You didn’t want any. Being his latest conquest was a thrill, and if the rumors were true, well worth it.

The elevator door opened to a monstrosity of modern design straight out of Forbes, and the sound of shattering glass. Bryan stormed out ahead of you.

“DICKFACE, YOU ASSHOLE!”

Keep reading

[inknopewetrust]

Here is the first of many recommendations of my favorite fanfictions. Now, this is not a cumulative list of everything I've ever read, but it is what I've been enjoying most recently or can’t get over, and the ones I immediately believe deserve recognition and further exposure.

I hope those who decide to read these fics enjoy them as much as I have, and to those who I've included, thank you for sharing your gift with this community and continue pursuing your passion.

Golden Cages // @aniqua

Aleksander Morozova x Sun!Summoner Reader x Malyen Oretsev // Firstly, let’s establish one thing: I am not the biggest fan of sun!summoner readers because of the initial reaction to Alina being one originally—but this fic is just *chef’s kiss.* It’s amazing. That’s plain and simple, taken as fact, an honest opinion and I love it. Plus I didn’t think I’d like Mal as much as I do in this?? I am a strictly Darkling girl and that surprised me a lot. A true testament to the writing and how it makes me feel.

Brighter Than the Sun // by @holden-caulfield

Aleksander Morozova x Reader // This is shorter compared to many of the other works on the list, but nevertheless angsty, heartbreaking, and truly invokes a sadness in the readers heart. Good angst writers know how to capture every sense needed to feel tension and truth, to which this author does spectacularly in less than 400 words.

Five Times Olivia Benson Thought She Saw Sparks Fly (Plus the One Time She Saw Them For Herself) // by @hurricanejjareau and @qvid-pro-qvo

Rafael Barba x Gender Neutral Reader // Words cannot describe how much I love this fic. It is so wonderfully written and full of love, longing, and ultimately an adorable resolution. This was one of the first Barba fics I had ever read on here, and it certainly has remained a favorite. It’s a fantastic collaboration between great writers.

I Can’t Hold You Now (And God, it Kills Me) // by @qvid-pro-qvo

Rafael Barba x Reader // I absolutely adore fics that follow canon is some way, shape, or form. As a direct insert into 17 x 10—Townhouse Incident—it feels incredibly natural to the storyline. There isn’t a heavy backstory on the reader and I love it. It’s about the characters, their relationships to one another, and the revelation of reader’s relationship with Rafael. I am just smitten with this fic!

Masterlist // by @thatesqcrush

I know this isn't what is usually on a fanfiction rec list, but ya'll, I have enjoyed ever single fic I've ever read from this author. From Rafael Barba to Bryan Kneef to Nevada Ramirez and more, there are few who write them all exquisitely as she does. So, I couldn't just choose one because I love them all. They're beautifully written, sexy as hell, and leave me wanting more every time I finish reading one. (These are 18+ so don’t go reading unless you’re of age!)

Sham, Pride, and Illicit Affairs // by @peeterparkr

Anthony Bridgerton x Reader // Seriously one of the best, if not the best, Anthony Bridgerton x Reader stories. It is exquisitely written and immediately pulls you in and asking for more. The reader is written in a way that feels natural, a continuation or addition to the story we know rather than an obvious insert. I cannot say enough wonderful words about this fic, so if you are a Bridgerton fan, you have to read this fic!

We'll Meet Again // by @siren-meets // on Ao3

Ronald Speirs (Band of Brothers) x OFC // I have read this story over and over again because it is simply amazing. Eleanor is the perfect OC to pair with Ron; their story is believable, the writing is respectful and flows so well with the episodic drama BoB so gracefully produces. Reading this, you can see the care and love put into the interpretation of each character (which is absolutely spot on), as well as the steadfast effort to make the female OC nothing like we'd expect her to be.

Dance With Me // by @zim-zam-goddamn

George Luz (Band of Brothers) x Reader // This fic is so heartwarming and cute. It's a really great interpretation of how Rick Gomez portrays George Luz, almost exactly what I'd imagine the character to be like if the situation were real. I think that speaks to the testament of how well BoB writers understand the characters and how to further them on the page (or computer, or cellphone, or where ever someone reads fics).

A Punchable Face I Want to Kiss // by @prurientpuddlejumper

Frederick Chilton (Hannibal) x Reader // This entire series is phenomenal. Chilton is a character you shouldn’t like. Irredeemable qualities, malpractice, etc., etc., but 1. Raúl Esparza and 2. this author knows how to make you love the character. It’s masterfully written, incredibly spicy, and full of heart I wasn’t expecting. An Absolutely wonderful series. (Chapter 1 is linked!)

Death of a Bachelor // @delos-mio

Logan Delos (Westworld) x Reader // I read this months ago and still think about it. Its a detailed, original story that I can get behind and it includes an entire trip to a city I hold very near and dear to my heart (it’s so descriptive and accurate too!) Definitely one of my favorite Logan stories written on any of the platforms. Plus Ben Barnes is having a MOMENT right now and Logan is one of my favorite characters of his.

[storiesofsvu]

Journey to the Past Ch 14

Bryan Kneef x reader Warnings: language, alcohol consumption, smut, light teasing.

When you awoke the sun was streaming in through the curtains, basking Bryan’s room in a golden glow, the warmth came from both the sun and Bryan’s body nestled behind yours, his arm draped over your body, holding you to him. You burrowed deeper into the pillow and heard him sigh behind you, arm tightening as he pulled you closer to him, his lips meeting the back of your neck and you could feel his cock hard up against your ass. You let out a quiet chuckle, arching your body into his and he groaned softly, hips rocking towards you as his hand shifted upwards, cupping your tits, gently rolling your nipples between his fingers.

“Morning.” He murmured, his beard scratching against your skin as he spoke and you shivered.

“Mmm…”

His hand drifted south, leaving goosebumps on your bare skin as the sheets shifted, exposing you to the cool air in the room. Bryan tickled at your skin, sinking between your legs and began to lazily rub your clit in small circles. You let out a breathy moan as pleasure began to flow through you, your back arching into his embrace. His hand sunk lower, sliding through your folds to feel how wet you were, smearing your juices around your pussy as his hips undulated against you. His lips made home in the crook of your neck, causing you to shiver, eager for more. Bryan’s hand nudged at your top leg, pulling it back around his to open you up for him while the tip of his cock teased at your entrance.

“This okay?” He murmured into your skin and you nodded.

“Yes….please…”

With an easy roll of his hips he sunk fully into you, letting out a soft moan at the perfect way your pussy wrapped around him. He started a lazy pace, thrusting into you deeply, the arm he had wound around your body held you tight, helping you rock back towards him in the same pace. You felt your breath catch in your throat; eyes fluttering shut as you moved together in search of your pleasure. One of your hands reached behind you, tangling into his short locks, tugging at his hair every so often when his cock dragged past the sensitive spot inside you. The other one made a home interlocking with the hand he had around you, fingers tangling together as he continued to fuck you.

“Oh god…” you whimpered out, your pussy fluttering around him, feeling every ridge of his cock with each roll of his hips and your body began to tremble.

“Good girl…” he cooed into your ear, “that’s it, come for daddy.”

“Fuck… fuck…” You bit you lip, your eyes clenching shut as your cunt pulsated around Bryan, letting out a quiet cry as your orgasm washed over you.

Bryan groaned his cock twitching deep inside of you, he barely picked up the pace, continuing for a few more thrusts until he moaned into your ear, breath hot on your skin as he came, spilling inside you. He shallowly thrusted a few more times, filling you with all of his cum before stilling, pressing a row of breathless kisses across your skin. A moment later his hand shifted to your hip and he was about to move away from you when you let out a small whine, your hand shooting to his.

“Wait…” you murmured and he grinned, pressing a kiss to the crook of your neck as he slid the rest of the way back into you, nuzzling against your body.

You stayed nestled together as Bryan softened within you, a series of happy content sighs coming from both of you as you drifted between the urge to fall back asleep and the expectation of starting your day. Bryan could feel his shoulder starting to cramp up, kissing your shoulder softly before slipping out of you and rolling onto his back, tugging you with him. You rolled over, smiling at him as your eyes fluttered open, leaning in for a gentle kiss. Your lips moved against each other with ease, a now very familiar dance that neither of you could get enough of. You hummed happily, coming to rest against his chest while his hand ghosted up and down your back.

“How do you feel about breakfast?” He murmured and you hummed.

“Sounds like a great idea, what’d’you got?” You started to sit up and he immediately tugged you back down.

“It’s pretty bare out there, oatmeal and scotch is about it.” He replied and you snorted.

“Great offerings.”

“I was gonna say we can order in.” He reached out to the side for his phone, unlocking it and opening the app.

The two of you scrolled through your options before deciding on West River Café and Bryan ordered multiple plates of banana French toast, apple cinnamon pancakes, a benedict to share with some sides of bacon, fruit, hashbrowns. He reluctantly got up out of the bed to pull on some briefs, make coffee and collect things when the food arrived.

He returned to the bedroom, grabbing a towel from the en suite to make sure nothing got dripped onto the bed, tossing the TV remote to you before he stripped back down and slipped back under the covers. You scrolled through options on the television while he carefully laid out the towel and started to unbox brunch before the two of you settled against the headboard, food laid out between you. The TV played quietly in the background, something mindless that neither of you were really paying attention to but it filled up the otherwise comfortable silence in the room. Bryan fed you bites of French toast, scowling when you stole the last piece of bacon off his plate with a wicked grin. Rather than apologize you simply leant in, kissing him gently, the sweetness of the syrup still evident on your lips. He found that he couldn’t help but smile as you let out a happy sigh, leaning into his side to get comfortable when you were done eating. Food was placed off to the side, coffees were finished, his free hand coming up to gently play with your hair, stroking down your back, fingertips trailing across your skin.

“Are you staying for the weekend?” He asked softly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

“I’ll have to run home to grab clothes for work at some point.”

“We can stay at your place Sunday?” He offered.

“Yeah? You have plans to leave the house?” You asked with a grin and he laughed, knowing what you were getting at.

“I was thinking about heading over to check out what WNDR has going on right now.”

“Oh god it’s been ages since I’ve been there.”

“You interested?”

“Yeah.” You stretched out under the sheets, rolling over onto your stomach, “as long as we don’t have to get out of bed today, I’m down.”

Bryan chuckled, sinking down to your level and grabbing you for a kiss, “I think that can definitely be arranged.” His lips met yours once again, this time with more fire behind them as his tongue slipped into your mouth and his hands began to wander.

He spent the afternoon doing exactly what he wanted to, taking you apart piece by piece, watching you come undone first with just his hands, then watching the way your body trembled as he ate you out, pulling as many orgasms from you that he could until you were tugging at his hair, pulling him off of you. Recovery periods were spent dozing, curled in each other’s arms, sometimes attention on the television, sometimes simply talking until he got you worked up once again. You rolled on top of him, sinking down onto his cock with a breathy moan as you began to ride him and Bryan had never seen a sight so gorgeous.

You did actually end up getting out of bed as the sun began to set in the sky, tugging on one of Bryan’s hoodies as you shifted from the bedroom to the living room for dinner. A classic black and white movie played on the television while you enjoyed pad Thai and a few glasses of wine together before finally heading back to bed.

Sunday was a bit of an earlier start, heading out for breakfast this time before adventuring through WNDR. The entire museum was an interactive experience and it took up most of your day wandering through the rooms to see everything, immersed into a different world. Bryan’s hand remained on the small of your back, or fingers entwined with your own the entire time, happy to be spending the time with you out in the world, a chance to show you off. You stopped for Mexican at Blue Agave Tequila bar, sharing chips and guacamole, enchiladas and tacos, with plenty of leftovers to heat up for lunch the next day.

You let Bryan into your apartment, kissing his cheek softly as you asked him to put the leftovers in the fridge and make himself at home before you disappeared down the hallway. Bryan did as you’d asked, moving through your space with a comfortable ease, he found an open bottle of wine from earlier in the week and poured out two glasses. You wandered back into the kitchen clad in pj shorts and a Harvard tee, your hair pulled up and make up wiped off, you had your laptop under your arm, placing it down ono the kitchen island.

“I’ve got to go over a couple of things for tomorrow, I hope that’s alright?”

“Of course.” Bryan reached for you, pulling you into a gentle kiss, his hands resting on your hips, “you take whatever time you need.”

“You’re a gem, you know that?” You smiled softly at him, stealing another kiss, lingering longer this time. Bryan squeezed at your hand softly, picking up the wine glasses as you scooped up your laptop and made your way over to the couch. You settled against the arm, your legs draped over Bryan’s lap as you tossed him the remote and opened your laptop.

If you had asked, Bryan would have sworn that he was simply watching T.V, leaving you in peace to do a little bit of work, but that was a straight up lie. His fingers traced patterns onto your skin, and out of the corner of his eye he was watching you work, the way you’d tug your lip into you mouth while you read something over. The way you flitted with ease between the computer screen, your phone and the case file beside you, the cute little way your brow would furrow as you rewrote something. He could see the wheels spinning behind your eyes and knew that your brilliant mind was at work, that yes, you were the girl he could dress up and show off out on the town but you were also whip smart. That you were so incredibly different from the string of meaningless women that had come before you in his life. You could hold your own, you had your own reputation, you weren’t just someone who was along for the fancy parties and expensive gifts. He’d enjoyed this past weekend more than he had enjoyed one in what felt like years. Usually any type of work event or gala was insufferable, aside from the open bar of course, and to spend the entire weekend with you wasn’t what he’d expected but it had turned out wonderfully. He felt a knot in his stomach slowly come undone and the all to familiar blooming sensation build up in his chest and he grimaced, clearing his throat.

“You okay?” You asked suddenly, glancing up over the laptop.

“Yeah, heartburn.” He massaged at his chest, “it’s gotten worse recently.”

“There’s antacids in the bathroom cabinet.” You gestured in the direction, “maybe you should cut back on the coffee… or the booze…too much hot sauce at dinner?” You raised a brow in his direction and he scoffed, gently moving your legs off his lap so he could stand. “What?” you laughed, “I’m serious, acid reflux is terrible, and with the stress of our jobs it’s worse. That’s why I cut out carbonated drinks.”

“What’s the point of life if you take away all the fun stuff?” He countered and you laughed, rolling your eyes, reaching out to grab his hand over the back of the couch you tugged him back to you. He leant over the couch, accepting the kiss that you murmured into.

“I didn’t say all the fun stuff.”

“Now you’re just being a tease.” He muttered back, kissing you again, “get back to work counsellor.”

You playfully rolled your eyes, watching him wander down the hallway before you returned to your work. You were unbelievably comfortable with him in your space, or being in his, it just felt natural at this point to come home to someone rather than an empty apartment after a long day. You let out a happy sigh, reaching out for your wine, taking a sip before looking back to your laptop.

Bryan found the antacids with ease, popping a couple and taking the time to change out of his dress clothes into pyjamas. The burning in his chest seemed to be subsiding, he let out a sigh of relief and made his way back down the hall, though he couldn’t help but pause at the end of it, leaning against the wall while he watched you for another moment. It was almost too late to be working now, he could tell by the fact that you’d put your glasses on, eyes tired at the end of a long day, and the way you rolled your neck every couple of minutes in an attempt to get the kink out. He almost didn’t notice the smile creeping onto his cheeks, you were special, he knew that. You cared about him, wanted to make sure he was taken care of, and that was very evident in both your words and your behaviour. Whatever feelings you had for him he was certain that he must feel them back to you because in that moment he crossed through the living room, approaching the back of the couch and his hands met your neck. They started out soft, enough to relax but not pull your attention away from the task at had, working slowly to undo the knots. You let out a happy sigh, your hand coming up to squeeze at one of his in an appreciative manner before returning to the keyboard. In return he bent over, kissing the top of your head,

“I know this is probably important, but can it wait for tomorrow? I’m sure whatever it is you’re more than ready, you deserve some time to relax too you know.”

“You’re probably right.” You shut the laptop, twisting on the couch to face him with a warm smile on your cheeks and a glimmering in your eyes as you looked up at him.

“What?” His head tilted and you laughed softly.

“Thank you.” Your hand caressed his cheek, and he leant over you to kiss you.

“Of course.” He shrugged, moving around the couch as you piled your work on he coffee table, “now what’d you say to finishing that movie from the other night?”

“Sounds like the perfect ending to a perfect weekend.”

______________ @detective-giggles @plaidbooks @thatesqcrush @witches-unruly-heart @beccabarba @bisexual-dreamer02 @amelia-song-pond @madamsnape921 @whimsicallymad @mrsrafaelbarba @mysticfalls01 @ssaic-jareau @caracalwithchips @barbasbodaciousbeard @alwaysachorusgirl @beardedbarba @michael-rooker @rafivadafreddy @lustvolle-liebe @anlin2058 @fandom-princess-forevermore @tinyboxxtink @alexusonfire @xovalliegirlxo @nobody-important1212 @somethingimaginative17 @momlifebehard @misscharlielulu @fighterkimburgess

[lv7867]

Me rn🤔🤔🤔🤔

In Another Time, Ch. 4

Bryan Kneef x Reader. CW: language & smut for giving Bryan a helping hand. WC 1.5K

Bryan groaned as he opened his eyes. His head was aching and throbbing, as if someone had taken a jackhammer to his head. The lights were bright and he squeezed them shut instinctively. As he pushed himself to a full sitting position, he winced as the head pain came roaring back to its full extent.

“Where am I?” Bryan asked out loud to the empty room. Looking around, the room was unrecognizable. “Where are my things? What the hell is going on?” He tried to stand but could not due to the pain. The light was bright - almost too bright and it made him instantly nauseated. He let out an audible groan.

“Oh thank God you’re awake.”

Bryan took in your rain-soaked appearance, hands filled with some various bags. “You had a nasty fall.”

You walked over to Bryan and pressed a kiss on his lips, before brushing some hair off his forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Bryan groused. “I’m starving and my head hurts. Where are we?”

“Downstairs, in the den. After you slipped and got hurt, you were up for a bit but then were woozy enough to go out again. Helping you down the stairs was easier than up.”

You then turned towards one of the bags you had. “I found a twenty-four hour diner not too far off from the main road. Eat something and you can then take something for the pain.”

**

“I’m sorry for blowing this weekend.” Bryan groaned as he polished off the last of his fries.

You looked at him and shrugged. “Look, all that matters is that you’re okay. Hopefully you’ll get some sleep and we can go home and you can rest a bit more.” You replied, wiping your hands with a napkin.

Bryan gave a small shake of his head. “No, you’re right - you have been right. I have been acting off and not like myself. And you deserve to know why.”

You sat up straighter and pushed your food away. “What’s going on?”

"This will sound so far-fetched, but I want you to listen," Bryan looked earnestly into your eyes, his usual confidence faltering. "I'm not who you think I am. Or, at least, I am Bryan Kneef, I am an attorney, I do live in Chicago...but I'm not your husband. I'm not our - your - Sophie’s father." He paused.

You narrowed your eyes, trying to understand. "What do you mean?" you urged, a little frightened by his words.

Bryan sighed. "It all started one day in the rain…" he went on to explain what had happened to him, how he'd woken up to a different life. He chose his words carefully, his gaze dropping away from your sceptical, increasingly bemused, expression.

When he finished, he looked back at you, waiting for your response with baited breath. You responded by bursting into laughter.

“Oh babe - you must have really hit your head!” You covered your mouth, trying to stop yourself from laughing so much.

“I am not surprised you don’t believe me.” Bryan replied, frustrated. He rubbed his face in exhaustion.

You gave Bryan a pout. “I’m sorry. I believe you.” You used air quotes as you spoke.

Bryan sighed. “It’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t know why I bothered.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “God, my head fucking hurts.”

“Well then, Mr. Mysterious. Nurse Y/N can make sure you’re all taken care of.”

“Is that so?” Bryan questioned, a lascivious smile crossed his face. His earlier confession was now long forgotten at the possibility of sex.

“Mmm-hmm.” You hummed, moving to sit closer to him on the couch he was laying on.

“And what kind of tender loving care am I to expect?”

“Something like this.” You pressed kisses on his face softly, moving from cheek to cheek, to forehead and then nose. Bryan shifted so he could capture your lips with his. His hands wrapped around your head, winding themselves into your hair. You climbed over him, settling your legs outside of his thighs and then sitting.

“How’s your head?” You questioned in between kisses. “I’m not hurting you am I? Do you want me to stop?”

“Never.” Bryan rasped.

You could feel his cock hardening beneath you and you rolled your hips in response. You shifted so you were scooted back on his thighs. You palmed his cock through the pants, enjoying the groan he emitted. Bryan let out a groan. His head was throbbing, but the throbbing sensation in his cock was way worse. He decided the pleasure coursing through him was well worth it and focused on that, instead of the searing pain in his head. You undid the fly of his pants and reached inside, finding his shaft. Bryan let out a sigh and watched fascinated as your manicured hand encircled his cock. Your hand appeared delicate and dainty and with his cock in your hand, the sight was absolute filth. What he thought was going to be a blow job wasn’t. Instead, you spat on your hand and began to stroke his cock, up and down, up and down.

“Ah that’s it…” Bryan groaned. His cock feels very thick, hot and hard in your hand and you revel in the way he is twitching with his arousal. You gaze upon his face, his eyes now closed, lost in the pleasure. Your hand ran over the texture of the ridges and veins of his shaft, before you spat more into your hand. Your hand, covered in saliva, moved lower to caress his balls. Bryan bucked his hips in response and his breaths became more ragged.

You scooched further back so you can lower yourself more against his body. Your mouth found purchase on his neck where you sucked a mark into his skin as you continued to stroke him, using his pre-cum as additional lubricant.

“Fuck, uh, yes, that feels so good.” Bryan groaned as you continued to lick and suck his neck, leaving yet another mark. You moved up to his ear and took his earlobe into your mouth, nibbling and blowing. Bryan’s breaths were uneven and his hands covered yours, further guiding you.

“I’m so close.” Bryan grunted. “Gonna make a mess in your pretty little hand.”

“Oh no.” You gently chastised him. “You’re going to shoot that load in my mouth.”

His shirt had ridden up slightly and you could see how his muscles twitched and you knew he was so close. The words coming out of his mouth were more nonsensical as he moved his hips more forcefully.

“Fuck! I’m gonna--” Bryan all but shouted. And you ducked your head, swallowing his length. His hands immediately latched onto the back of your head, forcing you to take more of his cock, causing you to gag slightly. The head of his cock hit the back of your throat and you could feel his cock twitch as thick, white creamy cum spurted down your throat. His load was so big, some of it dripped out of the corners of your mouth and to the base of the shaft, covering some of the neatly trimmed hair.

Bryan let out a sigh of relief as his cock twitched slightly in the aftershocks of his release. You waited until he was done to then move off to take a deep breath before bobbing back down to make sure he was fully clean. When you were done, you gave him a lascivious look akin to the cat who caught the canary.

“Fuck! That was amazing.” Bryan sighed. You beamed and leaned over to press a kiss against his lips.

“Nurse Y/N to the rescue. Now, you get some rest and I’ll be back in a bit with some more blankets and pillows.” You climbed off Bryan and bounded up the stairs. Moments later when you returned, you found Bryan fast asleep. You smiled to yourself before taking a blanket and covering him.

**

When Bryan woke up the following morning, he called for you before fully opening his eyes. When you didn’t respond, he sat up and looked around. He was somewhere else entirely different. He was acutely aware of the sound of a monitor beeping in the background. He looked down and realized he was in a hospital gown and that was when he noticed the plastic bracelet wrapped around his wrist with his identifying information.

Bryan wasn’t even aware you were in the corner, your arms crossed, along with your legs. When you spoke, he turned to where you were. His eyes grew wide with realization.

“Welcome back to the real world asshole. Shame you didn’t die.”

TBC.

Tags: @mgarner1227, @madpanda75, @tropes-and-tales, @dreamlover31, @beardedmccoy, @youreverycolor, @sass-and-suspenders, @beccabarba, @neely1177, @witches-unruly-heart, @ottosuricato, @mrsrafaelbarba, @skittle479, @mommakat32, @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo, @dreila03, @garturbo, @sweetsummertime99, @imjustreallynosy, @sweetsummertime99, @whyissvuruiningmylovelife, @annabelleb49, @redlipstickandplaid, @redlipstickandblacktea, @zoeykaytesmom, @differentshadesofgray, @misssirenlove, @esparza-army, @bananas-pajamas, @storiesofsvu, @pieceofshittytitty, @ktiz90,@evee87, @detective-giggles, @itsjustmyfantasyroom, @rampantmuses, @jazzyjoi, @rachelxwayne, @i-justreally-like-cats-okay, @prurientpuddlejumper, @lv7867, @permanentlydizzy, @bisexual-dreamer02, @madamsnape921, @averyhotchner, @teamsladsandgents, @qvid-pro-qvo, @alwaysachorusgirl, @amelia-song-pond, @wanniiieeee, @tintinxtintin, @law-nerd105, @metachorism, @choppedgalaxynerd, @catnip987

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

Bryan Kneef:  Breaking Point, Part Five

Word Count:  5864

TW:  Angst; fake dating; smut (PiV, protected). 18+ only.

AN:  Part five of a nine part series.  Other parts can be found here.

Bryan hadn’t exactly lied to you about St. Kitts.  He wasn’t going with family.  Well, one of the other people going was his step-brother, Kyle, but Bryan didn’t consider him family.  They had both gone to the same college for undergraduate, pledged the same frat, when their parents (Bryan’s father, Kyle’s mother) met and married.  And then, five years ago, another frat brother sold his share of the St. Kitts villa to Kyle…the rest was history.

They were cordial enough with each other, but Kyle had a habit of reporting back to the parental units, which caused Bryan to keep him at arm’s length.  He wasn’t estranged from his family, exactly.  He just kept his distance.

He sat in his office a few days after the embarrassing scene with you, and things seemed fine.  You came in each morning, gave him the same small nod of greeting, then got to work.  No fiery missives from H.R.  No visits from the building security guard to march him off-property.

Which was good – one less thing to worry about.  As the threat of losing his job for sexual harassment faded, another problem loomed.  And, like the former, the latter was entirely of his own creation.

Bryan should have just cancelled the trip to St. Kitts.  Cara and her husband would be there.  No one would blame him, but some petty voice in the back of his head convinced him that it would be a surrender.  That it would seem he wasn’t over it, all these years later.

But he also couldn’t turn up single.  So on the group chat, he lied without a single thought to the consequences….and the lie grew and grew, until he realized to his horror that he had told everyone – Cara included – that he was bringing his very loving, very obviously real girlfriend.

He sat at his desk now, scrolling with growing panic through his list of female friends.  “Friends” was a stretch – they were all women he had dated or fucked.  Neither was an ideal pool to find a fake girlfriend.  The women he dated all probably had hard feelings – Bryan Kneef was not exactly one to let a woman down gently.  The ones he fucked likely were pissed that he never called again.

There was Poppy, but a shared villa in St. Kitts was unlikely to tempt her – her family was filthy rich and owned an island outright.  Meredith was too dim to play along.  Anna was smart enough to play along, but she was mean enough to sell him out at the worst moment.

Well, fuck.

He sat his phone down and scrubbed his face with his hands.  He gazed out of his open office door into the bullpen, and as usual, his eyes fell on you.

When he watched you, sometimes you felt it and sometimes you were oblivious.  You were scowling at your computer screen, the hook end of a candy cane hanging out of your mouth like a cub reporter with a cigarette.  He watched you, fascinated, as you sucked on the end of the candy, whittling the end to a sharp point like he used to do as a child.

You must have felt his eyes after all – your eyes drifted from your computer screen to his office, and when you made eye contact with him, you pulled yourself up a little.  Stopped your borderline obscene licking of the candy cane.  Blushed.

Here was an interesting idea he hadn’t considered.  He stared at you so hard, the wheels turning in his head, that you squirmed under his scrutiny and eventually stood up and left the bullpen.  It looked like you were headed towards the little breakroom for a coffee.  A few moments later, you returned with a steaming mug, and Bryan was standing in the doorway of his office.

“Hey,” he called out, getting your attention.  “Come in here.  We need to talk.”

*****

You were glad you hadn’t been taking a sip of your coffee when Bryan Kneef asked you his outlandish question.  It wouldn’t be a good career move to spit-take on your boss.

In fact, your brain was so unwilling to understand his question that he had to repeat it again, and then a third time with even less patience.

“You know, when I was in the third grade, I had a boyfriend,” you told him.  “His name was Zach, and he had blond hair like a surfer boy.”

“I don’t give a shit about your ex-boyfriend,” he said, exasperated.

“You should.  Because he was made up.  I lied about meeting some amazing boy at summer camp because I was embarrassed to not have a boyfriend.  And, you know.  I was nine.”

“What’s your point?”

You held your hands up in supplication.  “My point is that I was nine when I outgrew lies about significant others.  Have I wandered out of my life and into a Hallmark movie?  Who takes a fake girlfriend on a vacation?”

“I’m being serious.  Two weeks in St. Kitts, all expenses paid.  You just have to pretend to be my girlfriend.”

You scooted forward in your chair until you were perched on the edge, and you leaned forward as much as you could to face him.  “Bryan, you hate me.  Absolutely not.”

“Hate is a strong word.  You irritate me.  You’re a pain in the ass.”  He fixed you with an appraising look.  “But you’re smart and capable.  I think you could pull it off.”

“And I have personality,” you added, still a little stung at his previous shot at you, even if it had just been to get under your skin.  “It doesn’t matter anyway.  I only get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off.  No way I could take two weeks.”

Bryan smiled at you, and on any other man, it would look handsome.  Approachable, even.  But you knew him well enough, and the sudden flash of white teeth made you think of an apex predator.  A shark.  A panther, baring its teeth before sinking them into your throat.

“If I gave you two weeks off for the holidays….I guess I’d have to do it for everyone on my staff.  You know, to keep it fair.”  His eyes drifted past you in the direction of the bullpen where all your coworkers were.  You saw the neat little trap he had just walked you into:  go with him, or be the reason that your fellow paralegals and secretaries missed out on two weeks of well-deserved paid vacation.  The realization washed over you, and Bryan watched as it happened.  It made him smile wider.

“You’re a goddamned monster,” you whispered, but you were a little in awe of him too.  The bastard.  No wonder he had a corner office.

*****

It was easy enough to get you to agree to his stupid scheme.  You had a weak spot for your colleagues, and Bryan exploited it with ease.  The rest of the logistics fell into place too, and the next few days was packed with last-minute arrangements (you had, for example, an appallingly small summer wardrobe, and Bryan had to arrange for a personal shopper to round out your vacation-wear).

The two of you also studied.  You had each taken the LSATs, and it reminded Bryan of those marathon study sessions – only instead of reading comprehension and logical reasoning, you were studying each other.  

“How long have we dated?” you asked him over a working lunch in his office.  “How did we meet?”

“Keep it simple.  We met at work.  We’ve dated….say, six months.”  He took a bite of his sushi, chewed, swallowed.  

“Okay, but how did we start dating?  Did you ask me out?  Did I ask you out?  Were we mutually set up by scheming coworkers?”

Bryan rolled his eyes.  “Why does that matter?  No one cares.”

“It matters a lot.”  You tapped your fork against your pursed lips and stared at a spot somewhere past his head.  “If I pursued you, then we could play up the reluctant playboy angle.  But if you pursued me, then it’s somehow more romantic.  Like, you saw me across the conference room table and fell in love with me.”

“That would never happen.”

Your gaze slipped down to his and you frowned.  “Obviously, but this is fiction.  I’m laying the groundwork for my character.”

“You aren’t Meryl Streep here.”

You smiled at that and your voice got an excited pitch to it, like a reporter breathlessly covering the latest entertainment news.  “It’s the role of the century:  Bryan Kneef, known asshole, finds love with a girl chock full of  personality!  She’s never even had a manicure, let alone a standing appointment for Botox and filler!  Will their love survive?”

Bryan glared at you over his tray of sushi.  “Knock it off.  And don’t pull any of that shit in St. Kitts.”  A beat, and then he asked, “Have you really never had a manicure before?”

You held your left hand out to show him.  “Behold the grubby paw of a mere peasant.”

The sigh he heaved was world-weary.  “Jesus Christ.  Just pretend this is mostly a non-speaking role then.”

-----

So you seemed to be approaching the entire vacation with a teasing, joking sort of armor around you, but there was still a moment at O’Hare Airport where you balked.  You had never, it turned out, been on an airplane before – a fact that never came up until first class started boarding.  Bryan felt you hesitate beside him, and he turned to see that you had gone wan.

“I guess I never really considered how illogical it is that a plane stays in the air,” you told him, but you kept your eyes glued to the plane outside the window.  

Bryan was sorry that Cara wasn’t there to see it, the first real test of your fake relationship.  He reached down and took your icy hand in his own, holding you tight.

“You’ll be fine,” he said.  When you didn’t reply, he dropped your hand and put his arm around you instead, grounding your trembling frame against his own.  To any outsider, it probably looked supportive, even loving.

Only you and Bryan knew the truth.

*****

The first day, flying anxiety aside, was mostly wonderful.

You never knew the Caribbean was so turquoise – you thought that was a function of Hollywood film editing, the way movies set it Mexico made the country look yellow or movies set in eastern Europe looked grey.

You tried to play it cool, since you were traveling with the High Lord of Disenchantment, but you still gasped and pressed your face against the window of the plane as it banked toward the island.  Bryan probably had rolled it eyes at your glee, but he thankfully didn’t say anything.

The villa was more beautiful that you had even imagined – you had pictured a slightly nicer hotel, maybe – and the two of you were the first ones there.  He gave you a brief tour, then pointed out your room, and there was a small fight over that.

“Where are you staying?” you asked, and Bryan’s expression was one of pure exasperation.  He gestured to the room – your room – and you wondered why you had been so stupid.  Or never even considered it.

“Why would my girlfriend be in a different room than me?” he finally asked.  “Are you suddenly religious?  A virgin?  Saving your virtue for our wedding night?”

You shook your head.

“It’s a king-sized bed,” he pointed out.  “Don’t worry, I won’t touch you.”

“Alright then.”

“I wouldn’t dream of touching you.”

“Jesus, I said alright.  Move on, Bryan.”

*****

People starting arriving that evening, and like a switch, you went from irritatingly naïve about the sleeping situation (honestly, had you really thought you’d sleep separately?) to full-on Meryl Streep.  If the law game didn’t work out for you, you could at least explore Chicago’s underrated acting scene.

Smith and his long-term girlfriend (Charley?  Carly?  Bryan never bothered to remember.  She was a bottle red-head, and that’s how he could tell her apart from others) were the second to arrive.  You were pure charm, friendly.  You looped your arm through Bryan’s and leaned against him and it felt unnatural to him because he never was casually cuddly.  But it probably looked convincing.

Then Kyle and his girlfriend (Jessa), and you chatted with them a long time.

“Bry never told us he had a girlfriend,” Kyle told you as you shook hands.

“He never told me he had a brother,” you joked back.  “Our Bryan is a man of mystery,” and you shot him a playful glare that earned laughs from the assembled group.

Then Cara and her new husband, Alexios, some fucking Greek shipping magnate’s grandson.  Bryan kept himself busy at the outdoor bar where everyone was congregated, but he studied his ex out of the corner of his eye as she greeted everyone else.  She was still gorgeous, tall and willowy.  Same blonde hair, just a shade darker.  Her tits seemed bigger, which made sense – she had planned on getting them done when she hit thirty.

Bryan felt his heart racing, and then felt something else – your hand in his, giving him a reassuring squeeze.  He would have pulled away, but Cara and fucking Alexios were walking over, so he kept up the charade.

That was day one.

*****

Bryan had made everyone seem like joyless suckholes (much like himself), but everyone seemed pretty nice.  Friendly.  The first three days passed in a hazy, sun-filled blur.  Christmas was day three, and the celebration on St. Kitts involved a feast of seafood, fairy lights strung through the bougainvillea that surrounded the patio, small gifts exchanged between couples.  

You and Bryan hadn’t discussed that, so you were shocked when he disappeared for a moment after dinner and returned with a small present that he handed you.  The surprise on your face was genuine, and it made Kyle laugh.

“Hasn’t Bry ever gotten you a gift before?” he asked, and you scrambled to cover it up.

“He has,” you lied, and you glanced over at your boss, but he was looking at his glass of whiskey.  “We just agreed that we were going to, uh, keep it small this Christmas.”

Wrong answer.  Kyle looked between the two of you, and you noticed Smith and his girlfriend lean forward too.  

“You saving up for something?” Kyle asked.  “Wait, are you engaged?”

“No!” you said, but it came out too defensive, too shocked, so you gave an embarrassed laugh and made up some lie about Bryan having everything he wanted anyway, and how you didn’t make as much as him, and how you wished you could get him something amazing –

“Open it,” Bryan broke in, his voice uncharacteristically soft.  You looked at him and tried to discern the expression on his face.

It was a triple strand of pearls, small ones, but probably real based on their subtle imperfections.  They were gorgeous, and you shook your head, a little confused.  You opened your mouth to protest – no acting now, you had no idea what was going on – but Bryan pulled the velvet box from your hand.  He stood up and walked behind you, brushing your hair away from your neck with a touch so light it made goosebumps break out across your arms.  He put the necklace on you and then leaned forward to whisper in your ear.  No one else heard him – they probably assumed he said something sweet (or sweet enough, by Bryan Kneef standards) – but he only said, “I owed you one.”

That was day three.

*****

Bryan did not care about you, but it didn’t stop him from learning about you.  Against his will, of course.  The natural result of spending so much time together.

He learned that you slept like a stone, and once you fell asleep, you were asleep.  He usually went to bed after you, and never once did he wake you.  He didn’t think he could even if he tried, which was good – he himself tossed and turned a lot before he fell off to sleep.

He learned that you were naturally cuddly.  He had thought maybe it was all acting, but as the days passed, he realized it wasn’t.  You took his hands in yours, you leaned against him.  Once, on the patio during sunset, you reached up and ran your fingers through his hair.  He didn’t even think you were conscious of the action until he reached up to still your hand, and you withdrew it with a murmured apology.

That was day five.

*****

You didn’t think you could ever get tired of the view.  You liked to walk along the shoreline at low tide, poking around through the debris looking for sea glass or interesting shells.  Bryan never joined you before until today.  It was a rare moment where the two of you were alone and could drop the act.

“Your friends are nice,” you told him.  Bryan grunted but didn’t answer.

He wasn’t himself, or maybe he was himself now and the mean-guy schtick at work was all an act.  He seemed subdued here, and you guessed it was due to his ex.  He hadn’t told you much (“she’s my ex, and that’s all you need to know”), but you could see the way his eyes followed her around when he thought no one would notice.  Cara seemed nice enough, though she didn’t exactly seek you out to chat.

She was also stunningly gorgeous, and if Bryan had been using you to make her jealous, he failed utterly.  You felt like a lump of dirt beside her, and all the sparkling personality couldn’t bridge the gap.  Normally, you didn’t compare yourself to other women – that was a losing game, in your estimation – but you couldn’t help it with Cara.  She had dated Bryan enough to make him lie about having a girlfriend.  It seemed to be a deep wound that hadn’t healed with him.  And that made him seem relatable, almost human.  

You’d never fall for Bryan Kneef, asshole lawyer and boss.  But Bryan Kneef, damaged soul with sad eyes?  Fuck, that was right in your sweet spot.  You loved nursing broken men back to health.  You were the Florence Nightingale of sad boys.  And Bryan Kneef, asshole lawyer and boss, had kissed you before.  That…hadn’t been terrible.  You had kissed this subdued version of Bryan numerous times over the past few days, but they were chaste, closed-mouth kisses.  It was like kissing a relative.

And true to his word, he did not touch you in bed.

You walked together in silence, along the beach and up the hillside path that led back to the villa.  Near the patio, though, Bryan grabbed you, the sudden motion making you squeal in surprise.  He had one hand on your waist, walking you backwards until you were pressed against the rough stucco of the wall.  

“Kiss me,” he demanded, but he didn’t give you much of a choice:  a split second later, his other hand was tangling in your hair, hauling your mouth towards his.  

Okay, so the man was a good kisser, and maybe you didn’t need to act when he kissed you like this.  You closed your eyes and let him lead, felt the way he tilted your head so that he could slot his mouth against your own, felt how his hand was big enough to cup your entire head – his fingertips on the back of your skull, his thumb pressed under your jaw.

His tongue ran along your lower lip, asking permission where he hadn’t before in his office, and you opened your mouth to him.  It was late morning, but you could still taste the mint of his toothpaste as he swept his tongue into your mouth.  You could also taste him, and that was new – before, you had only tasted the sharp bite of the bourbon he had been drinking.  

It would be too easy to fall under his spell.  You sighed against him, and when the hand on your waist reached down to cup your ass, you groaned softly.  Your hands drifted up to grip his shirt and tug him closer to you.

But the spell was broken only a moment later.  

“Ah, sorry,” the voice said, and Bryan broke the kiss to turn his head.  You opened your eyes and saw the speaker – Alexios – and Cara.  Walking hand in hand, heading towards the beach.  “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

You felt yourself flush, but Alexios only smiled at you knowingly and then winked at Bryan.  Cara’s eyes were cold, and she nodded at you before they both turned and left.  Bryan watched them, and once they rounded the hillside and were out of sight, he dropped his hands from you and went into the villa without a word.

That was day six.

*****

Bryan’s internal compass was usually steadfast and pointed in the same direction:  at the latest case for him to win, at the next woman for him to conquer.  He had read once that there were places on earth – like the Bermuda Triangle, maybe – that had magnetic fields that rendered compasses useless.  

He felt like he was living in such a field now.

His impetus for inviting you had been, simply enough, so that he could have someone there with him.  Everyone else was paired off, and Bryan hated to be the odd man out.  Now you were here in St. Kitts together, and Bryan swung like a pendulum between current schools of thought.

He wanted to make Cara jealous.

He didn’t care what Cara thought.

He wanted Cara to miss him, realize what she had missed out on by breaking up with him.

He didn’t care what Cara thought.

Between all that was you:  playing your role well enough, though probably a bit more reserved than he’d like.  He wasn’t sure if anyone was buying it at first until Kyle made a remark on Christmas day.

“She doesn’t seem like your type,” he had said.  Bryan had opened his mouth to say something convincingly non-committal, but then his stepbrother had added, “I think she’s good for you though.”

Bryan was surprised by how much he didn’t hate it, the pretending.  Yes, you weren’t his usual type, but he thought that might be okay after all.  At least for now, anyway.  The contrast between you and Cara was stark.

Cara slept late, took long showers, and then emerged hours later, perfectly styled.  She would settle in somewhere – the patio, the beach under a giant umbrella – and scroll through her phone.  Sometimes she and Alexios went off together, but for newlyweds, they didn’t exactly seem in love.

You though?  You woke up early for a walk on the beach, and then a swim in the ocean, or a swim in the infinity pool that ran the length of the villa.  Or you read the book you bought at the airport, some smutty historical romance about Tudors fucking their servants (Bryan had noted your flushed face one evening, and he snuck at look at it when you were helping with dinner).  Or you chatted with his stepbrother and his friends, asking more questions than you answered, giving little away about yourself.  And layered in through all of that, you were with him:  giving him little pecks on the mouth or teasingly calling him schmaltzy nicknames or getting him another drink when you noticed his glass running low.

Bryan stood on the patio and watched you now:  it was past sunset, past the early dinner you’d had.  You were in the pool, your arms hooked over the ledge watching the last ribbon of light on the western horizon before the sky went truly dark.  Your back was to him, but Bryan could picture your face.  You always got a sad expression this time of night.  Maybe not sad.  Wistful, perhaps.

Everyone else had gotten dressed up for a night in Basseterre, the capital city, but Bryan had declined.  Because he declined, you did too.  He told you to go along if you wanted, and he saw you waver in your decision, but you had finally shook your head and said that a quiet night in was better.

As if the past week had been anything but quiet nights in.  If you were lying so that he wouldn’t be left alone…well, he had realized a while ago that at your core, you were a kind person.  A thoughtful person.  Even to assholes like him.

Bryan kicked off his top-siders and shed his shirt, and he eased himself into the pool.  You must have heard him because you turned to watch him as he swam over to the edge to join you.

“You want to swim?” you asked.  “I can get out.”  It was a salt-water pool, long but narrow, specifically installed for swimming laps.  Though you were the only one who actually swam – the guys goofed around in the surf, but the women stayed well away from the water, their swimsuits only for show and not for utility.

Bryan told you no, and he hooked his own arms over the edge beside you.  He looked out towards the ocean, but he could feel your eyes on him.

“I’m sorry this isn’t working out the way you wanted,” you finally told him.  

Not turning to look at you, he asked, “what do you mean?”

You were close enough that he could feel your shrug.  “I mean, your ex isn’t going to be jealous of me.”  You gave a little laugh, like you were trying to make a joke of yourself but were falling short.  “You should have brought someone else.”

“Someone with less personality?”

Another little laugh that rang sad to him.  “Exactly.”

There was a long moment of silence until Bryan finally said, “I’m not sure how I wanted this to work out.”

“Hmmm.”  A beat.  “At least you got to meet her husband.”

Bryan snorted.  “That’s a good thing?”

You turned your entire body to face him, so he turned to face you too.  In the dim light from the villa, he could just make out your smile.

“Sure,” you said.  “You have to admit, it feels good to know you’re better looking than her husband, right?”

“What?”

You reached out and jabbed him in the chest with your forefinger.  “You know you’re good looking.  And he’s totally uncanny valley.”

“Wait, what?”

“Uncanny valley.  He looks almost human, but just….off enough to make you uncomfortable.”

Bryan laughed in surprise, which made you smile wider.  “I think he probably had a bigger nose, and then got a nose job, so now everything in his face is off-balance.”  You leaned forward a little conspiratorially.  “I think he and Cara got matching nose jobs, in fact.”

Bryan had never seen this deliciously catty side of you, but it sent a warm flush through him, that you might be playing down Alexios’ looks to make him feel better.  He shook his head at you but still chuckled.

“I’m serious,” you said, laughing a little with him.  “Look at the two of them really closely next time you get a chance.  They have matching noses.”

You reached out again and rubbed his arm in that familiar way that both conveyed comfort and the end of the conversation, and before Bryan knew it, you were paddling away from him, hoisting yourself out of the pool, wrapping yourself in an oversized beach towel.  

Bryan’s compass was broken, spinning uselessly.  Without any real thought, he followed you out of the pool, caught up to you inside, was on your heels as you entered the bedroom.

Like in his office that time, he reached out and grabbed your wrist, but gently, gently.  You turned, surprised, and before you could say anything, he kissed you.

Unlike in his office, though, you didn’t push him away this time.

There was no thinking in it for him.  No justifying it, no talking himself out of it.  His focus was on you:  how you tasted like the wine from dinner, how your skin was cool and clammy under his hands from the pool but rapidly heated as he touched you.  How your hands felt on him, running over his chest and shoulders and back.

Bryan reached past you and turned off the light, but if he wanted to pretend you were someone else, he failed.  He couldn’t pretend you were Cara – you were too…well, engaged in the moment.  Too handsy with him.  Too willing to chase his mouth with your own, too insistent when you pressed against him.  You were you, and in the moment, Bryan learned that you were more passionate than he would have ever thought.

Maybe you were pretending he was someone else, but Bryan pushed that uncomfortable thought away.

He got your swimsuit top off of you, and you grasped his head between your hands, steered his mouth towards your tits in a pushy way that he would have never thought you possessed.  He shoved you back against the bed until you fell, and he chased you down, latching his mouth on your nipple, already hard from the wet swimsuit.  You groaned at the sensation, huffed out curses as he bit down, then laved your sensitive bud with his tongue.  Then he switched to your other nipple, pinching the first one between his fingers, harder and harder, and you took it all.  Clawed against his shoulders and begged for more.

Bryan gave you more.  He wouldn’t have been so rough, but you begged him so prettily, a whine in your throat, and he obliged as a point of pride.  You had put up with a lot from him – his asshole behavior at work, but the entire trip to St. Kitts too.  The sustained act you had to put on, the questions you had to answer from his friends, the sleeping beside him, the rude insinuation that you were somehow beneath him.

And you missing the holidays with your own family and friends for his own selfish reasons.

He pulled your bottoms off, sodden with salt water, but when he ran his finger along the seam of your sex, he found you slick with arousal.  Your desire for him – in this moment, at least – matched his desire for you.  His cock was achingly hard, pressed against the damp material of his swim trunks, and he stood up so that he could push them down and kick them off before joining you on the bed.

You surfaced from the depth of your own lust long enough to ask about protection, and Bryan sighed and climbed back off the bed to find his wallet and his emergency condom.  He tore the foil wrapper and rolled the latex onto his length.  Then he rejoined you on the bed.

“Come here,” he ordered.  He couldn’t see much of you in the darkness of the room, but he could see enough – your naked body stretched out across the bed, then your body as you sat up and crawled over to him.

He was going to give you the courtesy of asking how you wanted it, but you reached up and took his face in your hands again.  You pulled his head back to yours, and you kissed him, long and lingering.  When you broke away, you turned away from him and got onto your hands and knees.

So, you wanted it like that.  Bryan wasn’t going to complain.

He inched forward on his knees, shuffling up the mattress until he was behind you.  He almost wished he could see more, but this was probably better.  He laid his palm between your shoulder blades and pushed you down.  When your head was down and turned, your cheek pressed against a pillow, he ran his fingertips down your back – from the base of your skull down to the small of your back, drawing a shudder from you.  

Then he smacked your ass, hard, making you yelp.

“You ready, baby?” he asked, and you told him you were.

He was too.

He grasped his cock, drew the tip through your folds, teasing you and coating the latex in your arousal.  You only lasted a moment before you started whining again, a breathy whimper that made him feel like a fucking king.  

Bryan lined himself up with your entrance and then pushed forward, slow but steady, the motion pulling a heady moan from you until he was buried in your tight channel.  His hips were flush with your ass, and he paused when he hit the end of you, when he felt his cock nudging against your cervix, even through the layer of latex.  But you didn’t seem to need time to adjust to him, because you begged him to move.

“Fuck me, Bryan,” you muttered, your voice thick with lust, and so he did.

He worked up to it, drawing halfway out before pushing back into you first.  You pressed back once you caught his rhythm, rocking into his thrusts, so he fucked you harder.  He pulled his cock out until just the tip remained before he snapped his hips forward.  Over and over, giving you everything he had and then a fraction more as you bucked against him.  

His hands gripped your hips, his fingers digging into your skin, sure to leave bruises.  Marking you.  In that swimsuit, relatively modest as it was, people would still see.  Cara would see.  His fingertip-sized bruises marring your smooth skin.  The thought made his cock twitch as he pounded into you.

He felt you come, and then he heard you – the smooth muscles of your cunt rippling against him, trying to hold him inside you.  You cried out his name, and your legs trembled under you.  He gave you no quarter though – he pushed through it, gritted his teeth, fucked you through your orgasm and through the fluttery aftershocks.

Then he pulled out, and flipped you over, and slid back into you.

“Oh,” you sighed, and you pulled him down to kiss him, but his focus was on marking you now – the jealousy it might inspire, the possessiveness he might evoke.  He kissed you for a moment but then broke away as he rolled his hips into you.  He latched his mouth onto your pulse point as he fucked you; he sucked hard enough to make you twist your hand into his hair, not pulling him away but pushing him closer.  Wanting more from him.  He knew you’d be bruised there too, and probably rubbed raw from his beard.  Let Cara see that.

And the final coup de grace:  a pair of matching bruises he sucked onto the soft skin of your tits – high enough that your swimsuit wouldn’t hide them either.  He latched his mouth onto them, bit down on your rounded flesh as his hips stuttered into you.  You came a second time and it pulled him over the edge too, but Bryan’s orgasm was as much the anticipation of the morning light exposing your marked up form as it was your clenching cunt.

And that was the end of day seven.

[melk917]

Melk's 250 Follower Celebration!

Ah! I’ve hit my first fairly-major follower milestone! As such, I wanted to celebrate with a bingo idea that has been on my mind for ages: What’s Your Fantasy.

I love writing smut and so it only seems appropriate to celebrate with a bingo card full of possibilities. 😈

Each bingo square will be a line from this classic piece of work by the sage poet, Ludacris. If you don’t know the song, go take a listen. For your own education and sheer enjoyment.

Rules are laid out in detail below the cut along with the card but the overview:

I will be accepting requests from today until 1/18 for 250-500 word fills. Feel free to send in a request for Rafael Barba, Nevada Ramirez, Jackson Neill, or Paul Mendelson + a square. Each square will get filled only once. I will be posting the fills as my schedule allows starting Feb 1. If you're writing/producing your own content, there's a lot more you can write for, but I will only be doing these four boys.

This is a bingo! So I’d love for other people to do their own fills as well. See below for more details + the card.

Even if you’re not participating, please share! I’d love to see how wide-reaching this can go and what creative things people can do. This is about community, and I want to celebrate that.

NOTE: Nothing about this song or the card itself is SFW so participation is restricted to 18+ ONLY. This is a hard and fast rule. If I discover anyone requesting is under 18, you will be blocked. If you are under 18 and participating, you will be blocked & your media removed from the bingo.

Rules:

For writing/creating your own work: Pick a single square, a row, four corners, fill the whole card. Up to you. No pressure - this is supposed to be fun!

For requests: send a square + one of the 4 boys marked with MK below.

How to use the squares? You can take them as literally as you want. They’re intended as inspiration, so feel free to use it to just set the tone, or feel free to incorporate the lyric literally. Let the muse lead you how it will. (And even though the bingo card itself is explicit, the fic can be anything from G to E. However you want it, as Luda would say.)

Types of media: you can do mood/storyboards, artwork, long fics, one shots, drabbles, HC... whatever your fancy. Want to do all fics? Great! Want to mix and match? Ok! All moodboards? No problem!

If your story is more than 500 words, you must use a “keep reading”. Anything explicit must also be below a cut.

One square per fic (note: multi-chapters can use more than one square, but it must be one per chapter).

Characters allowed (**can be reader insert or OC or fandom pairing. I will only write reader inserts**):

Rafael Barba (Can request from MK)

Jackson Neill (Can request from MK)

Nevada Ramirez (Can request from MK)

Paul Mendelson (Can request from MK)

Frederick Chilton

Jonas Nightingale

Bryan Kneef

Sonny Carisi

Nick Amaro

Mike Dodds

Rita Calhoun

Olivia Benson

Amanda Rollins

Want to write for someone else? Feel free to shoot me a message for requests. No promises, but open to requests.

No RPF/real-person fanfiction. No underage character (incl. reader/OC). No non-con. If you have any questions about something, feel free to shoot me a message. I also reserve the right to refuse any requests or add additional restrictions on a case-by-case basis, should there be an issue that arises.

Posting will be between 2/1 & 2/28 (this goes for both requests I fill and anything you wish to post)

Please tag me in your entries! I want to see the madness you create. Please also use the following hashtag: #melk917fantasybingo.

Any questions let me know. AGAIN HAVE FUN. Bingo card is below

You do not have to participate but a signal boost is always nice!

[raulesparzaconfessions]

“For all fanfiction writers, if you are reading this and feel inspired by my request, please do yourself a favor... Right now I really like to read angsty fanfiction, I started to like this style recently, I've already read a lot of fanfiction about Raul's characters and I'd like to read one where either Frederick Chilton or Bryan Kneef (I think it "might" fit better with those characters) is really really really bad/evil. I don't know what situation in particular, for example harassing an employee? I don't have something in mind but, i trust you, you'll find something... The only request i have is, a lot of angst and a Villain Raul's character, and “smut” if it fits. Thanks for reading me !” 

(x)

[storiesofsvu]

Journey to the Past Ch 1

Bryan Kneef x reader Warnings: language, that's about it so far. this one's kinda a prologue. If it looks familiar it's because ch 1 was posted a while ago when i didn't know where the story was going, but don't worry, i've got things up and running now. Lol.

Bryan was annoyed, as per usual. It was Friday, it had been a long week and he had wanted to be out of the office early to prowl his way through a couple bars with more than a couple glasses of scotch. Hopefully finding someone to pass a few hours with in the bedroom before bailing so he could wake up on his own.

But today, he had to wait. Diane had shifted meetings around with him, pushing his own back by over an hour already. At least it wasn’t an actual meeting, more of a rather quick conversation, he’d hopefully still be able to make happy hour at at least one of his usual watering holes. He was more than tempted to pour himself a glass of scotch while he waited but figured Diane would smell it on his breath and the last thing he needed was another reprimand from the woman.

He caught sight of the lawyer who was clogging up his schedule coming out of Diane’s office, giving her a firm handshake and a polite smile. He thought she looked familiar, his forehead furrowing as he tried to place where from. He hoped she wasn’t some conquest from a drunken night if she was going to be around the office more frequently. At least she was well dressed, a perfectly tailored pencil skirt with matching blazer, a coloured button up on underneath with just the right amount of buttons undone to tease but not be inappropriate. She wasn’t some mousy paralegal like half the office was. He watched the way she walked toward his office on her way out, the little bounce in her step pulling bounces elsewhere that he was more than intrigued with.

You were a step away from turning when your head finally glanced up through the doorway of his office, the small grin on your lips slipped off and for a minute Bryan thought he was in for it. Then your head tilted as you took in his appearance before your lips broke into a grin and you paused, leaning against his door frame.

“Bryan?” Your voice was just as silky as it had been all those years ago and he nearly melted, “bashful Bry? What the fuck?” You laughed.

“Y/N? What’re you doing here?” He had to gulp back before he spoke, feeling almost as young and innocent as he did back in school.

“Talking deals with Lockhart.” Your head lolled towards the office you’d just exited, “I didn’t realize you’d settled in Chicago.”

“I thought you went to New York?” He asked in return, remembering your last conversations in Cambridge. You’d kept in contact through social media, but that had slowly fizzled out as the years went on and you got buried into your careers.

“I was.” You shrugged, “better salary out here. Horrible pizza though.” You teased, pulling a small laugh from Bryan.

“You’ve just gotta know the right places.” He managed to get his courage back, remembering who he was, the reputation he held now, shooting you a wink.

“Aw, you know a place Kneef?”

“More than a few.” He grinned up at you and you let out an adorable giggle, “we should go tonight.”

“You know I’d love to.”

“Really?” He glanced up with such surprise that you chuckled.

“Yeah, but I can’t tonight. I’ve got plans, but..” you paused as you dug through your bag, pulling out a business card, stepping through the office and passing it to Bryan. “My cell’s on the back, I’d love to catch up. It’s been too long.”

“It really has.” Bryan smiled at you, pocketing the card.

“I’ve gotta run, motions to file before the day’s up.” You gestured to the file in your hand. “I look forward to hearing from you.” You smiled softly, “nice beard.” You winked and whisked yourself out of the office, leaving nothing but the smell of your perfume in the space.

Bryan couldn’t help it, leaning back in his chair as he pulled the card out of his pocket, turning it within his fingers. Looking at the way your embezzled name seemed to glisten in the light of his office, he was amazed at the chance of running into you again. Wondering just how much you’d changed after all these years, if you’d changed as much as he had or were still relatively the same person.

The two of you had gone to Harvard together, back when he felt like a literal fetus. Sure, he’d had a healthy, wealthy nice life growing up, but he was nowhere near the man he was today. The nickname you’d called him ‘Bashful Bry’ was known around campus, he’d been this soft, shy, inexperienced kid. It took him at least the entire first year of law school to get fully on his feet, and even then he was never as confident and brash as he was today, and he certainly wasn’t the asshole he’d become to be known as around the firm.

Meanwhile there was you.

You were the one that befriended him first, half shy, more so coy, small grin on your cheeks as you introduced yourself, extending a hand to shake. You had more than your fair share of classes together, and often grouped up for projects, spending the rest of your free time studying together, testing each other, playing mock court room to up your skills and wit.

You were always so kind to him, so friendly and open, there was more than just a part of him that had slowly fallen for you. First you were just a friend, but your passion, the ambition and power he could see behind your eyes, the amount of knowledge on the law that you held, the way you talked about your future career? It all made him want you more. But back in law school, he wasn’t the same kid, he was this shy little thing, he didn’t have the balls to ask you out, to ever make a move. That little grin you’d shoot him over a late night of studying? That gleam in your eye when you crushed him in a mock debate? It drove him crazy, gave his stomach butterflies, and back in the day? He had absolutely no idea how to deal with that.

You? You were the one that got away.

And now you were back in his life. Problem being? He’d made a reputation for himself, everyone hated him, thought he was a pompous asshole who valued sex, booze and winning cases over everything else. He didn’t care who he hurt along the way, he just wanted to succeed, and you knew nothing about that side of him. He knew there was a pretty high chance that you were still that somewhat innocent girl from school, there was no way you’d grown into as much of a jaded human as he had been. He suddenly felt himself in a panic, wondering if you’d be able to accept him for who he was now, better yet, if he would be able to change. He’d held such heavy secrets of his feelings for you back at Harvard, he wasn’t going to give up the chance to shoot his shot now, the only question was going to be if it would work. Whether he could be the man that you deserved after all these years, or whether he’d lose you the second you found out who he was now, he could only hope that he could try and do this.

He let out a huff of a sigh, pocketing your card before pushing back from his desk, at least for now he could worry about the meeting with Diane and distract himself from that before he had the chance to debate over how soon was too soon to call you.

________________ @newyorker14 @detective-giggles @teamsladsandgents @thatesqcrush @witches-unruly-heart @beccabarba @bisexual-dreamer02 @amelia-song-pond @madamsnape921 @whimsicallymad @mrsrafaelbarba @mysticfalls01 @ssaic-jareau @caracalwithchips @barbasbodaciousbeard @alwaysachorusgirl @beardedbarba @michael-rooker @rafivadafreddy @lustvolle-liebe @anlin2058 @fandom-princess-forevermore @tinyboxxtink @alexusonfire @xovalliegir2lxo @nobody-important1212 @somethingimaginative17 @misscharlielulu @momlifebehard

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Bryan Kneef:  Breaking Point, Part Four

Word Count:  2350

TW:  Dub con (a kiss); mild violence (Bryan gets slapped).  18+ only to be safe.

AN:  Part four of a nine part series.  Other parts can be found here.

Christmas was only two weeks away, and throughout the firm, offices started going dark.  Depending on the department, STR Laurie could be generous with their end-of-year time off.  Depending on the department…and the litigator who led it.

Offices were going dark, people were leaving for the rest of the year, but Bryan Kneef’s department was fully staffed and working the same grinding hours as ever.  You were glad you were going to leave within a few months, hopefully shuffled off to work under a more sympathetic manager which - considering how ill-mannered and impolite Bryan was – wouldn’t be much of a task.

Still, you and your coworkers tried to make it as cheerful as possible.  You ordered in and took group lunches together.  You decorated your desks and the shared spaces, like the copier room and the conference rooms.  You planned your own department-only holiday party at a nearby pub for the weekend, with a gift swap.

“Should we invite the boss?” asked Caleb, another paralegal.  He turned and glanced at Bryan’s closed office door and frowned a little.  

You thought about it.  It would be rude to not invite him, but Bryan forewent any polite societal rules.  Even on good days, he was sarcastic, and he’d been increasingly rude and downright mean as the holiday season approached.  If it hurt his feelings that he wasn’t invited (a mighty big if, since you assumed Bryan didn’t have feelings), tough shit.  You hated to see anyone left out, but Bryan had used up any warm, seasonal feelings you may have had for him.  

What did he say at the STR Laurie party?  We aren’t friends.

“Nah,” you told Caleb.  “We’re beneath him anyway.”

*****

Bryan had his admin put a meeting on his calendar with you for late Wednesday.  You were hard to read:  furious when you had thrown snowballs at him, coolly snide when he went to your apartment to ask you to return to work.  Tooth-achingly sweet at the holiday party, until he soured the moment and ran you off.  You seemed friendly and easy-going with others around the office.  It was hard to know which side was the real you.

He was certain of one thing:  if he didn’t find you a new placement by the end of January – February at the very latest – you would leave the firm.  Bryan had already lost two other people this month.  H.R. was getting clued in to his lack of people skills.  He would readily admit that he only had a modicum of charm.  His success in his career was due to a certain cut-throat demeanor that was nearly a cliché for lawyers.  His success with women was due to his money and his looks.

Still, maybe he could use that small bit of charm now.

You came into his office and shut the door, and you started to sit in the chair across from his desk, but Bryan stood up and gestured at the couch instead.  He reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Macallan Rare Cask, holding it up to you in an unasked question.  You shook your head, and you watched him pour a double into the coffee mug – World’s Okayest Boss – that you and his team had gotten him.  He noticed you watching him, noticed you noticing the mug in use, but your face remained blank, giving him nothing.

He picked up your personnel file and joined you on the couch, noting the way you shifted a few inches away from him as he sat.

He sipped his bourbon and looked you over closer.  You had a standard uniform for the office:  pencil skirt, thick stockings (in the winter only), button-down shirt, everything in bland neutrals.  A strand of pearls (probably fake) peeked out from where your collar gaped open a bit.  Pearl studs in your ears, also likely fake.  

Your sole nod to personal taste were your colorful flats (nearly childish, and they put him in mind of the shiny, plastic shoes his half-sister used to be crammed into for family portraits) and your perfume.  If Bryan leaned forward and took a deep breath, he could just make out the subtle, earthy scent of vetiver.  He preferred his women to smell like women – sweet or floral or powdery – but it suited you, somehow.

“Why didn’t you go to law school?” he asked, blunt, as he flipped open your file.  “You took your LSATs.  Did really well.”  

You shrugged at him.  “I changed my mind about law school.”

Bryan tapped on the top page of your file – your updated resume.  “There’s an unexplained gap between graduation and work.  Why?”

That got a reaction:  your eyes narrowed a bit and you pursed your lips.  “Personal reasons,” was all you offered.

“Explain.”

“They’re personal.”

Bryan took a sip of his bourbon and narrowed his own eyes back at you.  “Pretend we’re friends after all.  Let’s chat about the year between graduating from undergrad and getting a job with – “ He broke off to consult your resume.  “ – Keller, Morgan, and Morgan.”

It made you snort.  “If we were friends, you’d already know that about me.  I’m pretty open with my friends.”

“Quid pro quo then.  You tell me, and I’ll tell you something personal about my life.”

That made you laugh – an honest, surprised laugh that made you throw your head back.  “I think I have a pretty good read on your life, but okay.  I’ll bite.”  Your face turned serious, and you added, “I had a family member get sick.”

“Wait,” he said, holding up his hand.  “What do you mean, you have a good read on my life?”

You gave that same shrug of yours, a lazy sort of “what can you do?” gesture.  “You know…”

“I don’t,” he replied, his jaw tightening.  “Enlighten me.”

“Okay.”  You turned and faced him a little on the couch, studied his face.  “You have some glib little motto you live by, like work hard, play hard or live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.  Something like that.  Everything is calculated.  The right job, the right condo at the right address, the right car.  The right woman for the right moment.”

“That’s called success,” he retorted sarcastically.  “Stellar profiling.”

“But what no one knows, maybe not even you – it doesn’t make you happy.  You’re miserable.  Which is why you take it out on everyone around you.  You don’t lash out at people at your level or higher.  You’d never dare speak to the senior partners the way you speak to us.  Which makes you a bully.  And bullies are, almost always, miserable with themselves first and foremost.”

“You sound like a fucking after-school special.”

You tilted your head and peered at him a little closer.  “So you are unhappy.”

“The fuck I am.”  He drained off the rest of his bourbon and plunked the mug down on the coffee table, and he turned to face you.  “I pull in six figures.  I have a condo that overlooks the fucking lake.  I’m a member of the Sky-Line Club.  What was the other thing you said?  The right woman for the right moment?  Yeah, I’ll give you that one.  After this, I could head to the Underground or the Aviary and have any woman I want, just like that.”  He raised his hand and snapped his fingers in front of your face.

“Oooh,” you replied.  “I’m sure your date for the evening is just enthralled by your personality too.”

“Personality is just a nice word to give ugly people hope,” he informed you.  And because your assessment of him hit just a little too close to home, especially in light of the brewing disaster with Cara and the St. Kitts trip, he looked you over pointedly and added, “For example, I imagine you have a sparkling personality.”

The slap came so fast and so hard that Bryan swore he never even saw it.  His head whipped to the side, and fuck if it doesn’t make some of the blood in his body turn southward.  Maybe he had an unexplained pain kink he never realized before.

“Fuck you,” you hissed, and Bryan turned back to face you.  Your color was high, just like the night of the snowball fight, but your eyes were narrowed to slits.  You weren’t just fed up like before – now you were furious.

Just like the night of the snowball fight, he found himself getting unexpectedly turned on.  The longer the moment stretched between the two of you – him staring at you, you staring back with your hand half-raised to deal him another slap – the harder he got.  If your eyes drifted down to his lap, the situation would become clear to you.  But you only glared at him, your eyes boring into his own.

He ached for you to hit him again.  Call him an asshole.  Hold him accountable for his own unforgivable behavior.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” he said in his most insouciant tone.  “I’ve fucked plenty of girls with personality.”

You did it – you raised your hand again, but some self-defense part of his lizard brain made him catch your wrist in mid-swing…and then some cave-man part of him used your own momentum against you, yanked you forward into him, and he caught your mouth, half-open in surprise, with his own.

Bryan swore there was a moment when you kissed him back.  Between the gasp of surprise against his mouth and the moment you shoved him away, a scandalized look on your face.  There was a moment, brief though it was, where you seemed to melt into his grasp, and where your own tongue crept out to lick against his own mouth.  

He swore he felt your hand on his chest, palm flat against shirt, achingly close to a loving gesture but not quite.

But then you were shoving him away, and trying to stand, and Bryan had to tighten his grip on your wrist, and suddenly he was worried that he was bruising your wrist, holding you too tight, holding you against your will…shit, this was bad.  Bryan was good, a top litigator, but he wasn’t invincible and he wasn’t irreplaceable.  A sweet little paralegal, sporting a bruised wrist and an angry flush of red from where his beard rubbed against her mouth, could march into H.R.…

“What the fuck, Bryan?” you yelled.  You yanked your wrist out of his hand just as he was letting it go, and you flailed backwards, momentarily unsteady, before you righted yourself.

He didn’t answer.  The enormity of the situation was dawning on him, and he only muttered “fuck” to himself before standing up and striding to his desk for the bourbon and a clean glass.  He sank into his chair and poured a shot, tossed it back, and poured another.  It was early evening – everyone else was likely gone for the day.  And his office door was closed.  Fuck.  Fuck.

Long moments passed, and the office was thick with tension.  Bryan hung his head, focused on his glass of bourbon.  He chanced a look at you – you were still on the couch, your face flushed, your eyes fixed on him.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and the word practically stuck in his throat despite the truth of it.  He was sorry.  He hated how Marcus, a fellow litigator, took liberties with his interns.  He hated men who did that at all, felt a sick twist in his stomach.  Bryan preferred to make women beg him for it, yet here he was – forcing himself on you.  A sweet little paralegal, truth be told, who he had insulted out of sport and then assaulted.  It made the bourbon churn in his gut.

“It’s…it’s fine,” you finally answered.  You reached up, maybe unconsciously, and wiped your  mouth, and that hurt some point of his pride too, the thought that he had been disgusting, had tasted disgusting to you.

He didn’t say anything.  He watched as you reached down and picked up your personnel file, its contents scattered on the floor from when it slipped off of his lap.  He watched you reassemble it, and then you stood and carried it over to him.

“We can pretend it never happened,” you murmured as you sat the file on his desk.  “We both acted in ways that could get both of us fired.”  When Bryan arched an eyebrow in confusion, you pointed vaguely at his face.  “I hit you.  Assault.”

He chuckled mirthlessly.  “I doubt any jury would blame you, once you march out character witnesses.”

That made you smile – a real one, it seemed.  “Well, when all you have is personality going for you, it helps to cultivate a mean right hook.”

“That’s not true,” he said.  “I shouldn’t have said that.”  He didn’t apologize for it, of course (one “I’m sorry” was his absolute limit for the month).  And he didn’t elaborate that of course you weren’t ugly.  You didn’t have the high-polish and poise of his usual conquests (those awful flats of yours, for example), but you were appealing in a down-to-earth way.  Certainly none of Bryan’s past girlfriends would ever slap him so hard, since they would risk marring their manicures.

“It’s fine,” you repeated.  You glanced over your shoulder at the door, probably yearning for an exit from this terrible, awkward moment.  You turned back to face him.  “Can I go?”

Bryan nodded, and he watched you leave.  He sat there a long time afterwards – long after you gathered your coat and left, long after the sick churning in his gut receded.  It would probably be fine after all.  You had hit him, and STR Laurie had a zero tolerance policy about workplace violence.  You mutual bad behaviors could cancel the other’s out.

So he thought about the kiss instead:  the way you tasted like peppermint, probably from those candy canes you were always sucking on thanks to the season.  The way your pulse had jumped in your wrist, circled by his hand.  

The moment where he swore you kissed him back.