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yoonia · 8 months

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A Christmas Fix — 02 (m) | kth

⟶ Summary | One-night stands are supposed to be nothing more than just. It shouldn’t have involved seeing those two red lines looking back at you weeks later without a name or a contact number linking you back to your mystery man. Nothing more but his face. The unforgettable face that would sometimes appear in your dreams at night. So unforgettable that you immediately recognise him the moment he walks into your family home at Christmas, hand-in-hand with your older stepsister.

With special collab prompt: "the holidays aren't so bad with you around."

⟶ Title | A Christmas Fix

⟶ Pairings | Taehyung x female reader

⟶ Genre | Secret Baby!au, Second Chance!au, Strangers to Lovers!au

⟶ Ratings & Warnings | +18 / M for Mature; including: alcohol consumption, mentions of pregnancy, morning sickness, surprise babies, miscommunication, profanities/swearing, fake dating trope on the side, minor body insecurities (implied), fight scene, some family drama; involves multiple explicit sex scenes, including: sexual tension, one night stand, drunk sex (with clear consent), minor dom/sub dynamic, brat!reader, size kink, rough sex, light choking, restraint, hair pulling (M, F), protected & unprotected sex, pregnant sex, fingering (F), oral sex (F), clit play, breast play, stripping, biting, minor hand job/groping, grinding, masturbation (M, F), mutual masturbation, dirty talk, implied pain kink, praise kink, body worship, marking, multiple orgasms (M, F), overstimulation.

⟶ Word count | 29,410 words (of 54,773 words)

⟶ Story Notes | Part of the Jingle All the Way collaboration with @leahsfavefics, @kithtaehyung, @kpopfanfictrash, @cybrsan, and @sugaurora | Written in 2nd person POV (in case you’re new to my writing, I don’t use ‘y/n’ coding as all of my lead characters are considered as OCs) | Moodboard was done by me | Posted in: February 1st, 2024 by @yoonia

⟶ Author Notes | And we're finally at the end. Thank you so much for everyone who has read part 1, and those of you who have been so patient with me. I'm sorry I had to wait for a day to post this. I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the journey to see how this story ends :)

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: ⤎ previous chapter

⟶ Main Masterlist | Taglist | Feedback | Mailbox | Ko-fi

⟶ Read on AO3

The house has been quiet all morning.

There is only one day left before Christmas Eve, and everyone has been busy for the past couple of days. Your mother and Honey are hosting the Christmas Eve’s family dinner this year, with close relatives from their side of the family joining in, so everyone has been busy going around and about to prepare for it.

After days filled with all the bustling activities, it feels like you finally have some downtime. With both of your parents gone—your mother is out with Honey to shop for a couple of necessities needed for the event, and your stepfather out doing some errands, assisted by Taehyung in place of Hansol—it feels like you can finally breathe easy.

While the pre-Christmas rush helped smother the loud thinking constantly happening inside your head, the silence that you are experiencing now feels comforting. The underlying tension that is also present, however, isn’t so much.

When you agreed to stay home and help out with the rest of the Christmas baking still needed to be done, you didn’t expect that Alia had volunteered to stay behind and help too. So you have been using this silence as a protective shield.

Almost an hour has passed since the two of you started getting busy in the kitchen. No meaningful conversation has been shared so far, aside from the times you had to talk through the recipes together or talking about passing things over. The only sounds that are keeping you company are the occasional sounds of kitchenware hitting the counter, the shuffling sounds coming from both you and Alia as you move around the kitchen, and the burning oven behind your back.

Slowly, you are beginning to enjoy this routine, finding calmness in the steady rhythm of baking and cooking which helps quiet the voices in your head. Too bad it doesn’t last long enough for you to relish it when Alia suddenly speaks, bringing up something other than the task in your hand for a change.

“I’ve been wondering for a while, but you look like you had a rough night. Is your stomach still bothering you?” she asks, breaking the silence.

To say that you are caught off-guard seems like an understatement. And you have no idea how to respond to her question. For her to suddenly ask something personal is completely unexpected.

It’s not that the two of you never had an actual conversation with one another like a pair of normal human beings. It’s just she never seemed to truly care or have any interest in getting to know about you other than the stories shared at family dinners with your parents around.

It’s making it even harder to answer when you have this underlying guilt brewing inside you. A feeling that comes from hiding a secret that keeps getting heavier to carry. And you are afraid that the moment you open your mouth to speak, they will all come spilling out of you.

You wish you could just lie to her face. Tell her that everything is fine so you can continue working in silence.

But when you look up and actually look at her, she seems—genuine, in her concern, and almost as much with her curiosity.

But there is no malice or pretence in her question that you find yourself reaching out to accept the olive branch that she is offering you and answer, “It’s—okay. I mean, it’s been pretty rough the past few nights. I think it’s because of the lack of sleep I’ve been getting.”

And you’re not completely lying. Because the past couple of nights have been rough. But you couldn’t possibly explain to her why.

Alia scrunches her nose, oblivious to this. “I heard from Honey that you get this way when you’re stressed out. Has work been stressful for you lately? I mean, with your latest work promotion, I can only imagine that you’ve only gotten busier lately.”

You purse your lips and avoid her gaze, once again biting back the secret that is threatening to slip out.

“Maybe—” you start to answer, “I haven’t been eating well, and I’ve messed up my sleeping schedule so bad lately, that it’s been hard to fix it even when I’m home. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and I woke up with a headache this morning.”

Alia frowns. “Have you been taking meds? I have some vitamins that may help you sleep better. I’ve been taking them lately to—”

Thinking about taking vitamins makes you cringe. The doctor’s warnings come floating through your mind—reminding you that you should be wary of the medicines and vitamins to take, as they may not be safe enough for the baby in your belly, her warning about keeping your stress level low, and her reminder of watching over your diet at the beginning of your pregnancy.

“No, it’s fine. I don’t usually take medicines or vitamins to help me sleep,” you gently refuse. Even without your doctor’s warnings, you know that nothing could really help you with your sleeping problems.

Because the truth is, your nausea and ‘stomach bug‘ haven’t been the sole reason why you have been having trouble sleeping as of late.

It was Taehyung.

Ever since you came across Taehyung that night in the hallway, memories from the night of your wild hookup have been coming back to you. They have been haunting you at night, whether you were sitting in bed wide awake or when you were deep in your restless sleep.

When sleep failed you, you would be left spending long hours recounting every action and every conversation that you could remember. Every single detail had been coming back to you in bits and pieces jumbling together, and you would spend the next long hours trying to piece everything together. You went through it all to answer the resounding questions that are still messing up with your mind.

How many times did we do it that night?

More than twice, for sure, you recall each time you try to look back. Was it three, or four times?

You remember feeling sore and tired the next day, yet you were content enough to sleep the whole flight away towards your dream vacation with your whole body humming with the waning pleasure. And while you weren’t completely drunk that night, you were surely tipsy enough that you were unable to memorise every single moment with a clear mind.

But the biggest question that you have yet to answer—

He really did wear condoms that night, didn’t he?

You remember watching him roll the condom down the length of his impressive cock. It wasn’t really a memory that you could easily erase, no matter how tipsy-minded you were that night. Not when the way he did it left you completely transfixed.

For some reason, everything about the first intercourse you had with him remains vivid in your memory. Because it was the first time for you to ever feel that kind of pleasure. To feel wanton and free with someone who was willing to help you open up a part of you which had been locked and sheltered during the long period of time you spent in your past relationship.

The second time always seems a bit blurry. But you can still recall waking up to his sinful lips devouring your sore pussy in the middle of the night.

He claimed it as a way to make up for the rough and dominating way he took you the first time and the lack of foreplay. So he spoiled you by giving you pleasure through his mouth and tongue and the work of his fingers, before he fucked you gently, slowly, until you were arching into him and crying out his name once again as he helped you embrace your slow rising climax.

And the third time—

“Um, earth to ________.”

Alia’s sharp voice pulls you out of your dark thoughts. Her curiosity seems to grow more palpable, and so does the concerned look you see on her face.

“Are you okay? Seriously, you don’t look so well. You keep spacing out today and now it’s like you’re burning up or something.”

With a gasp, you reach up and touch your cheeks, quickly realising that she is right. You are burning up. Except that instead of burning from a fever, your body is growing hot from the inside for a different kind of reason.

You are burning from being drowned in your dirty thoughts and recounting all the pleasure that you felt back then. To be thinking about all the wanton things that you shared with—

Your eyes fall open as you draw a shocked gasp. Realising too late that you are thinking about your stepsister’s new boyfriend while she is sitting right in front of you. Guilt pierces through your chest right at that moment, and you quickly rise from your seat.

“Excuse me, I think I need to cool down a little bit. I’ll be right back,” you quickly say to her before slipping away from the kitchen without waiting for her response.

Needing distance from Alia, you rush to your bedroom upstairs, finding solace in your safe space as you lock yourself in it. The feeling of shame washes over you. You can’t believe that you had allowed yourself to think of dark, sultry thoughts while you were sitting right across your stepsister.

Worse yet, that doing so made you feel aroused.

The same thing always happens each time you think back about that night. As if your body has memorised what your mind has failed to remember. Each memory of his touch brings back sparks on your skin, reigniting the same reaction that he managed to draw from you then.

By the time you lie down on your bed, the heat in your body has spread all over the place. Even to the places that you didn’t expect to be affected, as it spreads down between your legs.

At the same time, your skin seems to be humming with need. There is a desire that has been awakened simply by reliving that night in your thoughts, which would be impossible to quench.

You close your eyes, and immediately feel as though you are under a spell. Your hands begin to move on their own, searching for the source of the heat rushing within your body. They continue travelling their way down, following the pulses that you feel emerging from your core.

You slip one hand down your pants, reaching down until you feel skin. A gasp threatens to come out when the tips of your fingers are met with dampened skin. Just as expected, thinking about that night and the things you did with Taehyung then has made you wet.

Your fingers tremble, and your heart starts pounding like crazy as you continue touching yourself. Slipping your fingers across your slit, you make use of the slickness that has formed to slide back and forth, playing with yourself until you feel only pleasure. A shudder erupts through you as you stroke your clit.

You shouldn’t be doing this. But before you can stop yourself, an image of his face hovering right above you comes to you. In that moment, you are back to the night when you were with him.

The fingers that are touching your hot center are no longer yours. They may not be the same size as his fingers, and not as firm, but your memory easily replaces your dainty digits with Taehyung’s longer and wider ones as you push them into your throbbing core.

There is a voice in your head that keeps telling you how wrong for you to be doing this. How inappropriate for you to be thinking naughty thoughts about someone who isn’t yours and pleasuring yourself with it.

But your body wouldn’t listen.

Your hand continues to move, pumping your fingers in and out of your pussy while your hips push back against them. The pleasure rises, increasing quickly the faster you move your hand, the more you ride your fingers like an animal in heat.

And you don’t stop until your orgasm starts building. It keeps growing stronger, until everything within you snaps.

As you fall into bliss, his face is all you see. His voice is the one you hear instead of the soft, muffled moans coming out of your lips, whispering to you the same sweet soothing voice that he gave you that night while you were succumbing to pleasure.

“Good girl. You’re amazing, Red. Rest up, and we’ll play again once you’re ready.”

“I suppose this is what people call a Christmas miracle.”

You start to roll your eyes before you remember that Skye wouldn’t be able to see it. For the past hour, you have been on the phone with your roommate while you were hiding from your family.

Locked in the safety of your bedroom for the second time today because you still couldn’t get over the mortification that has fallen upon you after this morning’s blunder.

Having your arousal slowly pooling between your legs by the mere thought of Taehyung and the sinful deed you shared with him seemed scandalous. Allowing it to happen while you were sitting right in front of his girlfriend, someone closely related to you, made you feel as if you were more deserving to be burned in hell rather than sharing the joy and laughter of Christmas.

And instead of brushing those nasty thoughts away, you took it one step further by seeking pleasure with the touch of your fingers. With your head filled with thoughts of Taehyung and while your stepsister was waiting downstairs for you to return.

Shame and guilt plagued you once you were done. And you were also too sated and tired to even function. But you couldn’t hide in your bedroom for long. Doing so would only cause people to grow suspicious of your behaviour, and you already gained enough unsolicited attention to let it happen.

So after cleaning yourself up and wiping off any remnants of your misdeed, you put your big girl pants on and went back downstairs to finish the Christmas baking with your stepsister. This time, you kept to yourself more, avoiding as much conversation with Alia while you continued to pretend that nothing happened while you were away.

Thankfully, you didn’t have to be alone with her for far too long when everyone returned from their outing.

Masking your shame no longer became a struggle when you stopped being the main focus of the room. Everyone was busy with Christmas Eve’s preparation; your mother with the holiday decorations, your stepfather with his handiwork as he went out to fix the porch and the locks on the front door, while you and Alia remained in the kitchen to finish baking.

Honey stayed nearby, as she sat at the kitchen counter, watching everyone doing their own thing while she was nursing a mug filled with steaming hot cocoa and sharing the most recent gossip about the old ladies living in her apartment complex.

While all of this was happening around you, you were blessed with the absence of Taehyung, who was said to have gone back to the motel where he and Alia have been staying to finish some work before Christmas Day.

You didn’t question it, trying not to care too much about him and making use of him being gone to try and forget everything that had happened.

But then lunchtime came, and he returned just in time to rejoin your family for the meal. Seeing his face again, hearing his voice, watching how your stepsister kept being all touchy feeling with her boyfriend and clinging to him all the time gave you an unpleasant feeling that you felt sick to the stomach.

That was when you rushed back into your bedroom. You convinced yourself that you weren’t hiding from them. That you simply needed some time alone; alone with your thoughts, to gather your wits, and calm your nerves that had become unsettled during lunch while he was once again sitting right across the table, subtly watching you when others weren’t looking.

But being alone with your thoughts hadn’t been quite helpful.

Your mind kept wandering into places that you shouldn’t dare to visit. You needed someone to talk to. To vent and get everything out of your system. And Skye, who is currently on the other side of the country to be with her family, was the best option to call.

And yet, after telling her everything that has happened and keeping her up to date with the latest developments, you are starting to regret calling her.

“Do tell me why you, of all people, would call this catastrophe a miracle?” you ask her while pinching the bridge of your nose. Your head feels tense, although you are relieved that it has somehow stopped pounding after sharing all of the drama to your roommate through the phone call.

You can hear the subtle sound of her humming to herself, contemplating her answer. “I mean, think about it. We already made an elaborate plan to track him down, to the point that we nearly booked a ticket to go back to the place where your flight made a stop for transit in case we can’t easily find him,” she says with the same no-nonsense tone of voice that she always uses when she is laying out all of the facts, “and then he suddenly appears, right at your family’s home, as if saying ‘Here I am, look no further’.”

She laughs, and you can picture her shaking her head when she adds, “Tell me that’s not a miracle.”

Instead of answering her, you only bite your lips. It does sound almost too good to be true. Except for the one simple fact that is impossible to ignore. “You’re forgetting the fact that he’s here as Alia’s plus one. I’d say it’s a curse, instead of a miracle.”

You can her chuckling bitterly on the other side of the phone. “And once again, I’m going to say that I don’t envy you.”

You let out a groan as you fall back on the bed. “This isn’t funny.”

“I know, sweetie,” she says, comforting you with a sigh. “It’s just so absurd to think about all the coincidences happening around this baby business.”

You close your eyes, hating the fact that she’s right. There are too many coincidences happening around you, and it’s astonishing to think that everything could come to this point.

“Yeah, it does sound absurd.”

“I’m just sad I’m not there to witness it,” she says, laughing, while you barely have the energy to scoff at her.

For the longest time, Skye has always been the one you turn to whenever you need someone to vent about your ordeal with your stepsister. But compared to the other times you clashed against Alia, this one surely takes the cake.

“You haven’t told him about the baby, have you?”

You wince. “No,” you answer with s sigh. “I can’t think of a way to do it.”

And you have been avoiding being in the same room with him to even have the chance to talk about it. Not that you would have found that chance anyway if you did, as Alia has always been by his side. You suddenly remember the way Alia suddenly sidled to his side when he was alone at a time, making a complete show about her doting on him.

Grimacing, you shake the image out of your head. “I’ve thought of different scenarios involving me talking to him and revealing about my pregnancy, but everything has changed now that Alia is involved in this.”

Skye grows silent for a moment. “Just tell him,” she says. Her voice softens, which only means that she is being serious about this. “The sooner the better, even more so because he is involved with Alia. It’s better to let him know now rather than later, once they’ve been dating longer and the baby is here.”

You bite your lips again, refraining to tell her that you had thought about the same thing. “He did say he wanted to talk—”

But he never made it clear what he wanted to talk about. What is there to talk about if he still has no clue about the baby? Is he trying to convince you again not to let Alia know about your past hookup? How would that work if you’re having a baby together from that hookup?

You hate to admit it, but being kept as a secret feels—painful.

“Well—” Skye hesitantly says, “It’s not like you’re planning to have an actual relationship with him, right?”

Her question makes your stomach drop. Have you ever really had any hope of having a relationship with him, just because you are expecting a baby with him?

Thinking back to the night of your hookup makes you look back and relive the emotions that you felt that night. You are sure that you felt a connection with him that night. A connection that you never felt before with anyone else. It felt real, yet you denied it simply because neither of you had been using your true identities when you climbed on that bed together. It had seemed to you that both of you had only wanted that night to be a one-time thing.

The sparks you felt with him had also been real, and you are quite sure that you felt them again the last time you were alone with him in that hallway, when he confronted you after the first family dinner that you shared with him. Sometimes, you can also feel that same sparks coming back whenever he is in the room, no matter how far away you try to distance yourself from him.

Could it be that somewhere along the line, you had unknowingly harboured hope that you could be together again? When did this happen?

Or did having his baby growing inside you make you think that you could somehow build something real with him, to develop the connection that you felt that night into something else entirely?

Is that why seeing him with Alia has been bothering you so much? Not only because you are hiding this secret, but also because nothing can come out of it once you come clean to him?

Not for the first time today, you feel like you’re about to throw up.

You only had one night with him. You keep reminding yourself this, hoping that it will be able to snap you out of the silly illusion that you had allowed your mind to possess.

“No, I just want him to know about the baby,” you answer weakly, hoping that voicing this promise out loud would help put an end to your wishful thinking. To stop it before it gets too far.

“But having this baby with me while he’s dating my stepsister will complicate things. And things are already complicated between me and Alia.”

“Right,” Skye sighs on the phone. Knowing exactly what you mean without you having to say it out loud.

Over the years, Skye had both witnessed and heard every single spectacle that had become a major part of your relationship with Alia. You can tell that she understands what to expect once this thing blows up.

“You’re right. I can’t imagine how she’ll react,” you hear her say, before releasing an overly dramatic sigh, and you immediately know where this is going. “Maybe she wouldn’t have hated you so much if you didn’t break that doll of hers when you were a kid.”

You scream into the pillows while she laughs historically on the phone. “Why do you have to bring that up?” you groan, hating yourself for sharing this with her during one of your late-night drinking fests. “Out of all the ludicrous things I shared with you, that’s the one crossing your mind right now?”

“Hey, you were the one who brought it up first. How would you know that it wasn’t true?”

“How could you possibly remember that when I barely could?” you whine out loud.

One drunken night was all it took for you to disclose the severity of your childhood crime. Even if you barely remember the details of it. Thankfully, your roommate had been the only witness to listen to your drunk confession.

“It was an accident that happened ages ago, and I already told you that she couldn’t have possibly started resenting me for years because of that ugly doll.”

Because it sounds ridiculous if you think about it with a sober mind. And you refuse to believe the disdain that Alia has shown you for years had all stemmed from the small incident that happened when you were a child.

At nine years old, your small family—originally consisting only of you, your mother, and your sweet grandmother, Honey—suddenly expanded. Everything changed for you the day your stepfather, Cliff, came into the picture. Not only did he fill the void that was left behind by your late father, but he also brought with him another girl, and you suddenly had an older sister to play with and to look up to.

A few years older than you, Alia appeared in your eyes like the coolest kid you have ever met. Beautiful, smart, witty, though she could act a bit snobbish whenever you tried to play with her, yet she still shared her bedroom, her toys, and sometimes her collection of dolls.

One sleepover, a pair of clumsy little hands, and a ripped old doll later, everything turned the other way around. It happened so long ago that you eventually forgot about it. As Alia entered high school, she rarely came to visit her father, and the incident was simply overlooked with all the other things happening in your life soon after.

The moment she came back into the picture, Alia began acting differently towards you and your relationship was quick to turn dreary.

Forced smiles and tensed, courteous chats. The hard and solemn look coming through her eyes that she would always reserve for you when others weren’t looking, always at the times when you earned everyone’s attention or when you accomplished something good in life. Plotting schemes by arranging her own agendas to match the significant moments of your lifetime—graduation days, birthdays, anniversaries—oftentimes forcing Cliff to have to choose between being there for you or to be by his biological daughter’s side, while mostly finding excuses to miss out on your important dates altogether.

After another incident where she caused another drama back home years ago, you came back to your apartment with an opened bottle of tequila and spent the night drunk-venting with Skye.

Somehow, as you drunkenly wondered why your stepsister would treat you with so much disdain, that small incident from a long time ago came back to mind. And that moment, it seemed that your subconscious linked the incident with the way she treated you years after, and you let it slip to Skye for her to later make it a running joke between the two of you whenever you came to vent about your stepsister drama.

But really now…all of that hate and drama over a doll?

As if that would justify the way she has been treating you for years. It also makes you wonder if last year’s incident had anything to do with that as well.

Shaking your head, you hate to think of what kind of hell she will be giving you once she finds out that you are carrying a baby from the man she’s been flaunting around since the day she came home.

You shudder at the mere thought of it.

“You know that my offer still stands, right?” Skye suddenly questions you, much to your relief, as she changes the topic right before your head begins to ache again. “If things get too hard or if he wants nothing to do with the baby, or if he mistreats you at all after knowing that he got you pregnant, we can still run away and raise the baby together. Maybe Europe is a bit too far, and too cold for me, so how about Australia?”

Unprepared to hear her comment, you immediately erupt into laughter. Like always, your best friend knows how to ease your mind. The tension that comes from the stress is lifted, and so are your worries.

It doesn’t change the fact that you are still going to have to face the music the moment you are given the chance to, but at least you are starting to see some light waiting at the end of this.

“Running away sounds awfully tempting right now, I’m not going to lie,” you murmur into the call, knowing that Skye can hear you perfectly. But she wouldn’t be able to see it as you rise from your bed and reach out to the beside table, picking up the sonogram which you had gotten right before you left for home.

Running away does sound tempting. But it is not the choice that you can make. And you won’t.

You are going to have that talk with Taehyung and tell him everything. Soon. You just need to be ready to face his reaction and the consequences of what the truth might bring.

As much as you kept telling yourself to prioritise finding the chance to speak to Taehyung, all of your bravado simply vanished by the time you rejoined your family for dinner.

Sitting down at dinner, once again taking the front row seat to watch Alia making a good show of being the doting girlfriend, as she kept clinging onto Taehyung while he was trying to keep his composure in front of you, you felt suffocated.

And you couldn’t escape it.

You had done it once, masking your discomfort with your sickness. And then doing it again a couple of more times under various excuses while everyone was spending time together.

Despite feeling like you wanted to run away, you were running out of excuses and there was nowhere for you to hide. Even once dinner is over, your attempt to escape unnoticed quickly fails when Taehyung finds you first.

“What are you up to now?” you nearly snap at him as Taehyung slips into view, intercepting you when you are about to slip past the backdoor, hoping to get some fresh air.

Pursing his lips, he hides his smile and shrugs. “Nothing, just trying to see what you’ve been up to.”

You squint your eyes at him, finding him suspicious. “Does Alia even know you’re here? Cornering me instead of chaperoning her out there?”

As you cross your arms over your chest, challenging him with your question, Taehyung simply stares at you with an amused look in his eyes. “You know, everyone is in the living room and they’re wondering where you are. Honey is about to make a show of making that rum cocktail that she was bragging about at dinner.”

An overwhelming feeling of craving and queasiness comes over you as you picture Honey and her rum cocktails that you would normally enjoy during the holidays. You swallow the tightness in your throat and force a smile. “So you offered to look for me?”

Taehyung grins, making it seem like he has no fault whatsoever for being where he shouldn’t be. “I’m currently free, so why not?”

You scoff at him and shake your head when you fail to hide your smile. “Yeah, well. I doubt that they’ll be missing me.”

There’s already Alia in the room with them to steal the show and everyone’s attention anyway, you silently wonder.

And yours.

Surprisingly, a frown forms on his face upon hearing this. “That’s where you’re wrong. Honey kept asking for you. Said something about making a special recipe for your, um…stomach bug,” he says with a small smile, and then lowers his voice to add, “and I also wondered why you weren’t there.”

Your heart makes a sudden leap inside your chest. “Thank you for caring,” you say to him with a sarcastic tone of voice, trying not to look deeper into it or feel to happy about him looking for you.

Having the flutter in your chest gives you more reason to walk away. “Please tell Honey I’m sorry that I can’t join her tonight. I’m not feeling up to it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks before you can get away. “I remember that you enjoyed drinking sweet cocktails the last time we met. With how Honey kept bragging about it, I’m a bit curious to try the drinks she’s making. Don’t you?

Of course, you would be interested, you wonder. But I can’t possibly drink whatever it is that Honey is concocting, even if I feel like I need a glass of whatever she is offering.

But he doesn’t need to know that yet—or should he?

Suddenly, you start doubting yourself. You can feel the words hanging by the tip of your tongue already, the urge to spill everything to him right this moment grows so strongly as you look at his smug face.

So what if he wanted to wait until the time is right to talk? When is the right time to talk about this?

You take a quick glance around, noticing that you are all alone with him. This would be the perfect chance to tell him about the pregnancy, wouldn’t it?

“Maybe her cocktail can help you feel more at ease and less—tense,” he suddenly adds with a hint of a teasing tone in his voice that rubs you the wrong way, taking away every good will you ever have of talking to him properly about your ordeal.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve dinner. There’s going to be enough drinking then,” you say to him while gritting your teeth. But you know that it would be highly unlikely that you are going to drink even then.

You realise that you will have to find more excuses tomorrow to avoid any alcoholic drinks being passed onto your hands. But you can figure that out later. You first need to figure out how to share him the news.

“You should go back. Alia would be looking for you by now,” you say to him with a bite while avoiding his eyes as you try to walk around him, yet he stops you from running away again.

This time, he isn’t using his words.

Your entire body freezes as he catches your wrist. Once he knows that he has gotten you right where he wants you to, he starts pulling you gently back to him. You look up at his face, surprised that he would do something so daring when he was the one who had been so adamant about keeping your history with him a secret.

“What are you doing?” you hiss at him, yet you don’t make a move to pull away. You throw a quick glance towards the hallway leading to the living room, worrying that someone might suddenly show up. “Are you crazy? What if someone comes here?”

Taehyung steps closer until you can feel his warmth engulfing you. He only stops once his chest is merely a few inches away from yours. His move seems menacing, and so does the look in his eyes as he looks at your face.

Those are the same eyes that had been looking back at you that night. You get to see the same look you saw then. Passionate. Enthralling. He grounds you with nowhere else to go even without having to restrain you to him, only refraining you from escaping him with nothing more but the look in his eyes.

Suddenly, the room feels tight. As though there is not enough air in your chest for you to breathe, much less to speak. And he is getting too close for comfort.

His hold on your wrist loosens, yet he doesn’t pull away. The dark look in his eyes also wanes, and he looks almost as if he is in pain when he leans down, getting even closer until your faces are almost touching each other.

“Is it making you feel uneasy that I’m around? Is that why you keep running away from me when I’m there?” he questions you with a voice so soft that you would have missed it if he hasn’t been this close, with his lips hovering close to yours.

So close that you can almost feel his kiss, even without touching. Each word he murmurs to you sends your skin shivering, while the cavities inside your chest seem to tighten on themselves when he whispers, “You might be able to ignore it and pretend nothing happened, but I can’t.”

You take a sharp inhale of breath. What is he saying right now?

Suddenly, you feel as if you have just walked into a dream. The same feeling that you had that night returns to you; all the sparks that seem to be floating in the air around you; the way your head seems to be in a haze, as if his entire presence is intoxicating you.

And his words are making your head spin.

Once again, you feel as if you are under his spell. But at the same time, you feel irritated at him for doing this. For choosing to act like this now, when he was just holding hands with your stepsister just moments ago.

While your irritation lights up, he rubs his thumb across your wrist, and the sparks explode around you like fireworks. “Tell me you’re not feeling it too.”

And just like that, his voice snaps you right out of the spell that he placed on you. Closing your eyes, you suck a deep breath and try to compose yourself.

“This isn’t right. Alia is in the next room,” you grit your teeth. You open your eyes and glare at him. “You were the one who told me not to tell Alia about us. Was that not your way of telling me to forget everything?”

Taehyung’s eyes grow wide and he slowly pulls back. To his credit, his face is filled with shame when you remind him of his own words.

Leaning closer, you whisper to him, doing your best to keep your voice from shaking when you question him, “Or do you make it a habit of jumping from one woman to another as long as it’s convenient for you?”

He winces. Once again, he looks pained after hearing your accusation. “We’re going to talk. Once the time is right,” he whispers. He clenches his jaw, looking tense for a moment until he lets everything go with a sigh. “But you need to stop avoiding me.”

You rear back, not expecting to find that he has noticed that you have been deliberately keeping your distance.

How are you going to explain to him the reason why you can’t possibly stay in the same room with him?

For you, the reason is quite obvious. You are still feeling it now, when your skin feels tight and your chest grows warm the longer you are in close proximity to him. Even when you entered a room once he left, you could still feel his presence lingering around you, and it was starting to drive you insane.

And yes, seeing him with Alia bothers you so much that you can never bear being there to witness it.

After your last conversation where he made it seem like he wanted to move on and forget everything, you thought that he would only notice Alia and wouldn’t care to notice your predicament. But obviously, he isn’t completely oblivious to your turmoil.

“I’m not avoiding you,” you insist.

Taehyung raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure?” he questions you with an accusing tone. “I don’t think I imagined it when I saw you turning away and running out of the room whenever I came in.”

He is right, and you find it impossible to lie about it when you barely tried to hide it.

Tired of holding out the truth, you finally admit to him with a small voice, “No, you’re not imagining things. Do you really think it’s fun for me to watch you both together with Alia getting all over you the entire time you’re here?”

The light in his eyes dims. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” he sighs, “I’ll talk to her so she can tone it down.”

You shake your head and chuckle bitterly. “Don’t bother. She’s your girlfriend. I’ll be out of here right after Christmas anyway.”

This makes him frown. “Look, ______,” he starts, but you are too exhausted to deal with this right now to listen.

“I have to go,” you whisper as you pull your hand away. “We’ll have that talk—”

Because there are a lot of things that I need to tell you.

“And then I’m gone and you can go back to Alia with her family thing on Christmas Day. But tomorrow night, we talk. Right after the family dinner.”

Not bothering to wait for his response, you turn and walk away, once again leaving him behind in that dimly lit hallway as you search for solace, somewhere far, far away from him.

Taehyung has been restless.

He has been feeling uneasy for days. The truth is, it has been like this for him since the moment he stepped foot into Alia’s father’s house and saw you standing there. It has been a struggle to hide it and keep everything in. But last night, after talking to you again, the urge to speak to you about everything and explain himself has been growing even stronger.

The look that you gave him when he first saw you has been haunting him, weighing him with guilt. Ever since that night six weeks ago, he has kept your smile deeply ingrained in his memory; the coy smile that you gave him as you flirted with him at the bar; the sultry look you wore when you clung onto him at the elevator while testing his limits with your lips tracing his neck; the content smile that he saw on your face the morning after the long, passionate night he shared with you before he took you again one last time.

And yet, the smile that he kept wishing to see again for the past month was not there when he finally met you again. The expression that he has yearned to see had been replaced with shock, as you stood there looking like a deer caught in the headlights, while at the same time, you also seemed as if you had just witnessed someone kicking your puppy.

Which was quite understandable, looking back at it now. It must have been a complete shock for you to see him entering your home, holding Alia’s hand and introducing himself as her boyfriend. Just as shocking it was for him to find out that you are Alia’s stepsister.

Fuck, how did things get so messed up?

”You’re not ready yet.”

Taehyung has been so out of it when he enters the motel’s bedroom that he fails to notice Alia watching him. Sitting right in front of the dressing table, she barely gives him a glance as she is busy putting on her makeup and doing her hair for the night.

Normally, she doesn’t take this much time getting ready. But Taehyung understands that tonight is different.

According to Alia, the family’s Christmas Eve dinner is a small annual gathering that is quite important for them. Held on behalf of Honey, who often spends the holiday with Cliff’s side of the family. It is when family members and second cousins would come to her Dad’s house to celebrate both the holidays and Honey’s good health.

Ever since early this morning, Alia has been saying how she needs to look as her best self tonight—spoken in her own words—because she wants to make a good impression on her stepmother’s family. The only problem was that she also made it clear that she wanted Taehyung to play his role as her boyfriend perfectly, to continue to show that they have a great relationship right in front of everyone, just the same way he has been doing it for the past few days.

It shouldn’t be bothering him so much that she would ask him to do this. Since that was the main reason why he is here in the first place.

The original plan had been simple. All he had to do this holiday was to accompany Alia on her trip home to see her family. The family gathering from her mother’s side has always been so stressful, and he simply wanted to help her lessen the pressure so she could enjoy the holidays for once.

Yet her mother’s special Christmas gathering tomorrow had not been the only thing that was bothering Alia before this holiday came around. Once Taehyung agreed to be her plus one, she extended her desperate plea for help by asking him to come with her as she spends Christmas and the upcoming days to it with her father’s family before heading to see her mother.

He can’t remember well what Alia told him about having to be here. He understood the reason when it came to her mother, but he barely knew anything about her father’s family. He remembers her talking about something that had to do with clearing her name. Obviously, he should’ve paid more attention, and maybe he should’ve taken the time to know more about Cliff’s family.

Not that it matters now. When he has travelled all the way here for this, and now he is stuck in this mess without having any clue how to fix it.

“Taehyung?”

Taehyung blinks. “What?”

Alia doesn’t say a thing at first. For a moment, Taehyung wonders if she notices anything when she tilts her head at him, finally looking directly at him as if she is trying to read him.

Yet he is proven wrong when Alia merely sighs. “I just said that you need to get ready,” Alia says, unaware of the battle happening inside Taehyung’s mind. Before he can say a thing, Alia averts her gaze and looks back at the mirror as if she is trying to solve a puzzle. “You need to look your best if you’re going to stay beside me and we’re going to be late if you’re not moving it.”

Chuckling to himself, Taehyung walks over to stand right behind her. With his face appearing in the mirror, she has no choice but to look at him. “Should I wear my best suit tonight, then?” he taunts her as he leans down, breathing in her perfume that is a bit too extravagant to his liking.

I was right, this perfume is nowhere near my taste, he says to himself, while he silently recalls breathing in your perfume and thinking just how much it suited you.

Alia looks up at him through the mirror and rolls her eyes. “You can wear whatever. A suit would be too much, since we’re having the dinner at home, not at some fancy and way too expensive restaurant like how my Mom would have it. You did bring your suit, didn’t you? Wear that at my Mom’s party tomorrow,” Alia instructs him, and for some reason, it doesn’t make him feel good about it.

Usually, he wouldn’t take it to heart and just laugh it off when she acts this bossy around him. Not this time, however. The entire situation has made him grow a bit resentful to her, something that he has been realising for a while now, even if it isn’t fair for her to be treated this way when it wasn’t really her fault.

Alia keeps her eyes on the mirror when she continues to speak to him. “Wear that black jacket that you love so much. You always look good in it,” she says, flickering her gaze in a teasing way when she adds, “Even I would swoon when I see you wearing it, and that doesn’t happen a lot.”

Taehyung scoffs at Alia and lowers his head to avoid her gaze. The black jacket brings back a lot of memories. He didn’t think much of it when he brought it with him on this trip, but maybe a part of him already felt that he would be needing it.

Would it be okay to wear it tonight, right in front of her?

“Are you okay?” Alia’s voice snaps him out of his musings. As he looks up to meet her gaze through the mirror, she surprises him by not only softening her voice, but looking as if she is worried about him. “You know, you don’t seem like yourself lately.”

How nice of you to notice, Taehyung wonders to himself but bites his tongue so he wouldn’t let those words slip. He has been wondering for a while now just how she could remain oblivious to everything that has been happening around her.

If only she would notice how uncomfortable he feels whenever she clings to him, or how their act in front of her family bothers you so much.

Maybe she does notice it, he muses. Maybe she’s been doing it on purpose by pushing it on him. Does it have to do with—

Before Taehyung could finish his own thoughts, Alia seems to have enough of his silence and turns on her seat to look at him straight in the eyes.

“What is it? Spill.”

Taehyung only continues to remain silent, having no idea how to answer that question or if he should try to. Even if he can explain himself, where should he even start?

Is this the part where he needs to tell her that her stepsister—the reason why Alia decided to come to see her Dad after spending weeks complaining that she didn’t have any desire to, and also the reason why she is trying so damn hard to impress everyone this holiday, even to the point of bringing Taehyung home to meet her family—was his last sex partner?

“You need to tell her.”

Taehyung closes his eyes as your voice echoes through his head, as if you are the voice of his conscience.

You were right. He needs to tell Alia about his connection to you. But knowing her mood swings, and the reason why she has been trying to be ‘perfect’ the entire time she was spending time with Cliff’s family, he was hoping that he could postpone talking to her about it until tonight’s big family dinner is done.

An event that Alia claimed to be more important for her than her mother’s fancy family gathering.

No, I need to talk to her first, he decides. Maybe we could figure something out once she knows everything.

“Nothing. I’m just overwhelmed. You didn’t tell me—” he stops himself as he almost let it slip that it was your presence that bothers him.

You didn’t tell me anything about your stepsister.

He keeps those words to himself. But he makes a mental note to bring it up once he gets back to her again by the end of the night to have a different kind of conversation to the one he is having with you. “So, black jacket, huh? Got it.”

“Good, now go get ready and make it quick. The trip from here back to Dad’s house will take some time,” Alia says with a sigh as she turns back to the mirror, her concern is quick to vanish as she proceeds to complain, “We could’ve spared that trip if you hadn’t insisted that we stay in this motel instead of using the guest room like me and my Dad suggested.”

“I already told you,” Taehyung says with a deep chuckle, leaning back down again to whisper, “I’m a terrible actor.”

He straightens up while looking pleased with himself for drawing a frown on Alia’s face. “And being in your Dad’s house the entire time we’re here would cost me too much work. The gig would’ve been up before you know it.”

“Fine, whatever. Just go,” Alia waves him off.

Taehyung nods and makes his way to the door. He stops before he opens it and asks her, “Remember what I asked earlier?”

Once again, Alia rolls her eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah, tone it down with the clingy girlfriend act. I get it. Now go get ready, we’re going to be late.”

Taehyung breathes a sigh of relief to hear it. He can’t seem to forget the way the light in your eyes seemed to dim when you talked about the way he kept putting on the new couple act in front of you. On top of this whole mess, the last thing he wants is to leave you feeling hurt by his actions, so he made a deal with Alia to tone it down, even if he couldn’t explain to her the reason why.

Pleased to know that Alia is listening to him for once, and that he has at least one problem handled before tonight, Taehyung leaves Alia’s motel room, closing the door behind him with a click before he goes to his own room to get ready.

You turn to your side and have a good look at yourself in the mirror. On instinct, your hands run down your belly, pressing down gently at the spot where the baby should be.

The knitted dress that you have chosen to wear tonight may not be the fanciest one, but it is the one that feels comfortable on your skin. It isn’t tight enough on your body to make you feel self-conscious about yourself and definitely not enough to show the changes happening in your body.

With just over six weeks of gestation, the baby bump isn’t showing that much yet. But you can still feel the way your body is changing. Perhaps it is all happening in your mind, only from knowing that you are keeping a living being inside you, but you can almost see it when you look at yourself in the mirror that you cannot help but try to do anything you can to hide it from your family.

For now, at least. Only until you are ready to reveal everything to them.

Thinking about this only makes you grow more anxious. You have been feeling this way since morning, all for the thought of having to face Taehyung again, and to finally talk about everything that is needed to be said before the night ends.

“Tonight,” you tell yourself as you straighten up to look at your reflection in the mirror for one last time. “I’m going to tell him about the baby tonight.”

Tonight will be the only chance you will ever have to talk to him, after all.

Tomorrow, Taehyung will join Alia to visit her birth mother. Alia’s mother has always held a massive luncheon or dinner event on Christmas Day that Alia would be required to attend, so you doubt that she would miss it this year, even if you had always overheard her complaining about it to your stepfather.

Every year, Alia would always prioritise her mother’s family event over her father’s during the holiday season. Coming from a wealthy family, Alia’s mother had always appeared to you like a different breed. Her holiday parties had always been so fancy, almost too extravagant compared to your family’s simple ones.

Every year, Alia would focus on preparing for those events, always stressing about it before going, and barely focusing on her days spent with her father and his family that it did come as a surprise to you when she came early this year to join your family and to even get herself involved.

Perhaps that was the reason why she had decided to bring a date with her this time around, and to introduce her boyfriend to the family like you did with your ex.

Shaking the thoughts of Alia out of your mind, you finish getting ready and walk over to your purse. With gentle fingers, you pull out the sonogram that you had printed during your latest trip to the doctor.

Holding it up under the light, you brush your fingertips across the blurry image of your growing baby. Sometimes it is still hard for you to process the fact that you are carrying a human child within you. Even through the nausea, the cravings, the lethargy, and any other peculiar things that have become parts of your life as of late, you still have a hard time grasping this fact.

But this sonogram shows you the undeniable proof that the baby is there. You had even gotten the chance to hear the baby’s faint heartbeat on your last appointment, making it clear that you are carrying a life inside you.

A life that seems so fragile, that you have developed a strong urge to protect it from the world. Even from its father, if he ever tries to deny or reject it.

“It’s going to be okay,” you whisper to yourself while brushing your fingers on the picture again, speaking of it like a mantra. At the same time, it also feels as if you are talking to your baby, soothing it like you would if the baby is here with you. “Everything’s going to be okay. Let’s just get through tonight first.”

For a moment, you contemplate between carrying the sonogram with you or to leave it here. With no purse or a pocket to hide it in, you finally decide to leave it on top of the bedside table until you are ready to show it to Taehyung later tonight.

With one last look at the mirror, you rub your palms down your dress and give yourself the final pep talk before heading out. “Let’s go,” you whisper to yourself as you walk out of your bedroom, strengthening your shoulders and keeping your chin up as you prepare yourself to face the inevitable.

It’s finally Christmas Eve.

The holiday spirit hasn’t completely sunk in on you until you finally sat down at the table for the annual Christmas dinner, surrounded by your immediate family and the family members that you haven’t met for a period of time while you have been pursuing your dreams away in the city.

Outside, the temperature has dropped down even lower than before. The layer of snow that your stepfather had spent hours shovelling away are piling up with fresh ones as snowflakes keep falling from the evening sky, while the windows would tremble once or twice with the flowing breeze that seemed to have picked up as the day turned into evening.

Inside, however, the warmth of the festive season fills the air, as everyone gathers around the overflowing feast that has been set up on the table—your grandmother’s specially made ham and turkey with the additional main of lamb skewers and turkey meatballs, Aunt Dara’s potato bake and baked salmon, and Uncle Marco’s signature casseroles, with smaller bowls of side dishes set on the side.

A couple of bowls of the fennel salad that you helped prepare are being passed around on the table. Once everyone is done with their meal, your home-made cinnamon bread rolls and your cousin June’s apple and caramel pie are ready to be served as desserts.

Once everyone has filled the dining room, your mother’s Christmas decorations which you perviously thought was overdone no longer seemed as much. The twinkling lights and the fragrant pine garlands adorning the room are enough to rival the festive sweaters and bright-coloured dresses that everyone is wearing for the night. The scent of cinnamon and cloves wafts around you all the way from the kitchen, and it makes your head swim even without sipping on the champagne that are being passed around.

As everyone took their seats at the table, you stepfather stepped aside to let Honey take the head of the table as the matriarch of the family and the night’s host. The radiant smile on her face which never seems to wane sets the mood in the entire room, helping you to also forget about your personal troubles that no longer seem as dire as your mind had made them up to be.

The laughter and chatter filling the room becomes the perfect distraction that you need to pay no heed to the unwavering gaze that Taehyung keeps stealing your way. Even as he chats with June who had sat down by his side, Taehyung continues to throw a few not-so-subtle glances your way, making you feel uneasy and self-conscious whenever you aren’t having your attention dragged away from your younger cousin, Maya, who is chattering right beside you while sipping her glass of champagne.

You turn your gaze at Alia, who had chosen to sit by Cliff’s brother, Kyle, who had decided to join your family this year. Too busy catching up with her uncle, she doesn’t seem to notice her own boyfriend’s wandering eyes. She doesn’t even seem to care as much as she should, you realise, as you have also noticed that she hasn’t been clinging or openly doting on Taehyung throughout the night since they had gotten back from the motel.

It has given you a sense of relief, because you can finally have one night where your heart isn’t being crushed from watching them together, but also a twinge of guilt, knowing that your last conversation with Taehyung may have had something to do with it. She did appear tense when she first came in, and you never figured out why when it quickly faded the moment she saw her uncle in the room, and her stiff expression quickly turned into relief.

The sounds of glasses clinking and the pouring champagne continues on as everyone is starting to finish their meal. Nursing the glass of fresh juice that you have had all through dinner, you hope that nobody notices that you have left the glass of champagne on your side mostly untouched—apart from the occasional raise of the glass when someone makes a toast or pressing your lips lightly on its rim to disguise the fact that you are not drinking any drop of it.

Not too long, dinner is over, and everyone filters into the spacious living room to gather around the fireplace while the kids loiter around the Christmas tree to curiously shift through the wrapped presents to try and find which one of them would be theirs.

There are a selective few that separate themselves to head out to the back porch to smoke and talk business—mostly your male cousins—while the others quickly follow Honey to where she has set up the minibar for her signature rum cocktails and act as the designated bartender for the night.

As you follow to join everyone in the living room, the impending conversation that you are about to have with Taehyung keeps weighing you down, making you grow more anxious with each passing second. It makes you feel vulnerable, causing you to be hyper-aware of his presence inside the room even before you catch the sight of him mingling with your family.

Moving one feet after the other without tripping feels like a struggle under the heat of his gaze. It bothers you to no end to notice that Taehyung seems to have disregarded any last bit of subtlety, when he is now openly staring at you even while he is chatting with someone else by the Christmas tree.

You have no idea if anyone, especially Alia, has noticed it. You wouldn’t be surprised if someone has caught on, when he makes it so obvious that he is watching you from across the room.

The only reprieve that you have to cover you from Taehyung’s gaze and the silent questions that may linger within any observant pair of eyes would be your grandmother, Honey, who steals most of the attention by running the show as she mixes her sweet cocktails and shares new stories about her friends back at her apartment complex and gossips that she heard recently from the neighbours here.

“Congratulations.”

A deep voice greets you, pulling you out of the stupor that you are in. You look over to see Kyle, your stepfather’s younger brother, coming to your side.

It was a nice surprise to see him this year to join your family gathering, as your step-uncle has been working at another state for the past year and you haven’t seen each other since. Carrying a glass of wine with him—red, just the way he enjoys it—instead of a glass of cocktail, he gives you a warm smile that looks like a mirror image to his older brother.

“I heard from your Dad that you just got another promotion. I’m guessing that this gathering is part of the celebration too?” he asks, while your skin warms at the mention of your stepfather.

For as long as you could remember, you have been calling Cliff as ‘Dad’. You can no longer remember how it started, but ever since you were little, the only ‘Dad’ you have ever known has been Cliff, not the birth father who had been gone almost your entire life. He may not be your birth father, and there has been no talking about him adopting you yet, but he is the one and only Dad that you’ll ever know.

Having someone else noticing and acknowledging it feels gratifying. Especially when it is coming from his side of the family.

Nodding your head, you answer your step-uncle with a bashful smile. “Yeah, that’s what Honey said and she insisted that we host the annual dinner this year instead of Aunt Dara. But we all know that she’s the main star of the show,” you joke with him as you nod your chin to point at Honey, who is teasing your mother about dropping rum into her hot cocoa instead of taking one of her sweet cocktails.

Kyle laughs with you as he watches the scene. “Still, you should be proud of yourself.”

“Oh, I am proud,” you answer him with a smile. “I worked hard for it, but I’m feeling a bit guilty too since the busier I had gotten, the lesser I was able to make time to contact my parents.”

Your step-uncle nods. “You can’t help it. That’s often the cost of building a career,” he says, understanding your situation, as he too has the same troubles of making time for his family with his busy life.

“But your parents would understand. In fact, your Dad has been bragging about his girls quite a lot lately. One who keeps traveling across the globe to see the world, while the other who keeps climbing the corporate ladder, and I have to say—” he sighs, “I’m kind of jealous.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Has he now?” you chuckle a little, somehow feeling good about being your stepfather’s pride. “Oh, you shouldn’t be feeling too jealous of Dad. You know your kids are doing great too. They’re both in college now, aren’t they?”

At the mention of his children, Kyle’s eyes seem to grow brighter. He speaks with a voice full of pride as he talks about the two young boys who had just returned from the back porch and now huddling in front of the fireplace to warm up while bickering on their own.

You stay to talk to him for a while longer, until your stepfather steals him away to share a bottle of a much stronger liquor in another room and you continue to mingle with the other family members that you haven’t met for a while.

By the time you are done catching up, the object of your frustration—who is coincidentally also the father of your baby—forgotten, you are feeling drained and your legs are giving up from standing for too long that you unceremoniously collapse on the couch in the corner of the room without a single care.

For a moment, you find calmness by sitting on your own, staying in the corner where you are mostly unnoticed. The festivities is still high around you, but you find freedom here, away from everyone’s attention. Too bad that you aren’t given the chance to savour it when someone decides to slide in and sit right next to you.

“So—I suppose that aside from the cocktail tasting, the gift exchange is going to be the main part of the night’s event, huh?”

A shudder rocks through your body. His deep, distinctive voice does that to you even when you hear it in your dreams. Taking a deep breath, you compose yourself before turning to him, hoping that you have enough strength to look at his face without feeling like your heart is about to burst.

Slowly, you turn to look at him, and immediately, your entire body betrays you. Your heartbeat picks up, and the cavity in your chest is overflowing with gentle flutters, as if there are a thousand of butterfly wings inside you coming awake with just one look at his face. Taehyung lets his gaze linger on the children who are showing off their wrapped gifts to their parents before looking back at you.

Your cheeks burn the moment your eyes meet each other, and you look away before it gets too much. “Yes, we’re exchanging gifts before the night ends, and then everyone will go on their merry way. Some drunk, while relying on their designated drivers or a cab, and some others to continue with their own thing back home,” you explain to him while trying to keep your voice calm. “It started mostly with Honey being the one giving out the gifts on the Eve, since it’s her thing to give something to everyone she cares about.”

A smile is lifted on your face while you watch Honey handing out small wrapped boxes of gifts to the children first before the older ones get their turns. The cheerful laughter shared by everyone who has received Honey’s special gifts fills the room. Curious expressions that quickly turn into joy has always been the high point of these Christmas gatherings in your family.

You should be there to join them, to enjoy the festivities, yet with everything that has been going on, you are feeling too overwhelmed to take part in it. “After a while, the relatives who are often invited to these things started joining in, bringing in their own gifts in addition to the plates of food that they bring for dinner.”

“Sounds like so much fun,” Taehyung muses. “Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.”

“Why are you sitting back here? Aren’t you supposed to be with Alia?” you question him as you wonder why he would be so daring to join you instead of staying by his girlfriend’s side and play his role as her plus one. “You could’ve asked Alia about these things.”

Taehyung grins. “She’s busy with her own thing. Besides, every time I ask her about these things, she would just brush it off and tell me to ask someone else.”

Frowning, you find his comment to be odd. It isn’t something that you could expect to hear from a new couple such as them. Lest of all from one half of the couple that haven’t been shy with their constant public display of affection from the day they arrived.

Once again avoiding Taehyung’s gaze as he looks at you again, you find Alia across the room, conversing with one of Kyle’s sons. Judging from the way she seems to be enjoying herself with the glass of cocktail in her hand, she doesn’t seem to care much about what her boyfriend is up to, much less to feel curious enough to find him.

That’s odd, but it’s not really my problem, is it?

You remind yourself and put your curiosity aside. “You could’ve asked Honey. You seem to have grown closer to her lately,” you tease Taehyung, pointing out how often he has been spending time with your grandmother whenever he isn’t busy helping others in the house or catering to Alia’s need for attention.

Taehyung chuckles softly. “How could I bother the host of the party? Look at her enjoying herself. She’s the superstar tonight, so I’d rather not take her out of the spotlight just to be my guide.”

Even without looking, you can hear the smile in his voice as he talks about your grandmother. And when you look ahead, you can obviously see that he isn’t completely wrong.

Honey is clearly having the time of her life; whether it’s about watching the happy faces receiving her gifts or seeing people enjoying the drinks she is making. She may have lessened her own drinking habit—except for the occasional drop of rum that she sneaks into her hot drinks—but she still knows how to make amazing sweet and fruity cocktails for others to enjoy.

That should explain why you have the penchant for sweet alcoholic drinks instead of the bitter ones whenever you feel like it.

“So,” you turn to Taehyung with a sly smile. “I guess that means I’ve earned the honour to answer your questions?”

Taehyung seems surprised to see that you smiling back at him. His gaze softens, and so does his voice when he leans closer to say, “You’re the only person I know in this room.”

Fuck. Your cheeks shouldn’t be getting warm just because he says something like this. You look away to hide it. “Is Alia the jealous type? Would it bother her to see us chatting as friendly as we do now?”

Taehyung scoffs. “I don’t think she even bothers to notice. Not tonight, anyway.”

“Yeah…she can be the least perceptive person in the room sometimes,” you sigh as you watch your stepsister joking with her cousin without a single glance at her boyfriend. Realising what you just said, you turn to Taehyung to apologise. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“It’s fine,” he scoffs. “Trust me, I know it full well from experience.”

There is a sarcastic tone in his voice that should have made you wonder about his comment. Yet there is a bitterness that you feel inside after hearing those words. Of course, he would have enough experience dealing with Alia’s attitude.

They are dating, after all.

You look away and bite back that bitter taste in your tongue. “Right, of course.”

Unlike Alia who can be completely insensitive to her surroundings, Taehyung notices your change of mood right away. You feel him sliding closer, just enough to allow him to speak in a low voice, but not enough to make people grow curious or suspicious that something is going on between the two of you.

“You promised that we could talk,” he says, almost a whisper under the noises around you.

Your stomach feels tight with nerves. It’s time. “I did, and we do,” you say to him while clenching your hands. You are beginning to wonder if you had made the right decision of leaving the sonogram behind. Maybe bringing him back to your bedroom wouldn’t be a good idea. “I have—something to tell you. Something important.”

Taehyung nods. “Do you think we can slip out of the room unnoticed?”

“You mean…now? You want to do it right now?” you hiss at him, glancing at Alia before looking back at him again. “Wouldn’t Alia be looking for you?”

Taehyung merely scoffs. “Like I said, she’s busy. Once she gets a few more glasses of drink, she’ll be more focused on looking for a sofa to lie down on instead of noticing that I’m gone.”

As if on cue, Alia’s laughter echoes through the room, and she turns away to joke with both of her male cousins now. You also notice that she has somehow gotten a fresh glass of cocktail in her hand, and she must have drank it halfway already by the looks of it.

Looking around the room, you notice that the guests crowding the living room is slowly dwindling. Most of your relatives who had gotten enough of Honey’s cocktail and received their gifts are starting to bid their goodbyes, hoping that they could return home before it gets too late and preferably before each of their designated drivers join in with the drinking. Yet there are some family members who have yet to show any sign of leaving soon, still enjoying their chat with Honey by the Christmas tree.

There will be no other chance, you tell yourself as you silently make a decision. The lesser people there are left, the more obvious it would be for everyone that you had gone missing from the room.

And with whom you may have disappeared together.

“Can you, uh—meet me in my room in about ten minutes, maybe less? I think we can get some privacy there and people don’t normally get upstairs unless they’re staying the night.” And because I left the sonogram there.

That’s right, it would be easier to show the sonogram to him right away when you tell him everything, just as how you initially planned it, even if you haven’t been too sure about it. “I’ll have to mingle a bit more and make sure that Honey can see me before I disappear. She’ll be looking for me if I don’t join her even if for a minute.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Taehyung says as he straightens up, “You go ahead and talk to Honey, and I’ll sneak us out some drinks so we have something to do while we talk.”

“Drinks. Right. Good idea,” you simply say to him, not bothering to try and turn down his offer, or to insist him to bring you the non-alcoholic ones. He’ll figure things out later once you are alone with him anyway.

With a nod, Taehyung rises from his seat and walks over to June, your cousin who seems to have gotten along with Taehyung over dinner. You wait for a few more minutes before making your move. Honey seems to be busy as more and more relatives are preparing to leave. So you turn to Aunt Dara and have a quick chat with her, making sure that the two of you remain within Honey’s peripheral vision so she can still see you.

Too restless to linger around and stay a bit longer, in not more than five minutes, you end your conversation and turn away from your aunt, hoping that you can slip away from the room before anyone notices your stealthy escape. Not even Honey. Because the moment you are caught by your grandmother, you know it would make it even harder for you to leave the room.

But just as you slip through the guests, staying clear from your mother’s relatives who are crowding Honey, your grandmother catches the sight of you and calls out—

“______, there you are. We were just talking about you. Come over here,” she says, waving her hand so you can join her and the small group that still remains to accompany her after a couple of more relatives have left the party.

Fuck. Too late.

Forcing a smile, you slither towards her, practically dragging your feet. “What is it, Honey?”

Honey leans against the minibar and picks up a small bottle. She continues mixing and pouring the drinks as she starts talking to you, “I was just talking to them about your recent promotion and how proud you made us. And then Jennie here shared that she is starting a new job and moving to the same city where you work. I told them that you have a big apartment that I love so much—”

You roll your eyes and laugh. “Honey, I already told you. I don’t own the place, I rent it with a roommate.”

“Anyway,” she brushes you off, “I wondered if you could be a dear and help Jennie out to find a nice apartment. You know people in the city can be a bit sneaky. We’ve heard stories of young girls getting scammed the first time they’ve gone into a big city, so obviously, I was worried.”

Before you can say anything, Jennie raises her hand and cuts in, “I told Honey that I’ve already been looking up at a few places so—”

Jennie’s voice fades in and out and you can barely focus on what she is trying to tell you. Something about making arrangements with property agents to look up for a few affordable apartments not far from where you live. But your attention is being drawn elsewhere, as you notice from the corner of your eyes, that Taehyung is nodding at June and walking away, barely giving you a glance as he slides towards the small corner table filled with bottles of beer to grab the drinks he promised you.

“You know what, why don’t you call me up once you start moving. Maybe you can crash at my place and use the couch while you’re looking. Then I’ll see if I can arrange my schedules to go with you when you’re looking into those apartments so you won’t have to go alone.”

“That sounds great!” Jennie says, looking relieved, and you see it as a chance to also slip away so you can get to your bedroom before Taehyung could.

“Honey, I—”

“See? I told you that _____ is an angel,” Honey cuts you off before you can get a word out. Then she turns to you, handing you the glass of cocktail that she was mixing while you were chatting with your cousin.

“Here, you should try this. I made this specially for you,” she says as she gives the drink a few more stirs. “I remember that you loved the rose scented drinks I bought you, so I ordered this infused—”

You bite your lips, trying to hide away your revulsion as Honey raises the glass to you so you can take it from her. On reflect, you lift your hands to refuse. “No, thank you, Honey. I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood for cocktails right now. I’ve just finished my hot chocolate, after all.”

“That’s too bad. Well, I guess someone else has to taste this one for me.” She pouts, making you feel guilty for refusing her offer as she lowers her hand. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you drinking tonight. In fact, I haven’t seen you drink any alcoholic drink at all this holiday. Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

Your stomach drops. An incredulous laugh leaves your lips. “W-what?”

What did she say? You wonder. You must’ve heard her wrong. Right?

Honey shrugs as she puts away the rejected drink and places it on top of the minibar. “Seeing how you keep getting sick and avoiding alcoholic drinks since you got here, I would think that you’re secretly pregnant,” she says while laughing and looking proud, as if she was simply throwing her crude joke as she usually does without realising how spot on it was to the truth. “Are you carrying a child in that belly, dear?”

The room falls into a rapt hush after Honey throws that comment into the room. You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, while Honey remains unfazed, still wearing her curious smile as if she hasn’t done anything wrong.

“Honey? W-what are you saying?” you nervously ask her, while your sweet grandmother merely shrugs and innocently waves you off.

“Oh, it’s nothing, sweetie. Just thinking out loud. It’s just that seeing you get sick every morning, and being so sensitive with certain smells reminds me a lot of myself when I was pregnant with your Mom. You haven’t even touched a drop of alcohol I offered since you got home, and I know that you barely touched your glass of champagne during dinner,” she says with a wicked chuckle. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t. You tried to hide it, but I knew. I have eyes, you know.”

Fuck. I didn’t think she would notice.

Gritting your teeth, you can only curse at yourself for acting such a fool. You thought you were being clever about it, but you must have been distracted by Taehyung’s presence at dinner that you failed to notice that Honey had kept her eyes on you all night.

“I—”

You try to speak, but words fail you. How do you respond? What do you say to this?

Ever since from the moment you came back home, you had expected that Honey would be the one who is able to put the pieces together, being the perceptive person that she is, and she had been the reason why you have been extra careful in hiding it, especially when you were around her.

Never once did you ever expect that she would so quick to draw up this conclusion and speak of it so nonchalantly with a few relatives are still around.

“Mom, stop talking nonsense,” your mother gently chastises your grandmother while laughing nervously. She looks back and forth between you and her mother, her eyes flickering on your face, then to your belly, as if she is trying to find what she has been missing. “_____ can’t be pregnant. Right, sweetie?”

Your tears begin to form. “I, uh—I don’t—”

Your head starts spinning harder the more you try to speak up, to explain, knowing that it would be futile to lie. Not to Honey. And certainly not to your parents.

Under the attention and distress, feeling the burden of having all eyes on you, all of them waiting for your answer, your hands move on their own, finding comfort in embracing the very spot where your growing baby is hidden as you press your palms on your barely-there bump. Noticing this, a collective gasp spreads through the room. Honey’s smile falters, while your mother’s eyes grow wide in shock.

But the most devastating of all is to see your stepfather walking around his brother to get to you from across the room. “You’re pregnant?” Cliff asks you carefully as he slowly comes to your side. When you look up at is shock slowly turns into rage when he asks, “Is that why that prick left you? Did he get you pregnant and choose to walk away like a fucking coward?”

“No, Dad. I—”

While you are struggling to answer him, your stepfather’s voice continues to rise. “Tell me where he is and I’ll chase that fucker—”

Everything moves in slow motion. Your stepfather who keeps cursing at your ex. Your Mom who keeps pulling him back to try and calm him down, and her pleading gaze silently asking you to explain. The whispering gasps and questions shared among the nervous glances that the guests are sending each other.

Everyone is talking at the same time, while you continue having a hard time to speak up. Your stomach feels tight. Even the touch of your hands no longer bring the calming warmth that your body needs.

Gentle hands press down on your arms as you are slowly being pulled away from the chaos. You can only make out Jennie and Honey’s voices whispering to you, guiding you to breathe while helping you to sit down before you would pass out.

Amidst the confusion, your eyes travel across the room, immediately finding Taehyung who is standing there in the corner with a frown on his face and a couple of bottles of drinks in his hands. As your eyes are locked with one another from the distance, you can see him processing through everything. His emotions are clearly written in his gaze; confusion, bewilderment, wonder.

You have no idea what kind of look that he sees on your face, but slowly, you can tell that everything seems to sink in on him. A dawning realisation sparks through his eyes when he finally puts the pieces together, and his shoulders fall to slump.

He knows.

And he isn’t the only one who is putting the pieces together.

With a quick glance, you find Alia standing on the other side of the room, her eyes keep flickering between you and Taehyung, evidently noticing the silent exchange happening between the two of you. There is a clear sign of shock and hurt in her eyes that you get to see a glimpse of when she looks at you one last time, before she turns away and runs out of the room.

“You need to rest. The stress wouldn’t be good for you.”

Jennie’s voice sounds subdued, worrying. She has always been shy, but she seems particularly cautious as she looks at you. As if she is trying her best not to look down at your belly. But her presence here and her small, careful voice offers you comfort. Something that you need as you lean against the doorway to your bedroom, feeling a bit too weak to stand on your own.

“I’m sorry you got entangled in all of this,” is all that you can say to her. You feel guilty for having your cousin and your aunt roped into this whole drama, all because they had been there to witness it when everything unfolded.

While your step-uncle, Kyle, took over escorting the departing guests, and your mother is somewhere in the house to talk with your stepfather, Jennie had volunteered to help escort you back to your room. She becomes the calming force amidst the storm that helps clear your mind.

“It’s fine,” she waves you off. “You’ll be paying me back once I’ve moved closer to you anyway. The couch is still available, right? You said I could crash until I’m settled.”

That helps bring a smile to your face. “Yes, my door is always open. I’ll let my roommate know that you’re coming. She’s usually open to welcoming family who needs help anyway,” you say to her with full gratitude before adding, “Thank you for staying to help.”

She nods and begins to turn away. “I better go check on Honey and see if my Mom is ready to go. I’ll see you soon.”

Too exhausted to say anything else, you simply thank her one last time and watch her go down the hall before closing the door. Once again, the silence in your bedroom gives you the perfect solace. It does nothing to erase the weight in your chest, however, or give you the answer you need as you wonder how you are going to talk to Taehyung about the whole thing.

You never expected that things would turn into such a mess, robbing any chance of you telling Taehyung about the baby properly, free of drama and uncertainty.

Just as you start dragging your feet towards the bed, you hear a soft knocking on the door, pulling you back to it. Thinking it might be Jennie, you immediately open it. “Did you forget—” Your voice falls to a hush when you find Taehyung standing there instead, giving you a small smile that draws back all the slow flutters in your chest.

“Oh, hi.”

“Hey,” he gently greets you. His smile is cautious, restrained, and his exhale of breath seems shaky. But he sounds calm when he speaks to you, “May I come in?”

You prepare yourself to answer, but your eyes flicker out the hallway, searching, a gesture that he easily notices. “Alia is with your parents. They’re worried about you, but your Mom seemed a bit frantic because she didn’t see the signs. Alia probably won’t be looking for me until later. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Okay,” you answer him with a sigh of relief. “Come in,” you beckon him, stepping aside so he can enter your room.

He steps deeper into your room while you take your time, gathering courage before you can turn to face him. His voice fills your room as he continues to talk, “I left our drinks downstairs. Things were so chaotic, so it slipped my mind—”

“That’s okay, it’s—” you say in return, failing to notice that his voice has faded out into silence. When you finally turn to him, you find him standing in front of your bedside table, his eyes are locked on the tiny thing that he is holding up under the dim light of the bedroom.

He found the sonogram.

“How far along are you?” His voice seems quiet against your thundering heartbeat, drowning even in the silence surrounding you.

You draw an unsteady breath before speaking up. “Six weeks, give or take.”

Taehyung remains silent for a moment longer before a sigh comes out of him. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” he asks, still with his eyes on the sonogram. His expression is unreadable, something which you cannot fault him with, knowing that this must have come as a shock to him.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve gone to you sooner,” you quickly apologise to him. A part of you wants to rush by his side, even if you cannot decide whether you want to calm and soothe him or rip that sonogram from his hand. Yet your legs seem frozen, and you are locked at one spot with no ability to move.

“From the moment I found out, I was planning to find you and figure out how to share the news to you in person, but then you showed up here with Alia, and I got”—blindsided, aghast, confused, terrified—”I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.”

“So, I was right. This baby is mine.”

Just as he says those words, you finally understand the look that he is wearing on his face. Captivated. Entranced. Amused. As if this revelation is more fascinating to him rather than it is frightening. It brings a twinge of hope rising inside you, telling you that maybe you can both figure out on how to deal with this.

But what about Alia?

“It was from that night, wasn’t it?” he asks again, breaking you out of your thoughts—from thinking about Alia. And you can almost sure that you catch the corner of his lips lifting to a smile.

“Yeah,” you cautiously say to him. “It happened the night we got together. I’ve never been with anyone else since—”

“What is this all about?” A deep voice bellows through your small bedroom, cutting through your words before you can finish talking. Both you and Taehyung turn to the door, noticing too late that your stepfather is standing there, watching the two of you with grief and horror in his eyes.

“Dad—what you are doing here?” you ask him as your eyes flicker towards the door behind him.

Crap. Distracted by your own nerves that had been affected by Taehyung’s arrival, you must have failed to shut the door tightly behind you.

“I came to check on you and apologise for freaking out,” Cliff says, frown deepening, his voice and the expression you see on his face convey a mixture of anger and hurt. “But what is he doing in here?” he continues, pointing at Taehyung. “Why is he in your room, when he’s supposed to be with Alia?”

The atmosphere grows heavier, yet Taehyung—the brave soul that he is—carefully steps forward to face your stepfather. “Cliff, I can explain—”

“And what did I just heard about the two of you being together? Is that baby—” Cliff turns to point at you, then back at Taehyung again while keeping his eyes on you, expecting you to answer him. “Was he the one responsible?”

Still holding the sonogram in his hand, Taehyung straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin. And it seems to be enough to answer your stepfather’s question. But what it only does is to aggravate Cliff even more. The air crackles with his rage, and he moves so fast—too fast for your mind to comprehend—as he grabs the front of Taehyung’s shirt and starts dragging him out of your bedroom.

“Dad, no!”

The moment you see your stepfather dragging Taehyung out the door, that is when you snap out of it and start running to chase them. As you run out the door, you see Alia who was clearly on her way to your bedroom. Her eyes are wide with shock, and though you are unable to interpret the gloss in her eyes—whether they are tears of hurt or her tipsiness—you can tell that she has been standing there long enough before anyone noticed.

But was she there long enough to hear everything?

“Daddy? What are you doing?” Alia screams out, though she doesn’t make any move, seemingly in shock to see her father dragging Taehyung across the hallway.

“Alia, you need to stop him!”

Your scream snaps her out of her shock, and she quickly rushes to chase both men down the stairs. You try to follow them as fast as you can, but your heart is racing, your legs feel weak, you can barely manage to come down the stairs without tumbling down.

“Careful!” Alia snaps at you in panic as she catches you at the final flight of stairs. You lift your head to thank her for helping you, only for her to give you no chance to as she turns away right after, chasing after her Dad who is now dragging her boyfriend out the yard.

Once the both of you are out the house, you can hear your stepfather’s voice bellowing through the air. His accusations echo through the chilly night, his eyes are blazing with frustration and rage, and he still has his hand pulling at Taehyung’s shirt, nearly lifting him off the ground as he continues shouting profanities between his grievance.

“—the fuck are you trying to pull?” he yells at Taehyung’s face, and you wince at how loud he is being against the silent night.

The only relief you can savour is the fact that he hasn’t gone physical. No hits are thrown, and the only rough handling he has been doing is to shake Taehyung back and forth with his tight grip on his shirt as he demands the truth. An answer. Anything that could clear this whole misunderstanding.

Taehyung’s eyes dart over Cliff’s shoulder as he notices you and Alia coming. Your stepfather follows his gaze and is caught by surprised to see you chasing him. But as he looks at you, his gaze hardens as he pleads, “Tell me that it’s not true. Tell me that you weren’t sleeping with him while he’s seeing your sister.”

No, it’s not true. They weren’t together. You remember hearing Taehyung denying it when you first questioned it, so it must’ve been the truth. Right?

The night you hooked up with him flashes through your head. That night from six weeks ago, the shared moment that he claimed to be a time where he hadn’t gotten involved with Alia. You want to speak up, to deny that he was playing both you and Alia, that the only thing behind this whole mess had been mere coincidence.

If only you could stop shaking. Get some words out. Anything.

But your chest feels tight. You can barely breathe in air, much less to let your voice out.

“Cliff, please! I told you, I can explain!” Taehyung tries to get your stepfather to listen. You see his hand reaching to grab Cliff’s wrist, though it doesn’t seem that the hold would budge no matter what he does to pull it off. His eyes turn to you, then to Alia, right before he screams out with fear in his eyes, “Alia!”

“Don’t you dare say her name!” Cliff yells at him, and you force yourself to speak.

“Sto—” you try once, failing when your chest tightens. “Stop,” you cry out again, “Dad, please—”

Your voice comes out as nothing more than dried paper, a silent hush compared to the loud voices as Cliff and Taehyung continue to argue with each other at the center of the front yard. But Alia is standing close enough to you to hear it. Close enough to see your hands shaking, your face turning pale and sickly, and she quickly moves right in front of you, standing between you and the quarrelling men.

“Daddy, stop yelling. You’re going to stress ______ out,” she yells at her Dad while pushing you behind her to keep you away from them, as if she is making sure you won’t get hurt.

She’s…defending me?

Your head starts spinning harder. Everything is so confusing right now, and it makes you feel worse when you look at Alia, seeing her getting caught in the crossfire as she tries to separate the two while shielding you from the chaos.

“And it’s not Taehyung’s fault!” she yells again, and this time, it seems to do the trick, because Cliff finally lets Taehyung go.

Now free from your stepfather’s clutch, Taehyung steps back. He tries to catch his breath while fixing his shirt. You notice then that he is still holding your sonogram, surprising you when even amidst all the chaos, he is still gripping onto it protectively.

“How is it not his fault?” Cliff snaps at your stepsister. “Why are you defending this asshole? He slept with your sister when he’s dating you, and he even dared to show his face at my—”

“Because we’re not dating!” Alia cuts him off with a scream, and everything stops. Her scream even shuts the voices in your head, drawing a single question in their place—

What—? What did she just say?

With all eyes on her, Alia begins to shake with nerves. And then the truth spills out of her mouth. “We, uh—Taehyung and I—we’re friends. I wasn’t planning to come this year but you kept calling me to come for Honey’s family dinner, and—” she says, stuttering as she points at her father, and then turns to face you to add, “I thought that your—I mean, Hansol. I thought he was going to come with you this year like he always did and I didn’t want you to think that—”

Drawing a shaky breath, she pushes through her nerves and forces the rest of the truth to come out. “I asked Taehyung to come with me and pretend to be my boyfriend so you wouldn’t think that I was going to try to make a move on Hansol again.”

“Wait—what?” Taehyung snaps at her. He seems confused, and it is evident in your eyes that he never got to hear this part of the ordeal from Alia when he signed up for—whatever it was that they had agreed upon. “What did you do?”

Alia opens her mouth to continue, yet Cliff cuts her off before she could. “Enough,” he says, no longer yelling. His voice sounds drained, exasperated, and yet there is an eerie calmness underneath that makes your skin shiver with fear. His silent rage terrifies you more than his loud, raging voice does, while the defeated look in his eyes hurts you deeply. “Alia, get inside. And you—” he turns to point at Taehyung. “Get out of my sight.”

“Dad, no—” you step forward to stop him, yet Cliff doesn’t even look at you when he calmly orders Alia to move.

“Alia, get your sister back in her room,” he says as he turns away, making his way back into the house.

Left with no other choice, and feeling like the fight has left you, you let Alia place her hands on your shoulders. “I’m sorry,” you turn to Taehyung one last time as she starts guiding you back to the house, but then your stomach drops when he remains silent. His eyes are cold, as if he is trying to mask his true emotions as he looks at you. Something twists in your gut as if he had pierced a knife deeply through it. “Tae, wait—”

A small smile is lifted on his lips, though it seems closer to a sneer, something which doesn’t seem to reach the pained look in his eyes, and that is the only thing that he gives you before he turns away and leaves the property without saying a single word.

Sleep, without a doubt, has become fruitless.

All night, you have been tossing and turning in your bed. Even when you manage to close your eyes and doze off a little, your stepfather’s grievance and Taehyung’s bereft smile flash through your mind, sending you to an abrupt wake each time.

At the very last time you find yourself being forcefully pulled away from your restless sleep, you glance out the window, its curtains left partly opened, you see the shadows of nightfall slowly shifting. A blush of hue in gradient colours of purple and grey is beginning to emerge amidst the dark, and you can feel it in your skin the awakening of dawn.

Too anxious to remain still on your cold bed, adrenaline and stress still flowing violently through your body, you finally give up trying to rest and tiptoe your way downstairs.

The stillness in the house at night has always been something that you have come so familiar with, but as you walk down the stairs and into the quiet kitchen, the house feels more eerie that it usually does. You can almost hear the creaking sound of the floors and the walls around you, as if they are whispering to you all the things that they have witnessed from the night before.

The air feels unusually cold. You fight the temptation to light up the fireplace once more and huddle up right in front of it, resisting only to avoid waking everyone else up, and then walk into the kitchen in search for another source of warmth.

You are just beginning to make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to warm up when a figure steps into the archway leading towards the hallway. You turn with a jump, realising with relief that it is Alia.

Giving you a hesitant smile, she walks into the kitchen. With her arms wrapped around herself and a thick shawl cloaking her shoulders, you realise that you are not the only one struggling with the cold.

“Can’t sleep? Or did you wake up too early?” she asks you with a soft whisper.

“A little bit of both. How about you?”

She stands by the kitchen counter to watch you work. “Tried to sleep, but I kept having nightmares. I was running downstairs to catch up with Dad, and it kept repeating over and over”—she visibly shudders—“and then I woke up with this crappy headache.”

You give her a smile and tip your chin at the high stool right by the counter. “Take a seat. I’ll make more,” you offer her, which she accepts with a smile.

Neither of you says a word for a moment, only breaking the silence once you are done pouring the hot drinks into two separate mugs and handing one to her while whispering, “Here you go,” to which she responds with a soft, sleepy murmur, “Thank you.”

Taking the seat on one end of the counter with Alia sitting on the other, silence stretches between the two of you once again. There is an awkward tension in the air. You cannot remember when you have ever found yourself alone with Alia like this, deep in the night and with nothing else to do but to talk. Not since those many years ago when you were children.

You remember how your parents made you share the same bedroom. It was their way of getting you to bond with your new stepsister at the time. Even then, you could tell that Alia wasn’t exactly thrilled by it, already so used to having her own bedroom before she had to split her time between spending the weekdays with her mother and then with her father on the weekends.

But at least back then, the silence didn’t feel as stifling. And she had let you borrow her personal things to play with, as long as you got out of her way. And that included her books—so many of them, you remember—with her occasionally sitting right beside you so she could read you some of the hard ones to follow for a little child.

Taking a sip of your hot cocoa, you decide that you have had enough of this silence. “So—” you breathe out a sigh. “You and Taehyung.”

Alia groans and closes her eyes. “You heard me last night, didn’t you? I know I was drunk off my ass, but it’s true,” she says, scoffing as she glances sideways and meets your gaze when you do the same, “It’s stupid, I know.”

You sip your drink before asking, “Why did you have to go make an entire scheme out of this?”

“I don’t know,” she breathes out an exhausted sigh. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.” Her voice sounds wistful when she says this, and then she breaks out into a bitter chuckle. “But I guess, just like a ton of other bad decisions I’ve made my entire life, it only added to the long list of fuck-ups that have tainted most of my adult life.”

You let out a snort, something that is so uncharacteristically you, but still comes out with all honesty. “At least you’re taking accountability of it,” you say to her almost teasingly, “I know some people who wouldn’t even admit that they fucked up and simply move on while everyone had to pick up the mess they left behind.”

Alia laughs. You can see her eyes warming up. “When did you meet him? How did it all happen?”

Your lips curl up to a smile. You drink your hot drink slowly before you begin telling her everything—the trip that you went to after your breakup, the frustrating debacle with your flight getting delayed and cancelled and meeting him at transit, the hookup, everything that you already shared with Skye the first time you revealed about your first promiscuous night abroad with the stranger, the agreement you both made about shedding your identities, which had lead to this whole mess, and more.

Surprisingly enough, Alia merely responds with a soft chuckle. As if this is something that is to be expected when it involves her friend. “That explains it,” she muses softly. She has this faraway look in her eyes for a moment, as if recalling something in the past—perhaps something that happened during that period of time.

“He was going through some stuff when we got in contact again about a year after the last time we met. We lost contact again briefly during that time”—the time he went to take that trip, you tell yourself—”I think he said he was off to some sort of a business trip and was using it to ‘escape’ from everything. He never told me any of the details, though.”

You are curious, wanting to know more. But you also know that it isn’t your place to pry. You can also tell that Alia may not answer if you try to ask her. Yet she then surprises you by adding, “Then he contacted me not too long ago and said something about needing my help. I thought it was a wild coincidence and decided to use the chance to get him to help me in return. One thing lead to another, and here we are now.”

You both share a laugh, despite how pitiful the two of you seem at this moment.

When you both grow quiet once more, each of you taking the moment to savour your drink and the silence that is starting to bring more comfort than the uneasiness you felt earlier, your mind wanders. You recall the events that have been happening for the past few days, to tonight, seeing everything with a new light now that the truth has come out. You also find that you no longer feel the weight of your secret shadowing you, allowing you to breathe easier.

And then the conversation you had with Skye on the phone from a while ago comes back to you.

“I’m sorry I broke your doll,” you suddenly blurt out, while Alia snaps her head to look over to you.

“What? Which doll?” she asks, her face is filled with incomprehension, before her expression shifts into knowing, and then to shock. “Oh, that one? That was a long time ago!”

You laugh at her reaction. “Yeah, but it feels like you started resenting me since then.”

“No, I’m—” she shakes her head and scoffs at you. “It’s actually fine. I hated that doll. That was the ugliest piece of shit I’ve ever owned when I was a kid.”

“What—?” you let out an incredulous laugh. “But you made it look like I’ve ruined your entire world. All hell broke loose because of it so I thought—”

Alia laughs, though she also looks somewhat guilty when she explains everything to you. “One of Dad’s ex-girlfriends bought it for me on my eighth birthday. I never liked any of the women he brought home and introduced me, but she was probably the sanest and most normal one of all,” she calmly tells you, quickly adding, “That was before your Mom came in, by the way.”

That makes you smile. Especially when you notice that her eyes are filled with fondness as she talks about your mother.

“Anyway, she gave me the doll as a gift after she went for a trip abroad, and maybe I did like it because it made me happy to know that she thought about me. But the older I got, the weirder it felt for me to keep it, but every time I wanted to get rid of the doll, it made me feel guilty for even considering it because of how sweet she was to me,” she winces as she recalls the past. “When you ruined the doll, I was actually relieved. But I couldn’t show it to Dad since he thought I loved the doll so much that he even went out on his way to help take care of the doll for a long time, so I made it seem like losing the doll made me sad.”

Your jaw drops and you laugh again. “Damn, I can’t believe I was gaslighted and framed by a twelve year-old.”

“Sucks to be you,” Alia laughs back at you as she sips her drink. “Sorry for causing you some childhood trauma or whatever.”

“It wasn’t so much of a trauma,” you say to her while scoffing. But that incident did leave an impression on you, regardless. And it wasn’t a good one. Looking back on it now, it does seem ridiculous for you to let it haunt your memories for so long.

You are just about to share your thoughts to Alia when she finally speaks again.

“On your eleventh birthday, you started calling him Dad,” she says, her voice dull, but you can feel the weight of her words when you hear them. It takes a moment for it to sink in, until you finally realise—

“Oh—” Oh. You swallow hard and take a deep breath, realising that she is talking about Cliff. “Did you, uh—were you worried that I might take him away from you?”

Alia smiles bitterly. “I’m not sure. Maybe?” She shrugs. “As a kid, I may have harboured an unrealistic fantasy that one day, my Mom and Dad would make up, get back together, and everything would be back to how it used to be.”

She looks at you with a small smile. “But then Daddy met your Mom, and my Mom became more unhinged after the divorce and dealing with the consequences of her affair that it was becoming more obvious Dad would have never taken her back, no matter what.”

The more she speaks, sharing her deep, darkest secret, the more you are able to understand her. For all these years, you simply thought that Alia has resented you for childish reasons. You never knew that she had nurtured the heartbreak of an innocent child for so many years. Silently hurting without anyone else knowing.

“But it was the day you began calling him Dad that finally broke me out of that fantasy and forced me to accept that they were never going back together,” she says, sighing deeply with a broken smile on her face, which only deepens the guilt that you feel for becoming a part of it. “Maybe—that was the moment I started seeing you differently.”

“I—didn’t know,” you murmur, and then you begin to recall how Alia kept avoiding to spend time with her father on the weekends when she was a teenager. “You started to come by less and less by then.”

Your parents had excused Alia’s absence at the time as her newfound need of being independent. But you know better now.

Alia releases a sigh, as if opening to you is helping her relief some of her own weight. “Dad was so happy because you and your family welcomed him into your lives. I guess that was really important to him. The more I watched him having a new family that was a whole, the more I resented it. Seeing you with Daddy—” she stops with a sharp intake of breath, “I guess the child in me felt like I was being replaced and I couldn’t take it.”

“Alia—”

She cuts you off with one look, with a gaze that is surprisingly warm. “You know what’s worse?” she asks.

“The way Dad keeps bragging about you in front of me and anyone from his side of the family whenever he has the chance to. You have always been smarter, you’ve gained everything you wanted in life with your own effort. You have a good job, a nice apartment and, for a time, you had a long-time boyfriend, while I’m still floating through life,” she says with a wistful tone of voice instead of a bitter one. “I have no steady job, and I’m still moving around instead of settling down, which left me with no chance to start any serious relationship to brag about in front of everyone. So I suppose that makes me feel inferior when I have to face you.”

You have no idea what to say. Because you had no idea about any of this. Still, you feel guilty, even if none of this was your fault when all you ever did was live your life the way you wanted it to.

“Last year, I think that’s when I came to my limit,” Alia adds with a chuckle. “I guess somewhere in my mind, I had this thought that since you already stole my Dad, maybe I could steal something that was yours for a change.”

Once again, your jaw drops. You let out a gasp. “Hey, that’s fucked up!”

She laughs at your reaction. “I know! And I’m sorry, alright?” she says, still laughing and lifting both of her hands at you. But she quickly sobers up, looking genuinely concerned when she asks, “Seriously, though. Did you break up—”

You quickly shake your head. “No. He chose his career over our relationship,” you admit to her. “He has always been like that. He’s always so crazy about work, a perfectionist, and not only does he have a big ego, he also has big ambitions. I think he pushed me to match his pace, whether he realised it or not, which became the reason why I managed to gained everything I have now.”

Looking back, you have to admit that your ex was the one who gave you the drive which helped you get where you are now. As much as you hate to admit it, you do owe him that much for your current life, despite everything.

“In a way, he pushed and motivated me to constantly be a better version of myself. But, deep down, I was starting to get tired of it.” You recall all the fights, the arguments, the agony that you felt when he belittled you for your need to start going in your own pace instead of following his. “I never realised how exhausting it was with him until we broke up. He made me feel like I was on a race against him instead of in a relationship where we were both equals in life.”

Alia slowly nods her head with a silent understanding. “What happened last year with your ex was also the reason why I asked Taehyung to come with me,” she confesses with a shy smile.

“I felt so bad for everything that happened, and I had no idea how to fix it. I thought that if I brought someone with me this year, not only would I be able to shut my Mom up about trying to hook me up with some snobby guy from her circle and pushing me into marriage”—she rolls her eyes—”I would also be able to show everyone here, and you, that I had no desire to steal your boyfriend from you.”

You grin at her. “That explains why it was shocking for you to find out that I already broke up.”

“Obviously,” she scoffs. “That thwarted all of my plans.” You laugh together while she continues to complain about it. How she had meticulously planned everything to clear her reputation and avoid adding more drama between you.

“But I couldn’t give up the gig. I know that Dad still keeps in touch with my Mom once in a while because of me, and she would call him to check on me if she’d heard I was coming, so if I let everyone know that Taehyung and I aren’t actually dating, my Mom would sit me down next to any bachelor of the year that she had chosen for me at the family gathering with just a snap of her fingers,” she sneers, lifting her hand to snap her fingers in the same manner that you imagine her mother would do.

“And, as always, I had to mess everything up too because of my stupid plans,” she heavily sighs. “Sorry, by the way.”

Scoffing lightly, you simply wave her off. “It’s not your fault. If only Taehyung and I had talked when we had the chance,” you finally admit, realising that you are also to blame for avoiding to speak to him right away, “Or if he had told you about me when I asked him to, then maybe the three of us could have figured something out.”

Alia nods her head in agreement, and then her lips rise to a slow smile. “I didn’t expect that Honey would be the one stirring the pot when it was already boiling.”

That makes you laugh again. “Honestly? I had expected that Honey would be the first to notice. I just didn’t expect her to blast me right in front of the whole family.”

Sipping her hot cocoa slowly, Alia hums. “Maybe it was meant to work that way. Or else, I feel like neither of us would find any chance to spill out the truth, as bitter and ridiculous it might sound to admit,” she says, and you cannot help but agree with her. Even with no resolution have yet to be made, you can feel some of the weight of your troubles being lifted from you.

Everything may have gone messy, yet for some reason, the future doesn’t seem so bleak when you are looking at it one last time. Then Alia gently adds, further encouraging the hope that is slowly blooming inside you.

“Taehyung—he won’t be joining me to see my Mom. He’s driving back home, either in the morning or before noon, I’m not sure. You should go see him and talk.”

“I—” you swallow hard. “I want to. We do need to talk, but—”

Alia stops you by shaking her head. “No buts. You have a baby on the way, and I’m sure—seeing his reaction last night—he would want to be a part of it. Only if you’d let him.”

That immediately shuts you up, taking away all the excuses that you have to run away and avoid facing him. You still remember seeing the way he was clutching your sonogram possessively as if it was his lifeline, and you have yet to get the sonogram back from him when he left.

“Even without the baby—” Alia continues, noticing how you are still deep in your thoughts. “The favour that I mentioned? I think it might have something to do with you. I’m not sure what it was though, because he hasn’t had the chance to say anything about it. He only said that it had something to do with what happened during his trip from that time.”

You know that she is right. The only problem is mustering the courage to go and see him in person. After what your family had put him through last night, you have no idea how to face him, feeling too guilty that he got roped into so much mess because you couldn’t tell him the truth when you had the chance.

“Well, while you take your time considering it, I should go back to my room. I have another Christmas event that I would need to mentally prepare to,” Alia says as she steps out of her seat. You watch her walking around the counter to put away her empty mug before smiling at you. “Thanks for the nice chat, and the hot chocolate.”

You return her smile and nod. “So—are we good?”

That makes her chuckle. She stops before going out into the hall and shrugs. “Yeah, you’re okay. I guess we are.”

“Does that mean we’re friends now?” you tease her, drawing a scoff from her.

“Ugh—don’t push your luck, kid. Don’t even think about us being sisters,” she says, pointing at you.

“Never would’ve dreamed of it,” you respond with a chuckle. Still, you are overcome with relief now that the old tension between you are lifted. “Good luck with your Mom.”

“Thanks. Good luck with—” she says, “well, everything.” She turns away, but not before giving you one final warning, “I’m serious. Go talk to him. Don’t worry about the others, or about how Daddy would react. I’ll hold down the fort and explain everything to them until you’re back.”

Your grip on the steering wheel tightens just as your stomach tightens with churning doubt.

The thought of seeing Taehyung, alone, seems nerve-racking. You have no idea what to expect once you get there, or what you are going to say, which only makes you even more nervous the further you are getting from home.

Your thoughts are filled with worrying that things may not go as planned. Not that you really had any plan to go with other than to talk to him, stop him from leaving, and maybe find out what the future hold—if there is any hope there.

The weather outside seems dreary, which is no help at all. Even under the winter sunlight that appears brighter than usual, the snow keeps falling thickly from the sky, the trees standing on either side of the streets are swaying dangerously towards various directions due to the intense wind.

Weather does hate me, you wonder to yourself as you glance through the side mirror, wondering why these things keep happening to you during critical times such as this one.

Getting more impatient, the urge to press down on the accelerator feels so strong, yet you fight it the best you can, recalling the promise you made when you stepped out of the house.

Honey was right, it was a bad idea to be driving out under this weather. She was the one who warned you about the weather when you were about to leave, which you simply ignored because the sky was bright, the wind was steady, and your intention to see Taehyung was strong.

You should have learned from experience and took your time checking today’s weather forecast to find out just how quickly the weather could change.

Looking at the fierce weather, it seems obvious that things are about to get even worse. A white jeep breezes past your tiny city car, causing your car to sway, and you feel a pull to match its speed. But then you see it nearly slipping on the road as the jeep makes a turn right ahead, and you heart stops. Your car slows as you start hearing Honey’s voice warning you about how easy the road becomes slippery on days like this.

“Drive carefully. Even if you want to risk your life getting out there, at least think about that baby,” Honey’s voice echoes in your head, stopping you before you could even think of picking up speed again once the road clears up before you.

“There’s nothing to worry about. With this weather, he couldn’t have left yet,” you convince yourself, though your doubt keeps pushing back nearly tenfold.

He couldn’t just leave, right?

Turning with reduced speed on the next intersection, you curse under your breath. It feels like it’s taking you forever to reach the motel, and when you still see no sign of getting any closer to the motel, you begin to wonder if you’ll manage to get there at all.

“Damn it, Alia. Why did you have to choose that motel? There’s a bunch of them closer to home.”

Obviously, there is nobody here to answer your question. So the only thing that you can do is to force yourself to calm down, focus on the road—and in not slipping or sending your car into a ditch—and find the motel as fast—and as safely—as you can.

Quiet Peaks Motel. Room 1109.

You almost laughed when Alia gave you the room number where Taehyung has been staying in. The irony of having those numbers shown to your face, reminding you of that night from six weeks ago.

“I suppose this is what people call a Christmas miracle.”

You let out a scoff as Skye’s words ring back to you. Christmas miracle my butt, you inwardly scoff at the notion. A queer coincidence, that’s what this is.

Not too long, you are driving your car into the small parking lot of Quiet Peaks Motel. With your head covered under the hood of your coat, you challenge the cold to rush into the motel without taking a look around to see if his car is still here. Past the receptionist desk, you follow Alia’s guide to find Taehyung’s room.

Room 1109.

Shaking off the snow that has gotten all over your body, you take a deep breath, and knock on the door. A few seconds pass.

No answer.

Another knock, just a bit harder this time. And all you have in return is silence. No. No. No—

You raise your hand again, ready to give it another try while refusing to accept the possibility that he is no longer there, when finally—finally—you hear a click, and the door slowly opens. Taehyung appears before you, with wide, curious eyes and a smile slowly lifting on his lips, like a piece of a fantasy manifesting into something real.

“You’re still here,” you breathe a sigh of relief, drawing a low chuckle from him.

Taehyung crosses his arms over his chest as he hovers by the doorway, the small smile on his face unwavering. “Alia called. Warned me not to run away,” he gently says.

The thought of him driving off to leave town, running away before you could see him, feels like a bolt piercing through your heart. “Were you—trying to run?”

“I felt the urge to,” he admit while lowering his gaze, briefly avoiding your eyes. “But I couldn’t.”

You can hear the sound of your heartbeat. “Because of the blizzard happening outside?”

Taehyung looks up, and his smile deepens when he steps aside. “Why don’t you come in? It’s getting colder. You can warm up inside.” There is a playful glint in his eyes which says the unspoken words—

With me.

Drawn by the look in his eyes, your legs begin to move on their own. Your arm brushes against him as you walk past him, just barely, and your skin prickles warmly, as if the thick winter coat that you are wearing is nonexistent.

Taehyung takes your coat, shaking the remaining snow that is still attached to it before hanging it on the coat rack by the door while you step out of your snow-coated boots, refusing to leave trails of snow and dirt on his floor as he pulls you inside. He guides you to take a seat on the edge of the bed while he takes the one-seater from the corner of the room and places it across from you.

Sitting back, he wears a playful smile on his face. He seems giddy, with a twinge of wariness that is quite noticeable coming out of him—both feelings are something that you also share as you sit with your back straightened while your legs are shaking.

Sitting here like this allows you to get a good look at Taehyung. And for the first time, you notice the boyish charm in him that looks—adorable. You can see it better when he smiles, when he looks at you with an expectant look in his yes, and when he doesn’t seem to be able to remain calm.

You have no idea why you had never seen this side of him before. Has he been hiding this part of him? Because, if you want to be honest with yourself, you like seeing this side of Taehyung, maybe even more than the side that he has allowed you to see before today.

If comfort is a person, this side of him fits the picture, you wonder to yourself with a smile.

Speaking of pictures—

Your eyes travel around the room, taking notice of the place where he has been staying at. The room is undoubtedly smaller than the suite that he booked back at the transit hotel, but not any smaller than your own bedroom back home. The bed that you are sitting on feels soft, with wooden bed frames that makes it seem sturdy. There is a single vanity table that stretches out on one wall, also functioning as a writing desk, an electric fireplace in the corner that is running with a soft hum, and a wall-mounted television that has been kept on with its volume lowered to fill the room with its white noise.

Your eyes fall on the long table, on the small object that catches your attention.

“Would you like to drink?” Taehyung asks you as the silence stretches out for too long, and you look at him with a smile.

“Sure, I’d love to.”

Nodding, he rises from his seat to grab a drink from the corner cabinet, while you do the same. Drawn towards the small object that Taehyung had placed on the table like a precious jewel—your sonogram.

“I didn’t mean to keep it with me. But throughout all the chaos happening last night—” you can hear his voice getting closer and closer, yet you do nothing to look his way. Holding up the sonogram between your fingers, your eyes are focused completely on it, fixated at the clear proof of your future. You still have your eyes on it as his warmth comes pressing on your back, his voice feels like a gentle brush on your skin as he whispers close—

“—I just couldn’t let it go. It felt surreal whenever I looked at it. It was almost as if—I was actually holding that baby in my hands, and I needed to protect it.”

His words send your mind into a daze, even when you notice the tremble in his voice. Everything he does next seems like parts of a dream. You notice his hand reaching out beside you, placing two objects which seem to be bottles of fresh juice on top of the table. And his hand stays there, palm pressing on the edge of the desk while his other hand is resting on your other side, practically caging you in place.

Slowly, you turn around to face him. The sudden closeness makes you feel dizzy, yet the feeling is incomparable to the way your body is reacting when you look into his eyes.

His dark eyes somehow appear even darker from up close. You feel nothing carnal in the way he is looking at you, nor the way he is giving you no chance to escape. But there is the heat that you feel reaching out to you, vibrating through his chest together with his heavy breath.

“We are—” he murmurs, stopping briefly with a deep exhale of breath. “We’re expecting a baby.” He speaks as if he is trying to rewire his brain into accepting reality.

Your heart starts racing when you hear his words.

We. That word seals everything in.

And you can feel that sense of acceptance coming from him. You can easily see it written all over his face; in his gaze that looks resolved and in his warm smile that seems inviting. And then you get to see it coming together when he takes you in, his eyes landing on your belly. Even though covered under your thick sweater, he looks at you as if he can see what is hidden underneath.

“We’re expecting a baby,” you whisper with a smile. “It’s still early. Very early. Which is why you might not see any changes, like seeing the baby in its fully grown form, or find out the gender yet, but we can already hear the heartbeat. We can arrange so you can join me on my next appointment with the doctor. That is, if you’d like.”

Putting all of your hopes into words feels risky. But thinking about him being there puts a smile on your face. That smile fades for a brief moment when you realise that you are also putting your heart at risk of being broken—be it from him, or from life.

“Anything could still happen,” you add with a wry smile. The sceptical part of you slowly sneaking its way into your mind to take control. “But if you’re willing to go through this with me and—”

He doesn’t let you finish your sentence when he suddenly reaches out to touch you. He brushes your cheek with the gentle touch of his fingers, and wraps his other arm around your waist, pulling you gently to him until you are nearly pressed into his chest. You bring your palms up to his chest in reflex, pressing against him as a barrier, separating you from his overwhelming warmth.

You can feel his heartbeat picking up under your palms, just as your own heartbeat starts thundering inside your chest.

“Last night, Cliff stole my chance to figure out or express how I felt about this,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “I was in so much shock both from the news and then Cliff’s reaction that I couldn’t say a word about it. But the moment I left your home and spent the night alone in this room, I finally got the chance to process everything.”

He stops, shaking his head before pressing his lips on your temple. “Still, I can’t believe that this is happening. But this is our new reality right now and I have to face it. No matter at what cost,” he whispers with his lips hovering against your temple.

“What—what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m all in,” he says, pulling back so he can look at you. “I told you, didn’t I? You never really left my mind after that night. I’m not sure why, but waking up in the morning to see you gone back then got me curious and, well—” he chuckles. “It was all the reason why I got roped into Alia’s sneaky scheme, which I’m beginning to regret ever being a part of, but since we’re here anyway.”

Taehyung lets out a dramatic sigh, drawing a curious smile to your face.

His chest rises and falls as he exhales a deep breath. “Alia promised to help me once we’ve done the deal. And although I never told her specifically what I needed help with—” he grins, looking as if he is thinking back to the day he planned out this whole scheme with your stepsister.

A scheme where he pretended to be dating her to trick your and Alia’s family.

“Actually, I was already trying to find you. Alia has a lot of connections, gathered by traveling to different places and jumping between odd jobs, so I thought that maybe she would know how to solve that problem of mine,” he admits, and your skin flushes warmly when you realise that not only has he been thinking of you this whole time, but he had also thought of looking for you when you thought that he would have simply forgotten everything and moved on.

“Things may have gone differently than I imagined, and not entirely in the right order. But technically speaking, she made it happen, just as promised,” he chuckles again, looking just amused at the situation as you are. “If I had known about the baby, I wouldn’t have asked you to hide from Alia that we got together at one point,” he grimaces. “I wasn’t sure what kind of situation Alia was in that would require her having a fake boyfriend, so I don’t know what telling her that we hooked up would do.”

Frowning, you simply shake your head and murmur, “No, I should’ve told you right away. But like I said, I wasn’t prepared to see my baby’s daddy coming into my parents’ home holding hands with my stepsister.”

Taehyung smiles and rubs his thumb across your cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Your body shudders under his touch, but you cover it with a sigh. “Likewise,” you whisper. “But can we please stop talking about Alia right now?”

He barks out a laugh. “Okay, if that’s what you want,” he says with a wide grin on his face. “Maybe you’ll be more interested in talking about something else, then?”

You suck a deep breath as his eyes bore into yours. Even before he says it, you can somehow tell what he is thinking. There is something in his eyes that makes you feel hot inside. Something that feels intimidating, yet comforting at the same time, and it makes you want to dive into whatever it is that is offering you.

As if he can read your mind, Taehyung starts staring at you the same way he did that night—with the same passion and hunger that are enough to engulf you as a whole.

While you are captivated with his gaze, Taehyung leans in, stealing a kiss from your lips before you realise what is happening. He begins with a gentle, tentative kiss, as if he is testing to see how you are going to react. But with your emotion heightened, and relief warming your chest, the innocent kiss that he is giving you is already enough to send heat flushing through your body.

Your fingers sink into his sweater in a desperate clutch as you return his kiss, pressing your mouth onto his without any inhibitions. A sigh escapes from your throat, while he releases a deep grunt and begins to deepen the kiss.

His tongue presses between the seams of your lips, penetrating into your mouth in seek of control. All the heat inside you starts swirling violently as he devours your lips, and it’s driving you crazy. Your thundering heartbeat presses against your chest and he keeps stealing your breath, leaving you gasping the moment he releases your lips.

Yet Taehyung doesn’t stop. Giving you a few more pecks on your swollen lips, he then moves his kisses down the column of your throat, and your head falls back in an instant, helping him to travel lower until he rests his lips beneath your earlobe where he breathes out a sigh.

“This wasn’t—” you gasp as he nips at your pulse, rocking your entire body at the touch of his teeth on your skin, “This wasn’t the reason why I came here for.”

“Are you sure?” he hums against your skin. “We can stop if you want to. But you have to be the one to say the words.” His words make you swoon, but contrary to what he is saying to you, Taehyung continues to press his lips on your skin, making it hard for you to say a thing. “It’s been pure torture having to hold back, being in the same room with you but unable to do anything about it.”

He leans back, looking at you with a deep gaze as he brushes his thumb across your swollen lips. “I kept seeing these lips and wishing I could kiss it.”

Silently admitting that you feel the same way for him, your eyes move to his lips, noticing its swell, the faint crimson shade and the moisture that are left there after kissing you, and hazily blurt out, “Did you kiss Alia with that same mouth?”

“Fuck, no!” he says, making you laugh when he seems horrified at the thought of kissing your stepsister. “We’re friends, but not that close as friends to be smooching at each other.”

The way he is scrunching his nose still makes you giggle. “Sorry, but—you know, I had to make sure.”

Taehyung snorts. “Of course you do,” he grumbles, although the mirth in his eyes turns, as he gives you an understanding look through them, now knowing what kind of relationship that you share with Alia. “There are a lot of things about your stepsister that you might not know about.”

His words remind you of the short conversation that you had with your stepsister this morning. Deep down, you realise that he is right. With so many years spent harbouring a deep misunderstanding between one another, you realise that you never really knew her at all. Closing your eyes, you tell yourself that you can revisit this later.

“Are you going to spend the rest of the day trying to butter me up so I can start being best friends with my stepsister, or are you going to kiss me again?” you question him with a grin on your face once you open your eyes again.

He returns your grin with his own, showing you that same boyish charm that makes you swoon as he murmurs, “I think I like the second option a lot better.”

Giggling, you release your grip on his sweater and move to wrap your arms around his neck, meeting him halfway just as he leans down to capture your lips again. “An excellent choice, Sir. I do like that option much better as well.”

Once his lips descend on yours once again, they don’t come down gently. They crash into yours, and you can feel his urgency, his hunger, everything that he had spent days withholding for the sake of the god-awful scheme. The kiss melts every cell in your body. It weakens your knees, leaving your arms as the only thing holding you up against him.

His hands feel hot on your skin as he runs them down your waist, your hips, the heat penetrating through your thick sweater and jeans. You instinctively arch your chest against his, while your legs are moving, rubbing against each other when his touch sends your pulse rising, hot blood flowing down right between your legs.

Fuck, why I am so sensitive?

Right as you are wondering if your pregnancy has anything to do with the way your body is reacting, Taehyung folds his body and grabs the back of your thighs to lift you up.

“Oh, God—” you pull away with a gasp, surprised with the sudden lost of balance. Tightening your arms around his neck, you hold on to him as he turns. His smile widens, looking as if he is proud of himself, and then he drops you onto the bed, gentle as he puts you down until you are lying on your back.

You shift backwards until you are at the center of the bed with him following close behind. His gaze remains on your face as he starts crawling over the mattress, not stopping until he is hovering above you. He doesn’t settle his weight on top of you right away, but instead grabs a gentle hold at the hem of your sweater. With a quick work of his hands, the sweater is gone, tossed somewhere across the room. He doesn’t let you see where it went as he bends down, hovering close above you.

“Doesn’t this make you think back about that night?” he asks, with a deep voice that has your entire body trembling. He ignites more reaction out of you with a gentle kiss at the crook of your neck.

“Something is”—you gasp, shuddering under his kiss—“something is different, though.”

His warm breath comes brushing on your skin with his deep chuckle. “You can tell, huh? I did some workout after that vacation,” he brags to you while wiggling his eyebrows, making you laugh.

“I’d say you may have gotten your money’s worth. A little bit,” you tease him as you reach down between your bodies for his zipper.

You can feel his hard cock pressing against your palm. Even while hidden under his pants, you can feel the heat coming from him as you rub your palm against his covered bulge, moving it back and forth until you feel him hardening under your touch.

“Are you going to continue staring at me, or are you going to fuck me?” you whisper, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with how much you need him.

And he is the only one to blame. When his sole existence stirs your every being. With one glance coming from his eyes, butterfly wings flutter inside your body, touching all the crevices that aren’t filled with past hurt and the baby’s presence and filling them with warmth.

With one touch, your whole body comes alight, and you are feeling it now as he brushes his fingers along the expanse of your waist. As tough your blood is on fire as it runs through your veins, even with nothing more but a light graze on your skin.

Taehyung licks his lips. His desire is written so clearly on his face. But then his gaze moves down your body, lingering on your stomach that is completely exposed now that you no longer have your sweater covering your skin.

“Will it be okay?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned. His voice sounds tight, filled with worries, which gives your chest a tight pinch.

When was the last time you had someone—other than your family—to be so concerned about your wellbeing? Granted, there is a baby that is involved in all of this, and it would be normal for him to care, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling like he is seeing right through you.

“I think I read somewhere that the baby will be okay,” you look down at your stomach and start rubbing your hand gently over it. “Maybe we can go gentle. At least until we get to see the OB and ask more.”

“Good idea,” he says with a smile, while you feel soft inside. But when his hand begins to move again, his thumb grazing down your exposed stomach, the heat rises back up and he is back in the game.

His smouldering gaze feels like a complete opposite to the softness in his voice when he says, “Alright, I can do gentle. Just tell me if it gets too much, or you can lead the pace so I won’t make any mistake.”

He wears the same wicked smile that stole your heart many nights ago as he lifts off from your body. You watch with your teeth nibbling at your bottom lip as he begins stripping himself. His sweater comes off, showing you his hard chest and filled arms which you haven’t had the chance to appreciate in the past.

This time, you get to see everything with a clear mind. Instead of feeling hazy with intoxication, all you can feel now is the haze coming from your need for him.

Reaching down to his pants, he pushes down his zipper. With a mocking grin, he makes a great gesture of pushing down his pants, only to stop once he hears your moan.

“God, I missed hearing that sound coming out of your lips,“ he murmurs. He immediately returns to you and pushes your pants and panties down in one motion. Your bra comes off right before your butt comes back down on the bed. Having not an inch of your skin covered while you are lying there makes you feel exposed and vulnerable. Yet he keeps a gentle hold on your waist, holding you still while he takes you in.

“I remember thinking that you were beautiful, but it beats seeing you in this kind of light to see what I didn’t get to see,” he murmurs, almost groaning as he takes you in.

Licking your lips, you hold back, keeping your voice from trembling to answer, “We were both kinda drunk, so—”

“Were we?” he chuckles softly and returns to you again, as if he can’t take being apart from you for too long. He presses his lips on your collarbone and whispers, “Good thing we get the chance to change that.”

Your legs come up and wrap around his waist the moment he is back on top of you. The way his hard chest is pressing on your bare breasts feels heavenly. You can feel his heartbeat pounding against your chest, almost at the same rhythm as yours. But your attention is quickly drawn away once you try to move your hips to get comfortable beneath his weight, only to unintentionally rub yourself against his body.

You can feel his hard cock pressing against your thigh as you brush against him. Heat pools right at the depth of your core once you feel just how badly he wants you. It grows more intense as he pushes back into you, rubbing his covered cock against your center until you feel your wet arousal soiling the front of his pants.

Yet still, the friction isn’t enough to satiate your needs.

“Taehyung—”

The moment he hears you calling his name—his real name—something dark and feral flashes through his gaze. As if saying his name in the heat of desire snaps something inside him that needs to be unleashed.

His mouth comes down to capture yours just then, claiming you with a deep kiss. You writhe beneath him while he devours your lips, pressing against his center in a silent plea to have him striping himself off of the restricting pants and letting you feel him.

Without saying a word, he understands what you are asking for and complies. With a reluctant sigh, he pulls back. He keeps his eyes on you the whole time as he pushes down his pants and boxer briefs until he is completely bare. His hard cock immediately springs free right before your eyes, drawing your attention towards it the same way it did the first night you were with him.

“Say it again,” he says to you with a deep voice. A rough sigh escapes him as he wraps his hand around his girth and starts stroking himself, making himself hard and ready while he pleads with you, “Say my name.”

“Taehyung,” you call him with a soft moan, and he lets go every last bit of his restrictions and covers your whole body with his.

His mouth crashes down on yours, kissing you passionately until your body grows hot. A moan slips from you, and his tongue sweeps in between your parted lips, getting entangled with yours and you are immediately lost. You barely notice it when his hand moves down, slipping between your bodies to find the source of your heat.

He flicks at your nether lips, drawing a gasp from your lips, and your hips rise up to welcome him. Then he slides a finger into your pulsing core, entering you until you are arching against his chest, overwhelmed with the sensation that he draws out of your body as he buries his finger deeper into your pussy.

While he slides his finger in and out of you, his mouth remains pressed on yours, swallowing every sound you are making. Drowning every cries, every moans, while he continues devouring you as though you are his lifeline.

The pleasure rises, and your body starts moving on its own before you can control it. You start grinding against his finger, needing more. It starts with a slow rock, but the more the pleasure climbs within your body, you continue grinding harder and harder onto his hand. This seems to amuse him, as you can feel his smile growing against his lips before he pulls away, freeing you from his searing kiss.

Yet his hand continues to move, not resting until you can finally find release. “That’s it, ______. Give it to me, baby. Come for me,” he whispers with his deep voice like a spell.

Under his encouraging words and his relentless strokes, you finally reach your orgasm. It feels so intense you can almost feel as if your body shatters in his hold, with your breath coming out in broken pants and your moans rising higher.

With a gentle move, he pulls his finger out of you, leaving behind a series of small spasms inside your pussy from the climax.

You immediately feel empty. But he doesn’t make you wait long as he positions himself between your parted legs, and his heavy hard-on comes right where his finger had been. His cock slides in between your slit, moving back and forth as he rocks his hips. The friction draws the slick sound of your release as he continues rubbing the entire length of his cock against your hot cunt.

As your body continues to shudder beneath him, Taehyung lets out a deep groan. “Can’t wait, baby. Need to be inside you now.”

“Yes, fuck me, Taehyung,” you cry out, and those exact words are the ones that draw him to move.

You should have been prepared for it, yet your mind and body are somewhat occupied. Distracted by the blinding pleasure that he keeps pulling out of you, you are not ready when he slams his cock into you. You instantly cry out, and Taehyung stills inside you.

You can feel your muscles clenching, pulsing around him in small spasms of pleasure at the sudden invasion. It draws a moan out of him, and he holds you in his arms to help soothe you through it until you are more accustomed to his width filling you up.

“You okay, baby? I’m sorry,” he whispers with his lips pressing gently on your skin. Starting from your neck, your chin, and then he keeps making his way up to capture your parted lips. His kiss is soft, barely a flutter, but with every pulse rising in your body, you can feel the heat shooting right into your core.

You wait just long enough until the pounding sound of your heartbeat eases before answering him, “I’m okay.”

You start to wiggle under his weight, moving your hips to test if it’s going to hurt. When you feel that your muscles are no longer tense, and nothing but pleasure rushes through your body, you start moving your hips more. Grinding down his length, you can feel your hot walls contracting around his thick cock. It draws a sharp hiss out of his lips, and he jerks his hips against you, as though he is close to losing control.

“Are you going to stay there the entire time we’re here”—you tease him while tightening your legs around his waist, your hands on his hard shoulders—”or are you going to fuck me?”

Taehyung lets out a deep chuckle and begins to move. “So impatient. It’s been a while, so I’m only letting you act like a brat just this once,” he growls against your lips as he rocks his hips, moving in a slow pace.

It feels so good. But you want more. You need more.

With your heels pressing on his back, you rock back against him, grinding into his cock. He reacts with a groan, murmuring to you, “Fuck, that feels good. You want more?”

The pleasure continues climbing. It starts to feel overwhelming that words fail you. The only thing you can give him is a nod. A sharp gasp comes out of your lips when he starts picking up his pace, going faster while pushing deeper with each thrust.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he nearly begs, sounding desperate when you have yet to give him words in response to him. “Please, baby. Promise me. I’m barely holding on here, but I don’t want to hurt you or the baby.”

His voice goes in and out of your senses, yet you still manage to hear what he is trying to say. “I’m fine, Taehyung. I won’t hide it, I promise.”

He lets out a relieved sigh and smashes his lips on yours. “Good,” he groans against your lips. “Hang on tight then, baby.”

Those words become the last warning as the force and speed of his thrusts escalate, hitting you deep and hard until your toes are curling and your throat feels tight with the urge to cry out in pleasure. Your chest rises in an arch at the sensations you are getting as your hard nipples are rubbing against his chest.

But your mind is clear enough for you to do exactly what he asked of you.

Your legs are pressing around him, not tight enough to make it hard for him to move, but enough to keep you attached to him. Your arms are around him, fingers running up to the nape of his neck and pulling at the back of his hair, while the other hand runs down his back, nails sinking into his skin as he takes you on a wild ride.

Pleasure explodes through your body under his hard strokes. Your mouth falls open with a series of strained cries, calling his name. You wish he would lean down, to kiss you, to drown the sounds of pleasure that you are unable to hold in. Yet Taehyung chooses to pull back, allowing himself to keep his eyes on you as he continues with his relentless thrusts, making sure that he wouldn’t miss any sign of pain that may show on your face.

But the pain that you had expected to come from his rough lovemaking only extends the pleasure. The wet sounds of his thrusts pushing deep inside you fills the room, growing intense by the minute. Your skin flushes warmly as blood pulses deep in your core, your pussy walls flutter around his girth, letting him know how close you are to reach the edge.

“Are you close, baby? Do you want to come?” he whispers to you with a groan, and you find yourself crying out,

“Yes, Taehyung—I’m close. Please, let me cum. Please—”

With his hands reaching down your hips, he lifts your bottom half slightly off the mattress, placing you in a new angle that allows him to reach deeper. Your whole body quakes once he finds your sweet spot, and as he repeatedly pushes his cock against that hidden spot inside you, you soon feel him pushing you over the edge, with him not slowing down even for just a moment. And you take it all while you continue clinging desperately to him with your nails sinking into the skin on his back.

Pleasure flares through you like fireworks. A new wave of raw pleasure overcomes you, and your body erupts with the first wave of your orgasm. It flows smoothly through your body, but still intense enough to knock the air out of your chest. You cry out with a strained voice, your entire body shuddering beneath him.

You heave as wave after wave of pleasure overcome your body, yet Taehyung shows no sign of stopping. Still not having enough, he still fills you up with long, deep strokes that rock your body and the entire bed together.

With every shake of your body, your nipples grow hard that they start to hurt as your skin keeps rubbing against his chest. Looking between you, Taehyung’s eyes turn darker with lust. You force yourself to watch him through your haze, feeling more than seeing it when he runs one hand down your belly.

His big palm stays there, as if silently greeting the baby growing inside, before it continues to travel lower, finding home right where your bodies are joined. With his thumb and forefinger, he flicks at your engorged clit. Already throbbing and growing sensitive with the amount of frictions happening all at once, it sends your hips rising as another wave of pleasure rises from your core.

Deep groans escape his lips as he savours the sight of you embracing the pleasure, and he continues playing with your clit—rubbing, flicking, pinching, drawing pain and pleasure over the constant thrusting of his cock. And just when you are feeling it building up once more from within, the telltale of your orgasm that you have been depraved of for so long, Taehyung leans down, capturing one taut nipple between his mouth and bites down.

"Oh god. Oh god. I'm going to come again,” you cry out with your hips rising to meet each hard thrust that he is giving you.

“Yes, that’s it. Cum for me like a good girl," he croons against your skin, which sends you straight into the next round of climax while you are still riding the aftershock of your last one.

Your body shudders as another orgasm rocks your entire body, and your muscles clamp around his hard cock, sucking him with a tight clench as he thrusts in and out, pushing deep and sending your body shaking violently as you finally succumb into an earth-shattering orgasm that takes away the last drop of strength that you still have.

And the force of your final orgasm is what sets him off.

With a deep groan, and a rough tremble of his chest, Taehyung finally finds his release. You can feel his warmth filling your insides, his cock twitching and pumping between your spasming walls, and you are almost sure that the wicked sensation of him filling you up with his cum is enough to send you to a smaller, much more subtle climax.

It takes a while for you to come down from the height of your release, and Taehyung is there, helping you to ride off your orgasm with the slow strokes of his cock and the gentle brush of his fingers as he slowly comes to halt.

Once everything is done, your body is completely spent that you are unable to move. Your legs have turned languid as Taehyung gently drops them back onto the bed. The room is filled with the sound of deep breathing as both of you are fighting to catch your breaths.

You can barely feel your arms moving, but essentially, he is freed from your tight hold, allowing him to pull out of you before dropping down beside you.

The room no longer feels cold now that your entire body is burning hot. Seeing the thin sheet of sweat on his skin, you know that Taehyung is feeling the same heat, yet it doesn’t stop him from turning to his side and wrapping his arms around you to pull you close.

The sound of your intense heartbeat makes it hard for you to listen to any other sounds. You feel so tired. The lack of sleep you had last night is making it hard for you to fight off the drowsiness that is coming over you. Feeling relieved and sated, you just want to give in to sleep.

Your eyelids keep growing heavy, and once your breath is calm, you can feel Taehyung’s gentle kiss pressing on your temple. His voice is barely a whisper when he murmurs to you, “——sleep, rest for a while. It’s not like we’re in any rush to get anywhere, right?”

You open your mouth to answer him, yet your body fights against it. His words seem to act like a spell, when you are soon taken deep into slumber, falling into a dreamless sleep with his arms wrapped around your body.

When you finally come to, the soft light of the afternoon sun is slowly penetrating through the windows.

It feels warm inside, especially now that you have a blanket covering your naked body and his heavy arm resting languidly around your waist, yet you know that the same cannot be said with the weather outside. Even without opening your eyes, you can still hear the sound of the fierce wind hitting the windows, and you doubt that the road would be safe enough for you to drive out of this place.

You find yourself curling against Taehyung’s bare chest as you properly come to wake. His heartbeat is steady, and you can feel it when he starts waking up.

“Hey, there—” you whisper, greeting him with a sleepy smile, which he returns with his goofy smile. “Was I asleep for a long time?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “No, not long enough,” he whispers. “I also just woke up, though. So—”

Chuckling softly, you stretch out next to him. Your muscles are lax, and while you still feel worn-out, the short nap has restored your energy some. It helps clear your mind, yet you still refuse to move a muscle.

Glancing at Taehyung, you notice that he has a faraway look in his eyes. He keeps his gaze out the window, and you start wondering what he is thinking about.

“Do you think we’re going to be okay?” Taehyung asks you with a gentle sigh.

You close your eyes briefly and sigh contently before answering, “With the baby? I mean, it might be a struggle at first. I know because I haven’t really grasp the fact that I’m carrying your baby, but—”

“No, I’m not talking about this,” he says with his hand waving around your entangled bodies. “I’m talking about—” he waves his hand to point at the window. The muted light of the sun that you saw earlier is still looking bleak, more of a pale-grey than the usual golden, with the wild swirls of snow dropping from the sky and no sign of the blizzard letting up anytime soon. “That.”

He sighs. “I feel like we’ve had strings of bad luck constantly following us.”

Smiling against his chest, you know what he is trying to say. “We slept together twice, and both happened due to bad weather,” you deliberately deduce his thoughts with a hum. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah,” he says with a delirious chuckle, finding it somewhat funny now that you have voiced his thoughts out loud. “Looks like we’re stranded together, again, until the wind starts letting up. They say it’s going to be soon, but I’m not sure.”

You cannot stop smiling the more you think about it. “Funny how it keeps happening to us, huh? At least we can remember this day as the first Christmas morning we celebrated together,” you say this with a grin, as you pull back to rub at your stomach from over the blanket. “Just the three of us.”

Taehyung follows your gaze and scoffs. “Way to go for making me feel guilty about stealing you from your family on Christmas Day,” he grumbles, making you laugh. “And if we’re actually doing this, uh—this relationship, do you think it’ll be weird?”

You look up to him, seeing the frown forming on his face. Before you can question what he means by it, Taehyung continues to explain, “Maybe I shouldn’t come to see your family again next Christmas, or anytime soon. At least until we’re settled and everyone has forgotten about everything.”

The way he says it, and the way he looks when he did, makes you want to laugh. “I think we’re good. And you can always join us next year. Besides, the holidays aren’t so bad with you around. Not this year. It beats sitting down and listening to other people’s stories for once.”

Hearing this, Taehyung raises his eyebrows at you. “Even with all the drama we had with your sister?” he asks, sounding doubtful. “In case you forgot, I almost had a brawl with your stepfather.”

For the first time ever, you doesn’t feel any need to correct him by calling Alia as your stepsister. That thought makes you smile. But you keep it to yourself, and instead lean up to kiss his cheek to help ease his mind out of it.

“What we had?” you question him with a teasing voice, “that’s nothing. You haven’t experienced having Aunt Janey around. Have you ever read or heard those Reddit stories about entitled aunts? She would have gotten all the trophies if anyone in the family has ever written anything about her online.”

You smile as Taehyung listens to you with a chuckle, and you can feel his worries slowly being lifted. “And as for Dad—” you let out a sigh as you think about your protective stepfather, “let’s just hope that Alia manages to butter him up to let things go. You know that he’s weak when it comes to her. Or, you can buy him a drink the next time you see him.”

Taehyung purses his lips as he considers this. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to believe your words, but he still nods his head either way. “Fine, I guess we can talk about that later. We’ll cross the bridge when we get there, I suppose?” he asks with a bashful smile. “Why don’t we focus on you for now, and the baby?”

You prop yourself up on your elbow while holding up the blanket with the other arm to cover your nakedness from his hungry eyes. “Alright, what do you want to know?”

“Everything,” he says with a grin as he sits up against the bed’s headrest. “Should we continue and maybe do this with a late lunch, though? I’m starving. I couldn’t eat anything at breakfast.”

“Are you famished for food, or—” you tease him by leaning closer, “Do you have an appetite for another thing?

He groans. “If the second option has anything to do with you, then the answer would be both. But we need to get some food in our system if we want to get back into the other.”

Laughing, you finally step out of the bed to call for the room service. You continue to spend the rest of the day with him, chatting over the meal, talking about your future plans and all the mundane things that you need to know about each other, before the heat between you picks up again and he pulls you back into bed.

Warmth envelopes you the entire time you are with him, regardless of the winter storm that is still happening outside of these walls.

Author’s Note 2.0 | Thank you for reading this story! Any likes, kudos, comments, and feedbacks will be appreciated. See you in the next story :)

#k-vanity #bangtanwhq #taehyung smut #bts smut #taehyung fanfic #taehyung scenario #taehyung angst #taehyung x reader #bts fanfic #bts scenario #bts angst #bts x reader

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spicyspiders · 25 days

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old man logan part 3

1.6k words

ft scott summers. logan has noticed scott has been angry at work and knows a way to help him relax. old man logan is his own warning, of course, but also a warning for rough oral sex, choking, and boot humping.

Part 1 and Part 2.

“My friend-”

“You have friends?” You ask, playing up your joke with a shocked expression.

Logan sends you a glare after cutting him off, a scowl darkening his handsome face. You bite your lip, trying not to let out the laugh that bubbles up, but when you see the man’s face beside him slit into a grin, you can’t help but let it out.

“My friend,” Logan starts again as he wraps an arm around the man’s shoulders, “I thought Scott could use a little downtime. He’s been a little stressed at work,” he says, sending Scott a knowing look, “I was thinking we could all hang out.”

“I didn’t know people over 45 still used the word hang out,” you responded to Logan.

“What word did you think we used?” Scott asked with a confused smile. Even inside Logan’s house he still wore the sunglasses he showed up in. It kinda weirded you out, but everyone had their quirks, you guessed.

“I don’t know,” you said, giving yourself a few seconds to think, “I thought you just had meetings,” you answered. Scott looked even more confused with your response, which meant maybe Logan was right. It looked like the man needed to spend a little bit of time not thinking so hard, some time where he could turn his brain off and relax.

“After all,” Logan said, turning to look at you, “I always feel much more relaxed after our– what’d you call them?” he asks, now sending you a knowing look.

“Meetings,” you answered with an eye roll. You weren’t a fucking prostitute, but it looked like Logan thought of you as one. Or perhaps this was Logan turning a new leaf like he did when he gave all of the toys back that littered his backyard and he was just trying to help someone else.

Or maybe there was just something weird, sick, and twisted in him that made him want to watch you suck another man’s cock. You had a lot of questions to ask afterwards, but now, you had more pressing matters to handle.

It was easy getting Scott to Logan’s couch, but he was mouthy when it finally came time to get his pants and underwear down, “this isn’t what I thought was going to happen when you invited me over,” he said to Logan, his already hardening cock twitching in your face.

“What?” You think I invited you over for a game of chess,” Logan said with a laugh, “you’ve been so hot-headed lately I thought this would help you cool off,” he said, one of his knees knocking Scott’s.

It was kind of sweet, in a weird, sexual way. It also answered a question you pondered on if Logan was as rude to his friends as he could be to you.

“I’m sorry about him,” you said to Scott, placing a kiss to his thigh, though you were sure he was already familiar with how Logan acted from working with him. “You could stand to be a little nicer,” you said up to Logan.

Ignoring what you said, Logan wrapped his arm around Scott’s shoulder again, “he’ll finally shut up when your dick is in his mouth,” he said to the man beside him.

“You’re sure?” Scott asked. You had forgotten how many times he had asked that since he was able to pick up on why you were really here, but it was sweet of him to ask, even if it started to annoy you after the last few times he asked.

You responded by taking the head of Scott’s cock into your mouth, the man above you gasping. You teased the head with your tongue, swirling the wet muscle around the sensitive glands on the crown. Once his cock was fully hard, you were rewarded with the salty taste of his precum from the slit.

Seemingly in another fucked up way to help him, Logan placed a hand on the back of your neck, “he likes it rough,” he said, his voice an octave lower, “he can take it,” he finished, showing Scott just how well you could by pushing your head down so his cock went deeper.

Scott wasn’t as large as Logan, but that didn’t mean he was anything to scoff at. His cock still brought tears to your eyes as it touched the back of your throat, your nose just a few centimeters away from the thatch of dark hair at the base.

Logan’s hand moved away as he let Scott take control, the man moving much slower than the other as he fed you his cock. Scott groaned when you swallowed and the wet heat of your throat contracted around his cock, his hips jumping off the couch.

The motion made you gag as he went even deeper, your tears spilling over, “attaboy,” Logan said as you heard the clink of his belt buckle unfastening. Though you weren’t sure who he was talking to, if the praise was meant for you for taking Scott’s cock, or if it was for Scott as he took the reins with his hand on your neck, the words still had your cock twitching in your pants.

“You okay?” Scott asked softly, his voice, like Logan’s, deeper than before. He pulled his cock free from your mouth with a hand wrapped around the base and used the other one to wipe at the tears that had fallen.

You nodded, looking up at Scott with a watery smile, one that Scott returned as he placed his hand back around the back of your neck. You glanced over at Logan, your cock jerking in your pants once more at the expression on the man’s face. It was difficult to tell what it was, probably due to the lack of oxygen to your brain from sucking Scott’s cock, but he didn’t exactly look happy.

Logan always looked like that though. The closest emotion your brain could come up with was jealousy. You didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the possibility of Logan being jealous watching you suck another man’s cock. It looked like your cock would think about it though, especially as it grew fully hard in your pants.

Logan’s legs were spread wide, giving you full view of the bulge in his jeans. What you last watched before you closed your eyes and took Scott back into your mouth was his fingers moving past the top of his underwear.

Scott didn’t push with his hand, just laid it there as he let you go at your own pace. It proved to be satisfactory as he moaned above you as you bobbed your head up and down along his cock. It was easier than moments ago to take him deeper, aided by the spit that slicked your way.

You heard a shifting noise on the couch, but with your eyes closed missed the soft, wet noise of Logan spitting into his palm. The slick noise of Logan’s hand along his cock lit a fire in your belly, and the sound of Scott’s moans only made it burn brighter.

Scott came when Logan’s boot made its way between your spread legs and the contact to your cock made you moan. The vibrations went straight up Scott’s cock, right to the tip where cum pulsed from his cock.

You swallowed his salty spend once it hit your tongue, warming your throat as it went down. Scott’s hand tightened around the back of your neck to keep you in place as he came, his hips spasming as his cock throbbed along your tongue. You ran your tongue along the thick vein along the underside, drawing all you could from his cock until it started to soften.

His cock fell from your lips with a pop as Scott’s hand was once again replaced by Logan’s, “ah!” You said in pain as Logan pulled you toward his cock. His hand moved to the front of your neck in a tight grip, locking you in place.

The pace Logan’s hand moved along his cock was impressively fast as he stroked his cock. His boot moved back between your legs, placing the toe of his boot in the perfect position for you to hump your way to completion as Logan fucked his fist.

“You’re like a bitch in heat,” Logan said around a cruel laugh, his words sending you right over the edge.

Your mouth fell open as you moaned, your head still held in face by Logan’s fist. You wheezed your way through your orgasm, Logan’s fingers tightening as he hit his own. Your vision went spotty and darkened along the edges as Logan’s fingers cut off your air supply. Mouth open, you tried to gasp in breaths, another taste hit your tongue as Logan spurted ropes of cum onto your face and a select few landed in your mouth.

“Logan!” Scott said loudly before Logan’s hand fell away from your throat. You fell forward onto Logan’s leg as you sucked in breath after breath into your aching lungs. You knew there would probably be a hand-shaped bruise there tomorrow, but right now all you could focus on was the quickly cooling mess in your pants.

“Quit yer bitchin’,” Logan responded, pulling you up with his hands under your armpits, “he’s fine,” he said as you fell forward into his lap, his softening cock rubbing messily into your shirt.

“M’fine, Scott,” you said to him, your voice rough and nearly unrecognizable, even to your own ears. “Will you get me a paper towel?” You asked as you let your head fall to Logan’s shoulder.

#x male reader #x male reader smut #logan howlett x male reader #logan howlett x male reader smut #logan howlett x reader #wolverine x male reader #wolverine x male reader smut #scott summers x male reader smut #scott summers x male reader #scott summers x reader #cyclops x male reader smut #cyclops x male reader #cyclops x reader

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aerynwrites · 10 months

Text

Lost For Words

Gale Dekarios x gn!Reader

A/N: for the anon that sent in this request - I hope you and everyone else enjoys! I had such a fun time writing this haha.

Word Count: 1.2k

Warnings: sexual content (not explicit), grinding, reader is a tease, gale is a flustered mess, suggestive talk, kissing, fluff at the beginning.

*I tried to keep this gender neutral, but please let me know if anything slipped through my editing!*

It’s not often you get any downtime, what with the parasite in your brain and all.

But this evening has afforded you and your companions a rare but much needed free night. Most everyone has decided to spend the evening down in the tavern, drinking or gambling or whatever other pastimes happen down there. However, you and Gale have opted to stay upstairs, reveling in the unusual peace and quiet.

Gale had been reading to you for a while, a fantasy book of some sort, but you’d excused yourself a few moments ago. Not because you were enjoying lounging in bed with him, but because a certain item in your bag has been calling to you since you received it.

The Wavemother’s Robe.

It has been a gift for getting ride of that machine that was polluting the bay waters, and you hadn’t really had a chance to look at it.

But now, after you’ve retrieved it and stepped behind the dressing screen, you find that there isn’t really much to look at, at all.

As you slip into the delicate yet butter-soft fabric, you can’t help but notice that it leaves very little to the imagination. So, in that sense, there is a lot to look at depending on who’s doing the looking.

The neckline of the detailed collar of robe plummets down in a tragically deep neckline, the end reaching your navel. And the skirt of the robe is much the same, the slits in the sides coming up all the way to above your hip, leaving the fabric covering yourself hanging dangerously loose in the front and back.

For half a second, you're tempted to rip the thing off and get rid of it. The whole outfit is somewhat absurd.

But, despite your question about the functionality of such a garment, you can’t help but admire the beauty of it. The blue, scaled fabric sparkles in the dim candle light of the room, iridescent light bouncing off the walls whenever you turn. Even the small delicate chains at your hips and resting against your sternum twinkle gently.

When you look in the floor-length mirror you can’t help but let your mouth drop open slightly.

You look…good. If not a bit exposed.

Without thinking much about it, you turn and come out from behind the screen, approaching Gale where he still sits on the bed reading. If he hears your approach he doesn’t acknowledge it, only flipping a page every so often as you watch him in silence, a small smile on your face.

He’s sat propped up against the headboard, legs outstretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He cradles the book gentle in his hands atop his lap, eyes trailing over the page quickly as he consumes the story.

You take a couple steps closer to the bed, now just an arms length away.

He still doesn’t look up.

“Gale…” you call in a soft sing-song voice.

The wizard merely hums, inclining his head your way ever so slightly, but never takes his eyes from the page.

“Yes, my love?”

You huff, rolling your eyes as your smile tugs further at your lips.

“I wanted your thoughts on my new clothes.”

You watch as his brows furrow, his thumb sliding down the page to hold his place as he closes the book before slowly turning to look at you.

“Your clothes-?”

His questioning is cut off with the audible clack of his teeth as his mouth slams shut, his eyes going wide as they finally take you in, trailing from your head to your toes before whipping back up again.

He blushes. Actually blushes - his cheeks turning several shades darker as his eyes flit over your form once more before he’s back to looking at you all wide-eyed and scandalized.

A shit eating grin overtakes your earlier soft smile as you take the last few steps to the edge of the bed, reaching out to pluck the book from his hands to toss it to the side.

“So…what do you think?” you ask, voice dripping sweetness.

“W-what do I-? I - ehm…it’s certainly - revealing-“

You drop your lips into a pout as you crawl onto the bed, your nose barely brushing his own as you swing a leg over his hips to settle on his lap. The robe pools between you, but the position causes the silken fabric to rise up your hips even further. One wrong move and even less would be left to the imagination.

Something Gale must take notice of, as he instinctively reaches out to tug at the fabric on your hips, keeping it in place as his fingers dig into the flesh beneath it.

“Do you not like it?” you ask, feigning disappointment as you reach down to toy with the chain running down your chest. “I thought it was pretty.”

Gale clears his throat and shifts his hips, the evidence of just how much he likes it evident against your inner thigh.

“N-No not at all I -“ He coughs, the blush reaching down to his chest now, making his orb mark stand out against the flushed skin. “I simply was not expecting…”

His words taper off as you begin to trail a finger over the mark on his chest, following the tendrils up over his collarbone and onto the sensitive skin of his neck, making his breath hitch.

“Not expecting…what?”

“Well - I was deeply entrenched in m-my reading and then you come out like t - that!”

His last word pitches up when you grind your hips against his own, his fingers now digging into your hip bones.

You lean in close, lips brushing his cheek as you speak.

“Thats a very…lackluster description,” you pout. “Have I left the great Gale of Waterdeep lost for words? What happened to your supposed verbosity? And I remember something about a practiced tongue -“

Your teasing words are cut off sharply as Gale's arms wrap around your waist and he flips you both over on the bed, your back hitting the mattress with a soft this just as his lips claim yours, swallowing your gasp of surprise.

He wastes no time, his tongue pressing against the seam of your lips, demanding entrance.

Something you happily grant him.

The kiss is eager, frenzied, leaving no room for the teasing banter you had established earlier.

His hands move to slide down over your bare thighs before hiking one of them up over his hip and holding it there as he presses his hips down into your own.

Only when his hips meet your own in a desperate grind does he pull away from you, lips moving instead to trail kisses down your cheek and jaw.

“If you had given me a moment to collect myself,” he chastises lightly. “I would have gathered my wits enough to tell you how magnificent you look.”

“Ravishing.” He presses a kiss beneath your ear. “Captivating.” Another on the junction of your shoulder.

“Absolutely sinful.”

A sharp nip to your collarbone has you gasping, just as a calloused hand slides up the exposed expanse of your chest, fingers hooking beneath the delicate chains there.

“So…” He trails off, his lips traveling down to where his hand lays and then lower, pressing lightly to where the deep plunge of your robe ends.

“Since you were so impatient, I suppose I’ll just have to show you as well. To make up for my lack of…verbosity.”

A moan slips past your lips at his words, and you can't stop the shiver of excitement that runs through as his hands slip beneath the fabric of the robe.

Maybe you’ll keep the robe after all.

#gale of waterdeep #gale x reader #bg3 x reader #bg3 gale x reader #bg3 gale #gale dekarios x reader #gale dekarios #bg3

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watchmegetobsessed · 4 months

Text

WING IT

A/N: we are slowly getting more content, lets just hope something drops soon!

WORD COUNT: 3k

SUMMARY: It's your first day working in Selma's Home, you're nervous enough already, but when an emergency calls your boss away and you're left alone, the situation is topped when famous CEO Harry Styles casually strolls in.

MASTERLIST | SUPPORT ME!

It doesn’t matter that this job is just an in-between. Something that earns you money until your dream position opens. A first day is always stressful, especially when you have no idea what to do.

You were applying to dozens of jobs at once, just shooting everywhere you could, hoping to get an answer back before your rent was due. Selma’s Home was the first one to invite you for an interview and somehow, miraculously you even got the job despite the fact that you have no experience in retail. You suspect that desperation was a big factor in your hiring, because Selma lost 2 of her employees at once when the young couple that was working for her moved across the country.

Now here you are, walking into the store, nervously fidgeting with your fingers as you head down the aisles where you see Selma behind the cash register already getting ready to open.

“Hi!” you greet her, her head snapping up at your weak voice. Selma is such a fierce, kind of intimidating woman, but you can see how it helped her to open this store and make it one of the most successful home decor stores in the city, offering tasteful stylish pieces along with practical utility items for one’s home.

“Oh, hi! Welcome to your first day, you ready?” She even cracks a smile, but somehow it just makes you gulp hard.

“Yeah, readier than ever!” you manage to squeeze out a nervous chuckle, hoping she doesn’t sense your jitters.

“Alright, then let’s get started.”

With an hour until opening Selma is eager to squeeze in as much information into it as possible. She walks you through the store, talking about the most important items, but also handing you a handbook about everything that’s currently selling in the store.

“Use your downtime to roam around and you’ll learn them by the end of the week without the handbook,” she says, eyes running over the shelves as she is talking, already moving to the storage room in the back.

She talks about the system, how to unload the new arrivals every two weeks and then you move on to the cash register, aka your biggest fear. It’s quite the stress factor to deal with money, making sure everything is neat and correct, you can only hope you won’t mess it all up.

Then the store opens and you follow around Selma to learn the ropes. What’s different here is that whenever a customer comes in you offer them help right away and if needed, you assist them throughout their whole time shopping. There are quite some designer products selling and you’ll need to know everything about them to be able to sell them to the customers just like Selma does.

She is so good at it. No matter who comes in, she so effortlessly talks them into leaving with not only what they came for, but some more as well. She is enchanting, nice, open and warm and you just keep taking notes mentally, though you don’t feel confident enough to be as charming as she can be the moment the bell rings above the door.

When lunch rolls around you allow yourself to feel relieved for a second that you survived half the day already. Selma sends you to the back to have your lunch and you just sit in silence, staring ahead of you, mustering up all your energy for the rest of the workday. You’ve just finished your sandwich when Selma barges into the breakroom.

“Y/N, there’s a bit of an emergency.”

You jump to your feet, scenarios already running through your mind. Is there a fire? Did the storefront just collapse? Someone stole those hella expensive Japanese tablecloths?

“What happened?”

“My daughter, she is ugh! Such a menace, she got into trouble at school, so I have to go there. I need you to cover for a bit, just an hour tops, I swear!”

She is already grabbing her purse, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head, car keys in hand while you just stand there dumbfounded. Is she actually gonna leave you alone in the store on your first day?

“Selma, I-I don’t…”

“You do, Honey. Just an hour. This is a dead time anyway, if anyone comes in, just try your best to help them and ring them up at the end. Easy, I know you can do it!”

She is storming out and you follow her like a lost puppy.

“B-But what if I mess something up?” you ask, panic setting in.

“As long as you don’t set the store on fire, you’ll be fine. I trust you, Y/N!”

And with that, she is already gone, the bell rings above the door as you stand there like a statue.

You watch the storefront in pure panic, your stomach dropping every time it seems like someone is approaching the shop, but no one comes in.

Until the bell rings above the door.

For a split second you hope it’s Selma, but looking up you see a tall, broad figure and your heart threatens to burst right out of your anxiety filled chest, at first because hello! It’s a customer! But then as he steps further into the shop and takes off his sunglasses, realization settles in.

This is not just a regular customer, this is Harry Fucking Styles, CEO of Pleasing Productions, the studio that’s given the world the absolute best romantic movies in the past decades and the man is famously known for being a ladies favorite, but appearing as a total mystery in the media.

You’ve read about him a lot before, it’s hard not to bump into his name online, thanks to his looks he is always somehow in talk for either having dinner with a model, appearing on the red carpet looking like a fucking snack, or, your personaly favorite, declining giving an answer to a question regarding his private life.

And now he is standing there, looking around the store.

It takes a couple of moments for you to push out of this frozen state and finally step forward.

“Hello!”

Wow. Did your voice actually sound like that?

Clearing your throat you keep moving towards him.

“Hi, can I help you with anything?”

You try to rake your mind to remember everything you’ve seen and heard from Selma to use now, but the moment he looks up, your mind goes blank. He is just as beautiful as he looks in pictures or maybe even more. Unlike on those red carpet photos where he is always dressed in designer suits, now he is wearing a pair of simple pants and a gray long sleeve, his hair is a bit tousled and it appears he is growing his beard out, a bit shaggy, but he makes it look very… hot. That’s all you can say looking at him.

“Oh, hey!” He is sporting a polite smile as he looks up, about to keep talking, but he stops for a moment upon looking at you and he stops.

Everything stops.

It’s as if he is taking you in, you can feel your cheeks heating up, the nervous fidgeting starts again, but you hide your hands behind your back so he doesn’t notice.

“I’m looking for some kitchen stuff,” he then says, hiding his hands in his pockets.

“Great!” you breathe out. “We do have… those.”

You flinch internally, but ignore just how awkward you are in his presence.

You ask him about what he needs specifically as the two of you start walking down the isles and for a moment you think of grabbing the handbook, but that would look awful, so you make a decision on the spot.

You’re gonna just wing it.

What could go wrong? You’ll just pretend like you’re Selma, confident and know everything about the items, you’re gonna say whatever comes to your mind and just… wing it.

All while ignoring how attractive this man is up close. And intimidating. And charming. And…

“I think I want to check out the coffee stuff first,” he suggests and nodding you walk him over to the kitchen items.

“Do you have a coffee machine and you’re looking for some accessories, or…”

“I just got one of those old fashioned moka coffee pots,” he says with a boyish smile. “But I want to get that to the next level, if you know what I mean.” You do not.

“Of course,” you smile, eyes scanning over the shelves.

Your grandmother has one of those old moka coffee makers, but you have absolutely no idea what else could be used for those, so you just start grabbing things and making up what they are used for.

One after the other, you just keep showing him stuff with no idea what you’re talking about, but the longer you’re talking the more confident you’re growing, especially when he just keeps nodding and humming along to anything you say.

“So… which one are you more interested in?” you ask at the end of your little speech. You look at him and find him already looking at you with a tiny smile curling up the corners of his mouth.

“What can you tell me about those?” he asks, ignoring your question and just moving to another shelf.

He keeps asking about items and you just make up everything as you go. Of course, you know some of the stuff, but you were never really a true chef in the kitchen, so there are way too many items you don’t know that much, but somehow, you’ve gathered enough confidence that even you believe what you say.

Slowly, Harry fills his basket as you move through the store and every time you look at him you catch him already looking at you with the same smile you can’t quite decipher.

“What about those?” he points up at a set of plates on the top shelf.

“Oh, those are so pretty! Let me show you them!” you enthuse and run to grab the ladder from the back.

It’s not the steadiest tool for sure, but you ignore the wobble you feel when you start climbing it.

“Are you sure it’s–”

“It’s fine, don’t worry,” you chuckle, reaching the top step, but your knees are definitely shaking. You focus on grabbing the plates and getting off as fast as possible, but right when you take them off the shelf you already feel yourself losing balance.

But Harry is quick to come to your rescue. One of his hands grabs the ladder to steady it and the other… the other one grabs the back of your thigh to help you hold yourself up. Until then you were shaking because of the ladder, but now it’s definitely because of his firm hold on you, the warmth of his touch and the thoughts that unrelease when you realize just how perfectly his fingers are digging into your flesh.

“You good?” he asks in a deep, husky voice.

“Yeah.” Your voice is barely more than just a whisper as you hold onto the plates as if they could hold you up.

You start moving down on the ladder, but Harry’s hand doesn’t leave your body, it works up on your hips and waist, grabbing onto your elbow as you finally step onto the ground and even then, he is still touching you, his eyes locked on yours as you’re still holding those damn plates. The image of dropping them and pushing up against him flashes through your mind and your knees wobble again when you catch his gaze flickering down to your lips for a second.

“The plates,” you blurt out then. He looks down and a smile stretches across his face.

“They really are pretty.”

“Right?” you let out a breathy laugh.

“Now that you risked your life for them, I guess it’s only fair if I actually buy them.”

Fuck, your heart is about to jump right out of your chest, how is he so smooth?

You gather a few more things and then move to the cash register to ring everything up.

“How long have you been working here?” he asks, patiently waiting for you to finish.

“Um… Do you want the truth?” you ask, with a cheeky smile.

“Yeah.”

“This is my first day,” you admit, just as you finish the scanning and when you look at the amount it all added up to, you almost choke on your own saliva. “Um, your total is 1630.”

For a moment you think he’ll question how it’s so much, but without hesitation he whips out his card and taps it on the terminal.

“First day, huh?”

“You wouldn’t have guessed?”

“Oh, I kind of did,” he chuckles and he starts to help you with putting everything away in bags. “You really should learn what the items are used for.”

Normally you’d be embarrassed that he noticed how much you just made up, but the smile he is gifting you with vanishes all negative feelings and you can actually find it funny.

“I will.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” he smirks, grabbing the bags from the counter. “And if I happen to leave a review about the excellent service, what name should I drop?”

“I’m Y/N,” you say with a sheepish smile. He then sticks his hand out and you take it.

“Harry. It was really nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

With a final wave he turns around, slides his sunglasses back to the bridge of his nose and then walks out of the store. You stand there completely overwhelmed by the experience and you have no idea how much time passes by before Selma barges through the door.

“Hi Darling! How did everything go?” she beams, walking up to the counter where you’re still standing.

“Great!”

“Did anyone come in?”

“Yeah. Harry Styles was just here.” Selma freezes for a moment before looking up at you.

“Harry Styles? As in…”

“Yeah. That Harry Styles.”

“How did it go? Did he buy anything?”

“He spent 1600 dollars on kitchen stuff.”

“Y/N, that’s great!” Selma claps her hands. “Was he satisfied? Could you help him?”

“I think I could,” you say with a knowing smile. “He seemed… satisfied, yeah.”

The first day jitters are luckily gone by the next day, especially because Selma looked at you with so much pride after you told her about your encounter with Harry that you feel like you can’t do anything wrong.

Before lunch Selma asks you to rearrange some stuff in the storage and you’re a bit relieved you don’t have to take any customers for now.

But because of that, you’re not out when one specific person walks into the shop. Again.

Harry enters the store confidently, a smile already on his lips as he looks in the direction of the cash register, but it fades when he only sees Selma, but no sight of you. Selma, on the other hand, becomes ecstatic when she sees and recognizes him.

“Welcome! How may I help you?” she chirps, walking towards Harry, who is still looking around, eyes searching for you.

“Hey, is the… Is the woman who worked yesterday here? Y/N?” Selma stops, surprised.

“Y/N? Uh, yes, but she is busy now, I’m sure I can help you–”

“I want her,” he states.

“She is still training, I’m sure I can–”

“Look,” Harry sighs. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Selma, the owner,” she states proudly.

“Selma, I’m more than happy to buy everything in this store if it means I get to talk to her. How does that sound?”

Selma stares back at him, finally understanding the situation. Her stance changes instantly.

“Let me go get her for you.”

You’re going over your list in the back when Selma appears, her spotless appearance feels odd in the storage room’s setting.

“Oh, hey! I just finished with–”

“I need you outside.”

“What? Why?” Panic washes over you, because you can’t read her face and what could she possibly need you for outside on your second day?

“Just come. Now!” She turns around and heads out, not even checking if you’re following her. Of course you do.

“Selma, what did I–” you start mumbling behind her, but just when you step out and spot Harry at the cash register.

His face lights up the moment he sees you and those damn butterflies start raging in your stomach.

“Harry, you’re here. Again,” you state the obvious.

“I am,” he chuckles and you see Selma walk away from the corner of your eyes.

“How, um–What can I… help you with?” you ask, clearing your throat. Why is he here? Could it be… because of you? Yesterday you definitely spent an awful lot of time daydreaming of the way he was touching you on that ladder and you’d be lying if you said you felt disappointed he just walked out, knowing you might never see him again.

Well, so much for that.

“I forgot to get something yesterday.”

“Oh,” is all you can say, the disappointment snaking back into your gut. He is not here because of you, how could you even think about that?

Harry’s smile widens as he watches your face drop and then he finally continues.

“Your number.”

Your eyes widen and you must look quite funny, because Harry chuckles at the sight of your expression.

“Was this too straight forward?”

“No!” you snap right away, maybe a bit too eagerly. “Not at all.”

“Great, then…”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it over, you type your number in quickly and hand it over. He taps on the screen and a second later your phone starts buzzing in your back pocket.

“Just checking you didn’t give me a pizzeria’s number,” he jokes, making you laugh. “And… now that I’m conveniently here, maybe you can show me some more stuff.”

“What do you need?” you ask as the two of you head down one of the aisles.

“Hmm, how long is your shift?”

“Um, another four hours,” you scoff.

“Then I guess I’m interested in everything. Whatever takes four hours to look at so I can take you out once you’re done.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed and buy me a coffee if you want to support me!

#harry #styles #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shot #harry styles fluff #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles blurb

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zhongrin · 1 year

Text

“honey, can you… leave me alone?”

— (sometimes, we all just need some downtime for ourselves)

◇ characters ◇ zhongli, al haitham, diluc, kaeya, kaveh, thoma, albedo, wanderer, xiao

◇ tags ◇ angst with comfort, established relationship, petnames

◇ a/n ◇ oh wow! guys!! i wrote angst with comfort!!! guys!!!!!!! are you proud of me????? this is kinda self-indulgent bc i wrote this when i was just. tired. you know, those moments where you genuinely just want to shut down and be in your own company? yeah.

𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ⬙ 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ⬙ 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡

zhongli smiles patiently. and if he judged that you would allow him to, he would place a kiss on top of your head before stepping away. his movements are graceful and calculated, amber eyes ever so observant as he watches the droop of your lashes and the downturn of your lips.

ah. you’re in that kind of mood.

with a firm nod, he promises to give you all the space you needed, as long as at the end of the day you return to his arms. a few hours or days of waiting would certainly make him miss you terribly, but zhongli is a patient man, and your well-being matters most.

“of course. you’ll come to me when you’re ready, yes?”

al haitham understands your needs very well. contrary to most people’s beliefs, he would put them just as equally high - if not more - than his own needs most of the time.

he simply nods upon your words and, after much consideration, would place his soundproof headphones on your side before he leaves the room, carefully minding his footsteps as he walks towards kaveh’s room to inform the architect of the situation and remind him to tone his antics down.

“alright. call me if you need anything.”

diluc would automatically ask you if something is wrong or is bothering you - it’s his protective instincts, don’t blame him too much - but he knows not to probe further when you give him that look.

he offers for a maid to deliver your favorite warm drink later, and with one last comforting squeeze of his hand on top of yours, he leaves, his head full of questions and his heart set to spoil you rotten the moment you return to his side.

“adelinde? tell the maids to skip cleaning [name]’s study today. and tell the workers to be especially quiet when they walk about the second floor.”

kaeya might only have half the eyesight normal people have, yet he’s anything but inattentive, especially when it comes to you. he settles with a light, fleeting caress upon your cheek with his gloved hand, and he presses a tender kiss to your forehead before retreating, offering you a sympathetic grin.

“i got you, babe. i’ll be at the office doing paperwork for once, but you can visit me anytime, okay?”

thoma holds back the urge to fuss over you like the mother hen that he is.

he knows about this habit of yours - sometimes lady ayaka exhibits the same behavior - so he knows he shouldn’t be too worried. you always get over this eventually; what you need now is time, and just like any other point in time in your relationship, he is more than willing to accommodate all of your desires.

“do you need me to sleep at the couch tonight? it’s really no trouble at all, love. anything that makes you most comfortable, okay?”

kaveh visibly pouts and looks like he’s about to cry when you ask him for such a request.

he can’t help it, okay? he wants to hold and kiss and cherish you constantly! so having to deliberately spend some time apart from you is torture to him… plus, those tired eyes of yours hurt his poor empathetic heart more than anything.....

with a saddened nod, he fiddles his fingers and gives you a pair of wet puppy eyes.

“are you sure, baby? …... you know you can tell me anything, right? …… whenever you’re ready, okay, precious? i’ll be in the living room, then…. come find me soon, okay, my love?”

albedo doesn’t even bat an eye. he’s already long since memorized your behavioral patterns, and from your recent ventures, he did conclude that this was going to happen. all within expectations, he muses, yet he can’t help but feel saddened at the exhaustion prominently displayed on your features.

with a soft smile, he places his specially curated ‘care package’ on your lap along with a gentle kiss on your cheek before exiting the room and hanging a “do not disturb - contact albedo instead” sign right in front of the door.

“there are a few snacks and calming scented candles inside, along with a few interesting puzzles and crafts. i thought you might like them and find them relaxing. i’ll be at the lab - just send a message through sucrose or timaeus if you need me.”

wanderer’s automatic response is a half-fearful, half-angry “are you fucking serious? hell no!”, but the second emotion is amplified when he sees the murkiness in your expression.

he swears to inflict pain upon whoever dared to put this expression on your face, but he falters when you explain your thoughts the best you can in your current headspace. eventually, with a scowl on his face and a gruff "fine.", the door closes behind him and he slides onto the floor. sure, you can shoo him away, but he has no intention to move from that spot until you reopen the said door.

“….. hmph. guess being a puppet is a good thing at times like these.”

xiao relates to your struggles far too well. he simply nods and teleports out from the room as fast as he could, not wanting his karmic debt to affect your mood further negatively.

throughout it all, your silent protector watches from afar and listens to the wind around you ever so cautiously. just because he agreed to give you space, it doesn’t mean he can’t continue to make sure you’re safe and sound, after all.

“understood. you need only call my name when you are ready to see me.”

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ghost-in-the-hall · 2 years

Text

The Mouse and The Bear (König x Reader)

(A/N: I'm too drunk to proofread this rn, I tried to keep this GN but it might've ended up being a fem! Reader. I'll come back and fix this later lol

Warnings: Swearing, mention of death, mention of injury, slightly angsty but not really, lots of fluff)

"Don't look now, but I think someone has their eye on you." Soap says with a smirk as he walks up next to you in the kitchen. You rolled your eyes in response, knowing that meant any moment now you were going to have some annoying asshole approaching you.

"Spare me." You say under your breath, Soap just laughs in response as he finishes pouring his coffee and heads off. You picked up your lunch, going to find somewhere to sit where hopefully whoever decided you were their new love interest would leave you alone. You were met with a sight you didn't expect. Instead of the usual bombardment of unwanted flirting you caught the almost nervous gaze of KorTac's gentle giant. The second he realized you caught him looking, his eyes snapped down to the mug in front of him. You hadn't had a lot of interaction with König but the few you had he had been nothing but pleasant. A soft smile finds its way to your lips as you start heading in his direction. "Hey König." You greet him pleasantly, "is this seat taken?" He shakes his head, a look of pure disbelief in his eyes over the fact you were standing in front of him. You slide into the chair opposite him. Normally if there was someone at base checking you out you wouldn't bother indulging their infatuation but König made you curious.

"I'm sorry for staring." He admits immediately, acting like a child getting caught doing something they're not supposed to.

"König I'm not mad." You reassure him.

"It's still rude… I know how much I hate it when people stare at me." He seemed to relax slightly now that he knew you weren't upset with him. Before you could ask him why he was looking at you he answered the question on his own. "I've never seen you without your gear on… I never realized how small you are- not that it's a bad thing of course! I know you're more than capable of handling yourself-"

"König," you cut him off before his rambling got him too flustered "it's okay." You smile at him and he shifts awkwardly in his seat. This was the first time you really allowed yourself to look at him. Bright blue eyes looking anywhere besides at you, he hunched over the table in an attempt to make himself look smaller and less threatening. "Du brauchst keine Angst vor mir zu haben." (You don't need to be afraid of me.) You joke in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"You speak German?" He sounded shocked.

"A little, I used to live in Berlin when I was younger." You explain. He nods, leaning forward slightly to give you his undivided attention as you speak. You sat and talked with him for a while, you definitely couldn't complain about the company. He was very attentive, asking you questions that prompted you to keep talking. He had a loud, boisterous laugh that made your heart soar everytime you coaxed it out of him

"Mick, we got takedown training, let's go." Your time with him was cut short by Price informing you to head down to the base's gym.

"I'll be right there." You call back. You turn your attention back to König, who was fidgeting with his mug again. "This was nice, thank you for the company." You smile at him, nervous eyes moving down to the table.

"Maybe… maybe we could do this again sometime?" He asks softly.

"Are you asking me on a date?" You retort immediately. His eyes snap up to you, already trying to stammer out a response in his flustered state. You giggle, reaching out and placing one of your hands on top of his, which looked child sized compared to his. "If we ever have downtime together I would love to." He nods, giving you a quiet goodbye as you cleaned up the table and prepared to head to training. You were unable to keep the dumb grin off your face for the rest of the day.

A few days later you found yourself in the kitchen again. You groaned internally as a high pitch whistle met your ears. "You come around here often sweetheart?" You recognized him, some obnoxious Private that often got in trouble for disrespecting the chain of command. He wasn't worth the energy, you just kept going about what you were doing prior to his interruption. "Maybe you didn't hear me," he tries to sound threatening. He steps uncomfortably close to you, "I asked you a question."

"You really shouldn't be speaking to a Sergeant that way." The Private turned, ready to cuss out whoever had interrupted his terrible attempt at picking you up. You saw all the color drain from his face at the sight before him. You couldn't stop yourself from breathing out a laugh. The Private slowly starts to back up with every heavy footstep that echoed through the kitchen. König steps in front of you, blocking off your pursuer. "Are you alright?" He glances back over his shoulder at you. You nod and his attention immediately turns back to the Private. "I suggest you get out of here kotzbrocken (lump of puke) before I tell your superior officer that you were getting aggressive with a Sergeant." As if on cue his Captain entered the kitchen. König very calmly explained the situation to him, the Captain grabbing his subordinate by the collar and pulling him off.

"Do you want to fucking die? Because messing with her is a good way to get there." You hear him angrily mutter to the Private as he pulls him out of the room.

"You're sure you're alright?" He asks in a much gentler tone than he was using before.

"I'm fine König, thank you." You smile at him, turning back to what you were doing before you were interrupted. You groaned as you looked through the cabinet. "He always does this to me, he knows I can't reach that shelf." You stood on your toes, struggling to reach your favorite mug that you knew Ghost put on the top shelf on purpose. König reached over you, grabbing the mug with ease before lowering it into your hands. You turned to thank him only to be startled slightly by his close proximity. You knew he was a big man, being 6'10, there wasn't anything about him that was small. But you had never witnessed your height difference with him this close up. You stood about his stomach height, the nearly 2 foot difference causing you to have to look straight up to see his mask covered face. Seeing your flustered appearance he quickly stepped back.

"Sorry, I just figured I'd have an easier time reaching it." He says bashfully.

You swallowed thickly, the mug in your hands becoming the most interesting thing in the room at the moment. "It's alright, I appreciate the help." You start making the tea you had originally come in here for, both of you sitting in silence. You didn't have to look up at him to know that König had his eyes on you. He was leaning up against the counter a couple feet away from you, just studying your movements as you flit around the kitchen. You hear König chuckle, your eyes drifting over to him. "What's so funny?" You ask him with a smile

"Don't take this as an insult, but you remind me of a mouse. You're so small and fast." You both laugh at his joke, he wasn't wrong.

"I mean, I don't have the codename Mickey for nothing." He studies you for a moment, you could tell he was thinking about whether or not he should say something.

"Would it be okay if I called you Maus?" He asks quietly. Normally you would object to someone calling you that. But hearing it from König, his deep voice that paired so wonderfully with his accent, you loved the way it sounded coming from him.

"I wouldn't be opposed… but only you get to call me that." You see the corners of his eyes crinkle in a smile.

"Deal." You searched through the fridge, finding a container of leftovers you had cooked the other night.

"Would you like to join me for lunch?" You ask, holding up the container.

"I would love to." It became a ritual for the two of you to have lunch together. You enjoyed the fact that he was company outside of your team and the usual annoying flirts around the base. Even though you hated to admit it, you had found yourself rather smitten with the Austrian giant. König was kind, but never in a way that made you think he was only being nice to you because you were cute. He was always making you laugh, cracking small jokes and telling you stories. He loved to see you smile, it was one of his favorite parts of his day.

"Good morning Maus." You smile as you hear König enter the kitchen behind you. You pull down a secondary mug from the cabinet.

"Good morning Bärchen." You greet him softly as you pour him a cup of coffee alongside yours. You hear him chuckle as he approaches you.

"Bärchen, huh? Mouse and Bear, that seems pretty fitting." He nods his thanks as you handed him his coffee. "Ready for the debriefing today?" Price had informed you yesterday that Task Force 141 and KorTac were going to be teaming up together for a mission. You were more than happy to work alongside them, the whole team was incredible. But you were still worried.

"As ready as I'll ever be." You sigh, taking a long sip of your drink. "Just… promise me, wherever we end up tomorrow, that you'll be careful." You couldn't look at him. The fear you were feeling in your chest, it was too real of an emotion for you. You weren't going to say that you were never scared to go on a mission, that would be a lie. This however was new, you had another person besides yourself to be worried about.

König smiles down at you, carefully reaching out to tuck some stray hair behind your ear. "Maus, you have my word." The threat of tears welled up thick in your throat. "I'm not going anywhere, liebling." Someone calls from down the hall that it was time for your meeting. You feel König place a hand on your lower back, keeping you close while ushering you further. You came out of your debriefing feeling even worse than when you went in, this wasn't going to be your run of the mill mission you were used to. This was going to be dangerous for even the most skilled soldier. The second everyone had broken off to try and enjoy the rest of their day König pulled you aside. "Look at me, it's going to be okay." He could tell you were on the verge of panicking, despite knowing that would only make the situation worse.

"König do you know the statistics of how many people get hurt going on missions like these. Do you know how many people die?" You said it, the one word that was forbidden in your line of work. He drops down on one knee, gently taking your face in his hands.

"I know, and I know it's scary, but I don't want you to be thinking about that." He sighs, stroking your cheek. He wanted to make you feel better, he hated seeing you so anxious. "Let me take you on a date… it will give us something to do instead of sitting around worrying." You froze, your mind going blank. He wanted to take you on a date?

"I…I don't have anything to wear. If we're going on a date I want to look nice." You couldn't stop yourself from smiling. König was right about one thing, it would be a welcomed distraction.

"You already look beautiful Maus." You blushed at his compliment. He held out his hand to you and you took it without hesitation. His skin was warm and calloused, his hand completely engulfing your own as he let his fingers completely close around it. The two of you got permission to head into the city for the evening. König had been stationed in this area before so he knew exactly where he wanted to take you. Before you left he changed out of his sniper hood and into a cloth mask that covered the lower half of his face. You finally got a chance to get an idea of what he looked like underneath. You were shocked to find out that König had dark blonde hair that he kept relatively long compared to usual military standards. He had freckles that peaked just above where his mask. You could also more clearly make out the wrinkles by his eyes that shows how much he genuinely smiles. When the two of you headed into town you were honestly a bit surprised when you ended up at a food truck that served some local specialty. He ordered for you and paid for your meal, the entire time keeping his hand on the small of your back so he could ensure that you were still there next to him. You wandered into a park to look for a place to sit and made it just in time to catch the sunset. You let your head fall to rest on König's arm, he sat next to you completely rigid.

"Thank you for taking me out, I needed to keep my mind off of tomorrow." He glances down at you, bright blue eyes trained on your face.

"I'm hoping you'll let me take you on another date after this mission is over." You picked up on the nervousness in his voice immediately.

"König, I don't know if you've noticed, but I kind of like you a lot… of course I'll go on another date with you." The hand that was situated in his lap began to reach out for yours, slowly moving his finger over so it would bump into the side of your hand.

"I'm really happy I met you (Y/N)." He says softly.

You smile, eyes never leaving the horizon. "I am too."

The next morning everyone was on edge. You all sat silently in the back of the truck, the usual attempt to lighten the mood vacant. As you neared your destination Ghost finally spoke up. "Team A, we're going to sweep their safe house, any hostages I want brought to me directly. Team B, you're in charge of sweeping the rest of their compound. This is a capture or kill mission, our number one priority is getting us and the hostages out safely. You glanced across the isle at König. He tried to give you a reassuring nod but you could tell how nervous he was really feeling. The truck came to a rough stop, jolting your body forward in the process. Everyone piled out and began separating into their teams. A giant gloved hand came to rest on the top of your head as König gave you a gentle pat. "Be careful out there, Bärchen." You say softly, unable to look at him knowing it would probably make you cry.

"You too Maus." He runs off to join his team.

"Come on Mickey, we got a house to clean." Soap says as he approaches you. He could tell how stressed you were feeling. Even if he didn't know the extent of your relationship with König he knew how much you cared about him. "He's gonna be alright, man's a fuckin' tank, there's no stopping him." You nodded heading off with him to handle your half of the mission. Team A consisted of you, Ghost, Johnny, Gaz, and a couple of privates from the base. Team B consisted of KorTac, Price and a few other soldiers.

"Mick, I need to know you're here with me sweetheart, you're looking a little spacey." Ghost says quietly as you wait for the perfect moment to storm the safe house.

"I'm with you lieutenant, just another day at the office." You tried your best to sound confident. To give your team the Mickey they needed right now. Soap was right, König would be fine. All of this would be over in less than an hour.

"Move in." You got your cue. You looked at Soap, the two of you exchanging an affirming nod before you made your way up to the safe house. He taps your shoulder, motioning that he'll start his sweep to the right you start to your left. You found nothing but a couple low grade officers guarding the hostages, which meant everyone incredibly dangerous was either not here or in the same building as Team B. You quickly and quietly escorted the hostages outside so you could get them some medical attention "Team A has successfully completed their sweep. Team B what's your status?" Ghost's voice booms over the comms. It was silent for a while… too long.

"Ghost, we've been hit." Price's panicked voice was the only thing you could hear. "They found out we're here."

"Do you need medical? We're heading to your location now." You readied yours as fast as you possibly could.

"Ghost, I need you to listen to me. I don't know how many men I've already lost, if you come over here your whole team could be taken out." You could hear gunfire in the background. You were going to attempt to make a run for it. You needed to help them, you needed to get out who you could. The second you tried to bolt Ghost latched onto your collar, pulling you to the ground.

"Let me go, I need to help them." You say through gritted teeth, fighting back tears.

"Mick, you know that's only going to make things worse." Ghost jumps back on comms. "Price, do you have a casualty count?"

"At least four." Any drive you had to stand back up left your body. That was half of their team, just gone.

"Anyone from KorTac?" Ghost remained motionless by your side, prepared to drag you out of there if needed.

"I don't know, I lost them in the fire fight." You were shaking. Throughout all your years in the military you had never felt like this during a mission.

"We'll rendezvous back at base, I need to get these hostages medical attention." Price confirmed and the comms went silent again. Ghost hauled you to your feet, attempting to steady you by the shoulders when you almost fell over. "Hold it together Mickey, come on." His gruff voice shocks you back to reality. You felt like you were in a fog, you were going through the motions of securing the hostages but you weren't really there. The second you were back to base you made your way to the common room, sat down, and waited. Your teammates tried everything they could think of to comfort you but it wasn't any use. All you wanted was König, or at the very least to know he was okay. After about an hour of waiting, Price finally found you. You stood, hurrying over to him. He looked a little worse for wear but overall he seemed fine.

"Price, is König okay?" Ghost was the first one to speak up. You couldn't bring yourself to say it knowing that there was a very high chance he didn't make it back at all.

"He was hit, but he's okay. He actually asked if I could send you down to him." You thanked Price, telling him how happy you were that he was safe but you had to go see him. You ran down to the infirmary, ignoring the calls from the nurses that you had to check in before you could enter as you pushed through the doors. You just needed to see what state he was in. You were met with the sight of König sitting up in bed, pleasantly chatting with the doctor that was going over what he would have to do for his wound care. The top half of his body was wrapped in a bandage that showed he was shot in the shoulder, sniper hood still on. His eyes landed on you and you saw his whole body relax. You waited for the doctor to leave before you approached him.

"Maus." You saw the corners of his eyes crinkle up. It was hard to be mad with the shirtless mass of muscle in front of you. You had a whole speech planned about how worried you were how he could've been seriously hurt. But now that you saw him sitting in front of you none of that really mattered. You sat on the edge of the infirmary bed, tears pricking at your eyes.

"You said you were going to be careful." Your voice cracked as you spoke. He grabbed your hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"I know, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you worry." You felt the first year slip into your cheek and that was enough to open the floodgates. Your body wracked with sobs, König pulled you to him, wrapping an arm around you.

"I thought I lost you." He quietly hushed you, running his fingers through your hair. You stayed like that for a while, both of you remaining silent until König.

"I think after my contract's up I'm going to call it." You shot up, in pure disbelief at what you were hearing. "I got hit today because I got careless. I was trying so hard to get this over with quickly to get back to you that I let my guard down. I don't want something to happen to me out in the field or have you worried like this all the time. (Y/N), I'm in love with you, I don't want to miss the opportunity to explore what we have before it even starts." Hearing him say that made you start crying all over again. Once you had finally calmed down you sat up, wiping your eyes.

"I think this might be my final tour too." You smile at him. He grabs the top of his hood, fully pulling it off his head. You gently caress his face, "you're so handsome under there." You hiccup a laugh through your remaining tears.

"I'm glad you think so." He chuckles. He holds you close, lips gently finding yours for what was the softest first kiss you had ever had. König gently cradled you in his arms, taking his time to fully memorize every single aspect of what kissing you felt like.

"I love you Bärchen." You say softly. He gazed down at you with the most loved filled expression of adoration.

"I love you too, mein mouse." He whispers, pulling you in for one more short, sweet kiss.

3K notes · View notes

naughtyneganjdm · 2 months

Text

For I Have Sinned

Summary: Since Negan was brought to Alexandria, you have been attracted to him. One day you find Negan dressed up like Father Gabriel and instantly find yourself turned on by the attire. After fantasizing about him all night, you decide to admit your feelings to Negan in a confession.

Characters: Negan, Aaron, Father Gabriel & the reader (OC, second person)

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57469084

Warnings: 18+, Swearing, Smut, Daddy Kink, Unprotected P in V, Oral, No Use of Y/N, breeding kink, dirty talk, priest! Negan, Public Play in a Church, Rough, etc.

Notes: This is more so Negan as a priest in training lol, but I just ran with it. It's just another filthy one shot from me. I hope you like it!

The unbearable heat was starting to break you down. It had been one of the hottest summers that you could think of in years. After the world fell to shit you thought there would be a lot of downtime, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Living in Alexandria meant you were working all the time. Non-stop. More than you would have ever done before when the world was normal. But it exhausted you. Being a sweaty mess and sore at the end of the day only to know you had to do it all over again tomorrow didn’t appeal to you. It was exhausting.

“Pick up the pace,” Aaron’s voice called out to you when you took a minute outside the gates of Alexandria to catch your breath. Shooting a glare at Aaron instead of fighting with him, you just pushed forward and headed back into town. Aaron slowed down to keep up with you and you kind of were just ready to be done at this point. You liked Aaron and he was a good friend of yours, but you were just exhausted. “Do you need a day off tomorrow? You look whipped.”

“I am,” you confessed feeling Aaron stopping, reaching out to grab your arm to get a look at you. “I don’t mean to whine Aaron, but I’m completely drained. It’s been non-stop with little to no rehabilitation for my body. I’m willing to do some smaller work around here, but out there I’m really putting my everything into things.”

“I’ll get you a week or so working inside the walls,” Aaron promised starting to talk to you about some things, but in the distance something else caught your eye. It kept you from hearing whatever Aaron was saying to you when your eyes followed the movements of what looked like Negan working on the church at the center of town. What shocked you the most was seeing that he wasn’t dressed like what you were used to seeing him in. He was wearing all black with the white collar of a priest. Almost like he was wearing Gabriel’s clothes. It had been a while since you had seen Negan but seeing that shocked you. You must have been gazing away too long because suddenly you had Aaron’s fingertips snapping in your face to get your attention back. “I lost you there.”

“You did. I won’t lie,” you pointed toward the church where Negan was hammering something in. Once Aaron saw what you were focused on, he rolled his eyes and huffed out loud. “I’m floored to see Negan wearing what he’s wearing. Is this a joke of some kind? Is it Halloween or…something?”

“No, this is Gabriel’s way of trying to fix him and prove that he’s changed,” Aaron scoffed, folding his arms out in front of his chest. The disgust over Aaron’s face told you everything about how he felt about the situation. “Gabriel is putting him through the trials of becoming a priest.”

You couldn’t help but laugh hearing that one. Negan? Of all people being a priest? Yeah, that was a crazy thought. Only if hell froze over. After all the time you spent with Negan when you would be the one that brought him his meals and talked with him, him being a priest was almost joke worthy for you.

"I still can’t believe the two of you are friends. You have very questionable taste in people,” Aaron grumbled under his breath and it made you smirk.

“You know, you’re my friend,” you reminded him, tilting your head to the side to get a good look at Aaron, arching your eyebrow in a mischievous way. It made Aaron roll his eyes and he dropped his arms down at his sides. “I like Negan. I think he’s a different man and I got to know him when I went down there with him.”

“You were down there with him because no one else could stand him,” Aaron noticed the way you were staring at Negan again. You were gawking at Negan who dropped the hammer down at his side and reached up to wipe sweat away from his forehead. When he slicked his hair back you felt your pulse leap in your chest and a moment later Aaron was hitting your shoulder. “You are smitten with him. What the fuck is your problem?”

“Language, that’s a priest you are talking about,” you teased Aaron, still keeping your attention on Negan never realizing before that you had some kind of kink for a priest, but with Negan wearing that you were starting to believe that you did. “Negan is a very attractive man. I’m not blind.”

“But you’re crazy,” Aaron commented and you tipped your head from side to side before shrugging. “For the love of God…”

“Now that you say that…” you stepped forward toward the church feeling Aaron reaching out for you. “I guess I could go show God some love.”

“Oh come on,” Aaron called out to you when you pulled away from him. Waving him off without looking back at him, you approached the church and leaned in.

“Working hard?” you whispered causing Negan to jump and he looked back at you. When he noticed it was you, a smirk tugged at his lips and he turned on his heel.

“Don’t you know to never scare someone holding a fucking hammer?” Negan waved the hammer about before moving forward to wrap an arm around you to pull you close to hug you. Having his short beard rubbing up against the side of your face made your eyes slam shut. God, this was what being close to him would always do to you. “Where have you been stranger?”

“Working my ass off,” you informed him with a sigh. It started to make you panic with him hugging you wondering just how much you may have smelled back with you working hard outside all day long.

“Oh?” Negan’s eyebrow arched up, his dimples sinking in when he pulled back to look you over. Urging you to turn on your heel, you weren’t sure what he was going with when he looked down at your bottom. “Nope, it’s still there.”

“Negan,” you laughed when you felt him smack your ass in a playful manner. Turning to face him, you watched the wolfish smile expand over his handsome features. “That’s not very God like. With you being a priest now and everything.”

“I…oh,” Negan looked down at what he was wearing. His face flushed over and he grumbled to himself. Lifting his head, his dimples sank in and he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m brand new at this whole thing. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked, but why did you do this? You look…ridiculous,” you couldn’t help but giggle seeing the way that his eyes avoided you. “I mean, not ridiculous. You’re very attractive and I like the whole look going on here for you, but you as a priest?”

“Yeah, I know,” Negan frowned, shrugging his shoulders while he tried to figure out what to say to you. “Because of everything I’ve done, Gabey boy thought it would be good for me to get in touch with God. So I guess I’m a priest in training. It really just means that I work on the church, clean things up, pass things out…”

“Did you even read the bible?” you wondered drawing his nose to wrinkle and he laughed.

“I did during my time locked up,” Negan answered with a sigh, shoving his hands into the pockets of his dark pants after he set the hammer down. “I had a lot of free time and Gabriel thought it would be good for me. There were some ridiculous fucking things in it, but I read it. I don’t agree with all of it, but if this helps people give me a chance and become a better person—I’m willing to try.”

“You don’t need to become a priest in order for you to become a better person,” you suggested to him hating to hear him say something like that. “I think you were already a better person, you just let these people get in your head.”

“I just want somewhere I feel like I belong,” Negan confessed with a saddened expression, lifting one of his hands to wave it about. “No one has really given me a chance here. You have, but I don’t get to see you much. Judith and Gabriel are the only two that have really put some effort into things with me. Gabriel was always preaching to me and he thought this was the only way for me to purify my soul.”

“So what do I call you now?” you reached out to playfully shove into the center of his chest causing a scoff to fall from his throat. “Father Negan?”

“Haha. Laugh it up,” Negan pulled his right hand out of his pocket and waved it about. “I think I look good you know. Black is my color and while I’m sweating my ass off in this, I can feel my soul purifying as we speak.”

“Oh, I see,” you smirked folding your arms out in front of your chest while gazing him over. “You know, it would be a lot hotter if you tore the arms off of that shirt. It’d be like you stepped right out of my dreams. A stripper priest. I’m getting wet just thinking about it.”

“Fucking hell…” Negan breathed out, his thick eyebrows bouncing up when he inhaled sharply. “You shouldn’t be talking like that. I can’t…I can’t be thinking the way you’re making me think right now with the way you are saying things. We talked about this in the past. The two of us…”

“The two of us kissed and I would have been okay with going the whole way, but you stopped me. Every time,” you reminded him of your past and he sighed, shifting on his feet. Rocking back and forth on them, he shrugged his shoulders and sighed dramatically. “I was never quite your type, huh?”

“That’s not true,” Negan immediately denied, shaking his head and letting out an irritated breath. “I was never good enough for you. That was the problem. This? This feels almost like a punishment doing this whole priest thing. It’s what I deserve. Someone caring about me and wanting to be with me? I don’t really deserve that. You know that just as much as I do.”

“Negan,” Gabriel’s voice called out breaking up the conversation between the two of you with Negan looking over his shoulder. Wiggling his fingers at Negan, Gabriel urged him back toward the church and Negan sighed. “Come along. I need to teach you some things.”

“Sure thing boss,” Negan was sarcastic in his response, giving you one final smirk before walking off. When Negan got to the door of the church, he stopped and let out a long sigh. It seemed like he wanted to say something to you, but he couldn’t. Instead of looking back at you, his head slumped forward and he spoked quietly. “Goodbye.”

After that discussion, you stood there for a moment and pondered the things that Negan said. This really didn’t feel like something that Negan wanted. It was more so something he was punishing himself with. You could have gone after him, but you didn’t. You were tired. You needed a shower and you needed to rest. But all night long you thought about Negan. How wildly attracted you were to him and as fucked up as it was, you were extremely turned on by the whole black get up with the white collar he was wearing.

The more you thought about Negan that night, the more enchanted with the idea of Negan you became. And when you woke up in the morning you had a plan to get Negan’s attention. You were given a day off before you had to start helping out around Alexandria, so you were going to take advantage of it.

You made sure to dress in something that brought attention to some of your best assets. Something you knew that the old version of Negan would have liked. And you headed off to the church. You knew that it would have been best for you to stay home and rest. Hell, they were giving you some time off. You should have taken them up on their offer, but all you had on your mind was Negan.

Once you were inside the church, you were surprised with it being empty. Empty except for Negan at the front of it sweeping something up. With how hard they had been working to fix up the church, you assumed that there would be more than just Negan in there.

Clearing your throat managed to get Negan to lift his head up. When his eyes fell upon you, his eyebrows bounced up in surprise. Setting the broom at the back corner of the church, Negan moved across the way to step before you. A weak smile tugged at his lips and his eyes fell to the dip in your shirt that showed off your breasts. Well that was a success.

“Uhm,” Negan spoke uneasily, forcing himself to look away from your breasts. “What are you doing here?”

“You know, after our conversation, I got to thinking last night,” you looked around the church and saw that Negan’s head tipped, his eyes hooked on you when you nodded toward the confessional in the back corner. “It’s been a long time since I did a confession and I was thinking maybe I should do one.”

“Oh, I don’t really do that,” Negan looked over his shoulder, his body shifting uncomfortably like he was looking for someone else. “I’m really just like a priest in training so to speak or some shit. I don’t know. You might want to grab Gabriel and do that if you really want to talk to someone.”

“Well, I’m not really all that religious so we can train together,” you suggested pointing back toward the booth that was there and Negan cleared his throat. “What do you think? You want to give it a try? I can confess my sins to you and you can help…”

“Absolve you of your sins?” Negan finished for you having your smile grow larger over your face and you nodded. Looking around, Negan seemed nervous before he shrugged his shoulders and stepped forward. “I guess we can do that. Gabriel is around here somewhere and he doesn’t have a service for a while. So…why the fuck not.”

“Are you supposed to be talking like that?” you teased him, moving in beside him when his hand pressed in over your lower back to lead you toward the confessional.

“I’m pretty sure someone said swearing makes you closer to God,” Negan spoke up, his head tipping from side to side. “Or some shit like that.”

“That sounds fake,” you noted, stepping before the confessional with Negan. He let out a long, expressive exhale before looking to you. “You should go first. Since you’re the priest and everything.”

“Right,” Negan frowned, moving forward, opening the door to the confessional that was there and when he closed the door you smiled.

Moving into the other side, you heard movement through the screen that was between the two of you showing that Negan was trying to get comfortable. Once you sat down, a warmth surrounded you and you realized that it wasn’t all that comfortable in here.

“Do I just talk through this screen or…?” you were confused how this thing was supposed to go since it had been so long since you even stepped into a church considering the circumstances.

“I don’t fucking know,” Negan pushed at something on the other end before the screen opened and revealed him sitting at the other end. “Maybe this is wrong. Maybe the screen is supposed to stay closed or…”

“Let’s just…do this,” you calmed him, throwing your hands up in the air noticing that he was looking down toward the ground as if trying to give you some privacy to talk about whatever it was you wanted to confess to him. “Bless me, father, for I have sinned…”

Negan was quiet, but it made him smirk and his dimples became more prominent when you started. He was amused. Which was better than him actually taking this seriously, “It’s been a really long fucking time since I’ve done one of these things…”

“I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to say,” Negan offered and you gave him a glare. Throwing his hands up in the air, Negan shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Go ahead my child.”

“God don’t say that,” you snickered hearing him laugh in return before you got even more comfortable where you were sitting. “You see father, I haven’t been a very good girl. For the longest time now I’ve had feelings for this guy that I met. He was a prisoner…” a bit of color flushed into Negan’s face when his dark eyes slowly lifted to meet your stare. “And yesterday I saw him in his priest get up for the first time and I was so very turned on by it. After talking to him, I went home and all I could think about was him. I could barely sleep.”

“What are you doing…” Negan breathed out, his long eyelashes fluttering when you hushed him and shook your head.

“You see father, I kept thinking about his hands. He has the nicest hands and they are so big. At first I thought about him undressing me with those hands. I thought about how long it would take him to caress all over my body. And then I started to touch myself…”

You made sure that Negan was looking at you when you dragged your fingers down over your shoulder, over the center of your breasts before dragging your hand across one of them. It had Negan shifting uncomfortable, licking at his lips.

“The way I wanted him to touch me,” you whispered squeezing and palming at your flesh leaving his lips to part. Nothing came out, but you could tell that you had him hooked. “I thought about his hand traveling lower between my thighs…”

The movement of your hand followed your words with you dragging your palm down over the lengths of your abdomen between your thighs. Pressing your legs further apart, you palmed in over your body purring out causing his breathing to grow louder.

“And then all I could think about was him using his fingers to pleasure me,” you panted, biting down on your bottom lip while your caress continued over your body. “But then I got to thinking about his cock. And how hard it would be straining against his pants. How badly I wanted to take him out of his pants and into my mouth.”

A grunt fell from Negan’s throat and you couldn’t help, but smile seeing the way he looked like he was sweating on the other side of the confessional, “I want nothing more than to have his throbbing cock in my mouth. I want it so bad. And the very idea of it just makes my pussy wet father. Once I get his cock nice and wet, I want him to fill my tight little cunt with his cock and fuck me senseless. I want him to fill my pussy with his cum until it is seeping down my thighs…”

“This is wrong,” Negan went to get up, but you shifted quick, stretching your arm out to curl your fingers around the back of Negan’s neck. Pulling him to you brought his lips to yours. Over and over again you tried to kiss him into temptation. And at first it seemed like he was fighting it, until the flick of your tongue drew his lips to part. Accepting the warm brush of your tongue over his, Negan growled against your flesh and it had your heart hammering away in your chest. “Fuck it…”

Pushing further at the window that kept the two of you separate, Negan managed to grab a hold of you to pull you into his side of the booth with him. You both laughed at the way you struggled to fully get in before Negan fell back into the corner of his side. Once you were firmly on your feet in the cramped space with Negan, your hands palmed up and over Negan’s body hearing him breathing loudly.

“How hard is your cock right now?” you whispered, lowering your palm over the front of his pants to give his body a firm squeeze. It had his hips bouncing forward into your grasp with a proud smile tugging at your lips. “You’re meant to be a daddy figure Negan, not a priest. No matter how fuck hot you look in this.”

Negan was breathing loudly, his hands squeezing at your hips while his lips hovered just over yours, “Your cock is just begging for a release after this long, isn’t it?”

Teasing him, you brought your lips close enough to drag them over his and swiftly worked to open the belt in Negan’s pants. Unhooking it, you undid the button and his zipper, pressing your body up against his with his breathing growing louder. His thick eyebrows furrowed when you started nibbling at his bottom lip. Dipping your hand beneath the material of Negan’s pants had him moaning out when your fingers curled around the warmth of his flesh.

“You’re meant to be a bad boy Negan,” you slurred, working his erection from the confines of the pants that he was wearing. Unhurriedly you started to caress over the length of his manhood, taking your time to watch his reactions while you touched him. “Your cock is too big to waste. You’re meant to breed Negan. Not preach.”

“Breed?” Negan muttered, the vein at the side of his neck bulging when his eyelids grew heavy. “But the people here…”

“The people have no idea what you are capable of and you shouldn’t give a shit what they think,” you urged him, the motions of your hand over his body growing stronger and it had him biting down on his bottom lip. Bringing you two closer together, Negan lowered his hand and it pressed between your thighs touching you in the ways you had wanted for so long. “Good boy.”

Pumping your hand over Negan’s cock, you got a nice throaty moan out of him with his forehead pressing up against yours.

“You have a choice Negan,” you licked your lips hearing him moan faintly under his breath. “Do you want to continue to sweep the floors and be these people’s minion or do you want to put that fat cock of yours inside of me? Because more than anything, I want to fuck you so bad it hurts. My pussy is throbbing just thinking about it…”

“Fuck me,” Negan hissed out, his hands desperately pulling apart your pants so he could make enough room to push his hand beneath the material. It had you stepping up on your toes when he palmed in over the warmth of your flesh. It had his eyelids growing heavier, his breathing louder when his fingertips traced over the length of your sex.

Reaching for Negan’s wrist, you pulled it from your pants and lifted his hands to his lips. Urging him to take his finger between his lips had him groaning out when the taste of you lingered over his tongue. Humming out, Negan dropped his hand and you lowered down to your knees. Instead of the worried glances he had before, a wolfish smile tugged at his lips when you press a wet kiss at the tip of his cock. Dragging your tongue out, you teased at the slit before taking him between your parted lips.

“Fuck,” Negan hummed out, his head dropping back. Both of his hands pressed against the walls of the booth and you took your time to lower your head over the length of him before pulling back. Grasping firmly to the base of his cock, you gradually allowed your movements to grow harder and faster. Wincing out, Negan dropped his hands down with one hooking into your hair and the other caressing at the back of your neck. Starting to thrust his hips up toward your mouth had you gagging with the way his cock hit the back of your throat but you were doing your best to pleasure him while he fucked your mouth. “That’s enough.”

A wet popping sound filled the small booth with Negan pulling you up. Swiftly pushing at the material of your pants, Negan pressed you firmly against the wall of the confessional and reached for his girthy length. Teasing the swollen tip between your slick folds had you purring out.

“Come on daddy, take what you want,” you urged and it had Negan chuckling faintly before working one of your pant legs away from your body. Pressing you against the wall, Negan persuaded your leg around his waist before eagerly sinking into the warmth of your body. The moan he made was loud, there was no hiding it at this point. Holding tightly to Negan, the first thrust of his manhood inside of you was hard and you didn’t want to fall over. Then the next thrust followed suit. “Don’t hold back. Just fuck my pussy as hard as you can. With how long it’s been, I want you to be balls deep inside of me by the time you come and fill me with all that you’ve been holding in.”

“As you wish,” Negan’s nose nuzzled in against yours, his thrusts starting off hard and fast. It had your flesh smacking together while you desperately tried to hold onto him. Your lips met his and you tried to kiss away your cries of pleasure. He was doing exactly as you asked of him. Fucking you hard, fast and it felt so fucking good. The extra added sensation of knowing that this was in a church in a confessional just turned you on all the more. Crying out, you tipped your head back feeling Negan’s hand loosely wrapping around your throat. Once the pressure started to be applied you hummed out in pleasure enjoying the pain that came with it. “God you feel so fucking good.”

Gasping out, you felt Negan tugging at the material of your shirt at the neck. Pulling it down, Negan managed to drop his head low enough to take your breast between his lips. Kissing, sucking and nibbling at the flesh until he had your nipple into a tight peak. Tugging at his hair, you brought his mouth back to yours and dragged your tongue out over his lips.

“I’ve wanted you to fuck me since the first day I met you,” you informed him with a purr, wincing out when Negan’s hips bounced firmly up toward you having him fill you completely with his cock. An amused expression flooded Negan’s face when you shook your head. “You don’t need to be a priest to be close to God Negan…”

Dropping your hands, you tugged at Negan’s black shirt using the strength that you had to rip it open. It had the buttons hitting the ground and an amused rumble fell from Negan’s throat, “All you have to do is be inside of this pussy and it’s yours. It’s all yours…”

“I like the sound of that,” Negan growled as you pushed into the center of his chest to get him to fall back onto the bench. Crawling in over his lap, your nails bit at his chest and he growled out. His hands palmed in over your ass when you took advantage to lower yourself over his throbbing length. “You make a good sell…”

“Don’t get me wrong, you make a hot priest,” you sucked faintly at Negan’s bottom lip, wincing when you allowed him to fill you again. Smacking at his shoulder, you weren’t used to the sensation of this since it had been so long, but you enjoyed the small amounts of pain that came with it. “But I want you to be mine.”

“You want to be mine,” Negan corrected you, his right hand reaching up to grab a hold of your jaw while you bounced your hips over his. Eagerly, his hips matched your movements and you let out a surprised sound at the sound the booth was making with the two of you inside of it. Hovering his lips over yours, Negan smiled and a moan fell from his throat. “I accept.”

“Good boy,” you complimented him, brushing your fingers through his hair to mess it. Adjusting your position, you found a way to move that made both of you louder in the way you expressed your pleasure. Each plunge of his cock into your depths had the two of you crying out in unison. “Come on Father Negan…”

Reaching back, your fingers caressed over his testicles having him hum out at the sensation with his thighs flexing beneath you, “You know you want to come inside of me.”

“So fucking much,” Negan growled, his hazel eyes hooked on yours dropping his hand down between the two of you. Circling the rough pad of his thumb over your clit, Negan was working on your sensitive bundle of nerves having you pant out with every movement you made. Your hips bounced up toward his thumb when you would allow his cock to pull out of your body before you swiftly dropped them back again. “You take that cock so good honey.”

There was a fire building in your belly and you rolled your hips faster over his, desperate to reach a moment of bliss that had been building up for you. With a cry, you threw your head back and Negan hungrily kissed over the side of your neck. Your orgasm hit you hard, but it didn’t give you the time to relax when Negan pressed you slightly back so that you were pressed against the wall opposite of him. Reaching down for your wrists, Negan hooked his fingers firmly around them and started bouncing his hips up toward you over and over again. His testicles smacked up against you with every hard pounding thrust and you couldn’t hide your moans.

“Almost there,” Negan informed you, his jaw tensing and the lines in his forehead growing. By how hard he was holding onto your wrists and with his jaw clenching you could see that his orgasm was quickly approaching.

“Make that pussy yours Negan,” you urged with his thrusts growing even stronger. You knew that you would be feeling this later, but you didn’t care. You wanted this so bad and you were thankful that you were able to make it happen.

Pulling you forward, Negan had you falling in against his chest with your head resting against his shoulder. Squeezing his hands firmly over your ass, Negan continued his thrusts until his groan filled the air and one final thrust upward had you bouncing upward feeling the throbbing of his cock inside of you. Moaning into the side of your neck, Negan stroked his fingers over your hair and you reached back to feel his balls straining while he filled you with line after line of his cum. You both were soaked with sweat. It was like a sauna in this thing, but neither of you seemed to care.

“Is everything okay in here?” the light from the church flooded into the confessional with you gasping out and pulling yourself in closer to Negan after the door was opened. Negan’s hips were still partially bouncing up toward yours with his orgasm and you whined out. The voice you knew too well and you knew that it was Gabriel that had just found the two of you right at the end of your sex act together. “What the hell Negan?”

“Goddamn it,” Negan grunted one final time, biting at your chin when you felt your thighs twitching over Negan. “Gabey boy, you are incredibly bad at timing.”

Negan’s breathing was loud, but you could tell by the sound of his voice that he was amused that Gabe was still there. Stealing a quick look you could tell that Gabriel was shocked and locked into position. Burying your face again had Negan laughing and he wrapped you up in his arms.

“Can we fucking have a minute with God here?” Negan requested and Gabriel shakily reached for the door to close it. It had Negan laughing against the side of your neck and you felt like everything was spinning. “Well that was…”

“Unexpected,” you finished hearing Negan snickering against the side of your neck. Lowering your head, you looked down between the two of you to see Negan’s cock still filling you. Keeping your eyes locked on it, you slowly lifted your hips enjoying the way his cock looked as it slowly left your body. When you reached the tip, it pulled from you with a wet sound and smacked up against his lower abdomen. Whimpering out, you watched some of his cum dripping from your body onto his thighs and you licked your lips.

“Did that feel good?” Negan lowered his hand to rub at your sensitive flesh. It had you whining out and he smiled when two of his fingers pressed inside of you to thrust them into your already highly stimulated body.

“So good,” you replied, meeting his lips in a drawn-out kiss that had him humming against your flesh. “I feel like you’re capable of more though.”

“Is that a challenge?” Negan smirked, looking down at his cock twitching and he growled out.

“That’s me begging you to do your worst,” you alerted him and he smirked. Tipping his head to the side, Negan shook his head and then passionately kissed you. Giving you a minute to gain back your strength, the both of you got dressed to the best of your ability before Negan reached for your hand. Once you moved out of the confessional with Negan, you could see that Gabriel was sitting at one of the benches giving you both a disapproving look.

“Sorry Gabey boy,” Negan reached for the white collar that was in his shirt, tugging it out and tossing it to Gabriel who fumbled with it. “There are some things I won’t give up, even for God. We’re going to my cell so I can actually fuck this beautiful lady right.”

Dropping his hand down, Negan squeezed over himself and you felt a rush of heat flooding into your face, “My crystal balls are telling me that we are going to be so fucking naughty that it’s something your eyes wouldn’t want to see again. These babies are aching after years of not being used, so they are ready to flood this hot little pussy with ready and willing swimmers.”

“God,” you choked out at the expression that Gabriel gave after Negan blurted all of that out.

“Also, there is cum all over that confessional. You might want to clean that up before you even think of using it,” Negan pointed back toward the area that you were in together when he started to lead you toward the door to church.

“Negan!” Gabriel called out to him and you could tell that Gabriel was not happy with how this was ending up.

“Sorry father. I’m on a mission from God here and I’ve got to do this right,” Negan hooked his arm around you, throwing you up over his shoulder and firmly smacking his hand over your bottom. “This whole father thing…it’s just not gonna work for me. I’m sure you understand.”

----

Tags: @slutlanna976 @fuckthis-and-fuckthat @jennydehavilland @pixelb4rbie @ibelongtonegan

@smallsadjellyfish @labyrinthofheartagrams @msjamesmarch @thebeautysurrounds @hotfornegan

@redmercysugar @caprithebunny @tuttifuckinfruitty @emoryhemsworth @a-girl-interupted

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#Negan #Negan fanfiction #Jeffrey Dean Morgan #The Walking Dead #twd fanfiction #Negan x you #negan x reader #negan imagine #Negan Smith #Negan smut #The Walking Dead fanfiction

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techhasmjolnir · 7 months

Text

Dealer's Choice

Plot: You and the guys are enjoying some downtime in between missions, and one night you all decide to kill some time by playing a game. Things quickly take a bawdy turn.

Author's Notes:

Many thanks to @zoeykallus and her wonderful “Truth or Dare” story as the inspiration for me to finally craft a poly Batch tale.

Unlike my other works, there's a general description of the reader as someone that's into body modifications (piercings and tattoos). Additionally, assume the reader has a contraceptive implant. No other description of the reader is implied, nor should it be inferred. This story also assumes that the interest is there between the reader and the boys, but they're not yet in a relationship.

Sit back and set aside some time to read this one, for it comes in with a word count of 14,009.

Important Notes:

This content is strictly for audiences 18+. The roles in this story assume female readers and all members of the Bad Batch. Concepts introduced include: creampie, cum eating, cum swapping, dirty talk, female ejaculation, M & F masturbation, M & F oral (giving & receiving), PiV, toys

A collective sigh of relief comes from you and the men you've spent the past year working with, the specialist troopers of Clone Force 99. After bouncing endlessly between missions, the word is finally given that all of you are to take a standard Galactic month off for much-needed R & R, and to spend time overhauling the Marauder. You look forward to going home to your countryside villa on Naboo, and extend the offer for the guys to stay with you instead of spending their nights on the ship.

“This is some place you've got here, Y/N,” Wrecker says, his head swiveling around to look at the large vestibule into which everyone is gathered.

“This is nothing,” you reply, groaning as you let your heavy backpack slide off your shoulders. “You should see some of the villas out in Lake Country. This place? It's modest, by Naboo standards. I did the best I could hoarding credits away for years during my time as a bounty hunter in order to be able to afford it.”

“Bounty hunter? I suppose that explains how you ended up with us,” Tech chimes in as he pushes his lenses back in place. “Mercenary work is a natural extension of bounty hunting, in terms of a general skill set.”

“You're not wrong about that, Tech. I may not have enhanced tracking abilities like Hunter, but I more than make up for it elsewhere. All right, since all of you are going to be crashing here for the next month, you're more than welcome to occupy any of the spare bedrooms on the second or third floors. It looks like the housekeeper was here just recently, so everything should be cleaned and in full working order. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been dying for a real shower ever since we were holed up in that dump on Tatooine!”

“Don't remind me,” Crosshair remarks. “I think I still have the stench of bantha on me.”

“I thought it was obvious it was their breeding season,” Tech slyly adds, never missing the opportunity to get digs in on Crosshair whenever possible.

“Enough, you two,” Hunter interrupts. “Grab your gear and head upstairs. Y/N's been gracious enough to let us stay here instead of being miserable in the Marauder every night, so let's at least try and act somewhat civil.”

You let out a cackle and painstakingly re-shoulder your backpack. “All right, you guys. Go upstairs and get settled. How about we reconvene in a few hours for something to eat, and maybe start unwinding with a game or two?” You start walking off to your bedroom, stopping to turn around when you hear Echo.

“Where are you going, Y/N?”

“Oh, my quarters are down here. I don't think there's enough room in there for all of us,” you tease.

You disappear down the hall toward your bedroom as the guys start making their way to the second floor, completely out of earshot as Crosshair casually says, “you want to make a bet?”

*****

“All right, guys, the rules are simple. All you have to do is spin the bottle, and whoever it points at is the one who will be asked “truth or dare.” If you pick truth, just answer the question honestly. We're all adults here, so there's no need to be embarrassed about anything. Same goes for dare. The only rule about dares is that you don't have to do them if it violates your personal ethics, or is a violation of whatever you consider to be your hard limits. You can rescind consent at any time and ask for a pass, or change it to truth. I just have a hard time believing you guys have never played this game before...I think almost every culture in this galaxy plays some version!”

“Remember, Y/N, we're from Kamino. “Fun” and “games” are two words that are not in the Kaminoans' language,” Hunter offers. “We did our best to amuse ourselves when we were boys as a means of escape from our harsh reality...but not with anything like this.��

“She doesn't need a trip down your memory lane, Hunter,” Crosshair sighs irritably, shifting his ubiquitous toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Are we doing this, or what?”

You roll your eyes and set an empty wine bottle on the floor. “Since you are my guests, one of you can spin the bottle first. Mmm, Wrecker, you want to do it?”

“Absolutely! Let me at it,” he says cheerily.

“Wrecker, mind your strength,” Tech warns. “We do not need you launching the bottle into the wall, or one of us.”

Wrecker's huge hand closes around the wine bottle and he gives it a deft spin. It slows and comes to a stop, the neck pointing at Crosshair. He chuckles and narrows his good eye as he looks at his brother's seemingly constant sour expression. “Oi, Cross...truth or dare?”

There's an audible crunch as Crosshair snaps the toothpick, hastily plucking the broken pieces out of his mouth. “Do I have to?” he grumbles.

“Do you have to be so disagreeable all the time, Crosshair?” you reply, half jokingly. Quiet laughter from the others ceases when you hold up your hand. “It's a harmless game. Just relax and play along. You might just have fun.”

“All right, fine. Truth,” he says churlishly.

Wrecker's face breaks out into a huge grin, and you have the feeling he's up to something. “Yes or no – do you have a crush on Y/N?”

Crosshair's eyes widen, heat stealing its way up the back of his neck and into his ears. You look around at the others, surprised that Wrecker would lead off with a very revealing question. Hunter is trying not to smile, and Echo and Tech share a knowing glance. You won't be surprised if Crosshair answers yes; it wouldn't be the first time someone admitted they had feelings for you while working closely together. The reactions of the others suggest your prediction is correct.

“Well? Do you?” Wrecker asks again, grinning madly.

Crosshair digs his fingertips into the arms of the chair in which he's sitting, his face slightly reddened. “Yes! Yes, all right? For fuck's sake, Wrecker, did you have to do that?” He turns his head away, not able to look at anyone, especially you.

Uproarious laughter fills the room as everyone finds it hysterical their normally unflappable brother is quite humiliated. The only one not laughing is you, because while you find it fitting that Crosshair is temporarily subdued, you're empathetic. You've always known Crosshair is a very private person, and admitting something like this represents a serious loss of control.

“Guys, please. Crosshair, it's your turn. Spin the bottle,” you say gently.

He sighs softly and turns to look at you, his cheeks tinged red. His dark eyes bore into yours and don't break your gaze as he leans down and forward, speedily grabbing it and setting it in motion. The bottle wobbles for a moment before it stops and points at you. You can hear Tech muttering something to Echo under his breath and for a split second, you have a feeling of apprehension. Crosshair's pride is hurt, and now that means he's unpredictable.

“Truth or dare, Y/N?” he sneers, completely evaporating whatever embarrassment he just felt.

Everyone's eyes are on you, keen to see if you'll accept a challenge from him. You look around and grin, chuckling softly. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, boys, but for the first round, I'm going to have to go with truth.”

One look at Crosshair's expression tells you exactly what he plans on doing; he's going to try and retaliate in an effort to fluster you. “Have you ever fantasized about any of us in a sexual way?”

You feel your heart start to race a little and you do your best to stay calm. Heat flows into your cheeks and as your expression softens, a little grin is riddled upon your lips. Ever since you became part of the squad, you've done your best to try and maintain an air of professionalism, but you're only human, and with five handsome men always in close contact with you, you certainly entertained thoughts of what it would be like to be with any one of them.

“Hey, are you in there?” Wrecker asks.

“I'm...thinking,” you reply slowly, the grin becoming a big smile. Finally you end up laughing, rolling your eyes as you speak. “Of course I have. Anyone with eyes would end up fantasizing about a group of incredibly attractive guys like you. There. Are you happy, Crosshair?”

He smirks at you, sitting back in his chair as he taps his cheek idly with his finger. “Not just yet, but give it some time. I think I will be.”

*****

“Are you ever going to accept a dare?” Crosshair complains. “I think you're playing coy on purpose.”

The game has been going on for awhile now, and it's been highly entertaining. The bulk of the racy questions have all been directed at you, and the only reason you've hesitated opting for a dare is because you know the minute you say yes, someone is going to get really creative, which will result in you losing an article of clothing. You're no stranger to being in various states of undress around men out in the field, and the guys are no exception, but you've never been completely naked around them.

“All right, all right! Fine! If you're that keen on it, I'll take a dare. Just make it a good one, Crosshair,” you say, feeling your heart starting to beat a little faster.

Crosshair grins and runs his hand through his hair, pausing briefly before speaking. “I think we've all learned quite a bit of...shall I say...interesting things about you tonight, Kitten.”

“Cross, don't call me that. You know I don't like it,” you sigh, rubbing your forehead. “Where are you going with this?”

“You wanted a good dare? I've been thinking about this all night, and it's something I think we're all going to like,” he says, a disconcerting grin emerging. “As long as you consent, of course.”

It doesn't escape your notice that Hunter flashes him a questioning look, and both Tech and Echo moved forward to the edge of one of the couches they're sitting on, clearly interested as to what could possibly be this good. Wrecker glances over at you, puzzled as to what Crosshair's about to do, and as you look over at him, you shrug. As you look back at Crosshair, he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, a very hungry look in his eyes.

“I've consented to everything you boys have thrown at me tonight. I can handle whatever you come up with.”

“That's good to know, because you're going to strip down to nothing and stay that way the rest of the night.”

You flash him a look of defiance, momentarily catching him off guard. “Fine by me! I've got nothing to hide, and besides...” You pause and look around at the guys, all of whom have the tiniest of grins on their faces. “The likelihood of all of you not wanting to see me naked is precisely zero.”

Tech clears his throat a little nervously. “I do believe she's got us, there. Statistically speaking...”

“Tech, shut up for a moment, will you?” Crosshair snaps. “Y/N, you accepted the dare, so follow through with it.”

You slowly rise and roll your shoulders as you stretch. Sighing softly, you pull the tie for the lower back of your top, letting the ribbons flutter loosely around your hips. The guys have all gone quiet, watching with you with rapt interest. Closing your eyes, you let your head fall back a little as you reach up to loosen the ribbon at your neck, pulling away your top and letting it fall to the floor. You can hear someone's breath hitch in his throat as your chest is on full display. Heavy tattooing spans the area over your breasts and down your sternum, prominent steel rings in your nipples.

You open your eyes and Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker are looking at you completely awestruck. Glancing over your shoulder at Tech and Echo, you wink and flash them a sexy grin, chuckling as you see color beginning to creep into both their faces. “You won't be left out, boys. Just be patient.”

Might as well give them a little show, as long as I'm doing this, you think. Really give them something to get off on, later...

Sliding your thumbs under the waistband of your soft, loose pants, you start to roll your hips in an enticing manner, purposely making eye contact with Crosshair. You slowly begin to slide the material down, the silky shimmer of your black panties coming into view. He stares, completely enamored, shifting uncomfortably in his seat in an effort to disguise the fact he's starting to grow hard. Despite the fact that Tech and Echo are sitting behind you, they're getting as much of a show as the other three, and the moment your muscular ass comes into view, one of them accidentally lets slip a tiny groan. You grin and step out of your pants, casting them aside to join your top.

“Mm, someone's enjoying the view, am I right?” you say, your voice lowering seductively as you turn to look over at Wrecker, who's got his hands in his lap, trying to cover up his growing arousal. “Please, big guy, I'm not stupid. If anything, it's pretty fucking hot.”

You bring a hand to your chest, letting it linger between your breasts, as the other slides down your stomach and lightly grazes your pubic mound. Letting out a content sigh, you hook your index fingers in the band of your panties and begin to lower them almost agonizingly slow, stepping out of them carefully as you drop them with the rest of your clothes. You're careful not to reveal too much of yourself, but you can't help but part your legs just a little so that the ring in the hood of your clit is plainly visible.

“By the Maker...” you hear Tech utter quietly.

You raise your hands above your head and lazily turn yourself around in a full circle so everyone gets a full look at you, coming to a stop in front of Tech and Echo. The two of them can't stop themselves from looking you over head to toe, with Tech's attention turning to your hood piercing. A broad grin crosses your face as you take your index finger and let it rest under his chin, tipping his head up so his golden brown eyes meet yours.

“My eyes are up here, honey,” you laugh. “It's all right. You like what you see. There's no shame in that.” You look at Echo, his normally pale skin now flushed pink with arousal. “I think the same goes for you, too, dear.” You turn around to face Crosshair, a look of smug superiority on your face. “Well? I did it, and I managed to render you speechless. I consider that a rare victory...and I do believe it's my turn to spin the bottle.”

You sit down on the floor, keeping your legs closed and to the side. Giving the bottle a hefty spin, it eventually stops and points to Wrecker. “Truth or dare?” you ask, a little smile on your face. He looks over at you, blinking slowly as he makes up his mind. Heat floods his cheeks as he feels his cock twitch heavily under his hands. “Which one, Wrecker?”

“Truth,” he says hesitantly.

“Hm. If you could have one thing right now, what would it be?”

His mind immediately goes blank trying to think of something plausible, because he's embarrassed to tell you the truth. “A giant bowl of Mantell Mix would hit the spot,” he mumbles.

Crosshair bursts out in derisive laughter. “Wrecker, you're the worst fucking liar. Really? Mantell Mix? You're going to have to do better than that!”

Hunter rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, turning to look at Wrecker. “Just tell her the real truth, vod. The smell of it rolling off you is getting to be a bit much.”

Wrecker groans and closes his eyes. “All right, fine. Honestly? I'd love to have you sitting in my lap with my cock buried in you, while I play with your clit.”

You raise an eyebrow at him, a mixture of amusement and intrigue on your face. “Well...I certainly wasn't expecting to hear that out of you.” The idea of having him splitting you in half with what is probably quite a thick cock is tantalizing. You feel the stone of arousal forming in the pit of your chest, along with a tiny pulse in your clit.

This gets a rise out of the rest of the guys; they're all laughing quietly and Echo gently pokes Wrecker in the arm playfully with his scomp-link.

“Come on, everyone. If Wrecker is brave enough to say that, then I'm betting the rest of you are having some pretty sexually charged thoughts, too,” you gently chide.

Wrecker takes the bottle from you and a brief look of appreciation passes between the two of you. It spins wildly before ultimately pointing to Hunter. “Truth or dare?” he rumbles.

Hunter's dark eyes lock on yours before he speaks. “Truth.”

“I wanna ask you the same thing Y/N just did. What's the one thing you want most right now?”

“I really want Y/N perched between my knees, letting me fuck those perfect tits of hers,” Hunter replies quietly, shifting just a little so you can see the bulge forming under his blacks.

Now it is abundantly clear to you where the rest of the game is headed. The heat building between your legs is growing stronger, wetness beginning to seep from you. The pulsing in your clit becomes constant as the sensitive flesh begins to swell. There's absolutely no hiding from Hunter that you're fully aroused now, and the look he gives you is one of sheer desire. You wonder if the rest of them are all sporting massive erections by now, but you don't dare to move your head to look around to check, lest you give away your intentions.

“I think you like my idea, Y/N, don't you?” Hunter asks with palpable amusement in his voice.

“She's turned on?” Crosshair murmurs, idly scratching his chin with a fingertip.

“Without a doubt, she is,” Hunter replies, giving the bottle a quick spin. It lands back on you, and your heart starts to race again. “Truth or dare, ad'íka?”

Your mouth goes dry and you manage to keep your voice from quivering with apprehension. “Dare.”

“I'm willing to bet that you've got an absolutely gorgeous little cunt. It's a shame you've kept it hidden away from us for so long. Spread your legs so we can all see.”

You feel your cheeks go hot, but not from shame. Hunter's never used language like this with you before and all it's doing is casting more kindling into the roaring inferno of your arousal. More wetness seeps from you as you carefully unfold your legs and rearrange yourself into a position on the floor where everyone can see you from the front. Slowly, you comply, leaning back on a hand to balance yourself as you part your legs. With your other hand, you take your index and middle fingers, spreading them into a V shape as you spread your outer lips, showing the guys the slickness between your cleft.

“You look so fucking tasty, Kitten...” Crosshair rasps as he slowly starts touching himself through his blacks, already soaked through with pre-cum.

Ignoring Crosshair's use of the epithet, you look at the others to see them all nodding in agreement, their eyes all seemingly darkened with lust. Tech leans over to whisper something to Echo, and the two of them chuckle softly, Echo biting his lower lip for a brief moment. You steal a quick glance at them, and like the others, they're concealing prominent bulges under their blacks. Tech looks over at you with a gentle smile on his face.

“If you are willing, Y/N, would you consider letting us all have a taste?”

It takes you a moment to figure out what Tech means by having a taste, and you realize it goes much further than wanting to eat your pussy. You choose your words carefully, making sure there's no room for any misunderstandings that could end in regret. “I know it's been a really long time since any of us have gotten what we want, or need. If we're going to do this, I want you to know that I trust all of you explicitly, and yes...you may all share me. Let's just have fun, and enjoy each other.”

“Then I believe a modification of the way this game is played is necessary,” Tech declares, pushing his lenses back into place. “Instead of asking truth or dare, we will tell Y/N what we would like to do with her, and she can choose to accept or decline. This way, there will be favorable outcomes for us all. Y/N, is this agreeable?”

You smile at him winningly and nod. “Works for me, everyone.” You exhale forcefully and send the bottle spinning. As it stops on Wrecker, you look and see him grinning like he's won the best prize in the galaxy.

“Can we do that thing I said earlier?” he asks a little shyly. “And will you let me have a little taste of your pussy, too?”

“Absolutely, big guy,” you chuckle as you get to your feet and stop in front of him. Even though you're roughly at his eye level when he's sitting, it still feels like he's towering above you. “How do you want to do this?”

“Climb on my lap, sweetie, and let me do the rest. I'll be gentle, I promise.”

As you straddle his massive lap, one of his huge hands rests on your back and the other comes under the back of your leg, suddenly pulling you off your feet so your legs are slung over his shoulders, your pussy so close to his face you can feel the heat of his breath. You let out a yelp and try to figure out where to put your arms so you're comfortable. Balancing your forearms on his thighs as his hands close on top of your knees, you look up at him, catching him wink at you with his good eye. You've watched people eat you out before, but never from this vantage point.

“Just relax, mésh'la. It's all right,” he reassures you.

You let out a surprised, quiet moan as he lightly kisses your clit and then your outer lips. His warm tongue delicately trails its way through your folds, gathering up all your juices as it makes its way up to your now swollen clit. When he closes his lips over it, you groan and let your head fall back, shutting your eyes as he alternates between suckling lightly and flicking the tip of his tongue along the underside of it, and over your piercing. When your legs start twitching involuntarily with each stroke of his tongue, Wrecker lets out a deep, rumbling moan of his own against you, the vibrations tickling every nerve ending.

His cock twitches against your back and you moan his name softly, thinking about what it's going to be like to have him inside you. Wrecker turns his attention from massaging your clit to slipping his tongue through your outer lips all the way to your entrance. His strong tongue probes deeply as he tastes another flow of your juices, and his grip on your knees tightens.

He starts to gently rock his hips up into your back, silently telling you that he's just about ready for the next step. As he pulls his mouth away, one hand comes back under your back to support you as the other brings one of your legs down. Once you're back in an upright position, you climb off his lap, your legs visibly trembling.

“I hope that was all right, Y/N,” Wrecker says. “Been a long time since I've done that with anyone.”

“All right? I think that was more than just a little all right,” you reply breathlessly, feeling like your legs are going to give out.

He laughs and takes your hand, placing it right over his thick, meaty cock, straining to be let out of his blacks. “That's all for you, mésh'la. Why don't you show everyone how beautiful you look when I've got my cock stuffed inside you?” His hands slip under the waist of his pants, easing them down to his ankles. His cock lies long and straight against his stomach, and as your eyes fall upon it, he flexes it for you, a little bit of pre-cum clinging to the tip. “Come sit and keep it warm, Y/N,” Wrecker coaxes.

You turn around and see the wanton expressions on the others' faces as they patiently wait their turns. Wrecker takes his cock in his hand and starts stroking it gently as he waits for you. As you back up and straddle his lap once more, you let out a loud gasp as you feel the head of his cock slip through your outer lips, positioning right at your entrance. Resting your hands on his thighs for balance, you start to carefully ease yourself down on him, exhaling slowly as you feel him start to stretch you out.

Wrecker wraps an arm loosely around you, resting a hand on one of your breasts, gently thumbing your nipple. “Take all the time you need, Y/N. I know this is an awful lot,” he murmurs.

“Y-yeah, it is,” you reply shakily. “You feel incredible, already...”

You lower yourself down onto him, inch by inch, moaning continually as his girth stretches you to what feels like your absolute maximum. Wrecker buries his face in your hair, groaning loudly the farther you sink. As he bottoms out in you, his strong hands slide under your legs and lift you up just a little so that instead of your hands on his thighs, now your feet rest there. He takes you by the ankles and you take a hold of his forearms as he starts to slowly rock up into you.

“How's it feel, Wrecker?” Hunter asks as he strokes his cock idly through his blacks. “Usually women are scared to death of that thing,” he chuckles.

“So tight...hot...wet,” Wrecker groans through his clenched teeth. “Ride me, mésh'la, please...”

You oblige, and start bouncing on his cock, deep lusty moans springing from you with each successive stroke. He starts bucking up into you a little harder, passing over your sweet spot repeatedly, sending white hot bolts of pleasure through your pussy. One hand leaves your ankle and works its way between your legs, where the flat of his thumb falls upon your rosy pink pearl, swirling in tight little circles. Wrecker is notably dexterous, switching with ease from rubbing your clit to flicking his thumb over it, loving how you're responding to his touch.

Riding him faster, you feel yourself getting closer to your peak, unable to combat the fiery combination of Wrecker's cock ravaging your pussy and the determined stroking of his thumb. Your clit buzzes pleasantly, tiny little contractions starting to multiply, and a deep growl rolls out of Wrecker as he now lays into you, feeling his own orgasm on its ascent. His cock begins to tighten even more with each upward stroke, and the electricity in your clit becomes more concentrated.

“Don't stop, Wreck...I'm so fucking close,” you gasp.

“So 'm I, mésh'la...come for me,” he moans.

A few more well-timed strokes of his thumb against your engorged clit is all it takes before he hears your breath hitch in your throat, his name falling from your lips in tiny gasps. The lightning in your clit spreads quickly through your core, sharp cries of unrestrained bliss spilling from your throat as your walls constrict around him. Wrecker's thrusting becomes erratic as his cock swells to maximum within you. He lets go of your other ankle and you lift yourself off, sinking to the floor on your knees with your back to him, chest heaving wildly.

Closing his hand around his cock soaked with your juices, he strokes himself hard. It's only a few moments before he lets out a choked gasp followed by a deep moan as he comes, painting your back with thick, ropy strands of his seed. He sinks back in his seat, covering his face with a hand, panting heavily. Utterly spent and basking in the afterglow of his long overdue orgasm, Wrecker slowly gets his pants back on. He looks down at you, sitting back on your feet, admiring his handiwork as his spend trickles its way down your back.

“Go clean her up, dí'kut,” Crosshair hisses. “She doesn't deserve to be left a mess.”

Wrecker gets up and heads to the kitchen, returning a short while later with a warm, damp towel. He attentively wipes down your entire back, then takes his hand and ruffles your hair affectionately. “Sorry about that, Y/N...I didn't ask if I could do that,” he says apologetically. “Are you okay?”

You get to your feet and reach for his chin, standing on tiptoe as he bows his head. Your lips meet his for a soft, loving kiss. “I'm fine, big guy. Might be walking funny for the next day or so, but...” The entire room erupts into laughter as Wrecker returns to his seat, blushing slightly. You wait for everyone to calm down before picking up the wine bottle. “All right! Who's next?” you say playfully, giving the bottle a spin. This time the bottle comes to a stop in front of Tech and Echo, pointing at neither. “Hm, well, this is a conundrum, indeed,” you muse.

“If I may, Y/N,” Tech interrupts, “there is a perfectly reasonable solution to what you perceive as a problem. Let us both gratify you, thus eliminating your need to choose. Echo, why don't you show Y/N the modifications to your scomp-link that we made? Perhaps we can also show her that new attachment I created. I am most eager to see it in action.”

“I'm not surprised you two have been up to clandestine operations,” you say, rolling your eyes. “But you've piqued my curiosity, and...I very much want to have both of you.”

“Excellent. I will return shortly, Y/N. Echo, help her get more comfortable on the floor; we will need the extra space,” Tech says as he rises from the couch, purposely readjusting himself so you can get a better sense of what he's got hidden under his blacks. “This will be worth your while, cyar'íka...I promise.”

As Tech heads upstairs to gather all the necessary equipment, Echo takes all the pillows off the couch and lays them on the floor. You walk over and sit next to him, his good arm wrapping around you. Slipping your hand down between his legs, you run your fingers gently over his fully primed cock, loving the little moan that escapes from him. His lips seek out yours as he lightly pushes himself into your hand, moaning once more when your tongue collides with his for an impassioned kiss.

“Oh, mésh'la, if you only knew how long I've dreamed of doing something like this with you...” he whispers hotly against your neck, planting a few open mouthed kisses there.

You let out a soft sigh at the touch of his lips, his kisses working their way down your neck to your collarbone. He lowers you just a little so he has easy access to a breast, his tongue gently licking a nipple, sending shivers down your spine. Echo grins as he closes his mouth around it, sucking lightly, relishing the sounds of your moans. You squeeze his cock firmly in return, his eyes tightly shut as he groans deeply.

“You want me to suck your cock, Echo? I can't wait to see what you have for me,” you purr, feeling the material of his blacks dampen under your fingertips.

“I do not think he wants to wait any longer to show you what he has in store for you,” Tech calls from the entrance to the living room. He's carrying a case and a small drawstring pouch with him. “Y/N, if you please, spread your legs for Echo so he can begin.” He pauses, and you see his brow furrow for a moment. “I...know we already have your consent, but I feel it prudent to ask you regardless...” He stops again and you see one of his hands tremble slightly.

Crosshair snickers as you get up and walk over to Tech. “What, now you lose your nerve, Professor Highbrow? She already said you can take her, so what the hell's your problem? Got limp dick syndrome, or something? You should forfeit your turn and let me –”

You whirl around, fury written all over your face as you approach Crosshair, who looks supremely amused with himself. As you stop in front of him, you grab the collar of his blacks and yank him up until he's a hair's breadth away from you, eyes locked on his. His eyes widen in genuine shock; he's never seen you this angry before. Hunter is about to spring into action to pull the two of you apart, but Wrecker puts a hand on his shoulder, curious to see how this is going to play out.

“Crosshair, shut your fucking mouth! I am so sick of you constantly ripping on Tech, trying to tear him down. Is it really necessary to try and destroy your brother's self-esteem?! You dare...in MY house?!,” you seethe. “Just for that, when it's your turn...I've already decided what you're going to do with me...and you'd better fucking follow through!”

You shove Crosshair back into his seat hard, letting go of his shirt. You look at the others, and they're all staring at you in disbelief, especially Tech, who remains rooted to the spot. Walking back over to him, you reach your hand up to gently cup his face, his eyes seeming larger than ever. “Now, what were you going to ask me?” you ask softly.

“Cyar'íka...” he starts, trying to regain composure and find his voice. “I would very much like it if you would orally pleasure me while Echo takes care of you. Would you also let me take you from behind?”

“For you, Tech, anything. You know...you didn't need to ask me for permission, but I'm happy you did. I just want to enjoy both you and Echo in every way possible.”

You retake your seat on the floor next to Echo, with Tech coming to sit beside you, putting the case and the pouch off to the side. “Spread yourself for me, Y/N, and relax. I think that beautiful pearl of yours needs some more loving,” Echo says as he positions himself between your legs. “This might feel a little strange at first. I'll start with this, then switch over to the new attachment.”

Tech leans down and rests a hand on the back of your neck as his lips graze across your cheek and down to your mouth where your lips meet his for a delicate kiss. Echo lightly rests his scomp-link on the hood of your clit, then activates it. You gasp as you feel gentle vibrations emitting from it, and Echo smiles, glancing up at Tech. “I'm glad you suggested we rewire this thing...I think she likes it!”

Echo swirls the scomp-link around your clit attentively, listening to you moan deeply as he touches every part of it. He can see you beginning to swell and grow harder for him with each pass, the sides of your clit especially sensitive. You lift your hips up into him, craving more stimulation and he obliges, upping the level of vibration. With his good hand, he pulls his blacks down enough to free his cock – thick, hard as durasteel, and craving your attention.

“Please, Y/N,” Echo softly moans. “Touch me...let me come for you,” he pleads.

He shifts a little so you can slip your hand down between his legs, taking his cock to slowly stroke it in an underhanded position. Echo sighs in pleasurable relief as your hand glides over the hot, turgid flesh, taking time to swirl your thumb over the head as more pre-cum steadily seeps from him. Tech, not wanting to be left out, takes your unoccupied hand and you look up at him, his eyes glazed over with arousal. He guides you down between his legs, and as your hand covers the conspicuous bulge, you squeeze gently, making him shut his eyes and let out a shaky breath.

“Are you ready for me, cyar'íka?” Tech asks as he takes your hand, kissing your palm as he frees himself from his blacks, revealing the sublime and statuesque curvature of his lengthy cock. “I will let you set the pace,” he reassures you as he lets your hand go, shifting close to your mouth.

Closing your hand around his cock, the tip of your tongue gently trails its way underneath the head, earning you a stifled moan. Slowly, your tongue swirls around its entirety, getting a taste of pre-cum as you slip him into your mouth, letting your tongue glide along his shaft. You expertly corkscrew your hand around him as you find your rhythm, sucking and stroking him with vigor. “If you only knew how many times I imagined doing this with you...” Tech murmurs as he lets his hand rest gently on the back of your head.

The grasp on Echo's cock tightens as you stroke him a little faster, feeling the pulsing in your clit intensify with each pass of the scomp-link. The constant low moaning coming from Echo sends a fresh wave of arousal coursing through you, and you feel your juices seeping out, dampening the pillow you're sitting on. You moan heavily around Tech's cock, the vibrations rewarding you with a hard flex and the sound of him choking back a deep-seated moan of his own. He rests a hand on your cheek, then pulls his cock out of your mouth, leaving you feeling strangely empty.

“You're too good at this, cyar'íka...I am already getting closer than I would like,” he pants as he sits back down, blinking heavily as he tries to recompose himself.

Echo's hand covers yours as he pulls himself back from your grasp, breathing hard. “I'm close, too, mésh'la...still want to...show you the best part...”

He takes the scomp-link away from your throbbing clit, taking the case lying next to Tech and opens it, revealing an instrument with two distinct curved parts to it – the larger part is considerably longer and thick, the smaller one much shorter and thin. Echo nimbly unscrews the scomp-link and replaces it with this new creation, holding his arm up so the others can see.

“The larger part goes inside you, and the smaller part stays outside and rests on your clit,” he explains once he catches his breath. “Both parts vibrate, and they also have a small range of movement to them, so they can simultaneously work your sweet spot and clit at the same time.”

Tech picks up the small drawstring pouch and opens it, taking out a bottle. “You may want to use this,” he advises, handing it to Echo. “It will make Y/N's entire experience that much more pleasurable.”

Echo applies a few drops of the lube to the attachment, spreading it evenly. He drips a little bit more onto your clit, letting it run down between your outer lips before he takes a finger and traces it around your entrance. As his fingertip makes its way just inside, a content moan rises from you, and Echo smiles. Satisfied you're ready to accept this new toy, he withdraws his finger and smears the residual wetness on his cock. He carefully nudges the head of the large end up against your entrance and eases it fully inside you. As promised, the head of the smaller end is flush with the underside of your clit – a perfect fit.

“I really want to see you come before Tech fucks you, mésh'la, but if it gets to be too much, tell me and I'll stop immediately.”

“Oh, fuck!” you gasp loudly as Echo activates the toy. “This isn't going to take me long!”

Echo keeps the level of vibration on its lowest to get you used to the feeling, the tip of each segment moving in tiny circles, alternating with a gentle upward massaging movement, perfectly mimicking someone's fingers and tongue. Involuntarily, your walls clench around the toy as it teases your sweet spot. You let out a lusty moan as the outer piece flicks gently under your clit, sending waves of fresh heat through your core.

Your eyes close as Tech's brilliant new toy works its magic, biting your lower lip as your hands come to your breasts, cupping them as you gently pull on your piercings. Echo increases the speed just a little more, a sharp cry coming from you as the pressure increases in your cleft and the buzzing in your clit becomes stronger, drawing you close to your peak. Tech smiles proudly, knowing his little invention works perfectly and is driving you wild.

Echo's hand strays between his legs once more to close around his cock, his arousal at a hair-trigger. He finds his rhythm quickly, his eyes locked on yours as he strokes himself hard, bucking his hips as he goes. Your head drops back against the couch cushion, arching your back and suppressing a small scream as Echo increases the intensity a third time. Tech takes one of your hands in his and squeezes it as your other hand remains on a breast, rolling and pinching your nipple.

Your clit becomes the epicenter of searing heat and electricity as the manipulation of your sweet spot triggers your inner walls to contract around the toy. Your legs begin to tremble, toes curling as you're nearing your climax with everyone watching you in fascination, waiting to see you come. Breath catching in your throat, you manage to utter, “So fucking close, Echo...you're going to make me come...”

“That's it, mésh'la, let it all go,” Echo groans as his cock pulses in his hand. “Come for me, Y/N...”

As your orgasm breaks, his name cascades from your lips in a heaving sob, a riptide of pleasure crashing violently through your body. The walls of your pussy constrict forcefully around the toy as you bear down. Rolling your hips madly, you cover your face with your hands as you keep riding the waves of your high. “No more, Echo, pull out...pull out...pull out!” you wail.

Echo shuts the toy off and removes it, a lewd wet sound following in its wake as a spring of your juices ejects all over his hand and cock. “By the Maker, Y/N,” he says, looking down in disbelief. Using the newfound wetness to his advantage, he strokes himself hard, moaning your name. You watch his balls tighten as he starts to come, spilling a considerable amount of his seed all over your stomach and pubic mound. Chest heaving with exertion, he sits back and gets himself tucked back into his blacks.

“It appears the toy did exactly what I designed it to do,” Tech says with a satisfied grin on his face. “You performed flawlessly, Y/N...how do you feel?”

“I'm...not sure I have the words, Tech. It's been a long time since I've come like that,” you admit sheepishly.

Wrecker passes the damp towel to Echo, who lovingly wipes you clean. His parting gift to you is a gentle kiss between your legs just above your clit, then he leans in to plant another kiss at the corner of your mouth as he lightly strokes your hair. “Thank you for everything, mésh'la...that was extraordinary,” he says, his voice laden with adoration. “I can't wait to watch you with Tech...you're in for a real treat,” he chuckles as he returns to your other side. “She's all yours, ner vod...”

Tech smiles and takes your chin in his hand, turning your head and leaning in to kiss you tenderly. You bring your hands up behind his neck, enticing him to leave a trail of kisses along your jaw, down your throat, all the way to your breasts. One of his hands reaches for a breast, closing over it as he traces his finger over your firm nipple, taking hold of your piercing. You let out a breathy moan as his eager tongue snakes out and flicks quickly over the other, holding the ring in his teeth. As Tech begins to gently pull on your piercings, your arousal renews with strong pulsing in your clit and an insistent fluttering deep in your pussy.

“You are hungry for all our attention tonight, aren't you, cyar'íka?” Tech says as he lets go of you, his silken voice low and sultry. “Get on all fours for me, and I'll share something else with you that is in desperate need of attention.”

As your rise to your knees, Tech pulls away the pillow soaked with your juices and replaces it with a larger one, wanting to maximize your comfort. You get into position for him and he reaches out, tracing his fingers down your spine, making you shiver and lift yourself up toward him as his hand reaches your ass. Taking both cheeks in his strong hands, he kneads them firmly, letting his fingers roam down a little until his thumbs are on either side of your outer lips. He gently parts your folds, looking down upon your entrance, moist with fresh wetness.

“Both Wrecker and Echo did an excellent job preparing you for me,” Tech states casually as he draws his index finger between your glistening lips. “Now we've learned that even something simple as playing with your nipples leaves you a soaking...” He slides his finger into you slowly, grinning as you let out a tiny moan. “...wet mess.”

Tech finds your sweet spot easily, teasing it in short strokes with his fingertip. Your eyes close and you let out a quiet sigh, a hand straying down between your legs to gently touch your clit, still partially swollen and sensitive from the last orgasm . Tech feels your pussy gently contract around his finger and he lets out a small groan as his cock stirs heavily. He pulls his finger out of you and slips it into his mouth, sucking it clean and marveling at the delicate balance of sweetness, salt, and acidity.

“Are you ready for me, Y/N? Will you come as violently for me as you did for Echo?”

You push your ass back toward him and he meets you halfway, letting you rub yourself along the front of his blacks, dampening them with your juices. Tech slides his pants past his knees, guiding his cock through your folds and over your clit, holding back a moan as your hand passes along the underside, your fingertips deftly caressing the tip, feeling a small amount of pre-cum emerge. He withdraws and then aligns himself with your entrance, taking your hips in his hands as he slowly pushes his way in. He's nearly as thick as Wrecker, and as he sinks himself deep into your succulent heat, Tech lets out the moan he's been trying to suppress.

“Fuck me, Tech,” you mewl, swirling your hips around him once he's fully seated within you. “You feel so fucking good...”

Tech feels pleasant heat rush to his face from your praise and he smiles, proud of himself for being able to please you like this. Now he starts to slowly rock his hips fore and aft, watching his cock effortlessly slip in and out of you, listening to your fervid cries growing steadily louder. You reach down to start rubbing your clit in time with his thrusts, fingertips dancing lightly over it, making your legs twitch uncontrollably again. A shuddering groan comes from Tech as he feels your walls quiver around him, feeling like tiny kisses all along his cock.

You softly moan as Tech leans over you, propping himself up on one hand as the other comes up from underneath to cup one of your breasts. His long fingers easily manipulate your nipple and piercing, gently rolling and pulling the hardened flesh and its adornment. You feel another strong pulse in your clit and Tech groans quietly in your ear as the contraction that follows makes your walls squeeze against him tightly.

“Cyar'íka, move with me,” he whispers as he begins to sit up, pulling you with him. “Let me show you what you and I have done together in my dreams.”

As the two of you rise, Tech carefully shifts himself back onto his feet, not wanting to slip out of you. One of his arms is slung loosely around your hips with the other around your torso, his hand resting between your breasts. Resting on your knees, you straddle his lap with your hands on his thighs as he pulls you flush against him, the hand on your chest sliding up to gently close around your throat. His mouth comes to your ear and plants a tiny kiss, followed by more along your jaw. A deep moan emanates from your parted lips as Tech's other hand comes down between your legs, his graceful fingers brushing over your hot, swollen clit.

“I always wondered what it would feel like to fuck you while you sit in my lap,” Tech mumbles into your hair as he starts to buck his hips up into you once more. “Granted, I wanted to do this with you while in the cockpit of the Marauder...but this will suffice.”

You start to ride him, timing your descent perfectly with each hard upward thrust. Tech lets go of your throat and lets his hand gravitate down to your chest, cupping a breast as he begins to play with your nipple and piercing again. His fingers skillfully swirl over your clit at the same time, stoking the fires of arousal once more. Tech lets out a muffled moan against your neck as his cock is greeted with renewed wetness.

Your hands dig into his thighs as you bounce on his cock a little faster, the fingers working your clit keeping time. Luscious, tingling heat pools in that tiny singularity, begging for release. Tech turns his attention to your neck, hungrily nibbling and kissing the soft flesh, sending shivers down your spine. You gyrate your hips when he's nestled fully in you and he moans unabashedly as his cock begins to swell.

“That's the way, cyar'íka...such a good girl, letting us fuck you,” Tech says, his voice pouring into your ear like liquid silk.

He lets go of your breast and trails his fingertips up your chest before wrapping his hand lightly around your throat once more, holding your head steady as his hips snap up into you briskly. As you match his pace, you feel him getting tighter as he stretches your insides to their limit. He rubs your clit in tight circles, your moaning constant as he starts to shorten his thrusts, the head of his cock perfectly massaging your sweet spot. Tech squeezes the sides of your neck slowly and you shut your eyes as your breath hitches in your throat, every nerve ending in your clit ready for the ultimate liberation.

“So close, Tech...make me come,” you gasp.

“I thought you'd never ask,” Tech replies flippantly.

He buries himself all the way in you and holds still, his fingers flicking over your clit as you near your peak. His thighs tremble against you as he feels your pussy clutching his cock like a vise, requiring every ounce of his restraint to not release before you do. Tech takes your clit between his thumb and forefinger, rolling the flesh of your hood over it as he strokes firmly, drawing out a few last gasps from you.

As he loosens his grip on your throat, an intense cry bursts from you as the floodgates open and he tips you over the edge, your nails digging into his thighs as the nectar of euphoria flows through you. Writhing your hips madly, Tech wraps his arm around your waist to hold you steady, unable to hold himself back any longer. He swiftly withdraws, then cants his hips up into you, relishing at the obscene wet sounds his cock is making as he drives himself in deeply. Mouth at your ear, Tech's low moaning sends shivers down your spine, knowing he's just about to come.

“May I...” he grunts, and you feel his cock swell and stiffen.

You bring a hand up around the back of his neck and turn your head towards his, pulling him down for an ardent kiss. “Do it,” you command. “Be my good boy and fill my pussy...”

Tech hides his face in your hair as he thrusts hard for a final time, letting his breath out forcefully as his orgasm overtakes him, moaning your name repeatedly. His cock flexes heavily in your cleft, and you whimper as you feel the sudden heat of his seed coating your walls. At long last, Tech releases you. Falling forward onto your hands, he backs out of you, juices steadily dripping between your legs onto the pillow underneath.

“Y/N, are you all right?” Echo asks, reaching out to take you by the shoulder and help you upright.

“Better than fine,” you reply breathlessly as you shift around to face the others. “Here's a little something extra for you, boys. Consider it an encore...”

You part your legs enough so they can clearly see between them, your outer lips swollen and spread wide. Biting your lip as you bear down, everyone watches transfixed as Tech's thick, creamy load slips out of you. You look over at Tech, now sitting back on the couch as he recovers from his high. Unsteadily, you get to your feet and go to him, taking his chin in your hand as you look into his beautiful golden brown eyes. He reaches up to touch your cheek with his finger, a relieved smile on his face.

“That was...extraordinary, cyar'íka. Thank you for letting me –”

You cut him off with a gentle kiss. “No need to thank me, Tech. If anything, I should be thanking you.” You pause for a moment, a grin creeping across your face. “However, I think you and I need to have a chat about an escapade in the Marauder's cockpit sometime...”

Wrecker snorts and bursts out laughing, causing Tech to immediately start blushing. Everyone else joins in as you sigh and shake your head, reaching for the towel to wipe yourself down. You look around for the wine bottle, stopping as your eyes meet Hunter's. He's sitting calmly in his seat, watching your eyes as they travel down toward his groin. As if he's read your mind, he spreads his legs apart for you a little, resting his hand on the mouthwatering bulge under his blacks.

“There's no need, ad'íka. It's my turn,” he says, pulling the waist of his blacks down just a little so the head of his cock is visible. “I'm serious about wanting to have those exquisite tits of yours squeezed around my cock. But first, be a love and let me have your mouth for awhile. Seems to me your pussy needs a break,” he chuckles.

Hunter swings his legs up onto the generous couch on which he's sitting, stretching out as he lies down, sliding a thumb under the waistband of his blacks. Looking over at you, he smiles and starts stroking himself through the material, closing his eyes as he starts thinking about sliding his cock into your mouth, watching your tongue swirl around the tip. You make your way over to him, wedging yourself between his muscular thighs. Curling your hands into his pants, you start sliding them down his hips, your lips curled into a seductive grin.

“Show me what you've got for me, Hunter,” you say as you get his blacks down to his thighs, holding back a moan as his lengthy cock is unveiled, thick with a gentle upward curve. Once you get his blacks off, you lay your palms on his thighs, running them up toward his groin as you lean forward to gently kiss his tip. “Just as beautiful as your brothers,” you murmur.

Starting at the base, your tongue draws its way up his shaft, tenderly swirling along the underside of the head. Hunter moans softly and rests a hand on the back of your head as he spreads his legs wider for you, resting one foot on the floor. Taking his cock in one hand, you bring him to your lips, kissing the tip once more before you guide him into your mouth, sucking lightly on the head. You ease him farther into your mouth as your free hand cups his balls, palming the firm, swollen orbs carefully.

You pull him out of your mouth with a slight pop, licking your lips. “Mm, look how full you are, honey. I bet you want to blow a huge load all over my tits, don't you?” Now you squeeze his balls just a little, a deep groan rolling out of him. “Gotta say, Hunter, I figured you would have wanted my pussy, but your creativity is fucking hot...”

Sliding him back into your mouth, your tongue flattens out along the underside, letting you inch him in slowly. Your eyes meet his, pupils fully dilated and shining brightly with fascination and arousal as he watches his cock disappear around your lips. Taking in as much of him as you can, one hand closes around him again to start stroking, twisting its way along as you hollow out your cheeks, sucking on him hard.

Hunter groans and lifts his hips up into you as you pull away, a long strand of saliva connecting your tongue to the tip. You close your index finger and thumb firmly around his cock, swirling up and over him, taking time to massage the head as your tongue lavishes attention upon his length, flicking over the small slit as a bead of pre-cum oozes its way out. Back into the hot confines of your mouth he goes, this time picking up the pace to stroke him a little faster while you give most of your attention to the heated, swollen flesh.

“Fuck,” he moans softly. “I thought you'd never do this for me, Y/N...”

One of his hands comes to rest on the back of your head once more, and now he begins to gently buck his hips as you let him fuck your mouth, pushing in deeper as you close your hand fully around him. Your other hand returns to give his balls attention, rolling and squeezing them while your index finger strokes the fine, soft flesh of his perineum, evoking a gasp and a choked breath from Hunter.

You can feel his leg starting to tremble against you a little as you draw him closer to his climax, and you chuckle with him in your mouth. The vibrations travel along his shaft, causing him to flex in your hand, and when the head tightens and swells, you exhale sharply through your nose, pulling him out. You're slavering all over his cock, curling the tip of your tongue as you withdraw, showing Hunter just exactly how much you love giving sloppy blowjobs.

You shift yourself back a little, placing a hand on Hunter's thigh as your head dips down, your tongue lovingly passing over his balls. Your other hand comes to rest on his other thigh, and reflexively, Hunter encircles his fingers around yours, while his other hand reaches to take a hold of your hair. Slowly your lips close around one of his balls, sucking a little to pull it into your mouth. Hunter closes his eyes and grits his teeth as he tries to restrain a deep-seated moan of pleasure.

He's so full that you almost can't fit it in your mouth, but as you engulf him completely, you suck on him tenderly, filled with anticipation over how much he's going to come for you. Hunter lets go of your hand and takes his cock, still wet with your saliva. He starts stroking himself, watching you intently as you let him go with a wet smack of your lips. As you take his other testicle in, he comes undone, moaning deeply as you sensually tease him. You can feel him beginning to tighten up in your mouth, and you release him, sitting back on your feet, flashing a sassy grin as you wipe your lips with a finger.

Hunter pulls himself up and you hear a low growl building as he suddenly reaches for your shoulder, pushing you down onto your back. Quickly, he climbs on top of you, his cock pulsating as he gets himself into position. Your heart races with excitement over his powerful show of dominance, but also with curiosity over how it will feel to have him gliding between your breasts. Hunter takes a breast in each hand, massaging them softly as he takes in this new vantage point.

“Do you have any idea how fucking hot you are, Y/N? You're like something out of a wet dream,” he confesses as his thumbs trace over your nipples, mesmerized by the gleaming steel of your piercings. He looks up and over at Tech, holding out his hand. “Gonna need that lube, vod. Throw it over here.”

Tech pitches the small bottle of lube across to Hunter, who catches it easily. He flicks open the cap and drizzles the lube generously onto your sternum. You let him rub the lube between and all over your breasts, groaning happily as he massages your heated flesh. As he finishes, he takes his cock by the base, rapping it firmly on your chest, a wicked grin on his face. You start pushing your breasts together until they're just touching him, a little unsure of how close you should be.

“Always wondered what this would feel like,” he murmurs as he starts to rock his hips slowly, pushing his cock between the cleft, letting out a soft sigh as he easily glides through.

Hunter looks down at you, seeing the enthrallment on your face as he pushes his cock closer to your mouth. Briefly, he pulls himself out and holds himself within reach of your mouth, easing just the tip in a little as you suck on him gently. Back between your breasts he goes, and you push them much closer together this time to create more friction. He teases you, the head of his cock coming close to your chin and mouth, and you let your tongue hang out a little, trying to lick him.

“Tech's right, ad'íka...you're starving tonight...you want me to feed you?” he questions, voice smoky with passion.

“Give me everything you've got, Hunter,” you reply.

Hunter smiles and licks his lips as he continues driving his cock between your breasts, this time adjusting himself so he can push his way into your mouth easily. You take him in and he watches as your gaze meets his, an incredibly arousing sight to see you suck his cock so easily. His heart goes into overdrive as he feels you press yourself tightly around him, and he wonders if your pussy feels anywhere near as good as this.

Faster he begins to thrust, and low moaning progressively becomes heavy as Hunter feels himself rapidly approaching his edge. Your eyes are locked on his and again, you open your mouth to show him your eager tongue. Seeing you so willing and trusting turns him on even more, and he holds his breath when his balls begin to tighten, knowing his orgasm is imminent. You can see his thighs beginning to shake slightly as he comes close and you push your breasts against him as far as they'll go.

“M-mésh'la, hold still, I'm gonna come,” he gasps, surging forward a few more times before you feel his cock flex, watching as he starts to unload.

Hunter moans loudly as thick streams of his hot seed launch all over your chest, neck, and chin before he pulls his cock from between your breasts and strokes it a few more times, sending the rest into your mouth. You swallow every last bit, your tongue slightly tingling as you taste the salty, slightly bitter profile of his spend, momentarily grateful he chose not to come solely in your mouth. He carefully climbs off you and reaches for his pants, tugging them back on before he leans down and kisses you affectionately.

“Thank you, Y/N,” he says quietly, moving your hair out of your face, kissing your forehead. “That was incredible...I would love to do that with you again sometime.”

You take his face between your hands, bringing your lips to his for a few velvety kisses. “Any time, Hunter...never done anything like that before, but it's getting added to the “must do” list,” you laugh.

Hunter gives you one last kiss before excusing himself to the kitchen to get another clean towel. You're sitting propped up on your elbows when he returns, and you close your eyes, letting your head loll back as he cleans you up. The warm dampness of the towel and Hunter's tender ministrations leave you feeling relaxed and perfectly sated. You inhale deeply, collecting your thoughts before you finally finish this game and set Crosshair in his place.

Without opening your eyes, your voice takes on a startling edge. “Crosshair, be my good boy...come over here and kneel before me. Now.”

The chatter among the others stops and Hunter retakes his seat on the couch, his attention fixed on Crosshair, who's looking across the room at you. As you bring your head back up, your eyes slowly open and you turn to look at him, his normally bitter expression erased and replaced by one of uncertainty, his cheeks red with uncharacteristic embarrassment. He's rattled by the glacial look you're giving him, and he swallows hard, looking at his brothers one by one, especially Tech.

“I strongly suggest you comply, Crosshair. It would be unwise to arouse cyar'íka's anger once more,” Tech says with a vein of mirth in his voice, a sly grin on his face.

As you sit up, you move to the edge of the couch, spreading your legs so Crosshair can get a good look at what he's been coveting all night long. The roseate bloom of your pussy lay before him, his longing for you coming to its summit as he sees your glistening folds, his cock throbbing insistently. Resting a hand daintily upon your knee, you reach out and beckon to him, smiling sweetly. But Crosshair is no fool; he sees through your façade, knowing you're up to something.

He gets up out of his chair haltingly and does as he's told, stopping before you and sinking to the floor on his knees. You can see his breathing becoming shallower, his dark eyes shining brightly with deep yearning. You bring a hand under his chin and lift his head up as you lean in, your other hand running through his silver hair. Your lips brush softly over his, and he doesn't bother trying to hold back a small moan. Now your mouth seeks his, tongues sparring as you converge for a fiery kiss.

“That's my boy...” you whisper heatedly. “You're going to learn a little humility and accept the consequences of your earlier transgression...starting by licking my pussy until every trace of Tech is gone.”

A brief look of disgust flashes across his face at your choice of words, but the desire to please you and be praised for it is overwhelming. As you look down at him, your expression softens as his hands make their way up your legs slowly. Crosshair never takes his eyes off yours, his long fingers caressing your silky skin as they rise over your knees and over your inner thighs. The corner of his mouth turns upward into a tiny crooked grin, knowing you're enjoying this.

Crosshair gives pause as he reaches your pubic mound, suddenly not wanting to proceed lest you think of something else to deflate his ego. His eyes search yours pleadingly, looking for the sign that he should continue. He wants nothing more than to touch you, let his tongue work its magic on the tantalizing swell of your pearl, and draw you to another orgasm. Hesitantly, his fingertips stroke the soft flesh of your outer lips, and when you don't stop him, his thumb rests on your piercing before he retracts the hood of your clit.

You let out a pleasurable sigh as you watch him close his eyes and lean in, his mouth closing over your clit. He wastes no time in showing you how skilled he is, sucking firmly while his tongue teases and massages the hypersensitive underside. His index finger makes its way to your slick entrance and slides in with no resistance. It's quickly followed by the middle, and you let out a gasp as he carefully threads in his ring finger, your pussy feeling like it's about to split in two.

Crosshair opens his eyes and looks up at you for signs of discomfort, but sees none. He starts moving his fingers in and out, the wet sounds coming from you are almost profane. He knows exactly where to touch you, curling his fingertips upward to manipulate your sweet spot as he pulls his mouth away, letting his tongue flick expertly across your clit. The divine heat and pulsation start you anew on the path to your climax, and he feels your walls starting to close around him.

“I think someone's hungrier than I am tonight, boys!” you exclaim, exhaling sharply as your needling leads Crosshair to pull out his fingers, coated with both your juices and the remnants of Tech's. “You're desperate, Crosshair. Lick them clean,” you order.

Jeering laughter erupts from Wrecker, clearly enjoying watching his brother being put in his place. “She's got you there, eh, Cross?! About time someone taught you a lesson!”

Crosshair's eyes narrow as heat spreads like wildfire through his face, blushing furiously. He sticks his index finger in his mouth, sucking it clean, the commingling of salt and bitter acidity not as vile as he expected. He licks his middle and ring fingers, watching your face for the sign of approval he aches for. You smile and point down at your pussy, slick with fresh arousal. Choking on a groan, his hands fly to your thighs and grip hard as he buries his head between your legs once more.

He licks a wide path with the flat of his tongue through your slit, gathering up everything he can. You rest your hand on the back of his head, encouraging him to do it again. Moaning softly against your folds, he makes another pass before his lips close around your clit and piercing once more. This time he suckles gently, feeling his cock twitch hard underneath his blacks as you utter his name. He brings a hand down between his legs and feels how damp the material is, badly wanting to sink his cock into you in any way possible.

Crosshair gives your clit a loving kiss and looks to you once more. “Was...that all right?” he asks. You don't answer right away, instead moving in to taste yourself on him, licking at the corner of his mouth before lightly kissing his forehead. “C-cyaré, please...are you satisfied?” he implores.

His words from earlier in the night come back to haunt him as you chuckle softly. “Not just yet...but give it some time. On your feet, Crosshair...show me that cock of yours and let me make fantasy a reality.”

He rests his hands on your knees as he slowly rises, his lithe, muscular body seeming taller than ever as he looks down at you. Your eyes lock on his as your hands slide their way up his thighs, and you feel him tremble slightly in anticipation. You palm his cock through the fabric, feeling how hot and impatient he is as you lean forward, strategically planting ethereal kisses as your hands take the waistband of his blacks and ease them down. The graceful curve of his impressively thick length is unveiled, the head glossy with pre-cum.

Crosshair licks his lips as he watches you take him by the base, your tongue emerging to lightly trace its way over his frenulum before it swirls over the tip, drawing in his wetness. His breath catches in his throat as you take him in your mouth, his level of touch starvation evident as you feel him beginning to swell a little from the most basic attention you're giving him. You suck on him gently for a few moments before withdrawing, and he brings a hand to your face, cupping it tenderly. Closing your eyes, your hand comes up over his, letting out a sigh of contentment.

“Cyaré, tell me how to please you,” he begs, inwardly cursing himself for feeling so needy and vulnerable.

You let go of his hand and slip it between his legs, taking him by the balls and squeezing firmly. Crosshair groans and bites his lip, moving his hand to the back of your head as your other hand grasps his cock. “Begging is beneath you, Crosshair,” you coolly reply. “Here's the deal. You're going to blow your load on my face, and then you're going to lick it up.”

Hunter raises an eyebrow in surprise as he looks over at you, and you hear Echo mutter, “oh, Maker,” as Tech covers his face with his hand, desperately trying not to laugh. You look over at Wrecker and he's sitting there silent, mouth agape and eyes wide. Crosshair feels the heat of embarrassment crawling its way up his neck and into his ears and face. He didn't expect this from you, and now he finally regrets his egregious behavior.

“Just one more thing, love...don't swallow!”

With that, you release the grip on his balls, rolling them in your palm as the hand on his cock moves it way up his length, closing over the tip to gently massage it. Crosshair moans softly and his fingers wind around your hair as your lips close around him, slowly easing him in. Your hand slides up his shaft, joining your mouth as you move your head to and fro, sucking tenaciously. He can't tear his eyes away from you as more of his cock disappears, chills running down his spine as you moan deeply around him. Cautiously, he starts to thrust into your mouth, curious to see how much of him you can take.

You accommodate him easily at first, your hand controlling the depth of his progress, but he soon starts to push in more aggressively. Tears prick the corner of your eyes unbidden as he moves in too deeply, triggering your gag reflex. You pull back, salivating wildly all over the head of his cock and for a split second, you catch just a hint of smug satisfaction on his face. Squeezing his balls roughly in retaliation, he lets out a hiss as your hand picks up the extra wetness and grips around him tightly, stroking him hard. Crosshair's thighs tense up, his arousal mounting exponentially as he starts bucking his hips toward you, wishing it was your pussy he was fucking instead of your hand.

“That's the way, baby,” you croon gently. “Such a good, obedient boy, wanting to come hard all over his cyaré's face...”

Crosshair moans heatedly at your words, especially the Mando'a term of endearment. He pumps his cock through your skilled hand, groaning deeply as his tip pushes through the tight ring of your fingers. Visions of having you all to himself and feeling how tight your pussy is for him race through his mind, and it's not long before his other hand joins yours, grasping his cock as his thrusting intensifies. You slowly ease your hand off him until he's fully in control, stroking himself vigorously as he chases his climax.

Now with both hands free, you turn your attention to his balls, which are already starting to tighten. You take one in each hand, rolling your thumbs over them, massaging lightly as Crosshair's breathing becomes rapid and shallow. As you squeeze his balls again, this time with care, his free hand gravitates to the top of your head to hold you steady. A low groan builds deeply in his chest as he feels himself drawing close to his orgasm, cock swelling firmly in his hand. He closes his eyes and brings his hand up to start quickly stroking the first few inches, moaning your name ardently.

“So close, ner cyaré... Let me come... Please let me come,” he gasps, legs trembling as he forces himself to hold on until you grant him permission.

You shift back a little to give him space and close your eyes. “I release you, Crosshair!”

He deftly strokes his cock a few more times and feels the coil in his pelvic floor unwind, a deep moan pouring out of him as he begins to come. Hot streams of his seed eject all over your forehead, nose, lips and chin, covering your face like a spectral mask. Breathing hard, Crosshair pulls away from you, hastily pulling his blacks up and tucking himself back in. Not forgetting the other half of your directive, he gathers his courage and sets aside feelings of revulsion, leaning forward and taking you by the shoulders.

He's never tasted himself before now, but curiosity and the driving need to satisfy you get the better of him. His hot tongue starts at your lips, licking them clean with a single pass. Hunter chuckles quietly as he watches Crosshair grimace, the salty bitterness an unpleasant surprise. He returns to your chin, then quickly passes over your nose and forehead, lapping up the remnants of his spend. You open your eyes and see he's pulled away from you, a look of serious aversion on his face as he's fighting the urge to spit out his load.

“Have you learned your lesson, Crosshair?” you say with great merriment. “Judging by that sour face, I'd say you have. Am I correct?” He nods, and you get to your feet, wrapping one arm around his slim waist, the other around his shoulders. He looks down at you and you can see his eyes silently beseeching you to hurry. “Feed me, love...I want to know how you taste.”

You open your mouth, tongue resting on your bottom lip as Crosshair lowers his head, opening his mouth when he's within reach. A quiet moan emanates from you as his tongue touches yours, the creamy pool of his seed passing from him to you. Curling your tongue back into your mouth, you swallow all of it as Crosshair closes his eyes and sighs softly. Your hand trails its way up the back of his neck until you're cradling his head, and you moan faintly into his mouth as his lips connect with yours for an amatory kiss.

“Now...I'm satisfied. See, I knew you would bend to my will. All it took was the proper motivation. Well behaved boys will always be rewarded...miscreants will not. It's that simple.” Your fingertip traces its way along the lines of his tattoo, his eyes meeting yours. “Such a good boy you are, Crosshair. My good boy.”

Crosshair's hand passes down your spine until he reaches your ass, squeezing one of your cheeks firmly as he seeks out your mouth for a passionate kiss. You hold onto him tighter as his tongue and yours meet, his hunger for you not yet slaked as he takes your tongue between his teeth and gently nips at it. You groan softly as you start growing wet again, and you can feel Crosshair's cock stir once more. A soft cough behind you interrupts the moment, and you turn to see Hunter looking at you with a gentle smile of approval.

“Oh...right. Game's over, lads. Everybody wins,” you laugh.

“What, no second round, mésh'la?” Wrecker jokes as he stands up and stretches. “I think I'm ready for another go!”

“No way, big man. Not until I've had another shower and a little sleep...you've all worn me out. So if you'll excuse me, I'll –”

You let out a yelp as Crosshair reaches under your legs and picks you up. “Then let's get you cleaned up and in bed, cyaré...as far as we're concerned, the night is still young,” he says devilishly, turning to walk out of the living room with you.

“Crosshair, wait.” He stops as he gets into the main hallway, and you look over his shoulder. “I don't want to sleep alone tonight, boys. Come on.”

*****

As you exit your bathroom still combing out your hair, you see Crosshair and Tech already under the covers of your gargantuan bed, waiting for you to occupy the space between them. The other three are all sitting at the foot of it half undressed, their shirts slung over the back of a nearby chair. You stop and flash all of them a flirtatious grin, and all of them return it with carnal smiles of their own.

“You said there wasn't room for all of us in here, Y/N,” Echo remarks with amusement.

“I was being facetious, Echo. This bed can support half the Hutt family, and then some!”

“Then we are in no danger of having it collapse,” Tech interjects. “Come to bed, cyar'íka...we all very much would like to continue the bonding process with you.”

He holds up the covers for you, and you see that both he and Crosshair are fully naked and partially aroused. You slip between them, Crosshair pressing himself against your side as he nuzzles your neck contentedly. Tech slings his arm around your waist, kissing your cheek softly. Echo and Wrecker reach for Hunter as they all lie down, settling in the spaces between you and the twins.

Crosshair closes his eyes, laughing quietly. “You owe me 10 credits, Tech. I told you we'd all fit.”

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