#here is an image of a beautiful horse:

[hoofbeatss]

The Horse Whisperer

[thatlittledandere]

I love the twins and Yumoto arguing about what being an idol is about and what is important. They have SUCH different motivations for doing things that they fundamentally cannot see eye to eye. Yumoto lives in the moment and is guided by emotions and ideals, while Beppus are pragmatic and goal-oriented in a way Yumoto just isn't.

They're also right that being an idol is business. I know Yumoto has some experience too thanks to Kurotama but theirs is a small, intimate family business, a shop, a service tied to one place manned by two people. Thy're not particularly trying to expand or really compete with anyone. He doesn't know or understand the brutality of massive-scale show business and how it impacts those whose life has been entirely dictated by it since they were likely less than ten years old, who started not out of a childish desire to "just have fun", but because it seemed like a viable means to a specific goal.

also they were manipulated into it by a scummy adult exploiting their young age, loneliness and feelings of literal alienation,homesickness and hero worship to make them his little pawns but this isn't about him

I love how I now seem to agree with the Beppus. Yeah Yumoto is being dismissive and condescending fuck that guy (jokes)

[foreverdolly]

ೃ࿔ SAVAGE BONDS part 2 『 feyd rautha x atreides!reader 』

summary: destined to one another since conception, your very life belongs to feyd rautha. as a token of good will you are sent to the strange planet of giedi prime a week before your wedding ceremony, only to learn that it is far more hostile than you imagined it would be. a failed assassination attempt has tempers flaring and sparks flying when it is decided to be safer to sleep alongside feyd. you hate to admit it, but he has played the part of a "protector" better than the guards who were tasked to watch over you. whilst you have been dreading this union all of your life, feyd has been anticipating it. meeting you as children had left him awe-struck. . . and a bit obsessed.

warnings: !SMUT HEAVY IN FUTURE PARTS!, feyd is super overprotective in this fic and kills multiple people in your honor, blood and gore, it's a dark romance folks, political marriage, forced proximity, temporary unrequited love, a lil dubious consent in some scenes, there's a lot of talk about breeding, enemies to lovers (in your mind, not his), there's a "who did this to you" scene, knife play, blood kink, breeding kink heavy, lots of scent marking/marking.

word count: 4.5k

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Legs tangled in gray sheets. The lightning-quick flash of a silver dagger, held by a pale hand.

The images in the dream are more like fragments- impossible to discern and decipher. On the bed, asleep and vulnerable. . .

There’s you.

And then Feyd wakes up, heart hammering in his chest so hard he can feel it in his throat. Slowly his fingers crawl up, up, up the expanse of the bed in search of something. In search of warmth, of you. Nothing. He’s just as alone in his room as he was when he drifted off into sleep. He lays awake the rest of the night, tossing and turning with worry.

This dream felt more like a warning than just another disjointed nightmare. It felt real. He was used to having dreams every now and again which clearly depicted a future outcome. He saw you in his dreams quite often, more so once he was no longer a boy-child.

If someone thought to hurt you… he’d just have to hurt them first.

The customs you and your people practiced were completely different to those that were normal on Geidi Prime. You watched one of your ladies-in-waiting as she brought over another small bowl of sweet smelling bath salts, dumping it in and using her hand to properly dissolve them. For a moment you felt self conscious, running your fingers through your hair as you looked at their perfect complexions and shaved heads. What did they see when they looked at you? Someone beautiful and strange. . . or an alien?

Still, you would eventually have to disrobe and bathe. Pressing your luck and refusing their help would only solidify your place as an outsider. You were sure that whispers of your arrival were already spreading like wildfire, and it was almost guaranteed that no one was happy about it. An Atreides amongst Harkonnen’s? You were nothing more than a pariah on their industrial wasteland of a planet.

The air was even more acrid in your lungs than it had been the night before, and while the smell of the rose body oils and salts were thick and hazy in your room, you could still catch the scent of pollution. Already you missed the cool, crisp air of Caladan. You missed your horses, your parents and your brother to the point of pain. This was not where you belonged. Not here in Geidi Prime. Not here with Feyd-Rautha.

The urge to cry yourself hoarse was practically undeniable, and yet you somehow managed to resist. You were late to breakfast already, and surely the Baron was making some unsavory comments about your family and their taught “manners”. So you untied the front of your nightdress and shimmied out of it, letting the soft cotton pool at the ground beneath your feet. The women couldn’t help but gawk at the tiny imperfections they saw there- a beauty mark you’d had since you were a child, a scar you’d received while training with Gurney. You weren’t used to feeling so self conscious, and so you were quick to grab one of the women’s extended hands so that you could sit down in the murky bath water.

They rubbed floral smelling soaps into your hair and on your skin, making sure to handle you as though you were as fragile as porcelain. You wished they would scrub you raw. Even then they wouldn’t be able to cleanse you of your fears. You were in the hands of the Harkonnen’s now.

No one could save you.

“We are not very used to styling hair, my lady. It might not be to your liking.” One of the women said anxiously. The way that her hands shook as she gripped the hairbrush was not lost on you.

How cruelly were they treated here? Or even worse- what did she think of the Atreides family? What lies had they poisoned these people’s impressionable minds with? You didn’t care to dwell too much on such thoughts. Reaching out you gently removed the brush from her hands, flashing her the kindest smile you could muster before shaking your head.

“Leave this to me then. Why don’t you pick something for me to wear from my things?” Your bags were still packed, lying exactly where a few servants had laid them last night. You had denied every offer to have them unpacked for you.

Denial. You refused to believe that you were actually stuck here. This would never be your home. It couldn’t be.

“He’s not here,” Feyd was sitting at a long, slate-gray table by himself. The food on his plate had barely been touched, but he had busied himself with chopping the meat up into miniscule pieces, too small to even fit on the prongs of his fork. “If you were planning on trying to make a good impression, you can forget about it. He always has his food sent to his quarters.”

You thanked the two ladies that had shown you through the colorless halls under your breath, moving to sit on the other side of the table. At least eight chairs separated you from the Na-baron and it still wasn’t enough. You wished you were on an entirely different planet, lightyears away from the Harkonnen scum.

The room was practically empty aside from the large dining room table. No art decorated the walls or rugs to cover the floor. It was all cold, black marble with white accents.

“I don’t care, actually.” And you were being truthful. You didn’t care about getting on the Baron’s good side any more than you cared about getting on Feyd’s.

He smiled then, staring at you long and hard before licking one of his black painted canines. He was amused by the blase way you brushed off his uncle so easily. Indifference wasn’t something he was used to, especially not when everyone in the galaxy had tried so hard to get on their good sides. People tended to tread lightly as far as the Harkonnens were concerned. They were as wealthy as they were cunning.

“Be careful, little Atreides. Saying things like that might get you hurt around here.” His gruff voice was but a whisper now, and suddenly you felt as though there weren’t twelve feet of dead-air separating the two of you.

You had picked up your fork, ready to eat whatever bland food had been prepared for you, but froze at his words. Heat rose to your cheeks and you were quick to lean back in the ornate high-backed chair, the cool iron seeping into your back through your clothes.

“Do you mean to threaten me?” Your words were icy, tongue sharp and ready to give him a proper lashing.

“It’s not a threat, darling.” He was practically purring, reveling in the joy of referring to you whilst using a pet name. It suddenly looked as though a switch had been turned on, his eyes narrowing on you. “I know him far better than you do. He’s killed people for far less. Be careful.” There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling you. There was genuine warning in his tone.

A pause.

“Please.” And then he went back to eating.

So were you supposed to act gutted at his uncle’s absence? You picked up the fork and took a bite of whatever had been put on your plate. It wasn’t at all what you were used to. Even the food tasted. . . fake. The meat tasted like it had been pumped full of chemicals and was mealy in your mouth, like sand. Still, you swallowed despite your distaste and shoved the plate away from you.

“Who have you assigned to be my sparring partner? I’m sure that my father made your uncle aware that I train daily, correct?” If you didn’t physically exert yourself and blow off some steam then you were bound to get no sleep tonight.

Last night you had tossed and turned, unable to stay asleep when your body was constantly alerting you to possible dangers. Even now you were on high alert, eyes locked on the knife that sat on the right side of Feyd’s plate. Your own fingers danced towards yours it you watched. Waited. Worried.

“Training?” He tilted his head again, eyes narrowed in disbelief. You could almost see the cogs turning as he mulled over your words. “What good would training do you now? If there are any threats then I am here to protect you- that’s my duty as your husband.”

Ah, yes. Why would a woman train when she could just sit back and play the part of a perfect little wife instead? You could spit.

“Would you rather I just hunt down one of your servants and kill him for sport?” You hated that he was so good at getting a reaction out of you. Maybe you were acting too much like a brat, but you wanted to see him squirm. Seeing him mad must be better than seeing him. . . like this.

For a second he sat there, arms perched nonchalantly over the armrests of his chair, staring at you with a crooked smile. You jumped in surprise when a chuckle escaped him, the act itself so out of place, so surprising that all you could do was stare in horror. The chuckles soon morphed into frenzied laughter, and he was quick to lean back in his seat so that he could place a hand on his chest.

“Was that funny to you?” You spoke through gritted teeth.

He watched the muscle in your jaw clench and unclench with wild eyes, sucking in a deep breath in the hopes of calming himself. Still, to hear such a beautiful woman speak such hideous words. . . it was wonderful, bordering on perverted.

“If you do kill a servant, please make sure I’m there to watch.”

He was too busy watching your face to notice the knife that you slid into the sleeve of your dress. With a huff you stood up, your skirts dryly brushing along the ground as you started to make your way out of the large room.

“I require a trainer.” You tried to mimic your mother’s tone, straightening your shoulders as you turned to look at him.

Lady Jessica always had a way of commanding a room. She was powerful, your mother. You needed to channel that same power now.

“You’ll train with me then,” He stood up from the table, the height and build of him alone nearly causing you to take a step back. You’d forgotten how large he was. How formidable. “Consider it a wedding gift.”

This had you balking, mouth opening and closing as you tried to think of some way to refuse. He was already stalking past you though, ignoring whatever retorts you were bound to make.

“I recommend getting changed. . . Unless you want me to tear that dress to shreds.”

That awful, ugly, no good- 

“Bastard!” You whispered under your breath, wadding up your dress just to angrily toss it onto your bed. 

You sank to your knees, braiding your fingers into your hair so that you could give it a few good yanks. He was doing this to fuck with your head. All of this was calculated on his part, it had to be. Was it all just to get a rise out of you? Or did he truly want to try and hurt you? You couldn’t figure him out, and that boiled your blood. All Harkonnens were cunning, blood thirsty schemers. You wouldn’t put it past him to be unhappy with the marriage arrangement, choosing to resort to violence in order to end things. 

‘Now. Now is the time to strike.’ 

You’d already hidden the blade under the mattress of the bed. The Baron wouldn’t allow you to live if you killed his precious nephew, but you’d much rather put up some sort of a fight than be put down like a dog. After taking a few steadying breaths you somehow managed to pull on your trousers and shirt, your mind plagued with dangerous, dangerous thoughts. If the moment called for it you were certain that you could not kill Feyd in hand to hand combat. His skills with a blade was well known across the galaxy, and while you were more than able to defend yourself, you weren’t delusional enough to think that you could manage to beat him without using underhanded tactics. 

You’d have to wait until his guard was lowered. 

“Do all women take this long to get ready?” 

You hadn’t heard the door open, nor his footsteps approaching. Who knew how long he had been watching you. The intrusion was an unwelcome one. You looked up to glare at him, trying hard not to balk at his appearance. The clothes he wore were skin tight, a black material that caught the dim lighting- like it was made of pitch black oil. His pants were tucked into big black boots, laced up high on his calf. 

He stretched his arms up, leaning against the doorframe so that he could continue his awkward staring. 

He did a lot of that it would seem. Any time you turned your head to face him you found that he was already looking in your direction. It was odd. . . off putting to say the least. Of course you couldn’t know that he was currently tracing the lines of your face with his eyes, committing every detail to memory. You were so different when he compared you to the females that he was used to seeing. You were all soft lines, long lashes and doe eyes. He found it impossible not to look at you. Gorgeous… you were gorgeous. 

“It took me a while to get out of my dress on my own.”You shoved your way past him in the doorway, his chest warm under your palms. 

You were quick to jerk away, startled by the fact that this was the first time that you’d touched him since the two of you had reunited. 

You didn’t hate the feel of him, but you should have. 

“Then you should have asked for some help.” He said, reaching out to grab you by the back of your shirt when you started to walk off in the wrong direction. 

Feyd pulled you along like he would a pet on a leash through the triangular halls, ignoring your mumbled curses as you tried swatting him away. 

The shield vibrated in your ears as you switched on the button, enveloping you in its warmth. 

You used to find it uncomfortable as a child, the tight, foreign warmth triggering a mild case of claustrophobia. You were used to it now, wearing it like a second skin. You waited for Feyd to turn his on as well, the blade clutched tight in your palm. 

You waited. And waited. And waited. 

“Where’s your shield?” You asked him, motioning towards his hip with your free hand. 

There it was, that crooked smile again. He was laughing at you. Was he trying to infer that you were weak? Was he so confident in his skills that he didn’t even see you as a threat?  

“I don’t see the nee-” He didn’t get very far. 

You kicked your leg out, catching the back of his right knee. His legs buckled, and he was quick to adjust himself, his left arm flying up to catch your wrist before you could sink the blade home. For a split second the two of you just stared at each other. Mild shock in his eyes, your own alight with an anger so consuming that you feared you might be burnt up with it. He gave your arm a sharp tug, hard enough that the joint rolled uncomfortably in its socket. 

You kicked your leg out before he could throw you over his shoulder, landing a sharp blow to his ribs. You heard him let out a pained moan before you hit the ground. Using your weight to your advantage, you tucked your body in, rolling to the side so that you could easily stand up to your knees, blade poised at your side and ready for an attack. 

“You fight well, Atreides.” Feyd purred, spinning his blade between two fingers before letting it fall back into his pale palm. 

“Turn on your shield.” You growled, rising to your full height so that you could begin circling him, a panther ready to pounce. 

“Was it Duke Leto that trained you?” Still, he was ignoring your statement. 

“No.” 

“No, of course it wasn’t him,” He took a step closer to you, eyeing you down. No one had looked at you like that before. . . and it made your skin crawl. You didn’t want to be desired by this man, the thought alone was miserable enough to have bile rising in your throat. “Your father is too weak-spirited to ever train you himself, lest he accidentally harm you.” 

Your heart was beginning to pound in your ears now, vision tunneling. All you could see was Feyd. All you could imagine was the blade that you were currently white-knuckling sunk hilt deep into his chest. 

“How horrible it must be for Caladan to have a Duke so. . .  spineless.” 

You bared your teeth, and for a second you were sure that you would snap the hilt in half with how hard you were gripping your blade. You demanded blood for such an insult. How dare he. How dare he. 

“I should cut out your tongue!” You screamed, pointed the blade at him. 

‘Don’t come any closer’ you urged with your eyes, feeling the angry tears causing your vision to fog. A Harkonnen was insulting your father. He was insulting your family and now he was smiling at you. The bastard had the gall to smile and this time all of his teeth were showing. Wide, unabashed in his joy. He was terrifying. So much so that you felt your legs begin to shake underneath you. 

“But you’ll want to put this tongue to good use eventually.” His gravelly voice purred. 

“Silence!” And before you could even control yourself you were using the Voice. 

You might not be as talented as your brother when it came to hand to hand combat, but your mother had taken the time to teach you well. Feyd’s mouth snapped shut so hard that you heard his teeth clatter together. 

“One more word and I will gut you.” Your voice shook and before you could rethink your actions you were lunging forward, the blade cutting through the air. . . 

Aimed at his throat. 

He was quick to push your arm away with his forearm, and even with the shield up you could feel the bone shattering pressure he put behind the movement. He was stronger than Paul- stronger than even Gurney. He took advantage of the fact that you were put off balance and grabbed a fist full of hair, the shield around you flashing red as he pressed his blade as close as he could to the base of your throat. Your scalp exploded in pain, eyes watering as he gripped harder to yank your head back so that you were staring directly into his eyes. They held no malice towards you, even despite the fact that you were obviously trying to maim him. 

And then he leaned in closer. And closer.

“If I didn’t know any better then I would think that you were actually trying to kill me.” He whispered against the shell of your ear. You could practically feel the warmth of his lips against your skin as he spoke, your heart roaring in your ribcage. With your chests practically touching like this you could smell him.

 You’d only caught the scent of spice once in your life- and it was akin to bitter cinnamon. There was something else though, something more complex to it. Aromatic spices you couldn’t quite put your fingers on and. .  . the natural musk of his skin. 

“So you can speak again?” You managed to tease him through your pain, wincing as he brought you even closer against his chest. The blade that you clutched in your hand was now pressing against his side, the pointed edge digging into his skin. 

He didn’t wince, even when you put more pressure against it. 

“You think it wise to use the Voice on me in my own home, little girl?” He hissed as he pulled away from your ear, and the fire that was in your eyes was now mirrored in his own. 

Slowly you moved the blade away from him, the metallic clanging echoing around the room as you let it fall to the floor. Your palm hurt from the vice-like grip you had been holding it in. 

“Release me now.” You didn’t shy away from staring into his eyes, unwavering even when he pressed the blade even tighter, the shield vibrating louder and louder around you. 

He leaned in, even when your hands moved to press against his chest, willing him to give you space. You could barely breathe with him this close to you. His own knife clattered to the ground, and using his free hand he ripped the shield from off of your hip. The gasp that escaped your lips was uncontrollable. You could feel his breath on your lips as his eyes continued to swallow you up whole. 

They looked even bluer when you were up close like this, framed by long black lashes. For a split second you wondered what had become of that beautiful little boy you had met. Had Baron Vladmir beaten the beauty out of him? Or perhaps it had never truly been there to begin with. 

When Feyd looked at you, up close like this, all he saw was the object of his ever-present affections. Something yawned to life in his chest- the need to protect. All at once he felt wrong, disgusting and horrible for causing you any sort of pain. 

But you looked so lovely with those tears in your eyes. So much so that he gave your hair another small yank, a shuddered breath escaping his lips as you yelped in pain. He saw the hate in your eyes and he detested it. 

‘Fear me’ he silently urged. ‘Love me, do as I say and I will become your slave.’ 

His lips brushed against yours, achingly slow- painfully soft. 

“I yield.” You were quick to say, pulling as far back as you could even with the grip he had on your hair. 

Fire. Your scalp felt like it was on fire. 

And then he released you, taking a step back with a heaving chest. The spell now broken, it felt like the world around you suddenly resumed its orbit. Wordlessly he pressed a hand to his side- the side that you had pressed the knife- and when he pulled it away you could see that it was stained with blood. 

“Didn’t you say that you were going to gut me?” There was no hint of humor in his voice now. 

“I wanted to.” You conceded. 

“Then you should have tried harder.”

Again you lay in bed awake, unable to fall asleep. You told yourself that it was just homesickness that had you clinging to the blankets, but you knew better. What had happened today left you rattled and confused. 

There were a hundred times today that Feyd could have killed you. Everything that Gurney had ever taught you had disappeared like smoke in the wind the second that your father was mentioned. You had acted on instinct alone. 

And if it was an actual fight to the death then you would have lost. Miserably. 

There was something strange about it though. It never once felt like an actual training session. He taught you nothing and gave you no feedback. Not only that but. . . it never felt like he actually wanted to damage your pride. He didn’t turn on his shield before and after taunting you, almost as though he actually wanted one of your attacks to land. 

He had allowed you to get everything out of your system. You hated that it had worked. It wasn’t helping you to sleep tonight though. No, you had other things on your mind now. 

Like the fact that he had almost kissed you. 

Your knowledge was limited where men were concerned, but you were nearly positive that there was something sexual about the way that he had treated you. It was like he didn’t want to actually hurt you, but still went out of his way to touch you. 

You’d be sure to ask for someone that might be willing to train you again tomorrow over breakfast. Someone who wasn’t Feyd, preferably. Lunch and dinner had been spent in silence on your part tonight. He had tried to strike up conversation a few times, even baiting you in ways that might warrant annoyance and anger. You didn’t budge. Why? Because you hated how nervous you felt in his presence now. 

Was it because you were afraid of him? That had to be it. Hearing about his proficiency in fighting and seeing it first hand were two different things. He had practically swung you around like a ragdoll. It was absolutely humiliating. 

Yes, that had to be it. . . well, you hoped. 

“Atreides.” 

The sound of your name had you bolting up into a sitting position, willing your eyes to adjust to the non-existent lighting in the room. The sound of footsteps had your heart jumping up into your throat, adrenaline flooding your system once you realized that it wasn’t a voice that you recognized. 

No one had entered the room since you’d gotten back from dinner, which meant. . . 

Whoever this was had been hiding, waiting until you completely lowered your guard. You were in danger. Horrible, horrible danger. 

‘Be careful. Please.’ You remembered Feyd’s words from earlier. 

He had been trying to warn you.

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ೃ࿔ savage bonds taglist:

@elf-punk @shitfuckeryclownverse @mydarlingelvis @heartarianagran @ohdearmaggie @chalametism @killingboredom @obsessedvibee @avidreader73 @softboo @tedcruzumakii @luminnara @narniansmagic @torchbearerkyle @ziggy-stardust-world @tian-monique @adoxra @zz-snow-zz @tiredsleepyhead @icontrolthespice @itsparksjoyhuh @verveta345 @shegatsby @zae5 @ertepla @my-soulmate-is-mycroft @lotus-888 @meetmeatyourworst @moonchild-artemisdaughter @abswifey @flower-frog @auroranodyssey @forgedfromthestars @moony-artemis @juliskopf @moonsoulk @serrendiipty @atrxidxs @the-ruler-of-death @mintoblobo @just-pure-trash @randominterwebthings @springholland @so-dramatic1 @ashy-kit @aslutforscarletwitch99 @sofia-013 @gamorxa @ricecakeslove @alexandrainlove @selfishlittlebeing @ceres27

the wonderful line “fear me, love me. do as i say and i will become your slave” is from the movie “the labyrinth”!

[ruinix]

Cock warming with Jack? Pls.

Hello, anon, lovely. Sorry for taking super long. Something took over my keyboard. I apologize if you don’t want a dom-sub dynamic, but I could NOT stop typing. Sorry, Jack got mean. Also, I am not used to writing this dynamic (a problem when my brain cells decided to brew this). We got another bonus here (you can skip it).

Caught

TW/CW: 18+ MDNI, Smut, Masturbation (usage of toy, then mutual), Dom-Sub dynamics (dom!Jack), Cockwarming as punishment, Degradation because Jack is angry -> slight Praise Kink, Unprotected sex (use protection, lovelies), a bit of Aftercare

Count: 3365 + 370 words | Masterlist

You must’ve not heard him. Jack is sure that you didn’t. If you had, you would’ve greeted him with a smile and a kiss while calling his name in such a melodic voice.

If you had, you wouldn’t still be fucking yourself with your head almost handing off one armrest of the couch, with your beautiful lips parted, your breathy moans escaping them, with your legs shaking at the pace you’re going.

If you had, you would just beg for his cock immediately.

If you had, he would just give it to you like he does with everything you possibly want. It wouldn’t matter if a game exhausted the fuck out of him or if he just arrived from a long flight after a road trip—which he did right now. He spoils you rotten.

You want a kiss? He will kiss every inch of your skin until you whine for him to bite.

You want his cock? He’ll let you feel every inch of him until he’s buried so deeply inside you.

You want his handprints on your ass? He’ll make your skin red and raw and bruised that you’ll feel him every time you sit down.

You want to be filled? He will spill every fucking drop inside your pussy until you are spilling around him. Too fucking full of his cum that you worry if he impregnated you.

You want to explore more kinks? He’ll fucking do it until you beg for more.

You touching yourself is fine. It’s hot. He likes it the best when he orders you to make yourself come. He likes the way your delicate fingers circle your clit, rubbing your folds, fucking your pussy. You’re always such a good girl. So you deserve everything including exploring and worshipping yourself—

Then he notices the dildo in your hand.

A dildo.

A fucking dildo. In. His. Pussy.

Worse thing about it, it’shis equipment—bespoke, molded from his cock. However, the dildo is secondary to the huge problem. The biggest bane of this encounter is the fact that you’ve entered the room. You’ve taken the dildo from there.

You are not allowed inside without him for reasons. He wants you safe. He doesn’t want you to use any of his equipment, because it’s not safe. What if you get stuck on the restraints, on the swing, on the inversion table? What if you used the wooden horse without prepping yourself? What if. What if.

He needs you to be safe.

You promised him that you wouldn’t go inside. You promised that you’ll wait for him. You promised. And you broke it. In turn, you’ve defied him and broken his trust.

Everything. He does every fucking thing for you. Simply because you were so obedient. You were his good girl. He was too trusting. Look what that got him. A fucking brat who doesn’t follow simple fucking instructions.

Right now, your image feels like a lie. A mirage that had successfully lured him in with a promise to quench his thirst, to satisfy his needs over his wants, to make him feel whole and alive. A mirage that killed him for its empty promise.

His heart hammers loudly in his chest, making his ears ring, as your leg falls over the couch, your foot immediately planting on the carpeted floor. His throat tightens the more you moan. His eyesight darkens as he notes his fucking dildo you are thrusting in his pussy again and again.

What the fuck is your problem?

He grips the wall, knuckles turning white. He is glaring daggers into your skin. Cursing your audacity, your idiocy, your mistake. Your betrayal.

People are sensitive that they’ll sense a glare on them. Not you. That irks him more.

His anger exponentially rises. His heated blood courses through his veins. His cock twitches, getting harder as your lewd sounds drive him further towards the edge.

“Jack,” you moan, still unaware of his presence, still digging yourself a deeper hole. “Jack, please. Oh, yes, yes.”

Fucking whore. That’s what you are. A bad whore.

It doesn’t matter if it’s his name that spills out of your lips. It doesn’t. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. You’re thinking about him. That clears his mind. You are so beautiful as you continue fucking yourself. It’s basically his cock in your pussy. He swears he can smell you—your arousal, your sweat, your delectable scent—in the air. His heart pumps in anger but also his ever-growing, everlasting love for you. He loves you. So much. Even more now.

However, he must correct this act of defiance. He doesn’t want this to happen again. So, he moves.

One, he grips your hair, tugging until you gasp, your pretty eyes opening so widely and full of fear of being caught. Your pleading voice sounds as he drags out the dildo, throwing it over his shoulder. Your arousal wets his hand which he uses to grab your throat, forcing you to look right into his eyes.

“Caught in the fucking act, baby girl.” His voice sounds deeper even in his ears.

Like the whore you are, he knows you like it. The blush burns over your cheeks. Your pupils threaten to engulf all of your irises. When he squeezes his hand—putting pressure on your arteries, limiting the blood flow to your pretty head, limiting your air—your eyes roll up as you let out a strangled moan.

“Just a fucking whore,” he lets go, letting you whine and chase after his touch.

“Jack, I was so close,” you plead, going to your knees on the couch.

Jack can’t stop his scoff nor his eyes rolling. Are you serious? On the couch? Oh, he truly spoiled you.

He grabs you by your arm and yanks. He forces you to the floor, swallowing the urge to coddle you when he hears the loud thud from your knees hitting the floor. He plops down the couch, dragging you between his thighs. He sees the tears running down your cheeks. He hears your apology then your complaints, so he grabs your jaw, leaning down so harsh that your forehead bumps against each other.

“Where’d you get the dildo?” he asks.

“Ja—” One squeeze to your jaw and you stop. You sniffle. “From the room.”

“Which room?” he challenges.

When your eyes stray to the left, he knows you’ll lie.

You say, “The bedroom…under your stuff…”

He sighs, pushing you away by your jaw. He’s seeing fucking red again. He leans back, closing his eyes, controlling his breaths to calm the fuck down, running his hand through his hair. Okay, maybe he’s more disappointed than angry.

“I’ll give you one last chance, baby girl,” he warns. “Where?”

“Just under your clothes—"

“We both know that it was not under my clothes, was it?” He growls, grabbing your shirt to force it off you. You sniffle, trying to hide his tits, so he slaps your hands away. He mocks, “Trying to hide now, hmm? When your cunt has been leaking and making a mess on our carpet? When you were fucking yourself with the curtains open for the whole world to see? You are such a fucking whore.”

“Jack, please,” you cry.

You are breaking and your eyes show it. Of course, you are. You’re not used to this. You’ve only ever experienced the joys of being his submissive. Only ever heard praises whispered in your ears. But he can see how much you want it. You are more curious than hurt. He knows. He understands you more than you do yourself.

Jack swears your pupils grow wider. Your lips—that are still so red from you biting it while you were masturbating—are parted as you pant. Your nipples are hard peaks, begging for him to touch for a smidge of relief, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think you deserve anything right now.

“Did you enjoy it at least?” He motions with his forefinger and middle curling, commanding you to move forward. You follow, your hands daring to run up his thighs. He lets you.

“Yes,” you say so quietly that it’s a whisper. “But I didn’t come.”

He’s still not hearing an apology. Is it so hard to say ‘Sorry, Jack, I broke my promise’ or ‘Sorry, Jack, I needed you and the dildo was the only thing I have here’ or just ‘Sorry, Jack’? Is that hard? You’re a clever girl, but why are you so dumb right now?

“I didn’t ask.” He unbuckles his belt, undoes his pants, exposing his rock-hard cock, totally distracting you. You are so simple when it comes to sex. “If I spank you, you’ll just come. If I tug your hair, you might. You are such a whore that you’ll just come even if I just pinch nipples right now.”

The way your breath hitches, your anticipation is heightening. Too hungry for whatever punishment he’ll give you, because you know it is coming. Maybe that’s why you’re not apologizing. You are taunting him. Fine. You’ve got him.

“You don’t get to come anymore.”

“What—”

He grabs you by your nape, pulling you so close to his cock. When you try to lick him, he gives your hair a tug. “Ah, ah. You’re not going to suck or lick”—you whimper a protest but he slaps his leaking cock on your lips—“or tease. You’re not going to do anything because I know how much of a whore you are that anything would just make you come. You don’t deserve to come or my kisses or cock on your needy little pussy. You’re not my good girl right now. Just a bad, bad girl.”

More tears escape your eyes. More whine from your lips. He doesn’t let you say another word, guiding his cock inside your mouth. He can feel your sob, can feel your remorse, but he chooses to ignore it. He pushes every aching inch of his cock down your throat. You can take all of him, he knows. Fuck, you feel so good. When you gulp, he almost comes, but he holds himself back. You don’t deserve his come.

“This is a punishment, baby. We’re going to stay like this,” he murmurs, smoothening down your hair, sliding his foot between your legs to keep you from making any unnecessary friction. “While I watch the replay of my game, hmm?”

You sniffle. You look so adorable with his cock in your mouth. So cute with your little tears. So cute when you dig your nails into his pants-covered thighs.

“You have your word,” he reminds you.

With no forcing hold over your head, you can pull away and tell him your safe word. This can stop—punishment or not. Just one word. But you don’t step back, and no word escapes you. Jack’s heart beats with excitement about learning this new side of you, rather, a new layer of you. 

When Jack’s sure that you won’t do or say anything, he turns on the TV with the remote conveniently on the couch. He starts the game. Although, he’s not really watching. He can’t just analyze the plays when you’re between his legs and his cock down your throat. He can’t. All his focus is aimed at you, despite his eyes are on the screen. All he hears is your soft breathing. All he feels is your tongue pressed on the underside of his cock, your chin putting the slightest pressure on his balls, your nails finally finding the skin of his thighs and digging into it. All he smells is your shampoo and conditioner—from when you are lying down on this couch—and your arousal. And in turn, all he tastes is your pussy just from the fucking smell. He’s losing it. It takes him everything to hold back and not fuck your throat.

Shamelessly, he prays for you to mutter your word. Maybe if you get overwhelmed, he can calm down while he eases you. What the fuck is he even saying? He doesn’t want you to say it. He wants you to want this as much as he does. He wants you to get used to a punishment, because he can’t just keep spoiling you.

You are such a delight to spoil.

Later.

Definitely later.

Still, he waits for you to pull away, but you never do. He swallows a groan. He can’t wait to spoil you after this. You’re taking this so well that his heart is aching from pride. He has forgiven you, even before the first period ends.

Who is he kidding?

He already forgave you the moment his name escaped your lips. Fine, not that. He was so pissed that you lied to him.

The moment you take in all of him, managing to breathe around him, controlling yourself not to such because he knows how thirsty you are for cum. That’s it. 

From time to time, Jack pats your head once before he slides his hand down your hair. It’s almost like he’s petting you. Every time, you sigh through your nose, air hitting his pelvis, making him fucking shudder.

He can’t help it. You feel so incredible that he’s losing it. Your tiny gulps are enough stimulation. Fuck. Fuck! So fucking good.

Your drool—that you fail to gulp down—drips from your lips. You shift on your knees. He knows your eyes are begging him to give your pillow or a knee pad. He can feel them on him, takes all of him not to cave. It hurts him not to care. To ignore you. He hates this. He’ll find another punishment that doesn’t hurt your pretty knees. Find another punishment that doesn’t make him feel guilty.

He doesn’t fucking understand it. He can bruise you, tie you up, fuck you with a dildo on a machine. He can do all of that with no issue so why is he hurting? Perhaps, he’s not cut out for this? Nope. Not that. He loves dominating you. He just needs to get you kneepads when he decides to do this again. Good idea. Perfect.

‘Good job,’ he mentally congratulates himself. One simply needs to boost his ego. Nothing’s weird about this. At all.

The second period ends.

You are sagging against him. Your jaw probably hurt. Jack finally looks down and sees how tired you look, how blush still stains your cheeks, how sweat beads on your skin. He pets your head again but instead of running his hand down your hair, he caresses your cheek then your jaw.

You sigh, looking so happy and satisfied with his touch.

“Fuck. Such a good girl,” he says, failing to stop the words, the truth. “My good girl.”  He praises, “My good little whore.”

You preen, your eyes shining with happiness and love. Any ache in Jack’s chest disappears. He didn’t lose you. Not one bit. He still has you. You still love him as he loves you. Fuck, he’s so lucky.

He's so weak. One look from you, he’s ready to pull you up and cuddle you. One look, and he has forgotten how he got angry in the first place. It feels so far away.

“I just don’t want you to be hurt if your curiosity gets the best of you,” he says. “I know you, baby girl.”

He can feel the shudder that wrecked your body. The slow blink you did shows your understanding. He grazes his knuckles over your cheekbones, swiping at the dried-up tear tracks, then over chin to smear your drool. Just a bit. Beautiful. How are you this beautiful?

The game ends with the Devils’ win.He needs to rewatch it again so he can truly analyze the plays. Not now though. Later.

Jack carefully slides his aching cock from your lips, hissing from the sensation, groaning at the sight of your saliva acts like a tether that connects him from your perfect mouth which only breaks when his pre-cum drips from his slit. He easily picks you up and settles you over his lap sideways. When you move to wipe away the mess on your chin, he stops you, kissing your pretty fingers. A slow and deliberate kiss on each of them. His eyes on yours. Then he grabs your nape, pulling you closer.

“Jack,” you whisper against his lips.

Not a whine. Just a gentle murmur of his name that sounds like a song that soothes his soul. Like an angel singing hymns of humanity. He loves it when you call him by his name.

He says your name in response, then he kisses you. Tongues feel and caress, tasting one another. He deepens the kiss to sooth any numbness that you may be feeling, yet he nips your lips here and there. He can’t help but trail kisses to your chin, licking away the mess, your saliva, your drool. It’s not much but he needs it.

He’s greedy for it.

He licks, licks, and licks, gulping in between.

Even your sweat that beads your skin.

His brain engraining your soft noises—your moans, sighs, and groans.

He needs everything of you.

He’ll die if he doesn’t.

“You did so well. I’m so proud,” he whispers again and again. He needs you to understand him. “My good girl.”

“Oh, Jack,” you breathe.

When his hand curls into your inner thigh, fingers feeling your wet pussy, teasing your folds and pressing on your clit with his thumb, you sob. When his two of his fingers dip into your pussy, your eyes roll up, hips grinding to seek more pleasure. He gives it to you. His other hand is on your hips, securing you to him, not letting you escape.

He curses when your hand wraps around his cock, giving him the same attention, matching his tempo. He rests his forehead against yours, breathing heavily for every tug. Fuck. So good. So fucking good.

It feels like eternity. Just you and him, bringing each other closer and closer to your undoing. Jack wants to keep you forever. He will keep you forever. He’ll make it happen. No matter what the cost. He can’t live without you anymore.

Can’t.

He fucking can’t.

You let out a squeal, hiding your face into his neck, your pussy quivers, clenching his fingers, as your orgasm consumes you. Your legs tremble, trapping his hand in between as if you’re scared that he’ll just leave you hanging. Jack will never. He rides your orgasm, teasing your clit over and over again until you are shaking your head, biting into his neck to stop him. He won’t stop.

The pain you’ve inflicted only sends him over the edge. He comes with his eyesight darkening. He fucking blacks out for a second, shuddering as you keep tugging and squeezing him. Your other hand grips his wrist as he brings you to another peak as he finally stops spurting cum on your thigh, your hips, your tummy, your breast. He made such a mess. On your fucking skin that he almost instantly goes hard again.

Both of you are a mess of sweat and cum.

It’s fucking perfect.

“I love you, baby,” he says, pulling out his hand from between your thighs.

“I love you too,” you respond, smiling against his skin.

Then you start to lick his fucking throat. Fucking hell.  Fuck. His. Life.

His sensitive cock is rock hard again.

“Say that I’m your good girl again, Jack,” you plead.

Shifting his head to the side so you can have more access on his skin, he nods, saying, “My good girl.”

Your satisfied moan seals your fate. He wraps his hand around your thigh and shifts you like you’re a weightless doll. He has your legs spread wide, your pussy leaking on his cock, dripping both arousal and your cum.

You pant as he pushes in the tip. Inch by inch. Until he’s seated inside you.

Until he starts fucking you while holding your hips to stop you from moving. Stop you from fucking him, when it’s his fucking time to do it to you.

You just need to take it.

˚｡⋆ ❀ ˖ Bonus: Your POV ˖ ❀ ⋆｡˚

You sigh, watching Jack settle on the floor beside the bed. He’s wearing nothing but sweatpants. He lays his head on your sweatpant-covered shin, pressing a kiss over the fabric. His hand carefully holds your foot before he starts massaging the underside of your foot. You relax even more. That feels good.

His hair is still wet from the shower—he took after your bath—while yours is already dried. He dried it. He did a lot. He gave you a whole-body massage, pressing kisses on your skin. He gave extra attention to your knees, clearly fussing over how long you’ve been on your knees without kneepads. They were sore before, but not too sore. The floor is carpeted for fuck’s sake, and he worried too much. Him fussing over you was cute, so you let him. Besides, he needs it. You saw how his worry ate at him, so you appeased him.

He may think that he’s the only one spoiling someone in this relationship. You are too. By letting him have his control. By letting him take and mark you. By letting him take care of you.

This is special for him.

And for you.

“Jack, come here,” you call, taking a towel you’ve prepared under the pillow. He peeks up at you, his blue eyes filled with satisfaction, before crawling up, wrapping himself over you. You start to dry his hair. “Sorry I went in the room.”

He sighs, nodding. “It’s okay, baby. Don’t do it again.”

“Yeah…maybe.” You smirk.

A spark burns in his eyes. “You won’t,” he growls, still surrendering to you drying his hair, head resting between your breasts now, taking a non-subtle inhale. He murmurs, “Smells so good.”

You ran a hand through his hair, nails grazing his scalp that has him humping your thighs. You taunt, “I’m not promising anything anymore.”

He’s so hard but he still glares at you for your non-promise.

“You can’t stop me—”

He cuts you off with a deep kiss. His kiss is rough and deep that he’s basically fucking your mouth. He’s telling you—without words, just the kiss—that you are walking on thin ice.

Fuck that.

He’ll just have to punish you again.

[frannyzooey]

Short Days, Long Nights: One Shot

Series Masterlist

Joel Miller x f!reader

Rating: E

A/N: I missed them, so here you go ❤ one million bajillion thanks to @bageldaddy for looking this over and for typing the words "do a crux check, I think it's here like five times". She was right, as she often is 😌

--

The brothers ride in silence, snow crunching under the hooves of their horses. Everything covered in a fresh blanket of white, they leave fresh tracks behind them as they make their way towards the gates. 

“You gonna tell me what your problem is?”

Joel glowers, his grip tightening on the reins. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Tommy smirks, a white cloud of heat puffing from his nose. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

A muscle in Joel’s jaw ticks, but he says nothing. He shifts in the saddle, his thighs squeezing to spur his horse on faster.

It’s fuckin’ cold, and his knees ache. 

“I think you scared ‘em,” Tommy says, flicking his chin towards the two riders behind them. The boys – new to patrol – give them ample space, their skinny frames swathed in coats in their seat in the saddle. “Just about tore their heads off every time they made a mistake.”

“They shouldn’t be makin’ em,” Joel replies easy. 

Tommy laughs. “Like you never made a mistake in your life.”

Joel shakes his head, squinting at the brightness of the fresh snow. Each night has brought a fresh few inches, and he wonders if the kids have been outside in it. He pictures them making snow men, building forts. The snowball fight they had last week with the neighbor kids comes to mind, and a warmth fills up inside of him. Snow wasn’t a thing for him when he was growing up – not in Texas – and he’s glad they get to experience it. 

Even if it’s cold as shit. 

He pictures the front window of the house, the warm glow it would cast across the snow as darkness falls. You in the kitchen, maybe, and the constant movement of the kids. The image invites him even from beyond the gates, and sighs. 

Tommy continues to poke, in the way that only little brothers can. 

“Oh, I get it. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

Joel frowns. “Since what?”

“Since you got some alone time. With your wife.”

Tommy’s eyes are bright with teasing, and Joel would normally rise to the occasion – but he doesn’t have it in him. Instead he gives his little brother a sidelong glance. 

Tommy chuckles. “I knew it.” 

“Hard with all the kids in the house all the time,” Joel grumbles. “Always underfoot, never giving us a moment’s peace.”

“Seems like every time you get a moment’s peace, you end up with another kid, brother. Maybe it’s a good thing.”

Joel shakes his head again, the edge of his mouth lifting for the first time in days. 

“It does, doesn’t it,” he says, and Tommy laughs. 

“Let me take those little monsters for you,” he offers. “Maria’s been wanting to see them anyhow, and then maybe you won’t walk around anymore lookin’ like you wanna fight anyone who steps in your path.”

Joel scoffs, though he doesn’t argue. 

The gates of the settlement come into view, the guard towers built along the top capped with mounds of snow. He pictures the bustle of people that will appear when the gates open – the mess hall, the stables, the familiar facade of the town he’s come to recognize as home. And somewhere, in all that, you.

His mind strays to the image of your face: your beautiful, soft smile, the warmth of your body that he’s missed at night. Weighted heat builds low in his hips, and he begins to thicken underneath his fly. 

“Goddamnit,” he mutters. 

It really has been too fucking long. 

“Tonight,” he says to Tommy, giving him a look. “Can you take ‘em tonight?”

Tommy grins.

–

Joel needs to see the little monsters first. 

He needs to listen to June’s endless chatter as she curls up next to him on the couch, wants to see Hank play with his trucks on the carpet, needs the weight of Dolly sleeping body on his chest. His lips brush her downy curls, and he relaxes into the cushions of the couch, surrounded by his children. 

“Yea, darlin’” to June, and “tell me more, bud” to Hank and murmurs of “hey, sleepy girl” to Dolly. 

His head tips back against the couch, his eyes closing for a second. 

“You gonna make it, old man?” you tease, tucking a sleeper into the backpack in front of you. A teddy next, a blanket following it. 

He turns his head to look at you, and his eyes slip down your body and back up again. He’s been half hard since the second he pressed a fleeting kiss to your mouth in greeting when he walked in the door.

“I’ll show you old man once these kids leave.”

Your movement halts for a split second, and the corner of his lips tip up as you start to pack faster.

–

You’re still tidying the kitchen when he gets back from Tommy’s. 

“I thought I would have more time,” you frown, scooping up the dinner plates to set them in the sink. He stands at your back, his hands curling around your hips to pull you close. His mouth brushes along the column of your neck, his beard tickling your skin. “I wanted to be upstairs, waiting for you. Assuming you’re still up for–”

He turns you, cutting off your sentence with the press of his mouth. 

It’s been so fucking long. So long since you’ve really kissed him, too long since you felt his strong grip, too long since you’ve done anything more than a peck here and there between the daily chaos of life. Patrol, the green house, your duties around town, the kids – too many nights have gone by with you falling asleep on the couch while he picks away at his guitar, or collapsing into bed together the second the kids turn in. 

You’ve missed him, and you can tell by the way he kisses you, he’s missed you as well. 

His deep kiss lingers until he breaks it, resting his forehead against yours. 

“Dance with me, honey.”

A smile curls at the edge of your lips. “There isn’t any music.” 

“Never stopped you before,” he replies, kissing the corner of your mouth, guiding your arms to wrap around his neck. 

Every time he mentions your time at the cabin, a sweet ache blooms in your chest. A time when it was just the two of you, nothing to exist on but the sustenance found in each other. A private, tender time, full of intimacy and closeness, of quiet peace in a world filled with anything but. It’s not like you miss it compared to the safety of Jackson, but…sometimes you do. 

You’re reminded of it in the mornings, with his warmth curled along your spine, his nose tucked into the nape of your neck. 

You’re reminded of it when you work alone in the garden, the kids down for their naps. 

And you’re reminded of it now, as he turns the two of you slowly in a room with no music. 

Drawing him in, you bring his mouth to yours. You lean into his sturdiness and breathe him in, your fingers slipping into the curls at the nape of his neck, and he sighs, melting under your touch. 

He tilts his head, deepening the kiss and his hands cup your cheeks, his fingertips brushing against the curve of your jaw. Shuffling his feet forward, he guides you towards the counter until the edge of it presses into the small of your back. His mouth moves with more intent, and the toe of his boot nudges your feet apart, making room for himself between your thighs. 

“Upstairs?” you mumble against his full mouth, and he shakes his head. 

“Right here.”

The husk in his voice makes your eyes flutter shut, an instant liquid heat pooling in the cradle of your hips. It intensifies when his hand takes your own and he slides it down his torso, your fingers brushing over his belt buckle. Lower still, and he wraps your fingers around the heft of his cock, clearly outlined through his jeans. 

His hips buck forward into your touch, and a soft moan breaks free of your throat. 

“You really did need it bad, huh?” you tease, a breathless thing dripping with your own want. 

“So bad, honey. So bad.”

His fingers work the button of your pants open, and you start doing the same to his belt buckle until he swats your hands away, and starts tugging at your pants and underwear. Kneeling, he drags them over the curve of your ass and down your legs, his mouth laving hot kisses along the front of your thighs as he helps you step out of the fabric. 

“Joel, your knees. Baby, get off the floor.”

He pays you no mind, his hands forcing you up onto the counter. Spreading your thighs, he shifts closer until his mouth hovers right over where you need him the most: your gleaming, soaked center. 

“Fuck my knees,’ he groans, leaning in for a kiss. 

Your head tips back against the cabinet with a small thud, your fingers pushing through his hair. You flex your hold, the strands silky underneath the palm of your hand, and he lets out a muffled groan into your center, smearing his tongue flat up the center. He slides it over the pearl of your clit, circling the bud a few times as his fingers dig into the meat of your thighs. He laps at your clit, taps it with the tip of his tongue, slides his tongue around and then over it, over it, over it and when you start to rock your hips against his mouth, he latches onto it with a gentle suck. 

“Oh God,” you breathe, your hooded gaze fixed on the crown of his dark curls. His brow furrows in concentration and pleasure, his whiskers catching the delicate skin on your inner thighs and when he presses himself even closer to bury the bottom half of his face, you arch your hips up to meet him. His hand slides up your side in a weighty drag and palms your breast in a full handed hold, giving it a squeeze as he sucks harder. Focusing on the pebbled peak he feels underneath your shirt, his thumb drags over the bud and you feel it between your legs, in time with the steady licks of his tongue. 

Your thighs start to tremble against his cheeks, and his hand curls around the bottom of your knee, pushing your leg up to rest your heel on the counter. The position spreads you wide open for him, something he takes advantage of to slip two thick fingers into your soaked core. They fit in snug to the knuckle; your other leg crooked over his shoulder with a tense hold as he starts to stroke a spot deep inside. His full touch tucks tight against your walls, the pressure paired with the wet glide of his tongue tips you over the edge of your release, your moan joining the sound of his. 

His knees crack when he stands, and his lips slide against yours. His mustache and chin are damp with you, your taste in his kiss and you deepen it, winding your legs around the back of his thighs to pull him closer. He palms your bare ass, grinding his denim covered crotch against your slick curls. His movements get faster, more desperate, and then he pulls back, his gaze dropping down to watch as you roll your hips into his. 

“If you don’t stop, honey, I’m gonna fuck you right here on this counter.”

His words are a low threat, that rumbles from his chest, his eyes never leaving the crux of your thighs. 

“Do it.” 

Your own gaze is fixed on the bulge behind his fly; your cunt an empty, needy thing. You know just how well he fits, just how good it feels when he slides inside. Snug and thick and filling and your eyes close, a frown pulling at your delicate features. 

“Please.”

“If I start here, I won’t be able to stop. I wanna lay you out.” He leans forward, crowding you against the cabinets. “I wanna fuck you too hard for this counter top. I want you too much.”

The words make your stomach drop with need, and you grab his face to pull him in for a frantic, consuming kiss before pushing him back so you can slide off the counter. You can feel him right on your heels as you race up the stairs, a laugh bursting from you when he slaps your ass on the way up. He rushes you through the bedroom door, his hands already grabbing at your remaining clothes. 

“Come on, mama. Take that shirt off for me.”

“You first,” you reply, tugging at his blue button down. The snaps pop open in a straight line down his chest, and he tugs it off, flinging it onto the floor. You strip with him: first your top, then your bra. Sliding onto the bed naked, you watch him peel his jeans down his legs. His briefs go next, and your thighs part to make room for him as he crawls on the bed to join you. 

Your bodies are a tangle of limbs lying sideways across the bed, his mouth presses against yours the same time his hand dives down to line himself up. The crown of his cock slips right in, and his hips drive forward, forcing you open around him. 

“Joel,” you moan, your eyes closing tight. 

In the cabin, sunlight pouring through the window across your writhing body, his shoulders between your thighs and his face buried at the crux. 

“You feel so fuckin’ good. So good,” he breathes, rocking his hips against yours. 

In the woods, the bark of a tree rhythmically scraping against your back, the hot pant of his breath across your skin. 

His low groans blend with your softer, higher pitch ones as your fingers dig into the meat of his ass to force him deeper. 

Clothing scattered on the bank; shadows scattered across the rounds of your bare shoulders as you ride him, taking him inside you again, and again. 

Heady need blooms behind your belly button, your toes curling as your heels dig into the back of his thighs, and every rock of his hips against yours is a filling stroke, a smooth slide forward and back. Whole is what you feel – pressed underneath the weight of his body, the heat of his skin flush with yours, his cock filling every last open inch that belongs to him. 

Threading your fingers through the gray at his temple, the open, pleading expression on your face tells him everything he needs to know. 

“You gonna come again, honey?”

You nod frantically, the roll of your hips picking up pace. Your nipples tighten against his chest, the hair there scraping each sensitive peak. He braces himself above you, his fists curling into the bedding as he fucks you harder, deeper. 

A shudder slips through his solid frame as he watches you come underneath him, and his hips stutter, a deep, reluctant groan rumbling from his chest as he pulls out. Sitting back on his heels, his fist works his cock with an audible, slick pump. 

“Where do you want it this time?”

It’s a question he asks now. Jackson has birth control methods, but with scarce supplies, they aren’t something you can always get your hands on. Condoms are more readily available, but you hate the thought of a barrier between the two of you. 

Instead, you push your breasts together in a silent invitation, and shift closer to him, positioning his cock right above your chest. The view of his broad chest and strong shoulders has you biting your lip, his arm flexing as he pumps his thick cock filling your vision and your thighs squeeze shut, even though you are more than satisfied. 

“Play with ‘em, honey,” he begs, his deep voice straining. 

You do, and with one of his hands wrapped around his cock and the other gripped white around the top of the headboard, he comes in spurts across your chest. You keep playing, smearing the milky pools across the tops of your breasts, circling the tight buds of your nipples until they are glistening peaks as he works every last drop out of his cock, and sated, his frame finally relaxes. 

“Jesus,” he sighs, dropping down on the bed to lay next to you. 

You roll onto your side, your skin damp with his release. His pulse is a steady drum underneath his skin, his cheeks are flush with heat, and the gray along the curve of his jaw stands out even more in the dim lighting of the bedroom. He’s older now, the physical signs more visible. Lines that surround his eyes, more gray threaded throughout his hair — but his hunger is the same. Still the same needy, firm grip love that you’re used to; his calloused hands sliding over your skin. Your gaze slips down his strong profile, lingering on his parted lips and you shift closer to him, tucking yourself closer.

He cracks an eye open to look at you, a dimple appearing in his cheek when he grins. Rolling onto his side, he faces you, slinging the weight of his arm over your waist. 

Your fingers brush along his collarbone, and for the first time in days, you feel yourself fully relax. 

You know patrol is part of the many pieces keeping this community together, but you’ll never get used to being separated, not fully. You’re half of a whole when he’s gone; half of your heart venturing out into the dangerous world. You’re tense from the second he heads out to the stables until the moment you see him through the front door. 

With him finally home, you breathe him in, curling closer. Right where you belong. 

His thumb brushes along your cheekbone, and you smile. 

“You’re so beautiful, honey.” His nose skims along yours, his lips brushing over your cheek. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too. It’s hard to sleep without you here.”

The kiss he gives you is slower this time, more lush. His mouth molds against yours, savoring your familiar taste and you swallow his soft groan down, holding him close. He starts to fade, his kisses slowing into lingering, soft presses. 

Rain sliding against the window, flashes of lightning illuminating his profile. 

His mouth stops, his eyes fluttering shut. He sleeps the way you never saw him sleep on the trail, the way he was never afforded before the cabin either. The way he probably couldn’t while on patrol, either. 

A book resting open and face down on his chest, his breathing steady and deep. 

A bone-deep sleep, sated and safe. 

Still, when your thumb skates across his full bottom lip, his mouth purses – an unconscious kiss, even from the depths of his slumber. His hand flexes, smoothing over your skin. 

Reaching for the light, you click it off, and pull the quilt over the two of you. 

Another worn quilt, another bedroom. 

Tucking your face into the space between his chin and chest, you close your eyes.

[taintandviolent]

Rien ; Marquis de Gramont x Reader

summary: You get a new job as stablehand at the luxurious palace of Marquis de Gramont, and the job is everything you thought it be. Marquis, however, isn't.

word count & w a r n i n g s: 4.7K | French dialogue (translations provided), smut with a sprinkling of plot, fingering, female reader, dirty talk, degradation (name calling, spanking), humiliation, abuse of power / power play, manipulation, Vincent being an absolute asshole (because he is one), abuse of power, brief food play, uhhhh - I think that's it.

a/n: deepest apologies for any errors in the French; I studied it in briefly in college and speak like a child. I tried to use google translate as little as possible, so most of this is just... painfully scraped from the confines of my mind. banners by @/saradika and @/strangergraphics!

↓ full fic under cut! ↓ / ao3 link here! / I don’t have a taglist anymore, but please turn on post notifications if you’d like to be notified of future fics!

Exactly two weeks after you’d started working for him, you���d laid eyes on the elusive Marquis. Most of the time, you were ordered by other staff to ready and bring out a specific horse before returning to your duties, never interacting with the infamous owner. However, one afternoon, he, the Marquis, walked through the stables himself. You had been brushing Bellefleur, a beautiful mare with the temperament of an angel, when you heard his voice echoing through the paddocks. He was speaking angrily about a man whom you didn’t know, discussing matters that didn’t concern you. You peeked up over the edge of the stable as he approached. 

It had been audacious to speak to him at all, considering, but something in your gut moved your limbs without thinking. You took two large steps backwards, moving your body into the opening of the stable. 

“Bonjour, monsieur.” (Good morning, sir.) 

He stopped walking, hands in his pockets. He seemed to consider that he’d just been spoken to, but finally asked what your name was. You told him, albeit somewhat shyly, unsure of whether or not this would result in you losing your job. 

There was no reply, however before continuing on down the long pathway, his heavy, lascivious gaze lingered on your body for far too long to be considered accidental. You had looked down at your own image, wondering what it was that he saw. The tightness of your uniform, perhaps. To a man’s gaze, the way your breasts filled your blouse, the way your trousers hugged your soft thighs and rounded out over the curve of your rear could be cause for a persistent gaze.  

The visits to the paddocks became more frequent after that. 

Some days, he was very cordial, responding curtly, but acknowledging you all the same. He went to you directly to retrieve the horses, fulfilling you with a false sense of importance and power. Other days, he ignored you altogether, dismissing your existence as easily as hay on the ground. So, why had you been developing a lust for the man? With so few interactions and none of them tempting in nature, it was almost embarrassing. 

Today is not one of the days where he ignores you.  

“Rien,” he growls from behind you. (Nothing.) You hadn’t even heard him come in, nor had you heard his approaching footsteps. You turn abruptly to face him and like usual, are staggered by the way he looks. He’s dressed immaculately, this time, wearing a light grey suit. 

“Rien?” you ask, confused. The brush drifts away from Eclair’s neck as your hand falls to your side. “Monsieur?” (Sir?)

“That’s what you are. You are nothing. As much as they are nothing to me, you are nothing.” He gestured dismissively, you assumed, to the other stablehands.  

Your brows knit together, visibly offended. “I…” 

You blink, stopping yourself from continuing any further. Though the Marquis spoke perfect English, you’d been told that he preferred his employees to speak in French when addressing him. Something to do with respect. 

He continues. “And yet…” 

Feeling the need to swallow, you wet your throat and find your words. “J-je ne suis pas sûr de comprendre, monsieur… Je…” (I’m not sure I understand, sir.) 

You swallow again, and look up into his piercing green eyes. “Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire?”  (What do you mean?)

He grabs your chin hard between his thumb and forefinger, pulling it up towards him. The harshness of the action startles you and the brush goes clattering to the cement floor, echoing throughout the paddocks. The closeness, though laced with hostility, has you throbbing between your legs. 

“You don’t understand what I mean?” His French accent is heavy, dripping like cream from his tongue. 

You shake your head, wincing as his fingers dig deeper into your jawline. “Non, j-je suis désolée.” (No, I-I’m sorry.)

“I know it’s difficult for you to express yourself in my native tongue, ma petite.” (My little one.)  You furrow your brows; he was so insulting without even trying. So insulting, in fact, that you can’t even focus on the charming little nickname he threw in. Wanting to prove him wrong, you clench your jaw as you take a step back, weakly attempting to pull yourself from his grasp. Your father had taught you French from the time you were a baby, you spoke it very well, and you – 

“Look at you,” he starts, his eyes sweeping over every feature on your face. “Tending to my horses every day. Cleaning their shit from the ground on which they walk. Pauvre petite chose…” (Poor little thing) 

As he speaks, you’re at a loss for words, unsure of how to proceed, how to answer him. Your ego is bruised and your jaw is sure to follow; the harder you try to wrench your face from his grip, the harder that grip presses into you, digging into the bone beneath the flesh. He bends down, putting his mouth dangerously close to your face, close enough to feel the heat that radiates between you two.

“J’en ne pas stupide.” (I’m not stupid.) He snips, looking down at you with unbridled hostility. 

He repeats the words against the shell of your ear, which sends a vicious shiver down your spine. Your cunt twinges with heat again, and the shuddering doesn’t stop – as though you’ve been out in the cold, freezing from a winter’s chill, your body quivers deep within your core.

“Je sais...” (I know) You acknowledge feebly. A blush crawls up the column of your neck. 

“I see the way in which you look at me. It is not a secret, you know?” 

He takes a single step forward, closing in the distance between your bodies. With no indication, no warning, his free hand cups your cunt outside of your pants, fingers stretching down between your legs. You inhale to gasp, to ask him what he’s doing, but the hand that holds your jaw slips fluidly over your mouth, silencing it. You gaze up into his eyes, searching them for an explanation, but he’s too busy to look at you, to give you any sort of comfort. Instead, he’s locked on the mound between your thighs, watching as his own fingers explore over the fabric, already feeling the damp heat that penetrates the fabric.

At this taste of what’s beneath, Vincent’s long, lithe fingers then make quick work of your trousers, opening the front of them and deftly slipping inside. You freeze, knowing that your body is about to betray you. Violently. Cruelly. His digits dig past the warmth of your folds, slipping past your quickly swelling clit, delving deeper. The brief contact is enough to send you toppling into his arms, but somehow, you stay upright and instead, tighten your fists into fleshy wads. The pads of his middle and ring finger smear at your entrance, searching for the answer to a question he didn’t ask. He taps your leaking slit a few times with a lazy curiosity. Immediately, you can feel your slick stringing from your cunt, spreading easily over your folds.

“You’re wet,” he hisses. “Whore.” 

Somehow, you feel the word before you hear it. It lands like a crushing slap to the face, and your cunt responds by clenching hard, leaking more out into Vincent’s waiting fingers. They twitch against you, pressing to your entrance and slipping inside just enough to make your knees buckle. 

He walks you back against the wood, sandwiching you between Eclair and the door. You strain against his grip again, flitting your gaze towards the horse whose ears twitch but other than that small movement, doesn’t seem bothered by the altercation happening next to him. Almost embarrassed, you whimper softly and look back to the Marquis; his gaze is on you now, watching every miniscule flicker of emotion. Your brows knit together as you shake your head in disbelief, unsure of what is happening. 

“Hm?” He prods your entrance with his middle finger, inserting it to the first joint. Your mind buzzes, blanking on words – in any language. It slips in further with no resistance and your lids flutter helplessly, as the sensations take control of your body. Searching, scrambling for stability, you flatten your palms against the cool, smooth wood of the stable. A bridle hangs down next to your pinky finger, and you have half a mind to wrap it tightly around your hand.

Crooking his finger slightly, he pumps it slowly in and out of your wet cunt. “You like that, no?”

His slow ministrations have you reeling, shivering in front of him. Silently, you wonder what would happen if you said yes. You open your eyes to his, and swallow. Up until now, you stood on your tiptoes, trying to escape his lewd actions, but now, you let your weight down, pushing his finger in all the way to the knuckle. His finger curls, hitting a deeper spot within you that has your toes curling within your boots. Your eyes roll back in your head at this, feeling overwhelmed. Weakly and awkwardly, you stumble over your next words, mumbling them clumsily into his fingers. “… qu’est-ce que tu fais…?” (What are you doing?)

He chuckles through his nose – at what, you don’t know – but as quickly as his hand has slipped in, it disappears, leaving you to pitch forward slightly into his long torso. He examines his finger briefly, which glistens with your arousal. With no regard for your own pleasure, he shoulders you off, and retracts his other hand from your mouth, allowing your breath to tumble out. Wordlessly, he reaches into his pocket and retrieves a white handkerchief, hastily wiping his fingers on it before tucking it back into the confines of his slacks. 

You collapse against the wood once more, your chest heaving with laboured, confused exhalations. This time, Eclair shifts away from you slightly, and huffs out a breath. The Marquis watches you, the hints of a smirk upon his shapely, seductive lips. Though you were still fully dressed, you felt unnervingly exposed. Humiliated, even. You reach forward to button yourself back up, doing your best not to fumble with the clasps.

“Follow me.”

Before you can blink, he’s already left the stable. You hurriedly exit, and grip the handle of the door, sliding it shut before securing the latch. The Marquis is already briskly walking away, his long strides carrying him farther and farther away from you, fully confident that you’re following him. As quietly as possible, you trot up behind him, not wanting to irritate him by being slow. The warm smell of wood shavings fills your nostrils as you run, but the second you’re behind him, you’re assaulted with the rich, expensive scent of his cologne. You inhale it deeper, wanting it to stain your lungs. 

As you follow him through the grounds, you take in your surroundings, head swinging to and fro to gobble up the visuals of unknown territory. You only ever got to see the stables and the fields behind it, which was necessary for riding and walking the horses. Naturally, your curiosity is peaked when he leads you both inside the towering, luxurious palace he calls home. Down opulent hall after opulent hall, with attendants opening each and every door that he comes to, you finally make it to your destination. 

The room is massive, and seems to glitter with all the gold details. You’ve never been to Versailles, but you assume the grandeur is similar. It’s sparse in furniture, save for a red velvet couch near the entrance. At the end of the room, sits a large table, adorned with every cake and pastry you could dream of; tiny crystal dishes of raspberries and strawberries, plates of cakes and cookies. They’re all picturesque, and the air is cloying, heavy with the scent of sugars and fragrant fruits. 

He beckons you with two fingers – a specific choice. A violent chill runs down your spine, feeling like there’s ice water cascading down the length of it. Once you’re standing next to him, looking at the dishes in front of you, you feel the weight of his aura, his existence. A few moments ago, you were merely a stablehand. Now, you were something else – you knew not what yet – standing inside the palace, a place where very few had the privilege of being. The tension between you two weighs heavy on your shoulders. 

Abruptly, the Marquis reaches over to pinch your mouth open, squeezing hard until your jaws pop apart. You wince, but succumb to his touch, albeit a little too easily. While watching intently, he brings a cream puff to your mouth, setting it carefully on your tongue. Instincts kick in, and you close your mouth, chewing carefully as cream oozes out from between the layers of fine puff pastry, and you swallow it down. 

He clocks your satisfied reaction, and smirks. “Delicious, isn’t it?” 

You nod apprehensively. It is delicious, of course, though your thoughts are tangled in the undisclosed eroticism of the moment, and the sickeningly unobvious reason why he’s brought you here. He picks up a macaron and carefully takes a bite, holding his other hand underneath his mouth to catch any crumbs, though none fall. 

“Comment dit-on… gourmand de sucreries?” (How do you say… greedy for sweets?)

“Sweet tooth,” you breathe, suspecting he already knew the answer. “You have a sweet tooth.”

“Mmm. I do.” The sound is syrupy within his throat. 

Surely, he hasn’t brought you here to enjoy some pastries. You swallow again, and muster up the courage to ask him: “Que voulez-vous de moi?” (What do you want from me?)

You brace for the oncoming response, half expecting him to say rien again. Instead, he finishes the macaron, and turns to you again, leaning forward. He reaches up to brush a stray lock of hair from your cheek, combing it gently behind your ear, and hums, his fingers lingering on the softness of your jaw. His voice is hushed as he tilts his head down to look at you.

“Tout. Je veux tout.” (Everything. I want everything.) 

With your faces inches apart, the Marquis de Gramont captures your mouth in a searing kiss, one that oozes dominance, staking his claim in your core. His tongue forces its way into your mouth, prodding past your lips and teeth until it finds your own wet muscle. Instinctively, you kiss him back, but your frazzled nerves inhibit any true passion. Your lust is clouded by uncertainness, tainting the otherwise intoxicating experience at hand. His hand flies to the nape of your neck where he pulls you closer, deeper. You taste his essence and raspberry-flavored remnants of the macaron, and you swallow into the kiss, your lids fluttering helplessly. But no…

You jerk your head back away from him. Your tongue sweeps out over your bottom lip, cleaning up the mutual saliva that has spread across it. 

“J'en suis pas une pute.” (I’m not a whore.) 

With his hand still on your neck, he laughs, the sound vibrating in his throat. “You will be.” 

And again, his mouth is on yours, hungrily claiming it as though he deserved it. Which, in his mind, you knew, he did. He deserved everything he wanted, and perhaps, that was the essence of why you were here – he wanted you, so he’d have you. 

He continues to kiss you in such a way that leaves you gasping for air – literally – and every time you do, his mouth finds your neck, your collarbone, your ear. Refusing to remove his lips from your body, he’s ravenous, devouring you like he would the sweets on the table. 

“Monsieur,” you plead, babbling senselessly. “Monsieur,… why?” 

“Because,” he hums into the crook of your neck. “Ahh, you weren’t listening, were you?” He clicks his tongue in disappointment before continuing. “As I said before, I see the way in which you look at me, watch me, desire me.” He presses a long, tender kiss just below your ear, and his hand ghosts up over your stomach, coming to rest on the fullness of your breast. “And because, I want it.”  

He’s unbuttoning your blouse before you can stop him. Not that you’d want to, anyway; you’d been dreaming about this for weeks. As he works to expose your chest to him, carefully slipping each  button from its slit, he murmurs into your collarbone, the feeling sending another convulsive shiver down your back.

“Tell me… Do you value your position?”

You nod hurriedly, hoping to convince him. A single, long finger ghosts your shoulder, trailing down your arm. “Then you agree to be my little slut, hm? For me to use whenever I desire, oui?” (Yes?)

While the realization hits you like a ton of bricks, you gulp down your words. There’s no sense in protesting to preserve your feeble morals; not when you want him the way you do, and not with your job at stake. He reaches around your back, undoing the clasp of the bra. Your tits fall free then, and his large comes to cup one of them, kneading the supple, pliant flesh while your nipple grazes the smooth skin of his palm. You whimper, your hand jerking up to grip his bicep. The stimulation entices your arousal further, warmth pooling between your legs again. He worsens your condition by rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pulling a pathetic sounding mewl from your lips. You roll your eyes to the ceiling, silently cursing him. 

His hands move away from your breast, up to your face, where roughly, he prods your mouth with his fingers, examining your teeth and tongue. Much like he would a horse, you realize. The sensation is terrifying, but erotic and you grip his arm harder. Wordlessly, he reaches behind him to the table filled with decadence, and with two fingers again, scoops up a healthy dollop of cream frosting from atop a cake. 

“Suck them,” he growls.

It’s a command, not a suggestion, and you obey it, drawing them into your mouth tentatively. Your lips – bruised and swollen from his assaulting kisses – tighten, closing around his digits, all while maintaining eye contact with him. As though you were starved for it, you suck gently, while your tongue begins to swipe back and forth, removing all traces of the cream. You weren’t an idiot – this was a test. A test which you pass with flying colours apparently, because the Marquis actually smiles as he withdraws his fingers from the warm confines of your mouth. 

Heat roils in your core as he disconnects from you, and you can do nothing but watch as he pushes the delicate dishes to the left, haphazardly clearing a space on the table. Your eyes sweep back and forth, watching as the cakes and pastries crowd each other. He doesn’t seem to care, single-mindedly only thinking of what he’s about to do to you. He turns back to you, his green eyes burning with arousal. Again, the Marquis unbuttons your pants, this time, aggressively pulling down the zip. He gestures to the table with a nod of his head. He doesn’t have to tell you what to do – you know what he wants. 

In silence, you take your place in front of the table, and hinge your body at the waist to bend over the ornate surface. Cruelly, he yanks your pants over the plush curve of your ass, exposing you to him. There is another rustle of fabric behind you as the Marquis frees his own aching arousal from his slacks. You hear him hiss through his teeth; you presume as he takes his dick into his hand. Your body jolts forward as you feel the pads of his fingers prod tease your leaking slit, smearing your arousal through your folds. 

His hand stretches over your ass, taking a fist full of it before drifting down. He reaches your cunt, admiring her from behind. With a hitched breath, he pulls apart your folds with the pad of his thumb, revealing your aching, wet center. 

“C’est parfait… mm.” (It’s perfect…)

Praise? From him? You swallow the lump in your throat.  

He shuffles behind you, bringing his body closer. That’s when you feel it; the searing hot head of his cock pushing insistently against your clenching slit. You whine and press your thighs tightly together, a desperate attempt to alleviate the building pressure. Futile, because the moment he notices this, he kicks your legs apart with the toe of his polished shoe. 

“Dis-moi que tu veux que je te baise.” (Tell me you want me to fuck you.) 

“Please…. Please.” 

A hand comes down upon your ass cheek, the sound of it echoing throughout the room like a gunshot. The pain sears through your nervous system as the skin swells up, blooming like a flower with the imprint of his hand. “You can do better than that!” 

You try again, this time in French. You knew he was condescending about you speaking French, but there was a deep rooted need to prove that you could. “B-baise-moi… baise-moi, s’il te plait, monsieur.” (Fuck me, fuck me please monsieur.)

He chuckles, and you just know he’s shaking his head, perhaps calling you The American in his mind. He presses the heavy tip deeper into your folds, smearing it down over your swelling clit and combining both your fluids. Your hips jerk instinctively, and your brain stutters as you try to speak. The arousal that leaked from your core had become too much. Much to your dismay, it was too difficult to think in another language and you whined desperately. He lifts his hand high and hardly pauses before he brings it down for another series of sharp smacks to your ass. You make a fist around nothing, wincing as the skin starts to flush an erotic, rosy hue. With each one, your cunt aches, confused by the melange of pain and pleasure that coursed through your body.

“Count them for me.”

You do. Your weak and tiny voice counts the resounding strikes, feeling the heat spread across your skin like fire. “One… t-two… three… four… five - ah! Six!”

He interrupts you suddenly to ask: “You know my name, non?” 

The assumption spoke volumes. You nod against the table, relieved that the assault on your ass had stopped. 

“Use it.” 

Almost uncertain, you murmur his name. “V-Vincent… please fuck me, I want your cock so bad. I have since… since I started working for you. Please.” 

A guttural sound vibrated his throat. It made sense; everyone called him Marquis. Marquis de Gramont. Monsieur. But no one called him by his birth name, and that, had become erotic to him, hearing it tumble off your lips in a desperate, wanton tone. 

He was rotten, cruel and terrible, and in any other situation, your last words would’ve been a lie. But here, they weren’t and you knew it. Despite all your trepidation, you knew they rang true. His cockhead lines up to your entrance, prodding it hungrily, and he leans his hips into yours. With a quirk jerk, he forces himself inside, breaching your aching heat. He bottoms out, sinking in until the flesh of his torso is pressed against your ass. The feeling is all consuming, immediately, filling you to the brim. 

Your mouth opens in a silent scream, unable to vocalize the staggering sensations that rip through your body as he splits you open. He finds a bullying pace quickly, fucking you hard against the table. Your hips bump into the ornately trimmed edge, no doubt bruising them. After a few deep thrusts, he pauses, withdrawing his cock to the tip, only to slam it all the way back in with a deep, strained groan. 

“Fuck,” you whine, your cheek smashed against the table. “Fuck, please.” 

Vincent pays you no mind, your plea serving only as fuel to continue his assault on your sopping cunt. His hands grip your hips tight, pulling them back towards him with each thrust. The room is filled with the lewd melody of skin slapping against skin, fine china clattering against each other, and the mixture of his grunts, moans and your desperate, pathetic whines. You can’t help them, try as you might, because the vicious way in which he fucks into you rocks your whole body.  

“Dis-moi,” he grunts, his accent heavy with arousal. “...dis-moi comment ma bite se sent bien en toi.” (Tell me how good my cock feels inside you.) 

You understand his words, but you’ll be damned if you can formulate so much as a yes in French at this point. Your gaze grows hazy, lids heavy as his dick pounds into you. “It feels… it’s so fucking good, Vincent! Fuck! Harder. Harder!”

His hand comes crashing down on your ass again with a thwack! You cry out, hot tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. 

“Don’t…” He breathes, struggling with his own words. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.” 

Spoiled, you think. Spoiled brat. But, regardless of him not wanting to be told what to do, his hunger for your trumps his indignancy, because his hips buck into you with a newfound power, slamming his body against yours with abandon. The head of his cock bumps into your cervix over and over again, hammering it. You feel the coil in your stomach wind tighter around itself, a telltale pressure building deep within. Your walls clench around him warningly. 

As if he realizes that he’s just done exactly what you told him to – or perhaps he feels your cunt’s desperate tugging –  the Marquis pulls his cock from your wet slit with a shlick and roughly grips you at the shoulder, spinning you around. With no effort, he hoists you up into his arm, his cock bobbing below you. Your ass bumps against the table as he sits you down, dragging you to the edge of the table. He looks down at your cunt, already swollen and red, and brings his fingers to it, slipping them inside. He then brings them to his mouth, sucking your combined arousals from his fingers. You watch, enrapt. 

“Remember what you said to me earlier, about not being a whore?” 

You nodded, panting. 

“Do you still feel that way?” 

You hesitate, but ultimately, shake your head. You’re a slut for him, a slut for the way he fucks you, uses you. The concept alone is enough to make you come, but you don’t, eagerly waiting for his cock again. He exhales through his nose, smirking. “I didn’t think so.” 

With his hands bearing down on your hips, he sheaths himself inside of you again, burying himself. The new angle brings a strangled cry from your lips, echoing in the vastness of the room. It doesn’t take long for you to come back to the high of your orgasm, having been edged before. 

“Regarde-moi.” (Look at me.) 

You do. Your half-lidded gaze connects with his intense one, watching him. You reach up, allowing one hand to grip his shoulder, digging your nails into the fibers of his fine suit jacket, while the other lays atop the nape of his neck, feeling the damp, warm skin there. His fingers blindly find your thigh, slipping underneath it to pull it up to your chest, pulling your ankle atop one of his shoulders.

“Uhh fuck–!” he groans, shivering at the new depth he reaches. “Fuck!” 

All at once, his hips start bucking into you with a frenzied rage. You feel his muscles tighten against your thigh just before his cock jerks inside you, twitching as the first wave of his orgasm hits him. White, hot ropes of cum glaze your insides, coating you in pearlescence. The feeling draws you over the edge, and your cunt flutters around his dick, coating it in your own searing arousal. 

For a moment, he stays there, resting his sweaty forehead against your own. Your leg falls heavily back against the table, rattling the dishes next to you. The sound rouses him out of his post-coital stupor, and with a deep sigh, he slowly withdraws his softening cock from you, pulling a gush of his release out with it. You, completely fucked out, could do nothing but sit there, arms quivering as you hold yourself upright.

 He brought his fingers to your entrance, swiping up some of the excess cum dripping out of you, pushing it back inside your spasming cunt. "Hold this inside, ma petite. As a reminder.”

You shudder, feeling his finger enter your swollen cunt once more. You look down, watching as he makes sure not a drop is wasted. 

“Rien, huh?” you ask, with a biting tone.

“Oui, rien.” (Yes, nothing.)

[startheskelaton]

Super cliche but Disney inspired Nightsparkblaster?

Beauty and the beast with Sparkplug and Nightflyer as Belle and Adam. Nightflyer was cursed to be in his predacon alt mode by Soundblaster on accident. Now they live in an old castle trying to fix Night.

Uhh, Slip and Arachnid are the candle and clock. Mrs. Potts is Soundwave and Chip are Rumble and Frenzy. Spark's ex boyfriend is Gaston, and Megs is Bell's dad. Instead of being an inventor, they don't like him because he was previously a warlord.

Spark ends up at the castle because she heard legends and wants to prove herself to the king and queen (Op and Elita) as a scout. Maybe she stays because she finds out what happened to Night and wants to help him and Sound?

I’ve gotten more then one ask about Sparkplug and her boys resembling a beauty and the beast type story. So fuck it, it’s the weekend, let’s draw something fun. Love the ideas but I changed it a little bit, sorry!!

I image here Sparkplug is the daughter of a wartime soldier turned normal medic…. One that’s not exactly liked as he did some shady stuff in the war. Sparkplug spends her days reading about the world and taking care of her father as he tends to forget his own health. She also deals with the advances of the town hunter, Landlot, sadly she has resided to her fate to having to marry him one day as Landlot’s fortune may help her family stay alive.

One day, Megatron is called to do work in a town far away. He heads off much to Sparkplug’s dismay, as he hopes to show her that she won’t have to marry in order to support them. While traveling he comes across a haunting castle, belonging to a kingdom that fell to ruin many years ago. While seeking temporary refuge there, he is captured by the monsters that lurk there.

When her father’s horse comes home without him, Sparkplug fallows the tracks to find out what happened. When she finds him, he’s locked in a dungeon, his arm amputated as punishment for trespassing. This is when she comes face to face with The Nightflyer, a being that seemingly has control over a horrible beast. To save her father, Sparkplug trades her life for his, and the Nightflyer takes her up on the offer.

Sparkplug is now the maid of the castle, her job is to take care of the people residing there. This comes as a shock to her as there seemed to be no one there, until the furniture and decorations started talking. Those who lived in the castle were turned into objects, alive yet restricting in their autonomy, from gaurds and servants… to the princess that once called this place home.

More in prt:2

[chesterfieldblossom]

"AMERICAN WEDDING"

Arthur Morgan x Reader (1k words) "Well you can have my mustang / That's all I've got in my name"

SUMMARY | Arthur and you had been in a discreet relationship, but everyone on the camp knew your commitment. But of course, he wanted to make a bit more official. NOTES | It's really short, like just and idea I had on my notes when I was listening American Wedding by Frank Ocean. But I hope y'all enjoy. Also, dividers by @cafekitsune WARNINGS/TAGS | Oneshot, fluff, wedding proposal, f!reader RATING | Teen

"Well, you can have my Mustang." He drawled, voice low and quiet, as though he didn’t want to disturb the night. "That's all I got in my name."

You glanced up at him, the moonlight casting faint shadows across his face, highlighting the lines of weariness that came with the life he led. His eyes, usually hard and distant, were softer now, vulnerable even. Arthur Morgan was not a man who gave easily, and yet, here he was, offering you what little he had—his horse, his loyalty, his heart.

You had thought about marriage before—when you were younger, when life seemed simpler and oblivious. But the image had always been different: a small church, family gathered, maybe even a white dress. Not this—lying on a dusty cot, surrounded by the wilderness, with Arthur Morgan of all people. But that was the thing about life, wasn’t it? It never turned out quite like you imagined.

"Arthur..." You whispered, unsure of how to respond. The weight of his words hung in the air, heavy with meaning. He wasn’t just talking about his Mustang. This was Arthur’s way of saying everything—his past, his future, his soul. You could feel his uncertainty, the tension in the way his fingers hovered slightly above you bare arm, as if he was waiting for you to make a move, to push him away, to tell him no.

But you didn’t want to. God, you would be out of your damn mind if you say no.

You reached up, placing your hand on his, stilling his gentle caress. His hand was large, warm, and rough from years of hard work. It grounded you, made you feel safe in this world of chaos. "I don’t need a Mustang, Arthur." You murmured, thumb tracing circles on the back of his hand. "I need you."

His breath hitched almost imperceptibly, and for a moment, no one spoke. You could feel his heartbeat, strong and steady, a reminder of the man beneath the outlaw. You could see the boy in he for the first time, a glimpse of your children. You wondered if he ever imagined this for himself, or if he thought he was too far gone for something like love, like commitment.

"I ain’t got much to offer." he finally said, voice hushed, like he was scared the words might break something between you. "Ain’t never been good at... well, any of this. You know that."

You smiled softly, shifting closer to him. "You’re enough, Arthur. Just you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted."

He didn’t speak for a while, just stared at you, as if he were trying to make sense of how someone could want him—just him. The world had not been kind to Arthur Morgan, and in many ways, it had hardened him. But beneath the roughness, the gruff words and guarded glances, there was a man who felt deeply, who cared more than he let on.

As if making a decision, Arthur suddenly shifted beside you, reaching into the pocket of his worn coat. You watched, curious, as he fumbled for a moment before pulling something out—a small, delicate ring. The band was thin, silver, and simple, with no extravagant jewels, but to you, it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

He held it out to you, almost sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "Picked it up in town a while back." he admitted, eyes flicking up to meet yours. "Didn’t know if you’d... well, if you’d want it. Ain’t much, but it’s real silver."

Your breath caught in your throat, your heart swelling in your chest. The fact that Arthur had gone out of his way to find a ring, something so traditional, so symbolic, meant more than words could express. You could see the way he was looking at you, searching for some kind of approval, some sign that this was right.

"Arthur..." You whispered, the voice breaking slightly. "It’s beautiful."

Without another word, he took your left hand in his, his touch gentle but sure. Slowly, almost reverently, he slid the ring onto your finger. It fit snugly, as though it had been made for you, and the cool metal sent a shiver through your skin. The moment felt timeless, as if you were the only two people in the world, surrounded by the quiet wilderness and the faint glow of the stars.

"There." he said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Now it’s official, I guess."

You couldn’t help but smile, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes. This was not the wedding you had once imagined, but in every way that mattered, it was better. Arthur Morgan was yours, and you was his, bound not by law or tradition, but by something deeper—something unbreakable.

You leaned forward, pressing your forehead against his, the noses brushing, breaths mingling in the cool night air. "I love you, Arthur Morgan." You whispered, the voice thick with emotion. "More than anything."

He closed his eyes, his arms wrapping around you as he pulled you close, his lips pressing softly to your temple. "I love you too." he murmured, the words coming out rough, like they were foreign to him. But they were real, and that’s all that mattered.

As you rested your head against his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing, you looked down at the ring now glinting on your finger. It was simple, yes, but it was yours. Arthur leaned forward, lifting your chin to gave you a kiss. You happily returned, your bodies shifting closer as he embrace you and the lips moved together.

"But Jesus Christ don't break my heart." He whispered. The warm breath brushed on your lips, making you want to kiss him again.

"This wedding ring won't ever wipe off." You promised to him, whispering back.

[bluebutterflytattooed]

Loser Lesbian Ellie x Mean Girl Reader

CHAPTER FIVE

HEY warnings for this chapter:

tw: mentions of drug abuse, masturbation (ellie)

It’s been almost a week since you were at Ellie’s house. You haven’t gone back yet, the work on the film has mostly been done just at school. You guys have civil conversations littered with laughing and smiling, and you’ve made barely any snide remarks about her at all since that afternoon at her house. 

Ellie is a big fan of these brand new, friendly interactions. So much so that she fears her middle school crush on you is coming back. She can’t stop thinking about you. Oh, I have this class with Y/N. I wonder what Y/N’s eating for lunch? Wow, I can’t believe Y/N was in my room. That thought in particular is her favorite one. It was floating around in her head constantly when she was at home. That you had been laying on the carpet in this very room, drinking a milk shake and listening to her talk about an apocalypse caused by a mushroom fungus. Occasionally, she’ll catch a little bit of your sweet cherry scent, even if it’s not really there, and it sends her spiraling. 

Yes. The middle school crush she had on you is returning, is what she ultimately decides. She knows that Dina will scream ‘I told you so!’ as soon as she updates her, and that Riley will scoff and advise her against it. ‘She’s cruel’ she will tell her. 

And of course, because Ellie has been so incredibly down bad for you before, she will ignore Riley. The crush got so bad in middle school that Ellie would draw comics of you. The two of you as Spider-Man (her) and the girl (you) that she had to save. Or maybe you both were detectives, or you were a princess and she was a guard. In Sixth Grade, she drew you both as dinosaurs. This is information she will NEVER reveal to anybody. Not a soul. 

This time, the crush is so bad that you’re on Ellie’s mind as she takes a shower after a day full of hard farm work. She had lugged around bales of hay all day, herding her dad’s flock of sheep while riding on her horse. It had left her bones sore and her muscles burning. 

If Y/N was here, she could give me a massage, she thinks and giggles to herself. 

But now that she’s in the shower, her thoughts have wandered away from her aching body and turned towards you. 

They’re not normal thoughts, they’re the kind that flush her face and make the space between her legs ache as much as her bones do. She tries to think of something else but… it just won’t work. 

And that’s how she ends up leaning against the tiled shower wall, whining and gasping pitifully into her hand as she uses her other hand to fuck herself messily, quickly, almost desperately. 

No, not almost. She is completely and totally desperate.

Why won’t you and your sharp words, your perfect smile, your stunning features, you, leave her head? 

Not that she’s complaining too much. It’s kind of thrilling to have images of you and soundtracks of your voice floating around in her mind. Those soundtracks play on a loop as she pounds two of her fingers into her dripping cunt, hot water from the showerhead soaking her flushed skin. A cacophony of whimpers and little pleading words fall from her parted lips.

“Ah~ nghh, Y/N, please,” It’s as if Ellie’s begging for you, and you’re not even there, no matter how much she wishes you were. You’ve bullied her for years; why would she be this needy for you?

Part of her knows that it’s because you’re the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen in her life, and the other part of her knows that it’s because the teasing has made her even more obsessed with you. Why? That’s a question for a time when she’s not about to come.

She starts imagining that you’re there with her, your manicured hands trailing over her skin, your lips pressed against her toned stomach that she wishes you know about, water dripping down your body as she stares down at you, sharp, teasing words coming from your mouth. She makes choked little moaning sounds as flashes of you, your face, your tits, your legs, fly through her head like a horney slideshow, the heat in her core twisting a building up until it’s unbearable-

And then she comes to the thought of her gorgeous high school bully, whining loudly and shaking as she soaks her already-wet fingers, her arousal dripping down her wrist. 

And she has no shame about it.

After recovering from her orgasm, Ellie sighs heavily, washing the shampoo out of her hair which is what she intended to do before she got a little distracted. Her shower routine is not complex. It consists of soap and shampoo. She’s imagined what yours is like before, all the steps you probably go through in order to smell amazing every day. The sweetness that follows you around haunts her mind. She wants to bottle whatever that smell is. 

She turns off the shower, stepping out and toweling her skin dry before putting her pajamas on. She just knows that if you saw the pajamas, you would laugh so hard that you’d cry. She has on her favorite dinosaur themed boxers and an old t-shirt that she got when she went on a school trip with the Marching Band. Basically, if you saw her in it, you’d be absolutely brutal with teasing her. 

Little does she know, you actually have begun to find her interesting and find some of her nerdy hobbies and interests endearing. 

She’d probably melt if she knew that. 

She ends up spending the rest of the night watching a truly terrible horror movie with her adoptive dad, Joel, a gruff man on the outside, but a teddy bear on the inside. Despite the movie and the laughter filling the living room, Ellie always found her mind wondering what you were up to. 

————————————————————————

You were not having as good of a night as Ellie was, to put it simply. Your mom had showed back up at the house, which is never fun for you. She’d been on a bender for about a week, having visited her dealer and buying all the shit she could come up with. Now that she’s gotten over the high, she’s at a low. You practically have to baby sit her. In instances like these, you barely go to school since you have to spend all day making sure your mom stays alive, tending to her every need even if it’s just her being demanding.

You almost text Ellie to tell her and the rest of your film group that you’ll miss some work days, but they don’t care about you like that. They’ll be fine without me, you tell yourself as you stir some honey into chamomile tea for your mom. The house is still quiet.  That’s a pro of your mother no longer being coked up, she’s too tired to say or do anything. 

As you take the tea to your mom, your thoughts fade to Ellie, wanting to know what she’s up to right now (fucking herself in the shower, that’s what she’s doing). Probably playing some conflict game in her mess of a room. You set the tea on the TV dinner table next to your mom, who lies on the couch. 

“Here, ma, this is for you.” You tell her softly. She looks up at you with bloodshot eyes and smiles, showcasing her dirty teeth. You grimace a bit, out of sympathy for her and also frustration that you’re acting like the parent here. You’re only eighteen. 

“Thanks sweet girl. You got a boyfriend yet?” She always asks this. You don't have the heart or confidence to tell her No, I’ll never have a boyfriend. I’m not into boys like that. You’re scared those words will never leave your mouth. 

Part of your jealousy towards Ellie is that she’s genuine. She knows who she is, and she doesn’t hide it. She’s been out as gay since eighth grade, which is when you started tormenting her. Because you knew that she’s proud in a way you never will be. It makes you feel sick to your stomach. 

Just like you guessed would happen, you miss school for almost a full week. You don’t text the film group to let them know that you won’t be in class. All you do is make meals for your mother, write little poems in your room, hang out with Cherry, and do Youtube pilates workouts. It’s oddly exhausting, being home so much. A few of your friends reach out to see if you’re busy, to which you say ‘can’t, some family stuff came up’. They don’t respond after that. 

On the sixth day of your confinement, a Saturday, you’re watching a Nikola’s Pilates video, dressed in pink foldover leggings and a black t-shirt, when your phone buzzes at your side. With a groan, you relax from the stretch you were in and check to see which friend texted this time with a party invitation. But when you see the screen, your heart stops. Or it starts beating faster; it’s hard to tell. Something is going on with your heart either way. Lit up on the phone screen is a text from Ellie, who’s listed in your phone as ‘Ellie 🥸’. Your heart beats even faster, or maybe even slower, as you read the text. 

Ellie 🥸: hey y/n

Ellie 🥸: do you maybe want to come over?

——————————————————————————

hi my loves! UGHHH i’m loving all the support, you guys are so sweet. what did we think of the slightly spicy chapter? i hope it wasn’t weirdly written or anything haha😭.

sorry this is coming out late at night, i had a huge math assignment and had to photograph stuff for yearbook.

-lots of love, blue 🦋

tag list: @vahnilla @elliesngirl @naniiiii12 @liztreez @eriiwaiii2 @elliesgffrfr @nymanas @yashirawr

[niccolites]

green cliffs: - lessons in mortality. chapter four

highlander!soap x fem!reader. cw dubcon and period typical violence. read on ao3 here

There is a large exhale of wind as night turns into morning. You roll around in unfamiliar sheets, plotting how to escape when you are next given the opportunity.

Johnny’s father had been a saving grace. Although he accepted that you and Johnny were already wed, he had wanted it officialised at a wedding for everyone to see before he could allow you and Johnny to stay in the same bedroom together. You were granted to stay in Johnny’s chamber while Johnny would take one of the many guest rooms. With how you are woken up, you imagine that it hadn’t made much of a difference, your innocence already compromised anyway.

You were used to the wake up from Ian, the pinch of his fingers on your cheek as he was already half telling you what needed done - feed the chickens, brush down the horses, check on the stock at the back of the cupboards. You wake up, half hopeful, cheek already smarting as if in preparation of him. Johnny blinks down at you, half-lidded. Beautiful but terrible.

“I’ll be back soon, angel,” he murmurs into the tilt of your neck, leaving a slick kiss there that has you shuddering. You swallow down the urge to snap at him to get off of you, letting him do as he wishes for the moment. Your compliance earns you a hand down your side, Johnny huffing as he rounds his palm over your hip.

He lifts his head, suddenly, gazes at you for a moment. You blink up at him, the image of docility, which has him squinting. You stay still, let him cup your jaw in the broad of his hand. His hair is mussed up from sleep, fluffy and loose in the morning. His beard is only slightly thicker than it had been when you had first met, a little darker.

His pupils dilate then pinch, taking in the expressions of your face. “Ah willnae be gone long,” he says, serious in a way that sends a different kind of shake through you. A warning. You nod as best you can, your chin digging into his palm. He squints for another moment. His thumb digs into the soft give beneath the bolt of your jaw. Just before you can crack under his hard stare, it dissipates and he dips his head to steal another kiss from you. “Wait fer me,” he bids you, and leaves.

You watch from the window, as he takes his horse from Mrs Duncan’s nephew - the stablemaster. You sit at the window, holding your chin like a phantom ache that Johnny has left behind. You can see his head, no bigger than your nail, tilt back as if seeking you out in the window. You doubt he can see you but he stares for a moment, hand near his clavicle as if in prayer before he bows his head and Cerberus starts to move.

You sit and wait, watching as he starts the journey towards the small village just outside of the Keep. He gets smaller and smaller, barely a dot in your vision and then not even that.

You jump up and stride over to Johnny’s desk. The clothes that you had left yesterday are folded neatly on the ornate chair. You had managed to salvage your stays from your dress before it had been spirited away by Mrs Duncan at some point while you were away from Johnny’s room. Your new dress is a softer cotton, a light blue skirt and a thick, dark woolen shawl that you tie around your clavicle. The bag filled with what little things you had managed to bring with you sits in the chair, ready to be picked up and returned to where they belong.

You do your stays up slowly, knotting the string up your chest. Johnny has barely been gone for part of an hour. Although you would be on foot, you didn’t want to chance him spotting you while you were still so near to the Keep.

In the dark of Johnny’s room, the smell of him buried in his sheets even though Mrs Duncan had replaced them, you had planned. If Johnny was less eager, maybe you could have waited for a better opportunity to attempt to run away, but you had felt time slip from endless into mere hours, minutes. 

You don’t know where the closest priest is, likely in that small village just outside the Keep, but Johnny hadn’t seemed certain. His father had been discussing how the vicar may have been summoned to another village to perform burial rites just the other week, and so may still be making that slow journey back.

It is a risk, stealing away and going towards the village, with the chance that the first stable you approached, Johnny would appear. But, it was one that you would have to take. It would be too noticeable if you were to take one of the horses at the Keep’s stable, and you didn’t know how long the journey home would take on foot.

You tidy the bed, as if smoothing away any evidence that you had ever been there in the first place. You half-expect someone to catch you in the corridor, stop you and ask where you’re going. The few maids that pass you may give you a second glance but they keep quiet, scurrying like mice to wherever they need to go.

You exit out into the foreground, feel the sun beat down on your face, familiar, like an old friend. Long days out in the field, tilling until blisters form on your palms. Your skin itches with the sudden craving for it, and you set out, nose like a bloodhound. You don’t belong here, trapped in a room with Johnny and soft dresses. You need dirt under your hands, you didn’t realise until it was taken from you.

You cross the open ground of the Keep, people milling around as they go about their day. You reach the stone entrance, hesitate for half a moment before stepping from gravel into grass. Muscles tense as you wait for something to happen, for someone to stop you. The cacophony of noise behind you doesn’t suddenly stop, no one seems to take much notice.

You take another step then another, wanting to run, to get as much distance between you and the Keep as possible. You know you shouldn’t, though. You’re still in view of the Keep, and you don’t know if anyone is watching you too closely, but if they are, that may send them chasing after you. Better to walk, worst case you can always say that you were looking for Johnny, lovesick in the preparation of your nuptials, barely able to stand a morning away from him.

You imagine that Johnny will move on swiftly. Maybe rage when he first finds you gone, if you were trying to flatter yourself. However, another maiden would be in distress, and Johnny would swoop in and the story would repeat itself. You had half a mind to ask if you were the first woman that Johnny had brought home in such a manner, but had decided to leave it be. If you weren’t, you were likely to be replaced soon in any case.

It feels good to stretch your legs, stretching out your back as you go. You reckon that Ian will have something to say about your newfound laziness, a harsh wake-up required to get back to the realities of farm living.

You try to keep your mind occupied, but you drift back to thoughts of Johnny. You can vividly feel the press of his nose into your temple. His hands on your skin, rough and skirting, always shifting against you, as if trying to touch all of you at once. The dark hair across his chest, the thick press of muscle against his skin. You imagine another woman in his room, letting him kiss her the same way that he had with you. There is a bitter taste in the back of your throat but you ignore it. Only you can taste it after all.

Within the hour you have crossed the open grounds and are on the cusp of the village. It had been bustling when you had originally passed through, crowds of people at the market, selling and buying from stalls. Now, everything is still, a gust of wind blowing between cottages and whistling in a way that has the hair on the back of your neck rising.

The warmth of the sun seems trapped on the rooftops, unable to reach you on the ground. You hesitate, grass under your feet turning to dirt that has been packed in after being walked over so many times. There could be another village that you could visit, that you could beg a horse from, or even just directions and walk. But, you barely know the area, and another village could be a day away, and you could be heading in the completely wrong direction.

You shuffle, uncertain, and turn to look back at Dundardy Keep. Easily a mile away now, but you imagine that you can see the shadows of people in all of the windows. Watching you, keeping an eye in Johnny’s absence. You think you can see a figure, near the entrance of the Keep, and you wonder if you are being followed after all.

There’s nothing to be done for it. You step into the village, and make your way forward.

The loose fabric on a stall shifts against the wooden plank of its counter, wriggling like a hand in your direction. You stand in what seems to be the centre of the village, a loose circle, surrounded with abandoned stalls and a few cottages before they span down different paths into more homes.

You can hear the faintest sound, a murmur in one of the cottages. The lively scene that had welcomed Johnny is long gone, everyone gone into hiding. Nothing had been said about the village last night. Just that the local vicar may be in another village. Contrasted with the liveliness of the Keep, you think that you may have stepped onto another country, one with an absence of residents.

You head down one of the paths, a few minutes later, emerging onto the other side of the village. There is a stable here, with a few horses, and the sight of them nosing at some hay, as normal as can be, fills you with a sense of relief. Here is reality, as welcome as a bowl of warm soup.

You stretch your hand to one of the mares, and she lets you pet down her nose, nickering at you softly. You worry your lip looking over your shoulder. The village is in hiding, no one is around to help you out. If you cannot get directions, at least it would be less exhausting to be heading in the wrong direction if you found this out on the saddle.

It feels wrong to steal, especially in the shadow of a Laird. Your own village were tenants, but Ian had always dealt with the rent, always spoken with the men who were sent out to collect. This close by to the Keep, you imagine the crime is tenfold, and the punishment even steeper.

You feel owed this, though. Dragged out here by Johnny, you feel that you deserve to help yourself out. Besides, once you were back in your home, you could return, ride one of your own horses and guide this one home. Johnny would likely be back in the Keep in that distant future, another bride on his arm. Hopefully, this one would be a bit more excited by the prospect.

You unclip the latch of the stable door, the horses huffing as you step inside. There are saddles hitched to the back wooden wall and you consider taking one as well before you deny yourself. It is one thing to steal a horse (borrow, you remind yourself), but it is another to just help yourself while you’re at it.

You do take some reins. You had ridden bareback on a horse before, but you hadn’t without reins, and you didn’t want to find out just now if you had the gift for it. You come back over to the mare who butts her head into your chest, affectionate in a way that has you giggling before you hush yourself.

You secure the reins in place before you toss them over the length of her neck, about to turn to guide her out of the stall when you feel the heat of a body behind you.

“Helping yourself out, eh?” A voice hisses, then there are hands on your upper arms, digging into the flesh. You don’t recognise it, and that makes your blood cool before it heats again, hot panic that almost spooks the horses when the man drags you out and you kick out, frightened.

You are tossed into the ground, a familiar experience that has you gasping. If the voice wasn’t Scottish, you might think that the last few days hadn’t happened and you were back on your farm.

You attempt to scramble backwards but the man is too quick. You are grabbed by your hair and dragged upwards. The man starts walking and you have no choice but to keep your pace with him, a hand on his wrist that is in your hair, as if to lessen the pain stinging your scalp. He’s muttering to himself, calling you a dirty thief, how you will seek penance. With the vicar seemingly gone, you wonder what that penance will look like.

“Where are you taking me?” you ask, and regret it when he yanks on your hair to shut you up.

“Shut yer thievin’ mouth,” the man hisses at you. He’s much older than you, balding and worn looking. You think of those Englishmen who had treated you like a plaything. Only that third man had looked at you with true hate, the way that this man does. It cows you, forces you to lower your eye as best as you can.

You are brought back through those empty paths that you had walked down, and brought to the chapel near the side of town, where your captor kicks the door in and throws you inside before slamming the doors shut again. It’s quiet here, here is where the sunlight had been trapped, filtering in through the weak windows and caught in the pews.

You rub at your scalp, gingerly, and get yourself up, looking up the aisle to look at the pulpit at the end. This is likely where the Sunday sermon is read.

Ian was always more religious than you were. He always recited his sermons before bed, whereas you had only ever believed in God when you thought He may smite you.

You sit on the pew next to you and look over that confessional booth. Johnny may be a sinner, but he clearly believed if the reason he hadn’t fully taken your innocence was any type of evidence. You wonder if he had ever been in that confessional booth. Wonder if there was enough time in the world for him to confess his wrong doing to you. Or maybe it was all overshadowed by his saviourism.

You are bought with Englishmen blood. You worry your hands in your lap, wringing your fingers together. Wonder if Johnny will be back in time to watch his father’s people take your hand for thieving.

The doors swing open again after a few minutes, and you expect to see the man who brought you here, and he is at the front. He also seems to have brought the entire village with him, streams of unfamiliar faces all peering through the doorway to glare at you.

Half-hysterical, you wonder if they really are going to take your hand after all.

//

An hour later, they still have not taken your hand, but you wonder if they may do even worse than that. This is no longer a chapel, no longer a church. This is a courtroom, an impromptu hanging of the witch. You had thought that your crime was attempting to steal a horse, but instead it was disrupting their peace. One of the village’s sons had died, and everyone had been in mourning, waiting for the vicar to come back to read the burial rites again, just as he was doing for another village.

You don’t dare say a word, let them discuss your crime amongst themselves. You don’t even know how the boy had died, if it had been an accident, or an illness. You know that you have done wrong in attempting to take on their horses, even as justified as you had felt at the time. Out of some kind of penance, you decide to let them do as they wish, and then hopefully you can continue your plan of escape. Ian will welcome you back, one-handed or not.

The weeping mother casts a hateful look at you, as if you had been the reason her son had died in the first place. You squirm beneath her gaze, hot shame curdling in your stomach like an old friend. You had been brought to the front of the congregation, stood in front of the pulpit. A sad mimic of a Sunday sermon, in which you are preached to instead.

It’s a mob, even as they play sensible. Listing your crimes, but you hear the creep of mania in everyone’s mutterings. A child is dead, and no one is to blame. These people want someone to rip apart, and you have given them half a reason. You can hear them starting to talk themselves into a hanging, perhaps even throwing you down the local river.

“There’s nothing to be done for thieves,” the man who caught you demands, addressing the room. “Take a hand, and they’ll steal with the other!” He throws his arms out in gesture to you, damning you.

There’s a murmur of agreement, every casting you a distrustful look as if you could be stealing again as they speak. You try to stand as meekly as you can, but it seems to make things worse, if possible.

Everyone is speaking over each other, demanding justice, but you don’t think they even know for what. The doors open but barely anyone notices, and in walks Mrs Duncan’s nephew. He takes in the sight of the crowd and catches sight of you. You wonder if maybe he will speak in your defence, if he’ll tell anyone that Johnny will be expecting you back in his room in the keep, and if you aren’t there, but rather dangling from a rope, then he may be more than a little upset.

He says nothing, but gives you a long look before he stays in the doorway, foot holding it open. Shoulder against the frame as he watches the room. No one gives him a second glance, too caught up in their own rabble.

You stand there, and let them yell at each other, deciding your fate. Only stirring when you are grabbed again, and spun around. You are facing the pulpit the wrong way now, back to the crowd. You only have a moment to wonder what it is that they are planning to do, before your hands are braced on the box, and someone must rear their hand back and the strike of a whip slices down your back.

Even through the wool covering and the fabric of your dress and shift, it is a sharp sting that slices into your skin. You shriek, try to dart away, or turn around, but there are hands on your wrists, holding you to the stand and the whip cracks against your back again.

You feel each leather tongue of it lick its sting on your back, quickly following with an agony that settles into the muscle and has you arching as if to get away from it. You think about the man in your village, how his back had been carved into, flesh ripped open as they did this on his bare back. You cannot even imagine, even as a lesser version happens to you. An extra step of pain, like a new colour that hasn’t been invented yet.

You can hear them chanting for someone to rip open the back of your dress, they want to see the whip slice down into the bone. They want blood, want it to cleanse you. The heat of a body  at your side, fingers digging into the back of your dress as if to make this reality. The rip of fabric, the cheer of the crowd as the untouched skin of your back is exposed, ready for the kill.

Everything is stopped with a bellow at the door. You know it’s Johnny, and relief sags in your knees before a different type of fear takes its place. “What the fuck is goin’ on here?” Johnny shouts, and he must be shoving people out of the way if the scuffle you hear is any indication.

The hands on your wrists are gone. You turn around to catch sight of Johnny, cracking his fist across the face of the man with the whip. The two men who had been holding you in place seem to be trying to get past as they see what their future has in store. You see them back away, stumbling into a pew and freezing as they watch Johnny rear his hand back again.

You blink tears out of your eyes and watch as most of the village floods out of the chapel, some staying and watching in horror. Johnny has the man who whipped you flat on his back, Johnny’s fist crushing into the delicate skin of his face over and over again, until there is nothing recognizable about him.

The sound of sobbing jolts you back to yourself, as you realise it is not your own. “Johnny - Johnny stop it!” You shout, falling forward and catching Johnny’s hand as he rears back to swing again. He shakes you off, forcing you back and into a pew which shrieks as it scrapes against stone. That sound seems to shake Johnny somewhat out of it, and he puffs, trying to catch his breath.

“Get him out of here,” he growls, forcing himself up and leaving the man on the ground. The man gurgles a little from what may be his mouth, blood frothing a little. You can’t look away from it, horrified. The justice for those Englishmen had been death and there had been something kind in that. This man doesn’t seem able to breathe, his nose crushed and flattened.

A couple of villagers scoop him up and cart him out, scuffling as they try to move as quickly as they can. The chapel is quiet besides the sound of breathing when the door finally swings shut at last.

Johnny stares at you, face still. You expect him to start on you next, maybe grab you and shake you around some. It’s frightening, how he just watches you, a faint twitch in his eye. The terrible urge to apologise sits in your throat but you swallow it down. You feel like you have been caught doing something wrong, even though you were just trying to get home.

“Vicar Jamie,” Johnny finally says, voice raw. His white shirt is stained in blood again, shifting down his chest and exposing the hair that grows there. You remember the bath from yesterday and flush, turning your head to who he is speaking to in order to distract your mind. A small, stout man, very haggard looking but dressed in Catholic finery stands near the doorway.

“Johnny, my boy, let us reconvene on this tomorrow, perhaps, give us some time to clean ourselves up,” the vicar tries to interject, but Johnny turns on him with such a veracity that has him shrinking.

“Now,” is all Johnny snaps out, mouth pulled back in a snarl that shows all of his teeth. His right hand drips red, a warning in itself.

The vicar nods, fumbles with his hands for a moment before he makes his way to the front of the chapel, neatly arcing around the smear of blood next to Johnny’s feet.

Johnny’s gaze returns to you, hot on your face. You hold your dress up on your chest, feel the cold air hit your back that has you shivering. His gaze holds no pity for you, and after a moment you glare right back at him.

The vicar shifts the stand that you had been shackled to, to the side and takes its place, avoiding your eye. Mrs Duncan’s nephew, who had stood at the door, takes a seat in the askew pew, face still as he watches you. A witness you realise, and a kick like a startled hare almost sends you tearing down the aisle.

Johnny’s hand on your upper arm catches you before you can seriously begin to run, yanks you into place.

A moment taken out of a play. You and Johnny, side by side. Your back exposed out of your ripped dress, a scared vicar who won’t look you in the face and a witness to your humiliation. Blood, cooling on the stone a step behind you, coating Johnny’s hands and his clothes.

You lean too far out of Johnny’s hold and you feel the tightening of his fist and you return to your place.

It's a sad affair, the vicar stumbling over his words as he binds the two of you together. Johnny is a barely controlled rage next to you, you can feel the shake of his fingers on your arm, squeezing and letting go, over and over. You don’t even have the official binding ceremony, the fabric that should tie your wrists together, the prick of blood. The vicar pauses as if to consider this, but quickly skirts past this as well. Likely, too much blood for a wedding ceremony already.

The vicar has barely finished before Johnny is snapping at him to get out. It’s a quick escape, a puff of air in your ear as he darts past you, Mrs Duncan’s nephew following shortly behind. The door snaps shut, fate sealed.

“What are you doing here?” Johnny asks, hot air huffing out of his mouth into your face.

You keep quiet, silenced in the face of his true anger. Before you had argued, snapped at Johnny, here is the first instance of genuine fear you have felt because of him. The anger he has that led to the murder of men who had hurt you, perhaps pointed at yourself for the first time. You wonder if he’s going to wrap his hands around your throat, squeeze like he seems to want to. There is a strange sensation of vulnerability, knowing your back is exposed even though it is hidden from Johnny’s view.

His hands come up and you flinch, missing the growl of frustration that comes out of him as they settle on your shoulders and wrestle you forward into your chest. “Why did they do this to you?” he asks, palms against your collarbone. The wrest of control, firmly in his hands.

You can’t look him in the eye, settle your eye-line on his clavicle again. The smooth skin, hidden in the dip of his throat. The itch from that horse ride - a lifetime ago - reawakens and you lift your hand, curl your finger in there. Feel the vibration as he grunts, feel the dip of his harsh swallow. Your name calls your attention. You look up, his eyes are dark, mad, even. You give into his tyranny. “I was trying to take a horse,” you admit. His nostrils flare, anger cracking across his face and you just barely stop yourself from flinching back from it. “I’m sorry,” you add, pathetic. Escape plan ruined before it even really started, you have nothing left to be prideful about.

He shudders, lowering his head to yours, the gulf of space now swallowed up with his proximity. You let out a meek sound when his forehead hits against yours, like he wants the bone to touch. “An’ Ah was out, findin’ us a priest to marry us, and you were tryin’ tae sneak out while m’back was turned,” he hisses out, hands clenching on your collarbone again, muscle and bone grinding against each other. You blink up at him, resigned to your fate. You felt the bite of teeth days ago, and had spent all of this time trying to hide from it. But, the stench of blood sticks and you must now reckon with it.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. Feel all of it, the drag of emotions as they sweep through. The mare out in the stables had been a lifeline and when you were dragged away, you felt it like the loss of Ian all over again. Leaving him behind had been one thing, but every attempt to get back has been a lesson in humility since.

You are a human, in the wraps of terror left by a god. Swallowing a cry that lingers in the back of your throat like a sickness, you hesitantly tilt your head back and nudge your nose against Johnny’s. He freezes, hands going still. A breath, shared between the two of you. Here is that smack of flesh after the fall, a day late, but now it registers. It was likely even before he woke you up with his mouth on the back of your neck. A lion lying with its mouth open, you were halfway down his gullet before you even noticed where you were.

Your husband now, you think, half-crazed, before you inhale his breath and press your mouth hesitantly to his. It’s clumsy, you only half know what you’re doing but he presses forward with a hunger that almost has you reeling back again. Johnny is a man to be offered an inch and takes a mile, his hands on the back of your head, pressing you closer to him even as he leans in.

You only half know how to kiss him, but you barely get a chance to learn before he is pressing your mouth open with his. Barely a moment to gasp in a breath before his tongue is against yours, slick and invasive.

You stumble back, still holding your dress up with your hands before you stumble into a pew. He pulls back for a moment and you barely manage his name before he’s picking you up and thudding down to his knees, dragging you down with him.

The cold stone sends a wave of cold through you that has you keening away from it and into the warmth of Johnny’s chest. He lets go of your head and it thuds against the ground, his arms worming around your back, skating past the ripped open seams of your dress and onto the bare skin of your back. He moans, deep and wanton into the curve of your chin, gives you a quick nip there before he drops his head into the crook of your neck.

“I’ve been so patient, wanted it tae be right between us, angel, didnae want to ruin us,” he groans, hands greedy on the bare skin of your back. “But, it’s alright now, I’ve done it right, jus’ let me -”

He barely seems able to finish a thought, tugging your dress down, dragging your torn slip and underskirts with it. He barely manages, as unwilling as he is to get off of you as he does it, so they end up pooled around your waist, nipples pebbling in the cold. He coos down at your chest, pinching one of your nipples meanly until you hiccup.

“Johnny, can’t we go back to the Keep, I won’t run again, I swear,” you start, feeling overwhelmed tears start to prick in your eyes. You don’t want it to be like this, on the cold floor of an unfamiliar parish. You aren’t sure of the technicalities of what comes next, your father hadn’t been forthcoming when he was alive, and your brother refused to say, always deeming it unladylike to ask. You knew it was something frightening, and heard some of the women describe their husbands as beasts during the act. You know how the animals look as they do it, saw the rutting of a stallion in a mare once, how she had shrieked as she was mounted.

“You were the one tae drag yerself out here,” Johnny points out, half-muttering to himself. He gnaws on your collarbone before he gives you a sucking kiss there. “Ye’ve made yer bed, sweetheart.”

He shifts himself up onto his knees and lifts your ankles up, yanks your skirts and dress down, tossing them over his shoulder with barely a glance. You’ve been bare in front of him before, not even a day ago, but this feels different. He looms over you, eyes dark as they seem to take in every inch of you. The stone beneath your back is cold, leaving gooseflesh all over you as it steals your heat.

He splits your legs across his lap and you jump, hand trying to reach down to cover the apex of your thighs but he catches your wrists in one of his hands, transfixed with his gaze between your legs. “There she is, oh angel, she’s so beautiful,” he murmurs, a thumb reaching down to pull the seam of you further apart, something that has you squirming in shame. “Knew ye would have such a sweet cunt, so pretty.”

“Don’t look down there, it’s unseemly,” you protest, voice weak. Your thighs clench with the need to close but you only end up squeezing your knees on his waist.

“All mine,” he continues to mutter, thumb coming up to round over the top of your sex, a feeling like a curling heat in your stomach starting up. It has you jumping, hare kicking out its legs before a hand soothes over its ears, pins them down. Your reaction seems to gratify him, has him rubbing his thumb until it’s almost mean, eyes hot on you for even the smallest reaction. You start to whine, deep in your chest, the feeling just on this side of just too much.

“Johnny, Johnny, please,” you sob, barely understanding what it is that you are pleading for. 

He lets up, petting down to your entrance which you can feel flutter at the press of his fingers. He pushes and you feel his finger push into you, a whine coming out of you like a wounded animal. He pants, not even blinking as he watches it, barely pausing before he’s pushing in a second finger, which almost has you bucking him off. He shushes you, half distracted by the sight of your cunt swallowing his fingers and leaving them shining. “So good, angel, so good,” he mutters. You hate that the praise has you trying to swallow down any of your complaints.

He lets go of your wrists and they lie, useless across your belly. Still watching his fingers move in you, his other hand tugs over the sash his kilt has made over his chest, yanking on it until it unravels and it is also tossed to the side. Lifting your knee to press a clumsy kiss to the side of it, he lets it drop again and pulls his hand away from your sex with a mournful noise and pulls off his white shirt.

Now that both of you are naked, Johnny seems to get quicker, breath coming fast. He quickly hitches your legs further up his waist and drags you closer to him. Stone scrapes at your back and you hiss, which he barely acknowledges with a quick kiss to the underside of your breast.

He drags his hand up your slit and gathers the slick that has gathered there, and slides that over his cock, moaning with his mouth hanging open as he looks at you beneath him. “Been dreaming o’ this, bonnie. Knew it was you, was always you,” he murmurs, smoothing his other hand over the curve of your hip, as if memorising the shape of you by hand. “Nothing wrong wae it now, jus’ the two o’ us, always, always.”

He braces one of his hands just over your shoulder, the other to guide his cock to your sex and notches it against your hole. It looks monstrous, now that you can bring yourself to properly look at it. Nothing like the faint sight of it you had seen in the Bible once, the mushroom head is red as Johnny pulls back skin to expose it. He intends to push it inside you, just as he did his fingers, but the head of it looks to thick to manage it.

“Johnny, it’s not going to fit,” you start to say, but that just makes Johnny groan and shush you, giving you a squeeze on the hip.

“Of course it will, angel, ye were made fer me,” he tells you, and you can see the pull of muscle in his bicep as he starts to push.

For a moment, you think that you’re right, it’s not going to. But, then, you can see the give of muscle, the parting of flesh and see yourself swallow the head as a tremor runs through you. A strange, foreign feeling. It feels half-invasive, as he pushes into you, the rest of you transfixed by the furrow of his brow as he watches the parting of your flesh around him.

“Oh, oh fuck, angel, oh shit,” he curses, continuing the slow guide into you until you feel it stop, as if you cannot take anymore. 

“Johnny,” you sob, looking back down to see only half of him is inside of you. “Johnny, take it out, I can’t -”

“The best cunt ever, the prettiest girl, fer me, all fer me, oh angel,” he rambles, eyes rolling back into his head as he shifts his hips. Pulls out of you just enough to push back in. You whimper with it, as he tries to grind even more of himself into you.

It's not working, leaving you sniffling beneath him until he grunts in frustration and brings his thumb to your clit and starts to work you in little circles.

His other hand hoists your thigh further up his waist, and he catches sight of your teary expression. Forces what must be an attempt at a soothing smile but all you can see is the clench of his jaw, the sharp edge of his teeth. You wonder if he likes the look of the pinch of your brow, the part of your mouth as you start to loosen up just a little. Even the few tears that drip down your temples. His hand on your hip smears blood into your skin, but you barely notice, trying to catch your breath.

“There we go, c’mon jus’ relax, honey, make it good, there we are,” he coaxes you, a tendon throbbing in his throat. His thumb on your sex makes everything a little slicker and more of him disappears into you, until he finally bottoms out, his thighs pressed flush against the back of yours.

A whine escapes you, painful and high and you cling to Johnny’s chest, coarse hair scratching at your palms. “Johnny,” you start again, unable to look down at yourself again, see the ugly stretch of yourself around Johnny. Everything throbs, you can feel him in your lungs, buried deep and irrevocable now.

Johnny is out of it, both his hands brace over your shoulders now, a tremble in his broad shoulders. You can see the white of his eyes, unreachable, as he groans long and drawn out. “The tightest cunt, knew ye would be so sweet fer me, dreamt of this, of you,” he rambles, pulling his hips back just enough to snap them back into you.

“I can't,” you stammer, but he just shakes his head roughly at you, beyond words. Braces himself on his knees and starts to grind against you. Pulls himself out and then pushes back in. It's a strange sort of pleasure. The stretch of flesh smarting a little before the clumsy rhythm starts to warm you up. Sweat slicks your back until the stone beneath you is warm with the fever spreading through you.

Johnny seems to come back to himself for a moment, thumb dropping back down to the peak of your sex, roughly rubbing circles in time with his thrusts. The pinnacle of the male body, all dark hair and rippling muscles, all bearing down on you. You can see the tense of muscle triangulating at his abdomen, flexing with each thrust into you.

He quickly seems to forget about you, hand dropping away in favour of sliding around to the small of your back and hitching you up. Your hands scramble for purchase, clinging to his forearms as both his hands keep only your shoulders against the ground.

“Johnny, no, don’t,” you protest, mouth opening on a shaky breath out as his thrust into you feels dirtier like this. You catch sight of the altar, the smooth wood built by holy men at their parish. Blasphemous, to consummate like this in here, Johnny makes it filthy, something that you imagine must be wrong even as you start to twitch your hips towards his thrusts, wanting it.

Your protests just make Johnny groan, your hips still propped up on his thighs, but he bends his torso down to press against yours. His head against your clavicle, you can feel the sweat building on his forehead smear against your skin. “Yeah, Ah’m a dirty man, aren’t I, sweetheart?” he asks you, biting at the side of your breast before broadly licking at your nipple, both of you whining together when that makes you clench around him.

Everything is slick, you can hear a wet sound as he works between your thighs and you want to cringe, ashamed even as you barely understand. You can hardly think, a fever in you that is spreading, but Johnny is burning even hotter. You slide your hands up to his biceps and cling to the hard muscle there as he thrusts into you.

Breathy sounds are punched out of you, punctuated with each collision of Johnny forcing himself deeper into you. It's lewd, the smack of flesh, but you feel hazy, dreamlike. Johnny continues rambling above you, his mouth working, the scratch of his beard across the soft skin between your breasts, but you can barely hear him.

There is a rising heat within you, and it spreads like disease through you, muddying your thoughts until you tilt your head back. Dig your temple into stone as if to try and grind your mind back into your body.

You’re wrestled back into yourself, Johnny refusing to let you look anywhere else. You understand why those women described their husbands as animals. Johnny is a huffing beast above you, slavering over you he gives and takes, over and over until you are senseless.

He stills, groans deep in his chest, his forehead resting on your chest, and you feel the twitch and sudden heat of him spending himself inside of you. The fever stills and festers in you, leaving you feeling itchy. Johnny snaps his hips a few more times, then drags it out, lazy as his mouth drools into your skin. Stills inside you, but you feel high-strung, still too tense.

Your hands twitch, fingernails catching against taut skin. Johnny huffs, amused but breathless. “I’ve got you, m’girl, so greedy, eh?”

You have half a mind to protest, he's the one who’s swallowed you whole, not the other way around. But your mouth opens and nothing but a choked whine spills out when his hand drops down to your sex again and works you over.

Still buried so deep, every flex is different like this, Johnny groaning his agreement into your sweaty skin. “Johnny, Johnny, please - !” You beg, legs kicking out as your vision gets blurry, and suddenly your back bows, a sob bursting out. A fresh slick of liquid around Johnny, and he thrusts lightly, half-soft now, whining at the overstimulation of it.

He keeps going until you start to squirm too much, almost launching yourself across the floor and he stops, laughing into the curve of your breast, still half whining to himself. He smooths his hand up your thigh and to the curve of your backside. You can feel the wetness of his fingers, but you feel too dazed to be too embarrassed of it.

“Knew ye’d be so good,” Johnny murmurs, squeezing at your backside. You hum, bone deep exhaustion dragging you down. You lift a hand up and drag it into his hair. He melts, his weight digging you further into the floor.

You become aware of the sopping wet beneath your thighs, wincing as you shift your hips and feel wetness slide down and join the sweat that you have left on the stone. Sweat cools in the divot of your throat, the small of your back, sticking between you and Johnny. The length of his body pressed against you, hard muscle against the soft give of your skin. He seems to like it, a hand squeezing at the give of your arse, the other smoothing over whatever flesh you have left to give him.

“We should get up,” you murmur, your chin on the crown of his head. He huffs like a lazy dog, but after a moment where you think he isn’t going to get up at all, he finally starts to shift with a sigh.

Johnny reaches between your thighs and pulls himself out of you, you wince at the stretch, watch with morbid interest at the white shine left behind, caught in the hair that covers the base of his cock. Johnny is equally as enthralled with what he’s made of your cunt and it’s only when your thighs squeeze shut that he shakes his head and stands. He gives you a firm pat on the backside before he hoists you up, a mean laugh at your squeak. “C’mon, up we go, lassie,” he says, teasing and light. He seems fond now, still a little more harsh than you want him to be, but he nudges his head against yours again, a mimic of how you were as you were joined. “Nothin’ between us, now, ehh?” he adds, blue eyes digging into yours.

His nose nudges against yours, your skin buzzes with the remnants of his touch. There is no stone left unturned, everything split apart under Johnny’s hands. Ripe fruit, ripped open and left to rot.

“Nothing,” you echo, and he smiles like the sun. There is man’s blood on his right hand and you can smell the metal of it when he cups your face and brings his mouth back to yours. A clash of teeth as you bite back even as you are swallowed up.

“Let’s go home,” Johnny murmurs, pulling back with a slick noise as your lips separate. You don’t think you know where that is, but you let him gather your skirts back up to half cover you before he gives you his kilt and fastens it around you. Damning, to wear the red of the Mactavish clan. The final nail in this coffin, solidifying who you are now.

Cerberus is outside, pawing at the ground and snapping his teeth at any of the villagers who get too close. Before you are ushered onto the saddle and away, you catch sight of the mare you had been about to escape on. Your bag of your belongings from home sits abandoned in a heap next to the stable. Your spare cloak, your spare shift. The last remnants of home.

It is all swallowed up as Johnny stands in front of you. You let him hoist you up and you curl into him as he slots into place behind you. The world is caught around the edge of Johnny’s shoulder, filtered through into your vision.

Cerberus starts a slow canter back to the Keep, and you dig your forehead into Johnny’s collarbone. Every step takes you further from your land. Johnny’s hand on the curve of your tummy, his chin on the crown of your head. There is a bottomless feeling in your stomach, but Johnny smooths his hand over your belly and catches it in the palm of his hand.

[wildfairies]

✧*̥˚ wildmelon cas game *̥˚✧

i've been seeing lots of oc challenges on pinterest recently, so i wanted to make a cas game that doubles as a little personality quiz! i'm sorry if your real favorite is missing from a category, just go ahead and choose your favorite out of the options provided :) things like skin tone and gender identity are up to you/the occult type! the entire challenge is typed below the cut in case the image is too hard to read for anyone ♡

✧*̥˚ here's my sim! (she's a spellcaster btw, i have a december birthday ♡) tag me and show me the sim you make! *̥˚✧

species: your birth month

january/february: human march/april: alien may/june: plant sim july/august: werewolf september/october: vampire november/december: spellcaster

hair length: your sociability

if you’re an introvert: long hair if you’re an extrovert: short hair if you’re an ambivert: medium hair

hair color: your favorite fruit

banana: blonde hair strawberry: red hair blueberry: brown hair apple: black hair kiwi: green hair watermelon: pink hair mango: blue hair raspberry: purple hair

eye color: your favorite season

winter: blue spring: green autumn: brown or hazel summer: grey

extras: your favorite subject(s)

history: add freckles english: add tattoos math: add beauty marks foreign language: add eye bags art: add colorful eyeshadow science: add piercings

clothing color: your ideal pet

dog: red cat: black lizard: green snake: orange guinea pig: neutrals hamster: pink fish: blue horse: yellow

[aspirationalpeony]

Dark Horse

Summary: As a cameraperson on the Abbott documentary crew, you've always had a good working relationship with Melissa Schemmenti. One flirtatious night at her home sends you spinning as you try to figure out if this is really real—not to mention how everyone at Abbott seemed to know about Melissa's crush on you, long before you ever did. (See author's note at the end for prompt credit.) Content Warnings: Lots of smut, a bit of emotional confusion, and me having absolutely no idea how filming anything works. I just faked my way through it, very horribly. Oops! :) AO3 Link

It all starts with a late shoot.

It's just you and the mic guy and one other crew, and your camera trained on Melissa Schemmenti. She talks, in a way she's done rarely so far. A season and a half and she's always conscious of the stare of the lenses, quick to dart around a corner or cut herself off if she knows the opps are listening.

She takes big sips, almost gulps, from her wine glass. She leads you back and forth across her house, reaching over tables or pointing along walls to find a photo here, another there, and talks. "Me'n Kristen-Marie... This one—" pause for more wine—"from my college graduation." It's the two of them, almost mirror images of each other at that age, with a tall man whose lean face makes you think he has to be their father; on the other side of the girls is their Nana.

There's no trick in this photo: no wedding dress, no blood, no hint of drama between the sisters at all. They just look hopeful and desperately young. This feels private, that Melissa could have been so young—something that shouldn't be content for the show—and you feel an impulse to duck the camera away, hide her secret. When you look at Melissa again, she’s watching you; there’s a glitter in her green eyes you can’t interpret: not hostile, and not the look she gets when she’s hustling someone, either. The gaze she’s giving you is strangely soft.

“Whaddaya think?” she says, to you, not to the camera.

You swallow. Nothing you say will make it to the final cut, but the editors will hear your answer, so you can’t tell her she’s beautiful in that picture. “I think I’m lucky you’re showing me this,” you say at last.

Her eyes move over your face. You feel it almost like a touch, intimate and slow, and you aren’t making it up: her gaze stops at your mouth and hovers there. She bites her lower lip before she lifts her wine glass again for another pull. “Maybe I like ya,” she says. “Maybe you’ll get luckier.”

You’re still blushing when you wrap for the night. You sit on your couch at home—you’re always insomniac after shooting at night, your brain and body still buzzing with the work—and put on Netflix on low volume and you don’t watch, just feel your cheeks still burning, thinking about her lipstick on her wine glass.

Of course, the whole crew knows the story by the next morning. When you turn up, Pedro, your best friend on the crew, says, “Look at you! Dark horse!” and it makes your face sear with heat all over again. He lowers his voice, leans in and nudges you. “C’mon, nothing in the contract about that. You deserve a little fun. Let your Italian mama take care of you.”

You cringe. “Please,” you say, “never say ‘Italian mama’ to me again. Okay?”

“Just sayin’,” he says, and leaves it alone.

Of course, it doesn’t leave you alone. You’ve learned the best way to sneak up on a conversation with Melissa and Barbara is to come at it around a corner, so you’re hovering down the kindergarten hall, camera on the two women, when you hear your name, making you stiffen.

“You said that?” Barbara’s voice is incredulous, sharp. “What did she say?”

“Nothin’, really,” Melissa says, “she was on the clock, y’know.” The smile starts in her voice before it grows on her face. It’s a Cheshire smirk bigger and deeper than you’ve ever seen. “She got all flustered. It was cute. You think she knows I was shootin’ my shot?”

“I think you could have ‘shot your shot’ with a little more dignity,” Barbara says crisply. “Like an adult does. Politely. Pleasantly.”

“Soberly,” Melissa says. “Listen, if it works, it works. I just gotta find out if it did, y’know. Work. She’s kinda shy.”

“I didn’t know you cared for that.”

"What, the quiet ones?"

You have to pull away. You're going to miss the rest of the conversation, but your face is burning again, your heart is pounding, and you're grappling with the reality that Melissa and Barbara are talking about you, that you're subject enough between them to be chatted about so casually, that all this footage is... God, are you ever going to live this down?

You'll go shoot some Janine and Gregory. That's always a crowd-pleaser; the audience loves the sweet tension between them, the way the space between their bodies turns tangible the longer their eye contact holds. You try not to think about Melissa's gaze on yours last night. You try to do your job.

That goes as well as you might expect. Fifteen minutes into some uninspiring quiz-grading ("oh, I never fail anyone," Janine says, "I just give 'em a different colored star—they like the gold ones best, so—") Pedro comes to find you.

"Hey, listen," he says, "I need you to come take care of your Calabrian chili pepper."

"What?"

"You know, your spicy linguini. Your Italian ma—"

"Stop." Your head whips toward Janine at her desk and then back to Pedro. The only thing you can think of to say, your heart thumping all over again, is "She's Sicilian, not Calabrian."

"She's giving us nothing. You got to come do her talking head. She keeps trying to square up to Kai and he doesn't wanna fight her."

"What makes you think she won't fight me?"

He gives you a look over his glasses.

The change in Melissa is instant when she sees you approach. Those folded arms, her squared shoulders, her broad, foot-planted stance—it all melts. She leans into the wall, her head tipping, one booted foot lifting for her toe to play in idle lines along the floor, and, yeah. Whether you picked her or not, this is your Sicilian chili pepper, and you swallow hard as you approach.

"Heya, hon," she says, "who's this clown they got me workin' with? Don't they know I only do this with the professionals?"

You mumble a little as Kai looks between the two of you, rolls his eyes, and backs off.

"We were talking about her Friday night plans," Pedro says. "It's school game night and she's not going."

"Yeah, the kids are too easy to hustle," she says, "it ain't even fun. What, do I look like I wanna spend all Friday winnin' their, I dunno, their Yu-Gi-Oh cards?"

Now's when Pedro should prompt her, ask a question. You glance at him; he nods his permission. "Not sure those are a thing anymore," you say.

"Their Pokemon cards," she says. "Whatever. Point is, it'd be like taking candy from a... Jacob."

You don't look at her; you focus on the camera. It's easier than holding her green gaze. "Is that where you draw the line?"

"Gotta draw it somewhere," she says.

You can't help it. Cautiously you look up, try to make your voice neutral: "So how are you going to spend Friday night?"

She lolls her head to one side and looks at you. She sticks her tongue into her cheek. "Prob'ly practicing tricks," she says.

"Tricks?"

"Yeah," she says. "With my magic wand."

You don't really remember the rest of the interview. You sure you babble some other questions, and she gives you some smirking answers, but your head is full of white noise and a singular image: Melissa Schemmenti with a vibrator between her legs.

You're sure other things happen that day. Pedro definitely ribs you some more, you and Kai go get lunch and he complains for a while, Gregory and Janine have one of their not-flirting conversations where he draws up a tightly-plotted itinerary for game night, trying to prove it's possible to run a children's event without delays (it all goes back to his father, of course), at some point you go home and numbly resume your post on the couch in front of your TV screen, trying to make sense of it all.

That picture won't leave your head. You think of the look she gave you that night at her house—intimate, caressing—and how she'd look deep in her pleasure, drunk eyes half-open, her face pink, her hair wild. Does she get naked when she touches herself? She seems too impatient—more like a jeans around her thighs kind of woman—but for a night she's planning ahead—a night she's set aside, just for her pleasure...

Your head drops back and you shut your eyes to see her more clearly. You can imagine the scattering of freckles over her shoulders and chest, the shift of her heavy breasts and the hard peaks of her pink nipples—how does she like to be touched there? Maybe she grabs one breast while she uses the vibrator, plays with a nipple, imagining the rough, confident hand of a lover. You can see the soft field of her belly, the abundance of her hips, her thighs, picturing her cunt, the head of the vibrator against her clit—she doesn't tease, can't tease herself, you imagine, not Melissa.

You can almost smell her sex, you think, until you realize it's yourself you're smelling. Your cunt throbs. You could shove a hand into your underwear now and just take care of it, but...

Your small toy collection lives in a box under your bed. It's nothing fancy, but you do have a small wand vibrator. You peel off your trousers and underwear and drop onto your bed, back against the pillows, holding the purple toy in one hand. Does Melissa have one this size? Or a big, classic one, the kind that could buzz your clit right off? You click the toy on and draw it up your thigh. As it nears the sensitive crease between your leg and your sex, your thigh twitches without meaning to, your clit aching, and you think, okay, no foreplay.

You can't help but wonder as you delve the thrumming head between your folds: does she know you're doing this? Was that the idea—plant herself in your head, grow over everything, including your common sense and your inhibitions, until your whole world flowers Melissa? Could she be doing the same—getting a head start on Friday's plans—thinking of you, right now? You're normally quiet when you do this, but that makes you groan aloud. Your clit pulses.

How does she do this, on a school night, like tonight? Back to the image of her with her trousers halfway down her legs, her hand and her toy crammed into the space between the fabric and her body. You can't help but see her in the outfit from today, that green, clinging top, the black blazer discarded somewhere, slacks caught just above her knees, her hair mussed and tangling against the pillows as she works the vibrator over her clit. No playing games for her, either; just getting the job done, hard and fast.

You come, watching her in your head, her name on your lips; you hope she comes tonight, too, thinking of you, of what she’s doing to you.

The next day, Janine, Gregory, and Jacob are in hushed conversation by the supply closet. You pick an angle from just inside the nearest classroom and train your camera on the slight crack of the open door and you can hear them, even though they think they’re being quiet—classic them.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” Janine is saying. “I think it’s kind of nice.”

“I think,” Gregory says, “it’s like…” He pauses, picking his words. “Like watching a dog shake a chew toy.”

“I think it’s very brave of Melissa,” says Jacob, and your heart drops into your stomach. “Considering the historical era in which she grew up and started her teaching career, being openly bisexual in the workplace must be a very—”

“Please don’t let her hear you call her ‘historical’,” Gregory interjects.

“It’s cute she has a crush on the camera lady,” Janine says. (“Cameraperson,” Jacob corrects.) “I just want it to turn out nice. You know, the vending machine guy didn’t work out, so. And now he doesn’t stock Gushers anymore.”

“Maybe she’ll be a little more relaxed,” Jacob says. “A little more… Open, fun—”

“She’s not going to start liking you because she’s dating somebody.” Gregory, with characteristic bluntness.

“One can hope,” Jacob says.

“The camera lady—person—is so quiet, though,” Janine muses. “Melissa is so intense.”

“Bet that’s what she likes,” Mr. Johnson says, making them all jump. He steps out from the supply closet; he’s holding a Teachers Without Borders coffee mug you know has to be Jacob’s. He takes a long, slurping sip, making sure everybody sees the logo on the cup. “Melissa gets a sweet little thang to take care of. Camera lady gets an Italian mama.” He says it eye-talian. (Where is everybody getting this phrase from?)

“Please don’t say ‘Italian mama’ again,” Gregory says, giving you a little flush of vindication.

“Why not?” Mr. Johnson says. “When I was on tour in Rome—”

That’s enough for you. You decide the rest of the conversation can go unrecorded. You check the time and it’s nearly lunch—thank God, because you don’t want to make eye contact with any of them for a while; you don’t know how to feel about them all talking about you. You know it’s not you, really, they care about. It’s Melissa, her caginess at odds with how boldly, openly she’s been flirting with you, an attraction so obvious even the younger teachers that she’d never confide in can see it.

Something light and effervescent swirls in your stomach, but there’s a leaden weight there, too. Nerves. And desire. You let Pedro know you’re taking lunch and leave your camera behind, finding Kai a block down, away from the school, hitting his vape. He passes it to you and you take a pull, letting candy-scented vapor out of your nose. You don’t really smoke anymore, but anybody would need a little comfort under these circumstances, you think.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks.

“What?” You didn’t know Kai cared about that. “I mean, I guess I’ll talk to her, maybe give her my number, then see—”

“For lunch.”

“Oh.”

You get hoagies together, eating them over a public trash can, standing up. Back at the school you scrub your hands clean in the bathroom and duck Pedro and your camera and you find your way down the second-grade hall to the classroom that's usually the noisiest. It's quiet now: the kids are at the library doing a reading circle with the librarian. Maybe it says something that you know their schedule.

She's in there, glasses low on her nose, working. You pause just on the threshold of the open door. You try to piece together everything you know about her, to make it all fit into the person you see, just a small woman with a love of pleather and a never-ending supply of high-heeled boots, a baseball bat taped under her desk (you've seen it), a guitar propped in one corner of the classroom (does she ever play?), how now she's focused and reading with scrupulous intensity, doubling back on a sentence from time to time, her manicured hand coming up to twitch away a lock of red hair.

You knock on the open door. You see her hand pass under the desk toward the bat before she realizes who's standing there. She cracks a grin, lifting her glasses up to the top of her head. Her eyes travel up and down your body in another look that feels like a touch.

"I was wonderin' when you'd stop by," she says.

You give a little hum. You cross the room to lean against a student's desk, just opposite hers.

"No camera?"

"No," you say, "I wanted it to be just us."

"Huh." She taps her pen on her paper a few times. "You here to let me down easy?" She lifts her chin. The look she gives you isn't intimate now: it's far-removed and challenging, like the gaze of a duelist across a plain. You've seen this before, the way she starts closing herself off, armoring up.

You shake your head. There's a shift in her expression, but the walls don't quite come down. "I guess I wanted to ask what you want."

"That ain't obvious?"

"I mean..." Your arms come up, folding over your chest. "You know, I was here last season, when you were dating that guy... Hulk Hogan."

It surprises a laugh out of her. "Yeah, Gary."

"You asked him out and it was... Different. I mean..." You can't think of how to say it. At last, you say, "Do you take me seriously?" No, that's not it. "I mean, are you just trying to hook up with me? Because, I..." You're starting to burn up again. You rub the back of your neck. "That's not the kind of... Listen, you're beautiful, and sexy, but that's not what it would—I mean, to me, it—"

"You're so cute when you're all shy," Melissa says, sounding equally mystified and amused. She stands. "Look... Maybe I did this all wrong." She circles the desk. "Kinda treated you like a piece of meat."

"Just a little bit," you say.

"I take you serious, hon." She doesn't cross the gap between you two, but mirrors your pose, leaning on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over her chest. "Look, Gare was a nice guy. But he didn't have, you know... He didn't make me wanna..."

You think of Gregory's metaphor. "Shake him like a chew toy?"

Another laugh. "Yeah, that. And I guess I felt... You know, I'd kinda uncorked the bottle, datin' him, when I thought all that part of my life was done, and when you were at my place the other night, you just looked so good, and I just wanted..."

You smile, eyes down. The cold uncertainty is trickling away and there's warmth pouring into the spaces it's left behind. "Okay," you say.

"Okay?"

When you look up, she's moved a little closer. You can smell her perfume again, warmed on her skin over the course of a long day. You've had the privilege of seeing her in detail, so many times: the fine, thin skin around her eyes, the creases at the corners of her mouth that forecast her smile, the tiny hint of gray growing in at her temples, the mellow warmth of her green gaze, the slope of her nose crooking slightly to her left. It's different with no lens between the two of you, when you're close enough to touch.

"Yeah, okay," she says to whatever she sees in your eyes. She lifts her chin and drops her gaze to your mouth. It's a clear request.

You answer it. You dip your head; there's a moment where your noses nearly bump, but you change your angle, catch her lips with yours. There's a tackiness from her lip gloss and an incredible softness underneath. The warmth of her almost shocks you, vivid past your imagining. Her hand pets at your jaw; you feel the other curl into the collar of your shirt. She pulls you closer by the fabric and you gasp.

You renew the kiss, lips sliding over hers. Your hand rubs down her lower back. You can feel the divot in her spine where it meets her pelvis, just above the generous curve of her ass. Before you can overthink it, your palm is gliding over that curve, your fingers digging into its lushness, Melissa gasping against your mouth as you squeeze.

"Oh," she says faintly when the kiss is over and you're catching your breath. "Huh." Her look is glazed and a little bewildered.

"I, um, I don't want to send mixed messages," you say, "but about Friday..."

"Friday?" she echoes.

"Yeah." You bite down on your smile, watching her try to remember what the hell you're talking about. "I was thinking... I know a few magic tricks of my own."

"Oh," she says again. You watch her eyes spark with understanding, her smile appear slowly, then all at once. "I guess you could come over and show me your stuff." Her hands tighten in your shirt and pull you back in for another kiss.

"Hey, gimme your phone," she says, much, much later, when you're wearing more of her lip gloss than she is. "I want to give ya my number." You don't think before you're unlocking it and passing it into her hands. She lowers her glasses from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose and thumbs her way around your phone, creating a contact for herself.

You have a flash of nerves—what if she opens your Instagram and sees all the stupid accounts you follow? A vision comes of her seeing all the dog-using-buttons-to-talk videos you've liked, her libido instantly withering... Then she's giving you back your phone and smirking at you, wiping at your lip with her thumb. "Might wanna stop in the bathroom before you get back to work, hon," she says.

When you leave her classroom, it's like floating; you've never felt so light. You stop in the bathroom and you wipe all the lip gloss off your smiling mouth. You catch yourself humming as you and Kai catch some footage of Ava pretending to organize game night, Gregory trying to involve himself, Janine admitting to a little competitive streak.

Your phone buzzes, chimes. "Sorry," you say to Janine and Pedro, who's leading the interview. You wait until you can lower the camera lens to check the notification. You always keep it silenced during the day—did Melissa turn the ringer on?

Italian Mama iMessage

Your face burns. You take a corner away from Pedro and unlock the phone.

Italian Mama You made me real happy

Your blush intensifies; something flutters in your chest. The phone vibrates in your hand as another message comes.

Italian Mama Don't know how I'm going to wait until Friday

The echo of your own thought in her words makes your heart flutter again. You bite your lower lip and type back, Me neither. An electric spark of daring moves you, makes you send her, Maybe I'll practice some magic just to make sure I'm on top of my game.

Is that too much? You hope not. You've basically made a sex appointment with her for Friday—sex appointment, you think, and wince at yourself, your own awkwardness; it's a date—and you don't—your breath hitches as three dots appear on your screen, showing that she's typing.

Italian Mama Oh yeah?

Italian Mama Better practice hard

You feel a pulse low in your belly. You're ready to type a little more flirtation when another message arrives and makes you gasp aloud, quickly clamping your hand over your mouth before Pedro or somebody else can hear you.

She's sent you a photo. It's herself pulling down the scoop neck of the hot pink blouse she's wearing today. You can see just the tip of her nose, her chin, the proud line of her soft neck, her freckled sternum, and, holy shit. She's showing you her breasts cradled in a bra made of black lace. And you stare. And you stare.

Italian Mama Little incentive for you

Your mouth is watering. You can see the rosy shadows of her nipples against the lace. You barely register yourself typing back, You're perfect.

Italian Mama Thought you'd like em

You're typing before you can stop yourself. All I'll be able to think about now is what I'm going to do to you.

Three dots appear, then disappear. Appear, then disappear. Your confidence wavers.

Italian Mama I want you to tell me

You've never imagined you'd be turned on in the halls of Abbott Elementary, but suddenly you're so aware of your cunt, you can't stand it. You're throbbing. You peer around the corner; Pedro isn't even looking your way, he's talking something over about the schedule with another producer. You have time. You glance up and down the hall; nobody except an aide going into a room at the far end.

Your fingers fly over the keys. If you stop to think, you'll psych yourself out, so you blurt out every thought, the iMessage equivalent of babbling—what you'd be doing in Melissa's ear if you could have her right now, in your arms, again...

You're so fucking sexy

I've thought about you so much

I touched myself thinking about you the other night

I'm going to kiss you until you go crazy and you're so turned on you can't take it

I'm going to undress you and I'm going to kiss every fucking inch of you

I'm going to play with you until you're begging

Do you like it rough or gentle?

Three dots.

Italian Mama Little of both

You're typing again in a flurry. You can feel your heart pounding, your breath coming in harder. You probably only have a couple minutes left to really make her feel it.

I'm going to be so gentle with you until you beg me to be rough

I want to bite you

Do you like being bitten?

Italian Mama Yeah

I know you do

On your neck, on your breasts

I'm going to bite your thighs before I eat you out

"Homie, you coming?" Pedro says, with the best and worst timing—and phrasing—he could possibly have.

"Yeah, one sec," you say, and you're proud of how your voice doesn't wobble at all. "Let me just send this. Sorry."

I have to get back to work

Italian Mama Fuck you

Italian Mama How am I supposed to teach like this

Italian Mama Come here and finish what you fuckin started

You laugh, breathless and surprised. You text her, YOU started it! If she hadn't sent you that picture... You scroll back up and look again. In the bit of her face you can see, she's smirking, because of course she is. The luscious curve of her breasts—you can almost feel them, what it would be like to drag your nose down between them, mouth at the soft skin...

Pedro's waiting. You send her a bunch of blowing-kiss emojis and put your phone away again. You're still buzzing with arousal, but you feel a strange satisfaction, knowing that Melissa is a few halls away, squirming behind her desk, thinking about all the promises you've made.

The day passes, somehow. It's a strange mixture of slow, syrupy boredom and electric, frenetic activity as more preparations are made for game night, and your phone periodically buzzes with another message from Melissa. Thankfully (for your pussy—you think it might fall off if it keeps aching like that), the two of you leave the subject of sex, and just talk.

She asks you your birthday, your favorite food. Where did you grow up? What's your favorite color? Each one makes you smile. You feel like you're on the receiving end of a Schemmenti interrogation, a mob boss with her goons behind her. You get her answers back in turn: July 19. (You respond in shock, You're a water sign??? and you can almost hear her voice when she dryly responds, I got no clue what that means, hon.) Pasta con sarde. Grew up here in South. Pink.

Your heart flutters with every new thing you learn. Even though you go home (and rub one out) alone, she's a presence with you, not just in your fantasies; you find you're texting her until you fall asleep, phone sliding out of your hand onto the bedspread. And when you wake up the next day, preceding your alarm by a bit, you find a text from her waiting for you, just a few minutes ago: Good morning, baby.

You levitate all the way through Thursday. You spot Melissa a few times that day, but it's a packed day for her two classes, so mostly it's in the hall as she marches lines of students to and fro. She gets you back for yesterday, though: pauses in the doorway of her classroom as she's filing the kids in after lunch, and gives you an up-and-down look of such searing intensity that your body heats, scalp to toes. She smirks before she vanishes into her room.

She makes you crazy. God, she's incredible. You're texting her every chance you both can get, though she's sparser while she's with the kids; it's all light stuff. Get lunch here today, she tells you, Shanae made beef patties, and when Shanae slips you a couple of golden-crusted pastries, you bite into them, smelling warm, floral curry, savory beef on your tongue, and think of how Melissa it is, feeding you from a distance.

That afternoon, just after dismissal, she calls, "Hey," to you from her classroom door. You try not to jump to attention. "I gotta do a lot of work," she says, playing with the strap of her Apple Watch, "or I'd ask you over, but..." Strangely, her eyes drop. It's a hint of shyness and it makes your heart patter, tenderness and affection for her pouring into your chest. "I was thinkin', why don't we go out and get, like, food or a drink or somethin' tomorrow? You know, before you come over."

"Okay," you say. Her eyes flick up and as soon as she sees your goofy grin, her shyness melts away, turns back into the smirking self-assuredness you're more familiar with.

"You pick the place," she says, knocking the wind out of you at once.

Oh, crap. You remember what it was like with her and Gary: he tried to take her to a shitty spot for their first date, and she flicked him away from her like a bug. She's challenging you, you think, asking to be impressed.

You can do that. Dark horse, right? "Okay," you repeat. "I'll pick."

She leans back against the doorframe. All at once she's in that lolling, casual, flirtatious posture that she assumes for you and only you, her face tilted up, gaze intimate and a little sly. "You headin' out? I get a goodbye kiss, or what?"

"Okay," you say a third time, and you can barely kiss her, you're smiling so widely. You take your fill of her, in every sense, one more time before you leave for the day, nerves and excitement and that thread of arousal all tangling together, like a knot of live wires.

You're texting her later, because of course you're texting her later. Do you want it to be a surprise?

Italian Mama I dunno

Italian Mama Surprises never seem to work out for me

That gives you a little twinge. You find yourself running the tip of your finger up and down the side of your phone, the way you'd touch her hand or her cheek, if you could. How about just this one? you ask. And if you hate it, I'll never surprise you again?

You wish you could see her face. It would help you know if she's resigned or wary or scared. You don't want her to be antsy or nervous going into tomorrow; you want her to feel like she makes you feel: like you've got balloons and not bones, like a wind could catch you and carry you off, you're so light and so happy.

Italian Mama Ok

Italian Mama I'm gonna trust ya

It makes your heart do its now-familiar flutter in your chest. It's like there's a bird in there, some delicate fledgling thing eager to start flying. It wants to soar, holding its precious cargo: Melissa Schemmenti's trust.

The next day. Friday. Friday. Somehow, the school day rockets past you. Game night preparations have gone disastrously, and it's time for a patented Ava save, with the help of Janine and Gregory.

"Wow, who could've guessed," Kai mutters to you, and fidgets in the pocket you know holds his vape.

Your hand fidgets in your own pocket, around your phone. You and Mel exchanged good morning texts, a few kiss emojis, promises to meet up before dismissal to solidify your plans, but you haven't had a chance to see her at all.

"I don't know," you say, "I think they'll get it figured out."

"I think she's probably going to use it to mine Bitcoin somehow," Kai says.

Honestly, that sounds plausible. You shake your head anyway and make an excuse and scoot past Pedro. He's not encouraging Ava to stream game night live on Instagram, per se, but everybody knows that will guarantee some Coleman-style silliness, so he needs to get her there somehow. (Can you mine Bitcoin through Instagram?)

You don't need to send any directions to your feet; they're already walking you toward the second grade classrooms. Mel doesn't have lunchroom duty today, so you know she'll probably be catching up on two classes' worth of quizzes, or restocking art supplies, or prepping the next lesson's props and tools. Her door is shut and you peek in through the window.

She's writing on the whiteboard, looking back and forth from a worksheet in her hand, glasses on her nose. You knock. When she sees you, the narrow-eyed look of interrupted concentration melts away; she gives you a smile that shows her teeth, the kind that changes her whole face, turning her girlish, almost a little goofy. It makes your heart melt.

You open the door. "Hey," you say as she puts her glasses on top of her head and caps the marker. Being in the room with her, after not seeing her all morning, feels like coming out of the cold to a blazing fire. "Uh, hi. You look beautiful today." Then, for the third time, stupidly, adoringly, "Hi."

"You missed me, huh?" she says, putting down the marker and paper. "C'mere."

As soon as you're in grabbing distance, she takes two handfuls of your ass and pulls you in for a kiss. You're lost in it for long, long seconds.

She pulls back after giving your lower lip a bite that makes you squeak. She tucks her hands squarely in the back pockets of your jeans, holding you against her. "You look beautiful today too."

"Thanks," you say, barely registering the compliment, the way you're chasing more contact, kissing the corner of her mouth, nosing at her cheek. She's so warm in your arms. She's wearing one of her tough-girl outfits, a blazer and matching top in military green, and you sneak your hand under the jacket, finding a little stripe of bare skin between her shirt and her slacks. You touch her there with a teasing trace of your fingernail.

She shivers. Is she sensitive on her lower back? You file it away to investigate later tonight. The thought of being able to have her all to yourself tonight—hours and hours—sends sparks skipping through you. You have to kiss her again.

"You think it's unprofessional, doin' this at work?" Mel asks you breathlessly when you part again.

"I don't know," you say, "but whatever Gregory and Janine have been doing is worse, kind of."

"Yeah, that's for sure," Melissa says, and gives you a third kiss; this time, the delicate muscle of her tongue laps at you, little frissons of heat that go right between your legs.

"I came to talk about dinner," you say at last, when you think you can survive without kissing her.

"Oh, yeah," Mel says, "right. What am I wearin'?"

"Uh..." You hadn't considered it. You're just going in your usual date outfit—a button-up, a nice pair of trousers. "Business casual?"

"Okay, easy. Do I get a hint where we're goin'?" One eyebrow goes up. Her gaze acquires a competitive glint, one you've seen a hundred times through your camera. "I bet I can guess it."

"Here's your hint," you say, "it's not Italian."

"Smart cookie," Melissa says, which leads you both into another kiss, and then another. "It ain't a sandwich shop, is it?"

"No," you say, "I can't beat cousin Rocco."

"Soul food," she says.

"No. I'll come pick you up, is that okay?"

"Yeah, come, like, at five. I gotta change and do my face and stuff." She leans back, giving you a squint-eyed look of scrutiny. "Tell me it ain't French."

"It ain't," you promise, and seal it with a kiss. "I have to go. I'm pretending to be in the bathroom."

"Oh, shit," she says, eyes going wide, "we gotta catch up on this freakin' math unit and I forgot, I haven't peed in, like—"

"Go, go," you say with a laugh, letting her extract her hands from your pockets.

When you return, Kai narrows his eyes at you. You shrug at him and you're ready to get back to work, when he reaches across and plucks something off your shoulder: a single red hair. Crap.

"Damn," he says. "Dark horse."

"What's up?" Pedro glances over at you two. Fuck, you don't know if you can take his teasing today—you know he'll want all the details, and you love him, but you want to just get through work and get to Melissa...

"Nothing," Kai says, and drops the hair. He gives you a nod.

You nod back, warmth and gratitude making you smile. He doesn't smile back—you don't think you've ever seen him smile, actually—but you think you see the corner of his mouth curve up, just a little, as he peers into his camera.

Dismissal, a quick goodbye kiss with Melissa, home to get ready. You're normally an all-black kind of girl—it's just easy—but you pause in your closet and find a pink button-up. It's a mellow, soft shade, the same color as a silky blouse you've seen Melissa wear.

You put on your cologne, you style your hair. You look at yourself in the mirror. It’s funny: this is the same face you’ve always had, but three days of Melissa have done something to you. Your eyes look larger, softer; there’s a smile on your lips, small but persistent, that’s been there all day.

You haven’t always been lucky with women. You have love in your heart—God, a lot of it. Sometimes it feels like the water of an ancient lake, going down almost infinitely deep, and yet somehow about to overflow. You spent years going around offering it to anyone who would take it, and once they’d drunk their fill, they just moved on, satisfied, never giving a thought to you, never thinking you might want something back, even just gratitude.

So you pulled away. You just hurt too easily: keep them at arm’s length, never close enough to bruise. The quiet one, the shy one; that’s who you became over time, knowing that if you gave out of your abundance, you’d only be depleted. No one’s ever filled your cup.

You find yourself chewing your lip, staring at yourself. You want this to be different. You want this to be something else. Can it be?

You park your car in front of Melissa’s and find yourself wondering: text, or knock? You’re starting to get out of the car when the front door opens, and a rush of surprise and pleasure comes at the thought of Melissa waiting, watching for you. Then your breath catches hard in your throat.

She’s wearing a little red dress that… “Wow,” you say, before she’s even close enough to hear. The square neck of the dress is cut lower than her usual wear, and shows an abundance of skin that makes your mouth water. There’s a princessy quality to the cap sleeves, a delicate detail that’s perfect for Melissa: blazing, challenging red, with a hint of sweetness. The hem stops just above her knees. The fabric shows her body in intimate detail, the delicate rounding of her stomach and the flare of her hips, straining across the perfect shape of her thighs.

Her hair is down. Even late in the day it has a bit of curl. Her green eyes are like gemstones in the early evening light. Her heels have got to be four inches, but she walks with the steadiness of a queen. She’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.

You circle the car to get the passenger side door. “Hey,” she says, surprised, coming closer, “it’s pink,” and touches your sleeve. It’s not even contact with your skin, barely contact, period, but it sends tingles up and down your arm. “That’s my favorite color.”

“Yeah, I know,” you say, grinning like a fool.

Her eyes drop—that hint of shyness again, that tenderness that makes your heart strain against your chest, trying to reach her—before they flick back up. “How do I look?”

“I could look at you for hours,” you tell her honestly.

"I'd kiss ya, but you'd mess up my face," she says. "Here, you get one." She turns and offers her cheek.

You're smiling as you lean down to kiss the offered skin. She's soft and warm, and you get the powdery scent of her makeup, the richness of her perfume.

"Now, c'mon, feed me," she says, and you laugh and open her door.

You drive. She's exactly the kind of passenger you expected: "Hey, check it," every time she sees a car nosing out past a stop sign, or "On your left," when you're trying to merge. "Hey," she barks when somebody cuts you off, a gesticulating, accusatory hand in the air, "cazzo, you wanna watch where you're fuckin' going?"

Melissa. Abrasive, loud, bossy, and you don't feel bulldozed at all. You feel charmed. The smile won't leave your face. You don't know if she could be more herself than right now, in your ancient Volvo, wearing the sexiest outfit you've ever seen on her, looking simultaneously bold and delicate and delicious, and hollering out the window like an angry truck driver.

She's checking her phone as you pull up outside the restaurant, and doesn't look up again until you're opening her door. "Oh," she says, surprised, looking at the place: it's a red brick building, no sign; just a single hanging red lantern beside a white door. You can see her trying to puzzle it out, glancing at you and back to the door.

"It's a bar," you explain. You open the door to your favorite izakaya. Low, golden light and warmth spill out with the Jrock playing over the speaker system.

Melissa cocks her head and looks at you curiously. You only notice that her hand's in her clutch purse when she draws it out again; you hear the rattle of her keys dropping back to the bottom. "Thought you might'a been about to take my other kidney," she says. "I was gonna fight ya."

You blink. It's one of those Melissa-isms, delivered in her dry voice, that you think might be a joke, but it might not be, either. "I wouldn't win if you did."

"You sure as hell wouldn't, baby," she says, and lets you hold the door for her as she steps inside.

You love this place. It feels a bit like your first apartment after you left home, a lot of exposed brick, shoddy white paneling creating an accent wall, and decor that's a little vintage, a little silly: a big, ornate mirror that might have once decorated a cheap theater, brass sconces for lights, Gojira posters in the style of classic ukiyo-e. There's booths on one side of the room and a mirrored bar on the other, with a wall of sake and Japanese whisky.

The hostess recognizes you, waves hi, gestures toward the room for you to seat yourself. It won't start filling up until a little later, so you have your pick of the booths; you take the side that puts your back to the door, letting Melissa have the sightline to the exit.

The low light flatters her. Any light flatters her, but there's something about the dim, intimate, golden warmth of it that makes you stare as she studies the menus, first the drinks, then the food; her eyelashes cast delicate shadows on her cheek, the curve of her lips carving lines there.

She looks up and catches you. The thoughtful twist of her mouth turns into a smirk. The question, though, isn't what you were expecting. "What made you pick here?"

Huh. "I..." You rub the back of your neck, dropping your gaze. "I really like it." That's a start, but not all of it. "I thought you might not have this kind of food all the time. I never see you eating it and I wanted you to have a nice change. And..."

"I come here alone a lot." You shrug. "I have... Good memories here." They are good memories: people-watching, trying new drinks and food, chats with the bartenders, a karaoke night where you fell in with a group of laughing, drunk women who all worked at the same office, who tried to persuade you to bar-hop with them until last call.

But it's always been you, alone; sometimes folded in with somebody else out of goodwill, sometimes noticed for your familiar face and your generous tips, spared a few more minutes of a busy mixologist's time, but always a separation, a glass wall between you and the rest of the room. No one's been on this side of it with you before.

"I wanted you to have a good memory," you say, finally. "I wanted to share it with you."

You glance at Melissa. She's watching you with a look you recognize. It's the one she gave you that night at her house—just earlier this week, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It's tender and intent. It's encouraging. Like she's watching a flower bloom.

"It's already a good memory for me, hon," Melissa says. Something nudges your ankle. It's her foot in its killer heel, gently insinuating between both of yours. You feel her knee against yours, your calves aligned together. She smiles at you. "We're here together."

Your heart does one of its aerial flips.

"You sure get shy for somebody who was talkin' about suckin' my tits before, though," she says.

You choke on nothing. Your face and ears burn. She laughs, her head dropping back, the light glinting on her saints' medals.

"Biting," you squeak, when you can get air. "We were talking about biting."

"Biting," she says, "right. How come you can say all that to me but you're nervous tellin' me you like a bar?"

It's not a bad question. You trace the grain of the wooden tabletop for a second or two, eyes down. "I'm used to giving other people what they like," you say. "I don't mean—it's not that I was lying or faking. No way. I meant it, I mean it, everything I say to you. So much, Melissa." You dart a look up to make sure she understands. "I mean, it's easy for me... For other people, I can express..."

Her hand finds yours on the table and stills it. Her manicured finger gently swipes along the curve below your thumb, down to the sensitive inner skin of your wrist, and traces slowly there, back and forth. She's giving you that look again, gentle and focused and intimate. "I get it," she says simply.

A rush of relief fills you, settling the rattle of your anxious nerves. You turn your hand over and hers settles into yours.

The server appears for your drink orders. You order the house sake, and Melissa says, "Yeah, me too." With your small glasses of sake, the two of you pore over the menu, picking a few things Melissa knows, a few things she's never had before.

The first few plates come out: shumai, hamachi, a bowl of spicy pickle. She gets pieces of toro, unagi, and salmon, and you get a roll and a plate of chashu buns. She gives those a look of pure lust.

"Take one," you say, and push the plate toward her.

She doesn't hesitate. At her first bite, she lets out a guttural moan that goes right between your thighs. You're suddenly much more aware of her ankle still caught between both of your own.

"You think I could get this recipe?" she says of the chashu after the bun has vanished.

"I think you can get whatever you want." Especially from you, especially if she keeps making those noises.

"I sure can," she says with a flirtatious bat of her eyelashes.

You've seen Melissa eat before, scraping the last bite of salad out of a tupperware or sipping from a Stanley Tucci mug, but it's different like this, sharing a meal. You love watching her small, plump hands with her chopsticks, her drinks; you love her expressive eyes, the way they widen or flutter shut at a perfect bite. Everything she tries she makes you try—insistent, "Here, you taste," like you're not the one who's had the whole menu before, and you oblige, trying to taste it for the first time, like her, letting each one blossom over your tongue, letting yourself fall under her spell.

The bar is packed by the time you're through and she's nibbled her way through a couple of frozen mochi. "We gotta come back here," she declares as the two of you leave, hand in hand. "I wanna try more. You got good taste."

"Yeah, I do," you say, looking at her. It's full dark now, but the streetlights and the moon illuminate her, outlining her red hair in silver, the shape of her hips.

"You gonna take me home now?" she says. She moves closer. "You made a lotta promises, you know."

"I know." Your hands settle on her hips. She tilts her head up; you catch her lips, tasting the plum wine you two shared. It's your first real kiss of the night, and she's mellow, soft, delicious. Still, you tell her, "We don't have to, tonight. I want to, but I don't want you to think..."

"I know," she says, and gives you another kiss. "If I thought you were buyin' dinner to make me put out, I would'a had way more food." Another kiss. "Come on, let's go. Or maybe you don't wanna get lucky?"

You drive back to Melissa's place, her hand on your thigh the whole way. Back over the welcome mat that reads GO AWAY, into the picture-lined place where it all started over a glass of wine.

Melissa takes your coat and her own and gives you her back, hanging them up in a closet by the front door. "I can get you another drink," she's saying, but all you can see is the back of her dress: the silver line of the zipper running from collar to hem, almost invisible.

You move closer and she stiffens when she feels you there, your chest to her back. You gather her hair, move it aside. Above the collar of the dress you can see the line of her nape and the muscle where her neck and her shoulder join. You lean down and kiss it.

Breathing in, you can smell her perfume again, her makeup again. Now, her skin. It's a scent you couldn't begin to describe, something living and animal and sensuous. And her hair: warm, intimate, a little bit of hairspray. You kiss the side of her neck.

"You have no idea," you say quietly. You nose against the shell of her ear. Its soft cartilage is cold from the night air outside, but warming quickly, flushing pink as you kiss it. "You have no idea how gorgeous you are. You don't know what you've been doing to me."

You lift your hands and find the tongue of the zipper. Her breath hitches. You slowly draw it down. The rasp of it is loud between your bodies.

The band of her bra. Red lace. Down her back to the luscious curvature of her hips. You're holding your breath. Her panties are red lace, too, a high-waisted thong that hugs her belly and hips but, oh, fuck: leaves her ass almost totally fucking bare. Of course, in that clinging dress. Couldn't risk panty lines.

"Jesus fucking Christ," you say, and slide the dress fully off her body. It's a puddle of red fabric on the floor. You push her chest-first against the closet door and drop to your knees.

"Oh my God," she says weakly as you hold her hips and kiss your way up the back of one thigh, then the other. The flesh here is dimpled with cellulite, a mark of her perfect abundance. You nose over the curve of her ass and bite one cheek and she squeaks and gives a weak, "Huh," afterward, like she'd surprised herself, and you bite the other cheek and her hips rock back into you.

She's still in her heels. You're starting to smell her sex. You think about having her bend over and put her hands against the door and let you eat her from behind until her knees shake and give out. Fuck, you want to, but you've been making promises; you have plans.

You straighten back up, brushing kisses up the line of her spine. "I want to see your bedroom."

"Fuck," she says dizzily. "Okay. Uh..." She starts to step away from the closet door and for the first time all night, she wobbles in her heels. She gives a little growl of frustration that's so Melissa you can't help but laugh, making her glower your way as she toes out of the shoes.

She leads you up to her bedroom. The big bed is made, but there are plenty of signs of life: the vanity against one wall, scattered with makeup; the bedside table with a dog-eared book and a pair of her glasses; there's a bra tossed over the cracked closet door.

She turns to face you, unself-conscious, and grabs you for another kiss, deep, dirty, her tongue licking into your mouth. "Can't believe you wore my favorite color," she says breathlessly, and starts fumbling with the buttons of your shirt. "God, you look so hot."

Your shirt's halfway open when you get your mouth on her neck. She groans, hands loosening on the fabric. Soft, right along the line of her jaw, under her chin, down her throat where you feel a moan vibrate through the skin. "Harder," she says.

You stay soft. The hollow of her throat, her clavicle. You nose one strap of her bra. She whines, "Harder," and grips your hair.

"I told you," you say. "I'm going to make you beg." She gasps. Your cunt pulses. You wonder if the same thing happened in her classroom that day, if she sat at her desk squirming, little hitches of her breath betraying her.

You squeeze her ass and she sways into you. Your hands shape her hips, up her sides, over her back, feeling the landscape of it, the valley of her spine. You trace the band of her bra. It's so pretty, you almost don't want to take it off.

"Where's your vibrator?" you ask.

"Huh?"

"Your vibrator," you patiently repeat, and lean back. You see in her eyes when it clicks. She leans away from you toward the nightstand, pulling open the top drawer. Inside, there's a pack of melatonin gummies, a lavender and chamomile room spray, a mini bottle of Jack Daniels, and a hot pink wand vibrator. Her sleep aid drawer, you realize.

You pick up the toy. It has a good weight, and the silicone is almost as soft as her skin. You find the power button, click it on, and cycle with a few presses through the three strength settings. You settle back on the first one and test it against the inside of your wrist, feeling the rumble against the sensitive skin there.

You look up again and Melissa's sitting on the edge of the bed. She's breathing hard, staring at you, and she's blushing.

"Lay back against the pillows for me, baby."

She scoots back, gives you a challenging look, and spreads her legs. You can really smell her, a thick, rich, saline scent that makes your mouth water. The drawer's still open and you spot a small bottle of lube; you take it out just in case, then slide the drawer shut.

"You gonna get naked?" she says as you join her on the bed.

"Not yet," you say and kiss her again. And again. The vibrator sits on the mattress, turned off, and you want to make her forget it's there. You take your time, licking at the serrated edge of her teeth, sucking on her lower lip until she's whimpering.

You couldn't have imagined that sound coming from Melissa Schemmenti. You chase it, have to have it again. Her lipstick is smeared, almost gone. She keeps tugging on your hair as you kiss her, starting to squirm beneath you, saying things like "More," and "Harder," but not please—not yet.

She slides down against the pillows, laying herself more fully under your body, and the motion makes the vibrator roll down the mattress to bump her side. Her breath speeds up all over again, and her eyes flick from it to you.

You pick up the toy and click it on. "Keep your legs spread."

"Oh, fuck yes," Melissa says, then whines aloud when you touch the vibrator not to her clothed pussy, but to the inner crease of her thigh. "Fuck, c'mon."

"C'mon, what?" You trail the vibrator up the inside of her thigh, toward her knee, and back down again.

"You know—" her breath stutters when you switch legs. "You know what I want."

"And you know what I want."

That makes her moan. Her head drops back, her chest heaving. You lean down to kiss her sternum, to finally nose against one perfect breast, the way you've hungered for it since that photo. The lace of her bra scratches your cheek. You can feel her nipple through the cup, taut against the fabric. You bring the vibrator up and tease its rumbling head over that peak, making her shudder, then replace it with your mouth, letting her feel the heat and wet, just barely, still separated from you by her bra.

"God, fuck," she says, "fuck you," and you switch breasts, teasing her other nipple to aching stiffness. You nuzzle the skin that her bra offers up, the plump perfect roundness of her breast, part your lips, drag your teeth over it. She's so soft here, so much, and it's perfect. Your hand drops with the vibrator and you trace it over her hip toward her sex, making her squirm, as you busy yourself with soft bites and sucks.

You change your angle a little, propping a hand against the pillows so you can lean over her. Your body casts a shadow and her green eyes look up at you from beneath it, somehow both pleading and mutinous. You idle the vibrator back up along the waistband of her underwear and then slowly down toward her cunt, playing it over the plumpness of her mons.

"Fuck," she says, "fucking fuck you, okay, please," and you smile. "Please, I said please, will you fucking please—"

You bring the wand down over her pussy. Her head rolls back and she groans, starting to squirm. "Pull down your bra for me," you say.

"What?" Her voice, face, are foggy and vague, but after a few seconds she understands, lifting her hands to tug down the bra's cups, showing you her perfect breasts. They're begging for your mouth, and you promised her you'd give her what she wanted when she begged, didn't you?

You drop your head. Kiss over one breast, then the other. Mouth at the flesh—so fucking soft, so good against your lips, sucked into the wetness of your mouth. The tops of her breasts have a small scattering of freckles that you have to dust in turn with adoring kisses. Her hard nipple brushes your cheek and you draw it past your lips as you trace the wand vibrator up and down, from her clit to the entrance of her cunt, back again, never letting it linger.

You switch to her other nipple, leaving her breast damp and reddened from your mouth. Her head tosses back and forth against the pillows as she whines, squirms, moans, says, "Fuck," and, voice breaking a little, "You're still fuckin' teasin' me—please, please, I said it, please—"

The words, her need, are electricity surging straight to your aching clit. Your voice is a rasp to match her own when you lift your head and breathe in her ear, "You sound so good like this, Melissa." She gives a broken whimper. "You're so perfect. I'll give you more. I promise. I'll take care of you. Take your panties off for me, sweetheart."

With a grateful sob she lifts her hips and shoves her underwear down her thighs, no further. You flash on that fantasy you had of her, getting off after a school day, slacks and panties around her knees as she fucked herself. Looks like you were right.

"You might need," she starts to say, but you're already reaching across to pick up the bottle of lube. You click off the vibrator and let her watch you drip the lube over your fingers, slicking them up. She's panting harder and harder just watching you.

With your other hand freed from the vibrator, you can pull the thong all the way off her legs, leaning back on your knees to do it. You push one thigh then the other wide apart. Her pussy is plump and gorgeous, red and swollen, her own wetness gleaming from between her spread labia. You add to it: the softest touch of your fingertips against her sex, trailing up and around the peak of her clit, not touching it directly.

She makes a noise you can barely describe, a groan of misery and arousal and desperation. Sliding your fingers back down toward the heat of her cunt, slipping one slowly inside, watching her as you do it. Her eyelashes flutter, her lips parting. Once you're sure she's wet enough, you add a second finger. The lube and her own gathering wetness makes a slick, dirty sound as you begin to stroke inside her, all delicacy, all torment.

"Oh, fuck," she says, "don't stop, Jesus Christ, please, don't stop, I need it, I, I..." Now she's babbling, the way she's made you do, one hand fisted in the bed covers, the other grabbing your wrist. "I need it so bad, I need you to fuck me, I've been waitin', please..."

"You've been waiting?" It occurs to you that this version of Melissa, already begging, might be willing to tell you some embarrassing truths. "How long?"

"Since we met," she gasps. "Since—oh, fuck..."

Since you met? That was the very first day of shooting—getting all the establishing shots, the very first moments and interviews. She intimidated you—her and Barbara both did—but Barbara, at least, gave a little, showed a bit of herself to the camera. You remember how Melissa was, arms folded over her chest, cool and hostile with Pedro as he tried to coax her out, get her to introduce herself.

Her eyes had moved from him to you, looking past the camera. "You Sicilian?" she'd asked you. She smiled at you that day and it transformed her sullen, cagey face, turned her, however momentarily, sweet. "Italian?" she'd continued, then her eyes darted from you to Pedro, over to the boom mic guy, trying to get a read on all of you. "You from South?" Her smile vanished. Her voice tightened up again: "Okay, you guys workin' with the cops? 'Cause you gotta tell me."

You reward her for the honesty with a press of your palm against her clit. Her hips jerk up. "I remember that day."

Her head drops back again, her eyes squeezing shut. The words leave her in a breathless rush: "You were so cute'n I hated the cameras but whenever you were there I would just—and you were always so, you were gentle, and—I always knew when you were lookin' at me—"

"I was looking at you every chance I got." You watch her face as you begin to ease a third finger inside her. This one has to burn a little; you can feel her body, resistant at first, starting to stretch to take it, and you don't push; you wait to see her eyes open again, their needy, yielding look. She lets go of the covers to grab one leg under her knee and pull it wider apart to help you. You add a little more lube, just in case, not wanting to hurt her.

"I was always looking at you, Melissa." She stares up at you. There's a crease between her brows, her swollen lips parted; she looks stunned, overwhelmed, face pink, as you slide that third finger inside her.

"I was always looking at you," you repeat, and begin to gently fuck her. Her cunt opens for you and desperately clenches against your fingers, grasping and irregular, trying to keep you. "You're so beautiful. I always wanted you. I thought you were the sexiest, meanest—" that surprises a panting laugh from her—"woman I'd ever seen. You were so smart, so funny—you protected everyone, and you took care of everybody—" her eyes squeeze shut. "Let me take care of you now."

You reach over and pick up the vibrator. You click it on. Her eyes open again at the sound of its buzz. You press the button again, then a third time, bringing it to its strongest setting. Melissa's eyes are huge. She's panting, staring, knowing what you're about to do, and the look of vulnerability and desire on her face, her smeared lipstick, her messy hair, she's perfect, so perfect, and you need to make her come now.

"I need it," you tell her, holding her gaze. "I need it. Let me feel it, Melissa." You bring the vibrator to her swollen, begging clit.

A moment of nothing but her breath caught in her chest and her wide-eyed gaze on yours. Her pussy clamps down around your fingers and you feel the ripples of her orgasm start before she drops her head back and gives a wounded, animal cry.

You chase the waves of her climax, fucking her through them, coaxing them toward you; you rub the head of the vibrator along her slippery clit. Her head tosses back and forth on the pillow like it's too much, but her hand still grasps your wrist, keeping you right where you are, and her hips are working, riding your fingers.

"I can't," she starts saying when she can heave a breath back into her lungs, "I can't, I can't, oh, please—" you click the vibrator off and throw it aside; it nearly rolls off the mattress. You spread the lips of her pussy wide and you lean down and bite one shaking thigh, then the other, then seal your lips over her swollen, tender clit.

Fuck the vibrator: this is your new favorite toy. You play with it and play with it and Melissa comes again, or keeps coming, you're not sure which. One leg goes over your shoulder and her hips twitch and writhe until you have to hold her down.

"Oh my G—oh my God, oh, baby," then, just chanting over and over again, like you could ever tell her no again, like you can deny her anything in the world: "Please, please, please..."

Anything she wants. The whole fucking world, if it were yours to give. You suck and lick at her cunt as her hands find your hair and yank.

How long can she go for? How many times can you make her come? You want to know. You want to fuck her until she faints. But that's not for tonight—not without planning, not without her consent—so when she starts making airy noises that are weak and almost pained, you ease off, slowing your mouth and fingers, letting her come down.

You rub her hips and thighs and her soft belly, and give light kisses to the mound of her pubis. She stops pulling on your hair, grip going slack at first; then, as she comes back into herself by slow degrees, she scratches her nails gently against your scalp.

Kisses for her stomach, her ribs. "Here, baby," you whisper, and reach under her body; she lifts up so you can unhook her bra, sticky fingers brushing her skin. You ease it off and drop it to wherever her panties went. She's nude under you now, flushed all over, body loose and relaxed against the mattress; you pet every inch of her you can reach.

You cup her cheek. Her head turns into the contact. There's sweat gleaming along her hairline and her upper lip. Her eyes, mascara and liner blurred, open to meet yours; her gaze is bleary at first, then sharpens.

You expect another fuck-you, or a joke, or even a "thanks, I needed that," but what she says is, "Now you sit on my face."

Your mind whites out. It's possible you forget the English language for a second or two. When you're back from wherever your soul departed to, she's pulling on the buttons of your shirt, brow knit and wearing an impatient little scowl, yanking the last ones open. "What?" you say weakly.

"I said," Melissa says, fully herself again, no longer the begging, needy, squirming creature of minutes ago, "now you sit on my face. C'mon. Get this off." She grabs the buckle of your belt and works the tongue out of it with a metallic clink.

"I," you say, "I," and she drags your trousers down your legs. You have to lean back off her to get them and your underwear all the way off. Your shirt still hangs open, showing your bra, your bare stomach. She leans up to kiss your sternum with an open mouth, tongue flickering hot against your skin.

"I told you," she growls against your neck, "to sit on my fuckin' face," and there's no more of anything in your world but her, you scrambling up onto your knees, spread wide, her sliding down the bed to get under your cunt.

You falter for a moment; she grabs your hips and yanks you down. There's no playing, no teasing. She drags the flat of her tongue up the folds of your pussy and takes your clit into her mouth and sucks. Her green eyes are open and staring up at you and you see your own dazed pleasure reflected in them.

It takes about five embarrassing seconds before you come in her mouth. She moans loudly against you and tries to hold you where you are, but your legs are shaking badly; imagine if you broke her nose the first night, God—you lift one knee so you can get off of her and drop onto your back.

She follows you. Clambers on top of you intently but unsteadily, still wobbling from her own orgasms, and kisses sloppily down your stomach to get back to your pussy.

"Melissa—" you're gasping, and she's putting her tongue inside you, angling her head to get it in as far as she can. She licks, sucks, wraps her arms around your hips and holds you against her as you try to buck away. The wet noises of her mouth against your cunt are obscene.

You come again, and maybe one more time, you're not sure; your mind blanks again. When you can think, feel, process again, she's giving little kitten licks to your sensitive sex that send shudders up your whole body.

"Okay," you say. Your throat hurts a little—how much noise were you making? You clear it. "Okay. You win." You tap out on the mattress like a boxer. She's wearing a look of supreme satisfaction as she lets you go, her face covered in slick wetness, her makeup a disaster, her hair a messy tangle. She's so beautiful. Your heart does a now-familiar backflip.

She crawls up your body and flops onto her side next to you, curling onto your chest. There's long minutes of just you two breathing, the sound filling the room, a tingling starting in your pussy that you know is the herald of after-sex soreness, her damp fingertips tracing idly on your skin.

You start to smooth out her hair. It'll take a shower and a comb to really fix—maybe you'll suggest it. You trail your fingers down and follow the freckled curve of her shoulder, the roll of flesh on her side along her ribs, the dip of her waist before it opens onto the perfect field of her hips and ass.

Her eyes flick up to yours. They're softer and happier than you've ever seen them; the look on her face is gentle and content. You bring your questing hand up to cup her cheek. She kisses your thumb.

"I'm hungry again," she declares.

A laugh bursts out of you, full of affection. "What?" she says, clearly about to be offended, but before she can go any further, you pull her fully into your arms, wrap around her and squeeze.

You press your face into her neck and inhale, smelling her sweat and skin and sex. "You're perfect for me," you say into that warm curve, muffled against her skin. "You're just perfect." You peck a kiss onto her jaw and lean back to touch her cheek again. "Should we make something? Do you want pasta?"

She grins at you. It's that big, Cheshire smile you saw on her face a few days ago, telling Barbara about how she shot her shot, full of preening satisfaction. She leans in and brushes your nose with hers.

"I knew I picked right," she says, simply, happily. She laces her fingers with yours. "Come on, I got a robe you could wear. You like carbonara?"

She leads you off the rumpled bed. You can see you've left a blurry pink bite mark on one cheek of her perfect ass. She brings you a fuzzy shortie robe ("I like your legs, baby, lemme see 'em") and puts on a silk one herself, and takes your hand again as she opens the bedroom door.

You feel good. You're happy. You realize as she brings you to the kitchen, to the very heart of her home, that you're not alone anymore.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Author's Note:

I received the following prompt from an anonymous reader on Tumblr:

"can you write some fluffy smut for Mel x reader where everyone thinks Mel would be in charge in the bedroom because she’s so tough and reader is so shy. but actually reader takes care of Mel."

Back when Season 2 was airing, I saw a few fan posts saying that Lisa Ann had suggested there was a cameraperson on the crew that Melissa thought was cute, which led to the rare scenes where Melissa opens up to the camera. I'm not sure if this is accurate to what she said, but that idea has stuck with me. When I received the above prompt, it went into a blender with that thought, and this is the smoothie that resulted.

I hope I've done justice to this lovely prompt!

[pandora-writes-one-piece]

Sources for images: |Ace| |Kid| |Zoro| |Law| |Sanji|

This is a series focused on five different love interests. Here's how it works: there's five introductory chapters where we get to know the female reader's background and, in each chapter, she meets one of the love interests. Just a first meet-cute.

Then, I will write a different love story for each, as if they're different timelines, continuing from the last chapter of the introductory chapters!

Summary: You had your life in Grand Line City all figured out. A wonderful job, a fiancé and a shared apartment. Until you found out he was cheating. Your father, Shanks, had a horse riding accident and you decided that this was just the right time to return home. You were expecting a peaceful, uneventful life back in the Calm Belt, but, fate had other plans. Think of all the rom/coms that make you feel good because you know the couple will end together. This is it. Enjoy!

|Chapter 1 - Ace| |Chapter 2 - Kid| |Chapter 3 - Zoro| |Chapter 4 - Law| |Chapter 5 - Sanji|

Firestarter - Ace's Story (Complete! 53+k words)

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. You intended to have some alone time, to reflect and heal, but your childhood friend's older brother, Ace, seems to be there just to upset that fragile peace you're striving for. He's a flirt and a womaniser. But why does he also have to be so handsome and perfect? And how long can you resist his charms?

|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3| |Chapter 4| |Chapter 5| |Chapter 6| |Chapter 7| |Chapter 7.5🔞| |Chapter 8🔞| |Chapter 9| |Chapter 10| |Epilogue|

The Great Pretender - Law's Story (Complete 83+k words)

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. You and Law (your father's doctor) start to build a flirty friendship because of your father’s procedure. So much so that when he’s invited to Baby 5’s wedding (his cousin), he asks you to be his date. His uncle Doflamingo - who is filthy rich - is very adamant on finding a suitable wife for him. Seeing as he wants to avoid that, he asks you to pretend to be his girlfriend for the weekend.

|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3| |Chapter 4| |Chapter 5 🔞| |Chapter 6🔞| |Chapter 7| |Chapter 8| |Chapter 9| |Chapter 10🔞| |Chapter 11| |Chapter 12🔞| |Chapter 13🔞| |Chapter 14🔞| |Chapter 15| |Chapter 16| |Chapter 17| |Epilogue|

Trouble - Zoro's Story (Complete 76k+ words)

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. You and Zoro are slowly returning to your easy friendship filled with banter and flirting and you actually begin to glimpse a future with the green-haired cop. But then you start to receive weird gifts. They quickly escalate to manipulative texts. And now you're stuck in a spiral of terror and there's no way to get help because the Stalker, whoever he is, is threatening something other than just your life.

|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3| |Chapter 4| |Chapter 5| |Chapter 6| |Chapter 7| |Chapter 8| |Chapter 9| |Chapter 10| |Chapter 11🔞| |Chapter 12| |Chapter 13🔞| |Chapter 14| |Epilogue🔞|

Beautiful Zoro fanart for the story Trouble by @laidenbreecatchall

Source for pic

Imperfect - Kid's Story (ongoing)

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. Then there's Kid, the gruff, hot-headed mechanic, who gets under your skin in more ways than one. The chemistry between you is undeniable and you can't keep your hands to yourselves. Until he starts to push you away. Each time you think he's let you in, he just shoves you further, it's such a maddening, dizzying push and pull that you don't know how much more your heart can take before it crumbles.

|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3 🔞| |Chapter 4🔞|

Bonus - Lament - A Meet-Cute Spoiler

|Drabble|

[thesweetestapplepie]

‘to remember by’

mc: 2.2k

tags: angst and fluff, mentions of weight loss and brief mentions of sex

Arthur Morgan couldn’t sleep. On the long list of reasons Arthur Morgan can’t sleep, it isn’t a single one. Even on account of him not sleeping most nights to begin with, the many reasons Arthur had to be restless despite being so sore all the damn time is extensive to say the least. There was the stress of the coming week’s volatile air, the worry Dutch and his ramblings are causing, the Marstons and their ever so narrowing predicament; he felt a solitary bead of sweat slink down the side of his face. Hands clammy, pinched a graphite pencil which sat rigid over the smooth clean paper. Then, as if guilty of debauchery, he steals a glance from you as you sleep peacefully in his cot. Just as you had looked 7 minutes ago when he last stared at you—ever so beautiful and peaceful when you’re granted the grace of rest. Even the under circles of your eyes, flushed in red, swollen from tears, Arthur held every little piece of you close to his chest and even deeper in his heart. Though, he supposes those tears are only for him to blame, for you had not stopped crying ever since hearing of his diagnosis.

Arthur supposes that is the other reason for his restless nights. He was a sick man. Dying. Living a regretful, deceitful life has a tendency to catch up to someone no matter how many train cars they hop and how many strangers they aid. Nonetheless, even then that wasn’t the reason Arthur Morgan couldn’t lay his head down to rest.

No, it was you. It’s always you. Even as the very foundations of his reality and world twist to spin poison in his ears. And yet, he does it all for you. He'd run the entire New Hanover with bodies on top of bodies on the back of his horse just to pay tribute to the sounds of your infectious laughter. He had thought of ripping the skin from his bones when the Colter snow left you pale and sickly. He lived to split men in half, to burn down families and foundations to ash all to earn the security of your smiles when he sleeps so soft against your skin. Soft turquoise eyes stick to your red nose and heavy heaving chest and he feels the familiar guilt hang in his ribs. Two weeks ago the two of you had argued long about the issues of you sleeping in his cot when he was so contagious. Even as he had argued his way into a fair point proven, he could not scold you further seeing you cry so much.

You didn’t deserve to live like this. It frustrated him and plagued his brain to no end. To be picked up down on your luck by a group of degenerate criminals, taken from your soft, warm bed to sleep on a rickety, springy cot. To live such a dishonest life as such a happy, compassionate woman. A woman made of honeycomb and goodness, meant to live a comfortable, gentle life. All just to be tethered to a family that had slowly lost their ties moons ago, a family with only a last name to share. And now, here you were, sleeping in the hot and humid terrain of a swamp with nothing but a dying, penniless man to show for it. A man who could never be a doctor or a farmer. A man who could never give you the life that you would read about in your books and marvel at in the movies. A man who dragged you into this mess and is now going to die leaving you in it. If he could at least write you this goddamn letter could his mind stop running with these senseless noises.

Arthur loved you to death and he knew that with every good beat in his body. Even as he absentmindedly watches you stir in your sleep on the cusp of a dream, he hopes you’re somewhere warm and sunny. His hand instinctively ghosts over your cheek, lingering to capture the warmth of your skin as you softly shudder in your sleep. The image tightens the corners of his lips. Still, Arthur found himself at a complete loss of words or a sliver of idea on what to write for you. He thought it would be nice, though thinking does nothing for him anymore. Arthur chews on the memory for just a moment, the way something in your eyes had shattered when he pushed you away to cough blood into a handkerchief. The horror followed by the tears when he tried to explain, to soothe the blow that must’ve splintered through your body. You were too wise to know Arthur could see the pure denial and despair in your barely composed hands and speech, offering to take care of him and love him even as the cough takes over his lungs. There was an ironic, cruel amusement lulling in Arthur's mind when you’d cry far more than he had.

.

How you tried to not be emotional at every thought of your lover’s condition, the way his body withered no matter how many hot meals you spooned to him. The eruptive coughing fits coated with crimson blood and shuddering breath. The loose fit of his work shirts became too much to process. You’d sit with him, somewhere where the sun hit and the streams ran, trailing fingers over his chapped lips and sunburnt skin. There was always that bitter pang in him whenever he saw your eyes begin to gloss up. You’d try so hard to smile as you kissed the corners of his mouth, trying so hard to make him better again. You held him as if you had a greater trade to sacrifice, your laughter for the air in his lungs, your body for the relief of his fatigued lumbering frame. The very ugly, bad in him was ever so comforted by the prospects of your tears. Yet, he knew that the sight of your sorrow had only withered him further, another grey hair sprung from his head.

“My sweet girl, wastin’ tears over me..” He’d say through faded breath, a heavy hand coming to urge you closer to him.

“Oh–I try so hard not to, Arthur..” Your voice drops sincerely as your volition is only so strong to stifle your cries. Small tears pearl down your cheek and he’s quick to run a calloused finger under it. So gentle, you’d akin him to something of a deer.

“Not even dead yet, darling—you’re gonna be all out of 'em the time that comes..” He tries to keep his voice light, the affectionate jest in his tease brings you closer. He knew you’d only scowl at his darkly playful attempts to make you smile, and it's the bad man in him that loves the way your face scrunches at his remarks.

“I'm so scared, Arthur.” The thick pain in your tone had spoiled his composure, and he fumbles. “Can’t imagine how you could begin to joke about this–” Your voice clips into a soft pitched cry, trying to look away from him when he gently takes your wrists. Your hands instinctively flex around something larger on account of his declining weight and health and it does nothing to heal your heart. “How can it not scare you–you—oh–it's all too soon” You trailed off, face coming to bury into the lining of his shirt, shuddering like an animal licking a wound.

“I’m terrified, baby. Hell, I’m a mean bastard for talking like that..” You’d lower your head to his chest, succumbing to the warmth of his solace and the creaking, slow beat of his heart.

“I’m sorry.. You know I just don’t know when to quit..” He’d speak with remorse heavy in his voice. Because the truth was, Arthur was extremely terrified. Scared even as he kissed away the tears that ran down your cheek. Even if it were bitterly ironic of him to comfort you, the emotions you bore had satiated his yearn for consolation.

.

He teeters in his chair as a cough rakes over his body, like a bullet splintering in his ribs. Coughing into his left hand, his right hand reached out to instinctively run over your head softly, as if in a vain attempt to protect you from his illness. You still laid in your deep slumber, exhaustion embedded into the crevices of your wrinkled face. It’s starting to hurt thinking about you, thinking about how much he cared for you. It hurts to realize how much he’ll lose when death does eventually come to take his head.

Hurt floods his veins when he runs his thumb over your lips, selfishness in his eyes. So long was Colter when your cherry pink lips were frozen blue from the angry ice storm. How he’d sit with you in the back of the wagon for hours at a time, your warmth bleeding into his side when he kept you tucked under the overbearing wing of his arm. He couldn’t move at the sight of your shivering slowly melting into a satisfied hum, and how he couldn’t stop smiling when you had reflexively pulled him closer. His mind fantasizes of that first so intimate encounter with a reflective fondness. How time had only crystallized your beauty and metamorphosed you into one brilliant, gorgeous thief. The hurt only blossoms into his affections for you, so delicate and yet ever so painful in his chest.

He knew to treasure the rich jewels of your laughter when he’d kick the dirt off of paths. His horse would dash to the sounds of your colorful voice, the way you’d sing praises on the back of him with hands locked around his waist. You’d giggle oh so innocently in his ear and how he had hoped you wouldn’t notice his ever so slipping glances. It was as if by some miracle his brain told him to remember such simple times, the water dribbling down your jaw tastefully as you had replenished the energy of your spirit. It only made him thirst. There he had immortalized the lightness of your laughter and the sick thrills of your adventure, your constant search for sensation and emotion.

How the closest he had felt to heaven was at the mercy of your flesh and body. When you had allowed his tongue to externalize his deep seated crave for your closeness. Every open mouthed kiss breathed word of his devotion. He finds the sensational slope of your hips and he relinquishes his addictive need for your essence in deep thrusts that make your body burn. The ever so pitchy cries of your swollen lips as he had taken you over and over, holding you through it with the sincerest need to have you tethered by skin. His heart burned like hot coal when he had looked down at you ever so lovingly, a swelling in his chest that he feels every time he dines to the sound of your pleasure.

You had filled his life with so many sensations, so much thrill and light that he had been so blind to for the better of thirty years. And he had felt selfish for still wanting to keep it so close to him even now. Even when he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He cannot help but give into the urge to kiss the top of your head, such a gift and such a mistake to have you walk into his life. Such a gift is your voice that seems to always play his favorite love song when you’d kiss him so sweet. Such a gift are your ever so warm hands that always know how to make his ears burn when you’d lather his worn body in foam and soap with a scolding tongue. A gift are your eyes which sing a color that lulls him to sleep each night. How he will willingly cut himself on the merge edge of your wit, that mind of yours always perplexing him with the darndest of things. He’ll miss the ever presence of your life around him. The way more of your items began to make an appearance in his tent. The way he’d find your hair around his cot. He’ll yearn the way you barrel rush to his arms at the first sight of his horse, tripping over yourself to have him catch you in his sturdy safe grasp. How he’ll miss laying next to you, covered in dewy lime grass with an oceanic blue sky hanging over your heads. Nothing but dreams in the clouds and hopes for better lives. How Arthur Morgan treasures every bleeding strand of his life with you.

And he’ll continue to share that life with you, even to the very end. And he doesn’t dare want to waste a second of it when he has such little of it left. He closes his journal—maybe he’ll think of something tomorrow night. With a weak hand he turns the dial of his lantern, the flickering yellow light smoking into nothing but ash and ache. So he lays next to you for another night in hopes that more will be just like this, even if he won’t be allowed the peace for too long.

When he turns back to look at you, he lets the image of you ever so peaceful soak into his mind one more time, with your hair free of ties and bandanas. Your body unrestricted by cloth and corset, natural and unfolding for his gaze. Your fountain of bliss and youth floors him in every regard and the sweet vibrance of your person and livelihood replenishes him of the air that was stolen from him in sickness and health. Oh, he was going to miss you oh so much.

His eyes rest on your face for another moment. And yet, he pockets the soft peaceful lines of your face again to treasure for his last dying breath.

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

I’ve been wondering, for dragon AU. How did Ford know Stan was in the villages looting? Or did he not know it was Stan but somehow knew someone was down there and it just happened to be his twin (happy surprise!)?

And did Ford and Stan have a fight in this AU? Did Stan get kicked out? Why did they end up going separate ways?

Love the fic btw. Princess Stan is hilarious. Mental image of a couple years passing and knights still going up to rescue the “princess” because they hear tale of a beautiful maiden with long flowing hair trapped by a dragon. And they get there and it’s just. Stan. Long flowing hair for sure because it’s hard to get a haircut when your dragon brother keeps you trapped in his hoard, but definitely not a maiden.

Stan is used to it by now but he still gets a kick out of seeing their faces when they realize there’s no pretty princess for them to rescue.

He did not know it was Stan! He was hunting for dinner, his dragon eyes saw the horse and locked on. It wasn't until Stanmare darted through the village gates and out of immediate reach that he realized the wagon looked familiar (since its the Stanley Mobile in this universe). He went over to check it out, thinking it might be a coincidence, then saw Stan there hiding. A very happy surprise for him!

Yes and yes, they had a fight and Stan was kicked out. In this universe, magic is a dying art that few can do. Ford is one of those few, someone who understands how to enchant things and has the power to do it. Instead if college, Ford was being scouted for the kingdoms wizard academy, where he could learn how to hone his skills and make a fortune using magic.

Instead of the perpetual motion machine, Ford prepares an enchantment of some kind. The night before his demonstration stan accidentally smudges or damages the magic circle and tries to fix it. Stan's fix worked short term, but failed before Ford could present. The wizards write him off as a fraud and move on, ruining his chances of ever being accepted. Ford recognizes Stan's work and confronts him, filbrick overhears, Stan is kicked out until he can make back the money. Ford goes to a regular non magic academy and focuses on trying to bring magic back into the world so its more accessible and not a rare skill.

Stan def gets a kick at seeing the devastated looks on knights faces. The dragon, castle, and treasure are all very real, but it turns out princess Stanel is actually Stanley, ex-criminal turned princess by job title. Everyone here calls him princess as a joke, since he's technically filling that role. Stan hates it, but be was kidnapped by a dragon for company and doesn't have any other role in the castle besides 'in distress'. In the parody cast of characters I have planned, he's the kidnapped princess lol.

[hbowartournament]

(thank you again tierney @kbsd for putting in the hours to make sure we got everything rounded up!)

round 1 saw 107 steal fanworks from 38 different users for 27 different ships—that includes over 65,000 words of fic, 14 minutes of video, over 100 gifs, a dozen pieces of art, and countless image edits and collages! here is a full masterpost of all the steals created for round 1 of the rarepair tournament (ships are sorted by total amount of steals):

Bill Guarnere/John Hall

FIC:

Luck of the Draw by @corrosivesaints

One Foot in the Box by @peaceandl0ve

Doggone Cowboy by @froggishg

VIDEOS:

Brooklyn Baby by @luckyreds

Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy by @tinglingfuckingsensation

GIFS:

What's that guy's problem? by @sidleckie

Then again, Hall is Hall by sidleckie

Beautiful all the same by sidleckie

PLAYLISTS:

some moments last forever by sidleckie

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Hi Yah, Cowboy! by @itstheheebiejeebies

Vintage style edits by itstheheebiejeebies

Bill Leyden/Jay De L'Eau

FIC:

soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin by @ww2yaoi

ART:

foxhole buddies by @randlemartin

freakman and loserboy by @cirr0stratus

i was in rolled shorts by @crowthis

VIDEOS:

Bed Chem by ww2yaoi

Cloud 9 by @evidenceof

Love Me Not by @catilinasghost

Short Kings Anthem by @sidsledge

Welcome to My Island by @kbsd

GIFS:

Gloucester by sidleckie

Hey, stovetop boys. by evidenceof

Bill'eau moments by @rockpaperscissuhs

PLAYLISTS:

Bill'eau playlist by rockpaperscissuhs

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Bill'eau icons by sidleckie

Robert Leckie/Mama Karamanlis

FIC:

Write down: "I am ok." by @chirpybirdy

the sky too, is folding under you by chirpybirdy

Stella's Mom (Has Got It Going On) by chirpybirdy

Time, Place, and Cause of Live Hoosier Reaction by chirpybirdy

Coming Up Roses by chirpybirdy

ART:

very simply cause and effect by chirpybirdy

Mama's imagination by @historicboii

GIFS:

cougar boutta pounce by @meyerlansky

MamaLeckie + food/drink by meyerlansky

PLAYLISTS:

Mamaleckie playlist by chirpybirdy

EDITS/COLLEGES:

Mrs. Robinson by @leftenantjopson

Helen/Tatty Spaatz

FIC:

She Wants the Young American by chirpybirdy

stormy weather by @bcolfanfic

ART:

sharing a cigarette by historicboii

VIDEOS:

Close to You by @hesbuckcompton-baby

GIFS:

Helen/Tatty in sepia by @dancing-thru-clouds

I can't laugh on cue by meyerlansky

Helen/Tatty rainbow by meyerlansky

PLAYLISTS:

Helentatty by bcolfanfic

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Vintage style edits by itstheheebiejeebies

HelenTatty collage by itstheheebiejeebies

Calling all Donut Dollies by itstheheebiejeebies

Lena Basilone/Vera Leckie

FIC:

but this love will not by @lesbians4kurt

VIDEOS:

Back to the Basics by lesbians4kurt

Candy Darling by lesbians4kurt

GIFS:

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) by lesbians4kurt

PLAYLISTS:

Lena/Vera by lesbians4kurt

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Lena/Vera icons by lesbians4kurt

Lena/Vera webweave by lesbians4kurt

Henry Jones/David Webster

FIC:

taking initiative by itstheheebiejeebies

ART:

Go for it, Jones by historicboii

GIFS:

What platoon are you in? by sidleckie

I'm Looking Through You by @bandoflovers

PLAYLISTS:

WebJones by itstheheebiejeebies

You are in love, Henry Jones by historicboii

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Vintage style edits by itstheheebiejeebies

Bill Leyden/Snafu Shelton

FIC:

talking about the cost of living by @handheldrope

ART:

i like to watch the new guys sweat by handheldrope

Bill/Snafu sketches by handheldrope

Bucky Egan/Marge Spencer

FIC:

Come Dancing by itstheheebiejeebies

John Brady/Robert Rosenthal

FIC:

one song before the sun sets by @blood-suits-and-tears

ART:

sitting on the porch somewhere by blood-suits-and-tears

dragon rider AU by historicboii

PLAYLISTS:

Bradyrosie by blood-suits-and-tears

EDITS/COLLAGES:

brady/rosie webweave by blood-suits-and-tears

Renée Lemaire/Eugene Roe/Babe Heffron

VIDEO:

Un Ami by tinglingfuckingsensation

Lewis Nixon/Dick Winters/Eugene Roe

FIC:

Care by tinglingfuckingsensation

VIDEO:

Winnixroe by @lazicalm

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Soldier—take care of your C.O. by tinglingfuckingsensation

Robert Leckie/Cpl. Ruddiger

Nothing crazy about that by @multifandomfanfic

Howard Hamilton/John Brady

FIC:

I Bite Because I Love You by @crubblessnowglobe

PLAYLISTS:

Hambrady by blood-suits-and-tears

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Hambrady collages (1, 2) by itstheheebiejeebies

Orange webweave by itstheheebiejeebies

Buck Cleven/Bucky Egan/Curt Biddick

GIFS:

Kiss me, I'm Irish by meyerlansky

Joe Liebgott/Eugene Roe

FIC:

We Lived Alone by @letters-to-gene-roe

PLAYLISTS:

We Lived Alone by letters-to-gene-roe

Eugene Roe/Joe Toye

FIC:

the boxer by @ralphspinas

PLAYLISTS:

running-shot by lazicalm

Bucky Egan/Charles Cruikshank

FIC:

don't fall away from me by @hellofanidea

Albert Blithe/Eugene Roe

FIC:

A quite moment by @silv-sk

Harry Crosby/James Douglass

FIC:

Naming Constellations by crubblessnowglobe

John Brady/Harry Crosby

FIC:

You Should Have Been Mine by crubblessnowglobe

Renée Lemaire/Skinny Sisk

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Not on my watch! by tinglingfuckingsensation

Curt Biddick/Bubbles Payne/Harry Crosby

EDITS/COLLAGES:

CurtBubblesCroz collage by itstheheebiejeebies

Andy Haldane/Eugene Sledge

ART:

Medieval AU by historicboii

Thomas Peacock/Edward Shames

ART:

Shamecock doodle by @glendylucast

Renée Lemaire/Anna Chiwy

EDITS/COLLAGES:

We came to help by tinglingfuckingsensation

Bucky Egan/John Brady

FIC:

Love Songs by @almost-a-class-act

Bucky Egan/Jack Kidd

EDITS/COLLAGES:

Vintage style edit by itstheheebiejeebies