#remmick x reader smut

[flowersforjude]

𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐝 𝐁𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥'𝐬 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 | Remmick x Fem!Reader

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫�� | You had been taught from a young age that your body was a vessel for sin. You pray. You obey. You repent for desires you've never acted on. Until one night, something old and unholy walks out of the swamp. Remmick doesn’t ask for your obedience. He simply asks for you.

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 12,353 (I'm incapable of writing short fics anymore stg)

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Mature Content-Explicit Descriptions Of Sex | Religious trauma, Shame-based upbringing, Mentions of blood, Vampire themes, Slight power imbalance (handled with care), Typical historical sexism, Horror themes, Smut: PIV sex, Loss of virginity, Period sex, Biting/marking, Worship kink, Oral(fem!receiving), Fingering, Begging/dirty talk, Dom/sub themes, Blood kink.

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 | This is the freakiest shit I've ever written and I love it. I may have gotten a bit carried away, but I was a vampire slut as a teenager so this was like going back to my roots! It might seem a little drawn out, but I promise you it's worth it.

masterlist

“LORD, IF THERE BE ANY WICKED THOUGHT IN ME, CAST IT OUT.”

Knees sunk into warped pine, you knelt before the pulpit. Rigid spine drawn upwards like penance carved into posture. The chapel groaned with age beneath you, floorboards moaning like the ribs of something half-dead. Still, you didn’t move. Not when your knees screamed. Not when sweat slicked down your back. 

Pain, after all, was a righteous offering. 

Beyond clouded glass windows, Mississippi’s summer pressed its damp mouth to the world. Cicadas shrieked into the thick air—bold and blatant. As if even God’s smallest creatures knew no shame. 

But you did. You’d learned it young. 

At thirteen, the blood had come for the first time. Bright and damning, soaking through linen drawers like spilled sin. Your mama had wept into her handkerchief, Bible clenched to her chest.

Your daddy made you sleep in the shed out back that night. 

“You’re unclean now,” Mama had said. Her voice gentle as cattails blowing in the wind, but no less firm. “The devil speaks through blood like that.”

Since then, your body had become something separate from your soul. Something threatening to it. Something to be managed.

And so, you managed it. 

You scrubbed every corner of yourself with lye and scalding water, rubbed lavender oil behind your ears and under your arms to keep the scent of you polite. You covered your chest tight beneath your high-necked dresses and crossed your ankles even in sleep. You swallowed down every tremble, every heat that rose under your skin when you caught sight of a man’s hands. Thick-knuckled and dirty from work, veins like roots. 

When the wicked thoughts came—as they always did, uninvited and slow—you banished them with prayer. Over and over until your throat went hoarse and your vision blurred. 

Lord, make me clean. Lord, make me still. 

You learned to live inside the rhythm of denial. Every dish was washed with precision. Every verse memorized and recited without fault. Every smile measured, every word weighed. Even your silence was studied. Measured like sugar for a pie crust. 

Your daddy called you his “God-fearing girl.”

The town called you sweet. Gentle. A lamb.

But none of them heard the screaming behind your ribs. Still, you stayed soft, obedient. 

You turned your eyes away from boys who looked too long. You flinched when your daddy’s voice turned thundering at the pulpit, screaming about Jezebels and harlots and fire licking at the feet of women who let their hips sway too loose. 

Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night, thighs damp and heart racing, some dream fleeing your memory like smoke. The shame that followed was near biblical. You would kneel in front of your window and pray ‘til sunrise, whisper to the floorboards so Mama and Daddy wouldn’t hear. 

Still, deep in the belly of you, a wanting took root. Not loud, not crude, just hungry. Starved from being ignored so long.

That hunger frightened you more than Hell.

The sun had just begun to sink when you uncurled from the floor, joints stiff, knees aching with the kind of pain that settles deep and stays. Your dress clung damp to your back. The chapel had been empty when you arrived, and now as you left, it remained the same. The air still, dust dancing lazily in halos through fogged glass. 

Stepping outside felt like surfacing from deep water. The humidity met you like breath on your skin. Thick, and warm, and a little too familiar. Your shoes pressed down the dirt path in soft grinds on the pebbles, the hem of your dress sweeping across your ankles. 

Home was only a half mile away. Past a narrow field, and through the grove of pines your daddy always said was cursed. “Too quiet,” he’d muttered once. “Ain’t right when the trees don’t even sing.”

You never asked him what he meant. You were taught not to question the wisdom of men like him. 

The cicadas faded as you reached the edge of the trees. The air shifted, cooler now, like something had drawn the heat out of it. There was no wind. No hooting owls, no coyotes yipping, no chirping of crickets. The absence of all nighttime sounds. 

You paused.  

The setting light had gone strange, pale silver-washed, as though the sun had dipped too fast beneath the horizon. The shadows stretched longer here. Almost deliberate in their reach. 

It was then that you saw him. 

He stood beneath a drooping cypress, half swallowed by the gloaming. At first you thought he might’ve been carved from the tree itself—so still and rooted. But then he moved. Not like just any man, not exactly. Not with effort or weight in his steps. He simply shifted. Like water finding the shape of a new vessel.

Your breath caught in your throat. 

His eyes, too pale to be safe, met yours across the thinning distance. He looked like some creature out of folklore. The kind from tales whispered between women who’d seen too much and men who drank too late. Broad, sharp-jawed, dressed in a white and blue striped button-down with a pair of suspenders hitched over his shoulders. His sleeves were rolled, revealing forearms etched with faint old scars, and the collar of his shirt hung open—loose, like he’d never worn a buttoned thing in his life. 

He had no hat, no weapon, not even a smile. 

You should’ve run, but your feet stayed cemented to the gravel, fists tight in your skirt.

He didn’t speak right away. He just looked at you like he knew the trance you were under. A muscle feathered in his jaw. Not with tension, but curiosity. Amusement, even. And when he did speak, his voice came low and smooth, like creekwater over stone. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, mouth curving up in the sort of smirk Mama warned you about. “Didn’t think anyone’d be out here.”

Your lips parted and then sealed shut again. You took a half step back, careful not to trip over the hem of your dress. 

“I didn’t mean to disturb—” you began, but his head tilted just a fraction. 

“You’re the preacher’s girl, right?” he asked, eyes narrowing with delighted focus. 

You nodded, barely. “Yes, sir.”

He huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “No need for ‘sir’; I’m not that respectable.”

Silence stretched between you. Even though you’d been raised on the belief that it wasn’t polite for girls to talk too much, you wanted to fill the quiet. Spill your voice into the cracks. Your pulse throbbed in your throat before you rounded up the courage. 

“You shouldn’t be out here this time of night.”

“Neither should you, preacher’s daughter,” he drawled, a flicker of something dark and knowing curling the corner of his lips. “But here we are.”

He didn’t look like anyone from town and certainly didn’t talk like one. None of the townsfolk would’ve spoken to you the way he did. Unguarded and heedless of who you were. No, he wasn’t from around here at all. And yet…nothing about him seemed inherently strange. Just out of place. Like he belonged to a different world that had nudged its shoulder against yours for a moment, just long enough to make the air odd. 

He rocked back on the heels of his feet, like he was settling into the moment, not at all eager to leave it. “Didn’t catch your name.”

Giving out your name to strangers never seemed like a good idea to you. It felt wrong just to hand it out, especially not to spooky men alone in the woods. 

“Don’t think you need it, mister.” Your words are nearly swallowed by the blood rushing in your ears. 

That smirk returned, subtle and crooked and ruinous. “Suit yourself.”

His voice curled around the words like telling you he’d figure out your name anyway. Whether you gave it to him or not. And maybe he would; in a town as small as this, everybody knew everyone. 

He took a step forward. Not as a threat, not even boldly. 

The breath in your chest locked up tight anyway. Your ribs caging something suddenly wild and very much awake. Heat pricked at your cheeks, and shame rose in your belly like smoke curling from a chimney. You didn’t know this man, but the shape of him, the sound of him, felt like something your body recognized before your mind could catch up. 

You were both terrified and enchanted by him. 

“You always walk this way alone?” He asked.

You glanced away from his thralling eyes, throat going bone dry. “Ain’t usually anyone else out here.”

“You’re a peculiar thing,” he chuckled, pointing a wagging finger at you. 

You stiffened. “Why d’you say that?”

He shrugged, hands tucked lazily in his pockets. “I’ve been ‘round town awhile. Seen enough to know who stares down their nose and who just keeps their eyes down.” He fixed you with those keen eyes, turning up his nose almost like he was sniffing. “But you look like you’re tryin’ not to see at all.”

You sucked in a breath. You could feel your heart banging around inside you, like it wanted out.

This was wrong. 

Not just him, but the way the trees leaned in like they were listening, the way your skin felt charged under your dress. You could hear it echoing in your skull, how your name would sound rolling off his tongue if you’d chosen to give it to him. 

You didn’t even realize you’d taken a step back until your heel slid slightly on gravel.  

“I should get goin’,” you said quickly, the words tumbling out like water breaking through a dam.

He didn’t stop you as you danced around him. 

“Sure,” was all he said, amusement bending his voice. “Don’t let the woods eat ya on the way home.”

Your pace started out slow, but you could feel him behind you. Something made you look back. 

He’d moved back to where you first saw him, there under the swaying cypress tree half devoured by dusk and shadow. He stood just as still, only now his head was tilted the slightest bit. Like he was listening to something distant or savoring something close. 

When he caught you glancing at, him he grinned. Wickedly. Like he knew something you didn’t. Like he’d caught a glimpse of the crack in your pious little shell and was toying with the thought of prying it open.

The moonlight caught his eyes, or maybe it wasn’t the light at all. For just a moment, they flashed red. Not bright. Not like fire. But like crimson blood. It was just a glint, sharp as wet teeth in the dark. 

Your breath hitched as you took a step back, your eyes still on him. Then another until your pace quickens into something just shy of a run. 

He watched you leave, that grin widening as you stumbled through the brush, skirts snagging on twigs, heart pounding like a hymn sung too fast. He didn’t chase after you, but he drank in your fear like it was fine whiskey. 

You could almost hear that smile taunting you. Ain’t you lucky I let you go?

YOU DIDN’T WALK HOME NEAR THE GROVE ANYMORE.

You took the long road instead, through rows of dry fields and along the ridge where wild blackberries grew. 

But no matter how hard you tried to avoid it, you still saw him. 

Not fully at first, just a shape in your periphery. Standing motionless at the edge of things. Watching the horizon as though he had all the time in the world to wait for you to come to him.

You never stopped when you saw him; never spoke to him. You kept your eyes forward and your mouth shut. But your palms went damp against the cotton of your skirt, and your heart slammed into your ribs. 

You hadn’t slept that first night. 

You stayed curled under your quilt, ears straining at every creak in the house. You told yourself it was just wind on the windows, just the groan of old nails in old wood. But deep down, you knew better. 

Because the next evening, he was there again—this time down by the riverbed. 

You’d gone to fetch water just as the dark came on, trying to outpace the setting sun, but when you reached the bank, he was already there. Sitting on a fallen log like it was a church pew, skipping stones across the slow-moving current with easy, idle flicks of his wrist. 

He didn’t speak, but he didn’t really need to. 

You could feel his gaze on your back the whole time you filled the pail, like fingers dragging down the slope of your spine without ever touching skin. When you turned around, he was gone. 

You blinked once, twice; nothing but empty woods and water rippling in dusky light. The pail trembled in your hands the whole way home. 

By the third night, you started to wonder if you were going mad. 

You didn’t tell Mama or Daddy. You couldn’t. What would you even say? That some pale-eyed stranger was haunting the dirt roads and riverbeds. Staring like he could see every wicked little thought you’d tried so hard to drown.

No. 

That would only earn you a slap and a verse from Leviticus. 

So you stayed silent, but you didn’t feel safe. 

Especially not the fourth night when you saw him outside your bedroom window. 

It was just past midnight; the house had gone dead quiet hours ago. The air was heavy with heat and thunder-stillness. You’d risen from bed to press your forehead to the glass, the way you always did when your dreams left you flushed and frightened. The nighttime sounds had gone silent again. 

And then he was just there. 

Standing at the tree line just beyond the garden fence. Unmoving and unblinking. Lit only by the moon in the same striped shirt, the same loose collar, his hands in his pockets like this was nothing unusual. Like he belonged right there. 

You didn’t scream or dash away from the window. You just stared because a part of you had been expecting this. Dreading it and needing it in the same capacity.

His head tilted again, same as before. Curious. Amused. That slow, knowing smirk unspooling like thread across his mouth with those razor-sharp teeth as the needle.

 A chill slid down your spine like the slow crawl of a water moccasin, cold and coiling. Your heart jittered wild in your chest, beating like a grasshopper’s wings. Part of you screamed to look away, but some buried piece of you—that part the prayers never reached—couldn’t drag your eyes from him. 

You hoped he wouldn't see the internal tremor of your bones, but you knew he did.

He just watched you, like he was trying to decide whether to devour you or let you rot sweetly on the vine. The air felt thick with something unholy. Then from the darkness, a sound soft and low and syrup-slick. 

A laugh straight from the depths of Hell. 

He moved then, pushed himself from the fence post like it cost him nothing, the slow drag of his boots through the grass loud enough through the closed window. The garden seemed to hush around him; even the insects ceased their chattering. 

The moonlight reached for him as he stepped forward, bent toward him like it knew him. Like it’d been waiting to kiss his skin. 

You’d heard plenty of stories in church warning folks about demons who walked only in the dark and wore man’s skin like a borrowed coat. You’d never put much stock in them. 

But now?

Now he was standing in your garden, eyes burning like embers and teeth too sharp, framed by a mouth that smiled like it knew the taste of brimstone. 

He was beautiful in the way demons often were depicted hunting for mortal souls. Terrible and magnetic and full of ruin. 

And every bit of him seemed to say just one thing.

Come closer, little lamb. The door’s already open.

You didn’t remember unlatching the window. Just that your fingers were already there, trembling against the iron hook.

It groaned softly as it opened, just enough to let the air in. Enough to let him near.

He was closer now, no longer by the fence but halfway through the garden, where your mama’s tomato vines curled up splintering stakes. His boots were sunk into the dew-dark earth, but he moved like something that didn’t need to touch the ground to get where it was going. 

When he made it to the window, you gripped the sill to steady yourself. 

“Why you tormenting yourself like this?” His voice was whisper quiet, but it slithered right under your skin like smoke through a crack in the floorboards. You flinched but couldn’t bring yourself to move away. 

“What d’you mean?” Your voice sounded so small in this moment. 

He stepped closer still, until he was just beneath the window. His hands stayed in his pockets, body loose with an ease you’ve never seen another person possess. But his gaze was the only restless thing about him. It was fixed on you shining bloody, sharp, and starving.

“Lookin’ at me like that,” he murmured. “Pretending I’m the one you’re still scared of.”

Your throat worked around the thickness gathering there. 

“I don’t—I was just—” You broke off. Words slipped through your fingers like running water.

He tilted his head in that slow, animal way. “Oh, darlin’” And then with a quick click of his tongue, he frowned at you, like it saddened him that you couldn’t see the way he did. “You ain’t really afraid of me.”

The thought made your stomach twist. “I am,” you said too fast. 

“No, darlin’. You’re afraid of what you feel when I’m close. That heat in your belly. That little pulse in your throat. You were raised to call that fear.” He leaned forward just a hair, voice going lower. “But it ain’t.”

Your eyes stung as you blinked the emotion away. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.” 

He looked at you like something half-ripened and trembling on the vine. A peach not yet plucked, but splitting at the seam just the same. 

You turned your face slightly, ashamed of how badly you wanted to hear what he might say next. The window creaked as you pushed it open a little more. Not to get closer to him, but to let in some more air. That’s what you told yourself.

His eyes followed the movement. “You ever ask yourself why I keep comin’ back here?” He asked. 

You couldn’t find an answer. 

“You think I hang around ‘cause I like the scenery? The garden?” His mouth carved, those fangs of his poking out. “It ain’t the tomatoes bringin’ me, sweetheart.”

You pressed a hand to your chest, as if you could calm the racing in it with sheer will. “What are you?” you whispered. 

He smiled wider but didn’t answer. “Why’d you open the window tonight?” He asked instead. 

That struck something deep in you. A place none of your daddy’s sermons had ever managed to reach. You just stood there, bare feet on old wooden floor, moonlight kissing your cheekbone, your heart loud enough you were sure he could hear it. 

Then, with his eyes fully shining crimson and his voice softer than breath, he spoke with a flicker of something ancient. “Come outside.”

The words hit you low in the belly. And for a split second, you almost did. Almost pulled yourself over the sill without a second thought, like a girl in a folk tale about to be taken by the monsters lurking in the woods. 

But you didn’t. Something made you stay where you were, clinging to the windowsill like it was the edge of the world. Or the edge of your sanity. 

“I can’t,” you whispered. 

He watched you a moment longer, the red glow fading from those unnatural eyes. He nodded just once, like he expected that response from you. His grin lingered as he turned away. 

“That’s alright,” he said. “You will, or either I’ll hang ‘round long enough for you to invite me in.”

He seemed to blink out of existence then. There one minute and gone the next. With his presence no longer holding you in thrall, you stepped back from the window like it had burned you. Heart hammering all the way up your throat as you slammed the window shut. You dropped to your knees without thinking, palms slapping the floorboards, breath coming entirely too fast. 

You prayed, but not out of devotion; out of desperation. 

But no amount of prayer could vanish the image from your mind. 

His face in the moonlight. 

That devilish grin. 

The way his preternatural eyes seemed to strip you bare without even trying.

It was demeaning how intense the thought of him felt, how vivid it was. How warm. He’d crawled under your skin like a fever and made home there. Uninvited and relentless. 

And worse, it was disgusting to want like this. To fantasize in such a way about a man you’d only spoken to twice. One who you knew nothing about. A man who might not be a man at all. 

Because what you’d seen…the flash of red in his eyes, the fang-like teeth, the way the light didn’t touch him, the stillness that came with him that felt wrong in a world always rustling. 

You were certain he wasn't human. 

And still, he’d become the subject of every dark corner of your mind. 

Your nightmares, yes—those came first. Dreams of him dragging you into the woods, tearing into you with those monstrous canines.

But the fantasies came after.

Sinful ones that had your fingers curling in your sheets. Your thighs pressed tightly beneath your nightgown. The shame bloomed fresh each time when you saw the sunrise and realized your soul hadn’t been struck down for the things you let yourself imagine.

You hated it. 

You hated him.

You hated yourself most of all.

And yet, even as your knees ached and your lips whispered psalms too fast to understand, a single, damning truth settled at the base of your spine like a stone.

You weren’t praying for him or even the thoughts to go away. Because in the most blasphemous parts of yourself, you enjoyed this.

The night after he visited the window, you dreamt of him. 

He came not through the door, but through the trees. Born of shadows and honeysuckle, and grinning beneath the weight of the moon. His presence pulled the night close, like even the dark bent towards him in reverence. 

The grove bloomed around you, but it was wrong. Cyprus roots split the ground like vines. The air was thick with humidity and the heavy, heady scent of sweet rot. Moonlight filtered through the branches, pale as spilled milk, and everything was silent, as if the world held its breath. 

You stood barefoot in the middle of it all, nightgown clinging to your thighs, the hem damp. The trees whispered in a language your bones seemed to know. There was no wind. 

Then he appeared—just was, suddenly—behind you. Closer than your shadow. 

One hand came to rest on your hip, the other brushing your hair aside, fingers cold but careful, like he was unwrapping a relic.

“You ain’t a saint. Not a sinner neither.” He breathed, voice like molasses poured slow. “Just a…sweet-blooded thing.”

You couldn’t speak. You wanted to, but no words made it free before they died in your throat. Your body pulsed with some kind of rhythm not taught by sermons, but by earth, bone, and blood. His hands roamed without urgency, touching you like something holy, as he hummed low with his sinner’s breath. 

Your knees gave out when his hands wandered too close to between your legs. He caught you holding your weight up with one arm. He lowered his mouth to your throat, inhaled, and sighed like he’d come home. 

And then—

Then the woods split with light, hot and blinding, and his eyes—pale as salt, rimmed in red like dying coals—met yours for a single, damning moment.

You woke with a sharp gasp violent enough to cut through the air. You shot up in bed, heart galloping and skin clammy. The dream clung to you like moss, heavy and damp. 

You felt it before you even looked. 

The wet heat between your thighs and the ache low in your belly. The blood smeared across the sheets like rust on Sunday white. 

You didn’t scream.

You just wept. 

Curled into yourself on the stained bedding, rocking like you had done as a child during storms, when thunder shook the windowpanes and Mama told you to hush. That the rumbling was just God. 

You buried your face in your hands and whispered like a sinner at the feet of the Lord. 

“I didn’t ask for this.”

But somewhere, somehow, you knew you had.

THE NEXT MORNING BROUGHT YOU NO MERCY. You woke in a fever of shame, the sheets damp and streaked rust-red. 

You’d barely stripped them from the bed and gotten them to the basin when your mama walked in, face already drawn with suspicion. She stopped short when she saw the washboard and the clear water turning pink.

Her mouth flattened. “You ain’t due,” she said simply, but it wasn’t a question. 

You kept your eyes on the suds, hands starting to shake as you scrubbed harder. 

“You been temptin’ something,” she murmured, voice gone cool and critical, like a snake easing through garden grass. “Lord sees everything, and so does a mother.”

You didn’t answer; you didn’t need to. Nothing you said would’ve made a difference. 

By noon your daddy knew. She’d told him in hushed tones over the breakfast table, her words laced with worry and faithful dread, her hands trembling around her coffee mug. 

The blood was a warning, she said. A sign that the devil was whispering, and her daughter was startin’ to listen.

The preacher’s face went hard as wood. There was no screaming, no belt. Just that look, and that was always worse. 

He sent you to the chapel before lunch, said it was time you remembered what it meant to be clean. Pure. God’s own daughter, not some wild thing led by flesh and fever. 

So you knelt all day.

Until your knees throbbed and your spine locked straight, until the air inside the church went stale and sweet from summer heat, and your throat was hoarse from whispered pleas.

You weren’t allowed water or allowed to sit. 

Just kneel, pray, repent. 

By the time evening came, your whole body ached. But the ache inside was louder. A low, relentless pulse that no prayer could silence.

When your daddy finally opened the chapel doors and sent you home, you walked like a ghost through the dusk, eyes empty.

You didn’t try to sleep that night. You knew it would be no use. So, you sat on your bed and waited. Waited because you knew he’d be out there. 

And when the animals fell quiet, when the breeze turned cool and still, and the moonlight poured soft and white through your curtain like cream in a glass, you knew. 

He’d come back. 

He wasn’t at the window, though. He’d gone to the tree.

The old white oak out front, the one your great-granddaddy planted with his own two hands nearly a century ago. Mama always called it the family’s spine. Said its roots ran so deep it could hold back Hell itself. Said it shaded the porch like a preacher’s hand. Protective and watching.

But tonight, it didn’t feel holy. Tonight it felt like it was aiding him, and he was anything but holy. 

You went out the front door before you could change your mind. Quiet as a fallen soul slipping out of confession, you opened it. The screen groaned on its hinges and snapped shut behind you.

The air outside was thick with the scent of honeysuckle and something faintly coppery, like blood in well water.

He leaned lazily against the oak’s trunk like he’d grown from it. Like he owned it. His sleeves were rolled, and his shirt rumpled. Shadows seemed to tuck themselves around his boots like hounds curling at their master’s feet. 

Once again, he let the silence simmer between you for a moment. If he was surprised you came out, he didn’t show it. 

You looked right back at him, jaw locked with some emotion that wasn’t quite courage. 

“I oughta tell you to leave,” you said, voice stifled but firm. 

He didn’t move. “Why don’t you?”

Your fingers knotted in the fabric of your nightdress. “Cause you won’t listen.”

That made him grin. “You’re smarter than you let on, preacher’s daughter.”

The night air wrapped tight around the both of you. The oak branches swayed without wind.

You stepped off the porch, slow like stepping into a grave you’d dug yourself. Dry leaves crunched beneath your feet as you got close enough to see his eyes already glinting that wrong shade. Like moonlight kissing iron.

He didn’t look monstrous tonight. Just wrong, like words spoken in reverse. 

You’d meant to confront him, to tell him to leave you alone. To make him. But now you stood before him, your voice softened like wax near flame. 

“Are you the devil?” It came out thin, breathy.

He let that sit in the air for a moment. A beat, then two. 

Then finally, “Would it matter if I was?” The words slithered straight down your spine.

You stared at him, heart thudding, lips parted, but no response seemed good enough. No verse, no warning, not even a whispered prayer. Because a part of you already knew. 

The devil in the pulpit wore rage and brimstone. 

The devil in the garden wore moonlight and a smile that made your knees weak. 

He pushed off the tree like he was just stretching his back, Like he hadn’t shattered your whole world view with those words.

You stood there like a deer caught by a hunter, bare feet in the loamy dark. The grass kissed your ankles, damp from the dew. The moonlight carved both of you into something unreal. Him all shadow and sharpened grin. You soft and lit from within like a lantern half-extinguished.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you whispered, but it came out too fragile. It didn’t sound like a protest; it sounded like longing dressed up in your Sunday best.

He stepped leisurely but with a certain deliberateness as the night seemed to part for him. “I ain’t the one who came knockin’, lamb,” he murmured. 

“I didn’t knock on nothin’,” you refuted. 

He looked at you through those searing eyes. “You came out the door, though.”

He reached you, then stood right in front of you. Close enough that you could smell the faint hints of aged cedar wood and burnt ashes and the unmistakable stench of blood. One of his hands lifted, slowly, to hover by your cheek. Not touching you yet, like he wanted you to touch him first.

“Tell me no,” he insisted.

Oh God, you should’ve. It was right there on your tongue, but you couldn’t get your voice to work. Not even as you felt a bead of sweat roll down your temple. From the heat, or fear, or something else you didn’t rightly know. 

Instead, you leaned forward like a sinner falling from the clouds of Heaven straight to the pits of Hell. It was just enough to let the tip of your nose brush his. Your breath caught in your throat, and you felt his exhale ghost across your lips like a curse. 

His fingers slid into your hair at the base of your skull and gripped. Not too tightly, but firm enough, as if testing whether or not you’d pull away. 

“Tell me no,” he provoked again, letting the sharp points of his teeth bare beneath a grin. “Go on, fight me.”

You did nothing. You said nothing. 

He chuckled. “Thought so.”

Then, before you could blink, he seized your shoulder with a grip like iron and spun you, swift and brutal as a summer storm. Your back hit his chest with a thud that knocked the breath from you, his body a wall of heat and muscle. 

One arm banded tight around your waist, the other clamped low on your hips, unyielding and possessive. Like he meant to etch his touch into your skin, make sure no part of you ever forgot it. 

You gasped, a soft, startled sound that was half swallowed by the night.

His breath dusted along your cheekbone, slow and scalding, as his hand slid up—up—to your throat. Not squeezing, just resting there. As if to remind you how easily he could. 

He leaned in, lips brushing the shell of your ear. 

“That noise?” he hummed, voice with a growl like thick honey. “Ain’t even half of what I’m gonna have you singin’ for me.”

Then his mouth was on yours.

It was rough, yes, but there was an underlying horrible delight in it. Like he was savoring a ripe apple from the Garden of Eden itself. 

He kissed you like he was committing sacrilege. It wasn’t tender or kind; it was sin made flesh and pressed to your mouth. Heated like he wanted to scorch your skin, ruin your body and soul alike. 

You whimpered into it before you could stop yourself, shame and want bleeding into each other. Becoming something you couldn’t tell apart from the other. His other hand came to rest at your waist, splayed over your hip like it belonged there. Like he’d known the shape of you long before you’d met, long before you were even born.

You were shaking, not from fear, but from the weight of everything you’d been told you must never want. 

He kissed you like he already owned your hunger. And maybe he did. 

Because when his lips left yours and trailed down the edge of your jaw, you tilted your head like you’d done it a hundred times. Like your body recognized him, even if your soul still hadn’t caught up. 

“You feel that?” He whispered against your neck. “That ache in your belly?”

You nodded before you realized you were moving. 

“It ain’t shame, sugar. That’s you wakin’ up.”

His tongue brushed your skin, and you whined, the sound catching on the back of your throat. You should’ve slapped him. Should’ve fled. 

But instead your fingers reached up to curl into his hair. 

You were dizzy. Drunk on the darkness and whatever he was made of. Your thighs pressed together as if they could cage the heat rising between them. As if they could quiet the throb that started the moment he touched you. 

“You know I can smell it, right?” He said, drawing back just enough to look you in the eye. “The blood dripping outta that pretty cunt.” His thumb swiped the corner of your mouth. 

A ragged gasp ripped out of you, loud and trembling, like it’d been wrenched from the bottom of your lungs. Heat flooded your cheeks—hotter than Hellfire, hotter than a July sun. You tried to turn, wide-eyed, unsure if you’d even heard him right. But his hand stayed steady at your throat, a quiet pressure that kept you still. Anchored in place like a lamb frozen before the slaughter. 

Your breath hitched again, this time rougher, rougher than the words he’d just spoken.

No one had ever spoken of your body like that. As if it weren’t sacred in the way of being a temple of God’s creation, but sacred in the way of what being his would feel like. What being hungered for felt like. What being known felt like.

Your whole life had been Bible verses and closed doors and whispered warnings. And now here was this…creature, saying the unsayable, grinning like he’s torn a veil straight off Heaven and made you look at what was behind it.

“You gonna let me taste?” His voice sang into your ear, raspy and filled with near giddy enthusiasm. 

“W-what?” The word barely made it out, brittle and panting, like it didn’t belong to you at all. Your head was spinning, thoughts colliding like thunderclouds. You weren’t sure if you’d imagined what he said, if the world was tilting, or you were simply losing your mind. Everything inside you recoiled and leaned in at the same time, like a moth drawn to flame. 

“Just a little taste. It’ll be good, I promise.”

His words slid across your skin like velvet and barbed wire. You felt them in your chest, in your belly, in the places of your body that remained unexplored. The world has gone too quiet around you. The branches, the air, your own breath. 

You froze in his arms. Not from fear, but from the nearness of the house just behind you, your parents asleep in their bedroom not twenty steps away. From the raw ache between your legs. From the heat twisting inside you and the shame curling around it like ivy. 

You wanted him. 

God help you; you wanted him.

But not here, not in the front yard. Not under your great-granddaddy’s tree. Not with the windows dark and your daddy dreaming just feet from where his hand gripped your waist like he had every right to.

Your hand left his hair to press against his chest. 

“I—” You swallowed hard. “No, I can’t.”

He went still. Real still. If you were a smarter girl, you’d be afraid right now. 

After a beat, he let out a low breath that sounded somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle.

“There she is,” he murmured, voice coaxing instead of mocking. “Little lamb has teeth after all.”

His hand dropped from your throat slowly, the other sliding away from your waist. He didn’t lurch back or scowl. He didn’t curse or shame you; he just let go.

“You ain’t angry?” You whispered.

He tilted his head, grin turning softer than what you’d seen before. “Nah, I’m not angry. ‘Cause you will say yes,” he said certainly. “One night soon.”

“Tomorrow,” you blurted out.

His brow lifted, one corner of his mouth ticking up. “Tomorrow?”he echoed, slow and teasing, like he wanted to roll the word across his tongue again just to savor the taste.

You nodded abashedly. “It’s Sunday. Mama and Daddy’ll be at evening service. I’ll stay home. Say I’m unwell.”

A smile bloomed across his face like the devil hearing a hymn warped just enough to suit him. “Well, now,” he drawled. “Ain’t you full of surprises?”

Your breath came fast, chest rising like the air had finally remembered how to move. 

“You’ll come?” You asked, quieter, like part of you still doubted he was real. That all this was just temptation stitched into a dream.

His eyes roved over you one last time. “You’ll be the one invitin’ me in.”

He took one more step back into the dark, the shadows seeming to reach out to surround him. He gave you a final crooked grin, then, like always, he was just gone.

The air sighed after him. The oak creaked softly, as if exhaling too. 

You stood in place for another moment, your heartbeat ringing like church bells in your ears.

Tomorrow.

 You’d spilled the word without thinking, without planning; now it hung in the shadows. Stitched into the air between the tree and porch. It felt inevitable, though. This moment, you, him. 

You turned toward the house, and the screen door groaned as you pushed it open. The hallway was still, lit only by the faint moonlight seeping through the kitchen lace. Your bare feet whispered across the floorboards, each one squeaking like they wanted to tattle.

When you entered your room, you didn’t go to the window. He wouldn’t be there, but he said he’d come back. And you believed he would. Not like a boy who was hungry and impulsive. But like something old and well practiced in the art of patience. 

As you lay in bed, quilt pulled to your chin, your knees ached from the chapel. But your lips were sore from his mouth. Somewhere beneath your ribs, a hunger had bloomed.

Because the devil in the garden hadn’t asked for your soul. Only your permission. And you’d given it.

MORNING CREPT IN SLOWLY AND SWOLLEN, HEAVY WITH THE SCENT OF RAIN AND YOUR DECISION. The sky outside hung pale and dull, as if the sun had second thoughts about rising. You stirred beneath your quilt, limbs stiff with ache, the ghost of his touch still clinging to your skin.

At the breakfast table, your movements were brittle, precise—a porcelain doll feigning breath. Spoon untouched. Biscuits going cold. You pressed a hand to your forehead, faking the flush of fever, and let your eyes linger unfocused on the woodgrain in the table like scripture too worn to read.

Your mama’s gaze was a blade behind her coffee cup. She eyed the tremble in your fingers, the pallor in your face. “You’re lookin’ a shade unwell,” she said at last, voice wrapped in thin linen concern, suspicion tucked neat beneath.

You didn’t look up. “Didn’t sleep good.”

The words rasped out like smoke from a chimney long gone cold.

You played the part through morning service, like a seasoned actress cast in her shining role. You wore your sickness like silk, light and convincing. Spoke only when spoken to. Let your eyes blur with imagined weariness. Folded your hands as if they weren’t stained with things that meant you’d burn in Hell. Sang the hymns like psalms of penance, though your mouth felt dry as ash.

When your daddy called for the wayward to rise, you stayed seated. When the prayer commenced, you bowed your head and kept your breath shallow. If they’d looked closer, they might’ve seen the lie curling beneath your lashes. 

But they believed you as easy as breathing. 

Easy as sin. 

By the time evening rolled around, you should’ve been in flames for how much you’d lied. But no lightning split the sky. No voice boomed from the heavens. Only the quiet nod of your father, the distracted sigh of your mother as she tied her shawl.

“A girl ain’t any good to the Lord if she’s too weak to stand,” your daddy said.

The words carried like a benediction, final and unquestioned. Your mama’s mouth twitched, tight as a drawstring purse, but she didn’t argue. Only adjusted her shawl and spared you a glance that lingered on your flushed cheeks. 

She left chicken broth simmering on the stove, the pot sweating like a guilty man in a prayer tent. “Don’t let it boil over,” she muttered, already halfway through the door.

You nodded, small and solemn as a lamb offered up on an altar.

The screen door clattered shut behind them, the sound sharp and thin in the warm hush of the house. A moment later, you heard the truck rumble to life, tires groaning down the gravel path like some beast being roused from its slumber. Then thick golden silence. 

The sun spilled sideways across the kitchen floor, the last light of it butter-yellow and dying. Shadows stretched long across the wood, and the house exhaled slow, as if even the walls knew what you were gonna invite in.

You sat at the edge of your bed with your hands folded tight in your lap. The lamplight fluttered beside you, casting the room in warmth and shadow. 

Your knees bounce once, twice, before you caught them with your palms. You swore you could hear the mantel clock ticking from the front room, but it could’ve been your ears ringing too. It grew louder with each passing second, like the calling of vultures as they circled a carcass. 

You shouldn’t have done this.

The thought passes through your mind as quickly as a hare. 

Any good girl would’ve known better. God-Fearing girls kept their windows closed at night and didn’t go out to have conversations with demons. They didn’t ache like this, in their bellies and bones.

Your window was closed, the front door too. He couldn’t come in unless you invited him. 

You could still stop it. You could still crawl into bed, hide beneath the hush of your parents’ God, and pray till your tongue went dry.

But the truth was, you didn’t want to pray no more. Not to a God who never answered you. Not to a god that was full of so much hatred and wrath.

You felt closer to the divine when he touched you. When he acknowledged the ache inside of you and didn’t shame you for it. When he decided your longing was his very own guitar string to pluck, then you ever felt when you cried out to God.

You wanted to know what it was like to be chosen. Not by God, but by the thing that watched you from the darkness like he wanted to devour you. You wanted his wickedness to ravage you. Let it seep into your soul and let you free.

But it still didn’t stop your fingers from shaking. Didn’t stop the thin sweat from blooming at your neck. 

The house had gone still. Too still. The kind of hush that settles on graveyards before storms. The kind you’d grown to recognize the last few nights. You could feel it building in your marrow. The pressure, the waiting. The dread that didn’t feel quite like dread. 

The clicking of the parlor clock bleeds through the walls, every second scraping against your skin like the bite of a distant insect. 

There was a knock.

Your breath caught, snagged in your throat like a fishhook. The room seemed to pulse with the sound. The wallpaper breathing. The floorboards holding their breath.

You rose like something called from a grave, unsure if it was your soul or your sin dragging you forward. Each step toward the door was heavy as a church bell. Your nightgown whispered against the wood floors, and every inch of you felt stretched—thin, lit from within like a lantern at the end of its oil.

You could feel the thrum of him through the wood as you reached the door. 

It looked the same as always—plain pine, white paint flaking at the edges, Mama’s lace curtain tucked in the window. But tonight, it felt like a boundary. A final veil between the life you were born into and the one you’d invited with your own trembling tongue.

You placed your hand on the knob.

“Lord forgive me,” you whispered, but you didn’t mean it. Not really. Because there was no salvation in what you were about to do.

Just surrender. 

The brass was cool under your palm, a mercy against the heat rising from your bones. You knew what stood on the other side. Knew he was waiting. 

You cracked it open slow like. The night spilled in like a secret, soft and damp and full of promise. 

He stood on the porch, the light catching on the edge of his smirk. He didn’t move, didn’t even shift his weight. 

He stood with the patience of something older than the air around you, something well-fed on the rituals of yearning girls and the sweet rot of their defiance.

The threshold hummed between you like a live wire. You could feel it. That old, bone-deep rule, the one no sermon ever spoke of, but every trembling child knew. Evil couldn’t cross unless you let it.

His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of night, catching what little moonlight the porch allowed. There was no white in them, no mercy, just a glint like storm-wet iron and the promise of undoing.

“Well,” he drawled, voice low and velvet-thick, “ain’t this a pretty picture?”

He took a breath, though he probably didn’t need to, and the porch boards beneath him groaned as if straining under the weight of something not entirely flesh. “I can’t come in,” he said, quiet, like the words were meant to be stitched into the air and left hanging there.

“I know,” you answered. All you needed to do was say the words. 

His lips parted, not quite a smile this time, but something softer, something that made your belly twist. “Then say it,” he said. “Say it proper, darlin’.”

A shiver ran up your spine, cold as baptismal water. You stared at him, at the way the shadows clung to his shoulders like a mantle, at the way the porch light dared not kiss his skin. You thought of all the stories your mama told, of blood and beasts and doors left ajar.

But you didn’t believe in fairy tales anymore.

You believed in what was right in front of you. 

So you parted your lips and let the words fall, soft as rain on a coffin lid. “You can come in.”

The moment you said it, the air seemed to shift. Like the house exhaled, or maybe it was you. Something unlatched inside, something old and hungry and no longer chained to the warnings of your father’s God.

He crossed the threshold without a sound. Not a step. Not a breath. He simply was there, inside. Closer than you thought he’d get.

Your lungs seized.

He smelled like blood still. You were beginning to think he always carried the scent with him. He leaned in close enough that your heartbeat stuttered.

“Thank you,” he whispered, voice all honey and hunger.

And then the door clicked shut behind him with the sound of something final. 

He didn’t jump on you right away, just looked around your home with seemingly curious eyes. His gaze moved through the house like a ghost tasting the air. Like he could see the prayers still stitched into the wood grain. Smell the repentance caught between wallpaper seams.

You watched him, chest tight, body wired with something above nervousness. He didn’t say anything else at first, didn’t need to. The hush between you was a thing with weight, heavier still for what was about to be broken.

His gaze found yours again, and in it was that same stillness he wore like a second skin—like he was made of waiting.

“Do you... want anything?” You asked, the words foolish, half-wilted on your tongue.

He stepped closer. Just one pace. But it was enough to draw the warmth from your skin and replace it with something cooler. “I already got what I came for.”

His voice slipped over your ears like dark silk. The space between you seemed to shrink, and you weren’t sure if it was his doing or your own. He raised a hand and touched the edge of your jaw. Just the pad of his thumb tracing the corner of your mouth, where your breath caught and held.

“Told myself I’d wait,” he murmured. “Let you lead.” His eyes dropped to your lips, then returned, gleaming. “But I’m a selfish thing sometimes.”

And before you could reply, before you could decide if you’d stop him, he bent forward and kissed you.

It was softer than you expected. So unlike the first time. There was no fire, no bloodlust. Just the aching press of mouth on mouth, as if he meant to read you by taste. Your hands curled at your sides, then rose of their own accord, fingers brushing the stiff cotton at his chest. His palm came to rest against the curve of your back, anchoring you in the middle of the storm you’d conjured.

You moaned against his lips, a sharp and involuntary sound, and he pulled back just enough to speak into your mouth, voice roughened with want. “Show me.” You didn’t ask what he meant. You already knew.

You stumbled backward down the hall, his mouth never far from yours, hands on your waist like a brand. He followed you with that inhuman stillness, that predator’s grace. Each step was made not of footsteps but of intent.

And when the bedroom door groaned shut behind you—

He turned you with fluid, startling ease, hands firm as iron as he swept you off your feet. You gasped, instinctively clinging to him, arms locking around his shoulders. Your legs, guided more by instinct than thought, wrapped around his waist as though your body already knew what to do. The world tipped, spun, and all you could feel was the press of him, his hands, and the dizzying pull of gravity undone. 

Lowering you down to the linen sheets of your bed, he moved like judgment falling slow from Heaven. His hands hiked the hem of your nightgown up your legs, bunching the fabric like offerings at the feet of an altar. The mattress beneath you was soft, rich with rot and temptation. 

He positioned himself between them, a serpent coiled in the garden, barring any retreat. One hand dropped to the inside of your thigh, fingers trailing higher like a creeping passion vine. You felt yourself relax into the sheets, widening the passage of your legs for him without even meaning to.

He watched you earnestly, like you were the only holy thing he put faith in. His hands reached for the soft cotton of your panties, like he was peeling back a church veil, uncovering something too sacred for daylight. When he pulled the fabric aside and leaned in, he let out a moan like he was breathing in sin straight from the source. 

A sound rumbled from his chest, low and devout. “Oh God almighty,” he near groaned, voice thick with awe and hunger. “Ain’t you a sight, darlin’.”

In a flash, your panties were off, and you were exposed to him, the night air, and God Himself. You knew you should've been embarrassed; the shame should’ve been eating you alive. But even with your bleeding center, raw and red as a dogwood bloom in spring, all you can do is look down at the demon between your legs. 

By the lord, he’s drooling. Thick spit glistening on his chin, dripping slowly like sap from tree bark. His eyes were lit with hunger that bordered on worship.

You’d been taught since the first time you bled that it was a curse. That it made you unclean. A doorway for devils, a mark of Eve’s sin carved fresh each month into your flesh. Mama said that blood like that was how the devil spoke. That it had to be washed out, silenced with scripture, buried beneath cotton drawers and long skirts and locked knees.

But here he was, salivating at the sight alone, eyes blown wide as if your body’s bleeding was the beginning of a gospel only he could read.

That’s why when he said, “You smell so sweet, darlin’. You gonna let me taste you?”

You nodded, “Yes.”

His mouth is on you in an instant. 

You nearly let out a scream, but your continued piousness stitched your lips shut. Your fingers twisted into the blankets instead, clenching around them until your bones hurt. He licks a stripe up your center, pressing harder against the top where something shoots hot white spikes down your spine.

Stars blink in and out of view behind your eyelids like fireflies caught in a mason jar. His mouth moves slowly, like easing into cold creekwater. He leaves little licks on that tender bud of nerves at the apex, drawing sounds from you like spirits from a grave, keening soft in the back of your throat. His mouth feels like the first warm rays of a new summer sun breaking through the clouds as his tongue glides up and then rolls over that button. He presses a sugary sweet kiss to your slit, hands prying open your legs as wide as they’d go. 

Turns out, that sweetness of his was just borrowed time—grace before the ruin.

He growled into you, like something pulled from the floorboards of the church, thick with rot. Then his wickedness grins, all teeth and no mercy. He grips your hips tight, nails sinking into your flesh like marks left by the devil making a covenant. His tongue works you over with near evil intent. He consumes you like it’s the only desire he’s ever had, gulping down every drop of your essence like it’s a sacrament. Like you’re the altar and he’s been starving for centuries. 

Your legs shake in his hold as the moans you’re holding back threaten to spill out, scattering like dandelion seeds caught in the wind. When he moves to suck on that delightful spot, again you can’t help but cry out, “Oh God!”

The snarl that tears from his throat thrums through your core, like a storm shaking the rafters. When you glance down, you’re met with eyes glowing the color of fresh blood spilled on altar steps. Feral and lit with something not of this world. A predator’s gaze.

“No name you should be sayin’ but mine,” he growls, voice rough as bark and twice as deep. “Remmick, sweetheart. That’s all you need.”

“Remmick,” you say breathlessly, testing how his name rolls from your tongue. Like the strike of a match just before it catches fire.

He hums low in his throat. “That’s right, baby,” he said before his face disappeared inside you once again. 

Something warm is coiling in your lower belly, winding you up like a pocket watch about to snap. Each swipe, each roll of his tongue, has that feeling growing tighter and tighter. Your voice pushes past your mouth in quiet cracks. 

It’s so wrong, downright wicked, what he’s doing to you. Wrong that you’re lettin’ him, wrong still that you don’t want to stop. Can’t even bring yourself to think about stopping, not when it feels like this. Like salvation dressed in silken sin. How can something born of such pleasure be damnable?

It surely doesn’t feel like Hell. It feels like Heaven’s front porch, and you’re laid bare beneath a man that knows every secret you swore to bury. If this is damnation, then maybe it’s always been stitched into your skin. Maybe Remmick’s touch ain’t dragging you down… maybe it’s just showing you where you already belong.

That thought should scare you senseless, but you can’t feel anything aside from him drinking from you so deeply, like he’s trying to crawl inside of you.

He speeds up his ministrations, his tongue raking across your core, licking all the way up to that sweet spot. You gasp as a fire begins to accompany the ringing coil in your belly. His mouth is so warm against you, laced with carnal motive. Everything sounds so soaked down where he works: the glide of his tongue, the quell of your blood, and the wetness from your arousal. 

He’s done being slow; he’s done teasing you to death. The unhurried air about him is gone as he devours everything your cunt gives him.

“Damn,” he groans against you, lips moving to kiss the inside of your thigh. “Never tasted anything quite like you.” Then, quicker than you can draw a shaky breath, there was a small sting. A sharp and sudden feeling, like the prickle of a thorn. You felt his fang split the sensitive skin, felt the warmth of your blood bloom from the cut. 

Remmick chuckled low, the sound curling around you like smoke. “My bad,” he drawled, voice thick with mock apology. “Sorry, darlin’.” But the glint in his eyes betrayed him; it hadn’t been an accident, and you both knew it. Before you could answer—not that you had the breath to—he dipped his head again, tongue darting out to lick the trail of blood. 

His eyes flash for a split moment, and a rumble of pure animalistic satisfaction comes from his chest. He redoubles his efforts once his mouth is back on your center. 

You're shaking all over now, barely able to conceal your growing cries. You slap one hand over your mouth, the other going to fist in his hair.

His tongue focuses on that bud, circling over it with obscene faithfulness. Your fingers in his hair pull without meaning to, making him shudder between your legs, moaning into you like he wants you to rip the strands from his scalp. 

Remmick moves his attention lower, to the entrance of your very being. His tongue delves into that passage, thrusting deep enough it had your back arching off the ground. His nose nudges your bundle of nerves in time with the press of his tongue. 

That coil in your lower belly threatens to give. Fireworks burst in your vision as his mouth stays locked in that position. Thrust, nudge, thrust, nudge. Even as your hips begin to rise up to meet him, he holds you still with his arms bolted around your thighs. 

You squeal behind your palm, tears pricking in your eyes as the feeling that’s been building burns through you. Like the holiest Hellfire merged together by your coupling. It races across your every nerve ending, Remmick groaning when he feels you clench around his tongue.

And he doesn’t stop, not when your thighs close around his head. Not when your hand in his hair tries to pull him up. Not when you whimper his name to get his attention. 

He keeps running his tongue over you, cleaning up every drop of blood, and your arousal. When he finally does move away, raising his face to look at you, he’s an absolute mess.

The silence that followed was a different kind of divine. 

The kind never heard in churches, but in the hush of a forest after a storm. Not peaceful, but the aching stillness of something changed. Something that was never coming back. 

You laid curled in the mess of it, linens beneath your back, the ghost of him still between your thighs. Shame and satisfaction bleed together in your bones. 

Your body was still trembling as Remmick leaned back on his heels. His hands smoothed up your thighs, calming the shaking even if he didn’t mean to. His eyes no longer glowed red, but they hadn’t dulled either. They watched you like a man who’d found God in a place no one else thought to look.

“Well now,” he said, voice lowly laced with honey. “Look at you.”

You flushed, turning your face into the crook of your arm, ashamed of the tears still clinging to your lashes and the heat still pooling between your legs even after everything. Your body felt unfamiliar, like you’d been rewritten. 

Remmick chuckled, soft and smug, but not unkind. “Didn’t think you’d come apart like that. Thought I’d have to work harder.”

You shot him a look then. Half glaring and half gawking at him. 

He grinned wider, teeth white but not sharp now. “Ah, don’t give me that face. You should be proud, sugar. That was a kind of worship, what you just gave me.”

He reached for you, slow as syrup spilling from a spoon, hands sliding over your hips. You flinched under his touch from sensitivity, your skin feeling fuzzy with little aftershocks. And your body, the traitorous thing it was, arched into his palms like a flower reaching for sun.

“We ain’t done,” he said, voice curling low in his chest. 

Your breath caught when he dipped to kiss your belly. Once. Then again. Moving higher as he went, his lethal canines scraping along your flesh. 

You glanced down to look at him, gasping when you see what’s now decorating your stomach. Bloody kiss marks are smeared across your skin. His messy face making you stained right along with him. 

Remmick smiled against you, eyes flickering up to meet your stunned expression. “Let me ruin you proper,” he whispered with soiled lips. 

He moaned into you, eyes still locked on yours as he slid a hand between your legs. One of his fingers pressed into that passage, same as his tongue had done moments ago. 

You gasped at the foreign feeling, head pressing back into the pillow.

“Nuh uh,” he scolded. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

You do without hesitation, eyes darting back down as if beguiled. His mouth continued to press kisses to your belly while his finger worked in and out of you. Your breath began to quicken again, sparks of that fire reigniting. He added a second finger, making you whine at the intrusion. But it wasn’t an awful feeling; it was strange but satisfying. 

“Remmick!” You cried out when he curled them upwards, pressing against something that brought tears to your eyes. He kept that movement up once, twice, and three times before you went to close your legs around him. A pathetic few tears spilling over. 

“Oh, darlin’.” He cooed, prying your legs back open. He moved then, body stretched over yours, chest brushing yours with each breath he didn’t need to take, his weight settling on top of you. 

You shivered as you sniffled, caught somewhere between the aftershocks and the ache for more. 

“Shh, sweetheart,” he murmured, brushing his nose against your cheek. “I know what you need. I know how to help.”

One of his hands slid into your hair, fingers gliding through the strands with a sweetness you hadn’t expected. He stroked along your scalp, petting you like something precious. Like you hadn’t just let him defile you beneath your daddy’s roof. Like you weren’t still marked by his mouth and your own undoing.

“You want me to help you?” He asked, a certain amount of smugness dripping into his tone. 

You gave a soft, half-broken nod. 

That was all it took for him to rip your nightgown over your head. You had no time to be concerned for your modesty, because he was already fumbling with his belt, unbuckling and unzipping in a haste that was almost reeling. He tore the suspenders from his shoulders, shoving his trousers down before working on his shirt. Before you could fully prepare yourself, he was back over you. Your naked bodies perfectly aligned with each other. 

“Ain’t no sense in drawin’ it out,” he spoke against your throat, voice thick and taut with something close to hunger. “Cunt’s already beggin’ f’me. 

His hips rocked forward, not yet inside but threatening, the hard press of him sliding along the heat of you. You gasped, legs twitching to close around him, but he growled—low and guttural—grabbing your thighs and spreading them wider, anchoring them with his own. 

“Promise it won’t hurt too bad,” he said, kissing the corner of your mouth, gentler than he had any right to be.

Your fingers clutched at his back, at his arms, nails catching skin, but he didn’t flinch. If anything, it made him press in harder, dragging the thick length of him through your slickness with a hiss through his teeth.

“God,” he muttered, head dropping to your shoulder. “You’re soaked for me. Didn’t think you could get sweeter, but damn.”

Then, with no further warning, he pushed inside.

The air left your lungs in one shattered breath, back arching off the bed as the stretch burned through you. He filled you in one steady thrust, rough but precise, like a man who knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t see the point in waiting.

“Remmick—” you whimpered, voice high and caught between a sob and a moan.

“I know, I know,” he rasped, pressing a kiss to your temple even as he drew back to surge forward again. “It’s hurting so good, ain’t it? But you can take it. You will take it.”

He set a hard rhythm, driving into you in a way that’d leave you sore later on. You swore you could feel his craving wrap around you with each thrust, tight and invisible, choking out everything else. Your hands had started fisted around the sheets, knuckles bone-white, but now they raked up his spine, wanting just to feel him. His muscles jumped beneath your touch, a tension coiled tighter than wire. 

With your hands occupied, your moans and cries were free to float through the air. Remmick’s hold on your hips allowed him to pull you into him. He did so roughly, as if to remind you where he was, what you’d let him do. 

An especially harsh snap of his hips had you sucking in a stuttering breath. It felt like you were being split apart, like a log sliced through with an axe, but it was the most divine thing you’d ever experienced. He made love to you deeply enough that it felt like he was caressing your soul.

Remmick is groaning and panting above you, seemingly losing his own composure right along with you. Cock pressing into you as one hand moves from your hips to between your bodies. His fingers find that bud again, pinching and teasing it until you were crying again. 

“Keep crying, sweetheart,” he moaned into your neck. “Y’tears are just as sweet.”

You shuddered at his words, tears still spilling, core clenching around his length. He grunted at the increased tightness, breathing deeply to steady himself as he drove inside of you with more urgency than before. His tongue darts out to lick up your throat before sucking a mark there. His fangs teasing their sharp edges over the sensitive skin. 

“Remmick, I…” Your damp eyes rolled back as a loud moan interrupted you. The incessant movement of his hips made it hard to form a coherent thought. Along with his fingers swirling your bud with faster and faster motions. Your body quivered as you felt that fire build up once more. 

“You gonna cum again so soon?” He chuckles, basking in the control he’s got over you. 

“Yes, please,” you can’t help but plead. 

His eyes flash that dangerous crimson, fangs bearing as he grins down at you. He picks up his pace, all but battering his cock into you. He still works his digits over your bud, overwhelming you with the onslaught of feelings. 

Your belly coils tighter and tighter like before. That warmth bubbling within you, begging to boil over. When it finally does, it’s the most violent thing you’ve experienced. It burns but in the most euphoric sensations, making you clamp down around him as you nearly scream his name. 

Remmick paws at you, movements faltering just a bit. He moves your legs higher up on his waist, letting himself sink deeper inside of you. Stars blink in and out of your vision; you whimper as you feel him invade every corner of your being.

His moans become more frequent, more loud. His hold on you becomes more bruising with each sharp thrust. Watching him lose even a piece of his control seems to draw out your release. You clench around him again, making an almost pained grunt leave his parted lips. 

“I need—” he mumbles barely audibly before he’s slicing a fang along your neck. That small, recognizable sting blooms across your skin again as he splits it open. Hot blood flows down your throat, but he’s licking it up before covering the cut with his mouth. 

He sucks your blood from the wound, still slamming into your center. It only takes a few more before he freezes, a deep moan reverberating against your skin. Warmth seeps into you as he finishes. 

You both remained still for a moment. The room smelling of sweat and sin, like a baptism gone wrong. Every shuddering breath you took felt like it snagged on something unseen, a seam torn open and left to bleed. 

Your body trembled beneath him, limbs slack, soul aching in the hollows where his name had carved itself. There was a warmth between your legs that wasn’t all yours and a dull sting at your throat that pulsed in time with your heartbeat. His mark. His claim. And you had let him do all that and more. 

Remmick collapsed beside you, not with the grace of shadow, but with the slow, satisfied sprawl of something fed full. One arm draped heavy across your waist, anchoring you in place like he feared you might float away.

Neither of you spoke for some time, only breathed each other in. The tip of his nose brushing against your temple as if he needed to memorize the scent of you post-ruin.

Then his voice came, low, rough-edged, and tender, like gravel soaked in molasses. “You alright, lamb?”

Your throat was too raw for speech, so you just nodded, once or twice, eyes fluttering closed.

He shifted, careful this time, easing the tangled linens higher to shield you. His fingers found your hair again, dragging through it in absent strokes. Not with lust now, but with reverence. Like you were a song he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“You’re shakin’,” he murmured.

“It’s a good shake,” you whispered back.

He grinned as he kissed your shoulder with blood stained lips.

You turned your face into his chest, where his heart didn’t beat but his warmth still lingered. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” you confessed.

He curled around you like the dark curling around a dying candle. “That’s alright,” he assured. “Reckon you never liked who you were before anyhow.”

You couldn’t think about how he was probably right. Couldn’t think about how at some point he’d have to leave. Maybe never come back. You didn’t want to think about going back to normal preacher’s girl life after this. After him. 

Even if it meant your soul was damned, you didn’t care much. You just wanted to be his, not saved, but his.

Outside, the cicadas sang like mourners, but in his arms, you knew salvation. Not the kind Heaven promised, but the kind that came with being held in the devil’s gentle hands.

﹙taglist﹚ @001-side

Listened to Ethel Cain on repeat while I wrote this.

[vel-vet61]

Remmick eating Reader out, involving his nose to grind on the clit and stroke through the folds? He’s a sniffy little freak.

though remmick’s been around hundreds of thousands of years, he had yet to find a smell and a taste as raw and righteous as your pussy. he longs day and night for you to lay down and spread for him again and let him sniff and lick as he pleases, kissing your thighs to prep before diving the crux of his nose in to push on your clit, get you begging, get you wet, get you excited.

he sniffs along your slit like a mad man, not hiding his fetish at all in the slightest with the deep inhales he goes in for to take you in your precious petals that are doused with his favorite scents ever. whether you’d been sweating in the heat or from a generous workout, whether your slit was washed clean and fresh. whether you were free bleeding onto those sheets profusely, his tongue and his nose was there to take your scent all the way in. appreciate you up and down.

he drags the bridge of his nose, smoothing it up and down your inner lips, leaving himself a residue of shine right on him while you’re clenching for him, clutching on his hair and moaning his name like a slut that just wasnt getting enough. remmick gives in eventually, lets his tongue in the mix and drags it long and hard and deep within you, your wet, needier depths. his cock is ignored in those god awful pants and suspenders, humping like a dog into your sheets while your feet are stuck up in the air while he ravages.

sniffing and licking, fucking you with his stubborn nose and his wiggly tongue for hours. loves it when you steadily leak out onto him, smothering his face in your musk. he’ll snatch your clit up and suck on it, humming on it and looking up at you in a haze, that damn nose still nestled into your pubes and getting his heightened senses filled just with you.

when you’re about to cum he can smell it, smell how your insides twitch and contort and find desperate ways to hump and clench down on something, on parts of remmick. sometimes he’ll draw that feeling out for you, leaving your pussy alone in misery and taking turns to sniff your thighs, the rest of your skin, even your belly. but your insistent whining doesn’t let him keep fucking around on you for long, gripping his hair with force and pressing his face back where it belongs. he’ll ultimately always give in with a sly smirk, smiling into your pussy while licking and sucking on her again. still taking advantage of the point of his nose, pushing it onto your crotch back and forth, over and over, and back again until you’re leaking more and screaming.

“want you to lemme smell that cum when it’s comin’ outta you, girl. let go for me. c’mon. get excited for me.”

your pussy is milked, clenching like she’s helpless from his tongue and his words. he takes both his thumbs to keep those lips spread wide open so you’re gaping right in front of him. that stupid nose gliding all around the rim, pushing back on your needy clit in harsh beats. you warn him you’re about to cum all over his face, and he hums and nods to encourage you, keep you going. remmick’s face is a fucking mess, slathered in your wet arousing stench, still not even through with him and already using his facial features like a slip and slide. humping for that sweet friction of his tongue and his nose.

“cum on me. cum on my face. let that pussy take what she need, yeah. atta girl.”

after some dirty words spewed into your pussy you’re done for, creaming and convulsing. still riding on his face while he lays there and takes it, face all shiny and pretty while you gush and clench right on top of him. he readily sniffs and drinks it all in, tongue wiggling about while his nose takes sharp inhales to sniff your finishing fluids in. doesn’t care if he can’t properly breathe for a second, he doesn’t even have to.

when your pussy’s fresh off a nut, you’re always still leaking and catching your breath, slowly coming back to earth after the wave rushes over you. remmick palms your thighs and kisses you through it, talks to you and your pussy, says he’s proud of her, that he always loves the smell of her taste. he’ll kiss your clit and nuzzle it before you wince from tenderness, and even then he can’t seem to back off until you’re pawing his face away.

smearing that smiling, wicked face covered in all your wettest orgasms, and seeing how giddy he looks all because of it never ever gets old

—

hhhhh I’m soft and hard in love

[devourrrmee]

oh man! oh boy!! …his fangs and hands 🫦

[virtualflowergirl]

Remmick begging to come in, pleading that he'll be a good boy. Remmick kneeling on your porch, panting, a man starved of your touch.

To

Remmick pounding into you, telling you the mistake you made by welcoming him. How he's going to knock you up and make you eternally his.

[i-smoke-chapstick]

It's warm in your room. Too warm. His bare chest is sticky against your back, his breath heavy and damp where it ghosts against your neck.

You’re tangled up in him, the two of you still half-naked, sheets kicked down to your ankles. He’s curled around you like he’s afraid someone’s going to rip you out of his arms, like the last hour wasn’t proof enough that you finally let him in- for real this time.

Remmick always talks after. He needs to. Needs to fill the quiet like he’s afraid it’ll mean something’s changed if he doesn’t.

And God, he can’t shut up.

"I thought about you," He murmurs into the shell of your ear. "Like this. For too long." He’s still trying to catch his breath, but his hands are already roving again- lazy now, just skimming your waist, mapping the softness of your hips with a desperate adoration.

"Every night I’d lie there and imagine this. Not just the sex- I mean, that too, obviously." He snickers, eyes flitting between your entwined bodies.

"But shit, baby, you’re just so... perfect." He nuzzles closer, planting a kiss under your jaw, voice dipping into that velvet tone he only uses when he’s honest. "But this. You letting me stay. Letting me touch you after. Hold you."

You reach back and tangle your fingers in his hair. It’s damp with sweat. He practically purrs at the contact, pressing a kiss to your shoulder like he wants to crawl inside your skin.

"Wasn't too much, was I?” he asks, quieter now. He murmurs with something raw, almost something boyish. But you know better. The smirk in his tone when he says it- he knows. He knows you couldn't get enough.

When you shake your head, he presses another rewarding kiss to your neck, humming in pleasure.

"That's what I thought." He whispers, squeezing you close. "You gon' let me in tomorrow night too, yeah?"

"Remmick-"

"Shh." He hushes you, shaking his head in mock displeasure, a finger coming up to your lips to quiet you. "Just nod your pretty little head."

You think of what could happen- what you're doing. Letting a killer love you like this. But against your better judgement, you nod, looking into those lovestruck eyes he casts on you.

A slow grin spreads across his face. You're already underneath him when he slides back in- half hard, too sensitive, and still not done. The room smells like sex, humid and sweet, and his chest is flushed as he rolls his hips slow, lazy.

"You feel that? Nah, that’s love, darlin'. That’s me loving you so slow, so deep, so damn good no one else could ever even try." His voice is a broken overstimulated growl.

He kisses your spine once. Then again. Then again.

"This is all ours." He urges, baring his teeth, "Never gon' let anyone take it from us." He promises, almost obsessively into your shoulder, letting you feel him stretch you open.

You believe him. You feel it in every lazy, desperate thrust. In the way he wraps himself around you tighter, keeps you locked against him. You briefly realize that you're all he has.

And he won't ever, ever let you go.

[budgiefeatherboa]

Modern!Remmick being obsessed with anonymous camgirl!reader…

I just know his creepy ass would find a way to access the internet from whatever ditch he dwells in… and once he discovers these kinds of websites you know it’s over. Never in his 600+ years has he seen some shit like this. Maybe he even gifts money (from god knows where) during your streams.

He obviously ends up tracking you down one night. Gets stiff in his pants just seeing your face for the first time, but hides it well. Manipulates his way into being let inside your home… before revealing himself.

You expect him to get violent and threaten you to give him what he wants. But of course this down-bad freak gets right on his knees and begs to join you on camera. Promising to “help you cum harder than y’ever did before, darlin’… we can do whatever you want. We’ll put on such a good show.”

And then the manipulation pops right back out of the pathetic display. He stares up at you, something inhuman glinting in his eyes. “I’m your biggest fan. Don’t I deserve it?”

[matrixfangs]

blessed be the whore - part 1

Priest!Remmick x fem!reader

summary: The old priest in your small town has died a gruesome death. The new one has an... eccentric way of doing things. 18+ READERS ONLY PLEASE!!!

word count: 6.3k

warnings: smut, sacrilegious actions, blood, praying, quoting the Bible during sex, sex in a church, sex on an altar, P in V, Oral F! Recieving, cum play, reader's first time, religious themes/imagery, blood play, blasphemy, abuse of a rosary, drool, squirting, degradation if you squint, praise kink, allusions to murder

a/n: HELLO! I have been working on this fic for weeks, and I finally came to the conclusion that it just needs to be a two-parter. I want to keep this A/N short and sweet because I have so many people to credit, all from Rosie's lovely Discord server! Firstly, my two beta-readers, @confetti-cakemix and @fuckoffbard! LIZ, YOU ARE MY NORTH STAR WHEN I'M WRITING, THE BESTTT, and CONFETTI!!! YOUR DESCRIPTION OF IMAGERY, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE JUST BETA READING, IS PEAK. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to tag each and every person in the server that also gave me suggestions and helped me in ANY way! @spikedfearn @somnolenthour @citrinedigital @eternalstrigoii @le-temps-viendra36 @iceemochaa @hyoscyxmine @otxiycohcoy @flixpii @faestunna Clown (also not sure if they have a tumblr but that's my twin!!) @cherryxhaze. If I forgot ANYONEEE please please comment or DM me and I'll add you immediately! I got so much help in the server, and I had to scour through almost a month of messages to find everyone!

tags: @moyavsemoya @slasherflickchick @reneeswrld @made2wait @horror-moviehoe @arminstopguy @weirdblob21 @writersp3n @endofradio @thecontortionistsportal @notabot2 @spikedfearn @fuckoffbard @madkingcrowley @manyimaginativemuses

The new pastor of your quaint village church was strange.

The village itself was old. You’d grown up with wrinkled hands drawing ash crosses on your forehead, strings of garlic hanging on doorways, barefeet in hot, red dirt. When you were younger, you were never allowed out after dark. No exceptions. Kids who went out after dark went missing. Their names became prayers on the congregation's lips at each church service.

The old pastor, Monsignor Quinn, had been so kind. He’d listen to your panicked confessions, fleeting feelings of lust with a boy from school. Brushes of fingers against skin that kept you awake at night. 

He’d died so suddenly. He hadn’t been very old, not even past his thirties. And the weirdest part - the local sheriff wouldn’t tell you or anyone in your village how he died. You heard rumors of blood-streaked walls and screams that had only been heard by those awake that late into the night. You watched people cross themselves as they passed his boarded-up house. Little children crossed the street to avoid passing it.

And now, you were shaking the new pastor’s hand, rough and firm. Father Remmick. His lips curled like he could tell what you were thinking, his tongue running through the folds of your twisted mind. His eyes, calm and clear blue, never left yours when he introduced himself. Your father’s arm rested protective and heavy on your shoulders, the heat radiating from him comforting you like a blanket.

“Pleasure to meet y’all.” Father Remmick drawled, hand still wrapped around yours. His accent was strange - deep, and Southern, but mixed with something old that you couldn’t place. Something thick and gooey, honey falling slowly off a wooden spoon. “I’m sorry for what happened to Monsignor Quinn. Tragic… truly.”

He didn’t look sorry—not really. His other hand pressed to his chest in sorrow, but his eyes shone with a playful gleam that was sinister, bloody, and cold. 

Your voice was dry when you spoke to him for the first time, having to turn your chin up to look at him. “What happened to him?”

“Oh,” Remmick’s smile fell, but the concern didn’t feel real. It felt mocking. You felt his thumb stroke your knuckle. “Nothing that needs to fall on ears as sweet as yours.”

Your father’s arm tightened, and you were grateful for his presence. When Remmick released your hand, you fought the urge to wipe your palm on your dress, to wipe him off of you. His crooked grin remained, and his tongue slowly ran over his bottom lip, licking the sweat from his chin.

“I can’t wait to get to know you.” He looked away from you like he had to force his eyes away, like it was painful not to be looking at you. His gaze left you feeling naked, the inside of your body tingling like someone had dug around inside and pulled out everything sacred.  “All of you, of course.”

His sermon had been even stranger than he was. He said all the right words, but they came out of a twisted mouth. A serpent’s tongue ran over the words of God, words meant to comfort and uplift, but coming from him, made your stomach twist. Your fingertips ran over the silver rosary underneath your shirt as he spoke, his eyes never drifting down to the Bible before him. He knew the words by heart, and they still sounded so wrong. 

When you got on your knees to pray, you felt something so deeply, internally wrong in your chest. You couldn’t help but look up while everyone else’s heads were down, their lips moving silently in prayer. You found Father Remmick, hands wrapped tightly around the lectern, looking at you. His knuckles were white, his eyes roaming over you ardently. A rust color flashed over the blue of his eyes, like the nictitating membrane of a reptile. His gaze violated you, drilled a hole through your chest.  

For a single heartbeat you kept your gaze locked on his. When he smiled at you, you swore you watched something crawl under the skin of his forehead, two points—like horns—begging to poke out of his skin.

That night, and for many nights onward, you dreamt of Father Remmick.

The church was empty, save for you and him. His clerical collar glowed against the black of his button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal veiny forearms and slender fingers following it. Fingers that reach for your rosary beads, let them clatter to the floor. He spoke in a language you didn’t know, touching you in a way you’d never felt. A way that felt too good to be holy.

When you woke, you prayed. You prayed for hours into the early morning until the skin on your knees was raw and your eyes were sore from being squeezed tight. The rosary left a red and stinging imprint on your hand that would be there for days. 

But what frightened you most was the throb between your legs, pounding rhythmically and making you yearn for… fullness. After every hour of prayer it seemed only to get worse. 

At church, you couldn’t listen to the sermon. You couldn’t even look up at Father Remmick. Not without images flashing behind your eyes, sounds so vile and loud in your ear that you couldn’t even hear the words he was saying.

Throaty moans. A hot, wet tongue between your legs. The feeling of rhythmic thrusts, something pressing into a spot inside of you that made you feel more euphoric than God himself ever could. You felt weak every time you looked at him, your fragile body giving in with every glance. 

“My child-” His voice echoed through the rickety church, but you knew he was speaking to you.

“You look distracted.”

Your throat ran dry as you stared at the scabbed-over skin of your knees, just below your dress. You could feel your father's demanding elbow digging into yours. Be respectful.

A flash of something else when you looked up at him again. Something softer, something tender. Lips pressed to your skin, dragging against the top of your breasts. 

“What could be more important to you?” He was smiling. Smiling like he knew what you’d seen, and the devilish things you’d heard. “Than worshipping and praising God with your community… with me?”

His tongue ran over his bottom lip as he raised his arms to grip the sides of the lectern. The muscles under his shirt tensed, and your eyes lingered. By the way his smile widened, he noticed.

“Be sober-minded and alert, Miss.” He nodded his head toward you, like some kind of twisted teacher. “Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion…” His eyes, gleaming again like something inhuman. “Looking for something to devour, like a lamb wandering from the flock.”

Remmick paused, smiling to himself. “Be glad that I arrived here at the right time, to lead you down the path of righteousness.” 

Your skin had grown cold, like spiders were running up your arms and the back of your neck. But it wasn’t just what he’d said that made you rigid, a dripping of cold sweat rolling down your spine. It was the agreeing hums of the congregation, like they knew what you’d been thinking.

You couldn’t sleep that night. The pillow's satin fabric was coated in sweat, which clung to the back of your neck and made your butter-yellow nightdress stick to your back. You stood from your bed, bare feet pressed against the hardwood of your bedroom floor. As you left your room, you knew every creaky spot to avoid, opening the door with close precision to keep it from making a sound.

You could hear your father snoring from the cracked door of his bedroom as you slipped through the hallway like a ghost. You blindly slipped your feet into slippers in the dark, your hand wrapping around the gold door knob of your front door. 

The cool breeze of a late July night kissed your skin, making your hair prickle against the fabric of your nightdress. The sky was black, stars spilled across it like bleached sugar against molasses. 

The walk to the church was by memory, your feet crunching above the gravel road in the cool dark of your village. No light was lit in anyone’s homes; the only sound was the cicadas whining in the trees surrounding you. As you passed Monsignor Quinn’s home, the foundation seemed to creak before you, the sound almost like a weeping in the air. You didn’t cross the street and kept your head forward to pass by it. It was just another house. Just another death. 

The church was dark but buzzed with an energy that made the air feel electric. You could see its indent in the darkness. It was made of white siding sun bleached from hundreds of years under the sun of the South. The smokey-colored brick spires reached out into the dark sky, pointing to the stars. Their elegance had entranced you as a child. Now it just made you feel sick. 

A rectory with a gabled roof and dead bushes surrounding it stood next to the church, just a few yards away. There was no light to be seen, no sign of life. Father Remmick would be asleep in there, sleeping soundly despite his completely taking over your mind and your body. 

As you entered the church, you didn’t make a sound, creaking the door open just wide enough to slide your body through.

You moved blindly down the pews, hands running across the cool wood, hoping it would comfort you. It didn’t. You fumbled around until you found a box of matches and lit the candlesticks at the table behind the altar. It didn’t provide much light, but you could at least see the flickering expression of Jesus on the crucifix before you, He who had died for your wretched, terrible sins.

Knees hit wood, your hands gripping the fabric of your nightdress as you prepared to grovel. But you wouldn’t get the chance to. Not to God, at least.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?”

A voice that echoed through the dark like it- he owned it. You stood, turning around and searching the dimly lit dark for him. 

Father Remmick was sitting in the pew furthest from you, legs crossed and arms stretched long behind him. He was smiling; crooked,pointy teeth nearly glowing in the dim light. Your eyes roamed over the clerical that remained against his neck.

Your throat had gone dry. You swallowed hard, one hand reaching out to steady yourself on the altar rail. 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Remmick’s legs uncrossed, spreading out in a way that felt like it couldn’t be anything but disrespectful. His eyes didn’t look blue in this light. They seemed almost amber, gleaming and ever-changing in the flickering candlelight. 

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep,” Remmick said quietly, a teasing little smirk on his face. “For you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

Your knuckles had turned white against the altar railing, and the sudden realization that you stood before him in nothing but a nightdress made you freeze. You should have felt empowered by his words, but instead, you felt like prey under that violent gaze. You kept your expression blank. 

“Yes, I will perhaps follow those words when I know peace.”

Remmick’s head cocked to the side, like a dog sniffing out a treat. His eyes rolled down your body, stopping at your bruised knees. 

“You troubled, darlin’?”

He didn’t sound concerned, not really. He sounded starved the question dripping off his tongue like drool rolling down a chin. He looked at you with mock-concern, eyebrows just a little too furrowed, his lips just a little too downturned. 

“Have somethin’ you’d like to confess?”

His eyes flickered to the confession booth. Two purple, velvet curtains opened to a small wooden box—one side for the priest, the other for the sinner. 

You didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was the throb between your legs, or the puppy-dog shine of his eyes in the candlelight that made them look almost like melted caramel. Or perhaps the way his voice lingered in the room like steam after a hot bath. But you nodded, quicker than you’d meant to. 

Remmick stood on long legs, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to reveal curling veins that traveled along his forearms. He gestured toward the booth, lips curling deviously like he’d won something. Like he was collecting a prize he’d been patiently vying for.

“Ladies first.”

The confession booth was dark, except for the little light that flickered through the intricate carvings on the wood door. The worn leather cushion sank beneath you, full of cracks and creases from years of use. You could hear Remmick shuffling on the other side as you closed yourself in. You could hardly see him through the lattice-patterned window separating him from your booth, just the shadows cast over his face and the bright white of the clerical covering his throat. 

Your hands were tangled in your lap, your leg bobbing up and down under your nightdress. You listened to Remmick’s calm breath as he settled into his seat, closed your eyes for a moment, and envisioned his hands running over his pants, his head bowing in silent prayer. The thought of it made more heat travel down your body, your heartbeat loud in your skull.

“Sign of the Cross, yes?” 

His voice seemed even deeper, even more irresistible in the dark—something as velvet as the curtain before you. Your hands trembled as you made the Sign of the Cross over your face. 

“Bless me, Father,” you paused, licking your dry lips. “For I have sinned. It has been… far too long since my last confession. These are my sins.”

Remmick was smiling. Hands clasped in his lap, burning eyes staring into the wood of the booth. He could hear every shift you made, every breath coming from your heaving chest and out of your beautiful throat. The throat that pulsed with your heartbeat. The heartbeat that hadn’t left his mind since he’d laid eyes on you. He thought of your blood pooling in the dip of your collarbone and shifted in his seat.

Your chest was heaving, your nails digging into the seat's leather. You pressed your legs together, glanced at what you could see of Remmick’s face.

“Father, I have impure thoughts. I fear that the Devil has his hold on me, making me yearn for…improper things.”

Remmick’s smile curled, teeth sharp against his lip. You were right where he wanted you. Hot, pulsing, panting. His hands unclasped, his palm pressing into the seam of his pants. His head fell back, eyes slipping closed at the pressure against him.

“Improper things?” he asked you, his voice leveled as much as possible, but you caught the hitch. “Do you think the Lord would accept this confession… if you can’t even say what sin you’re thinking of?”

Your throat bobbed as you realized he was right. You were a sinning coward, unable to tell God what He needed to forgive you for. Your hands left sweat marks on the seat, palms raised to grip the rosary around your neck. The marks on your knees from groveling for God had started to sting, as if the Devil himself scratched down your legs. Reminding you of who you thought of and who you wanted to be on your knees for.

“I think of someone… touching me. Their hands against my skin, defiling me in a way that-”

A sound, guttural and desperate, left Remmick’s throat. His hand had continued to press against him, thick tendons and veins straining under his skin. His eyes opened, pupils nearly flooding his entire iris. All that was left was a ring of red on the outside, the color of blood stained on satin white sheets. He was silent, marinating in how you gasped at the sound he’d released. You were so deliciously untouched.

“And who is that you think of?”

The question lingered in the air, heavy and charged with something dangerous. It felt as if the rosary in between your hands were being tugged from your grasp, until you looked down and realized that it was just you releasing it, letting it clatter onto the floor.

The point of no return. Letting the Devil take you by the hand and dance you into Hell. You’d called to God so many times and He’d never answered, but Remmick was here. Real, tangible, beautiful. You dug your nails into your palms, prayed for your soul one last time before diving into the deep end.

“...I think you know, Father.”

Silence, at first. Something that made the air hot, that made your breath catch in your throat. 

The wood groaned as Remmick shifted, his feet scuffing against the floor. You could hear the screech of metal rings against a rod, Remmick pushing the curtain open. 

He didn’t ask for permission. He pushed your curtain open slowly, filling it with his broad frame and slender fingers. His fingers gripped the velvet, and a brass ring around his finger caught the light. He was a wolf in wolf's clothing, teeth sharp and bright in the dim light. 

One hand left the curtain, reaching out to touch the lines of your collarbone. He ran his nail up your neck to rest the pad of his finger against your pulse. 

“I do know,” he hummed, applying pressure to the pulse, just enough for you to feel him there. “And I always knew you’d come.”

His other hand flew from the curtain with a speed that didn’t seem human, fingers gripping your hair and tugging your head back to expose your throat. 

“God.” You moaned low in your throat, breath ragged as Remmick lowered himself enough to be straddling your lap, thighs warm and solid on top of yours. He leaned forward, his mouth finding your ear. You felt his tongue run over the shell of it, something long and cold like a serpent.

“Not sure your God is here, sugar.” His voice was low and sweet, rattling the inside of your body. “He woulda saved you by now, right?”

Remmick looked down into your nightdress, lip caught between his teeth. He was quiet as he raised his hands to the fabric, gripping it tightly before tugging. The nightdress split apart as easily as tearing paper, your skin prickling with goosebumps as the cold air hit your naked chest. He looked at you like a sinner did the cross, eyes nearly glowing. He waited; waited for your invitation to touch you, thick drool rolling down his chin like a rabid dog. It dripped onto your chest as you nodded, your hand shaking when you wrapped your fingers around the white clerical collar at his throat. You tugged it off, letting it fall to the floor beside your rosary. 

“Touch me, Father.”

Remmick was on his knees in a second, tearing away the rest of the ruined nightdress from your body as he nestled his shoulders between your thighs. The only thing that remained between you and him was a thin pair of underwear, lacy trim at the edges that he ran his fingertip over with a twitching smile. 

The pad of his rough fingertip pressed over the fabric of your underwear, firm against your clit. Your body jolted forward, legs falling open for him as the pleasure traveled up your spine. 

Remmick laughed, his head thrown back and mouth open wide.

“So wet for having never been touched, little lamb.” Remmick’s fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down your smooth legs. “Do you want to be worshipped, as your God is…” He tucked your underwear into the back pocket of his black pants. “Or ruined, like the Devil would do to you?”

“I want…” Your words cut off with a whimper as he pulled his finger from you, only to open your legs wider. “I want what you want, Father…”

Remmick hummed, weighing his options. “Lil’ bit of both then, I reckon.”

His head dove in between your legs like he’d been starved of water for years, and you were the first drop of salvation he’d found. He groaned, deep and low in his throat, that sent a vibration through you that had your hands flying to the dark waves on top of his head, pulling him against you.

His hands gripped your thighs hard enough to bruise as he licked against your cunt, long tongue rolling around your clit like he’d been made to worship it.

“So sweet,” Remmick smiled against you, warm and wet for him. “Like the Lord made you just for me.”

Remmick’s hands left your thighs, palms searching the floor as he continued to suck on your clit, pushing his tongue into you, curling it up in a way that didn’t seem possible. When he found what he needed, he pulled away, looking up at you through half-lidded eyes and your wetness dripping from his lips.

His hand raised, your rosary beads tangled between his fingers. With careful precision, he lowered the necklace against your cunt, the coolness of the beads making you shiver and scratch marks into the leather seat beneath you. As the beads pressed on either side of your clit, your head fell back against the wall, heat traveling up your neck as if the flames of Hell were already licking against your skin. 

“Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes penetrating and sharp on your face. He could sense your impending release, the way your heartbeat quickened, your back arching off the seat.

“Don’t.” 

Once low and ragged in the dark, his voice had become clear. He closed your legs with one large hand and dropped the rosary beads back to the floor so he could lean forward, pressing his other hand against the wall next to your head. His face was inches from yours, and his breath was hot on your neck. 

“Not yet, darlin’. Not ‘til I say.” His lips found the pulse point on your neck, nipping before kissing tenderly. “The Lord teaches patience, lamb.” 

Remmick’s hand left the wall to grip your hair again, tugging your head back. It made your scalp sting in a way that made you want more, your mouth parting to whimper against him.

“That bein’ said,” A crooked smile - lips baptized in your essence. “I’m bettin’ you sound real pretty beggin’.”

His tongue was long and rough against your cheek as he tasted your sweating skin, a deep rumble in his throat as if he was tasting the sweetest nectar. He stopped at your temple, placing a gentle kiss there. His lips remained there, teeth grazing skin.

“So go on, darlin’. Pray for me to fuck you.”

Your breath caught, your entire body going hot from his words. He laughed against your skin, like he could feel the very chemistry in your body change, the way you grew slicker from his twisted request. The way you knew that you would do it for him. You’d pray to be spread open by him, explored in a way not even God could do.

“Oh, you will do it, won’t you…” 

It wasn’t a question. Remmick knew you’d beg; he knew how far gone you were. He laughed against your skin.

“Doesn’t matter how good of a girl you are… how much you love Him. You’ll give it all up just to get off, won’t you?” 

Remmick pulled back, hands sliding down to hold firm on the flesh of your hips. He lifted you from the seat like you weighed nothing, turned both your bodies around until you were straddling him. Your naked core rested against the rough material of his pants and made your body shiver. He smiled.

“Go on… hands together in contrition. Do it right…” His rough hands grabbed your wrists, pulling your hands flat together between your bodies. When they were pressed together to pray, he let his fingers linger on the bare skin of your thighs, fingers just too long and nails just too sharp against your skin. 

Your lips were dry, and Remmick’s eyes drifted to them like he wanted to lick across them, make them wet again. 

“Heavenly…”

 Remmick hummed in glee already, just from a single word. His head bowed, as if to join you in prayer, his eyes slipping shut.

“Heavenly Father… forgive me for what I am about to ask of you. I know I do not deserve such a blessing as being touched…” Your words faltered as one of Remmick’s hands slid up your thigh, gathering the slick in between your legs. His finger pressed against your clit, and you gasped, hands pressing together tighter. “As being touched by someone so good, so…”

Remmick’s finger pushed inside of you, pressing up to a spot that made your throat close up, the only sound coming out a pathetic squeak of a whine.

“Aww, darlin’, that’s so sweet of you. But you don’t have to lie.” His body leaned forward, his wet mouth pressing against your ear. “Tell your Heavenly Father what I am. What you know I am.”

“I’m…” You continued the prayer, voice deep and rasping. “I’m going to fuck the Devil… and Lord, I beg you to have mercy on my wicked soul.” 

Remmick laughed against the skin of your neck, drawing thin beads of blood with the sharp points of his teeth.

“Are you now? Going to fuck the Devil?”

All you could do was whine at the pleasurable pain in your neck, your hands shaking with the desire to pull them apart, to grab at his skin and his hair. 

Remmick hummed to himself, pulling his finger out of you with a slowness that made you bite the inside of your cheek. His cold hands slid up your arms, pulling your hands apart from their prayer. 

“Get up.” He said quietly, with that same thick, gooey voice he’d had when you’d shaken his hand for the first time. You did as he asked, spreading your legs and backing off his lap. His eyes traveled up your bare body as he stood, towering over you inside the booth. With a firm hand on your hip, he nudged you toward the curtain.

“To the altar.” 

Remmick’s breathing was heavy behind you, his gaze burning holes into the bare skin of your back as you slowly walked to the altar. You looked to the cross just above, and you felt no remorse, not anymore. Whatever God could do to punish you, you were sure Remmick could do worse. Maybe you wanted him to. 

You ceased walking once you had reached the altar, your belly just close enough to feel the cool wood against your skin. Remmick was behind you, his breath hot and wet on your neck. His eyes ran over your skin, from the top of your head to the balls of your feet. The expanse of a human body that he was now free to ruin. That he’d be begged to ruin. 

With one swift movement, he grabbed your wrists, raising them and placing them flat on the altar. Your fingers brushed the closed Bible there as your breath hitched. Remmick made no effort to remove it. He only slid one hand down your body, as soft and languid as a serpent, and pressed down on the arch of your back. 

“Look at you…” Remmick murmured, fingers sliding into your folds, finding you warm and wanting there. Your legs quivered at his simple touch, so his other arm found its spot under your belly, assisting in holding you upright. “So nervous… shaking. You must honor God with your body, little lamb.”

Two fingers entered you, pushing in and out with a torturous speed. Your legs spread wider, your nails scratching into the leather-bound fabric covering the Bible before you. 

“Please..” Your voice quivered as you tried to keep it level. Your head fell against the Bible, leaving sweat marks. “I need you inside me, I need it more than I need God.”

Remmick’s fingers pulled out of you, and you heard the faint sound of his lips licking his fingers clean. He moaned at the taste of you, his other hand pulling the clasp of his belt buckle apart. “Aw, sweetheart, that’s so kind of you.”

By the press of him against you, hot and pulsing, you could tell that Remmick was big. But nothing could have prepared you for the way it felt when the head of his cock began to press inside you, hardly able to breach your entrance. He pulled back, body lowering to press lips against your sweat-slick spine.

“Gotta open up for me, baby.” He said against your skin, running the length of himself against your folds. His tongue was cold and barbed as it ran up the expanse of your back and to the shell of your ear. “Take me all at once, and maybe I’ll make you see Him. Denying yourself would be the true sin…” Remmick tried once again, his cock slowly able to start stretching you, inch by torturous inch. Only babbles came out as your mouth fell open, tears beading at the corner of your eyes from the sheer size of him.

“Haven’t even fucked you good yet,” He groaned as he pushed in. “And you’re already speaking in tongues.”

When he’d bottomed out inside you, pressing deep on a spot inside you that only made a guttural sound escape your throat, his large hand pressed against your belly. 

“Feel all that pain, lamb. You’re just getting used to me… your body will learn quick.” He slid back slowly and pushed back in with just as much resolve. Your legs nearly gave out, hands scrambling for purchase on the lectern as he fucked into you. “Soon, all you’ll feel is me.”

Remmick was right. 

Soon, the only feeling that remained was deep, wicked pleasure. Every thrust of him inside of you felt like another ring lower into Hell, the souls eternally damned there shaking their heads at you as you made the same mistakes they did. But the problem was - you didn’t fucking care.

A whine escaped your throat as Remmick picked up the pace, just a little bit. One hand on your belly, the other gripping your hip so hard you were sure you felt the cold prick of blood on your skin. Every thrust was hitting something inside you that somehow made you wetter, something that had you dripping onto him like some kind of deranged baptism.

Remmick was grunting, getting louder with each thrust into you. He tried to hide with honeyed words, but you felt too good around him.

“So easy, aren’t you?” Remmick was grabbing one of your arms, pulling your hand into his to press onto your own belly. You felt the bulge of him with each thrust in, and the pressure on your stomach made your cunt flutter around him. He groaned, words faltering as you squeezed around his cock. “You…” He nearly whined, hand gripping yours on top of your belly. “Just a few words about your corrupt God and you... you spread your legs for me?”

He laughed, hand leaving your stomach to grab at your hair, tugging until your head reeled back just enough to see him. He was beautiful like this, pupils blown out, and the first few buttons of his clean shirt popped open. Blood streaked down the corner of his mouth from the wound on your neck, and his tongue was unnaturally long as it unraveled out to wet his lips.

“Do you know something, sweetheart?” He asked, dark eyes meeting yours. “Your God isn’t here.”

A whine broke through your mouth as he rolled his hips in a particularly torturous way, hitting the spot in you that he’d found with his fingers in the confession booth. There wasn’t anything you could do but let your body go slack against him, head kept in place only by his grip on your hair. 

“What would your God say, hm?” Remmick asked, pressing into that spot again, making your vision go white. “If He saw you split open for me?”

Remmick released you, and your head fell forward to the altar. He leaned forward, and you felt the cold press of something against your neck, a chain or something of the like.

“Do you still believe in Him?” He asked against the nape of your neck, pressing deep into you. He nipped at you again and lapped the blood up with his tongue with a soft moan. 

“Maybe you should apologize to Him, hm? How does that one go again?” Remmick pulled out, almost entirely. You felt the cold air hit the wetness of your cunt, and you whined at the loss of contact from him.

“Forgive me my sins, Oh Lord,” Remmick spoke, moved both of his hands to your hips, and thrust in with one swift move that made you cry out in shock, in pleasure, in shame. “The sins of my youth.” Another deep thrust, and back out again. “The sins of my soul,” Another. “And the sins of my body-” 

The last push inside of you made you see streaks of color in your vision, your mouth hanging open, and your lips wet with drool. You felt something like a spool form in your stomach, desperate to unravel. It was an odd feeling that you’d never felt before, akin to the feeling of nearly wetting yourself, and it made your face burn with embarrassment.

“Father,” Your voice was gone, raspy and unrecognizable. “Father, I feel…” You whined as the feeling grew, doing everything in your power not to let the spool unravel. “I think I‘m gonna pee… it feels like-” Remmick chuckled, increasing the speed of his thrusts. 

“Oh, my poor baby.” 

You could hear the smile in his voice. He was the Devil himself.

“You don’t even know what your sweet little body can do, do you?”

 And with that, Remmick was reaching around your body, pressing two of his fingers against your clit and rubbing, coaxing something out of you. The more he coaxed, the tighter the spool wound.

And then it snapped.

You didn’t recognize your voice as you came, nails scratching into the altar so hard that the wood began to splinter, piercing the tips of your fingers. Remmick was laughing as wetness coated him, the front of his pants and the fingertips at your clit. You’d provided an entire baptism for him, and he wouldn’t let it go to waste.

He pulled out of you, gripping your hips tightly and whipping you around so your back hit the altar. Remmick’s knees hitting the floor and his tongue diving inside of you happened in one action, in one second. He licked up everything you gave him, your essence leaking onto his face and dripping down his chin. 

His cock remained hard, long, and red below you as he sucked on your clit. You wet your lips, a shaking hand lifting from the altar to grip at his auburn waves.

“Touch yourself,” You whimpered, voice coated in overstimulation. “Please… let me see the image He created you in…” 

Remmick’s eyes slid open, peering up at you needily. His nose brushed your clit as his tongue pushed up inside you, and he grabbed at his cock with a strong, blood-covered hand. Immediately, he was moaning, the vibrations in his throat traveling through your entire body and making your head feel airy. His hand was so beautiful pleasuring himself, pulling up and down the length of his cock and making himself leak. His hips thrusted up into his fist, and you found yourself longing to see the muscles that flexed beneath his shirt. 

Your trembling hand scratched at his scalp, and Remmick sighed happily underneath your touch. He wasn’t even eating you out, not anymore, just nuzzling his face into your skin and breathing you in as he touched himself.

“Beautiful…” You whispered to him. “Like an angel.”

Remmick growled, hand tugging on your thigh and yanking you to the floor. Your back slid against the altar as he pressed the head of himself against your cunt. His forehead pressed against yours as he came with a groan. The warmth of him spilled against your clit and downward, and Remmick’s fingers gently pressed into you, making sure it stayed tucked away inside you.

Your body trembled as Remmick pulled his forehead from yours. His thumb came up to brush against your lips, and for a brief moment, he pushed it inside, humming as the pad of it pressed against your warm tongue. He leaned forward, replacing his thumb with his mouth. A small squeak sounded in your throat at the feeling of his tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, licking away the last of the prayers that stuck there.

Remmick’s lips remained connected to yours as he helped you stand on shaking legs, his hands pulling you up effortlessly by your waist. His hand reached behind him, grabbing the underwear he’d tucked in his back pocket as he’d prepared to stick his tongue between your legs. 

He leaned down, untangling the delicate material and holding it out.

“Step in, sweet thing.” He peered up at you through half-lidded eyes. “Gotta keep everything I gave you inside… keep you close to me.”

Your hand gripped his strong shoulder as you stepped into the holes of your underwear. Remmick pulled them up slowly, leaving soft kisses on your skin as he went. When they were fully up, getting soaked with the mix of Remmick’s and your release, he straightened. His lips pressed against your forehead for a brief, sweet moment.

“I’ll see you at Sunday service.” He said as he pulled back, his voice just as fucked out as yours had been. 

“Front pews. Don’t think you can hide from me in the back.” 

His hand grazed your arm, almost innocently.

 “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

pls comment if you’d like to be tagged in part 2 <<3

[angeltingzzzz]

she had pale, milky thighs``

[spikedfearn]

I Thee Bled

one-shot

Remmick x fem!reader

Summary: On the eve of your arranged wedding, you flee into the woods with trembling hands and a bloodstained gown—only to slip a ring meant for another onto a graveyard root and wake something ancient beneath the soil. Remmick is not a man, not anymore, but he remembers how to be tender. Touch-starved and centuries dead, he offers you the one thing the living never did: choice. In a forest that breathes and remembers, where the dead dream and the moss learns your name, you find yourself questioning everything you left behind. After all, what is a monster—if not a man who waits for you? And what is love, if not something you’re willing to bleed for?

(or: A Corpse Bride au)

wc: 15.2k

a/n: thank you all so much for the overwhelming love and support you’ve shown my fics, it means the world to me!! I originally planned to release I Thee Bled on Monday to celebrate one month since Brittany Broski posted Mercy Made Flesh to her Insta story (!!!), but life had other plans, so she’s arriving fashionably late. This one’s especially close to my heart, and I want to dedicate it to the lovely Moga @somnolenthour, whose beautiful fanart for this fic when it was still just an idea (completely unprompted!!) lit a fire under me, this one’s for you <333 shout-out to my beta readers, starting with Liz who also came up with the title: @fuckoffbard @titaniasfairy @jaythewriter @anhelconhmuda @kkniveschau

warnings: Corpse Bride!au, gothic horror, supernatural romance, blood, vampirism, smut, oral sex (f!receiving), praise kink, dirty talk, creampie, touch-starved monster, monsterfucking, sub!remmick, ghost town setting, period-typical misogyny, vague Victorian era, Tim Burton aesthetics, mutual pining, tragic undertones, Remmick in his final monster form

likes, comments, and reblogs as always appreciated, please enjoy!!

Masterlist

It was a quiet kind of death—to walk toward a future that never belonged to you.

The candlelight danced in its sconce like it too was afraid of the dark, throwing gold and shadow in uneven patterns across the walls of your bridal chamber. The air was heavy with the scent of crushed lilies—white, thick-stemmed, and already browning at the edges—as though the blooms themselves had second thoughts. A bridal veil hung limp from the mirror. You had not put it on.

You sat at the edge of the chaise, corseted to breathlessness, the bony ridges of your knuckles straining beneath the thin layers of skin from how hard you're clutching the ring.

Not your ring. Not yet. It was his—your would-be husband's—a man who smiled without his eyes and spoke of love like it was transactional. Whose name alone made your face pucker like you just smelled curdled milk. Mr. Langdon. So old your mother whispered “distinguished.” So cold the maids whispered other things when they thought you couldn’t hear.

Outside, the wind howled through the wrought iron balcony rails, shrill and wild like something mourning. You stood slowly, your bare feet silent against the marble floor, gown whispering around your ankles like the ghosts of every woman who’d gone quietly before you. The gown had been sewn for beauty, not for running. But you would run in it anyway.

You packed light, brought a white shawl and gloves to combat the chill. You brought the ring.

Not because you meant to keep it. Not because it held sentiment. It didn’t. It had no warmth, no story, no soul—just gold, cool and dull beneath your thumb. But it was worth something. Enough to pawn. Enough, maybe, to buy a train ticket. A meal. A room somewhere with a bed that didn’t come with a price pinned to your spine.

You told yourself that was why you kept it clenched in your fist as you slipped out the servants’ gate and into the dark. Not because it was his. Not because it had ever touched your skin. But because the world beyond your wedding had no place for a girl with nothing—and a gold ring, even one never worn, could be a lifeline.

Or a curse.

Fate hadn’t decided yet.

A band of simple gold, dull with fingerprint smudges, too loose for your thumb. You had not even worn it yet. It was handed to you this evening after supper, set beside a slice of blood-orange cake you hadn’t touched. “Keep it close, darling,” your mother had said, smoothing your hair as if you were already a corpse. “It will be yours come morning.”

You slipped it into your palm. And now it pulsed there like a secret.

The hallway outside your chamber creaked and groaned, the house settling into its evening sighs, and still you waited. You waited until the grandfather clock struck eleven, slow and solemn, each chime echoing like nails hammered into your future. Then—silently, so silently—you fled.

The woods did not wait to welcome you.

They swallowed.

The moment your slippered feet hit the dirt path behind the manor gates, the trees leaned in like they were listening, thick with Spanish moss and shadow. The moonlight fractured through their limbs, casting the path in broken, silver stripes. Your breath came out fast, clumsy, fogging in front of you as the night grew colder with every step, every frantic press forward into bramble and black.

The hem of your gown—once bone-white satin—darkened with mud. Then blood. A snag of thorns caught your ankle, sliced skin. You barely flinched. Pain felt like permission.

You weren’t sure where you were going.

Only that it has to be away.

You didn’t stop until your lungs burned and the trees had turned unfamiliar, too thick, too silent, the air tasting of copper and something older—stone, earth, iron. You collapsed against the base of a twisted tree, your gown a tangle of ripped silk and smeared petals, a bridal bloom gone to ruin.

The ring was still in your hand.

You looked at it—glared, really—angry at its weight, at the heft something so small contains. “To have and to hold…” you muttered under your breath, voice bitter, breathless, a mockery of a vow.

Your fingers fumbled blindly through the loam, sticky with sap and rainwater, until you found what you thought was a root. Something slender and pale rising from the earth like a bony finger.

You laughed, delirious. “Here,” you whispered, sliding the ring onto it. “Do you, strange tree, take me to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

The wind rose.

“I do.”

You reached out to steady yourself against the gnarled bark—but as your hand met the tree’s twisted surface, a sharp edge of wood caught the pad of your finger, snagging your bridal glove and the soft meat underneath. You hissed.

Blood welled—bright and living. It wobbled off your fingertip and fell. One drop. Then another. The red hit the base of the tree and sank into the soil like ink into paper. The bark beneath your palm felt warmer now. Almost…breathing.

Something moved. Beneath the dirt. Beneath you. You blinked. Sat up straighter. Listened.

Nothing.

Then—again.

A twitch. A shift. Like the earth itself was exhaling after a long silence. The root curled, moved, wrapped just slightly around your finger. Cold as the grave.

You yanked your hand back with a startled gasp. But it was too late. Blood had already spilled from your hand, sliced on bark or thorn or bone, and soaked into the black, thirsty soil. You watched it disappear.

The tree shuddered. Not in the breeze—there was no breeze anymore. The air had gone still, heavy as boiled milk, clinging to your throat, your hair, the space behind your knees. Your breath hitched. The birds had gone quiet. The crickets. The frogs. The world was listening.

And below you, the earth moaned.

A sound like old wood splitting. Like ribs breaking beneath dirt. Then, suddenly, a violent lurch—wet, sucking, earthly. The ground near the tree root cracked open, moss peeling back like flesh. You scrambled backwards on your palms, your gown tangling around your legs, but you couldn’t look away.

It didn’t feel like waking the dead. It felt like being watched by something that had never closed its eyes to begin with.

First came a hand.

Wide-palmed, thick-knuckled. Fingers unnaturally long, his nails cracked and gray and dirty, like shale. A gold ring gleamed faintly from the third finger. The wedding band you slid onto what you thought was a gnarled uproot.

Then the second, this one skeletal, stripped clean of flesh and muscle and tendon.

And finally, the rest of him.

He rose in pieces, as if gravity itself hadn’t yet decided whether to allow him back. His body pushed through layers of sod and clay and root like a memory that refused to stay buried. His shoulders were broad, shoulders that had once carried something heavy—tools, a body, a burden. One arm braced against the edge of the grave, veins bulging under pale, slick skin.

You saw the sweep of a dark, deep blue tuxedo, its fabric dulled by dirt and time, stitched with the memory of ceremony. The jacket clung to his shoulders unevenly, one side sagging low with centuries of damp, the lapels wrinkled and soil-smudged. Beneath it, a white collared button-up lay partially unbuttoned at the throat, the linen stained faintly at the seams.

A slightly lighter blue tie hung askew from his neck, knotted but loosened, the silk puckered where it had weathered through the grave. His trouser legs matched the tuxedo, tailored once, but now creased and grimy at the hem. Shoes to match—oxfords, maybe—scuffed to near ruin, soles coated in moss and wet earth.

He pulled himself from the dirt slowly, deliberately, like someone waking from a sleep they weren’t meant to return from—each breath thick in his throat, each movement dragging time behind it.

And his face—God, his face.

He was beautiful. In the way statues are beautiful. The way a ruin is beautiful. Pointed cheekbones beneath a mask of grave-filth. Mud in the seams of his short, messy brown hair, clinging in dark curls across his forehead. His mouth parted as he panted for breath he didn’t need, and you saw the right side of his jaw was ruined—torn open, exposing ribbons of raw muscle and the gleam of sharpened teeth. All of them sharp. Uneven. Crooked in places, silver-fanged and jagged like they weren’t made for a human mouth.

He drooled. Milky and thick, slow as syrup, threading from his teeth to the black soil.

His skin was a deep, post-mortem blue—something between bruised flesh and storm-lit sea, like teal left to darken in shadow. In the moonlight, with his veins just barely visible beneath the surface, it looked like cracked glass. His chest heaved. His head turned. And then—

He looked at you.

His eyes were wide as a frightened dog’s. But in the shadows, they shifted—black, almost red, glowing from somewhere behind the pupil like dying coals still clinging to that cherried spark.

He didn’t speak. He just…stared. Watched. Not like a stranger. Like someone trying to remember you. Like someone who knew you. Maybe before. Maybe in another life.

“Are—are you…” Your voice broke, shamefully small. You didn’t finish the question. Couldn't.

He swallowed, thickly. The sound was wet. And then—he smiled. Not cruel. Not ghoulish. Soft, tender.

“I knew ye’d come,” he said.

His voice came low and lilted, thick with the cadence of an Irish accent—rounded consonants, vowels pulled soft and long, a kind of music in his throat whether he meant it or not. The kind of voice made for stories. For lullabies. For oaths.

He took a single, stumbling step forward, mud pulling at his shoes, laced tight enough to keep the soil from suctioning them off his feet.

You couldn’t move.

“Ye put a ring on me hand,” he said again, gentle this time. Coaxing. He held up his fingers, all blood-caked and twitching, the wedding band glinting faintly beneath the filth, fractals of moonlight dancing off the polished gold, a stark contrast to the dirt and grime clinging to his skin. “And ye spoke a vow. That counts, don’t it?”

He tilted his head, like a curious animal. “Didn’t reckon ye’d be so bonnie.”

You should have run.

You knew that. Every part of you knew that. The sensible part. The terrified part. The part that still heard your mother’s voice whispering warnings about strange men, and worse things still, things that didn’t breathe right, didn’t die right.

But something rooted you.

Maybe it was the ring still snug around that pale, twitching finger. Maybe it was the way he looked at you. Like you were the first warm thing he’d seen in centuries.

He took another step forward. Then another. His oxfords left deep, sucking impressions in the soil, and his gait wasn’t quite right—like a marionette with its strings pulled too hard, or a man remembering how to be one. You flinched when he got too close, but he didn’t reach for you. Not yet. Just stood there, arms slack at his sides, mouth slightly open, that thread of spit still hanging from one fang like an afterthought.

His head dipped low, curls shadowing his brow, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost shy. Like he feared you might bolt.

“Was it the blood that roused me, then?” he asked, one brow raising slowly. Thoughtful. “Or the vow ye whispered?” He swallowed, working his jaw with a faint wince. “Might’ve been both. Hard to say.”

You blinked at him. Swallowed the lump that had risen hard and high in your throat. “Who…who are you?”

His smile faltered. Just a flicker. Not hurt—more like confusion.

“Don’t remember me, do ya?” His voice dropped low, almost tender. “But you called, lass. I heard ya—clear as day, so I answered.”

He tapped his skeletal palm against his chest, right over his sternum, his eyes round and brows raised in a puppy dog look, a pleading little tilt to his head like he's desperate for you to believe him.

“I felt you in here.”

You opened your mouth. No sound came out.

The man—the thing—before you cocked his head again, just slightly. His eyes were too soft for the rest of him, too warm. And the accent in his voice made everything worse, somehow. Made it gentle. Comforting. It stripped you of fear, piece by piece, until all that remained was the strange throb of something you didn’t understand.

“What’s your name?” you asked, finally.

His gaze lit up like the question pleased him. He didn’t answer right away. Just dragged a hand through his hair, leaving streaks of mud and grit and grave soil across his temple.

“I’ve been called a lot o’ names,” he said after a pause. “Some of ’em I earned. Some I didn’t. But the name I remember best is…” A thoughtful frown pulled at the less-damaged corner of his mouth.

“Remmick. That’s what me ma called me,” he said, almost shy now. “Back when the sky was still thick wi’ peat smoke and the land hadn’t yet learned the sound o’ English steel. When we carved prayers into stone ‘stead o’ paper, and the rivers boiled not from fire, but from the rage o’ gods long buried.”

He glanced at you then, as if expecting you not to understand. But you didn’t flinch, causing his smile to grow like a decaying flower that didn't know it was dead yet.

“Back when the forest had a name you weren’t meant to speak after dark,” he added, voice gone soft and faraway. “And folk still left cream out on the stoop, hopin’ to keep the hills quiet.”

You said nothing. You had no words.

He glanced down at himself as though just now noticing the state he was in. Fingers touched the torn lapel of his jacket before dusting the front off next. His nose wrinkled faintly, sheepish, eyes round and sorry.

“Would’ve cleaned meself up a bit had I known,” he said, glancin’ back up at you with a crooked smile. “But by Gods, ye caught me right in the middle of me dirt nap, didn’t ye?”

And then he laughed. A soft, broken sound. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t hollow. It was almost—sweet. You didn’t realize you’d taken a step back until your spine hit bark.

He noticed.

“No need to fear me, lass,” he said, quickly, voice pitching soft, hands raised just a little, his eyes bleeding red like a freshly weeping cut, “I won’t hurt ye. I wouldn’t.” His fingers curled back toward his chest again. “Not you.”

“Why me?” you asked, finally. “Why—why do you think I called you?”

His smile returned, slow and tender. He lifted his hand—the one with the ring, the one that was intended to collar you to Mr. Langdon before you turned tail and fled, looking sleek and shiny against grimy blue skin.

“’Cause ye put this on me finger,” he said. “Ye made a promise. A vow.”

You shook your head, your breath catching like a bird startled mid-flight, wings beating frantically in your throat. “It wasn’t real.”

“It was real enough for me.”

He looked down at the gold band, turned it with his thumb. “You bled for it, didn’t ye?” he murmured. “Spoke words into the trees. Placed a ring on a buried hand. That’s old magic, love. Older than graves. Older than the Gods above.”

His eyes flicked back to you—red blooming around the edges now like ink through water.

“Old magic don’t care whether you meant it.”

You didn’t know if it was the way he said love, like it meant something eternal…or if it was the silence of the woods, how they held their breath around him…but your world had suddenly been flipped upside down like you'd been living inside a snow globe and someone decided to just come along and shake it. All because you'd gotten cold feet. All because you couldn't bring yourself to walk down the aisle and wed a man who barely made your acquaintance prior to the arranged ceremony.

You recall last night in great detail, the last time you were alone with Mr. Langdon. It had been in your father’s study—dark-paneled, smelling of tobacco and power. He hadn’t touched you, not exactly. But his hand had rested too long on the curve of your shoulder, fingers splaying toward the top of your spine like he was trying to gauge how much pressure it would take to snap it.

“I prefer quiet girls,” he’d said with a smile that didn’t reach his shrewd eyes. “Ones who don’t ask so many questions. Obedience is a virtue, you know.”

You had smiled. You nodded. Because what else could you do?

He had leaned in close, breath stale with wine and something bitter, suppressing the reflexive urge to recoil, “After tomorrow, your body belongs to me. That’s what marriage is. Best you start getting used to the idea.”

You hadn’t answered. You’d gone to your room and vomited in the basin. And tonight? Tonight—you ran. You didn’t bring a bag. You didn’t bring a plan. You brought the ring.

And you brought the no you hadn’t dared speak aloud.

It’s only then that you start to notice—the world around you moves. Not with the subtle rhythm of wind or wildlife, but with a kind of strange, theatrical breath, like the forest is alive.

The tree behind you creaked like a yawning coffin, bark groaning against your spine as if waking from its own long sleep. Overhead, the moon hung too round, too large, almost theatrical in its glow—more paper lantern than celestial body. It cast light not white but a washed-out bluish silver, the kind that made every shadow look like it was up to something.

There were no clouds. The sky didn’t need them.

Instead, the forest itself began to shift—bending at the edges like a curtain drawing inward, branches twisting and stooping with exaggerated grace, their tips curling into crooked little hooks. The trees no longer stood tall and noble; they hunched and leaned like gossiping old women, knotted spines cracking as they bent to get a better look at you.

The leaves above clinked faintly like dry metal. One branch spiraled down and hovered beside your shoulder, like it was waiting for permission to touch you.

And still, Remmick didn’t seem to notice.

Or maybe he did.

Maybe he was used to it—the way the world rearranged itself around him, the way nature bowed and blinked and breathed differently wherever he walked.

Maybe he’d never known a forest that didn’t follow.

He took another step toward you.

He was close enough now that you could see where the flesh on his cheekbone pulsed faintly, still clinging to old life. Where blood had dried in a crooked path down his exposed jaw. Where some of his teeth weren’t perfectly sharp at all—some had chipped, split, yellowed in ways that proved he hadn’t always been what he was now. He had once been a man.

You stared. Not at the horror. At the detail.

His collar was unbuttoned. There was a ring of skin just below his throat that was somehow clean, as if protected by the chain that still hung there.

“You’re real,” you breathed, as much to yourself as to him.

He smiled again. Small, head bowed slightly. Like the thought embarrassed him.

“Aye,” he said. “At least I was.”

Your heart skipped. The accent curled around that last word—was—turning it melancholic and soft. He sounded deeply lonely in a way that didn’t scream or shudder, but bled slow and quiet—like a candle left to burn itself out in a chapel no one prayed in anymore.

You didn’t realize your hand had risen until he caught it. His grip wasn’t strong. In fact, it was hesitant. Loose. Like he feared you might flinch, and he was giving you time to do it. To reject it.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged over the small wound on your finger where your glove was torn. The one you’d cut on the tree. Your blood had dried there, rust-colored and still.

“’S’what woke me,” he murmured. “This wee thing.”

You tried to speak, but the words tumbled over each other, panic and fascination tangled in your throat. “What are you?”

Remmick looked up at you, then down at your hand in his. He didn’t let go.

“I was a man once,” he said. “Before they put me in the ground like a secret.”

There was no anger in his voice. No grief. Just barebones honesty.

“I remember cold,” he continued. “I remember bein’ bound.” His brows drew together. “I remember hunger.”

You swallowed.

His head tilted slightly again. “But now I remember you.”

You opened your mouth to deny it, to tell him he was wrong, that you weren’t anyone, that this was all a mistake. That you weren’t his. That you weren’t meant to be anything.

But the woods behind you had gone too still. And he was staring at you with a gaze so tender it made your stomach twist.

“Ye came in white,” he said, voice softer now. “Like a bride. Ye gave blood. Ye spoke vow.” He brushed a skeletal knuckle to your chin with aching slowness, the bone surprisingly soft, “don’t reckon the veil’s far behind.”

The branches rustled above, though there was still no wind. You realized the forest wasn’t closing in. It was gathering.

And Remmick…he was looking at you like he was home.

It was no longer night in the way night should be.

Time moved differently now. The sky above bled grey and silver and rust, but the moon never shifted from its throne behind the trees. The light stayed fixed in place, like the forest had slipped sideways into some pocket behind the world. Hours passed like fog. You slept, but never fully. You walked, but your feet left no prints.

And Remmick—Remmick stayed near.

Not hovering. Not leering. Just there, always just far enough not to crowd you, yet always within reach, like the forest had redrawn its laws to keep him at your side. Like you were its axis now.

You thought of Langdon.

Of his voice—measured, polished, practiced. The kind of voice that never raised itself above a certain register, as though passion was unsightly. He had a way of looking at you that always felt more like study than affection. Like you were something to be assessed, not adored. His fingers, when they grazed yours, were cold from gloves and colder still beneath them. Everything about him had been lacquered to a shine: his shoes, his manners, his hollow future he spoke of with such sterile pride.

You remembered one night, not long ago, when you’d dined together at his family estate. A private supper. Three courses. Too many forks. You’d asked him if he liked poetry.

He blinked. Set down his wine glass. “I tolerate it,” he said. “In women.”

That had been it.

No questions in return. No warmth. No wanting.

You’d spent the rest of the meal smiling at your plate, wondering if it would be considered madness to simply climb out the window and run.

And now—here.

Now, you were with a man who’d crawled out of the earth, with dried blood under his nails and a ruined jaw, and somehow he made you feel safer than any lace-draped parlor ever had. Remmick, who flinched when he touched your skin like you were the sacred thing. Remmick, who didn’t ask you to perform, or flatter, or prove anything—who simply stayed close because he wanted to be near.

He was a walking corpse.

And he seemed more human than Mr. Langdon had ever been.

Remmick spoke in murmurs. Half-conversations.

“My folk used to call this part the belly,” he said, gesturing toward a clearing that bloomed only with pale fungi and white moss. “Said the trees grew too thick with memory. Said it weren’t safe for the livin’.”

You stepped forward slowly, the hem of your gown brushing through the hush of strange underbrush. The clearing pulsed in stillness, like something held its breath just beneath the surface.

The fungi were long-necked and ghostly, some capped in translucent bells, others curled like fingers mid-spasm. They glowed faintly in the dark—not enough to see by, but enough to feel seen.

Overhead, the trees now leaned inward with impossible arches. Their bark smooth and gray as drowned bone, and where knots should’ve been were instead hollowed faces, soft and suggestive, as though the trunks had grown around someone who once leaned too long against them. One of the branches creaked in a slow, pendulum sway, even though there was no wind.

You tilted your head. The white moss underfoot looked soft, inviting—until you noticed it wasn’t growing in any natural pattern. It coiled in tight spirals, some large enough to circle your slippered feet, others small and delicate as lacework.

When you asked what he meant, what memory had to do with the trees, he only gave a crooked smile and pointed at your feet.

You looked down. The moss had formed perfect circles beneath your heels.

Spirals.

“See?” he said. “She’s already learnin’ you.”

And sure enough, even as you stood there, the spiral beneath you shifted. Just slightly. Not like a plant reacting to pressure, but something alive—tracing the shape of your sole, marking your weight, remembering the heat of your blood. It liked you.

Or worse—it recognized you.

He never called the place a graveyard. He called it “the kept.”

You first saw them while following a worn path between black pines—stones laid flat into the dirt, unmarked, sunk deep with age. You almost stepped on one before he reached out and caught your wrist, not harshly—just quick.

“Aye, mind where ye tread,” he said, voice gentle, Irish vowels lilting around the warning. “They don’t take kindly to bein’ disturbed.”

You stared at the stone. And then you realized it was moving. Not rising. Not moaning. But the soil above it—it breathed.

You took a step back, heart climbing into your throat.

“They don’t wake unless they’re called,” Remmick said softly. “But they listen.”

Far off, from a hollow deeper in the woods, a chime echoed. High and delicate, like a piano key played underwater. Another answered, lower, more metallic. You didn’t see the source, but you could feel them vibrating in your bones. And yet it didn’t frighten you.

He never told you how he died. You tried to ask. More than once.

The first time, he looked away. The second, he closed his mouth mid-sentence and didn’t speak for a full hour. Not angry. Never angry. Just—withdrawn. The third, he reached up and touched the ruined side of his jaw, as if he’d forgotten it was there.

Then he whispered, “Not yet,” and nothing more. You didn’t press.

Some things, you could feel, were kept buried by more than soil.

It was on the fifth day—if you trusted your own body’s clock—that you tried to leave.

You didn’t make a show of it. You waited until Remmick went still beneath the shade of a hollow tree, head tipped back, eyes closed like he was listening to something beyond your hearing. You crept away quietly. You didn’t look back.

You hadn’t meant to stay that long. You told yourself it was only curiosity, only caution, only until you understood what he was. But the forest had begun to feel too quiet in the right places. Remmick had begun to speak too softly, like a prayer meant only for you. And that was precisely the problem. He was too gentle. Too kind. Too patient.

You weren’t supposed to like any of this—weren’t supposed to be lulled by a dead man’s voice or find comfort in a world where bones lined bird nests and laughter came from unseen mouths. You ran not because you feared him. You ran because, terrifyingly, you didn’t.

At first, the trees parted for you. The path unfolded.

You ran.

You didn’t cry. You didn’t call his name. You just ran. But the forest…it shifted.

The branches overhead grew too low, too tangled. Vines curled beneath your feet like hands reaching out to stop you. A bramble reached out like a whip and slashed across your collarbone, slicing clean through the dress, nicking your skin just enough for blood to bead along the uneven seam of your cut. Still, you kept going.

Until you hit it.

The edge.

It wasn’t a wall—not exactly. It was air. Thick, humming, wrong. The veil between life and death. When you stepped into it, your skin felt like it peeled. Your lungs refused to fill. The world blurred and bent at the corners like warped glass.

You stumbled back, coughing. Gasping. Remmick was there. Not chasing. Not angry. Just there.

He caught you around the middle before your knees buckled, arms strong but careful, like you were made of spun sugar and he was afraid you'd shatter.

“Sshh, now,” he whispered, curling you to his chest, soothing, the brush of his lips, the bloodied network of muscle fiber and tendons woven through his jaw pressed to the side of yours, wet and textured, “easy, easy, you’re alright.”

“I—I had to try,” you managed, fingers curling into the lapels of his jacket. “I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t mean to—I can't stay.”

“Shhh,” he soothed again. “I know.”

You felt him exhale into your hair. Slow. Shaky.

“I know wee bride,” he murmured, the accent softening everything it touched. “But she don’t open the same way twice. Not once she’s taken a name.”

You pressed your forehead into his shoulder, trembling. And for the first time—you wondered. Not how you got here. Not how to undo it.

But if you even should.

You thought of Langdon. Of his thin lips, the contracts, the expectations. Of your mother, her quiet threats tucked into lace gloves. Of the veil that felt more like a burial shroud than a blessing.

And then you thought of the way Remmick had caught you—like a man catching the last soft thing left in the world.

Later—how much later, you couldn’t say—you sat with him in the moss-ringed clearing where the mushrooms bloomed like broken teeth, soft and damp and glowing faintly blue at their tips. The forest had gone quiet again, but not heavy this time. Not watching. It simply…was.

Remmick had taken to lying on his side, propped on one elbow, his ruined jaw turned slightly from view, though you were never sure if it was for your comfort or his.

His fingertips brushed through the withered stems, and chose one near the base of a crooked stone. It was long-dead, crumpled and brittle at the edges, the color all but drained. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, and as he rolled the stem, you watched something shift. The petals darkened—deepened—like blood soaking back into flesh. It bloomed, slow and unnatural, into the shape of a dried red rose. Not living, not quite—but remembering life. Like something dressed for mourning.

“These only grow where the veil’s thin,” he said quiet-like, voice laced with that low, lilting Irish bend. “Where things slip in and out. Couldn’t say for certain which side they’re meant for, if I’m honest.”

You didn’t reply. You just looked at him.

There was dirt under his nails. sediment clinging to his collarbone. His oxfords were still caked in grave mud, but he hadn’t touched you with anything other than gentleness.

Your voice felt small when you spoke. “Why did you wait?”

Remmick blinked slowly. His fingers stilled.

You clarified before he could pretend not to understand. “All this time. You said you felt me. But you were already down there, weren’t you? In the earth. Waiting for someone to call you back. Why?”

He didn’t answer right away. Didn’t shift. Didn’t look at you. And just when you were sure he wouldn’t speak—he did.

“I didn’t know I was waitin’,” he said, voice gone low, just a touch rough. “Not truly. Time goes quiet when you’re laid under like that. Y’don’t count the years. Some days, y’don’t even remember your own name.”

He looked at the sky through the trees.

“Sometimes I’d dream o’ faces. Yours, maybe. Or someone who looked like ye. Sometimes I’d think I heard someone weepin’. I’d think, was it me?”

You felt your chest tighten. Remmick smiled again, faint and lopsided, like a man recalling a song he hadn’t sung in years.

“But when I felt ye, I knew. I knew it weren’t just hunger or ghosts or wind. I knew it was real. Ye bled for me. Ye called for me.” He glanced over. “No one’s ever done that before.”

You stared at him. At his hands, broad and veined. At the faded chain around his throat. At the ring you’d slipped, thoughtlessly, onto the hand of a tree like a promise.

A tree that had promised back.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” you said.

“I don’t care.”

You swallowed.

He said it without venom. Without accusation. Just—resolute. And maybe something softer curling underneath. He rolled onto his back, the moss giving way beneath him like a cradle.

“I’d have waited another thousand years for that drop of blood,” he said, quiet now. “Another thousand after that just to hear your voice say I do.”

You turned away. Not because you didn’t believe him. But because some part of you did. And it made your throat ache.

Your gaze drifted to the edge of the clearing, where the trees stood thick and close.

“Will it ever open again?” you asked. “The forest.”

Remmick didn’t move. “Aye. Someday. When she’s good and ready.”

“And if I’m not here when it does?”

He was quiet for a beat too long. Then:

“Then I’ll follow.”

That made you look back. He didn’t smile this time.

“I’d walk through fire to find you, wee bride.”

His voice was still Irish—but there was something else behind it now. Something old. Ancient. Something so sure of its longing it didn’t need to shout. It just was.

You realized, in that moment, how terribly lonely he must’ve been. How quiet his world had become. How loud your heartbeat must be to him now.

And how warm you still were.

He asked if you wanted to see the rest.

Didn’t demand. Didn’t lead without waiting. Just…offered.

With a hand half-outstretched and those eyes still puppy-wide, still lit like you were a miracle he was afraid to touch too quickly, lest you vanish into smoke.

You hesitated. But not long.

The forest parted for you both this time. Not like it had when you tried to run. Now it was more like—inviting. The way a house might creak its doors open when it recognizes one of its own.

You slipped your hand into his, the one that still wore flesh. His fingers were cold, yes—but not corpse-cold. Not the kind that bit. His hand was rough in places, as though he’d lived long enough to carry calluses even through death. His thumb flexed gently along your knuckles, testing. Not possessive. Just…checking.

Reassuring himself you were real.

He showed you the orchard first. Or what was left of it.

A grove of trees that no longer bore fruit, only ribbons—hundreds, thousands of them, hanging from the branches like wilted party streamers. Blue, white, ivory, pale lilac. Some patterned, some torn, some fraying from centuries of wind.

You reached up and touched one.

“They’re wishes,” Remmick said, voice softer than ever, his breath beside your cheek. “Made by the dead. Before they were buried.”

You turned to him.

“But they never came true?”

His expression shifted—fond, wistful.

“Some did. Some didn’t. Doesn’t matter.” He touched the ribbon nearest to him, the pad of his thumb brushing its edge. “It’s the hoping that counts, innit?”

You said nothing. The breeze moved the orchard like a lullaby.

Further in, he showed you a town of sorts.

Carved into the side of a crumbling cliff where the rock split into ribs and the stone seemed to breathe, the little village clung to the earth like a half-forgotten secret.

The houses were squat mudstone cottages, weathered and slouched, their chimney pots crooked like snapped fingers. Moss crept up their sides in thick velvety bands, swallowing old lanterns, window frames, and entire doorsteps. Windowpanes blinked with eyes pressed from the inside.

The doors were low and arched, some made of driftwood painted in peeling funeral hues—deep violet, waxy blue, iron black. A few homes had teacups balanced on their roofs. Others had shingles shaped like fingernails or pressed flowers. Bones hung from strings between rafters, clacking gently in the hush, arranged like wind chimes or family crests, each one carved or etched with little initials, or painted with the ash of something you couldn’t name.

A skeletal cat darted past your ankles, all jangling vertebrae and twitching tailbone, its paws clicking faintly against the cobbled path. Its jaw hung open in a rictus grin. You didn’t scream. It looked up at you once—empty sockets glittering faintly—and carried on.

And then the town began to move.

A shutter creaked open. A door whined on its hinges. A hatless man with no lower jaw swept the stoop of what looked to be a bakery, the scent of charred sugar and burnt cinnamon floating faintly from within. He nodded at you politely, bits of soot falling from the collar of his shirt, and kept sweeping. Further down the lane, a trio of old women sat in rocking chairs that had been nailed directly into the wall of a house—sideways, five feet off the ground—and knitted with thread made of silver hair. One of them had no eyes. The second had too many. The third winked at you with a socket.

“Don’t mind them,” Remmick murmured. “They been there long as I can remember. Like to keep to themselves.”

He led you past a crooked fountain that spewed a slow, syrupy trickle of black water, and through a crooked square strung with dim, blue lanterns that hung from lengths of discolored intestine braided like ribbon. In the center was a music box the size of a carriage, its brass bell warped and dented, still playing a waltz you could swear you remembered hearing in a dream long ago. No one danced to it—but some of them swayed.

There was a tailor’s shop with mannequins made of stitched skin and bent spoons. A chapel whose bell tower rang without sound. A bar, glowing faintly green from the inside, where shadows moved across the windows though the glass had long since clouded over with frost from the wrong side. A child floated by without legs, giggling into a jar that held a swarm of candleflies. You saw a man with a flowerpot for a head watering it with tea. A woman selling buttons shaped like teeth.

This was not a place that mourned death.

This was a place that remembered it, wore it, built tea tables from it.

Remmick led you down a sloping path toward a cottage built halfway into the stone, the door crooked, the curtains made of faded funeral veils.

“This was mine,” he said, his voice almost sheepish. He toed at the dust near the doorstep, head ducked slightly.

“When?” you asked.

He smiled faintly, lifting a shoulder. “When the veil was thinner. When the dead and the livin’ shared more than just memory.”

He said it like someone recalling the smell of something they’d never taste again. Like someone who’d tried, once, to live after he’d been buried.

You looked around you.

The town wasn’t decayed. It was…rearranged. It had rules you didn’t yet understand. Gravity worked only where it felt like it. The dead did not walk in straight lines. Some glided. Some bounced. Some stitched themselves together fresh each morning and wandered about humming.

And the strangest thing of all?

You didn’t feel afraid.

Not in the way you should have. Not even when you turned around and the fountain had grown teeth. Not even when a man tipped his hat and his entire scalp followed. Not even when a door sighed open with a voice like your own and whispered, Stay.

Remmick was beside you, his body casting a shadow even here, where most things didn’t. He looked at you not like you were lost—

But like you were home.

That night—you still called it night, even though the moon hadn’t moved—he brought you to a bridge.

It spanned over nothing. No river. No ravine. Just a stretch of fog and sky. A ghost bridge.

You sat beside him at the edge, your legs dangling off as if you could fall somewhere, though you knew you wouldn’t. He sat close. Close enough that your shoulder brushed his.

He didn’t move away.

“Used to dream o’ this,” he admitted, after a long silence. “Not the forest. Not the dirt. Not the blood.”

He looked over at you, slowly.

“Just this. You. Here.”

You couldn’t answer. Your throat ached again.

His voice dropped, deep in his chest, accent thick with emotion he couldn’t hide. “Haven’t been touched since they put me down.”

The confession wasn’t vulgar. Wasn’t even pleading. It was starved. He smiled, crooked and small. “Can’t remember the last time someone just…looked at me. Like I wasn’t somethin’ to be feared.”

He didn’t touch you again, not even your hand.

He didn’t need to.

Your fingers brushed his pinky. Slowly. Once.

And his breath hitched so sharp you felt it in your bones.

By the next day—if you could still call it that—you weren’t watching the sky anymore. Weren’t thinking about what the world looked like outside these woods.

You walked the paths beside him. You listened to the hush of wind that sang like violins through cracked branches. You let him point out where the ghost-lanterns grew, little flowers with glass bell-heads that chimed when you passed them. You started remembering the feel of his shoulder bumping yours and missing it when it wasn’t there.

And you started to wonder.

Would it really be so terrible if you stayed?

You asked yourself that once. Then again. Then again.

At first it was just a whisper behind your ear. A suggestion. But now it nestled behind your ribs. Grew there. Took root.

Because you remembered Langdon, didn’t you?

You remembered his hand on your waist at supper, always too firm, like you were something to steer. You remembered how he spoke over you in every conversation, like a man correcting a child he hadn’t bothered to raise. You remembered how the ring—his ring—had been handed to you by someone else. No kneeling. No asking. Just expectation.

You remembered the way his lips never curled unless he was closing a deal.

And then there was Remmick.

Who asked if you wanted to see the rest. Who offered you his hand like it might be too much. Who waited every time you hesitated, and looked like it hurt him to do so.

He smiled with his whole mouth—ruined and all. He grinned when you laughed, even if he didn’t understand why. He softened around you like someone desperate to remember warmth. Every time he brushed against you, it wasn’t accidental. It was careful. Measured. Hopeful.

He looked at you like he was still not sure he deserved to.

You sat on the bridge again. Together.

Remmick had his hands in his lap, thumbs tracing nervous circles against each other. Every now and then, he’d glance at you. Say nothing. Then glance again.

You finally looked back.

“What is it?” you asked.

He startled slightly, sheepish. “Ah—nothin’. I just…”

His jaw clicked when he closed his mouth, then tried again.

“Ye don’t wear nothin’ on your finger,” he murmured.

Your breath caught. “Remmick—”

“No, no, love, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly, huffing a laugh with no sound. “I know ye didn’t mean what ye said under the tree. I know ye weren’t…ye weren’t askin’ for all this.”

He paused, eyes dropping to the ring still on his own hand, the one you'd given him. “I just thought,” he added, quieter now, “maybe it’d feel a little less lopsided, is all.”

You didn’t know what to say. But your silence wasn’t rejection.

He must have felt that, because something flickered behind his eyes. He turned his palm over, and reached into the inside pocket of his coat. From it, he drew something strange.

A spool of hair, spun fine as thread—white and silvery-blue, like spider silk in moonlight. A broken thorn. A sliver of bone, no longer than a sewing needle. And the petal of one of those ghost-lantern flowers, shriveled but still glowing faintly at the edges.

He looked at you. Not for permission, exactly. Just to be sure you were still there.

Then he began.

He wrapped the hair into a loop, whispered to it in a language you didn’t understand—soft, low, rhythmic, like a lullaby hummed through soil. The thorn pierced the bone. The petal melted as it touched the band, fusing everything together in a slow flicker of light. It wasn’t magic like fireworks. It was quieter than that. Sadder. But it was real.

When it cooled, it had taken shape.

A ring. Fragile-looking, but solid. Matte white, like pearl gone to sleep. Veined faintly in red.

He offered it, resting on the flat of his palm like an offering. You looked at it. Then at him.

“It’s not a bindin’ spell,” he said softly. “I’d never do that to ye. It’s just a…a mark. That ye’ve been seen. That someone loved ye enough to make it.”

Your breath caught. You reached out, fingers trembling, and took the ring. And when you slipped it on—

The forest sighed.

Branches curled in. Flowers blinked open. The bridge beneath your feet thrummed like a harp string plucked once, gently.

And Remmick—Remmick made the smallest sound.

A choked inhale. Then, in a voice so soft it broke your heart:

“Ye look like someone worth waitin’ for.”

You don't remember dozing off.

But you did—still sitting beside him on the bridge, the soft weight of the ghost-ring warming your finger, his presence beside you steady as the moon that never shifted in the sky.

And when you woke, he was gone.

You startled upright, heart lurching. Your hand flew to the ring first—still there. Then to the edge of the bridge—still solid. The air felt heavier. Scented with something faint and iron-rich.

You called his name.

No answer.

Not at first.

You stood, blinking the fog from your lashes—and that’s when you saw it.

Laid carefully across the planks of the bridge, stretching in a line from your feet to the treeline beyond, was a trail of dead butterflies.

Hundreds of them. Each one perfectly intact, wings folded like prayer hands. Black as pitch with veins of crimson. Their bodies still. Sleeping. Dreaming. Waiting.

You followed.

Each step brought a rustle beneath your slippers, the softest stir of powder-dust wings. And up ahead—beneath the crooked trees that hung low like eaves—there he stood.

Remmick.

He had one hand behind his back, and his head tipped, sheepish as ever, like he’d been caught with something sinful in his pocket.

“Didn’t mean t’worry ye,” he said, voice soft.

You looked at the butterflies. Then back at him.

“What…is this?”

His smile wobbled.

“A bit of foolishness, maybe. Or maybe not.” He stepped forward, still holding whatever it was behind his back. “Back where I’m from… when we had no coin, no land, no dowry to offer—only things we’d taken from the earth—we’d still find a way t’make a gift.”

He stepped closer.

“An’ the most prized thing a man could offer…” He brought his hand forward.

In it, he held a locket.

But not gold. Not silver. It was made of bone, carved smooth and rounded into the shape of a heart. Not anatomically perfect—no, it was whimsical and off, a little uneven, the way a child might draw one. Etched into the surface were little spiral markings—like the moss had made beneath your heels that first day.

He opened it.

Inside was a pressed bluebell, perfectly preserved, its color dimmed to twilight. Across from it was a single moth’s wing, paper-thin and gleaming dully like wet stone—its veins iridescent, its edge slightly frayed. It shimmered like dusk and felt like a secret, as if it had been plucked from some dream before it could end.

Remmick didn’t explain right away. He only watched you open it, watched your thumb trace the curve of the petals, the fragile line of the wing. When he did speak, his voice had gone quieter, almost reverent.

“Th’bluebell,” he said, “they grow o’er graves where the dead were loved. Not all graves. Just the ones where someone wept hard enough t’water the earth.”

Your fingers stilled.

"And the wing?" you asked.

He hesitated. His eyes—those soft, wolf-sad things—lowered.

“She followed me once,” he said. “When I had no body. When I weren’t really a man at all. She’d land on me shoulder. Wouldn’t leave. Thought maybe she’d carry me soul somewhere if it ever got light enough.”

His smile came crooked. “She never did. But…I kept her. Just in case.”

You looked down at the locket again. At the love tucked carefully inside it—not gaudy, not gold, not spoken in flowers or poems, but in grief. In memory. In quiet things that didn’t ask for attention, only to be kept.

That was how he loved, you realized. Not loudly. Not demanding.

But devoutly.

With mourning in his blood and hope in his teeth. And you, wearing that little bone heart, felt something ancient stir beneath your ribs. Like maybe you'd been waiting for this place—this grave-bound man—just as much as he'd been waiting for you.

You blinked. Then laughed. It startled even you, the sound of it. But he didn’t flinch. Just watched, like you’d handed him the sun.

“I know it’s not what you’re used to,” he said, scratching the back of his neck, that left side of his face pulling with a skeletal twitch where the wound exposed too much. “But I’d like you to have it. If you want it.”

You took it with both hands.The weight of it pressed into your palms like a heartbeat. You looked at him.

At his eyes—those wide, sorrowful things that glowed only faintly red now, not from hunger, but hope. At the way he didn’t reach for you, didn’t presume. Just stood still. Waiting.

You reached up. Tied the chain around your neck. It settled just above your collarbone. Close to your throat. Close to where he watched your pulse.

When your hand brushed his chest after—just lightly, just shyly—he let out the breath he’d been holding like it was his last. That was the moment you knew.

Not the rose. Not the bridge. Not the ribbon orchard. Not even the ring.

This.

This strange, mournful creature who had carved you a heart from the bones of the dead. Who watched you like you were worth every moment of his waiting. Who asked for nothing except to love you.

And you thought—

I feel more alive here, in this place of ghosts and ghouls and goblins than I ever did among the living.

You didn’t say it. But you didn’t have to. Because the forest heard you.

And so did he.

You held the locket in your palm long after it cooled, long after the weight of his gaze had eased—but not faded. He didn’t speak again. Only watched you with that tremble behind his smile, like he was scared his own heart might make too much noise and scare you off.

You looked at him. Really looked.

The sharp, wolfish teeth. The wound yawning over the right side of his jaw, red-veined and lipless but somehow not grotesque—just raw, unhealed, honest. The way his suit jacket hung slightly crooked over his frame. The moss in his hair from when he’d laid down in the grove beside you and listened to your voice like it was music. The wedding band still on his finger, slightly dirty with time passing but not with meaning.

You thought of the bluebell. Of the moth wing. Of all the things buried. And you asked, gently, “you never did get to kiss your bride, did you?”

He blinked. His breath caught like a match about to light. “No,” he said, slowly, voice cracking around the edges, thick with barely restrained emotion. “Never did.”

You stepped closer. Bare feet brushing bone-white moss, slippers silent as ghosts. The town behind you stirred like something dreaming—warm, moon-drowsy lamplight spilling from crooked windows. A cart creaked past on rusted wheels, pulled by a skeletal mule with eyes like glow-worms. Somewhere overhead, a thousand paper bats took flight from the belfry, flapping on stringy wings like dying leaves.

You lifted your hand.

Touched his face—gently, gently—cupping the uninjured side, but letting your thumb rest just at the edge of that ruined jaw. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t lean in.

He just…stood there. As if he was scared his own desire might shatter him.

“Then kiss her now,” you whispered. “She’s right here.”

Remmick’s eyes burned. Not metaphorically. Literally.

A ring of red swallowed his dark gaze—glowing like coals in a hearth that hadn’t felt breath in years. His lips parted, a tiny whimper caught between them. His hand twitched at his side, then lifted—hovering over your waist, then pulling back, trembling.

“I—” he choked. “Tell me if y’don’t want it. I’ll wait, I swear, just—just say it, an’ I’ll wait ‘til the grave grows cold.”

You didn’t answer.

You kissed him.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t chaste. It was raw and starved and aching. His hand finally landed on your back, gripping your gown in a fist like it was the only thing tethering him to the world. His mouth was cold—unnaturally so—but the longer it moved against yours, the warmer it got, like you were coaxing heat back into him.

He whimpered into you.

That sound—ragged and small—was almost too much.

His other hand found your cheek. Not greedy. Just reverent. Like he couldn’t believe you were solid under his fingertips.

And all around you, the forest bloomed.

Not with roses or lilies—but with boneflowers and glowing toadstools, with lantern-bugs that lit the air like constellations. Wind chimes made from ribs began to sing, and the belltower rang once, a low, humming note that quivered like a heartbeat.

You didn’t want to pull away.

Not because it was perfect. But because it wasn’t. Because it was messy and trembling and stitched together from grief and longing and the quiet, sacred madness of being wanted exactly as you were.

When you finally parted, his forehead dropped to yours.

“Christ above,” he whispered, voice gone soft and accented and wet with disbelief, “Ye taste like warmth. Like bloody spring after a thousand years o’ frost.”

You smiled.

Because for the first time in your life, you believed someone meant it.

His forehead rested against yours, breath shaky and uneven as if he’d forgotten how to need anything until now.

The world around you hummed in its stillness. Lantern-light flickered like breath behind gauze. Something in the cliffs sighed—the sound of wind moving through the hollow spaces of a place not meant for the living. The scent of old parchment and smoke-moss clung to the air. The boneflowers glowed dimmer now, like candles burned low in anticipation.

Remmick’s hand still cradled your cheek, reverent as a benediction. His thumb moved once, a trembling stroke along your jaw.

You looked at him. Really looked. The way his lashes fluttered like he couldn’t hold your gaze too long. The way his lips—wet, bitten, parted—trembled just slightly even though he’d stopped kissing you. He looked stunned. Like a man waking from a century-long dream and realizing heaven hadn’t been a lie after all.

You pressed your hand over the one still clutching your back.

And you asked, very softly, “Is there somewhere we can go?”

He blinked. “Go?”

Your thumb brushed his wrist.

“Somewhere private,” you said. “Somewhere we can be alone.”

You let the weight of your meaning hang there, open. Raw.

His eyes—still rimmed in that glowing red, still almost black where the light didn’t touch—widened just slightly.

He didn’t speak right away.

Then: “Y—ye mean…”

You nodded.

He let out a breath that wasn’t a laugh, wasn’t a sob, but something caught in the middle. His jaw flexed, the muscles around the torn part twitching as if it ached to smile and didn’t remember how.

“Aye,” he said at last, breathless. “Aye, I—Christ. C’ourse there is.”

You followed him through the quiet town, through paths lined with broken gravestones and wrought-iron gates wrapped in black ivy. The skeletal mule lifted its head as you passed, but didn’t move. The sky flickered between colors that didn’t exist aboveground—indigo, absinthe green, deep plum, midnight rust.

The house he led you to was small, crooked, nestled between two weeping trees. Its windows were frosted over from the inside, but lanterns glowed behind them—soft and inviting, not gold but something bluer, like the edge of candlelight seen through tears.

He opened the door and held it for you, eyes not leaving your face even once.

And when you stepped inside, the house breathed around you.

Like it had been waiting too.

The moment you stepped inside, the door shut behind you with a hush like a drawn curtain. No click. No finality. Just the sound of something sealing the world away—just the two of you now, cocooned in this crooked little house where time didn’t dare intrude.

It was warm, impossibly so. Not with fire, but with memory.

Lanterns floated untethered above the room, bobbing gently like sleeping fireflies in glass cages. Their glow was the color of old violets pressed between pages—dim, wistful, soft. A chair sat crooked beside a hearth with no fire, its frame carved with sigils too old to name. The walls were mismatched wood and stone, patched in places with stained-glass panels that bled moody light across the floor. Dust danced in the air like confetti made from ash and pearl.

And across the room stood a bed.

Not some pristine matrimonial thing. No, this was older. Lovingly worn. A frame of twisted wrought iron and bone-white wood, headboard etched with curling ivy and crescent moons. The sheets were moth-gray and velvet-soft, tucked in neat but frayed at the edges like they'd been waiting for years—centuries—to be touched again.

Remmick lingered behind you, his presence like a shadow you didn’t want to outrun. He hadn’t stepped closer yet. He was giving you space. But you could feel the way he vibrated with restraint. His hand hovered just inches from your back, like he couldn’t trust himself to touch without unraveling.

“If ye…” he began, and his voice cracked down the middle. He cleared his throat, tried again. “If ye’ve changed yer mind, just say the word. I’ll not take a thing ye don’t want to give, not even a breath.”

You turned to face him.

There was nothing hungry in his stance. Not yet. Just reverence. Just awe. But something in you had already begun to ache with want.

You stepped closer, silent as snowfall, until your fingers found the button of his collar. He startled at the contact—but didn’t stop you.

“I’m not scared of you,” you said, voice hushed. “I want this.”

You slid off the suit jacket, palms skimming the broad expanse of his shoulders, Remmick's lashes fluttering in response. Underneath, you found a pair of suspenders stretched taut over his chest, creating wrinkles in the fabric of his collared dress shirt.

You undid the top button. He didn’t move. Then Another.

His throat worked around a swallow, breath trembling. The glow in his eyes flickered, pulsing, softening. Like it responded to your touch.

Another.

You watched his chest rise and fall, slow and shallow as he tried not to pant. As if the sheer fact of you, undressing him—not in horror, not with trembling hands, but deliberately—was too much.

Another.

You laid your palms flat against his chest now, pushing the shirt from his shoulders. The white wife beater underneath clung to him, threadbare and soft, stretched over his broad frame. He was muscular in that quiet, devastating way—someone who’d labored long past death. His chest heaved with breath he didn’t need.

He hadn’t stopped watching your face.

Not once.

“I dunno if I remember how to do this slow,” he murmured, voice hitching on every word. “I’m too far gone for gentle if ye ask me to take too much control.”

You smiled, cupping the side of his neck. The unbroken one.

“Then let me.”

You stepped back once, your own hands now at the hem of your gown, torn at the hem, blood dried like rust at your shin. You pulled it loose now, bit by bit, letting it fall from your shoulders with the softest sigh of fabric meeting floor, leaving you in just your panties.

Remmick stared. His lips parted. No sound. His knees bent slightly, like he was fighting the urge to fall to them.

“Sweet hell,” he whispered, reverently. “Ye look like…like the night I died dreamin’ someone might love me anyway.”

And then, as if the words had summoned it, the lanterns above bloomed brighter, casting kaleidoscope patterns over your bare skin. The stained-glass windows threw ribbons of blue and red and indigo across your collarbones, your hips, your thighs.

Remmick reached out—slowly, slowly—and let the backs of his fingers trail along your arm. He didn’t dare touch your breasts. Not yet. He touched the hollow of your elbow. The dip of your wrist. The edge of your shoulder where your gown had once kissed your skin.

“Are ye sure?” he breathed.

You nodded.

“Lay with me.”

He exhaled like he’d been holding that breath since his last life.

And then he moved.

He moved like he wasn’t sure he was allowed.

Like the spell might break if he touched you too boldly—if he let himself believe for even a moment that he could have this. Have you.

You were already on the bed, the velvet beneath you rich and rippling like ink-stained water. Your head resting against moth-gray pillows. The locket he’d given you pressed cool against your breastbone, shifting with every breath. The air smelled of petrichor, moonlight, and something sweeter—something you’d begun to associate only with him. A scent like charred lilac and old longing.

Remmick knelt beside the mattress on one knee, wide palms gripping the edge of the frame like it was the only thing keeping him from coming undone.

“Christ, darlin’,” he rasped, his voice thick, slurred just slightly with his Irish cadence. “Ye don’t know what ye’re doin’ to me.”

But you did.

You could see it—see the way his jaw clenched, the left side twitching faintly where the skin had long since been torn away. The way his fangs caught on his lower lip, not bared, but there—unavoidable. You could see how hard he was fighting himself, how deeply he was suppressing the parts of him he feared you’d flinch from.

You didn’t flinch.

Instead, you reached for him, fingers curling into the front of his thin undershirt. Pulled him closer.

“Remmick,” you whispered. “It’s alright.”

He froze above you, nose inches from yours.

“I can’t—”

“You can.” You cupped his cheek, gently thumbing along the edge of exposed muscle. Not in disgust. Not in pity. But in affection. “I want all of you.”

Something in him broke.

He surged forward with a noise caught between a sob and a growl, his mouth crashing against yours. It was not the kiss of before—this one had heat, had desperation, the kind of longing that hadn’t been touched in over a thousand years. His lips were cold, but his tongue burned. You tasted the salt of old grief and something copper-sharp beneath it. His hands—God, those hands—one cupped your jaw while the other slid around your ribs, feeling flesh and bone simultaneously, cradling your back like you were sacred, like he might be punished for touching you too hard but couldn’t stop himself even if he tried.

“So soft—” he whispered, kissing the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then your neck. “So fuckin’ soft, love, like the world before it soured…”

His fangs dragged the faintest line along your throat. Not piercing—just testing. Just tasting. His breath hitched like it pained him to hold back.

And you whispered again:

“It’s fine.”

That was all he needed.

A low, guttural moan tore from his chest as he finally let himself grip you harder—your hips, your thighs, hauling you into his lap like he needed you closer, needed your skin pressed to his or he might rot again right there on the floor. His body was strong, stronger than a man’s should’ve been, and you could feel that strength now as he spread your thighs wide and settled between them, the weight of him pressing down deliciously heavy.

He groaned when he felt the heat of you beneath the fabric, when your legs wrapped around his waist. He wasn’t shy anymore. His teeth caught on your lower lip as he kissed you again, hungrier now, drooling slightly with want—not from gluttony, but from sheer, unbearable starvation.

“Ye smell like everythin’ I’ve ever lost,” he murmured raggedly. “And everythin’ I thought I’d never be allowed to touch again.”

His hips rolled once, helplessly, against yours. You felt the hardness of him, thick and restrained behind old linen and buttons. His breath hitched, head dropping to your shoulder.

“I’m tryin’, I swear it, I’m tryin’ to be slow…”

“You don’t have to be,” you told him, voice gone small and shaking. “I’m not afraid of you. I want you. All of you. Even the parts you’re trying to hide.”

He lifted his head slowly—eyes glowing red now, the pupils huge and blown with need.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he breathed. “Marryin’ me twice over, sayin’ that.”

You hadn’t meant to tempt him. Not exactly. But you’d said the words—I want all of you—and now you could feel what that meant in the trembling of his fingers as they hovered over your body. Not touching. Not yet. Just breathing you in like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening. That you were happening.

His voice cracked through the hush of the room. “D’you know what yer sayin’, love?” He cupped the back of your neck, gentle as a grave flower. His thumb dragged along your pulse like he was listening to it. “A thousand years o’ hunger in me…an’ you go sayin’ that?”

Your answer came not in words but in action—pulling his hand down, pressing it against your chest so he could feel your heart race for him. For this. For the way his eyes glowed like twin embers in the dark.

That did it.

He surged forward, lips grazing the shell of your ear. “Then lie back for me, mo chroí,” he breathed. “Let me see what I’ve been dreamin’ of since before I knew what dreamin’ meant.”

You reclined against the velvet, heat curling low in your stomach, and Remmick followed you down—kneeling between your legs like a knight in a fairy tale gone all wrong and better for it. His skin caught the light, that blue like moonlight over still water, marred only by the right side of his jaw—where muscle and bone were laid bare, yet never once did he try to turn his face away from you.

Because you didn’t flinch.

You reached up and traced the edge of the torn flesh, and he shuddered, a sound like something old breaking loose in his chest.

He kissed you then—not hurried, but deep, wet, needy—and his hand came to rest between your thighs, warm despite everything. His fingers traced the seam of your inner thigh first, featherlight, before his mouth followed. Down your jaw. Your throat. Lower.

Praise spilled from him like prayer:

“Look at ye—soft as sin, warm as summer rain—ain’t never seen anythin’ like ye.”

He mouthed at your thighs, biting down just enough to make you gasp, but never break the skin. He lapped at the indentations like he wanted to memorize every tremble, every twitch. When your legs started to close reflexively, he hooked an arm around one, spreading you wider with a low, sinful groan.

“No, no, love. Let me see. Let me taste. It’s been so long—I’ll be good, I swear it, I’ll make ye forget everythin’ but me.”

His hand moved between your legs again—rough palm against soft heat. He doesn't remove your panties yet, content to tease you through the., letting the slick there soak into the cotton. He rutted his palm against you, slow and grinding, until your hips started chasing it.

You keened. And he moaned in response—open-mouthed, desperate.

“Fuckin’ drippin’ f’r me already…ain’t even had a taste…”

And he did.

One long stripe with his tongue over the damp cotton. Then another. Until he was panting into you like a starving man nosing through the seam of your underwear. One hand splayed over your belly, keeping you still.

Then he sucked the fabric into his mouth like he could wring the taste of you through it.

When you gasped, he looked up—eyes blown wide, red rimmed, lips wet and parted.

“Beggin’ ye,” he whispered. “Let me have ye proper, yeah? Just me mouth for now—let me make ye sing, mo chroí, let me worship ye like the altar ye are.”

And when you nodded—more a whimper than a yes—he pulled your panties aside and groaned, deep and broken.

You didn’t expect him to kiss your cunt.

But he did.

Like he meant it.

Like it was holy.

He parted you with reverence—his breath hot against your folds, one trembling hand holding your thigh like it anchored him to the earth. The other lay against your belly, fingers twitching as though resisting the urge to claw, to grasp, to sink into your softness and never let go.

And then…he kissed you.

Not rushed. Not ravenous. Just lips to flesh, slow and aching, as if the act itself might undo him. As if his very mouth might shatter around you—and he’d welcome the breaking.

Your back arched.

Not from shock—but from the texture.

Because his mouth wasn’t whole.

His lips were soft, yes. Warm, even. But where the skin gave way—where bone and sinew lay exposed, where every sharp, imperfect tooth glistened with preternatural hunger—his kiss became something otherworldly.

It should’ve been frightening.

It wasn’t.

It was devastating.

You felt it not just in your cunt, but in your spine, your ribs, your soul. He didn’t just use his tongue—though God, that tongue, wet and thick and curling with practiced strokes that told you he hadn’t forgotten how to ruin a woman—he used his mouth in full. The broken parts. The jagged ones.

He scraped—not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to tease. Just enough to remind you this wasn’t a dream. That this was him. Remmick. The dead man with the living hands. The monster with the gentle touch.

He licked you like you were spun sugar and sacrament, and when he pressed his tongue flat against your clit and sucked, your hands shot to his hair, tangled in it, dragging him closer—

He moaned. Moaned into you, like the taste alone could kill him.

“Christ alive,” he rasped, pulling back for half a second to pant against your slick. His voice was wrecked, thick with emotion and want, thick with his Irish cadence.

He ducked back down—open mouth, flat tongue, slow circles that made your thighs tremble—and then slid two fingers inside you in one smooth, devastating motion.

“Tight little thing,” he whispered, “grippin’ me like ye missed me your whole life.”

You sobbed something between his name and God and yes, your thighs clenching around his ears, and he groaned again—deeper this time—rutting against the bed like he was getting off on the noises you made alone.

And somewhere between the moaning and the wet pop of his mouth over your clit, somewhere between the slurp of his tongue and the squelch of his fingers moving inside you, the thought came—

My mother warned me of what goes bump in the night.

She whispered it when you were little. When the winds howled. When the floorboards creaked.

She said, “There are monsters, my love. Stay in the light.”

And now here you were, sprawled beneath one, flushed and soaked and gasping, letting him drag you apart with teeth and tongue.

You wondered what she’d say if she saw you like this.

If she knew that you’d chosen the dark—and begged it to keep you.

You felt it coming.

Not like a storm—fast and brutal—but like a tide, rising slow. Heat bloomed between your hips, slow and dangerous. Your thighs ached with the effort of keeping him there, like if you let go he’d vanish back into the earth that made him.

And still he stayed. Mouthing at your cunt like a man devoted. Like a man damned.

His eyes fluttered shut as his tongue circled your clit, drawing wet, lazy shapes—infinity, you thought, or a name—until you couldn’t tell where his mouth ended and your body began.

And then—

His eyes opened.

They glowed dimly at first, that reddish hue flickering like coal beneath ash. But when he felt your hand trembling against his scalp—when you whimpered “Remmick, I—”, his gaze snapped to yours.

Locked. Frozen. Held. It wasn’t lust you saw there. It was awe. It was reverence.

It was a man who hadn’t been touched in thirteen hundred years, now watching you—bare, flushed, trembling—fall apart beneath his mouth like a blessing.

His lips glistened. His fingers curled inside you, stroking something sharp and sacred. And still, he didn’t look away.

He stared at you like he was watching the stars be born. Like you were the only heaven he ever hoped to find.

And you knew—without him saying it—that if you asked him to stop, he would. If you asked him to die again, he would.

But you didn’t want that. You wanted more. So you said nothing.

You only whispered, voice shaking, “Don’t look at me like that.”

His jaw twitched. His breath caught. Then came his voice, low and ruined:

“Can’t help it, darlin’. Ye look like salvation.”

And you broke.

Your thighs clamped around his ears. Your back arched. You came with a sound so soft it felt like mourning. Like prayer. Like surrender.

And Remmick—beautiful, monstrous, trembling—moaned like he’d been given breath again.

He kept licking you through it. Slower now. Gentler. One last kiss to your clit, soft and grateful. He pressed his cheek to your thigh, jaw wound resting against your skin like it belonged there.

And still, his eyes never left your face.

After, you pulled him up.

He came willingly. Crawled over you with something almost shy in the set of his shoulders, the way his body trembled despite its strength. You reached for him—and for a moment, he hesitated, like he couldn’t believe you were still here. That you wanted this. That you wanted him.

You cupped his face.

Cold skin. The torn edge of his right jaw like worn marble. One fang brushing your thumb where it passed his lip. His eyes flickered between black and red—uncertain, afraid he might be dreaming.

“Remmick,” you said, your voice thick and still breathless, “do you want me?”

The question broke something in him.

He nodded too fast, like a man who’s never been given permission to hope. “Aye. Christ, aye, I do—been wantin’ ye since the trees took yer scent. Since ye bled on the bark and woke me.”

Your fingers trailed down his chest, down the wife beater—until you reached his belt. He sucked in a breath, whole body twitching when your knuckles brushed the tented front of his trousers.

“Then show me,” you whispered. “Show me how much.”

His mouth twitched into a smile, wide and crooked. “Ye don’t know what ye ask, lass.”

You leaned up, lips brushing his jaw, your whisper soft and sharp against his skin. “Then show me anyway.”

He kissed you—harder this time, desperate now, hips grinding against your thigh with the ragged rhythm of a man barely keeping himself leashed. His tongue pushed into your mouth, all heat and hunger, and you could taste blood and lavender and something older, something wild, on his tongue.

And God, he kissed like he meant to die in your mouth. When he pulled back, his voice rasped, thick and low:

“Ye sure?”

You nodded once. Twice. Then said it, clear and sure:

“I want to feel you inside me.”

He shuddered. Not just a tremble—but a full-body quake, as if your words went deeper than skin, straight to the buried places inside him.

“Then lie back, ma wee bride,” he murmured, voice shaking, thick with that Irish lilt you’d grown to crave. “Let me make a proper mess of ye.”

He moved slowly, reverently, as he undressed you fully, fingers shaking as they peeled your underwear down. His breath caught at every inch of exposed skin, like he was memorizing it with his mouth slightly parted.

He bent low, kissed the inside of your thigh again—then your hip, your stomach, your ribs. Worshipful. Starved.

And when he reached for himself, undid the buckle of his trousers with fumbling hands, he looked up at you once more, almost apologetic.

“I—ah—may not last long,” he confessed, shame flickering across his face. “Not when ye’re lookin’ at me like that. Not when I’ve waited this long. I’ll—I'll make it up to ye, I swear it—”

You touched his face again.

“Then come undone for me, Remmick,” you whispered. “You’ve waited long enough.”

He lowered himself between your thighs like a man preparing for worship, not fucking.

His forehead pressed to your sternum. His breath trembled. You felt him—not just the weight of his body, but the heat of him, pulsing against your thigh, thick and straining beneath your touch.

And God, he was big.

You glanced down and saw it—long and flushed dark at the tip, veined like marble, so hard he twitched in time with his breath. The way his cock curved heavy toward his stomach made your breath catch. He looked like something carved from sin.

He saw your eyes widen and started to pull back.

“I—I’ll wait, love, I’ll—”

“No,” you breathed, grabbing his arm. “I want it. I want you. Just…slow.”

He swallowed, hard. His throat clicked.

“Gonna ruin ye,” he whispered, voice thick with Irish dusk and awe. “Gonna stretch ye wide and deep and still wish I could go deeper.”

Your legs parted further on instinct. Your heels dragged the sheets. He looked down at you like you were something sacred, worshipped and half-afraid of.

Then his hand moved between your thighs.

His fingers—two at first, slow and careful—slid back into your soaked heat, working you open gently, watching for every flinch, every sharp breath. His jaw—half-torn and glowing faintly with the light of his hunger—tightened.

“Look at ye,” he whispered hoarsely, breath like a vow. “So soft f’r me. So warm already.”

Your hips arched into his hand. You whined when his thumb brushed your clit, your hands clutching at his shoulders, his name escaping your lips again and again in half-sobs.

“Please, Remmick,” you gasped.

He kissed your knee. Your hip. Your inner thigh again. Then—

He lined himself up with you, shaking. “I can feel ye callin’ f’r me,” he said, voice low, trembling. “Can feel yer body beggin’ mine to belong.”

You didn’t have words for what he made you feel. Only need. Only the hot, aching stretch inside as he finally pressed forward, the thick head of his cock nudging into you with aching slowness.

And God—the burn. It wasn’t pain. It was too much and not enough all at once. You clutched his arms. Gasped. He froze.

“Too much?” he rasped. “Do I stop?”

“No—Remmick—don’t stop,” you moaned, “just—go slow—”

And he did. So slow, like he was trying not to shatter.

His cock dragged deeper, inch by inch, your walls clutching at him, your slick coating him as he bottomed out in you with a shudder that shook his whole body. His arms shook. His forehead dropped to yours. His mouth opened but nothing came out—not until your name escaped his throat on a cracked, desperate sound that felt more like prayer than pleasure.

“Fookin’ Christ,” he choked, barely moving, buried to the hilt inside you. “Ye feel—Gods above—ye feel like fire.”

You were full. So full. Stretched in a way that left your eyes fluttering, your voice catching in your throat. You didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to breathe. You only wanted to feel him there, pulsing deep inside, trembling like you were the first sunrise he’d ever seen.

And maybe you were.

He stayed there, deep and still, as if even the smallest movement might break you. His eyes squeezed shut. His jaw flexed against the side of your throat. You could feel him shaking—not from strain, but from the restraint it took not to move.

You wrapped your arms around his neck.

“It’s okay,” you whispered, mouth brushing the shell of his ear. “I can take it.”

He didn’t answer at first. Just trembled, breath warm on your shoulder. But the sound he made when your hips tilted up—when your walls squeezed gently around him—wasn’t human.

It was a groan wrenched up from the deepest part of him. A sound centuries old.

“Ye don’t know what ye’re sayin’,” he rasped. “Ye don’t know what I’ll do if ye tell me I can…”

“I do,” you whispered, meeting his gaze. “I want you to.”

And that’s what broke him.

The first thrust was shallow, but sharp—his hips twitching forward, grinding deep. Your mouth fell open, a gasp slipping past your lips. He did it again. Then again. Each movement just a little rougher, a little more desperate. Until he was fucking you with the kind of pace that spoke of appetite, not lust.

He pressed you down into the sheets, breathing ragged, body arched over yours like he couldn’t get close enough. His lips dragged down your throat, over your collarbone, mouthing at the tops of your breasts like a man starving.

He muttered something in Irish against your skin—raw, thick, ruined—but you didn’t need to understand it. You felt what it meant in the way he rutted into you, deep and fast, his cock dragging along the parts of you no one else had ever touched.

You sobbed his name.

Your nails dug into his shoulders. You felt his back ripple beneath your hands, all sinew and strength, every part of him working to fuck you the way he’d been dreaming of since long before your first breath.

“You feel me?” he groaned into your mouth. “Deep in that sweet lil cunt, aye? So warm—so wet—I could drown in ye.”

You cried out, back arching, thighs trembling.

His mouth kissed down your breast, licking over your nipple before sucking it between his teeth. Your whole body jerked beneath him.

“Fook,” he breathed against your skin. “Ye’re squeezin’ me like you like it when I lose m’self.”

“I do,” you sobbed. “I want you to—Remmick, please—don’t stop—”

He didn't.

He pounded into you, hips snapping, the slick drag of his cock obscene as your bodies slapped together. His jaw wound gleamed faintly with wet, his eyes glowing a deep carnelian red. But even with his mouth parted, his teeth sharp, even with the beast in him taking hold—he still looked at you like he loved you.

Loved you, even if he didn’t dare say it yet. You clenched around him. His rhythm faltered.

He growled, low and broken, “Tell me if I hurt ye, love. Tell me—swear it—”

“You’re perfect,” you whimpered, tears slipping down your cheeks. “You’re perfect, Remmick.”

His forehead dropped to yours. Then he rutted into you with such bruising depth, you saw stars.

He couldn’t stop shaking.

Even as his body rocked into yours, even as your legs wrapped around his hips and your nails raked down the meat of his back, Remmick trembled like a man possessed.

“Can’t hold m’self back,” he whispered, voice rough and wrecked and soaked in longing. “Not when ye’re like this—soft and beggin’ beneath me—so fuckin’ warm—”

“Then don’t,” you breathed. “Remmick, please—don’t stop—don’t hold back—just take me—”

Your words undid him.

He groaned low in his chest, mouth falling open, and something inside him slipped. His pace turned brutal—not cruel, never cruel—but driven. Like centuries of craving finally had a body to answer to.

Like you were the only thing he’d ever wanted, and the wait had nearly broken him.

The frame of the bed creaked beneath his rhythm. Your thighs trembled around his hips, slick and trembling, your body rocked with every deep, ragged thrust. And still—still—he tried to speak.

“You feel me, yeah?” he rasped, forehead pressed to yours. “Deep in that sweet cunt…like I belong there. Like I was meant to be there—"

Your hands curled at his nape. Your lips brushed his ear.

“You do,” you said.

That was all it took.

Remmick let go.

His body slammed flush against yours, hips stuttering hard, cock pulsing deep inside you with a heat so full, so heavy, it knocked the breath from your lungs.

He groaned brokenly against your skin, his whole body arching as he spilled inside you—deep, thick, endless—his forehead resting against yours like he had nowhere else left to go.

You clung to him. His breath hitched. Then again.

And when you looked down between your bodies, when your thighs parted with a sticky ache—you saw the proof of him leaking back out of you, thick and warm where you were still stretched around the base of his cock.

A creamy ring of white.

Remmick saw it, too.

He moaned—deep, guttural—and pulled you closer, nosing at your throat like he was afraid you’d disappear. “So full of me,” he whispered, dazed. “Look at ye. Stuffed so pretty…”

You kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Remmick,” you whispered.

His eyes fluttered open.

And when you looked into them—when you saw the pain, the wonder, the sheer reverence—you knew. He’d been waiting longer than you’d been alive. For this. For you.

His voice cracked, Irish accent trembling:

“Don’t leave me, love. Not now. Not ever.”

You kissed him back.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The air felt different after.

Not warmer, not colder—but fuller. As if something ancient and unseen had exhaled at last. A spell released. A promise made flesh.

Remmick lay tangled beside you, arms wrapped tight around your body like he didn’t know how to let go. His cheek pressed to your shoulder, jaw wound cool and tender against your skin. His breath was shallow, uncertain—like he still couldn’t believe you were real.

You watched the glow-worm lanterns drift lazily overhead. Somewhere outside, the bones in the wind chimes knocked gently together like teeth. The forest whispered.

You should’ve been afraid.

Of the damp, breathing woods. Of the moss that learned your name. Of the way the moon never moved and the veil hung so thin you could taste it when you kissed him.

But you afraid. You were…calm.

He stirred slightly when you traced a lazy pattern down his back—soft whorls against undead skin still damp with sweat. A low, content sound rumbled in his throat, and he nosed into the crook of your neck, whispering something like “m’wife…” so quietly, you weren’t sure if it was meant for you or just the silence.

And God help you, you smiled.

It hadn’t been love with Mr. Langdon. It hadn’t even been kindness.

It had been a future written in ink not your own. One you’d been expected to accept without complaint, because it was tidy. Respectable. Fitting of a girl raised to smile politely, to never contradict her elders, to marry for property and speak only when spoken to.

Your mother had called it security.

Had warned you to stay away from things that wandered in the woods. From things with glowing eyes and sharpened teeth. Things that hungered.

And now—

Now you lay in a moss-slick bed of dirt and silk, bare and marked and full of one such thing. You wore his locket. His bite. His ring.

You brushed your fingers along the smooth place at your neck where his lips had lingered. A perfect bruise. A signature.

And still you weren’t afraid. You weren’t ashamed. You were…

Content.

“I wish I’d met ye sooner,” he whispered against your collarbone. “Back when I still knew how to be a man.”

You turned your head, met his eyes. Those wide, glowing eyes.

“You still are.”

He swallowed, expression caught between reverence and disbelief.

“I ain’t decent,” he said, voice thick with that Irish lilt again. “Ain’t clean. Ain’t right. I sleep in the dirt, I feed when I must, and I carry more ghosts than I do breath in m’lungs.”

“You’re kind,” you said.

“A monster.”

“You’re mine.”

He closed his eyes at that.

You rested your palm over his heart—cold and still. But when you pressed closer, you could swear something stirred there. Like an echo. Like a wish.

He buried his face in your chest, arms tightening around your waist. And you let him hold you.

You never looked back again.

Not at Langdon. Not at the mother who warned you off the dark but allowed the devil in anyway. Not at the world where your name was written beside a stranger’s in a church you hated.

Instead, you stayed in the belly of the forest. In the town built of bones and moss and memory. You watched the ribbons in the orchard sway like breath. You fed the skeletal cat scraps of peach and laughed when it swiped at your slipper. You kissed your husband when the wind moaned, and whispered promises against his cheek when his hands trembled.

Because you loved him. Because he waited.

And because when you reached for a tree with trembling hands and a bloodstained ring, he was the one who answered.

Not Langdon. Not God.

Him.

On the morning the bluebell bloomed again—only one, shy and frost-bitten—you knelt beside it with Remmick and whispered,

“Maybe this was the wish that came true.”

He stared at the bloom, then at you. And smiled.

“I ran from a man with a pulse,” you whispered, lacing your fingers through your undead husband’s. “But I stayed for the one with a soul.”

[rhaenyraeri]

nah bc i cannot get the thought of tasting remmick out of my head <33

his sweat, his drool, his come..

lord have mercy on me i need to taste this man

warnings: oral (m! receiving), sloppy making out, mention of fem! recieving oral on her period, reader is obsessed with remmick’s come, sweat, and drool, licking, overstimulation

minors dni, 18+!!!!

his grip on your hair is tight, using the strands as a reign to push and pull your mouth up and down his cock. the other hand is gripping the armrest of the dinner chair in your house, legs spread apart so you can have access to him. the corner of the room is illuminated by a few candles melting on the windowsill, the flickering lights shining against his face.

“ah, shit, darlin’. you’re so damn good at this. suckin’ on me like that.”

you place your hands on his thighs, fingers pushing into his skin as you grip. his moans are guttural, you can hear the desire laced in each sound. he’s always been more than happy to please you; to have his head between your thighs for hours on end. but tonight you stopped him, saying it’s his turn.

you hummed as you sucked on his length, tongue lightly moving when you got the chance. he tasted divine, like heaven on your tongue. and you wouldn’t let a single bit of him go to waste. the hand gripping your hair let go, he’s now using it to run his fingers through his hair. you go back up his length, removing your mouth and replacing it with your hand. he whines at the feeling, how your mouth wasn’t taking all of him anymore.

you took a hand from his thigh and wrapped it around his length, stroking it up and down as you looked at the man above you. his head is tilted back, eyebrows furrowed, and the back of his hand is placed against his forehead.

“aww, come on, darlin’. don’t tease me like this, i-i need your pretty little mouth back on me.”

he opened his eyes, looking down at you, pleading.

you scooted closer, spreading his legs a little more. you lifted his cock and moved in to take one of his balls into your mouth, sucking as you stroked him. his hips twitched at the feeling, and you could see his leg muscles tighten. giving them a few kisses and then licking up and down the seam, you raised up to put his cock back into your mouth.

he ran his fingers through your hair as you sucked on him, giving it a light tug before taking it up your arm to grab your hand. his hips thrust involuntarily into your mouth, hitting the back of your throat.

“honey, i’m so close. fuck, i’m gonna come darlin,” remmick warned, his voice desperate for the release. you moaned at his words, thinking of how good it’s going to feel for his warm seed to run down your throat, the taste of his release as you continued to suck the life out of him (well, what was left of it).

“it’s all mine, baby. give it to me, let me taste you. wanna swallow it all,” you pulled away from him long enough to tell him, to send him over the edge.

he muttered a quick “goddamnit,” as you put your warm mouth on his length again, humming to send vibrations through him. you got a few more sucks in before you heard his loud moan of release, then felt the feeling of his salty cum filing your throat.

but you didn’t let up, continuing your job as his body shook, the release doing him in.

remmick started to squirm, the chair creaking. his claws shot out of his hand, almost piecing the both of you. overstimulation started to set in, his foot stomped down against the flooring as you kept going. you were to determined to suck him dry, the taste of his come being so insanely addicting.

“darlin’ please i.. i can’t go anymore, please. it’s too much.”

giving in, you hollowed your cheeks around his length one last time, as much as you could, and pulled away. you licked the slit of his cock, gathering just the tiniest bit more of his release.

you kissed up his clothed abdomen before running your hands across his arms as you stood up. staring down at him, a thought popped into your head. you sat on his lap, looking over his spent body. he still hasn’t looked at you.

drool fell from his mouth, running down his throat and chest. his head was still leaned back, eyes staring at the ceiling as he tried to control his heavy breathing. you kissed his exposed chest above the white tank top, savoring the taste of his sweat and vampiric drool. it was intoxicating. so invigorating.

you licked from the collar of the tank top and up his neck, sucking a hickey just below his ear. pulling back, you noticed remmick was still looking up at the ceiling, lost in the bliss from the head you’d given him.

you glanced at the chain sitting around his neck. your eyes flicked up to his face then back down. deciding enough was enough, you took two fingers and wrapped them around the chain, forcing him to look at you.

“are you just gonna ignore me the rest of the night, rem? i still haven’t got my fill of you yet.”

he shook his at you, mouth open as he stared at your face, a small bit of his come pooled at the corner. he brought a hand to your face, running his thumb across your lips to gather his release and push it into your mouth. you moaned around his thumb, sucking on it. his fingers rubbed your cheek lovingly as he watched, mesmerized by how entranced you were by his taste. all of his tastes, for that matter.

“darlin’, i’ll be here all night, you know that. you got the rest of the moonlight to take me for all i can give you.”

you leaned in to kiss him, immediately noting that you’re desperate to get your tongue deep into his mouth. he kissed you back with ferocity, wrapping his arms around your body as you take your hands and place them on his shoulders. the kiss was messy— probably unnecessarily so. but thankfully you didn’t give a fuck.

remmick got to ravish you damn near every night, absorbing every ounce of your slick that he could get his greedy tongue on, so why couldn’t you? there was nothing more he loved than to be trapped between your thighs, drinking your release like his life depended on it. especially the nearly week long treat he got each month, where your sweet blood and divine come mixed together. it drove him insane.

you’re using too much tongue but again, you didn’t give a fuck. saliva dripped down your chin, mixing with his vampiric drool. the squelching sounds made you dizzy with infatuation, only making you kiss him more aggressively. the noises were obscene, yet somehow that fired you up more. you hum into his mouth as his grip tightens around your body. he pulled away, mouth soaked. he knew what you were thinking.

“go on, darlin. i know you just can’t get enough.”

and that’s what you did. you kissed around his face, your tongue sliding out into kitten licks to take in the mess you’d purposefully made. you kissed his jaw, tongue swiping at the dribble of spit hanging on his chin. he laughed, finding your enthusiasm and desperation for every ounce of his flavor to be entertaining.

he could remember a couple weeks prior when he’d come to your home drenched in blood, and the both of you needed each other desperately. you’d moaned at the taste of the blood, a shock to him as humans didn’t tend to enjoy the flavor, hell, none he’d ever met had the stomach for seeing blood let along licking it off of someone.

it all makes sense now. it wasn’t so much the blood as it was him. something about the way his body tasted to you drove you insane, getting you drunk off of it.

he touched your cheek again, swiping the spit off your mouth and putting his still slightly wet thumb back into your mouth, letting you clean up the mess. when you finished, he kissed you, but this time it’s a more loving, sweet kiss. nothing like the others tonight.

“what’s gotten into you, girl? just a couple weeks ago you licked blood off me like a damn vampire, and tonight you’ve licked every ounce of liquid i gave out. you’re a messy woman, you know that?”

you smiled, thinking about just how insane you’d gone tonight. might’ve been overkill, might not have been. remmick shouldn’t look so handsome and taste so goddamn amazing if he didn’t want you doing something about it.

“well, rem, i just cannot help myself. sounds familiar, doesn’t it?,” you laughed, quoting what he’d told you one night when you asked him why he was so obsessed with eating you out.

he smiled at you, kissing your forehead as he breathed out.

“the damn sun’s coming up, darlin’. i hate to leave you like this but i gotta get goin’.”

you pouted, huffing as you crossed your arms across your chest. he tilted his head, raising an eyebrow at you, as if asking “really?”

sighing, you got off his lap and walked to the front door, grabbing his clothing. he hadn’t even made it two steps into the house before the desire overcame the two of you.

“we need to find a way to block it out. i can’t keep missing you all day, rem.”

he stopped buckling his belt, looking up at you. he scanned the room for ideas, then landed on a huge curio cabinet you had.

“well, we could always board up these windows. maybe even more some of these bigger pieces of your furniture ‘round to block ‘em out.”

a smile raised in your face. having remmick in your house at night time wasn’t enough. during the day you yearned for his presence, just him being nearby.

“i like that idea. a lot, actually.”

he walked over to you, noticing how soon that sunrise was coming.

“i really gotta get goin’, sweetheart. but i’ll see you tonight, alright? help ya move some of these around. unless you plan to make me do all the hard work,” he said as he placed his hand on your doorknob, bracing himself as his slid his boots on.

“and miss you working up a sweat? yeah, right,” you laughed, a devious smile flashing to him.

“lord, girl, you’re gonna be the death of me.”

[audreyownsdiamonds]

🌾 remmick burying himself inside farmers!daughter!reader on the field

You were looking for a chicken, a stubborn one, nowhere to be found.

Sun was already down, the sky carrying a soft blue glow, not hard enough to give the stars space to shine. You weren’t scared, you lived here your whole life and this wasn’t the first time one of the birds ran off on their own.

You were annoyed to be outside in this time, wishing to go pick an outfit to wear tomorrow.

All of a sudden, the whole place went quiet. You were past the fence and on the field, now an empty ground. Then a man came into your view. He stood still, his sleeves pushed up on his elbows, knees smeared in something you couldn’t see.

“You lost?” you called, with a hand on your hip.

He didn’t answer. Just tilted his head, eyes glinting. You have never seen such a thing before. But you knew he was up to no good.

You should’ve have gone back. Turned the heel and ran back to the coop, lie about the chicken. But your feet were left in place as his lead him closer to you.

“You are not from around here?” his mouth didn’t open until they were near your neck, breathing, his hand brushed on your skin like he was checking for a pulse.

Before being able to do anything on your own, he kissed you with uneasy roughness, grazing at your bottom lip when he caught it between his teeth.

Next thing you knew, you were on your back, in the dirt. Skirt bunched up to your hips, his body was towering over you, climbing on it, just like that. Your heart kicked in your chest, surprisingly out of thrill and enjoyment.

The way he positioned himself between your legs, penetrating you with his cock, tumbled your head into the warm earth beneath you. He took you, in an instant thrust, grunting over your skin animalistically. Seeing his eyes glow even brighter as he fucked you, but you couldn’t be bothered by it, clenching at every single move.

The dirt below was buried under your weight, and you didn’t feel the rocky bumps, only the way his cock was stretching you.

"You wouldn't like your daddy seeing you like, hm?" The mustered saliva dripped out of his mouth, dangling over your blouse. His hand slid under it, pulling it apart. You barely shook your head, left and right, only once. He'd seen it.

"Then get up." you whimpered, as he stroked your nipple, his drool slid onto your breast, glazing your skin. You weren't going anywhere, for as filthy as this was, it was far too good.

"No? Good girl." his hot mouth lingered above you, before sinking into your neck, at first with a nibble, before the pain started to appear. But your mind was in a haze, too lustful to consider yourself in danger or to get away from the pleasuring fuck you were getting.

[vel-vet61]

Slice of Heaven

warning(s): explicit 18+, breeding kink, dirty talk, bareback, public sex, filth, wet and messy

—————————————————————

Remmick takes you out and backs up against a tree out in the open when he feels like hearing the echo of every pump inside you - every noise you make. Especially the ones where you try your hardest to stifle them.

Feels it on his dick when you’re getting used to his size, your pussy slowly getting gradually wetter and accustomed to the intrusion. Remmick is shushing you in your ear, pulls all of it to the side as he slides home every fucking inch. Pumps the head until he’s balls deep and kissing your cervix. Your reactionary mewls entice him to go harder, fuck you rougher.

“Fuckin’ squeal so pretty for me. That’s it. You likin’ that?”

His voice rasps in your ear, shoving you onto him deeper by the white knuckled grasp on your hips.

“Oh fuck, fuck—“

“Mmm, I’ll take that as a yes…”

Remmick’s tongue skis down the slope of your jaw, finding the meat of your neck.

“Just wanna, wanna take one bite,” he coos. “It’d feel so good for the both of us. Get you cumming on my dick while I mate you.”

“Don’t tempt me like this, not when you’re giving it to me this good,” you whine. Arms flailing back to grab onto him for a semblance of leverage while his thrusts only speed up. Ever the responsive lover, sees your scrambling to hold onto a part of him, and keeps his bicep extended out for you to grip on. The arm you’re holding had folded over your stomach. Rubbing fine circles while his cock keeps steadily drilling into you. Fucking with an unstoppable passion, licking on your neck the same way he licks your pussy, soft and slow. Teasing himself with the salty sweat that he tastes.

“Love givin’ it to you this fuckin’ good, fucking my babydoll out in the open. Anyone can hear us right now, see what a pretty little slut you turn into for me,” he huffs. Pulls at your hair between picking up speed with the free arm that wasn’t fastened around your stomach.

“Would… would promise to kiss it better, not let you get infected,” he swallows the drool piling up on his tongue, surely seeping down one corner of his mouth. “Got that sweet blood, already know, already smell it.”

His nostrils dive in your hair and whiff, kissing your scalp as he slows down his thrusts to tease you.

“Got a little slice of heaven all for me in this pussy… gonna have me actin’ up, maybe get me cumming right inside you this time around,” Remmick hints with a low whistle, looking down at where your lips hug around him as he rhythmically pushes in, and out, in, and out. Deviousness in him prevails as he stops his rough hips. Slips his cock out and grabs down on the thick base to drag it up and down between your pussy lips. Sending spiralling shockwaves that threatened to trigger another orgasm from you, noises of wet skin smoothing together all that filled the dark quiet of the woods.

“Ohhhhh, don’t fucking stop I’m gonna cum—”

“Shh shh, not yet, no no no. Pussy’s not doing anything ‘til I say,” he chastises, drool blatantly slurring his speech as it drips down your cheek as he leans over. He feels you relent and relax on his dick, still trying not to selfishly clench down and latch onto anything he’ll feed and give to you. “Yeah. Good girl. Now line it back up, fuck yourself on it real slow and smooth. Softly now. Pussy sounds so sensitive when she’s all worn out.”

Following instructions that were almost painful to obey, not to grab him and fuck him until sunrise. You swallow with a long gulp of your throat, blindly scurrying a hand behind you to find his cock and grab it. Lining up the fat head with your cunt was the easiest thing, sliding back down on it and trying to keep some semblance of control of your pace. Slowly gliding your pussy up and down the head, desperate to please him enough to let you finish.

“Thaaaat’s right, lass. Fuck me, you’re made for this aren’t you?”

You feel his hips slowly pick up the pace for you, slipping inch by inch back in before his balls are curled up against your clit.

“Mmmmhmph, made to take you… made to take your cum,” you gasp. Helpless in the descent of your control, your pussy sick of the slick hot torture that won’t let you finish. It brings a sick grin to Remmick’s face, feeling how your cunt squeezes onto him like a brat for more.

“Shit yeah, made to take this fuckin’ dick anywhere I please,” he heaves. Feels the tingly feeling all the way down to his toes when he’s about to finish, exaggerating the circle of his hips to itch every spot inside. Your whining periodically gets interrupted by a harsh set of gasps, clawing onto his arm and fucking your pussy back on his manhood. It felt so rigorous and primal, fucking him out near the trees and the bushes. Your pussy was squelching on him, hot and sloppy as he grabs your jaw and turns you towards him, letting a pint of his drool seep down onto your tongue. Your moans only serve to make him pound you harder, loving the strangled squeeze your pussy does around him while he fucks it good.

“S’right angel, take this fucking dick. Cum on your dick. All yours, you deserve this baby.”

Remmick can’t help it anymore, not holding anything back on you with his vigorous pumps, balls slapping up against you over and over every time he pulls in and out.

You didn’t need to be told twice, body inevitably starting to bend over as your pussy squirts a puddle of cum all over him. Remmick catches you before you get anywhere near the ground, holding you up as he keeps his thrusts consistent.

“Shhh. Oh yeah baby, that was a good one wasn’t it,” he smiles against your face, digging his nose in your cheek. “Always finishin’ harder when I make you wait for it.”

You palm the back of his head to hold him there, turning your head to nip and kiss his mouth.

“You want my seed real deep inside this time, don’t you?”

“Yes…. yes, oh god yes…”

“That’s right. I’ll give it to you, give you everything that you need,” he assures. Slams his hips forward and rips himself out, and slamming right back in again. “Gee, fuckin’ wet on me, girl.”

His balls are tightened up against you and his mouth is right back to licking at your neck, teasing you there with kisses. As he murmurs mixes of your name and fuck, fuck that’s so right darlin, shit, his cock smooths all the way inside deep as can be, shooting rope after rope of his release. Your hips stall to help him through it, pumping back in him with your puffy sensitive lips making him go increasingly more insane.

“Yes, Remmick. Give it to me, give it all to me… wanna make you feel good,” you pet his hair as he sucks the creation of a deep hickey on your neck.

“God…. fucking…. dammit.”

The sharp intake of air he takes in puts a smile on his face when you wiggle your hips around and let him gently slip out, leaving the milky remnants to seep out of you onto the dirt of the ground.

Harmonious deep breaths and hurried kisses are all to be heard in the night now. Remmick soothes you with his hands, running his palms all over your body. Whispers of you’re beautiful, honey. always so fucking beautiful.

“Know you wanna turn me, turn me into one,” you whimper between the kisses, mouths practically stitched together out of his clingy tendencies. “I want to as bad as you do.”

“You say the word, darlin… I’ll make you mine forever, stop all this pain in a heartbeat.”

He mouths at the blotches of purple works of art scattering your neck. Snakes one hand down your front to feel the mess still drooping down your legs. Gets a sick smile spread to his face knowing he’s the reason you’re this filthy down there, both your fluids coming together as one.

“You could have my babies just like this. Feel me filling you up every night. That sound nice?”

Remmick turns you around to face your body towards him, running delicate fingers down your back and smashing his mouth to yours.

Your answer comes in the form of humming and nodding up against him, melting like you’re boneless into his torso.

“I promise I won’t bite your pretty neck too hard.”

[junkiex0]

“Let Me Eat You.”

a/n: this is just a short one shot. I didn’t want my blog to be empty any longer😭. Hope you guys enjoy! more content is coming soon <3

c/w: explicit sexual content, including oral (f receiving), possessive/monster lover dynamics, and strong themes of yearning and intimacy

Moonlight spills in through the slats of your blinds, silver and soft, casting pale ribbons across the bed. It’s the only light in the room, and it bathes everything in a hush, like a secret being told in the dark. Your thighs tremble around his head, your breath catching as he continues to feast on you like he’s been starved for centuries.

His face glows where the light touches him—cheekbones sharp, lips glistening, eyes smoldering as he looks up at you. The kind of gaze that leaves you bare in more ways than one. You let out a fragile whimper, your fingers twisting in the sheets, overwhelmed by how much he wants you.

Slowly, he pulls back from your heat, the loss of him making you shiver. He rests his head against the plush of your inner thigh like it’s the softest pillow he’s ever known. One hand lingers, rough palm caressing the curve of your opposite leg with a touch that is both reverent and possessive.

“I’ve been starving, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and aching. There’s something feral in it, but also tender—like hunger wrapped in silk.

You reach down, threading your fingers into his hair, stroking gently before letting your palm rest against his cheek. He leans into your touch like a prayer being answered. Then, with a slow, almost worshipful movement, he lifts your wrist to his lips.

He breathes you in, his lashes fluttering closed. “Let me eat you,” he whispers into the delicate skin, the warmth of his breath ghosting over your pulse. Then come the kisses—slow, deliberate, like he’s marking you as his with each one.

You know what he is. A monster, yes. But under the hunger, under the roughness and ruin, he’s soft with you. Gentle. Loving, in his own dangerous way.

His grip tightens just slightly, his fingers curling around your wrist like he’s afraid you might vanish. Like if he holds on hard enough, you’ll say yes.

And god—you want to.

[senselessviolets]

“no tenderness”

paddy mayne x spy!fem!reader

rating: explicit (slow burn angst/smut)

word count: 5k

ao3 link

warnings: **DUBIOUS CONSENT**, drunk sex, hatefucking, slapping (m/f recieving), first time squirting, “hold the moan”, degradation, spanking, panties as gag, doggystyle, fucking on staircase, slow burn, reader has anger issues like paddy, pet names, description of sexual harrassment, sexism, paddy is an asshole to reader but reader’s an asshole right back, kinda bitter(sweet if you squint) ending

a/n:

Important to note that while the reader’s exact race/physical description is kept vague, she is meant to be of British descent and shares beliefs that could be construed as nationalistic. Paddy, ofc, pushes back on her for this. But they are by no means indicative of my views (literally just an ignorant American over here). I figured that such a characterization would be more in line with how spies devoted to/serving under their country may have felt during this time.

“Evening, Lieutenant,” you greet the unshaven uniformed man leaning at the bar counter.

Briefly startled, he cocks his head over, neither expecting nor wanting to be recognized. It was a rarity to find Lt. Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne at a stuffy military soiree such as this, but even for the most reclusive beings, the drab dusty Cairo nights on the front could leave much to be desired at times. Some nights, being amongst the living that weren’t your comrades or your enemies—especially when that line between both became obscured more and more—was vital. Maintaining some vague connection to ‘humanity’ could help to ward off any doubts clouding one’s mind, whether or not, after all they’d seen and all they’d done, that they were still, indeed—human. So for this one night only, he’d don his stiff khaki uniform and exchange the briefest of pleasantries, regardless of how overstimulating the environment or aggravating the atmosphere. 

Not to save face but to merely prove to himself that he was still capable of being ‘decent’.

“I take it things must be exceptionally…quiet on the front, what with you showing your face in some awfully ritzy place such as this,” you say.

The Luxor Jewel Hotel was indeed a marvel. Golden everything; chandeliers, light fixtures, ornate detailing etched into the ceiling. Towering palm trees positioned at every doorway and the intricate white and turquoise zellij-style marble flooring made it feel even more decadent.

“Perhaps,” Paddy replies, to your surprise, “Maybe I’ve just half a mind for something on ice after all those weeks roastin’ under that bloody hot sun,” 

“Were that so, you could’ve gone to one of the many dingy pubs this city has to offer. The same ones, I’m sure the boys in your troop are busy getting pissed at. I hear they fancy gettin’ into a bit of a scuffle now and then. That is, during the rare instances they even get a chance to. Working them to the bone, are you? You and Lt. Stirling?”

“Aye. They’re not so bad, though. Dudley Clarke only wanted the ones who showed the ‘utmost potential’—the fuck that means. Must say there are more than a few that I’m surprised…made the cut,”

“Not up to snuff?”

“Not up to my fuckin’ snuff.”

You aren’t offended that he doesn’t seem to remember you, for you went to great lengths to ensure that wouldn’t be the case; dying your hair, wearing dresses you normally wouldn’t ever reach for, and going under a rather unremarkable alias. Still, you had become acquainted with the Lieutenant in passing on base as a nurse, your identity still your own and going by your real name. You looked him over after a drunken brawl he got into with several privates and a few locals one night in the city. You remember him saying something about you ‘having some poor other bastards you could be tending to,’ instead of him. From then on, you got the impression he wasn’t used to or liked being cared for. 

At least, in that regard. 

For the first time in the duration of the conversation, Paddy’s gaze is directed to your own. He was raising his glass of whiskey to his lips when a flicker of recognition skipped across his face. Something in your stomach drops, and your tongue goes dry. For several months now, you had maintained this cover and had carefully interwoven some layered but believable backstory that you had gotten various expats and persons of interest to cozy up to you. To be caught now by a British officer wouldn’t by any means be a death sentence, as it would be if he were on the opposing side. 

Just more of a headache than anything else.

“...say, you wouldn’t happen to be the reporter gal who whalloped the poor private that was tryin’ it on with her?”

Relief washes over you. Your journalist cover had stuck. 

You purse your lips with an eyebrow arched, “Perhaps. What gave it away?”

He nods to your purple, red, and scabbed knuckles. In truth, there was an insistent young private who, after making many, many advances, thought he’d be cheeky and pinch your arse as he walked past you at the embassy. In return, you gave him hell, socking him square in the jaw so hard, you felt his teeth clang shut. It took the private’s two mates, who he was accompanied by, to pull you away from him fully. Even once he was on the ground, you kept nailing him in the sides with your oxfords.

How the SOE signed off on such a hot-head like yourself being recruited as a spy would forever escape you. Desperate times to be sure.

“Can’t fault a woman for defendin’ her ground. Even if it sounds like you were mostly defendin’ your pride. Caught sight of him with the nurses later on. Looked like shite,”

“I saw it merely as a deterrent to ward off any future ‘incidents’. A lad with those sensibilities is not who we want representing our armed forces, now, is he?” 

“Sure, and yet, I can think of thirty lads that’d done worse and either been promoted or awarded a medal. Sad state of affairs, wouldn’t you say?”

“Certainly,”

“Now, what my curiosity is; where in the fuck does a lass learn how to fight dirty like that? Got some mean cunt for a father?” 

“No,”

“Raised with a lot of brothers, then?”

“Also, no. When I was a girl, I liked to chat a lot of shit, and rather than my mouth landing me in trouble with the headmaster, the girls in my year liked to resolve their conflicts at the schoolyard. And of the many, many spats I wound up in, I never quite walked away having learned the right lessons,” you say with a shrug.

“I see. Want some ice for that hand? Even mine don’t ever look as bad as that,”

“No, thanks. I can handle it just fine on my own,”

“Not gonna argue with that,” he surrenders, “Drink, then? Celebrate this wee victory?”

“...A drink would be lovely, Lt. Mayne.”

“Oh, fuck’s sake!” you proclaim loudly as the drink in Paddy’s glass sloshes over onto the hem of your shirtdress and the rayon stockings you wore underneath. 

You slug him harder in the shoulder than you intended, the liquor having finagled its way into interfering with your motor skills. 

In the past several hours, the two of you had begun to build what one may call a ‘rapport’ while slamming shots of whiskey, which worked to hasten the process. He’d done a marvelous job of maintaining his guard up while still allowing you further into his circle than most of his comrades. Paddy had made it abundantly clear that he was dubious of your intentions, given your alleged profession. He knew that even the most vague allusions to the troops and their movements would become front-page news, so he was quick to derail the conversation every time it veered in that direction. You both kept it casual and light, whingeing about the weather or discussing your favorite authors. It only became heated when Auden came up, and naturally, the two of you had differing opinions on his body of work and his politics.

“He’s a bloody fuckin’ coward, is what he is!”

“I’m not sayin’ the man’s a saint or not or whether he was in the right. I just think he was doing what he reckoned he had every right to do!”

“Fuck off with that,” you groan, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re on about,”

“Maybe I don’t. But I don’t think he’s the right cunt you all paint him as, that’s all,”

Paddy’s cheeks are flushed from the insulated dining room as well as the drink in his hand. He smooths back his hair while nodding to the barkeep to ‘keep them coming’. His uniform jacket has become unclasped, and his hand flies to his belt to adjust it every so often. You’ve ditched your stole, having crammed it into the small clutch you brought. Occasionally, you catch Paddy’s eyes ghosting over your shirt-dress, particularly in the places it gripped your curves the nicest. 

“Y-Your dress, i-it’s good. The kind that get worn around here are ‘loose’ or too ‘frilly,' y’know—not really one for the sequins. But that’s alright, that,” he insists, unsurreptitiously. 

“Oh, is it? What exactly is your game, Lieutenant? Are you trying to take the dress off my hands…or are you trying to take it off of me?” you tease. 

His eyes widen, and he begins to stammer when, from across the club, a taller dark-haired man dressed in the same uniform flags him down. 

“Oi, Paddy!” Stirling bids with a shout, “Cheers, mate!”

He was on his way out, clearly more than a couple of drinks in but not as sloshed as you were accustomed to seeing him on nights like these. Stirling was dashing in his own right, despite his reputation. The nurses and other female staff on base certainly seemed to think so. Even you couldn’t help but beam in his direction when he flicked you a quick nod. 

Paddy was immediately privy to this. 

“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath.

“What?” you say, clueless.

“It’s nothing,”

“No, there’s something. What? You have a problem with Stirling?”

“None,” he lies, “Only problem is how he wittles every woman in his vicinity down ‘till they’re nothin’ but some schoolgirl with a crush, just absolutely gaggin’ for it,”

You set your glass down firmly on the wooden counter, arms folded. You stare unflinchingly into his eyes.

“And you think every grown woman is that deep down? Just a brainless ‘schoolgirl with a crush’?” 

“Wouldn’t go that far myself…but…maybe I oughta fetch the Lieutenant Colonel. Give the two of you some privacy. Then we’d surely see. Wouldn’t be the first time those knickers dropped faster than a fuckin’ salute for a man in uniform—”

In an instant, Paddy sees stars and feels a familiar warm, angry sting of a smack bloom on his left cheek. His shit-eating grin only makes you see red.

“Go to hell, Paddy,”

“Aye. Felt how hot it is, have you, sweetheart?! I’m already fuckin’ there!” 

“Are you? Here, a little something to cool you down, then!” you say. 

The glass of now-melted ice that Paddy did eventually request for your injured hand is hurled at him. Its contents splash onto his khaki jacket, leaving his chest and undershirt damp. It hardly phases him, though you don’t stick around to gauge his true reaction. You don’t care. Storming off as fast as your modest heels will grant you, you haven’t even begun to take into account how much attention your dispute has garnered. Fortunately, only a handful of servers with trays of champagne and decadently dressed guests witness the scene. 

Still, doesn’t detract from the embarrassment of it all. 

He shouts your name several times across the dining hall. You don’t answer, even when he jogs right up to you, matches your pace, and tries to outflank you.

“Please. We were just having a wee laugh, that’s all. Just a bit of fun. No harm done. You wanna come back to the bar…tell me how wrong I am about T.S. Eliot?” he trails off, a boyish, loopy grin painted across his face.

With as firm a grip as you can muster—paying no mind to how hard you jab your nails into his shoulder—you tow him to a nearby, fortunately vacant service corridor, forcing him past the double-acting doors.

“Alright, alright. Pack it in. You’ve made your point, quite…firmly,” Paddy goes, massaging his shoulder.

You roll your eyes at his pained reaction, knowing full well he’d been injured much worse on the front. Eyeing him up and down, you examine the complete and utter piece of work standing before you.

“What?”

“Y’know, I’d always heard you were an unconventional man, Mayne. Maybe even a bit odd. But they never once told me how absolutely fuckin’ unbearable you are,” you spit, “It’s a wonder why you can’t keep company around for long, why no matter what—you always seem to wind up on your ownsome. I’d almost feel bad for you…if you weren’t so much of a measly prick,”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,”

His jaw tightens, and his breathing grows unsteady. Paddy’s overcome with some raw need that can’t be verbalized or fully comprehended. It hurts him inside—how bad he wants to make you hurt. And you can see it scrawled all over his face. Paddy’s eyebrows begin to furrow ever so slightly, and his rose-hued lips begin to part in a way that leaves you aching.

“Whaddya keep looking at me like that for…? Huh? Like you want something. That it, sweet pea? Been wantin’ a wee peck on the lips from your lieutenant?” he taunts.

You boldly step forward, fully invading his space. Paddy’s smile returns.

“I don’t want a fucking kiss,” you say, flatly and without missing a beat, “I want you to do your fucking worst.” 

A hint of a frown begins to poke through. He’s visibly confused and doesn’t know what that means. Luckily, he catches your drift quite expeditiously when you strike him across the face once more. This time, it's much harder. You go in for another, but he grasps your flailing wrist with one firm hand and encases your neck with the other in a loose hold. Paddy walks you backwards until you’re roughly pressed against the wall. You wind up dropping your clutch during the struggle, which you’d been holding under your arm. It clatters on the floor and spills open, a tube of lipstick, a compact mirror, a tin of rouge, and a pill box falling out. He dips one of his legs in between your own, his built thigh incidentally rubbing against where you need him most. You struggle against his leg, only adding pressure to your most sensitive area. You don’t know at what point you begin doing it intentionally. Paddy’s hand around your neck grows more and more taut, so you relent, your trapped hand no longer spurning for freedom, and your hips stagnant. 

You appear to accept the position you find yourself in, much to Paddy’s surprise and thrill.

His bearded face is now next to yours, and you feel its coarseness as he brushes along your soft cheek with his scruff like a cat. Your pants are hot and repel off of one another in steady, hasty exchanges. His hand, clasped around your neck, now begins to squeeze the sides of your throat. A high-pitched whiny breath emits from your lips. 

“Y’know…for being so fuckin’ feisty…I wasn’t expectin’ you to give up so easy,” Paddy mocks, behind gritted teeth, “Not complaining, though. Thinkin’ I like you more when you’re peaceful.”

You spit in his face, and he flinches, taking his hand off of your throat to wipe the glob of saliva from his cheek beneath his lower eyelid where it landed. Two approaching service workers beyond the swinging doors can be heard talking in Arabic, the volume of their conversation growing the closer they get. The panicked look in your eyes softens Paddy’s demeanor, and he eases up off of you completely. You stand opposite one another—Paddy leaned on one wall and you on the other. 

Presumably, to give the impression to the incoming servers that there was no physical engagement occurring between the two of you whatsoever and that you and the Lieutenant had been merely ‘chatting’. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence, however, would be able to see your and Paddy’s flushed cheeks, your heaving chests, both of your disheveled attire, and the contents of your handbag—now scattered all along the floor in the gap between you. The servers pause in front of the threshold, the light shifting with each of their footsteps beneath the sliver of the doors’ edge. Wordlessly, you and Paddy eye each other up and down, both of you in no fit state to be seen. 

It becomes rather clear that this was going to happen whether the two of you had even intended to upon first meeting. Whether either of you was spoken for or had someone waiting for you back home. 

And whether or not it’d fucking end the both of you

The exact moment the servers were summoned by some nearby guests and departed from the doors, Paddy was on his knees. He frantically begins to sweep up the spilled belongings back into your clutch, returning the small bag to you. Then, he seizes your wrist, dragging you further and further into the dimly lit corridor. Now you’re the one struggling to keep up, skipping along in your heels. This predictably winds up with you briefly tripping over your own feet and Paddy bracing your fall, midway. 

“You alright?”

You nod, out of breath. Eventually, the corridor opens up and leads to a shadowy back stairwell, leading to the upper floors of the hotel. It was late, and all of the attention was on the party. You still run the risk of being caught, though being on the main staircase or near the two elevators helps. You and Paddy nearly make it to the first landing before you’re removing various articles of clothing. For Paddy, his belt. For you, your briefs. 

If comfort were any constellation, you might go through the pain of unclasping both stockings from the garter belt they stay held up by, and then working the rayon nylons down your legs carefully so as not to rip a hole in them. 

But that was not on the agenda. 

Instead, you sit on the stairs, with your ass hanging off the edge of a step and your legs raised, panties draped off of one heel. You wait for Paddy to unfurl himself out of his trousers. You catch the briefest glimpse of his cock—thick with a drooling pink tip—before it disappears under the hem of your skirt. You’re surprised by his deftness as he both licks his palm, wets the head of his dick, and bores his way into you with one deep, singular thrust. The angle is not ideal. None of this was. But his steady ramming, rutting you again and again against the pristine wooden stairs. Your cunt takes his cock with ease, having worked up a slick from the first slap you gave him. 

“F-Fuck, oh, f-fuck me. Fuck me,” he shudders, beyond your shoulder.

“Y-Yes, y-yes,” you whimper, each sob punctuated by a punishing slam of his hips, “Yes, Paddy.” 

Your legs are already trembling mid-air, and he sees this, taking the underneath of both knees into his hands to better support you. It becomes very apparent that he’s merely doing this for more leverage to piston himself into you. The only way you’re even partially seated upright is by leaning back on both of your elbows, gripping the edge of another step for dear life.

“Fuckin’ talk. Fuckin’ talk to me,” Paddy growls, “Act like the fuckin’ bitch I know you wanna be for me—c’mon, you,”

He suddenly drops a leg of yours in favor of holding your jawline between his fingertips. He pinches your cheeks to purse your lips open, prompting you to speak. He unwittingly aims his hips upwards into your special spot, and your eyes roll and your moans escape your barely opened mouth, coming out like an ‘ooh’ sound instead.

“Hm?” he remarks, fucking you through the stairs, “What’s that? What you tryna say, sweet pea?”

You lurch forward from his grip and take his bottom lip between your teeth, biting down hard. 

“Agh! Fuck me!” Paddy curses, pulling away and inspecting his lip.

His fingertips have dabbings of a sheer crimson—blood and spit. When he smiles, that same mixture is evident on his teeth. 

“I really do hate you, you know that?” you ask, tasting iron on your own lips.

He gifts you a light slap across the cheek. Enough to sting a bit; not nearly enough to bruise. It’s far more controlled and restrained than the full-blown smacks you’d given him earlier. 

“Again,” he beckons.

“I hate you,”

Another slap.

“Again,” 

“Fuck you!” you say, far too loudly.

Your shout echoes faintly in the resonant stairwell. His anticipated slap is swiftly converted into a muzzle as it clamps shut over your mouth. Paddy pauses his thrusts and leans in so his lips just barely graze your earlobe.

“You shut yer fuckin’ mouth now and don’t move a fuckin’ inch, ‘ya understand?” he rasps, his lower teeth grazing the shell of your ear.

You say ‘yes’ underneath his palm. He presses a wet, firm smooch to the back of his hand, the one over your mouth—the closest, you figure, you’ll ever get to a proper kiss from Lt. Paddy Mayne. 

“Aye. That’s what I fuckin’ thought,” he mutters.

Paddy adjusts his position, moving each of his feet to a different step, gaining even more purchase over your body. Before you can even register what he’s doing, your calves are now barely resting on his shoulders, and your ass is suspended in the air, hanging over the steps. Then he resumes fucking into you, and the poet uncovers a beautiful new rhyme scheme before him. 

A new way to make you fall apart. 

Gravity is partly to blame this time; now every thrust is followed up by the sensation of you falling deeper and deeper onto his cock. The noises your sopping wet cunt is making leave you squeezing your eyes shut tightly in embarrassment, mouth, and moans still muffled by his hand. An icy hot burst of pleasure is struck deeper and deeper into your core as he curls his hips upwards, determined to provoke and torture that ‘special spot’ again. In the process, he winds up fucking against your cervix in a way so deliciously intense—your toes begin to curl.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” Paddy moans, “So fuckin’ tight. Squeezing on it like you don’t want me to stop. It’s okay, doll. I amn’t gonna fuckin’ stop, ‘ya hear?”

Your eyes, still wound shut, have tears escape the corners of them. Even an act as tender as him lightly kissing away your tears is followed immediately by him licking them off his lips. As he continues to ravenously fuck up against your G-spot, you start to feel something build within your depths. It’s a sensation you’re not familiar with—mildly uncomfortable and all-consuming. It feels as if whatever is tightening within you is bound to break. 

Or burst. 

“P-Paddy…i-it’s…t-there’s…something’s wr—wait—”

You’re hardly able to finish protesting because all of a sudden, a gush of warmth rushes out of your cunt, coating his cock in fluid that drips onto the stairs beneath you. Paddy looks down at the scene of the crime and smiles, crazed and feral.

“Lookit that, sweetheart,” he laughs in bewilderment, “She’s weepin’ just like you are.” 

He pulls out entirely, and you whine at the sensation. The removal of his cock brings a small gossamer-colored trickle of whatever you just released onto him. It runs down the crack of your ass almost onto the steps when his fingers—those fingers—catch the mess, dragging it back up over your punished hole and your hard clit. He starts to rub you there roughly, almost painfully, when your hand grips his forearm and gets him to stop.

“It’s t-too…it hurts,”

“Does it now?” he asks in a belittling tone. 

You bob your head, still sniffling from his previous roughness. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,”

“Good.”

Before you can even register his fingernails digging into the plush of your hips, Paddy has you flipped over, sprawled out on all fours, the wind damn near knocked out of you. He doesn’t move to stop you when you begin to climb to the second landing, crawling rather pitifully like some meek, wounded animal. No—instead he opts to watch your meager attempt at belaying his touch.

Paddy’s eyes don’t know where to look. Your shaky knees, the stockings that have become more and more hiked up throughout the encounter, or your ass, draped in the skirt of your now-wrinkly shirt-dress. You feel the cool air on your bare, slicked cunt and realize your panties are no longer draped on your ankle as they had been. You aren’t able to look behind you and see where they may have fallen because the garment is now being roughly shoved into your mouth from behind. You groan at this, the dry fabric bristling against your tongue. 

“Can’t have ‘ya makin’ a peep and blowin’ our cover, now can we?” he seethes.

Paddy’s hands migrate from your face to your scalp, ensnaring themselves in your hair. 

“Must say though, sweetheart, and I mean this from the bottom of me heart—you really can take a fuckin’ beating.”

One hand stays wrapped in your hair, the other trails down your clothed back, his index finger pressed into the dip of your spine. You feel your dress skirt being flipped up and hiked over your waist. In an instant, you’re a lot more exposed to him than you had been, and it makes you whine. A sharp and mild spank catches your right cheek. Your hips wriggle in response, and your hair gets tugged on, the burn at your roots pairing nicely with the sting of your ass. He gives you two more spanks before plunging back into your sopping wet cunt with no warning. The squelching sound of his dick hollowing you out has dipping your head down in shame. It only causes Paddy to tighten his clutch on your hair, pulling you up and keeping your head straight. Your eyes can’t help but roll back into your skull as he takes you.

Paddy, as a young man, had earned himself the reputation of being rather shy or indifferent around women. It alienated him from his peers, and he loathed their constant bragging of past conquests and their talks of what they’d be doing to their girls upon returning home. And while yes, in his heart, he’d much rather flock to the company of his male compatriots and find solace therein, there were exceptions. 

Especially if he had liquid courage coursing through his veins and to the end of his cock.

His steady thrusts grow sloppier and sloppier the more present the release he’d been staving off becomes. And yet it’s still not enough; not deep enough, not hard enough, not fast enough. It almost starts to irritate him. He lets your hair and the hip he’d been grasping go and begins to instead gather the extra fabric of your skirt and pulls it so it props your rear up. Then, he takes all of that fabric, winds it up, and bunches it so it creates the perfect handgrip. The material of the dress goes stiff against your lower stomach the more he pulls, stoking that familiar sensation you had before you squirted. That sensation grows exponentially as he begins nailing into you, using your own dress to rail you. You swear you hear a few seams rip, but you absolutely could not be bothered. 

How could you be when your soul is also being pried from the inside out by a man you’re not positive you’d ever see again after tonight? 

The reckless abandon of it all, the lack of commitment, the absence of attachment—it swirls all around you and the uniformed man. The old adage was ‘all is fair in love and war,’ but to exist comfortably with the fact that you both hated the other to no end and weren’t exactly the most concerned for their well-being was freeing. It meant less consideration. It meant less confusion.

No heartbreak to be had.

So who was to argue against you drenching the Lieutenant’s formal attire for the second time that night? This time, you spasm around his cock, your cunt intending to suck him dry. In a brisk motion, he swipes the crumpled-up panties from your mouth, and you cough. 

“I’m g’na f-finish, w-where…where do you want i-it?” he says between grunts.

You cling to the stairs ahead of you for dear life while his words take a moment to fully process in your brain. Certainly not inside, as dangerously tempting as that sounds. You reach behind you, holding out a hand by his hips, signaling Paddy to stop his thrusts. Swiftly, the Lieutenant pulls out and strokes his soaked cock with vigor. It squelches and makes obscenely wet noises as he attempts to imitate the pace you two had to no avail, so you take over and stroke him until his thick load splatters all along your dress with a high-pitched, brassy whine. It’s moments of silence until Paddy collapses alongside you, still sitting on the stairs. You look over at him, and he inspects the mess he left on your dress, almost rearing to apologize. 

“...It was a cheap dress, anyway,” you dismiss, “I’ll simply get another,” 

You begin to roll your stockings back up the length of your legs, and Paddy, who was still holding onto your briefs, tosses them back in your direction. He turns away to make himself decent; as decent as possible with much of his clothing amess with water, sweat, and your fluids. Paddy sheds his jacket, opting to hold it instead in front of the guilty wet splotch left behind on the front of his pants. Similarly, you dig your stole out from your clutch and drape it around your arms, the long flowing fabric working to mask some of the Lieutenant's stains. It isn’t long before you’ve gotten your bearings straight and fully collected yourself. Once Paddy sees you’re about to depart, he quickly intervenes. 

“Wait…before you go…,” he says.

You stop at the landing, pivoting to face the man you dread as he speaks below you. Your face is unamused, and weariness hangs around your eyes. 

“...have I ever seen you ‘round…?”

“Around…?”

“On base…like at GHQ? You said you’d just gotten here, but…,”

You attempt to smile absurdly at his suggestion, so as not to give your position away. Something in your chest swells, but you don’t allow yourself to relish it for too long. You couldn’t. Not in times such as these. 

“I think that may very well be the liquor talking, Lt. Mayne,”

“Aye,” he concedes, “Must be.”

{thank you for reading!! now taking requests and ideas for future fics! check my fandom list in my pinned post for more info!}

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[flixpii]

Not Inside

| fem!reader x remmick

word count : 2.7k

happy juneteenth !! 🥹

a/n : i want to tag this blessed soul @remmicks-salvation for bringing the remmick degradation into the spotlight for me 🙇🏾‍♀️

this is in lowercase … i don’t feel like typing on my laptop after six p.m …

also, working on the salem witch trials au & a remmick & stack x reader one-shot

synopsis : reader told him no. so he fucked her thighs instead—desperate, messy, and still completely hers.

warnings !! (MDNI 18+) : oral (f receiving), denial of orgasm, degradation, pathetic remmick, dom!reader, reader is lowkey mean (he deserves it), unprotected rutting (no intercourse), drool/spit, period blood, remmick’s a slut for praise

tags : @pathetic-remmick @avidreader73

———

thigh-fucking.

it was the only thing you’d allow him to do while you were bleeding.

he looked heartbroken when you said it. not because he didn’t want it—no, he wanted anything you’d give him. but he craved more. craved the slick, pulsing heat of your cunt wrapped around him like a vice.

“please,” he’d whispered, voice rasped and aching. “just let me have it… let me feel you.”

but you said no.

now, his hands tremble as they knead into the softness of your thighs, spreading them wider over the edge of the bed. his knuckles press into the backs of your knees as he lowers himself between them, mouth watering—literally—as thick strings of spit dangle from his parted lips and drip onto your inner thighs.

“fuck,” he groans, forehead pressing to your knee for a moment as his cock jumps in his fist. he looks up at you like he’s starving—like you’re the only thing that could ever satisfy him.

he jerks himself slow at first, hand slick with spit and pre-cum, sliding over the flushed, leaking head. you can see how swollen he is—how red and angry the tip looks from neglect.

“baby, please,” he whimpers, voice cracking as his thumb rolls over the slit. “i just wan’ to be inside of you.”

you stare down at him, lips parted slightly, breath shallow. but still—you shake your head.

“no, remmick,” you murmur, voice barely a breath. “you know the rules.”

he lets out a strangled sound, somewhere between a growl and a cry, and buries his face against your thigh.

“then let me fuck them,” he breathes against your skin, hot and wet, kissing the curve of your flesh. “let me fuck your thighs like they’re your cunt.”

you hum, teasing, letting your knees fall open just a bit more.

“is that what you want?”

he nods frantically, stumbling to his feet with his cock still in his hand. one hand finds your thigh again as he steps closer, dragging you just a little more to the edge of the bed until your ass barely clings to the sheets.

his tip grazes your skin, smearing precum over the softness as he lines himself up between your thighs, jaw clenched tight.

“please—please,” he babbles, voice unsteady, almost breaking. his hands grip the tops of your thighs, squeezing tight as he pushes forward, slotting his cock between the blood-warmed press of your skin.

you tense around him slightly, thighs pressing together just enough to mimic the feeling of your cunt. he lets out a low, guttural moan, hips twitching.

you look up at him, eyes heavy-lidded, lips parted.

“then fuck them, baby,” you whisper, voice like honey. “fuck them like you wish it was me.”

he lets out a ragged groan as he pulls back, then drives forward again, his cock sliding hot and heavy between your thighs. your skin slicks with sweat and blood, and the friction only makes him moan louder.

his hips slap against you with more force now, the sound obscene—wet and sharp, over and over. drool slips from the corner of his mouth, falling messily onto your abdomen, mixing with the sheen of sweat already there.

“fuck… you feel so good,” he slurs, voice choked with need, the words barely coherent through his panting.

his pace quickens—sloppier now, more frantic.

you tighten your thighs around him, pressing in, and he cries out like a wounded animal.

“shit—fuck—do that again,” he whines, already fucking into the vice of your thighs like he can’t hold himself back anymore.

his fingers dig into the plush flesh of your thighs, hard enough to bruise. his knuckles turn white from the pressure.

“smell so fuckin’ sweet,” he growls, inhaling the coppery scent of your blood like it’s perfume. he salivates.

“want to fuck you properly,” he pants. “want to split you open and stuff you full, feel this bloody little cunt pulse around me while i fuck you raw—”

you feel his cock throb between your thighs as he ruts harder, desperate, hips jerking like he’s already close.

his brows knit together, muscles straining as his thrusts grow faster, harder.

he moans, loud and wrecked, chest heaving as his body curls forward just slightly—like the pleasure’s too much to bear. his eyes squeeze shut and his rhythm starts to falter, every snap of his hips more desperate than the last.

you feel it—how close he is. how his thighs start to tremble.

and then you speak.

“stop.”

his eyes fly open, wide and glassy, a pained whine ripping through his throat as he slows to a trembling halt.

“n-no,” he stutters, voice breaking. “fuck—please.”

your name falls from his lips, guttural and raw, as his cock twitches between your slicked-up thighs.

then—your legs spread, slow and deliberate.

the bloody mess between them glistens, spilling onto your inner thighs and smeared across the crease of your cunt.

he stares like he’s hypnotized. drool spills from his mouth again, thick and slow as it drips down his chin.

“come on,” you whisper, breathless.

he lunges forward instantly, grabbing your thighs and yanking them up around his waist. his cock slides up against your folds, already seeking your heat.

but just before he can breach you—

“you can’t fuck me.”

he lets out a deep, broken groan, his body shaking with the need to come, to bury himself deep.

he snarls softly under his breath, grinding his cock against your cunt instead, letting the flushed head slide along the wet, bloody mess.

his tip nudges your clit with every pass and you jolt each time, breath catching as your moans start to echo his.

he fists the sheets behind you for leverage and ruts hard, faster, his cock coated in the sticky sheen of blood and slick.

he pants, watching the way his cock glides against your folds, dragging your swollen clit every time.

you clench around nothing, your walls fluttering from the pressure and the build.

his moans get louder, almost pained, as your blood paints his cock in messy streaks.

you watch him unravel.

his breath hitches every time your clit catches under the swollen head of his cock, slick and red smearing across both of you. his muscles shake as he ruts into you, chasing the high you’re dangling just out of reach.

you lean back slightly, propping yourself on your elbows, eyes heavy as you look down at the scene between your thighs.

“look at you,” you murmur, voice slow and syrupy. “so fuckin’ desperate. cock all messy and throbbing, and you’re not even inside me.”

his head drops forward, forehead brushing your shoulder, a strangled groan leaving his chest.

“please,” he gasps. “baby, please let me—”

“no,” you cut him off, rolling your hips slightly to meet his next thrust, just enough to tease him, to keep him shaking. “you come like this. not inside me. not tonight.”

he whimpers, actually fucking whimpers, grinding harder like he can force his way in if he tries.

“god, you’re mean,” he moans, voice thick with frustration. “so fuckin’ mean to me.”

you smile lazily, trailing one hand up his chest, nails dragging through the light sweat gathered there.

“then stop,” you offer softly. “pull back. get off me.”

he jerks his hips again in answer, a growl rumbling in his chest.

“can’t,” he chokes out. “you smell like blood and sex and you’re fuckin’ soaked—fuck—i can’t.”

you hum low, pleased, and shift your hips so that your folds part just a little more, letting his cock nestle perfectly between them. your clit throbs from the stimulation, but you bite down on the whine building in your throat.

“you keep going like this,” you whisper, voice dipped in threat and promise, “and you don’t get to come at all.”

his whole body stutters, cock twitching hard between your folds.

“n-no, don’t do that,” he gasps, fingers bruising your thighs now as he clings to them like a lifeline. “please, baby—i’ll be good. i’ll be good, i swear, just let me—fuck—just let me use your cunt.”

you tilt your head, pretending to think, enjoying the way he begs—how wild he looks with his face flushed, his jaw tight, his mouth wet, cock pulsing and soaked in blood.

“i said no,” you whisper against his ear. “you’re gonna come. outside.”

he lets out a sound that barely qualifies as human, hips snapping wildly, frenzied now.

and you—

you don’t stop him.

you just watch him fall apart.

you can feel it in the way his thrusts lose rhythm, in how his cock twitches violently between your folds, tip catching on your clit with every sloppy drag.

his hips stutter. he gasps your name like a prayer, like a curse.

“fuck—fuck, baby, i’m gonna—”

his hands grip your waist, desperate to hold himself steady, to not come before you give him the word.

but you see it—the way his jaw locks, the way his thighs shake, the way his moans grow ragged and high.

he’s right there.

and just as his body starts to curl forward, just as his cock pulses hot against your blood-slicked cunt—

“stop.”

one word. soft, but firm.

and it cuts through him like a blade.

he sobs. actually sobs, a sound torn from the back of his throat, thick with denial and disbelief.

his body convulses as he forces himself to still. his cock jumps against your clit, leaking, throbbing, aching.

his chest heaves, mouth open, spit stringing between his lips and your collarbone where he’d leaned in too close.

“please—please, i can’t,” he gasps, voice hoarse and broken. “baby, don’t—don’t do this to me.”

you lean forward, one hand stroking down his trembling stomach, stopping just before you touch his cock.

“you almost came without permission,” you murmur, lips brushing his cheek. “that’s not very good of you, remmick.”

he shudders, his cock twitching again like it’s trying to come anyway, leaking thick pre against your folds.

“but i—I tried,” he stammers, eyes glassy, tears threatening. “i stopped, i stopped, please, i’ll do anything—just let me finish, please.”

you hum softly, pressing your fingers into his jaw, forcing him to look at you.

“then prove it,” you whisper. “prove you deserve to come. get on your knees.”

he blinks, confused for half a second—then his legs fold beneath him like he’s been shot, collapsing to the floor at the edge of the bed.

his cock stands flushed and furious, twitching with every mimicked beat of his heart, streaked with blood and thick strings of slick.

he presses his cheek against your thigh, panting, shaking, whimpering softly into your skin.

you tilt your head.

“no touching,” you warn, one hand sliding gently through his hair. “not yet.”

his hands clench uselessly at his sides.

you smile.

he’s so close you can feel it vibrating off him.

he stays still.

kneeling between your legs, chest rising and falling like he’s run miles, face pressed to your thigh.

you feel the heat of his breath—fast, uneven, desperate—as it ghosts over the mess between your legs.

he whimpers again, soft and pathetic, like a dog trying not to whine, and it makes you smile.

“good boy,” you murmur, dragging your fingers through his damp curls, slow and teasing.

he makes a noise at that, a quiet broken little thing, like just the praise alone might undo him.

your thighs part a little more. the blood has started to dry in some places, but the warmth still lingers, slick and coppery and thick.

“clean me up,” you say.

his head jerks up immediately, eyes wide and blown black, like he didn’t believe you’d actually let him close.

but you nod, just once.

“with your mouth.”

he doesn’t hesitate.

his lips press to your inner thigh first, reverent, like he’s praying.

then—his tongue.

slow at first. testing. trembling.

he licks a stripe through the blood smeared across your skin, groaning at the taste.

and then it’s like something snaps.

his mouth drags lower, hotter, messier.

he moans into you, lapping at the blood pooled between your folds, drinking it like he’s parched.

“fuck,” he pants against you, tongue flicking your clit by accident—and you jerk, biting your lip.

he freezes, like he’s afraid that was too much.

“don’t stop,” you whisper, fingers in his hair again. “but slow. tease it. just like that.”

his breath shudders against your cunt as he licks again, slower this time, taking his time now, dragging his tongue through the mess he’d made earlier—your blood, his spit, your slick.

every now and then, he bumps your clit just right, and you twitch, thighs tensing around his head.

he moans again, like your reactions are the only thing keeping him alive.

his hands grip your thighs—not to guide you, not to pull you closer, but just to hold on.

his cock hangs between his legs, flushed and twitching, untouched and angry.

you look down at him, his face painted with blood and lust, mouth slick and red, eyes pleading even as he obeys.

“such a good mouth,” you murmur. “you want to come, don’t you?”

he nods into you, desperate, tongue slowing just to answer.

“then make me come first,” you say softly, “with that pretty, bloody mouth.”

he moans into your folds again, the sound vibrating against your clit just enough to make your legs twitch.

your fingers tighten in his hair.

you don’t guide him—he’s learned by now.

and fuck, does he want it bad.

his tongue laves through your mess, slow at first, then faster, more focused, circling your clit before flattening against it, dragging long, wet strokes over the sensitive bundle.

you gasp softly, hips rocking forward.

“just like that,” you whisper, breath breaking, “keep going.”

he hums in response, and the sound rumbles through you like lightning.

his mouth moves with more purpose now, more pressure. messy, but good—so good, so fucking good.

your thighs clamp around his head.

you start to pant, sharp, fast, your hand fisting in his hair as your body begins to tense, the pleasure burning up your spine like fire.

he sucks gently, then flicks his tongue in quick, tight strokes—again, again, again.

you cry out.

your whole body jerks as it hits—hard.

your orgasm rips through you like a storm, blood rushing in your ears, your thighs clenching, your back arching just slightly as you grind into his mouth.

and he doesn’t stop.

he moans like he’s the one coming, like tasting you unravel against his tongue is better than anything he’s ever known.

you breathe heavy through it, letting it take you, letting him have it.

and when you finally come down, you tug gently at his hair, easing him back.

his face is soaked—slick, blood, drool, all of it—and his cock is still flushed and twitching, drooling precum onto the floor beneath him.

he’s shaking.

“please,” he rasps. “please, can i—can i come now?”

you drag your fingers down his throat, watching him swallow hard beneath your touch.

“stand up.”

he stumbles to his feet, cock bobbing, angry and glistening red.

you look at it, slow and deliberate.

then up at him.

“you come,” you murmur, voice low, “but you don’t touch yourself.”

his jaw falls open.

“w-what?”

“grind against me. like before.”

he groans—loud, pained—as he steps forward, dragging the tip of his cock along your still-throbbing folds.

“fuck—fuck, baby—”

he ruts into you, wild and broken, his cock slipping against your blood-slick cunt, head catching on your clit again and again.

you moan softly, overstimulated, but you let him use you.

“gonna come,” he gasps, hips stuttering. “gonna come all over your pussy, please, let me—fuck, let me—”

“do it,” you whisper. “make a mess of me.”

that’s all it takes.

he lets out a strangled, half-sobbed cry as his cock jerks against you, hot ropes of cum spilling across your folds, painting you with thick, pulsing streaks of white.

his legs nearly give out as he collapses forward, forehead pressed to your shoulder, body trembling.

“thank you,” he pants, voice cracking. “fuck—thank you—”

your fingers stroke through his hair again, slow and soft.

“good boy,” you whisper. “such a good fucking boy.”

[i-smoke-chapstick]

His hips stutter, the rhythm messy now, almost frantic, like he’s trying to fuck the apology into you.

You've been fighting with him all night. Started small- he got blood on the floor. Got worse when he confessed exactly whose blood it was.

A young charming friend of yours. Sweet boy. You hardly knew him, but you knew enough. Enough to share a few drinks with him in the morning. Remmick would find out. He always finds out. You were lucky he didn't turn you the moment he considered you his own. His family. His. His. His.

"Come on, darlin’," he breathes against your ear, voice gravel-thick and cracking at the edges. "You’re not still mad at me, yeah? You can’t be. Not when I’m- mph- deep inside you like this."

He breathes hot in the crook of your neck- marks mottled on your delicate throat. A few puncture marks or two from his leftover anger, when he had you face down in the sheets. Now all that's left is his desperation.

You say nothing. Your nails bite into his shoulder, and the sharp pain only makes him moan, needy and almost pathetic.

“You’re killin’ me here,” he pants. “Won’t even look at me.” He grabs your jaw- rough and insistent, making you face him even though your glare could cut through steel. “Still got that damn attitude. Thought you were over this.” He scoffs, laughs light, like he can't believe what he's hearing. But his voice breaks.

You clench around him, and he groans like it hurts.

“Oh shit, yeah- do that again, I’ll do whatever you want. Beg if I gotta,” he growls, still thrusting hard, but his rhythm’s off, needy now. “Wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you, baby. You know that.”

You turn your face away again, and something cracks. Not in his voice- in his ego.

“You’re mine,” he spits, patience worn, pride bruised. “Look, I know I messed up," He grits out. "Yeah, I tore out his pretty little throat, but I’m here, ain’t I? Givin' you everything I got."

He's huffing, gripping you tighter when he remembers just why you two are in this predicament. You feel his claws tangle in your hair, tugging gently. Just to show you he needs you.

"Wanna know the best part?" he murmurs against your neck, lips ghosting along your skin. His voice shifting sweetly to that infuriating 'im-not-mad-just-disappointed' tone. "Got his blood under my fingernails still."

Then- without warning, he slips two fingers between your lips. Forces them in, until you're gagging around the metallic tang and sharp nails.

"Wanna taste?" He adds after the fact, sarcastic. One half bitter, one half pleased with himself.

You moan around them, eyes wide and watering. He’s still fucking you, deep and relentless, watching your face as you suck his fingers like it’s the only thing keeping you alive.

His hand slides down to your thigh, pulling it higher up his waist. The angle makes you gasp- he notices.

"Yeah? That feel good?" His lips brush your jaw, trembling. "Still mad, baby? Still hate me?" He growls out. Depraved.

You still don’t answer, but your glare is wiped- eyes rolled back into your skull. Back arched, soft whimpers around his fingers. He observes you, scans you over, and finally loosens his hold just a little.

"Please," he mutters, and it’s real this time- raw, low, like it’s costing him everything to say it. "Please, darlin’. I don’t wanna live in a world where you hate me. Don’t- don’t do that to me."

His pace slows, not stopping, just grinding deep and hard, and his lips press to your neck like a prayer.

"I’m yours, alright? Just say the word. I’ll crawl, beg, bleed. You want me on my knees? Say it. I’ll worship the ground you walk on. Forever." He pleads, hips stuttering as he tries to stop himself from cumming. As he tries to convince you this is for you.

Then, cocky again for half a second, he mutters against your neck- the one condition.

"Long as you keep stayin' with me. Just me. Just like this."