#until porsche coaxes it out of him | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mightymorphingayagenda · 4 years ago

Note

cant wait for lethal combination chapter 5! and loved the holiday nessian fic you wrote!

then you shan’t have to wait! and thank you so much, nonnie. the fic they’re talking about and all previous chapters of lethal combo can be found here, x

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”

Nesta kept her gaze on the wall of oak opposite her.

“Is this the part where I tell you to get on your knees for me?” She asked.

Humourless.

And she could practically feel the feral rage radiating from him. Bleeding through the grate to her left like he were trying to smoke her out.

“This is the part where you-“

“Shhh.”

A lean shadow, a head of auburn hair, muted in the darkness like the decayed verdure of autumn, barely distinguishable through the latticed window no bigger than her hand.

She’d made Eris wait almost a day.

In Nesta’s experience teenage girls understood psychological warfare better than any CIA types she’d met. And rule one in the handbook was never call him back right away.

Eris might as well have been a cute boy from home room, the advice stood fast.

She’d also chosen the time and place for their meeting, giving no concessions in authority. Picking the church as unlike her he’d inherited both the egregious wealth of his family and their faith. Irish Catholic. Meaning he’d find himself here every Sunday evening regardless, and providing not only the guise of normality, but the cosy anonymity of a confessional.

The only people who did secrecy better than assassins, were the Catholics.

It was perfect really, the perfect plan. Undistracted Nesta had been able to work it out pretty quickly after Cassian had left. Leaving her all those hours between four in the morning and her meeting the following evening with nothing to do but hate him.

Avoiding returning to the bed he’d screwed her in. Glaring at his jacket which still hung beside her front door over a bottle of vodka.

It was a blow to her pride to be sure. The closest thing to rejection she’d ever received from a man. Whatsmore, some gooey part of her she’d pushed down had been upset.

Too worked up to sleep she’d spent hours tucked into her armchair and entertaining plucking his teeth from his mouth like the petals of a rose. He loves me, he loves me not. Because worse than revealing himself to be a complete ass as most men did, Cassian had done so subsequent to fucking her better than she could have dreamed. And she’d had that dream. Multiple times.

Wet dreams that couldn’t hold a candle to the way he’d had her dripping down to her knees, begging for his cock, trembling on legs he’d thrown over his shoulder to lick out her cunt like it was the reason he got out of bed in the morning. The man had spoilt her rotten.

Nesta knew she probably shouldn’t have been thinking about sex in a church. Her mother was likely burning with a fury hotter than the flames that surrounded her down below, but she couldn’t help it. Because while she hated the sinner- ever bronze buffed, tattooed inch of him - god did she love the sin.

“The adult is going to talk,” she said quietly. “If you want to throw a tantrum you can do it on your own time because as of this moment, I’m officially off the clock.”

Eris’ silence said he knew better than to interrupt her. Perhaps he was smarter than she was about to give him credit for.

“In fact I stopped working for you as of the moment you chose to question my methods and profess concerns that I may have jeopardised our venture because I lack the professionalism to keep my legs shut,” she said.

“So if you want Helion Day neutralised, you’re going to have to find someone else to do the job. Though I seriously doubt you’ll be able to.”

Cue phase two of the plan.

Because she may have hated Cassian, but she wanted the monopoly on causing him emotional anguish.

Like hell some other pro was going to put a bullet between Helion’s eyes and devastate his bodyguard. Making that man cry was Nesta’s prerogative.

“I have made it clear to anyone in my field you might attempt to solicit that you are a impertinent, trust fund brat, who insists on micromanaging the work of other’s despite your incompetence in an attempt to feel important beyond the breeding mummy lied and told you made you special.”

“I wasn’t aware you also specialised in character assassination.”

Eris’ voice was charred with a sweetness like wealth; earthy and rich it reminded Nesta of muscovado sugar.

He was right. She was being unprofessional. But she was tired and hungover and out of a gorgeous lay so fuck him.

“My specialities are no longer any of your business, Mr Vanserra,” she replied. “My displeasure however, should be of great concern to you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I wouldn’t do you the courtesy of warning you if I intended to kill you.”

Eris said nothing.

“You can consider it incentive if it helps you sleep at night though,” Nesta continued. “To do as you’re told.”

She gave him strict instructions. Wait five minutes then leave. Never contact me. Forget we were ever in correspondence in the first place.

“Murder is cheap, Mr Vanserra. You don’t want to learn the cost of disobeying me. It’s not the kind of thing daddy’s wallet can cover.”

She emerged from the confessional, slim shades obscuring her eyes and the deep bruises beneath. Her heels clipping against the stone floor as she made her way toward the station of votive candles at the back of the church.

Each glowing stick a prayer for a lost loved one. Matches and and a few unlit offerings still available.

She lit herself a cigarette on a flame.

And Nesta couldn’t have missed the fresco above those colossal doors of oak and rustic gold flake even through the plumes of smoke that curled upwards as she stalked lazily down the isle: a depiction of the Heavenly Father himself.

She didn’t bother flicking a glance behind her to the confessional.

Who’s your daddy, now?

She’d collapsed face down into already rumpled sheets.

They’d smelled like sex and heaven and she’d smelt like cigarettes and a church and that was all she knew before the exhaustion caught up with her, the world went black, and she was waking up in exactly the same position . Vex’s fluffy tail swishing against her ear. The tickling sensation plucking her from the bliss of pure nothingness.

Nesta groaned a little as she rolled over and pulled herself to sit up. Pleased to find she’d had the energy to take off her clothes. Unlike her makeup.

“Damn it,” she hissed as she saw the smudged mascara on the pillow.

Not that the sheets didn’t need washing anyway…

“Ugh,” she huffed, dropping flat onto her back again.

She’d been awake less then seven seconds and a man had already ruined her day. Just thinking about him…

“Ugh,” she said again, louder. Like she was angry with the ceiling for not acknowledging her the first time.

Vex meowed, his little head nudging at her bare arm. As though he were trying to coax her bra strap back up to a respectable position on her shoulder.

“Hi, baby,” she grumbled, picking him up for a cuddle. “You hungry?”

He meowed again.

Padding down to the kitchen she’d made them both breakfast (technically lunch, she’d slept in till almost one) and carrying her plate of fruit back upstairs to draw a bubble bath he winded between her ankles, catching her attention as he hissed at something in the living room.

“What?” she inquired, looking down at him before tilting her head to follow his own.

Cassian’s jacket.

Uhg.

Now she was thinking about him again.

Childish, dumb, insecure little prick. How he’d had the fucking nerve to call her a coward was truly a mystery.

He was so crippled by that fear of not being good enough he’d immediately presumed she wanted rid of him. Lashing out defensively- God he was infuriating.

She looked back to Vex who was now staring up at her. “If that thing somehow ends up on the floor,” she said, “you have permission to piss on it”.

He purred.

Vex truly was the only boy worth his salt. Something he proved yet again in hopping atop her bathroom counter and guarding her like a fluffy little gargoyle as she sank into the bath. Opening m the window to let out the smoke of her cigarette so as not to bother him. The sound of rain slipping something comforting through the January chill, twirls of smoke and steam visible in fatigued plumes.

Another lethal habit she’d picked up from Aunt Ripleigh.

The thought gave her an unpleasant feeling in her heart. Like a worm writhing in the rotted meat of an apple.

Ripleigh wasn’t actually her aunt. But Nesta avoided her much like she did the rest of her family and that was what really counted. Besides, spilling blood together arguably made for a closer bond than just sharing it.

Like Nesta said, not really her aunt.

Aunt Ripleigh – initials AR, an homage to the assassin’s preferred weapon the AR-47, American hybrid of the Russian Автома́т Кала́шников, A.K.A the AK-47.

Some mothers left their little girls pearls, or scrapbooks packed with baby pictures and the lingering scent of their perfume. Angelina Archeron had left her’s a Mafia assassin’s cell number.

Of course Nesta hadn’t known that.

Not until she’d found herself with her hands caked in something dark and sticky, her boyfriend’s skin stuffed beneath the lip of her nails and a taste in her mouth like hot rust.

She’d been seventeen the first time she’d killed a man.

Not a man. A boy.

A few months her senior, Thomas been a child just like her.

Her first crush. Her first boyfriend, her first love, and her first.

Nesta had known Thomas was using her for sex. Just as she’d been using him for his money, and wasn’t that what love was? Finding the gratification of your needs in someone else? In Thomas’s case he’d needed to get his dick wet. In Nesta’s…it was more than embarrassing but half the time all she’d needed was a hot meal.

She couldn’t count the number of times she’d called him in the dead of the night to hook up in his Porsche so she could sleep there instead of at home, where the windows screamed freezing air from their shattered mouths and the electricity bill was rarely paid.

But one night Nesta hadn’t felt like earning his kindness. And so he hadn’t offered it.

Instead he’d held her wrists, ripped at her shirt, forced his hands into her jeans. Pushed up against the bonnet of that Porsche by a lake in woods she’d torn through his face, her nails splitting through the waterline beneath his eyes as she’d kicked and screamed, blood pouring, his hand on her neck, throwing her head against the wing mirror. Heat spilling heavy down her jaw and neck from somewhere which had smelt like lose change.

She remembers blood in her eyes and the taste of soft, smooth skin and a kind of rubbery strength between her teeth as she’d bit down hard until something had popped or burst or split with a squirt or a tear. She remembers spitting out whatever of Thomas’s ear she’d torn off between her teeth and something swinging into her lower ribs so hard one broke. She remembers the sounds that had been both of them and then at some point just her.

Her screaming.

Her sticky, disgusting face, stinging with every horribly wet sob and shriek. The shrieks that hadn’t choked to shaky breaths until she’d pulled herself to sit back against the wheel of the car. Clutching at her ribs which had only hurt so much worse when she’d thrown up right next to her boyfriend’s body. What looked like a pint of blood glowing in the dust. His face…his head.

It’d looked like a Halloween prop. Like dark jam. Like a brutalised seventeen year old dead in the dirt.

And sometime after noticing one of his teeth in the dust, Nesta had realised how fucked she was.

It wasn’t much of an achievement when you considered Grafton, Vermont had a population short of seven-hundred: but the Mandrays had been quite possibly the most well connected and well off people in its less than seven-hundred square miles. And despite keeping Nesta’s name out of their sneering mouths through referring to her almost exclusively as “that white-trash bitch”, that population short of seven hundred didn’t give a shit about her.

Didn’t give a shit she’d been top of her class with a place at Georgetown. Because Nesta could never have afforded to accept it.

And it certainly didn’t matter she was a pageant queen when everyone knew the petty cash prizes were the only thing that paid the rent on their shitty one bedroom. Especially with things barely breaking even. In spite of Feyre’s making use of their father’s rifle and sourcing for the butcher any chance she could.

A too skinny child in the woods with a gun and blood in her braids.

Nesta’s efforts to keep food on the table had always seemed to pale in comparison to that. But she’d never felt bad about it. Wouldn’t bother hating herself when everybody else was already doing that for her.

Nesta Archeron was the cheap fuck that nice Mandray boy was messing around with. The gold digger with the dead commie mom and daddy issues.

No one would have ever believed he’d tried to rape her.

And she’d had no money for a decent lawyer- she hadn’t even had anyone to call. Not her dad, not a fourteen-year old Feyre nor Elain, sixteen and the last person she’d ever want wrapped up in something like this.

Nesta had been desperate and vulnerable and jaded for as long as she could remember but she’d never felt as terrified and broken as she had in that moment. Crying alone and hugging herself tightly, she’d just wanted her mom. As cold and neglectful and dead as the woman was.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь”

Her mother’s last words.

Ten numbers.

Nesta had somehow gotten to her feet, only realising Thomas had broken a few of her fingers when she’d tried opening the car door. All but collapsing inside once she’d managed as she’d fumbled for her phone.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь” she’d repeated to herself, voice hoarse and wet and cracking as she’d dialled.

Ten numbers. Ten numbers. Ten numbers.

Like a phone number.

No doubt concussed Nesta had deemed it logical enough. Her mother’s dying breath a kind of atonement for leaving her children with nothing in the whole word but a father that could watch his girls starve and go into the woods with his hunting rifle and whore themselves out like they meant nothing.

A life-line in the deep waters opaque with clouds of blood.

“Здравствуйте.”

Those three syllables had been like a punch to the gut.

Nesta had made a noise that might have sounded like “mom?” or the creaking of a damn as it ached under duress. She’d obviously known it wasn’t her mother, but she hadn’t heard a woman speak Russia since- hadn’t heard Russian at all in years.

“Who is this?”

Trying to pull herself together Nesta had taken a breath that had rattled, dripping wet and slightly wheezing. Everything was going to be okay. She’d been right. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Of all the phone numbers in the world what was the likelihood that the voice on the end of this one spoke her mother’s native tongue?

“I’m- I’m Angelina Archeron daughter. She gave me this number I don’t know what to do I-”

The specifics aren’t as clear after that. Like a jigsaw left out in the rain or soaked in fresh hot blood, the pieces, the details, they’d melted to mush.

A mess she’d held in her hands and wondered what the fuck to do with.

What do you do with a dead body and the knew found knowledge your mother was a boyevik for the Russian Mafia? What do you do with her retirement package which contained nothing but the contact for an assassin working for the New York arm.

Nesta had only known what she wasn’t going to do.

Go down for murder.

Aunt Ripleigh had told her what to do over the phone, instructing her on how to deal with her injuries and Thomas’ pulp of a body. How to explain the state of her face and ribs and fingers and head. What to do with his car and how to speak and sit and and react when then police came asking questions about Thomas’ disappearance. How to get away with it.

Nesta had followed each direction flawlessly. Consoled in finally having a definitive plan. Even a plan that started with “buy meat cleaver, trash bag, battery powered blender and bucket, with cash from dead boyfriend’s wallet.” Even a plan that got progressively worse from that point on.

Filleting chunks of a body that had once been inside her. Hauling a trash bag of boyfriend smoothie to the river with broken fingers. The thick slop sinking almost immediately just as Aunt Ripleigh had said it would. Before she’d told Nesta to burn the bones and roast marshmallows over them.

“If it had not been you it would have been next girl,” Ripleigh had said. “And she might not have had your fight.”

“You mean she might not have been disturbed enough to kill her boyfriend?”

“Killer instincts, Anastasia. Is not disturbed, is talent,” Aunt Ripleigh had said. “Cannot be taught but what can be taught you learn quick. No whining. Like very good puppy with very sharp teeth.”

“Woof,” Nesta had said dryly.

“Stray puppy though, no? Is why you have no manners.”

“You offering to adopt me?”

“I have pet already. And my husband is funnier than you.”

Nesta’s compromised rib had punished her for finding that funny.

“But you ever want job, you call me.”

Needless to say that was not the last time she’d called Aunt Ripleigh.

Three weeks later and four months shy of getting her high school diploma Nesta had turned eighteen and moved to New York in order to “pursue modelling”.

In reality she was doing coffee runs with a dash more arsenic than normal and luring prosecutors to hotel rooms they’d never leave. A personal assistant of sorts to Aunt Ripleigh.

She had kept the mafia, the Bratva, at an arms length whenever she’d been able. Paying off the shitty house she’d left her sisters in with one less mouth to feed and not wanting their address in any files accessible to people with skill sets like her’s.

And while working with Ripleigh had been a mortiferous riot, two gals shattering the glass ceiling in their industry and slitting throats with the shards; Nesta had developed expensive taste from the fringes of high criminal society. She’d cared less about the art of killing than she had about the art she could hang up in a penthouse apartment if she were in private practice. Her lust for comfort winning out after two years or so at which point she’d gone freelance. Assisting in a few heists before getting in with a crowd of Nazi hunters for a bit, all the while keeping in touch with her mentor.

Until Feyre had moved to the city.

Then she’d given up on the more dangerous antics, selling out for safer and even more lucrative bets like CEOs and cutting ties with Aunt Ripleigh. Terrified if not a little paranoid of something happening to her sister. Which had been shit. Because Nesta hadn’t had any other friends. Like, at all.

At eighteen Feyre was still as bitter and proud as she’d been when Nesta had left. As Nesta herself still was.

Elain had tried bridging her sisters’ relationship once she’d moved to New York but she’d had better success career-wise. Working at a florists before eventually graduating to a self employed wedding planner.

Nesta had kept her thoughts on the psychological tells of a girl jilted at the alter becoming a wedding planner to herself. Mostly because Elain was always brining her cake samples she’d stolen and Nesta wasn’t going to sabotage her supply of free cake.

Feyre on the other hand had gone about far less conventional means of making a living. The child was a force to be reckoned with if for nothing but her resourcefulness and almost objectionable will to survive. Fiercely independent and clumsily capable she’d taken a crack at everything while selling her art on the side. It was a piece she’d modelled for that had delivered her to true economic grandeur however.

Well, “modelled” maybe wasn’t the word. Her sister had essentially been used as a human stamp. Her naked body detailed with intricately painted swirls then pressed to canvas.

The work had been showcased somewhere high brow and had caught the eye of one Mr Rhysand Velaris, thirty-one and the sole inheritor of his late father’s worldly possessions. Among which were several millions of dollars.

Half of which now belonged to her sister thanks to a very reckless prenup on his part.

Though Nesta had briefly wondered if he’d spent at least that on the engagement ring. A glittering iceberg that seemed to only glare brighter next to the stark black band tattooed just beneath it, a matching tattoo on Rhysand’s own ring finger. Because of course they’d eloped in Paris and gotten tattoos instead of wedding rings.

If Nesta had been closer to her baby sister she imagined she might have felt betrayed on some level. But as things were, Nesta wasn’t entirely sure she would have received an invite even if they’d had a traditional wedding, planned to perfection by Elain.

It was probably the worst part of her job. The distance she had to put between herself and everyone she had the potential to care about. A distance she could never close even if she decided to retire right this minute because the damage had already been done. Nesta had become a liability to their safety the minute she’d moved here and started in this line of work.

She took another chocolate from the box she’d snatched from downstairs on second thought. Her supply already dwindling thanks to the rather depression freight train of thought she’d embarked on.

That and the fact they were really very good.

Cassian may have been a prick, but she couldn’t deny he had great taste.

In chocolate, and women, she thought smugly. Sinking deeper into the basin.

A heat flushed up her neck that had nothing to do with the bath as she unwillingly remembered how he’d softly coaxed one of these lovely little parcels between her full lips. The drunk hunger in his deep brown eyes and what he’d done next, snapping her lace thong between his teeth-

Her music stopped. Only to be replaced by a buzzing thrum of her phone.

Leaning forward Nesta checked the caller ID before swiping across the screen to accept the call and sinking back to her earlier position.

“I’m not in the mood,” she hummed dismissively, head tipped back against the lip of the tub and eyes closing. She’d known this was coming, better to get it over with.

“When I supply you with handsome, rich, and eligible men, I do not expect you to break them!” Feyre castigated through the phone, and anyone might guess she were the elder sibling.

Feyre indeed thought herself wiser and more worldly than both Nesta and Elain, and getting married hadn’t helped diminish her false sense of maturity. Thrusting her character into some weird sarcastic seriousness that mirrored her husband’s demeanour perfectly. It made Nesta cringe so thoroughly she was mildly concerned about getting wrinkles.

“And I thought we’d grown out of sharing toys, but it seems both our expectations were thwarted.”

“Humans aren’t toys!” Feyre reminded her. Not that Nesta didn’t already know that. No vibrator had never made her cum as hard as Cassian had.

“And if you resented me setting you up with Cassian then why did you fuck him ?” Feyre asked. And she said fuck as though it were synonymous to stab or poison.

“Was it to punish me? Because if so you did a spectacular job. He’s crazier about you than ever and won’t stop moping. The second-hand embarrassment is painful enough without the added agony of how annoying it is.”

If he likes me so much why was he so eager to assume the worst of me? Nesta thought spitefully.

It didn’t matter that she technically was lying to him. He didn’t know that.

“You told me to give him a chance.”

“And you couldn’t have decided you didn’t like him before having sex with him?”

Nesta wasn’t surprised Feyre had taken Cassian’s version of things at face value.

Her husband’s family were unimpeachably wonderful in her eyes. Meanwhile Nesta remained just another reminder of a time Feyre couldn’t have afforded the plane ticket to get to New York, let alone a town house on the upper east side. A cold bitch who hadn’t begged to join the weird cult that was the Velaris family and their innermost circle when Feyre had married Rhysand last year.

“Oh I’d already worked out he was an ass by that point but I thought he could at least make up for putting me through the date. Not much going on in that head but he quite clearly had it all going on-

“Ew ew ew!” Feyre interrupted. “One, I need this conversation to steer clear of anything anatomical, and two, do you have to be so horrible?”

“You’re the one pimping out your friends, I just took you up on the offer.”

“Ever heard of the third date rule?”

“Didn’t you marry Rhysand on the third date?”

Feyre sighed.

“Cassian’s a good guy, Nes. It takes a lot to come out the other side of what he’s been through a good man and he deserves the world so-”

“So why did you send him my way?”

Nesta knew what Feyre thought of her. And if she hadn’t then this conversation would have made it very clear.

“Because Nesta! You’re twenty-four and already a crazy cat lady! I’m sorry I tried to save you from dying alone and having Vex eat your corpse.”

Nesta rolled her eyes.

“Have you ever considered I choose to be alone because I like it?” She asked.

Feyre sighed again, but it was softer this time, sad more than exasperated.

“You’re not alone, Nesta,” she said. “You’re lonely.”

It was annoying enough that she was right, she didn’t have to be so pretentious about it aswell.

“I’m fine,” Nesta said.

“You sound just like Cassian,” Feyre grumbled.

“Well I’ve been smoking.”

“I’ll be sure to put how funny you were on your headstone when those things kill you.”

“I’m racing Rhysand to the grave, he has more cigars than I do shoes.”

“He only smokes them on special occasions.”

“And how do you know this isn’t a celebratory cigarette on account of you calling me?”

“Because instead of saying hi you said I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh so you did hear me?”

“I hear you, Nesta,” Feyre conceded, disappointment weighing on her words. “Loud and clear. Have a good week.”

She hung up.

“You too,” Nesta said into the silence.

When the silence replied she sank beneath the water. As though she hoped it might act as the cushioned walls of a padded cell meant to protect those who posed a danger to themselves.

It didn’t. And that unpleasant ache didn’t go away. It never did.

Worse than the dull pounding in her ears and tightness in her chest as she held her breath.

But it would be nothing compared to the devastation of seeing Feyre or Elain hurt. The tender ache of keeping them at arms length, knowing they were at least there to brush her fingers against, was worth avoiding spending the rest of her life reaching for someone taken from her.

Perhaps that was also why she’d wanted so fiercely to dislike Cassian.

Nesta re-emerged with a gasp, her chest on fire.

What an unpleasant notion, she thought, running her fingers through her wet hair and sinking back as she took a slower breath. That she’d been looking for a reason to dislike him even after overcoming the minor detail she was going to kill his friend and client. An excuse to throw in the towel as soon as she could. Because it was just easier.

Easier than accepting she was fundamentally terrified of keeping him around.

Easier than keeping him around and seeing him get hurt.

Fuck.

Her being mad at him had been a cop out.

Because yes he’d been a petty, insecure idiot; but hadn’t she told him she was going to fuck and chuck him? Hadn’t she been at typically fast to get in a fight with him? Substantiating his insecurities.

Nesta might have been furious at his calling her a coward, but he hadn’t actually been wrong.

She’d let some subliminal fear convince her to sabotage things.

A subliminal and blissfully irrational fear she realised because, Cassian, a monument of pure muscle, could definitely look after himself. He’d been marine corps for Christ’s sake. Not to mention she’d seen him take down Helion enough times in the ring while still working for Eris and the fact the man literally specialised in keeping people safe for a living!

Nesta felt a weird and almost unfamiliar lightness in her shoulders. It felt a little like hope. Which was also terrifying.

But she wasn’t going to the let the fear control her this time.

—

Cassian had ignored her calls.

All three.

Which was fine because she’d been stalking him for the past month. She knew exactly where he’d be that evening and doing things in person meant she could kill him if he kept up the asshole routine.

Nesta’s platform stiletto boots clipped against the laminate flooring as she emerged from the elevator. Stalking lazily through the top floor of the Illyria building.

Even if she killed Cassian he was going to die happy. She looked good enough to eat. Thick hair fastened back into a high ponytail, the details of her face were subject to full attention. Her eyes appearing almost wider and lashes lavished with a black like her jet thigh-highs and tied coat. Plump lips softly lined and shaded, she looked drop dead fucking gorgeous.

Though it was what she was wearing under her fastened coat that was the real killer.

Nesta didn’t uncross her ankles from where they’d flicked over one another as she let herself lean against the doorframe of Cassian’s office.

It was wide open. No privacy needed when everyone else had gone home around four hours ago. The night detail on Helion allowing Cassian time to catch up on work as he had every night and well into the morning for the past month.

“All work and no play?”

Cassian looked up from his desk.

“I can fix that,” she said.

He’d never looked more handsome.

Hair bundled into a dark band, his shirt cuffed at his forearms and a bit of scruff marring his chiselled jaw. A pair of slim reading glasses were pushed up his slightly imperfect nose and it was such a turn on Nesta was glad she was leaning against something.

He looked a little exhausted in a kind of brooding and adorable way.

It gave her this awful pining to massage those sculpted shoulders as he let loose a deep, tired sigh, arms folding across that powerful chest causing his white shirt to hiss as he leaned back into his chair. It was a fucking massive bit of furniture. But then it had to be to accommodate him.

“What are you doing here?”

Rude.

Nesta pushed off the doorframe and into his office.

“You ignored my calls,” she said by way of explanation. Making her way to the bookcase and running her fingers across a row of spines. It was mostly files, but she noticed a few novels as well.

“You kicked me out of your bed at three in the morning.”

She turned to find him watching her.

His words were dismissive and effortlessly confrontational as usual. But there was an edge to his voice. And it wasn’t arousal. Even if his gaze caught on her boots and lingering there for longer than he’d probably care to admit.

Nesta leaned back against the bookshelf, inspecting her manicure with an eye roll.

“You’re still upset about that?”

“Not at all,” he said with a smirk. Reclining back against the chair a little further, hips rolling and arms casually folding. Too casually. The dangerous grace of it speaking to the emotion that no doubt roiled beneath his bronze skin. Belied by that bullshit cockiness which grated her to the bone. “It seems I dodged a bullet.”

“Oh really?”

“The whole hot but mean cliché is one thing, but crazy hookup who stalks me-“

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sneered.

She’d seen hints of this before. The rugged and crude act meant to cover up the insecurity she’d also been treated to.

“Oh I’m sorry. I forgot you can’t ever admit what it is you want.”

“You don’t have a clue what I want.”

“I have several, Nesta.” He looked her up and down pointedly.

The way he said her name. Even like this it made her weak in the knees while her fingers itched to choke him.

It was all very conflicting.

“Oddly confident in your last performance for someone so insecure,” she quipped lazily.

Cassian rose his brows with a mean a laugh.

“What do I have to be insecure about?” He said. “I didn’t hide behind a half-ass lie to throw someone out of my bed. And I’m pretty sure even your neighbours can attest to how good of a time I gave you,” he smirked again. “You’re not a good enough liar for the way you moaned my name to have been an act.”

The white hot fist in her stomach folded in on itself as it melted to a stickiness despite the misguided insult. She certainly hadn’t been putting it on Saturday. Every sound he’d drawn from her dripping with sincerity. Every moan and whimper well deserved.

“You’re right,” she said.

Cassian blinked.

Nesta prowled toward him and hummed, “those, four, orgasms, were about as fake as my emergency.”

The sultry softness to her voice thickened to something less affected at those last words.

Cassian scoffed. Though there was something withdrawn and careful to him that hadn’t been there a second ago. Like a snake recoiling in case it needed to strike. “Your emergency, of course. Which was?”

“Nothing to do with you.”

He shook his head, laughing bitterly.

“Seriously, Nesta? You’ve had two days to come up with something now.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Nesta slipped atop the corner of the desk, perching there with her long legs crossed over one another. The blade of a stiletto heel close enough to brush up his calf if she wanted to make him shiver.

But she didn’t. She just wanted him to listen. To understand what she was saying so she didn’t have to say anything more because for fucks sake he was the one who’d acted up and yet she was here putting her pride on the line again.

“It had nothing, to do with you,” she said slowly.

A weighted silence settled like snow between them.

Until Cassian took a blow torch to it.

“Shit.”

His head fell into those large hands.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” he cursed again. “Oh god, how badly have I fucked up?” He groaned, looking up. So humbled and distraught it was almost comical.

“Irredeemably.” Her eyes flirted with the notion of a little smile even if her mouth remained unquirked as she propped her hands against the desk behind her and leaned into them to more comfortably watch him suffer.

“I’d beg you not to tease me but honestly I think it’s the least I deserve- fuck.”

“Like me teasing you isn’t the highlight of your day.” She rolled her eyes.

Cassian laughed, pained and almost sheepish, which shouldn’t have been hot but god it made her blush.

Keep your cool goddamn it. She wanted a little more bang for her buck where grovelling was concerned before she let on how eager she was for things to get back on track.

“Want to flat out abuse me and make it the highlight of my year?”

She was struggling to keep the smile off her face even as she said, “I’m not in the habit of rewarding bad behaviour. You’re a man, you get enough of that already.”

“Nesta,” he took his glasses off, setting them down on the desk beside her thigh. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I’m, really, really fucking sorry I’m an idiot.”

Nesta slid of the desk.

“Go on,” she instructed.

“A moron a fool a stupid, stupid son of a bitch.”

Taking a step forward she was stood between his thighs. Picking up his glasses and pushing them back on his nose. Missing the sight of this hulking, powerhouse of a man in spectacles.

“I’m sorry.” Cassian was looking up at her with those big brown eyes, and the bastard actually leaned into her palm.

“Oh for fucks sake how did anyone discipline you as a child with those damn puppy-dog eyes?” She growled softly, furious.

“They didn’t to be honest,” he admitted with a breathy laugh.

“I can tell.”

She slid her hands to his shoulders, fingers curling soft and possessive over the stacked muscle and palms pressed to his upper chest, stepping tighter into him.

“I guess I’ll just have to do it.”

Cassian swallowed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, sweetheart,” he tried. Intoxicatingly deep, trying to maintain that arrogant and playful edge in a way that made his words all the hotter. The simmering ache he attempted to push down all but throbbing in his voice.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she returned, brows arched. Battling a smirk off her face.

“Can I ask you to do something for me, then?”

“If you say please.”

“Please don’t screw around with me.”

Nesta faltered.

Those warm hands came to rest on her lower back, long fingers curling slightly into the fabric and coaxing her that last bit closer so that her thighs brushed against the edge of his chair and her stomach was brushing up against his.

“I’m really into you,” he admitted. “You’re smart and you’re beautiful, and at first I thought the whole hard to get thing was an act but woman you are genuinely hard to get and it is, so sexy. But whatever it is that’s holding you back, that made you wait a week to call me, that made you claim all you wanted was a hook up; I’m clearly not cut out to compete,” he confessed. “It got in my head, and that’s on me and me lashing out at you the other night that’s on me too and I’m so, so sorry Nesta. I need to know where I stand with you though. I need to know if you’re actually interested in me. Because I like you. But I’m too old for games.”

The silence was so thick she could have cut through it with a knife.

Nesta’s hands fell from his chest slowly.

“That’s good,” she assured him at last. “Because I’m not a toy.”

She brought her fingers to the belt of her coat and pulled slow and deliberate.

Black glazed her figure with a gorgeous intimacy. The dress hugging at what little it concealed with perfection enough to make up for its lake of mercy. Long legs sheathed in those thigh-high boots, the item was short enough that a decent length of her thighs could be seen. Interrupted at the last possible moment by sleek jet as though she’d been dipped in oil of purest night.

Cassian’s eyes blew out to sticky treacle behind those glasses.

“I’m human, Cass,” she hummed, tossing her coat onto the desk behind her as she spoke. “Which means I make mistakes.” He swallowed as she sighed softly, her cleavage swelling a little with the motion. “And that I have needs. Needs you can be the one to fulfill or not.”

She slipped into his lap, straddling him, knees bent either side of his thighs. The corded strength of which pressed painfully and exhilaratingly apparent against the soft seam of her inner thighs and she was genuinely suffering from some kind of contact high. Every inch of him seizing up subtly, deliciously taught at her touch in an effort not to respond and yet it only revealed just how much she affected him.

“Nesta-“

“Shhhhhh,” she interrupted. Hands cupping that ruggedly handsome face and titling it back to tuck her’s against him slowly. “But I want it to be you,” she purred against his jaw, tracing her nose up the stubbled curve. “Let me show you how bad.”

“Someone could come back-“

“I don’t care,” Nesta murmured against his mouth. “I want you.”

His eyes fluttered shut. And she felt his cock stir in those immaculately tailored slacks.

“Nesta-”

She could feel every muscle that licked up his stomach tremble with a drawn out contraction as she said it again, her hands slipping down to his broad shoulders.

“I want you,” she purred again.

He might have tried to breath. And it might have rubbed up something uncomfortably nice in her lower tummy.

“Say it,” she whispered, tilting her face so that the tip of her nose brushed up the side of his. Her breath hot on his stubbled Cupid’s bow and hands running down the solid power of his upper body, burning up through his shirt. “Say it, Cassian.”

His brown eyes like cognac and magnolia were hooded behind his glasses as he conceded.

“You want me,” he breathed.

She grazed her mouth against his. Lips parted suggestively and an almost silent, utterly cruel noise escaping her.

The length of his thick cock pressed up against the seam of her plush sex as he grew to full, hard attention in his slacks. Warm and thrilling even through her panties and their open mouths melted into one another hot and heavy, tongues caressing as his large hands came to her knees and smoothed up her bare thighs covetously.

“Fuck,” he groaned lazily as her hips began rolling deeply into him, and her hands slid under his shirt. Fingers splayed, she snaked up the cobbled muscle of his stomach, the flesh burnished and warm beneath her touch. His shirt riding up to reveal the gutter of his hips, gruesomely toned and dusted with hair.

“This is…such a…” he breathed, between the perfect and yearning motions of their jaws, a hand smoothing up her waist in a way that made her shiver.

“Dream come true?” She hummed, kissing him wanton and unhurried. Dangerously close to becoming a brainless mess with the way his cock rubbed up her core.

His groan melted to a laugh or maybe it was the other way round.

“Yes,” he admitted breathlessly. “And a bad, bad…idea.”

“Well you’ve been a bad, bad boy, Cassian,” she whispered filthily against his ear, before capturing the lobe between her teeth softly.

She sucked and nibbled oh so gently and he expelled a breath so gravelly and masculine it twisted the hungry knot in her core tighter.

“Nesta…we-fuck you’re good at that…” he groaned lethargically . “Sweetheart, we can’t…”

“Why not,” she coed quietly, the sound airy and affectedly filthy.

“We’re…” he choked as he took in the sight of her cleavage, pushed intimately to his chest and escaping the neckline of her dress like a plume of toothpaste squeezed from the tube. “Fucking hell Nesta we’re in my office.”

“And I’m saying you could be in me.”

She rocked her hips against him with a particularly cruel slant.

The groan that escaped him made something flip in her stomach, tossing about whatever sweet, impossible to describe feeling rushed there at the same time at the way his head fell back against the chair as she worked him over. The hot friction that rubbed against her sensitive core the cherry on top of the sweet, creamy, decadent sundae.

“Besides,” she moaned, breathless and sultry. Teeth plunging softly into her plump bottom lip as she continued rolling her hips. Hands rubbing over his shoulders and providing her leverage. “You’re the boss.”

“I think we both know…that I’m not the boss��right now…” he groaned. Almost pained.

“Your cock a little much for those slacks?” She hummed, faux sympathy dripping through her mocking pout.

“I thought you liked a tight fit,” she teased, still pouting but eyes smokey. Her toes curling in her boots as her fingers began work on pulling his shirt apart.

The buttons popped undone with a sensual and pining tempo and she was moaning quietly into his mouth as she explored the panes and ripples of that powerful upper body. More than thorough in her hands-on assessment.

Cassian’s own hands were keeping just as busy, massaging and kneading her ass indulgently before smoothing over her rolling hips and eventually coming to her lower back. His thumbs pressing to the small of her back either side of her spine and it made something tight inside her swoon. The touch so hot and the memory it conjured so good. His big hands on her as he fucked her from behind.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned deeply, as she began rocking into him tighter, hotter. The impression of his cock lined up just right with her aching core.

“Hey, baby,” She purred, drunk on the friction that made her whole body throb and hum with pleasure and the tip of her nose brushing the side of his. Hands snaking from his exposed chest to either side of his face and capturing his bruised mouth with her own. Chewing on his bottom lip obscenely, the friction beginning to push her over edge.

“Fuck you’re incredible,” he groaned huskily once she let up. Kissing back decadently. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed almost mindlessly. “I’m so fucking sorry, Nesta.”

“You wanna show me how sorry you are?” she purred, sultry and low, mouth parting, forehead still pressed to his and eyes fluttering open to hold his own.

Cassian nodded, dumb and silent and eager and Jesus it turned her on.

“Yeah? You wanna make me cum?” She hummed.

“Yes, yes, please.”

“Touch me, Cassian,” she whispered against his open mouth. “Make it up to me, make me feel good.”

Cassian’s hands slid back to her ass and she moaned into the kiss he captured her lips in as he lifted her with a sensual squeeze, wrapping her long legs tightly round the tapered cut of his waist as he stood.

The surface of the desk was beneath her before she could work out which way was up and his touch smoothed down her legs to her knees before she could take a a breath in reprieve from kissing him. Her legs splitting either side of his broad hips and his erection, tucked to the side in his slacks and thick and heavy and hard, pushed against the inner seam of her thigh as he pulled that band from her hair.

“I’m gonna make these gorgeous legs tremble for me,” he pledged against the her jaw, kissing and nipping his way down to where her pulse throbbed for him as he a hand through the loose locks.

And he began suckling at that sensitive spot just as a calloused hand slipped between her thighs.

“Mmmmm,” Nesta moaned smugly, gripping at his biceps still sheathed in the sleeves of his shirt as Cassian’s thumb ran up the seam of her dripping cunt through her panties. The lace a flimsy veil between her swollen clit and his hot touch.

“Fuck I’ve missed you,” he moaned into her neck, her head rolling back as he snapped her panties and began stroking his fingers through her soft folds possessively. “Missed those little sounds and your mouth and this pretty neck and perfect pussy.”

“Then cut out the all bark no bite bullshit and prove it,” she breathed.

“Yes ma’am,” he murmured thickly, the pad of his thumb coming to her clit and she moaned as he circled the sensitive bundle of nerves expertly. Her nails pressing into his shoulders, a few through the hiss of his shirt but the others carving crescents into the bronze muscle and tattoos like the meat of an apple.

His forefinger began teasing at her tight entrance and Nesta’s breath caught.

“Tease me and you’ll fucking regret it,” she warned thickly, and he pushed the digit inside.

The intrusion was far from the thick, eight inches she craved, but when he curled his finger against a sensitive, swollen spot deep inside her Nesta keened aloud.

“You look so fucking good like this,” Cassian breathed, husky and bestial as he crooked his finger inside her over and over.

“More,” she demanded.

It probably wasn’t clear if she was demanding more dirty praise or physical attention but Cassian was a good boy and covered all his bases. A second finger pushing inside her that second.

She gasped as the snug walls of her cunt stretched to accommodate the two of them as he waxed lyrical about how hard her moaning got him. Their foreheads level and those deep brown eyes lathering her with his earnest attention.

“You’re dripping down my knuckles like a fucking peach,” Cassian told her as he thrust inside her over and over, the only thing more obscene than her facial expression and the breathless sounds she was making being the quite, wet noises his fingers illicited.

He hadn’t let up on her clit, and at the exact moment he decided to start curling those two fingers together, he increased the speed and pressure with which he rubbed at her most responsive spot with his thumb.

“Cassian,” Nesta moaned, her fingers running up the nape of his neck and delving into his hair, still pulled into that bun.

“That’s it, that’s so fucking hot, baby, I want your cum dripping down my wrist,” he growled softly. Her nails sliding down his scalp.

“You’re so fucking needy,” she got out, which only served to utterly delight him. His thumb working at her from an oh so subtly more intense angle that had a familiar buzzing low inside her threatening to pluck her apart at the seams.

“Oh my god fuck,” she moaned. “Uhhu, that’s it, just like that oh my god.”

“You gonna cum, Nesta? You gonna cum on my desk- Jesus I’m gonna be thinking about you moaning, long legs spread for me while you moan so fucking dirty for my fingers every time I’m sat at this fucking desk now, you know that?”

His words sent her over the edge.

Silently she threw her head back as her orgasm licked up every frayed nerve in her body. It was hard. And Cassian kept on working those thick fingers inside her and over her sensitive clit throughout.

Fucking her dirty and skilled. Prolonging her twitching and bone melting pleasure.

Until she was snaking her hands from where they’d wound through his fastened hair, and pushing him off her at the shoulders. Falling back on her forearms with a shaky exhale, thighs still trembling subtly.

Cassian smirked. And brought his fingers to his mouth. Licking up the length of the calloused, sticky digits. Eyes on her’s from behind those obnoxiously sexy reading glasses she had half a mind to slap off his face.

“You taste even better than I remember,” he purred.

“Then get on your knees.”

Her voice was shaky but he didn’t even throw her another of those antagonistic and gorgeous smirks, just sank down. All six foot whatever, two hundred and something ridiculous pounds of muscle. Knelt on the floor between her legs.

“Is initiative encouraged of am I to be strictly obedient?” There was that smirk.

“You can use your brain,” she permitted. Still out of it. But still dying for him to touch her again. “If only because I need to be convinced you have one.”

His chuckle felt like fucking heaven between her thighs. His stubbled jaw rubbing up against her aching cunt as he kissed her like he meant it. Open mouthed and his tongue then slipping out to lavish her dripping slit before he began playing with her clit with the tip.

Nesta moaned, chewing down on her lip once she located the dignity to quieten down so she could keep it that way.

Her previous orgasm should have taken the edge off, but it had only reminded her already whetted appetite what there was to gorge on. Leaving her pining for more and disastrously sensitive.

“Mmmm,” Cassian moaned deeply- though honestly it was closer to a growl which was hot- and brought those large hands to her thighs. Holding her open for him stoking the bruise-blue flame that writhed in her core and allowing him better access to her pussy.

“Oh god right there,” Nesta keened. His nose brushing up against her clit as he licked up her snug entrance, teasing his tongue inside.

He threw her legs over his stacked shoulders and obeyed, working his tongue inside her with shameful enthusiasm only emphasised by the noises he was making. Seriously he was putting her to shame.

In fact if she hadn’t been rapidly approaching another orgasm she might have thought he was have more fun than her.

Hands no longer occupied with gripping her black-clad thighs they came to her hips and waist. Coaxing her to slant forward at an angle that granted him an even more advantageous angle from which to eat her out.

She moaned, manicured nails almost clawing into his desk behind her. “Mhmm mhmm uh,” she gasped sharply at the sudden relocation of his tongue. Cassian capturing her clit in his mouth and sucking on the sensitive bud as he flicked his tongue up and down.

“Fuck, yes yes yes yes,” she was utterly breathless. “Oh god, oh fuck, I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna cum,” she whined.

Cassian fucking groaned and it was like he’d pulled at the knot in her stomach with his teeth.

The muscles in her lower stomach twitching as she came, the cushiony walls of her cunt pulsing tight and the only thing grounding her to reality.

Though she was just lucid enough to know Cassian was lapping up the nectar between her legs with audible and pleased snarls of pure, masculine satisfaction.

Nesta couldn’t say how long it took her to stop seizing, just that she was completely drunk on pleasure by the time her body allowed her to at least try and think. She failed completely. Wasted on her orgasm, on Cassian.

“Come ‘ere,” she said, breathless and doped up. Eyes barely fluttering open, heavy lidded and probably glazing over with unabashed appreciation as Cassian did as he was told. Rising to stand before her, thick arms winding round her waist snuggly and pulling her to him tight.

His sheathed erection pushed to her sticky inner thigh and his powerful upper body, chiselled and broad and comforting, warm and hard and dusted with dark hair, pushed to her’s.

His sharp jaw, like her thighs, was slightly sticky, and his mouth looked even more abused than it from the attention of her teeth. But the best part- better than his mid-sex blush or the way he was breathing all deep and powerful and hungry for her, were his glasses. They were slightly fogged up at the edges.

“Apology accepted?” He asked huskily, like he was already sure of the answer. Like he didn’t care because no matter what she said he was going to have her screaming for him till they were both sick of each other.

“Apology accepted,” Nesta confirmed. Splayed hands smoothing up his broad chest as she captured his lips in a wanton kiss.

“That still leaves your punishment though,” she whispered.

Cassian’s dark brows had barely risen before she’d pushed him back and he was falling into the chair again. Breathing deep and thrumming with a desire that destabilised him as he watched her slip a stiletto heel beneath her panties on the floor and flick them up into her hand. Prowling toward him and climbing into his lap. Hoping it wasn’t obvious that her legs felt like liquid.

“Hold these,” she demanded, feeding the bundle of lace into his mouth, his groan muffled by the fabric and her hands making quick and embarrassingly eager work of removing his unfastened shirt. All but tearing it off his sculpted arms that must have been as thick as her thighs- his body was ridiculous.

She griped his wrists before he could start doing something like feeling her up and brought them behind his head. Elbows out and biceps flexed, his hands meeting in the middle at the nape of his neck.

Cassian kissed and nipped at her fingers as she plucked her panties from his mouth with one hand, holding his wrists with the other.

He licked at his lips as though chasing the taste of her lingerie, eyes on her’s from behind his glasses.

She wasn’t gentle knotting the lace round his wrists.

“Oh,” he grinned, trying to move his arms.

He couldn’t of course, the physics working against him and rendering it so his only way out would be pulling until the lace snapped for a second time this evening. Still, it was a fucking gorgeous sight watching him try. Biceps and broad chest flexing.

Tied up and at her mercy she was dripping wet for him and slipped her tongue into his mouth as a little reward for how fucking hot he looked like this. Kissing him obscene and wet.

“Safe word?” She murmured into his mouth.

“Harder,” Cassian grinned. No doubt referencing her answer to the very same question the other night.

Nesta bit his bottom lip, puncturing the bruised cushion subtly and she tasted blood on her teeth and his tongue.

“Safe word,” she insisted once more against his lips, fingers winding through his hair with a drawn out and yearning pull.

“Amren,” he groaned`. Then added, “don’t ask.”

“Yeah we’re done talking,” she informed him dismissively. Unbuckling his belt and pulling it through the loops of his slacks with a swift tug.

Cassian’s hips jumped beneath her and she unfastened the button slung low on his hips, pulling the zip of his fly down. Parted lips close to brushing.

“Down boy,” she purred.

“Bit late for that,” he breathed raggedly, jaw feathering as she slid her hand into his boxers.

“God you’re adorable,” Nesta pouted, freeing his thick cock. Obnoxiously engorged and a dribble of pearlescence spilling from the uncut tip.

“Now be a good boy and don’t you dare cum until I say,” she warned.

And sank down on thick inch after inch of his hot, rigid shaft.

Nesta couldn’t help the arch that slipped through her spine as he filled her up, the stretch so acute it had her eyes rolling back with a flutter of her thick lashes.

“Oh my god,” she moaned breathlessly, hands splayed against his powerful chest. Thighs straddling his, her walls hugged him vice like and- Jesus, he rubbed up that deep spot inside her perfectly.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned beneath her. “You’re so… fucking tight.”

Nesta rolled her head to the side in tandem with her hips, growing accustomed to the sheer size of him and eliciting a raw sound from the man before she removed his reading glasses. Fitting them over the bridge of her own petite nose.

“No backseat driving now, sweetheart,” she purred a little shakily.

She rose onto her knees only to sink back down again with a filthy twist of her hips. Repeating the motion again and again. Gliding up and down his cock with a tight and slippery friction that had her stomach flexing and his gaze heavy lidded. Encouraging, low noises escaping from deep in his chest that she wanted to bottle up and get drunk on.

“Uhh,” she keened, dirty and blissful, hands on his stacked shoulders. “Uhhu.”

“Oh fuck,” Cassian breathed huskily. “Mmhhm…that’s it…fucking ride me baby”

Nesta felt a familiar heat fan at her core as she drank him up. Every perfect, delicious inch there for her to use.

“Cassian,” she moaned. The sound tasting like sex in her mouth.

She fluttered around him again on an upwards twist of her hips, his cock pushing in and out of her snug cherry with a delicious wet sound. Just audible above her filthy moans.

Riding him was like sucking on a hard candy, that intense sweetness at the centre burning ever closer. And he kept running that damn mouth. Gravelly and deep, lavishing her body with sickly sweet and dirty compliments.

“Fuck that’s it gorgeous, just like that sweet thing fucking hell you’re fucking perfect.”

Powerful and dripping with raw fucking desire his body rolled upwards into her, slick with sweat and chiselled sinew. His cock burying deeper inside her. The sounds he was making just to top it off causing a tight fuzziness to tremble in her upper thighs.

“Oh my god,” Nesta moaned, hands coming to his face and lips brushing his as so she moaned a hot, “I’m gonna cum,” into his mouth.

Cassian groaned. Kissing her hard and deep.

“Cassian,” she keened.

She began bouncing deeper in his lap. Up and down up and down. His cock thrusting inside her hard and rubbing at her g spot just right while her clit grazed the coarse hair at his rugged hips. There was a bead of sweat gliding down the chiselled muscle that carved his broad torso, washboard abs flexing as he resisted release and Nesta felt the pressure between her thighs reach a fever pitch.

Grunting he bucked violently beneath her once, twice, and she was undone.

Nesta might have made a noise this time. Airy and hot and open mouthed against his neck as she buried her hands into his hair.

He was so tense beneath her, like pure marble soaked in the heat of the sun. Trying not spill inside her as her walls flexed with every hot wave of pleasure.

And once it passed his breathing was as ragged as her own.

“You did so good,” Nesta whispered at last against his ear. Voice wrecked like she were experiencing a sugar crash. Nibbling at the lobe. Tasting salt on her lips and eyes fluttering shut at the heady scent of his aftershave.

“Does that mean I get a reward?” he managed.

“Something like that,” she hummed, repositioning herself so that her back was to his chest.

“Nesta please. Just untie me, sweetheart,” Cassian whispered against her ear. Voice trembling like he’d shot up something good.

Nesta only chuckled, head knocked back so she could hold his eyes as she rolled her hips. Teasing, tormenting.

“The second you get your hands on these,” she brought her hands to her tits, giving them a soft squeeze and biting her lip, “you’ll be cumming and out of commission.”

Cassian growled, watching her feel herself up as she rolled her hips in leisurely circles. Sensual and dirty. The length of his hard shaft, thick and velvet smooth beneath her.

“Fuck,” he moaned huskily. Nose buried at her throat and lips working against her pulse point with the assistance of his tongue and teeth. Just as slow and through as her hips.

She gasped softly, grinding deeper.

“You know how good I can make it for you,” he purred.

“Mmmm,” she moaned quietly in agreement.

“Let me take care of you.”

“Cassian.”

“You make my name sound so sexy,” he grazed his stubbled jaw against the bruise he’d worked into her throat, the sensitive skin blushing warm at the contact as he moved his mouth to another location and started kissing and nibbling there. “Untie me, baby, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

Nesta smiled.

“Or I could keep you tied up and just take it.”

Cassian growled against her neck as she tilted her hips forward allowing his cock to spring up, and sank down on him again.

She moaned, loud and keening. Hands snaking through his hair behind her as she rocked herself up and down slowly. There wasn’t a lot of friction, but for now it was enough just to revel in how good Cassian’s cock felt. That last orgasm having finally takes the edge off.

“Fuck that’s it grind for me,” he moaned. His breath was hot against her neck and she could feel his heart beat. Feel every deep sound reverberate through his chest as she moved.

His cock rubbed up against her g spot, colours and stars bleeding behind her eyes like fireworks.

“Cassian,” she whimpered lowly.

It was so good.

Hands fumbling distractedly she brought her fingers to untie him. And he deemed it all the permission he needed. Tearing himself free with a growl. Capturing her mouth in a slow and wanton kiss as those big hands came to rove her body, taking his time to pull her apart.

His touch hot and calloused, Nesta moaned into his mouth as he ran up her stomach, her hips, her thighs, her tits. Massaging and glazing every inch of her with a rough heat that made her feel like she was going to explode. Her body a champagne flute dangerously close to shattering at the frequency of his hot groans and growls.

“Right there, oh right fucking there baby,” She moaned quietly against his lips, one of his hands rubbing her hip and guiding her motions while the other palmed at her breast.

“Yeah? You like that?” He dipped his head to pull down the straps of her bra and dress down with his teeth until her cleavage spilt from the cups. Pebbled nipples tight and rosy in the dim light, peaking over the balcony of her bra.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured against her throat, exploiting the sensitive spot as he made his way back up to her face and watched her plump tits sway. A hand running from her hip down her thigh and back up again to slip between her legs to stroke her clit.

Nesta whined softly.

“Cassian…more…”

She kissed him sluggish and distracted. The two of them humming and moaning every so often until he started caressing her clit tighter and her sounds grew more frantic.

“Fuck uhhu, uhhu just like that,” she panted quietly into his mouth. “Oh god uhh, uhhh more…more…more more Cassian fuck me.”

She was on her feet before she could complain that his hands were no longer between her thighs. Pushed up against the edge of his desk, hands falling splayed against the surface to stop herself falling across the wood and legs split apart.

“Oh!”

“Good girl,” he grunted deeply. “Moan for me.”

His calloused fingers came to her clit, coaxing her closer to the edge as the other gripped her hip.

“That’s it, that’s my girl such a good girl baby.”

Mouth caught open as though on a fish hook Nesta started seeing black splodges, the puddles flaring in her vision on every one of his thrusts. Deep and dirty and filling her till she was so impossibly full she spilt over.

“Fuck fuck just like that oh my god you’re so fucking tight, cum on my cock, cum on my cock, uh, uh, uh.”

Cassian finished inside her with a guttural sound as she came. Pumping her full one last time with a brutal snap of his hips.

She was vaguely aware of his ragged breathing against her ear. Somewhat sure her forearms had fallen flat against his desk and her head hung forward. Hair falling over her face and back arched as her tight sex twitched and fluttered around him.

Coming back to her senses took longer than she’d ever admit.

“Is that cctv?” Nesta asked eventually, head tipped back and resting on his shoulder. Eyes flicking in gesture to the tiny little camera in the opposite corner of the ceiling.

“Don’t worry,” Cassian breathed. “It’s switched off.”

She turned her gaze to him.

“Shame.”

He let out an exhausted and reverent sound that might have been a laugh. And just as exhausted, once he’d pulled out, he fell back into the chair behind him. Trousers pulled back up but unbuttoned.

Nesta followed in fatigued suit, working her dress back down over her hips and sinking to the floor, back against the desk. She probably shouldn’t have worn black… but the impending bill and judgement from her dry cleaner would be worth it.

“Friday night. Pick me up at eight,” she breathed.

Cassian grinned.

“You like Italian?”

Nesta rolled her eyes from behind the reading glasses askew on her nose, but nodded none the less. She was sort of screwed if she didn’t. Cassian’s adopted family were Italian on his father’s side. The cuisine was going to be pretty commonplace if they kept seeing each other she imagined.

“What are you thinking about?” He hummed, watching her.

Nesta smiled. Then crawled toward him across the floor. “How I still have that table cloth you call a dinner jacket at my place.”

“Was that plan b?” He laughed, snaking an arm round her waist as she climbed into his lap. “Hold my jacket hostage till I agreed to go out with you again?”

“No,” she glared at him softly, nestling into the crease of his shoulder. “Though I had thought about wearing it tonight. Just your jacket and a pair of heels.”

Cassian licked his lips as though contemplating the sight and liking what he imagined very much. “Next time,” he hummed distractedly. Less promise more pleading. “This was…,” his free hand roved down her side, the black fabric glued to her figure. “And these…,” his touch made her melt as he ran down her thigh and platform boot, her legs flicked over one another.

“Lethal,” he whispered.

Nesta scoffed. “You’re telling me. My toes are killing me.”

Cassian hummed sympathetically, fitting a heel in his hand and guiding the shoe off her foot. Nesta groaned softly and he did the same with the other boot.

“That bad?” He chuckled, starting to massage her.

“Worth it though,” she sighed, nuzzling into his shoulder.

Cassian held the door open for Nesta to emerge out onto the street first. The cool night air whipping lazily at her hair.

Their second date had been incredible.

He’d taken her to Gnocco in the East Village. Proper Italian food, fairy lights, and intimate little corners perfect for flirting over too many glasses of wine and playing footsie beneath the table. Not to mention casual enough to see Nesta Archeron fitted out in heels, a snug black top, and a jaw dropping pair of jeans.

Tactically quiet and effortlessly biting as ever, she’d been armed with passionate reviews on the podcasts she’d listened to or books she’d read that week. Asking him about his own week and listening thoughtfully in a way that had probably made him blush.

If it hadn’t, then the way she’d licked at the creamy vanilla gelato on her dessert spoon definitely had.

Cassian was far too tempted to slip his hand into the back pocket of her dark skinny jeans as he emerged after her, but he felt Nesta probably wasn’t one for PDA. Or more accurately, public groping. And he was determined to be on his best behaviour this evening. Determined to make her forget all about how shit-awfully he’d handled last Saturday.

Not that he hadn’t given her a thorough apology.

Consistency was key however, and there would be no lapse in his conduct any time soon when it came to Nesta. He’d lucked out so fucking hard in getting a second chance when he hadn’t even deserved the first with a woman like her. Clever and beautiful and passionate and god he had it bad.

Had been thinking about her all week. Their date the only thing getting him through the late nights that were pretty much killing him at this point and the days spent arguing with Helion.

Cassian had worked out who’d put a hit on his friend. And why.

The contracts Helion was in the midst of signing were of a more personal nature that he’d originally let on. His will to be precise. In which it was detailed that upon his death, the pharmaceutical powerhouse that was Day Inc. should be handed over to Saoirse Vanserra.

The married woman Helion had gone and fallen in love with twenty odd years ago. The mother of his child.

Not that Helion had been aware of the that little detail until recently. Terminally ill, Saoirse hadn’t wanted the secret buried with her, and had gotten in touch with her old flame to tell him her youngest was his.

Despite being well into his fifties, Helion behaved like a twenty-something at the best of times. But learning he had a son that actually was twenty-something had thrust him into a panicked play at accountability. Saoirse was going to die, and soon, but Helion would still have a piece of her, a piece of the both of them despite the estrangement that had haunted their relationship since the start. A piece he’d do every and anything in his power to do right by.

Which meant Lucien would inherit his father’s company when the time came.

But removing Saoirse from his will…it felt like signing her death warrant. At least that’s what he’d told Cassian. That it it felt like he was giving up on her.

Cassian wished Helion could process everything in as much time as it took him. But time was a luxury not even the multi-millionaire could afford. Not with Saoirse’s eldest, Eris, trying to take him out before the will could be changed.

As things stood, Eris was set to inherit anything of his mother’s- a compromise reached between Saoirse and her cunt of a husband who’d wanted everything in his name. The Vanserra court its own savage little patriarchy of snakes and vipers, meaning as long as Beron was around, what belonged to his sons, belonged to him.

Still, Eris was the undisputed second in command and Beron wasn’t getting any younger. If he could take Helion out before any changes were made to the CEOs will, and if Saoirse’s doctors were to be believed, Day would practically be his by the end of the year.

Maybe sooner. If Beron beat his cancer ridden wife to death upon learning she’d been left Helion Day’s company and why.

He doubted anyone would put it past the bastard.

“Hey,” Nesta’s voice tugged at his attention as they turned off tenth. “Where’d you go?”

Cassian snaked his arm around her small waist, pulling her against him. “Just thinking,” he said. And as hard as he tried to push those thoughts away, something of them lingered in his voice.

She raised a neat eyebrow. That little beauty spot above the arch lifting with it and the one beneath the corner of her plump bottom lip quirking just barely.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that before.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Tucking her tighter to his side as he looked down at her. “That’s because the only thing I ever think about is you. And when I’m with you, I don’t have to do that, do I?”

Her blush was so utterly adorable it made him want to kiss her senseless.

“How do you do that?” Those eyes like the smoke of ice narrowed in sincere curiosity. It was a little terrifying. Which off course only made him like her more.

“What? Make you blush like a-”

“No,” she interrupted him with an embarrassed and chiding laugh, pushing at his chest slightly. “Say things, just say them- like the only thing that matters is that you mean them?”

Cassian smiled. “Not everything has to be done strategically, Nesta.”

“Says the military man.”

“And wouldn’t you say that makes me qualified to- okay fine, roll your eyes at me. Jokes on you because it’s actually very sexy when you do that so.”

Nesta laughed, her head falling to rest below his chest as they walked.

“Fortunate you say something to make me roll my eyes every five seconds then,” she hummed.

“And that I know just how to make those eyes roll back,” he purred lowly in response with a roguish grin, rubbing his thumb against where her coat lay over her stomach.

“Oh and you’re telling me this whole conversation wasn’t strategically constructed so you could use that line?” Nesta looked up at him.

“Sweetheart, when are you going to accept that I’m just incredibly smooth?” He grinned. “Besides, that wasn’t a line.”

“That was so a line!”

“You’d know if I was giving you a line.”

“Go on then. Give me your best line,” she challenged. Stopping dead and turning on him with her arms folded. Cassian didn’t let his arm slip from around her waist though. Kept it right where it was as he brought his free hand to tuck a lock of chocolatey hair behind her ear. Inspiration striking him.

“Are you a box of chocolates?” he asked, gravelly and suggestive. “Because I’d love to take your top off.”

Nesta really had the loveliest laugh in the world.

“That’s awful!” She put her hands firm against his chest. “How did you ever get laid before I took pity on you?”

“Um I’m gorgeous and rich,” he reminded her, both arms now caging her in.

“What a coincidence,” Nesta purred, their noses tucked against one another just barely thanks to his date’s shoes. No doubt expensive as they were tall.

“No coincidences here, sweetheart. This is all fate.”

“I’m deliberately not rolling my eyes just to spite you for saying something so cliché and dumb,” she murmured.

“Fine then. Fate and your meddling sister,” he admitted.

“Let’s not talk about my little sister right now,” Nesta’s hands snaked up to toy with the lapels of his coat.

“What would you rather we talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk at all,” she whispered. And pulled him down lazily to meet her mouth.

Cassian moulded his lips to the perfect pressure of her own. Hard and soft, her mouth like velvet and her body pressing into his tight and loose in all the right places.

Kissing Nesta was like brushing you fingers against the glacial softness of snow like flakes of glass. Irresistible and inevitable. Burning so soft at first before the sensation grew unbearably tender and acute. It reminded you that you were alive.

The movements of their mouths grew hotter, no less lethargic, but simply heavier. Like they had all the time in the world and planned to exploit every second.

So much for not into PDA, Cassian thought, as she coaxed his mouth open further with her tongue, his own slowly swiping to meet it. And he did slip his hand into her back pocket then, giving her a fond and pining squeeze which pulled her tighter into him.

The pads of her thumbs brushed at either side of his jaw as she arched a little, those perfect tits pushed against his upper body and he dug his fingers a little more possessively into the fabric of her coat. Bunching at her waist beneath his calloused touch.

Nesta sighed sweetly into him-

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cassian swore. Tame Impala playing from his pocket.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who likes your attention,” Nesta laughed quietly, hands smoothing back to her sides politely. The little menace. Her effortless composure all the more devastating with her mouth kissed cherry-red and pupils blown wide as saucers.

He fished out his phone, and declined the call.

“Well you’re the only one getting it.”

She rose her brows as though she were impressed, winding her arms back around his neck.

“For a man who hates games you have game, Velaris.”

“Would you feel less wooed if I told it you was just Rhysand?” He admitted. Rejecting his busybody brother’s phone call a far less bold gesture than if it had been work.

Nesta’s little smile was like molten satin.

“That makes it even better,” she kissed him again.

Cassian kissed her back through his laugh, dipping her back slightly for a more indulgent angle, her arms lacing tighter around him to hold herself up. Like he’d let her fall.

Nesta was the one laughing now and it tasted like gelato and champagne and sunrises. He nipped at her lip as he pulled her back up with him snuggly, and she brought her hand to cup the side of his face, the other at his tapered waist.

“I should get going,” she hummed distractedly, hand gliding up his body like she didn’t even realise.

Her tongue caressed his slowly before he was muttering against her, “probably”, chasing the plush heat of her mouth.

They didn’t stop. Not even as Nesta was murmuring a disjointed, “heighten the…suspense…keep you…wanting and all that.”

“I’m already losing interest,” he purred gruffly, their jaws knocking intimately as the kiss became hotter and fitful, short breaths and hungry mouths. Her nails scraping softly up the nape of his neck and through his hair.

“And you’re looking for it in my back pocket, is that it?” She whispered, and Cassian gave her ass a firm squeeze as either confirmation or reprimand.

She bit his bottom lip, the nip of her pearly teeth giving way to a sensual sort of chewing that made his eyes roll back behind closed lids and his large hands wound through her hair to guid her head back so he could take charge. Kissing her slow once again but dirtier, thorough and wanton and Nesta keened almost silently.

“Found it,” Cassian said thickly into her mouth.

“Want your prize?” She whispered breathlessly.

“Yes please.”

Nesta slid her hand between them. Fingers brushing his belt, then lower-

Cassian couldn’t tell if he was relieved or devastated when she slipped her way inside his pocket and plucked free his phone.

She withdrew just barely from the kiss, switched it on and turned the screen to him. The device unlocked as both his hands tucked into her pockets and her manicured thumbs were tapping away.

Cassian brushed at the curved beam of her high cheekbone with his nose, trying to see what she was up to.

“What are you doing?”

“Callander says you’re free Friday. Or it did. Now it says you have a date.” She nestled herself back into him tightly, tucking the device back into his pocket, exploiting that teasing proximity to something else entirely and driving him crazy as she grazed his mouth with her own.

“Congratulations.”

Cassian grinned.

“Tha- wait just to be clear the date is with you, right?”

“Yes, Cassian, the date is with me,” she chuckled. “And I can’t wait,” her humming melted to something wordless and heavy as he kissed her again.

Slow and explicit he stroked his tongue inside and he swore he felt the flutter of her lashes against his cheek.

“Cassian,” she breathed almost silently and it burnt his lungs like freezing air.

“Can I take you home?” Cassian whispered.

“May I take you home,” Nesta corrected between the sinful caress of their lips.

“Please do.”

She was kissing the smirk off his face like she could taste how snug he was and wanted a piece of it for herself. Like she were working at a marshmallow or strawberry lathered with thick chocolate from a hot fountain of the stuff.

“Maybe you are smooth,” she whispered and it only inflated Cassian’s self satisfaction. “But we both know I like it rough.” Ouch. “Just like we both know you’re way too exhausted to have your way with me.”

He pulled back abruptly.

But his mouth had barely opened to argue when she gave him a definitive “don’t”. It was little bit arousing. “You said yourself how late you’ve been working. Have you slept at all this week?”

For all her icy glares and hellish attitude, at her core, Nesta was kind. She cared despite her pretences to the contrary and it meant she noticed things. Like how despite his lively grins, Cassian was out for the fucking count.

“That’s what I thought. You can screw me when I know you won’t pass out before making it to third base.”

“The only one who’d be passing out is you once I’m through fu-”

“Save that thought for a night you have the energy to see it through,” she said.

“But I-”

A quirk of her neat brows shut him up.

He growled a bitter but accepting sound. She was right, of course she was right, because she was Nesta and a Nesta was always right.

“Friday,” he promised. “I’m gonna cook for you, something fucking romantic.”

“More romantic than that sentence?”

“Look I may not be Keats but I know my way round a stove, so hold all sarcastic comments until I’ve fed you.”

“I’ll try, but I know for a fact you’re going to make that very hard.”

“How have you already failed?”

“Shut up,” Nesta laughed.

“You have the sexiest fucking laugh.”

“So you’ve said,” she blushed.

“And I’ll keep saying it if every time I do you blush like that.”

“Like I’m embarrassed for you?” she countered with an arched brow and a cruel twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“You’re so mean,” he grinned.

They made their way to the curb and hailed down a car on twelf.

“Want me to ride with you back to your apartment?” he said, opening the back door of a yellow cab that had pulled up for her.

“That’s sweet, but trust me, I can take care of myself,” she promised.

“Text me when you get home safe and sound just to spite me then,” he said from the opposite side of the door.

“I will. But you better not be awake to read it,” She gave him a lingering kiss before gracefully tucking herself inside.

“Night, gorgeous,” he winked, and shut the door.

Her ride had just turned onto fourteenth when Cassian decided against hailing his own despite the cold. It was only fifteen or so minutes on foot, and he could probably do with cooling down.

Though even if he had to trek through tundra to get home he suspected he’d still find himself burning up under a cold shower in an attempt not to jack off to the thought of Nesta like a fourteen year old.

Stuffing his already slightly numb hands into his pockets he began walking, his fingers brushing against his phone. He should probably call Rhys back.

The phone rang for a moment before his brother picked up.

“Did you decline my call?”

“Yup.”

“Bastard.”

“I’m sure Feyre will kiss your bruised ego better,” Cassian grinned as he walked. “Along with something else so long as she doesn’t hear you’ve been calling me names,” he added slyly.

“Are you threatening to tell on me to my wife?” Rhysand asked, a little wound up by the allusion to Feyre’s kissing certain places even if he hid it behind an unimpressed drawl.

“Are you pretending the thought doesn’t have you quaking in your givenchy loafers?”

“On the topic of not upsetting Feyre, she’s demanding a family dinner.”

He laughed deeply at Rhysand’s avoiding the question.

“That why you’re calling?”

“Partly,” Rhys said. “Work’s been…She wants to be around family right now,” he said with an all too familiar casualness. “You free?”

“For Feyre?” Cassian said without hesitation. “Yeah, I’m free.”

He would just have to pull an all nighter on the Monday.

“Thank you. And also fuck you for implying if it was for me you wouldn’t be,” his brother said.

“Well you called me just as Nesta was about to slip her tongue down my throat so-”

“Nesta?” Rhys interrupted. “I thought that was over?”

Shit.

In all the carnage that had been the last week he hadn’t bothered letting his family know he and Nesta were back on. The woman was a touchy subject and he hadn’t had the energy or balls to get into it.

While Rhys had been able to excuse Elain’s inactivity when the Archerons had been at their financial lowest, he’d never managed to extend that same courtesy to Nesta. Maybe it was because the first time they’d met she’d called him a cradle snatching whore. Regardless, Rhysand pretty much hated the woman’s guts, meanwhile his wife was desperately trying to lure her into the inner circle of the Velaris family.

Cassian may have been able to bench a number higher than his IQ but he wasn’t dumb. He’d clocked on to the fact his sister-in-law was using him as Nesta bait. In all honesty he was loving it. Nothing made him happier than helping out his family, and if that meant taking out an intelligent, passionate, stunning young woman, then really it was a double-win.

Taking a second to grind his jaw softly he was reminded to tread carefully. Not something he generally excelled at, but for the sake of his brother he could try.

“I know you’re not her biggest fan,” he said. “But Feyre forgave her years ago for bailing-”

“Well Feyre’s a better person than I am.”

“I’ll say. She set me up with a smoking hot model, meanwhile you’re trynna cock block me,” he tried.

“You can put your dick wherever you want, doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“I guess not,” he ground out. Itching to hit something at the implication Nesta was just “somewhere to put his dick”.

“Cassian if you want to date a biblical plague in human form knock yourself out, seriously, god knows Feyre will be thrilled. And Azriel, your moping-”

“I don’t mope,” Cassian interjected.

“Fine, your stropping-”

“Fuck off.”

Rhys’ laugh was about smug as the bastard’s crooning voice.

“Mor’s gonna kill you by the way. You put a two grand dent in her wine collection over a woman you took back the next week.”

Cassian groaned, wiping a hand over his face. The only thing worse than the hangover he’d had Monday morning would be Morrigan’s laying into him on this.

“Don’t you dare tell her,” he warned.

“Fine but you’ll have to do it before next Sunday, you’re bringing Nesta.”

“Hang on a minute-”

“Feyre wants a family dinner and if you and Nesta are back on that means she’s coming,” Rhys said.

“Boy you are asking a lot of me here,” Cassian sighed dramatically. “I mean I can think of a few ways to persuade her but most of them are illegal in a lot of countries,” he grinned.

“I don’t care if you have to roofie her and strap her to the hood of your car, just make sure she’s there.”

“Alright, alright Don.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rhys growled irritably to Cassian’s delight.

“What else were you calling about then?” He smirked. “You said dinner was only part of it.”

“I wanted to ask how things were going with Helion,” his brother said. “Any update?”

Cassian sighed heavily.

“This a secure line?”

“Always”.

“The hit’s Eris,” he said. “Apparently Saoirse does pretty well for herself if Helion kicks it and it’s looking like she won’t last the year. When she goes Eris takes the lot so he’s trying to take Helion out before he can change his will.”

“That little bitch,” Rhys interrupted.

“I’m not done. Guess who Helion might be transferring that inheritance to?”

“Is Azriel going to finally have the funds to build that sex dungeon?”

“Not quite,” Cassian said. “The money’s going to Lucien.”

“Lucien?”

“Turns out the kid’s his.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Seems obvious in hindsight to be honest.”

Rhys was silent on the other end for a moment as he evidently thought through matter.

“You said might, is he waiting on a paternity test or something?”

Cassian winced. “No. No he’s dragging his feet about changing the will altogether.”

“Why the fuck is he doing that there’s a bullet with his name on it!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cassian hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “I’m the one whose gonna have to jump in front of that bullet if he doesn’t get his ass in gear. But he…he’s losing the love of his life, Rhys. I’m trynna cut him a little slack-”

“Slack Eris is going to have someone strangle him with.”

“I’m handling it,” Cassian promised.

Rhys went silent again.

“We could always just kill Eris.”

Cassian would have laughed at the unrestrained glee in his brother’s voice if the suggestion hadn’t been so tempting.

“No you can’t,” he reminded him, ascending the steps to his front door.

“Sorry, sorry, you probably want plausible deniability and all that- which is a shitty reason to leave a family business-”

“What are you talking about? I left because I don’t like any of you.”

“Dick.”

“See it’s that kind of thing that made for a hostile work environment I really couldn’t foresee a future working under,” he grinned, unlocking the door.

“You taught me words far more creative than that growing up, monte de merda-”

“Desenmerda-te, and don’t cuss at me in Portuguese carcamano.”

“I’m fucking Persian!”

“Tell that to your pale ass like unbaked garlic bread, minchia,” Cassian retorted in Italian as he tossed his keys onto the skirting board and shrugged off his coat.

“A fanabla!”

“Love you too, tell Feyre I said hi.”

“See you and Nesta on Sunday, I’ll text you timings.”

“No shop talk okay, she still doesn’t know anything about-”

“I know, I know, it’s not me you have to worry about. Feyre keeps asking me to hire her.”

“As what? Has Cosa Nostra began dabbling in the modelling industry under your direction, baby brother?”

“If I said yes would you come back to us?”

“I’m a one woman man, Rhys.”

“Jesus, it’s been less than a month.”

“At which point you and Feyre were engaged.”

“Nesta’s no Feyre.”

Yeah, Nesta has enough wit about her to know you can’t go round offering Mafia jobs like candy, he thought to himself.

“Whatever man, I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

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yoksdan · 3 years ago

Text

I understand you’ll never be mine, and thats fine… - VegasPete fic

When Kinn and the rest of the main family find out what Vegas did to Pete, they try to get revenge…. my continuation after chapter 10.

Dark memories flood his thoughts as he stares down at the man responsible for his sleepless nights. Nights now filled with unrelentless anguish, constant worry that if he closes his eyes, he would wake up in that room that housed the brutal torture that Pete endured. He looks down at Vegas’ bloody form, eyes cast down and refusing to meet Pete’s own. Anger begins to cloud his once hopeful eyes as once again he was face to face with the man who had caused every emotion in his body to be replaced with pain.

After Pete had escaped from the chains that bound him to Vegas, he had refused to talk to anyone about the events that occurred while he was kidnapped. In part due to the embarrassment that he felt, but also because he knew the hell that would ensue once Kinn found out. Pete refused to start a war between the two families over an insignificant bodyguard like himself. It was not to say that both Kinn and Porsche had tried to coax it out of him multiple times, with Pete refusing to let them in every time. The answer that Pete would always give to them would be that Vegas just had him locked up to mess with Kinn, intentionally leaving out details about the torture that occurred.

One night, after Pete had downed an entire bottle of alcohol in an attempt to give his mind even a sliver of peace, he had broken down all his walls and revealed to Porsche about the source of his physical scars as well as the one that was left on his heart, the one that had hurt more than any physical one ever could. Porsche, fueled by anger and disgust, informed Kinn of Pete’s words. This had led Kinn to call up his men, intent on getting revenge on Vegas, and dragged his bruised and bloodied body to the warehouse in which they were currently in, along with a few of Kinn’s men. While Kinn and his men had beat Vegas until the light in his eyes was slowly dimming, Kinn had decided that Pete should be the one to finish this act of revenge. And how could Pete ever disobey his boss?

Pete felt like he could not breathe, like the world was closing in him, and he could not escape. All the emotions that he was keeping bottled up fought their way to the surface, evident by the tears that threatened to spill in his glassy eyes. His breathing stopped when he felt a cold, metal object touch his fingers. He slowly turned around to see Kinn handing him his gun, the same gun that he had used to protect the people that he loved numerous times, was now being turned into the weapon to enact his revenge. Pete’s hands shake as he holds it in his hands, the weight of the gun almost foreign to him now.

“Don’t be afraid, Pete,” he thinks he hears Kinn say, words not registering in his head as he stares down at the black metal. “Nothing will happen to you if you do this, I promise you. I will make sure the first family knows exactly what this bastard did to you,” Kinn assures as Pete slowly looks up at him. Kinn eyes are filled with fury, ones that his own should reflect.

Pete slowly turns around to Vegas, heart threatening to break out of his chest as Pete casts his gaze upon him once again. Only difference is that when Pete turns around, Vegas is staring directly into his eyes. As soon as Pete takes one look at him, all the memories of that day he escaped come rushing back, invading his mind like a virus. Vegas’ remorseful, pleading eyes stare up at him, pain clearly coursing through his features. Pete turns his attention away from Vegas, not wanting to show him the tears that were freely flowing from his eyes now.

“Pete…,” he hears softly, like a soft wind in the forest, barely able to register if you were not paying attention. Pete whips his head back to Vegas as he hears a loud ‘slap’ echo in the warehouse. He notices the newly formed red spot on Vegas’ skin and Kinn standing next to Vegas, anger evident in his posture.

“You fucking bastard,” Kinn sneers before he slaps Vegas again. “How dare you think you can talk to him?” Pete could see Vegas’ gaze flicker toward him quickly before he looks down at the blood stained floor below him. An indescribable feeling swells in the pit of Pete’s stomach.

“Go ahead, Pete,” Kinn encourages Pete. “I would say put this son of a bitch out of his misery, but where he’s going is going to be way worse than anything we could do to him here.”

Pete, with obedience now engraved in every fiber of his being, slowly lifts the gun to Vegas’ forehead. He feels his hands shaking, and the echo of his ever beating heart in his ears. Almost like he could hear Pete’s heart as well, almost like Pete’s heart had become Vegas’ compass, Vegas looks up at him with those same eyes that begged him not to leave him, that told him he loved him. A part of Pete wants to slap that look off his face, and wants to yell at him that Vegas is not allowed to have sympathy for the pain that he inflicted with his own hands. Another, very deep part of Pete wants to take his fingers and wipe away all the hurt that was present on his features. The part of Pete that he had tried to keep hidden so meticulously.

“YOU FUCKING BASTARD,” Pete yells directly at Vegas, not knowing where this explosion of anger had come from all of a sudden. “I HATE YOU VEGAS, I FUCKING HATE YOU! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU HAVE HURT ME?” Pete cries out, voice straining at the last word. His outburst makes the man in front of him flinch as his tears fall down Vegas’ reddened cheek. Vegas looks like he wants to extend his hand out to Pete, but can not due to the rope that was burning circles around his wrists. Vegas’ lips move slightly apart, words unspoken sitting on his lips. Pete stares at Vegas for who knows how long, his whole body trembling.

“Can you please leave us alone?” his words directed at Kinn, but his attention on Vegas unwavering, gun still firmly prompted on Vegas’ forehead.

“What?! No, we’re not gonna leave you here alone with him,” it is Porsche who speaks up.

“Please, I’ll be fine,” Pete begs Porsche with conviction. Out of the corner of his eyes, Pete sees Porsche and Kinn hesitate before he hears Kinn command his men to leave the warehouse.

The silence that follows becomes deafening as words that have been begging to be spoken hang in the air. The connection between their eyes remains steady. It had been awhile since Pete had been alone with Vegas, but this time he was the one with all the power, Vegas was his prisoner. And yet somehow, this did not bring an ounce of pleasure to Pete.

“Please…,” Vegas whispered, voice unsteady. “Just get it over with. My life is not worth living without you in it. I’m sorry for everything Pete.” Pete felt the hot tears burn his cheeks as Vegas’ words flowed into his awareness. Vegas was ready to die, he was willing to give up his entire light to give Pete a fraction of his own light back. The fire that had glowed so bright in Pete, was now dimmed by Vegas’ cold hands. But Vegas had been burned too, playing with a fire that he had never seen in his years of living.

“No… no you don’t get to say that…,” Pete cries out. “You can’t just say that and expect everything to be ok!” he almost shouted, anger returning to him once again. “Vegas.. You wrecked me.”

“I … I know…,” Vegas sighs. “Just please end this right here.”

“No!” Pete yells. “You think that killing you solves anything, huh? You think all my pain will just go away when you are dead? I’m not like you, Vegas. I’m not cruel.”

Pete’s words register in Vegas’ mind. The dread that flashes in Vegas’ eyes causes Pete to falter, remembering how those same eyes stared at him when Vegas had let down his walls and invited him into the despair of Vegas’ past. Just like that time, it almost makes Pete want to let down his guard.

“I don’t want to be that person anymore, I’m not that person anymore,” Vegas states, as if trying to convince himself more than Pete. “I can never go back and change what I did, but I can only promise that I will spend my entire life trying to repair it. I promise I will never hurt you as long as I breathe.”

Pete’s grip on the gun falters as he feels his breath stop at the sound of Vegas’ words. The gun makes a loud thud as it makes contact with the stone ground. Silence grows between the two as Pete struggles with his words, his feelings creating tangled web in the foreground of his mind. Pete knows that his words should not have any affect on him, but they do. When Pete looks at Vegas kneeling in front of him, he does not see the vindictive, cruel person who acted without a care for anyone. Instead he sees a scared boy, terrified of finally finding love in this world that keeps throwing one missile after another and losing it due to his own messed up mind.

“Please Pete…” he hears Vegas whisper, breaking the silence between them. Pete slowly trails the fingers that were just gripping the gun down Vegas’ forehead to his cheek, softly caressing the other man’s face. “I am so sorry for everything. I know that won’t take away any of your pain, but I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I want you to know that I am not that person anymore. I wish I could take your pain and make it mine. You became my peace, Pete. I just want to give you some too.”

Pete falls to his knees beside Vegas, feeling all the strength leave his body and letting go of a fight he did not realize was happening within him. He slumps down as he hangs his head, staring down at his shaky hands that had fallen when he did. Fresh tears begin to burn his eyes once again. He felt Vegas’ turn his head down, causing their foreheads to touch as Pete struggled to return his breathing to normal. He did not dare to look back up, instead choosing to focus on the tears that were mixing with Vegas’ blood on the ground.

“Pete, I love you so much,” Vegas said softly. Hearing this causes Pete to completely break down his walls. He looks back up at Vegas, their faces only centimeters apart. This is the part he tries so hard to fight, the raw, foreign feelings that had haunted him since he left Vegas. He wants to blame Vegas, wants to blame being locked up and spending every day with Vegas, but he knows it was not anyone’s fault but his own. He started to care for Vegas. He believed if he did not have to see Vegas anymore, all those feelings would go away. But they did not. Being in front of Vegas and hearing those words that had echoed in his mind spoken once again causes all those feelings to return full force. He knows that he could never forgive or even forget the things Vegas did to him, but Vegas had changed. Deep down Pete knew this, he had let him go after all. Maybe he would not forgive him, but maybe there was still a chance for them to overcome this. A chance for them to heal, together.

Not breaking eye contact with Vegas, Pete slowly removes the knife from his pocket that every bodyguard was given and snakes his arms around Vegas. Fear quickly flashes in Vegas’ eyes before Pete cuts the rope that was bounding Vegas’ hands. As soon as he does this, he feels himself being brought into Vegas’ strong hold. The smell of blood and sweat invading his senses as Vegas’ hands grip his shirt on his back like Vegas is sinking and Pete is his anchor. Pete’s neck becomes moist from the tears that were spilling from Vegas’ eyes. He can not stop his own tears from spilling as he hangs on to Vegas. Time passes as they just hold each other, trying to heal the pain that echoes in their hearts.

It is Pete who pulls away first to look at Vegas. “You’ve hurt me so much Vegas, it’s something I cannot forgive,” Pete whispers. Vegas casts his eyes down, about to speak until Pete interrupts his thought. “But I cannot forget these feelings I have for you. I don’t understand them, but they are there… and I have not been the same since I met you. I care about you, Vegas. I just really hope you have changed.”

“I have Pete, please believe me. I will never do anything to hurt you ever again,” Vegas reassures.

“I don’t believe you right now,” Pete states. “But that does not mean I won’t believe you in the future. You’re going to have to earn my trust back, Vegas. But… but I’m willing to give you a chance to prove to me that you truly mean the words you are saying. And believe me, if you ever hurt me again, I will not hesitate to pull that trigger and kill you.”

A small smile fights his way up on Vegas’ lips, his hand slowly coming up to caress Pete’s cheek. “Thank you so much, Pete. For giving me another chance. You are so amazing, and I have changed because of you. You have made me a better person. I know I don’t deserve this, but I will work so hard to make you believe me when I say that I love you with my whole heart. You are the only person I love.” Vegas states. Pete feels a small form on his own lips. “Can I kiss you?” Vegas asks for permission.

Pete brings his face closer to Vegas’ own, silently giving him permission. He feels Vegas’ lips on his own, a soft touch like Vegas is scared that if applies any more pressure, Pete will pull away and take back all the words he had just told him. Feeling the weight of all the emotions he’s been hiding away come spilling out, Pete deepens the kiss. Vegas takes Pete’s face in his hands as Pete’s hands join together around Vegas’ neck. Vegas kisses him with an intensity that burns brighter than any fire, pouring all his love and conviction into that one kiss. An unspoken promise is shared between the two. Hope fills all the voids that were once gaping inside both Vegas and Pete, the mutual love they share acting like medicine to all the wounds they have suffered.

Pete is the one to break the kiss first, withdrawing his lips to connect his forehead with Vegas’. He stares at Vegas’ tear filled eyes and the smile radiating off of Vegas’ face. He can not help it when he feels a soft feeling at the pit of his stomach staring at the broken boy who just wanted love, who was torn apart by this cruel world. Pete smiles back at him. He may never forget the past, but when he stares at Vegas, he is hopeful for the future that lies ahead of them. He hopes that Vegas can eventually replace those painful memories with happy ones. It may take time, but he is willing to give his heart forever to the man in front of him, as long as Vegas is willing to prove to Pete every day that he has changed. He knows it’s not going to be easy, but Vegas’ love is clear to him. He saw it the day when Vegas decided to let him go, when he saw that Vegas’ actions were no longer for his own benefit. If Vegas was willing to change, Pete was willing to give him a chance.

“We’re gonna give Kinn a heart attack, I hope you know,” Vegas states. Pete laughs for the first time in months.

#kinnporsche the series #kinnporsche #vegaspete

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ri-ahhh · 4 years ago

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I hate to be that person but like today’s been really shitty and embarrassing staining at work and I was just longing for some boyfriend gray (or e hehe but I know it’s easier for u to write gray!) just comforting you after an embarrassing period moment like that 🥺🙃 is that silly idk u really don’t have to hehe love you so much!

Ugh the strug👏gle👏 Shout out to anyone who has been through the horror of bleeding thru ur pants in public I think we all deserve a medal of bravery or something lol. Or an ott bf that looks like a Dolan twin to comfort us.

How’s your day going baby? Ily

The text from Grayson couldn’t have come at a better time for you mentally. You’re on the home stretch of when it’s time to get off work, and it can’t happen soon enough.

shitty tbh :/ urs?

Good. But imma shut up tell me what’s wrong

started my period at work, had to tell my boss and come home to change cuz I forgot to replace the extra set of work clothes in my car from when I stayed at your place last. then realized I only had like 2 tampons left so I’m gonna have to get those after work and I’m just ready to be home

im glad urs is going good tho

that sounded sarcastic. I really am glad ur having a good day haha sorry

Grayson sends you back a frowny face and four little dots, which is the little code the two of you use to indicate you’re busy and aren’t ignoring the other person mid conversation. You tuck your phone back in your purse under your desk and get back to the email you’re supposed to be typing up. Having to concentrate doesn’t help your mood any, head throbbing and your back aching both in the middle from your crappy office chair and in the lower part from Mother Nature.

Just as your phone buzzes by your foot, a cramp seizes your belly and radiates throughout your pelvis. You wince and bite your lip through a grunt, cursing the fact you were born female as you reach down to grab your phone. You cover your mouth to stifle your giggle and keep your boss a few offices over none the wiser when you read Grayson’s text.

What size pussy are u? ;)

You’re even more amazed when you open the message and a picture of a shelf full of tampax products fills your screen. How many boyfriends are out there buying tampons - the only brand of tampons you ever buy, at that - for their girlfriends unprompted and without coercion?

Grayson.. ur not real

I’m the realest bb. Now tell me which ones to buy cuz I’m starting to look like a weirdo

You chuckle and shake your head.

regular pls. the one w yellow on it. and a box of overnight pads. look on the box and it’ll say specifically.

Oh yeah u stopped wearing them tamps at night.

God, who is this man and where did he come from? How in the hell did he pick up on that of all things. Before you can respond, he hits you with a double text.

Sweet, gottem. What else?

You bite your lip and think. He’s already being so sweet and you don’t want to run him ragged all over town to get your period cravings. But then another cramp hits, this time one of those especially nasty ones that makes you feel like you got punched right in the vagina, and you think if you’re going through all of this to potentially carry and push out one of his babies one day, he can run a couple of errands for you.

if ur not too busy... watermelon sour patch, Trader Joe’s takis, milanos, and those frozen chipotle sweet potato fries. pls:)

Grayson hearts the message, and you sink back into your chair with a sigh. Just the thought of not having to trudge into Target or CVS after you leave the office is enough to alleviate some of your stress. You check the time and realize you only have an hour until you’re home in a bath, with no pants on, and your heating pad ready in bed with Grayson as well. An hour seems doable now.

You make your half hour commute home in a record 22 minutes, desperate to get out of your work clothes and into one of Gray’s oversized t-shirts. You saw the Porsche in your guest spot in your apartment garage, so you know he’s here when you kick the door shut behind you. “Gray?”

“In the bathroom!” His voice is muffled but comes distinctly from your room. You hang up your keys and toss your bag on the kitchen island, kicking off your heels lazily by the door before following the now audible sound of the bath running.

You stop dead when you turn into the bathroom, shocked to see your tub already halfway full, the tampons and pads you requested sitting neatly on the counter next to one of his faded Cub Sport shirts, and the distinct color and smell of the Lush intergalactic bath bomb (your favorite) wafting from the steaming water.

“Gray-son,” you whine, throwing your face into your hands as your throat swells up and tears prickle behind your eyes. You hear him chuckle before you feel his arms wrap tightly around you. He presses a lingering kiss to your hair as he strokes your lower back gently, his touch and the heat of his hand providing an instant modicum of relief to the dull ache there.

“What?” he says quietly. He moves in front of you and untucks your shirt, removing your hands from your face so he can drop a sweet little kiss to your nose as he unbuttons the top two of your blouse. “Is it too much?”

You shake your head and open your eyes to look at the pretty hazel of his own. “It’s perfect. I’m just a hormonal mess.”

He laughs again and kisses your lips softly this time. “If you want your fries, I’ll make them while you soak.”

You nod, and he leaves you with another kiss before shutting the door behind him to give you your privacy.

The bath is amazing, the sparkly blue water relaxing some of the tension in your body and alleviating some of your pain, and you’re almost sad to get out, but you’re starving and the cravings are real.

You re-enter your bedroom to find heaven on earth: Grayson, shirtless in your bed and scrolling through Netflix on your TV; a steaming plate of fries with a mountain of ketchup already squirted out for you; and each bag of goodies you requested already sitting on your nightstand, one of which catches you by surprise.

“Holy shit, they make this?” you ask incredulously, picking up the giant three-and-a-half pound bag of watermelon sour patch as you slip into bed with him.

This is the only time you ever allow yourself to eat in bed, and you don’t catch his reply as you instantly seize the plate of fries and dig in, moaning loudly as the taste graces your tongue. He selects The Office on Netflix while you chew. He really knows you too well.

While Grayson takes your half-empty plate back to the kitchen once you’re done, you help yourself to a couple of the Milano cookies until he returns. You offer him a smile, which he returns happily as he sinks back into bed with you.

“Feeling a little better, baby?”

You roll up the bag and nod, coaxing him to lie down with you as you turn onto your side. He settles close behind you as you situate your heating pad across your abdomen, and he puts his arm across it to keep it in place for you. Space heater that he is, he’s creating a similar effect against your aching back, and it’s the most comfort you could possibly feel while you bleed out of your vag.

He’s made you forget about the work fiasco completely, and you cuddle into his warmth. “Thanks again, Gray. Seriously, you’re unreal.”

He nuzzles into your hair and smiles against the back of your neck. “Anytime. I mean, once a month. But anytime.”

#i made myself jealous writing this ngl #pao also said she likes gummy bears but i think tjose are vile and they have no place on my blog #😋#sorry pao u still got ur milanos lol #dolan twins #grayson dolan #grayson dolan fic #blurb #g blurb

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ladyreapermc · 4 years ago

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Fic: Thank you kindly, sir part 2 (Keanu x (f)Reader)

Summary: AU. After your failed audition, you head to Keanu’s auto shop so he can fulfill his promise.

A/N: This a follow up to this work and since I’m drawing blanks on new titles, I’m keeping the same. LOL. Also, I decided to write with a plus size, latina reader in mind because I don’t think I ever read a story with that combo and my brain decided that was the way to go!

Wordcount: 1,8k

Warnings: smut (rough, unprotected sex; degradation kink; spanking and choking)

You weren’t even that surprised at how much of a mess the audition ended being. You had barely any time to prepare and you knew the second you stepped inside the room that the director didn’t like what he saw. Maybe it was the fact that you were a Latina woman with actual curves, unlike all the other candidates who were paler than glowsticks and just as thin.

Whatever it was, you could see in his eyes that he wasn’t pleased and it was enough to make you self-conscious and caught up in your head. You stumbled over the text twice and before you could even have a chance to apologize and ask for another try, he was cutting you off with a thank you and a promise of a call you knew it would never come.

With a sigh, you rolled up your script and stepped out of the room, dejected and depressed, wanting nothing more than to gorge yourself and a greasy burger and enough milkshake drown sorrows.

Instead, you chew on the protein bar you kept on your glove compartment and that tasted like cardboard since you couldn’t exactly afford to spend too much money. Not when you have to gave have your piece of shit car fixed. So while you chewed on the tasteless snack, you googled the address for Keanu’s auto shop. If you couldn’t eat away your sadness, maybe he could fuck it out of you.

The place was unlike any auto shop you had ever seen. All glass walls and sleek metal countertops, very modern. The cars waiting for service were all Porsches and Audis, expensive and high end, unlike your battered old Chevy from twenty years ago.

The clientele also was a distant cry from you. Men and women on their fifties, dressed to the nines, sipping water or coffee from elegant glasses and cups. They all eyed you with mistrust with your tight jeans shorts, oversized buttondown, and dirty converse.

“Hi, I’m looking for Keanu,” you asked the women in the front desk, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other as she eyed you from the top of your head to the tip of your sneakers.

“Do you have an appointment?” She asked her nose so high in the air you wondered if she could see anything at all.

“Not really,” you shrugged. “He just said I should stop by and he would take a look at my car.” You glanced behind yourself at the parking lot and she followed your gaze, snorting at the sight of your Chevy.

“We don’t really work with that kind of... vehicle.”

“Can you just call him, please?” You asked losing your patience with this bitch.

With a grimace of disdain, she followed your instructions, her little smirk turning into a pale, terrified look that filled your heart with satisfaction.

“Mr. Reeves said you can leave your keys with me and the boys will bring your car inside. You can go ahead and meet him in his office.”

“Thank you,” you flashed her a victorious smirk, setting your car keys on her waiting hand before sauntering to the stairs, putting and extra sway in your hips, and knowing all eyes were on your ass. It was a very nice ass after all!

It took you only a couple minutes to find Keanu’s office, his name etched with dark red paint on the dark wood. You knocked once, before stepping inside and he looked up at you with a small smile, phone glued to his ear as he spoke to someone in Italian, if you weren’t mistaken.

You took the time to look around at the elegant looking office, dark wood furniture and black leather couch and chair; metal and glass desk, walls adorned with pictures of sports motorcycles much like the one you saw Keanu riding last night.

“Sorry about that,” he said finally setting down his phone and standing up, he was dressed in a light blue button-down and tan slacks. “It was a supplier.”

“No problem,” you turned to face him, eyebrow cocked. “I thought you said you were a mechanic.”

“I am,” he replied with a smirk, leaning again his desk. “At heart, at least.”

“Right,” you chuckled, checking him out. Under the bright light of his office, he looked even more handsome.

“How was the audition?” He asked, taking his phone again and dialing a number. “Barbara, hold all my calls for now, please. Thanks.”

“It was pure crap,” you huffed walking over to him, and even though he was slouching slightly, you still needed to tilt your head slightly to meet his eyes. “So I hope this visit can save the day for me.”

“You’re talking about your car or...?”

“That too.” You smiled, resting your hands on his strong chest. “But I seem to remember someone promising to fuck my pretty little pussy so...”

“That can be arranged,” Keanu smirked, large palms warm against your waist as he tugged you gently until you were standing between his legs and he could catch your lips in a kiss.

At first, it was so soft, his tongue coaxing yours into a slow, sensuous dance, while his fingers explored your heated skin beneath your shirt. And as nice as it felt, it wasn’t what you wanted or needed.

You pressed closer, your tongue tangling with his, searching for more. Your fingers nimbly undoing his buttons, as you swung a leg over his strong thigh, straddling it and rocking against the hard muscle.

“You’re not very good at foreplay, huh?” He teased, nipping at your lower lip but catching on with the program and undoing your shirt until your black bra was in display.

“I’m a straight to the main event kinda gal,” you smirked at him, bending down to press kisses to the exposed skin of his chest, while he cupped and kneaded your breasts, making tendrils of pleasure swirl in your center. Unfortunately, it was just too little to do anything for you. “I’m not made of glass, Keanu. You can be rougher.”

“How much rougher?” He asked interest peaked if the bulge in his pants was any evidence.

“Shove me down on your desk and fuck me until I can’t stand straight. Make me your little whore.”

“Jesus!” He hissed, his eyes darkening as he looked at you.

“Choke me and slap my ass. Leave bruises all over my body.”

His kiss this time was hungry and desperate, almost bruising and you loved it, your nails sinking on his shoulder as you rocked against his thigh, your cunt throbbing with the friction but it wasn’t enough.

You palmed his erection, feeling the thick length of his cock pulsing against your hand as Keanu shoved the lace of your bra down and exposed your nipples to the unnaturally cold air of his office, making them perk up. You groaned when he pinched and pulled at them and this time the bolts of pleasure gathering in your center were sharp and intense, making that knot of arousal grow.

One of his hands fell to your ass, guiding your movements, making your ride his thigh faster, harder and you keened in his mouth, feeling your orgasm getting closer and closer.

“Not yet, pet,” Keanu said, forcing you to stop. “You don’t cum without me.”

The harsh edge of command made you cunt throb and you nodded obediently, letting Keanu manhandle you until you were face-first on his desk, ass in the air and you flinched at the first sharp slap on your cheek, the fabric of your shorts doing very little to soothe the sting.

He reached around you, to undo your buttons before shoving them and your panties down your legs, hands cupping your ass as he hummed appreciatively before Keanu slapped you again making you whine and buck.

“Is that how you wanted?” Keanu asked against your ear and you could feel his erection rubbing against your drenched cunt, teasing you with temptation. You didn’t even notice him taking off his pants.

“Yes,” you gasped, pushing your ass back against him. “Exactly like that.”

Keanu just hummed, rubbing his head against your folds and you moaned, needing him inside your right the fuck now.

“I’m waiting, pet.” There were amusement and expectation in his tone and suddenly you knew what he was waiting for.

“Please, Keanu, fuck me. Fill my pussy. Make me your slut.”

“Oh baby,” he chuckled against your ear, hand coming to your throat and squeezing just the perfect amount to make you gasp and your sight blur. “You already are.”

He thrust in with one swift motion, making your cry out at being filled so wide and fast. Your entire body shook with the effort of staying still; of keeping any modicum of self-control but your higher brain function had shut down, leaving only the primal need of being taken and used. Soon enough you were rocking against him, grinding your hips to elicit those familiar bolts of pleasure, that sweet tension of desire in your core. It was enough for Keanu to take the hint and start to thrust, slow and steady and so not enough.

“Harder, please. I need it.”

He complied, using his hold on your throat as leverage to start snapping his hips so hard you heard the table groan and squeak beneath you. Now you had it. The delicious pulsing of your walls trying to pull his cock deeper inside you, his tip hitting that blessed spot with forceful thrust and you had never seen stars quite like that but when your orgasm overtook you, your sight blacked out suddenly leaving only all-consuming pleasure as your quaked and writhed and moaned beneath him.

You heard Keanu curse and hiss above you, his pace losing its coordination, becoming sloppier, even harder and you could feel your walls clenching tight around him, trying to keep him deep inside you.

“Come on baby,” you encouraged, breathlessly. “Cum inside me. I wanna feel you slicking up my thighs all the way to San Francisco.”

Keanu grunted and tugged you up until your back was pressed against his chest and he could grind into you, his hot breath against your ear.

“You have such a dirty mouth, pet. Beg.”

“Please, please, cum inside me,” you sighed, feeling the heat in your cunt start up again just as Keanu stilled. You felt his warm cum coating your walls as he groaned against your ear.

You two stayed together, catching your breath until Keanu pulled out and you felt the mess of fluids start to trickle down but you just pulled your shorts up, flashing him a dirty smirk.

“So was it worth the visit?” Keanu asked with a smirk of his own.

“Definitely.”

—

If you enjoyed this drabble, please consider reblogging and/or commenting please. Feedback gives life to us writers!

#keanu reeves #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves x you #fanfic #plus size!reader #latina!reader #alternate universe #mechanic!keanu reeves

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prurientpuddlejumper · 4 years ago

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A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss, Ch. 5 [18+/NSFW]

<- Chapter 4 | Chapter 6 ->

Summary: After your not-boyfriend, Frederick Chilton, turns out to be not-dead, you hope you can elevate your status from fuckbuddies. Maybe be honest about how you feel? But honesty is haaard... especially when he is more closed-off than ever.

(This is probably my favorite chapter. It has actual smut. And ridiculous idiots, and fluuuuuuuff)

5,075 words

After Hannibal fled, leaving a bloodbath in his wake, Dr. Frederick Chilton returned to the land of the living and to administrating his psychiatric hospital as if he had simply been away on vacation.

Likewise, your relationship resumed where it had left off. You thought things would be different now—that you would be more honest with your feelings, and he might open up, too—but nothing changed, except for the things that changed in a direction you didn’t like.

“Oh, Doctor Chilton, I need help,” you purred, leaning seductively against the doorway of his office. He sat up rigidly in his leather chair and stammered a greeting with failed nonchalance.

Since his return, his voice shot up an octave whenever you walked in the room. He was like a shy teenager with his first crush, and you could only assume he was re-learning how to exist in the world after trauma. What else would it be?

Slinking up to his desk, you unfastened the top buttons of your shirt. He swallowed, hungry, but not immediately pouncing upon you with a lewd promise growled in your ear and a firm grasp on your hip like he used to do. New reserves of insecurity crouched beneath his skin like lions hidden in tall grass. It broke your heart to see that timidity in his eyes, but it was all incentive for you to work harder to relax him.

“I’m afraid I don’t have insurance, doctor,” you pouted, pushing aside a stack of papers to sit on his desk. “And mental health care is prohibitively costly because of a broken for-profit system, leaving the most vulnerable populations without access…” you put an emphasis on vulnerable, biting your lip.

He quirked a brow. “Your sexy-talk needs work.”

“Oh, doctor,” you moaned, sliding off the desk and straddling his lap to pull at his tie. “Until we get universal healthcare”—you brought the end of his orange tie up to your mouth and bit it, gazing coquettishly into his eyes—“surely there’shh some ofther way I can pay you…” you lisped, mouth stuffed full of tie.

He never knew it was possible to laugh, be annoyed, and aroused at the same time, but you were always teaching him new things.

“That would be a severe ethics violation,” he said sternly, brows lowered, but clearly teasing. You snorted.

It was impossible to remain self-conscious around someone flirting so badly. His hesitation melted away as he turned your awkward role-play around on you, so you moved on to phase two. Sinking to your knees at the foot of his chair, half under his desk, you smoothed the fabric of his pants over his lap, rubbing his inner thighs to coax his legs open and position yourself between them.

He drew in a sharp breath, but disguised it as a gasp of offense. “This is highly inappropriate. I am going to have to ask you to leave my office. Future visits will be attended by a nurse to ensure proper conduct, or I can refer you to another psychiatrist,” he said in a dry monotone, fully committed to playing hard-to-get. You growled in annoyance at him in between bursts of laughter. He patted your head patronizingly. “Now, now, I am a magnanimous doctor. I am not angry with you as a patient for this behavioral outburst… just disappointed.”

You licked your lips. Challenge accepted. You ran your hands over the front of his dress pants until you found the outline of his cock, and stroked it through the fabric, arching your back while giving him your best please-fuck-me look. He swallowed.

Unzipping the fly, you reached into the warmth of his pants, searching through a bed of curled hairs until you found his cock and drew it out to admire. The skin was velvety and soft, pulsing with heat as you gave it a few slow strokes, watching it grow larger and more firm. You loved it at its full arousal, when it took its sculptural form and shape with veins running up the underside of the shaft, when the foreskin pulled back and the domed pink head stood out, ready to plunge itself into you.

God, you loved his cock.

“On the other hand,” he quickly changed his mind, “perhaps I require a demonstration of this ‘alternative payment.’ For the sake of due diligence.”

Your brought your tongue to its head and gave a teasing lick, tasting the salt of his precum, then kissed it like you would kiss his lips. You pecked a series of kisses down the length of his shaft until you were buried in his neatly trimmed curls, lips brushing the wrinkled skin of his balls, then flattened your tongue against his cock and traced a torturously slow wet line from the base to the tip.

“I confess... you are my most attractive patient,” he said in a shaky, staggering breath, one side of his lips quirking upward. His chest was rising and falling rapidly now. He wanted more. “That is very good.” Not content with you stopping to look up at him, his hand cradled the back of your head, pushing you down and urging you to continue. “But I will need more payment than that.”

Taking his entire thick cock in your mouth, you slid down it until he hit the back of your throat and you gagged, eyes watering a little as you adjusted to having your throat stuffed full of him, jaw forced open wide. His manicured fingers curled into your hair, gently petting you. “Easy,” he soothed.

It was nice sucking the dick of someone as fastidiously clean as Frederick Chilton. You always appreciated that as you began, moving slowly up his shaft until your lips were only closed around the swollen head, licking it gently, then faster until you felt his fingers tighten. He always tasted faintly of soap and very little else. His sedentary lifestyle helped as well; he was never running around and building up a nasty sweat. It was a pleasant little bonus to the whole affair. His cock was the most delicious you’d ever had.

Your head bobbed up and down in his lap with renewed vigor, building a rhythm with his hand gently guiding you to his preference (which you followed to please him, and deviated from to get a reaction). You loved watching his face—his breathing as he struggled to control it, the way his mouth twitched, and his eyes watched you work. That desperate little whine in his throat when you broke his rhythm, which grew into a low moan he tried to suppress when you started a new one.

He gave you instructions: slower, faster, use your tongue... just like that. Good. You twisted, and sucked, and pumped his base with your hands, gliding your tongue along the underside of his cock until the exquisite moment when he broke down, and stopped trying to keep his breathing (and noises) under control. By the end, he was a shaking mess mess, barely able to stammer out “k-keep going!” You loved to watch the moment he surrendered to you completely, his fingers digging into your scalp as his hips jerked helplessly, and his mouth falling open as he released into you, moaning and gasping so loudly the staff were sure to hear.

You kept him buried in your mouth as his hot seed spilled on your tongue, swallowing every drop until his muscles stopped their convulsions, and you licked his cockhead clean. Cleaning up was a pain in the ass otherwise (and Frederick might implode if any got on his dress pants), but also, his largely vegetarian diet made him taste exceptionally sweet. You smiled up at him and ran your tongue over your lips as he panted, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

As he was coming down, the phone on his desk rang, and naturally, the ambitious jerk answered it without so much as a thank you, or even putting his dick away. Orgasm complete: never mind you, back to work. Based on his half of the conversation, it sounded important—something about a publishing deal for a book he writing on Hannibal the Cannibal. The tone of his voice took on that haughty smarter-than-you air as the topic turned to intellectual property rights, and he was clearly driving for more money. So you started sucking his overstimulated dick. He gasped loudly into the receiver, and stared down at you in horror as he tried to cover for it. “I apologize. A bee got into my office, and I have to swat it.” He pushed you off his lap, eyes sparking like choppy waves on a windy sea.

“That was rude,” he growled when he got off the phone, a somewhat deranged smile slanting up one side of his face. He bent you over the desk and slapped your ass, whispering promises into your ear of how he would pay you back later.

You knew he would keep his promises. Each one. He had a lot more aggression to work out lately, and while you weren’t its target, a good hard fuck always made him feel better. You knew when you went to his house tonight you were guaranteed to have a lot of fun in a lot of positions—but you also knew when you were done, he would usher you out with some excuse for why you could’t stay.

That was the biggest, and worst, change. You thought the incident would bring you closer, but he hadn’t let you spend one night with him since the day he was shot.

It made you feel cheap.

Worse, it meant you were drifting apart. He used to be grateful (though he would never admit it) that you were there for the nightmares. When he woke up shaking he would turn to hold you, crushing you against his chest like a teddy until the shaking stopped, and he drifted back to sleep still holding you tight. You would have thought he would need you there more than ever, now. Something made him stop trusting you.

*****

“Did I do something wrong?”

You were in the cramped passenger seat of his midlife-crisis Porsche cabriolet as he drove you home yet again, and a silence had fallen over him. It was a warm spring night with beautiful stars in the breeze above you glowing their brightest, albeit faded amid the glow of Baltimore’s city lights.

“Not at all. I am simply setting healthy boundaries, darling. I begin to suspect you only like me for the amenities.”

His house was new—he did not want to move back into the place he had found Abel Gideon dissected, and Hannibal had slaughtered and arranged two FBI agents for display—and even more grandiose than the last. All of the staircases were spiral for some unfathomable reason (because it was fancier), and it contained an entire gym, pool, gourmet kitchen, and a television the size of an actual movie theater screen. The bath had hot-tub jets.

Admittedly, it was nice staying there. It made you feel like someone who’d seen the inside of a country club. But his answer was complete bullshit.

“You know I don’t care about all your fancy crap,” you groaned.

“Do I? You told me you only stayed the night because my house was nice, and you enjoyed my coffee.”

Ouch. OK. Called out. “Obviously I was lying! I only like your stuff because it’s part of who you are—I can’t imagine you not being shamelessly bourgeoisie—not because I want a sugar daddy. If that’s what you’re worried about… why don’t we stay at my apartment?”

The thought never crossed his mind that you might call his bluff. He was horror-stricken.

“At your little… chalet?” he said like he was poking a dead bug with the end of a stick.

“It’s an apartment.”

Trapped by his own logic, instead of dropping you at your front door, Frederick got out and hobbled up the narrow staircase with you.

“My god, what is this? For ants?”

“It’s called a full bed, Frederick, and there’s plenty of room,” you answered with a little annoyance creeping into your voice. You knew he was prissy, but from the moment he set foot in your two-bedroom (which you could barely afford) he had been acting like he was in a decrepit slum. It was hilarious, actually, how living like a normal human being made him squirm.

He flopped down into the middle of the mattress, a sullen expression on his face like a toddler in a time-out. “You cannot expect me to sleep on this prison cot.”

“Move over,” you nudged him, crawling onto the covers beside him. “There’s plenty of room if we cuddle.”

He didn’t look interested in cuddling at the moment, however. He stared up at the ceiling like he was about to explode. You smiled. Even at his bitchiest and sulkiest, there was no one else you would rather spend time with. He tugged at your heartstrings. You admired his profile—his square brow that could express so much emotion (right now: petulance), the new scar on his cheek that was clearly the source of some embarrassment to him (though you thought it looked rugged), the stubble down his jaw with the slightest hint of grey. He was just so handsome.

Seeing his scar this close up was rare, as he always tried to keep you on his right side whenever you were seated or laying next to each other. You rested your chin on your arm and smiled at him, but he didn't smile back, or even glance over. He just stared at the ceiling like you weren’t even there. You waggled your eyebrows suggestively, hoping to get a laugh (or an irate glare that was secretly a laugh).

No response at all. He was moody.

You rolled on your side to cuddle him, intent on kissing that scar, but when your hands touched his chest, he flinched, recoiling with a surprised yelp.

That was the last straw. His nostrils flared and eyes widened as if this was the gravest indignity he had ever suffered. He jumped up from the bed frantically saying, “I have to go.”

And he did. Just like that.

You tried not to cry. He was being a jerk. He was going through post-traumatic stress. He just needed space, and it wasn’t your fault, you said, but you counted up all of the ways it was your fault anyway.

You were always so blunt and rude with him. As much as he deserved it when he was being officious, exploitative, surly, or generally the poster child for “check your privilege,” he probably didn’t want to be around someone who called him out all the time. It was a miracle he tolerated you at all. You’d gone easier on him since he returned from the dead, but maybe he simply didn’t want a rude fuckbuddy anymore.

You decided you wouldn’t bother him. He needed space, and you constantly showing up at his office and calling his house wasn’t helping, and it obviously wasn’t what he wanted.

Not three days went by before he called wondering where you had been. You could hear him trying to hide the worry in his voice, and the relief when you told him you were fine, and not angry. He wanted to see you. Not just the usual tryst, either: he wanted to take you out for dinner.

You had no idea what was going on.

*****

Chilton was terrified when you stopped calling him. His greatest fear hit him deeper than a scalpel—that you were dead. Hannibal was back from wherever it was he went, and he was killing off everyone close to his enemies. Or any other of hundreds of killers. When it was clear that nothing horrible had happened to you, and you were, in fact, alive, he realized his second greatest fear—he had fucked up and finally driven you away.

A few of his exes used to give him the cold shoulder when he had committed some error, like failing to spoil them with gifts or expensive dinners, or pretending to forget their name. Maybe you, too, were punishing him, and he still had a chance to win you back. It seemed very likely that you wanted more from him than just sex. He had been selfish and unreciprocal with you—though outwardly, you never asked for anything else, except to stay the night. But he could never do that, not anymore.

Instead, pampering you at a Michelin-star restaurant seemed like a good start.

*****

Dinner with Chilton that night made it clear why you had never gone out on a proper date with him before. His world was not your world.

As you walked in, you were fairly sure the maître d' glared at you for wearing what you considered your nicest outfit—but given that your typical dinner was boxed mac n’ cheese in your underwear, your best may not have been up to standard.

Frederick was at the bar waiting for you, severely out-dressing you in a formal black suit and dazzlingly contrasting tie, but didn’t make any underhanded comments on your attire. He crossed the room to meet you, flashing that used-car-salesman smile he hadn’t used on you since the first time you met, and offered his elbow in a revoltingly genteel fashion. It was like he was a stranger.

The the maître d’hôtel guided you to your reserved table, and Frederick set his cane to the side, sat, and crossed his legs. You felt like you were being interviewed. Was this an interview? From an inner pocket of his suit jacket, he produced and handed you a silver-inlaid pen that cost more than your rent.

“I don’t want this.” You left it sitting on the white tablecloth and stared at it like an alien artifact, trying to figure out what made it better than a two-dollar pen from the drugstore. Maybe he could still return it.

He got flustered, blinking in confusion, then held his chin up haughtily, jaw clenched. “No accounting for taste, then.”

You groaned. For some reason he wasn’t pretending to be wounded this time, he actually felt rejected. Over a stupid overpriced pen. “Fine! I’ll take it if it’ll make you feel better,” you caved in, snatching it off the table. “But if we break up, I’m pawning this.”

His mouth curled, primed to make a retort, but then went slack.

Was he thinking of breaking up?

Was that what dinner was about? That’s right—that trick of breaking up in a public space so you won’t cry and make a scene. It would explain why he’d been acting so nervous and distant lately. Why else would he suddenly want to take you out?

An awkward silence fell over the table. You wished this place had paper napkins you could stress-doodle on with your stupid new pen. Was it a breakup gift? Were breakup gifts a thing?

The waiter blessedly interrupted to take your orders, which Chilton gently assisted you with because everything was in French, the menu did not have pictures, and none of it appeared to be mac n’ cheese. He also ordered an entire bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild for the table, which you divined from the slight puffing out of his chest was meant to impress you.

When it didn’t, things went back to being sulky and awkward. By the time the bread arrived at the table, he had already downed a glass, and reached to pour himself another.

Instead of grabbing the open bottle, he completely misjudged the distance and knocked it on its side with a string of swears. Dark red liquid poured out onto the table. Acting quickly, you reached to pick it up, but collided with Chilton who was also trying to salvage the bottle, and succeeded only in batting it toward him where a puddle of wine began overflowing over the edge onto his suit.

Puddle! Spilling! You needed to mop up the excess quickly! You grabbed slices of baguette and started soaking it up.

“Why are you using bread when there are napkins for this?” Chilton hissed.

“I don’t know! You’re the dumbass who knocked over the Roth IRA Burgundy.”

His eyes bulged from his skull. “Rothschild! Bordeaux! And it wasn’t that bad until you flung it at me!”

“Do you want to help, or do you want to continue berating me?”

“I am more than capable of doing both!” he cried, grabbing a napkin and righting the bottle.

The table was a complete disaster. Wine even got all over your stupid fancy pen, which matched the stupid fancy pen in his office. Oh. That was sort of sweet, actually. As you wiped it dry, you noticed it had your name inscribed around one of the silver rings.

The waiter hurried over to assist, and Chilton looked positively mortified.

“Sorry,” you shrugged sheepishly. “I’m a little clumsy.”

After much fussing and cleaning was finished, Chilton sat back in his chair, eyes boring into you. He swallowed.

“Why did you...?”

“They already think I’m a mess, this way they’ll at least let you back in here.”

“Well, that is very…” a dark blush crept up his neck from under his collar. “You didn’t have to do that"

You reached your hand across the fresh tablecloth, and he took it, rubbing soft circles in the flesh between your thumb and forefinger. (It was a testament to your familiarity that the massive, ostentatious gold ring he always wore no longer felt in the way when you held his hand.) His eyes lingered on you, and the blush continued working its way up to his face.

Things felt open enough to quietly ask, “So, what is all this, anyway? You’ve never wanted to take me out before.”

“I assumed you wanted something from me; you have been ignoring me,” he bristled slightly at your density. “If this is not it, then what?”

You blinked. He really thought you’d been holding out on him to… get something? And the way his voice strained when he asked, “then what?” told you he would do whatever it was you requested.

You shook your head at the tablecloth and squeezed his hand. “The way you left the other day, I assumed you didn’t want to be around me.”

“Oh.” The brilliant psychiatrist hadn’t thought of that.

He didn’t apologize, and you knew he never would (about anything—it was one of the reasons so many people wanted to punch him), but his demeanor softened and any resentment you’d been holding onto faded with his dumbfounded expression.

“So.” You cleared your throat. “How’s… uh, psychiatry?”

“Well, most daily therapy sessions I have delegated to focus on writing…” He launched into a mundane description of his work, and you just… talked. Like a normal couple. It was strange in its ordinariness, but it was nice to not have your entire interaction revolve around getting dick. It made going back to his mansion after dinner and getting dick even more meaningful. You were sure this time he would let you stay.

When he tried to send you away again, you had had enough.

*****

“I don’t understand, what changed?” you asked a little too brusquely and immediately regretted it. “I know you need space,” you breathed out in a more understanding tone, “but I need to know where we stand… Do you want to break up with me?”

He froze in the middle of throwing a shirt on over his bare chest and dropped it back into the dresser, turning to gawk at you with shocked-wide eyes. “What? No! Of course not.”

That was a relief at least. “Then why won’t you let me stay?”

He was far too exposed: his abdominal scar still prominently pointing up to his blaze of brown chest hair, and you, ambushing him in his own bedroom. “You cannot let it go, can you? You want to know?!” he snapped, limping resentfully across the room. He had reached a breaking point. “It’s because I cannot sleep with the prosthetics in.”

“The...” your brain crashed and you frantically clicked enter on the reboot screen, “...prosthetics…?”

He scowled. “Did you believe the bullet passed neatly through the copious empty space in my skull without causing any collateral damage? That this little scar is the sum total of my injury?”

Of course. You hadn’t even considered that there was more to his near-fatal shooting than what you saw on the surface. It was breathtakingly ignorant now that you thought about it. He was shot. In the head. He spent weeks at an expensive medical resort where they could perform all kinds of reconstructive miracles, and he let you believe he was dead until they had finished whatever it was they were fixing.

“Show me.”

His face twitched. “You do not want to know.”

“I do.”

“Then I do not wish you to know.”

“Why?”

Emotion boiled under his face, but he breathed in through his nose and kept his outward composition calm, controlled. “It would change the way you see me. Every time you look at me, I do not want you to see that.”

You crossed the room to him. Gently, you put your hand on his arm, and slowly rubbed up and down. His breathing was shallow, controlled but barely. He didn’t push you away. You wrapped your arms around him and buried your face in his neck, listening to his pulse whispering a swift beat. “I just want to know you, Frederick. Please.”

*****

Doctors had seen it. That was by necessity: he had paid for the best cosmetic prosthetics available in the country to look exactly like his old self, with the exception of the scar on his left cheek which could never be fully hidden.

He had shown it to Mason Verger, but that, too, was different—a mutual display of their motivations for revenge. It was almost a contest to see who was the more disgusting, the most wronged.

You would not be the first to see his face, but you were the first whom he cared about disgusting. The first whom he cared about. He did not want to see you recoil from him in shock. He did not want to lose you. He did not want you to see the darkness hanging over him.

He acquiesced, but refused to make a circus display of taking his teeth out in front of you, and vanished into the master bathroom for a long time. As you waited, you rehearsed not reacting—not showing a hint of shock that would make him regret the choice to let you in—yet as each minute ticked by, you grew more and more anxious.

The door opened.

“Jesus fuck.”

His lower eyelid sagged without the support of a massive chunk of facial bone holding it in place, and the eye within was the milky blue-white of a fish preserved in formaldehyde. The skin of his cheek sagged over half a mouth of missing teeth, and the left corner of his lip hung slightly too loose.

“Eloquent as always,” he said, adding some bite to the word. He hoped you knew what a jerk you were.

You rushed in to hold him, and he stiffened, looking away. “Oh, your eye,” you whined. He must have been completely blind in it, but he masked it so well you never noticed. He flinched as you touched his face.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

You pulled your hand back and searched his expression. “Do you want me to stop?”

He thought about it, and huffed, rolling one eye. You were being so cute, and at least not fleeing in terror. He stuck his chin out. “Go ahead. Do what you want.”

With a sour frown, he let you explore his skin with your fingertips, finding scars and hollow cavities where bone was supposed to be. “You’re missing… oh, god, it must have shattered the maxillary bone, and,” you felt farther back, continuing to find hollow gaps. “Oh god, baby…”

“Do not pity me, it is unbecoming.”

“Heh,” you breathed, slyly sliding your hands up over his shoulders and arcing them loosely around the back of his neck. “I thought you didn’t care about my motivations,” you said, languidly drawing out each vowel.

That earned an irritated look, finally meeting your gaze. You grinned back.

“Sorry,” you said, biting your lip.

You kissed him all along the sagging side of his mouth, pressing your lips to every new contour and texture. A few worried noises escaped his throat, along with half-formed words of caution of what you might not want to kiss, but they were quickly swallowed by groans of pleasure as you worshiped his mouth, reveling in each new discovery. All his imperfections were perfect, and you wanted him to feel that in every touch, filling each glowing breath with all the love and acceptance in your heart.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore, but it itches.”

“I hate itches.”

“As do I,” he breathed.

You kissed him again, this time his tongue danced along your lips to taste you. It darted between your teeth, curling around your tongue as his strong hands snaked around the back of your head, pulling you harder into the kiss. He grunted, teeth clashing with yours as your lips interlocked with feral passion, consuming each other until your lips were bruised and you had to break away, breathless and panting.

“I’m so glad you're alive,” you smiled, trying not to let tears well up in the corners of your eyes. “You came back to me. You’re amazing, you know that? What you can survive.”

His chest puffed out a little. He was amazing, wasn’t he? But when he spoke again, it was sullen.

“I did not want you to see what a monster I’ve become.”

You shook your head. “You’re still beautiful. Absolutely perfect. I’m sorry it happened, but you know I’m going to love you no matter what…” You trailed off as a word snagged in your throat. Did you just say…

“You love me?”

Dry. Your throat suddenly felt drier than sandpaper, and swallowing didn’t fix it. You weren’t supposed to admit that to him. He was going to tease you, to twist it around somehow to use against you—

“I love you, too.”

#frederick chilton #Frederick Chilton x reader #hannibal #raul esparza #My writing #I spent like 4 hours editing this why do I make my own life so hard lmao

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thedaughterofkings · 7 years ago

Text

never too late

For @fandom-madnessess, who prompted one of Sterek almost not making it to the New Year’s Eve party in time! Happy New Year, Mar, I hope you’ll enjoy your 1.6k of New Year’s Eve angst and fluff!!

Derek is late. Terribly late.

He’s already speeding along as quickly as he dares, but the clock is mercilessly ticking on, moving ever closer to midnight. His chances of making it in time are dwindling with every passing second. It’s going to take a miracle - a New Year’s Eve miracle if you will - for him to make it in time.

It’s the first time he’s coming back to Beacon Hills in three years, and at the same time it doesn’t feel long enough and too long. Beacon Hills itself holds mostly sad memories for him now; even the happier ones are at best bittersweet, coloured grey by everything that has happened to him there. It’s still his land, his family’s ground and earth, but it’s not enough to keep him anymore.

Stiles is though.

Stiles is the only thing that can bring him back here, when he’d be just as happy travelling through South America with Cora or reconnecting with his and Laura’s friends in New York. But Stiles is here. Not always, not forever, but now, today. He didn’t ask Derek to come here; he never would, full aware of how tainted the place is to Derek. Derek offered.

Stiles and he have kept in contact all this time, first through just occasional texts checking up on each other, then through random texts several times a day, about whatever they thought the other might like or find interesting. Those texts became calls, longer and longer each time, until Derek woke up one morning to the sound of Stiles’ snores coming out of his phone and the realisation that he wants this everyday and not just through the phone.

Somehow, without him even realising it, Stiles had become the most important person in his life, the one he trusts without question, whom he listens to, talks to, talks about (much to Cora’s chagrin), dreams about. And he hasn’t seen him in three years.

So when Stiles tells him about his New Year’s Eve party plans - a get together with the pack and their families back in Beacon Hills, Derek doesn’t even hesitate.

“Got space for one more guest?” he asks and the line falls worryingly silent.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Stiles eventually says, sounding stricken. “I wouldn’t ask that of you, you know that. I’m okay with you staying away, I mean I’m not,” he corrects himself and adds quietly: “I miss you when you’re away, but I know why you are staying away and that’s okay.”

“I want to,” Derek says simply, trying to put as much conviction into his voice as he can to make Stiles believe him. “I miss you, too, and if you’ll have me, I’d like to come back.”

He holds his breath because this is no longer just about him coming back for New Years now. But Stiles answers without a hint of hesitation, voice soft but firm:

“I’ll gladly have you, surely you know this, and you’ve always had me, even when I didn’t even know it myself. See you on New Year’s then?”

He’d sounded so hopeful and now Derek is going to destroy that hope, if he doesn’t make it through all of Beacon Hills in the next five minutes. He’d always known that celebrating Christmas with Cora and then legging it to Beacon Hills afterwards was going to cut it close, but the gods had conspired against him, putting pile ups and freak snow storms and a hail storm that dented the Camaro in his way. He’d persevered, though, taking detours when necessary, shoveled snow to get his car out of the snowdrift that had built up around it and hadn’t even stopped to get rid of the hail marks. And he’s so close now.

At the end of the street he can already see the Stilinski house where the party is held, brightly lit and with cars parked along the front. Some of them he recognises, others he knows from Stiles’ stories (the new Porsche Jackson is driving now featured regularly - apparently it was extra douchey), and some are entirely unfamiliar to him. That’ll be the case inside the house, too. The pack has grown since he left Beacon Hills and he’s not sure about his welcome among some of these people. But none of them matter, only Stiles does.

He throws his car into park just as the radio moderator gives a thirty second warning. The front door opens under his hand just as the ten second countdown starts. There’s no need to look around to find the one he’s here for; Stiles’ scent is like a blazing trail guiding him. He hasn’t actually smelled him in three years, but Derek doesn’t think he could ever forget that particular combination of spices and sparks.

Five…

A few quick steps bring him to the corner of the room Stiles is hiding in. Derek doesn’t have time to study him as closely as he’d like, at a quick glance from behind he can just tell that Stiles’ shoulders are broader, but also more slumped, as if carrying more weight. His head is bowed over his phone and for a moment, Derek’s heart clenches with a pang of fear that he’s too late either way, that Stiles has found someone else.

Four…

But the next step brings him close enough to see the name at the top of the open chat window - Derek. Stiles is waiting for a message from him. Derek hopes that this is going to be much better.

Three…

He puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder and gently turns him around.

~*~

Stiles checks his phone for the umpteenth time that night. The last message is still ‘on my way’, though, no new texts since. He tries to tell himself that it’s a good sign, it means Derek is too busy driving to keep him updated about his progress, but the clock says it’s ten minutes to midnight and at this point, Stiles is losing hope that Derek is going to make it in time. And if he can’t have him right next to him at midnight, he’d take a text message over no word at all. But his phone stays stubbornly silent.

Slowly all the couples start migrating towards each other, pairing up neatly and it drives home painfully that Stiles is alone. He wonders if he wouldn’t care as much if he hadn’t gotten his hopes up about not being alone for the countdown this year. But then, it’s not even about being alone for New Year’s. He doesn’t think he’d feel better with any random guy he’d picked up at jungle two nights earlier next to him now. It’s just - he misses Derek, has been missing Derek for what feels like a really long time now, and he’d been looking forward to finally seeing him again so much.

It’s honestly a bit ridiculous to care so much about a particular moment in time - just because Derek won’t make it in time for midnight doesn’t mean he won’t make it back to Stiles at all, but there’s a superstitious part within him that worries about the significance of Derek being late now of all times. Is it the universe’s way of telling them that they are too late in general? Have waited too long? Should Stiles have said something earlier, should have made his feelings clearer? Should he have actually asked Derek to come back, instead of keeping quiet because he didn’t want to pressure him by asking?

Ten…

The countdown is quickly taken up by everyone else in the room and Stiles edges away from the center of the room, trying to hide in one of the corners.

Nine…

There’s a sudden draft in the room as if someone had opened a window or the door, but it’s gone again so quickly that Stiles doesn’t turn around to check. He’s facing away from everyone at the moment, and he knows that he’ll have to turn around again soon, but for now he’d rather not see all the happy couples.

Eight…

Stiles gets out his phone one last time, but there’s still no new message.

Seven…

‘On my way’ seems to almost mock him now - on his way where? Apparently not here, not to Stiles.

Six…

Stiles’ finger hovers over his phone. Should he send a message himself? Wouldn’t that make it even more obvious, though, that they haven’t managed to move beyond phone based communication?

Five…

Stiles breathes in deeply and tells himself that it’s not the end of the world. He’ll smile and wish everyone else a happy new year when it’s time and hug Derek extra hard to make up for the delay when he finally comes home.

Four…

There’s someone standing behind him - probably his dad, wanting to be the first to wish him a happy new year. Stiles is so grateful that they still have each other. It seemed touch and go for a while in High School, but they’ve built up their trust in each other again and Stiles honestly doesn’t think they’ve ever been closer.

Three…

A hand touches his shoulder and turns him around. But it’s not his dad, it’s Derek! He’s looking tired, and a little nervous, but he’s smiling, grin growing wider when Stiles’ mouth drops open with shock.

Two…

Stiles shakes off the surprise enough to finally move again, throwing his arms around Derek in an exuberant hug. He’s warm under Stiles’ hands, solid and strong and there and Stiles has to hide his face in Derek’s neck.

One…

But Derek gently coaxes him back out and cups Stiles’ cheek with his hand. The question in his eyes is silent, but Stiles is pretty sure he knows what Derek is asking and nods.

And as the clock strikes midnight, Stiles gets his first kiss from the one man he wants to kiss for the rest of his life.

It looks like it’ll be a happy new year after all.

#Sterek #teen wolf #haleinski #eternalsterek #New Year's Eve #my fic #my Sterek fic #NYE fic

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chaebunny-moved · 8 years ago

Text

cloud nine.

word count: 1253 pairing: changkyun x reader notes: fluff, rich boy au

“Where are we going?” You’ve been asking the same question for the past 3 minutes since Changkyun dragged you out of work. All it took for your boss to let you go was the smell of Changkyun’s money. He might as well have laid out a red carpet for you too if he wanted to kiss his ass even more.

“You’ll see,” he says again, leading you out the company building and to his black Porsche parked right on the curb. His chauffeur shuffles to open the backdoor with his tailcoat flailing in the wind, surprised by how fast his young master is walking towards the car. Needless to say, you stumble over your own feet a couple times trying to keep up.

“Get in,” he commands gently, ushering you into the car first.

“This is kidnapping!” you shout as you duck into the all-black interiors. The car smells of new leather with a faint hint of the ‘Royal Pine’ car freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. Changkyun swings the door closed behind him, whispers to the chauffeur, and you’re speeding down a highway before you even know it.

“Kidnapping? That’s hardly it. Plus, you owe me,” he smirks. With a swift motion, he swipes his Versace sunglasses off his face and into the open collar of his black dress shirt.

You groan at the memory of last week’s events. You were just dumped by your boyfriend, and you decided to drink your heart out with your friends at the bar. Not to your surprise, each of them went to hook up with the guys they just met and you were left drunk on almost 20 shots. To make matters worse, your idiot friends thought it was a good idea to text Changkyun, who they won’t shut up about. You can’t even count the times they’ve told you to ditch your boyfriend for Changkyun.

Except that the two of you are in two different worlds. It was only pure chance that you even encountered him two years ago on your school. You pretty much lived under a rock back then, so you had no idea who that insanely alluring man was. He was speaking for the business majors in your university, and he wandered off from his butler and got lost. You found him circling around the fountain, and couldn’t find the heart to walk away, even though you were already late for class. You exchanged small talk while taking him across the campus. He just never told you much about him, you had to find out yourself.

The fact that you stayed in contact is even more surprising. After minimal research you found out that Changkyun owns the biggest corporation in South Korea, and his assets are through the roof. There isn’t anyone (except you) who doesn’t recognize his handsome figure and charming voice. He’s a top celebrity in his own sense.

And you? Well, just a college graduate still struggling to find a stable job to pay rent. It was even harder to do so at the time, having to support your ex-boyfriend’s spending habits. Little did you know, he used the money to take his side chick out on dates. That’s shit that always happens in dramas, but you really played yourself.

Well, back to the nightmare at the bar:

Changkyun drove himself to the entrance right after he received the text, still half dressed. He dug through the sweaty sea of people until he finally spotted you sprawled out on a table in the back. He carried you to his car, and just as he was about to lay you down on the seat, you threw up the 20 shots plus everything else you ate that day.

Let’s just say he chose the wrong day to drive himself. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant trip to your house with you passed out and him covered in throw up.

You woke up that morning with a loose t-shirt, and Changkyun sleeping soundly next to you, half-naked, smelling like your strawberry body wash. He didn’t let you hear the end of it that day.

And now you’re driving through what seems like miles and miles of grassland, on a strip of a strangely paved road.

“You seriously bought a new car?” you finally ask, a hint of annoyance in your voice.

“I mean, why not. Cleaning takes money and so does new car,” he responds. He really meant what he said, without a hint of cheekiness.

“Can’t relate…” you mumble under your breath.

“What?“

“Uh, nothing,” you cough. “So where are we going?” You look out the tinted windows again. Still nothing but green grass lines against the bright white horizon.

“Don’t you get tired of asking the same question?” He glances up front. “We’re almost there, relax.” A clearing appears up ahead, and soon, a huge runway comes into view. Not too far off, you see… a plane… in the middle of nowhere?

You then find yourself standing in front of the steps to the shiny white jet.

“Alright, let’s go!” Changkyun gives you a small push with his innocent dimpled smile.

“Huh?!” The whole time you were dismayed, wondering if this was all just a really strange yet realistic dream. But knowing Changkyun, this shouldn’t even be a surprise anymore.

“Before you ask again, we’re going to Paris,” he announces, like it’s a perfectly normal situation. Your mouth hangs open, and then panic follows soon after.

“W-what do you mean we’re going to Paris?! This is crazy! I don’t even have anyt-“

“Stop worrying so much Y/N,” he laughs heartily, cutting you off. “You’re going to age too quickly."

"How can I not! I mean, this is so out of the blue… Im Changkyun, I knew you were crazy but this is a bit too mu-"

"Relax, relax,” he coaxes again. “I did all the preparations already, and I told my maids to pack your things, they’re all already on the plane okay?"

You groan, bringing your palm to your forehead. "That’s great… but that’s not the main issue here…"

His eyes widen and he turns to you with a anxious expression. "Did you want to go somewhere else? Rome… Australia? Or do you not like the jet? I can change it right now if you want! What color? Blue? Black?"

You laugh continuously at his franticness, and at how cute he is right now. He may be too rich for his own good, but he has pure intentions. You know he’s trying to cheer you up in his own way, and you really appreciate that. A warm feeling wells up in you, and you didn’t have the heart to reject his thoughtful gesture.

You tackle him softly with a big hug, and he shuts right up. He slowly lifts his hands, but they just end up hovering over your back. "Uh… Y/N?” He tries to play it cool, but you can feel the warmth from his face.

You nuzzle against his shoulders, and slowly breathe in his scent of mixed colognes. His heart is beating right next to yours, and it’s having a hard time keeping up with his.

“Thanks Changkyun,” you whisper next to his ear. You pull away, and he just stands there, stunned. You chuckle to yourself. Where did the usual cool Changkyun go? Now he looks like a cute little stray wolf pup.

You twirl around and skip up the steps. You look back down at Changkyun, and smile wholeheartedly. “Come on, let’s go!”

#changkyun fanfic #monsta x fanfic #monsta x scenarios #monsta x fluff #monsta x au #monsta x #changkyun #im changkyun #changkyun fluff

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teachanarchy · 7 years ago

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At the photo shoot, the accoutrements of being her precede her. A tray of acrylic nails and an almost-empty bottle of professional-grade nail polish remover are carried by Bernadette Thompson, the Takashi Murakami of manicurists. A tall, strong-looking man walks around distractedly, wheeling a Louis Vuitton duffel bag that is smaller than his forearm; from time to time, he spins it in a wide circle out of boredom. Jewels—gold chokers, hoop earrings, and rings in a velvet-lined box—are attended to by a thin young man wearing a black Balenciaga fitted cap and high-top Nikes. There's a bottle of jewelry cleaner harnessed to his chest and a chain of styling clips attached to his hoodie strings; he looks listless, like he has given his body over to the task. On the table, someone has set down two Kangol hats, one tan, one black: fuzzy, wearable homages to the golden era of hip-hop. They sit there like low-key crowns.

I take a seat out of sight, behind Misa Hylton, the stylist who is the reason people let their pants sag and their Calvins show. Dressed like a ballet dancer from Brixton—or is it Ginza—in a baggy gray sweatshirt and a sheer, tutu-ish white skirt, she sucks on a lollipop, not saying much but taking everything in. When Missy Elliott needs help pulling off her shoe, Misa rushes in to steady her. I recognize the intimacy of it; it's like having your mother or your sister oil your hair. They share a joke; Missy laughs. Misa walks back to her seat, and because they seemed so comfortable, others start to crowd around to look. I still can't see anything from my seat, but I can hear Missy ask something so softly that it has to be repeated and shouted back: "Everybody move back and give her some privacy. Please." Then a large white scrim is stretched out that totally eclipses her from our view. And she turns into a silhouette behind the screen.

What does it mean to be a shy black woman performer in a world where black women are never thought to be shy? Before I went to meet her, I had read articles that decided it just wasn't possible that Missy Elliott is shy. The Guardian wrote that "scary diva is what you expect"; they do not explain why they expected her to be scary, they just say it. In the same way that no one explains what I should expect when I'm told over and over again that Missy Elliott is very shy, without anyone offering a larger understanding of what it might mean. Would she need to be coaxed to open up? Would she not answer my questions? At the shoot, the photographer yells out to her: "Don't be shy—I love it! Let's turn the music up."

Although I got the sense that others were fretful about how this "shyness" would manifest itself in our conversation, after I watched videos of her performing in concert, I was not.

What no one seems to realize is that Missy, like most shy black girls, had long ago been forced to master a certain skill: to hammer down her shyness, along with any fear, to some low, unseen place deep inside of herself, and keep it there until she could step over it, again, again, again.

From the moment I walked on the set, I assumed that Missy Elliott was someone who had this skill, that her ability to rise was ingrained, and I wasn't there for long before we are all watching just that: Missy the Performer—exuberant, high-stepping, arms up in the air, roof-raising, and hair whipping—taking over the monitors and smiling like a woman who has released five platinum albums, possesses four Grammys, and has sold 30 million records and knows very well how to overcome being called scary or feeling shy.

When Missy Elliott dropped her debut album exactly 20 years ago, she altered the spectrum and the range of hip-hop. She made it wild and hyperdimensional. Suddenly, we could all see and hear more. The first rap album I ever purchased was Supa Dupa Fly. And the most important video in the story of my life is "The Rain." On "The Rain," she raps about what still sounds like a perfect day: some light precipitation that clears, smoking some weed, driving to the beach, and dumping an undeserving man. It's a simple enough narrative, but she made it sound strange and wonderful. This was what hip-hop would sound like if it were conceived inside of the calyx of an African violet, unfurling and wet.

I remember seeing that video for the first time in Atlanta at my cousin's one summer in 1997. I was 16. We didn't have cable at our house, so my sister and I stood in his basement and stared at the screen as a woman in a bubble suit that seemed to be filled with equal parts helium and black cool wobbled and bopped. These were lyrics we got intuitively even though we usually didn't understand a word. The vertiginous beats, the cacophony of thunderclaps, and her movements—both fluid and staccato—put me on the floor. I lay there, sweating in that Southern humidity, wondering what I had just seen.

I spent those first early summer weeks in Atlanta fucking up the norms of my cousin's neighborhood, a place where the social codes seemed to be as thick and intricate as in Downton Abbey or any E. M. Forster novel, but with sweet tea and beepers. I was greedy to fit in and also aware I never would. We had been there for two weeks when I saw her, sitting on her "Hill's like Lauryn / Until the rain starts, comin' down, pourin'." Years later, she would put it all into words and boast, "For those of you who hated / You only made us more creative." The double entendres, the hair flipping, the irreverent eye rolls, the smirks, the wink, and the symbolic power of putting on an ink-colored balloon suit and becoming blacker, larger, lovelier, and gigantic with daring weren't lost on me.

Pharrell Williams, who has known and worked with Missy for almost 25 years, calls me on her behalf one Sunday afternoon. He talks about her properly, like she is a sonic theory, a leader, and a woman he adores as a creative liberator. "We came up in a time where we were always told no. Where we were always placed in a box. And she defied it. Over and over again. She defied the physics that were dictated to us. She ignored the gravity of standards and prejudices and stereotypes. She ignored that gravity."

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Missy Elliott is in constant metamorphosis, but there is still something about her that feels like your homegirl—if your homegirl had a fleet of cars that include a Rolls-Royce, two Lamborghinis, a Porsche 911, a Ferrari 599, an Aston Martin Vanquish, a Spyker, a Range Rover, an Escalade, and a Jeep Cherokee that she says she prefers over all of them. Missy owns enough houses to start a small village (she splits her time between Florida, Virginia, New Jersey, and Los Angeles), but she tells me that she just feels lucky not to have to pay rent and to be financially secure. These are the rewards of being a 45-year-old humble rapper who is still very much in demand at a time when other rappers her age are trending down.

But what makes her iconic is not the numbers; it is what she empowers in others. Missy was always aware of her worth, her real worth—not the fluff or the proxies for currency and confidence that most people depend on. She always expressed what so many of us feel on the inside but have no model for how to display. Her refusal to discuss her personal life has allowed her to deftly deflect any inquiries about her real life toward her surreal life: The one she inhabits with her many costumes and her various personalities. In almost every video, Missy Elliott is a different character (a black Barbie in "Beep Me 911"; a floss-fluorescent, bald-headed creature in "She's a Bitch"; a black Beatrix Kiddo at war with a rival gang that's driving the Pussy Wagon in "I'm Really Hot"). This is the stuff that makes her Missy Elliott, the legend. It is a demand for privacy, but also a sign of wisdom. She's kept our eyes on the prize. She seemed to know early on that the only thing that matters is the work, and it can look fun. But ultimately, the relentlessness and the far-reachingness of it are what have kept her in orbit.

Missy Elliott is a creator's creator. They say that, before he died, Michael Jackson asked her to teach him how to rap. The Dirty Projectors work below a triptych of the people they consider to be the all-time greats: Joni Mitchell, Missy Elliott, and Beethoven. Tyler, the Creator once told GQ that in his mind, alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Missy Elliott was one of the most stylish women ever to exist. "I'm not even talking about her normal dressing. Just the swag that she had in her videos. She made a fucking plastic bag look awesome," he said. Björk, Herbie Hancock, Debbie Harry, Lil Wayne, and Solange Knowles cite her as an inspiration. And Patti LaBelle has thanked her for bringing R&B back. "Missy's so amazing," Thom Yorke of Radiohead once said, that "she makes me want to spit."

While other rappers were adversarial, making you feel broke, or uncool, or backed up against despair, Missy was inviting us to join her party. Others insulted us for listening, told us about what we didn't have, didn't own, and couldn't brag about, whereas Missy said, Forget who you are, forget what you heard, and come dance with me. In Missy Elliott's songs, bodies jiggle, jangle, they sweat, they drip, they drop, they are invested in the beat. In the early eighties, Michael Jackson gave an interview in which he told the interviewer that above all, he liked "to really forget." What feels good about Missy's music is that for four or six minutes, your body is helmed by her control of the beat; you can "really forget" your own life because there is so much to pay attention to in hers. In the "Pass That Dutch" video, she runs through a primer of black footwork in a cornfield while instructing us to work our legs. In "Lose Control," she samples an old electro song by Cybotron, turning things frenetic, until they sound double-timed and fast enough to fly off the handle. In "Slide," a track that feels enormous, a booming cut-time march, she uses a simple rhyme scheme and her background vocals to remind us to work the waist and keep it slippery. "Slide, slide, dip, shake / Move it all around," she purrs. Missy raps from within the rhythm—she doesn't work against it or with it, she doesn't ride it, she becomes it. Words zigzag and stretch to match time signatures. She can speed them up and slow them down; she organizes her harmonies like string sections; and if she can't do it alone, she'll invite someone else—Ludacris, Jay Z, or Tweet—to join her.

What I realized when Missy and I finally sat down to talk is that Missy is communal and sentimental in a way that hip-hop at times denies itself. She tells me about a last-minute sleepover party that she had with Mary J. Blige, Queen Latifah, Misa Hylton, and Lil' Kim in Virginia for her birthday a few years ago. It touched her that they could be "real friends, not just friends for the camera." She seems far too delicate to be asked about Aaliyah, the singer who died in a plane crash in 2001, who was her best friend, collaborator, and "little sister." Missy mourns and pours visual libation to Aaliyah in most of her videos and many of her songs.

Missy Elliott's work doesn't deny death, or poverty, or bad times, but it pushes for recovery. In her most recent single, "I'm Better (feat. Lamb)," which was released in January, the chorus circles around and gets repeated with a robotic flow: "I'm better, I'm better, I'm better / It's another day, another chance / I wake up, I wanna dance / So as long as I got my friends /...I'm better, I'm better, I'm better." This is not a boast from her to her fans; it is a mantra to them from her, even if there is a self-help quality to it. What matters more is that it feels determined, and that is what her fans depend on her to provide—the good news.

She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, to Patricia, a dispatcher for the power company, and Ronnie Elliott, a former Marine. She was their only child, and her parents named her Melissa Arnette Elliott. Missy told me that when the other kids in her class were asked what they wanted to be, they changed their minds every other week. "It would come to me, and I would be like, 'I'm going to be a superstar!' And the whole class would bust out laughing. But every Friday I would say the same thing. And I would watch them change to different things. Now the doctor is going to be a fireman, but still, when it came to me, I wanted to be a superstar. They thought I was the class clown. But I was like, 'I'm going to be a superstar.' So when I would get in my room, it was like, if y'all don't see it, I'm going to create it myself."

The black sculptor Augusta Savage once said of her father that she believed his violence was the result of him trying to whip the "art out of her." The expression of her artistry, her voice being utilized outside of him, was an affront to his masculinity. So he beat her and tried to break her down. Missy's father beat her mother almost every single day. He dislocated her arms; he berated her. He hit Missy only once, but the violence and instability in her life were relentless. She was eight when an older boy, a family member, saw her vulnerability and preyed upon it—he began molesting her in the afternoons.

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Unable to stop her father, put off her molester, or save her mother, Missy shut her door. She turned her room into something that she describes as her Wonderland. This was where she would write fan letters to her favorite singers, the Jacksons, with the unexpressed hope that they would appear, see how musically gifted she was, and come to her rescue. The Hype Williams–directed videos that would define her sensibilities decades later were conceived in spirit in this workshop. Here, she practiced singing along to the radio or to the records her family gave her. And before each performance, she twisted her doll babies' arms up, so they were frozen, forever applauding her.

There are two ways to look at a story like Missy Elliott's. The first is within the context of that little girl now. All grown up, in her mid-forties, talking with me while wearing four diamonds in her ears that are bigger than my eyes. This is the woman who will tell you matter-of-factly, "I believe that I spoke it all into existence," and can explain year by year how she actualized her vision, but gives glory to God that she did. The other way to see this enormous dream is as one that was steeped both in pragmatism and what could not be helped: fate.

Although she does not call it this, Missy Elliott believes in the technology of the self, the idea that we can alter our lives by what we create and transmute, and in doing so, we can become invincible. For her, black innovation, black America's ability to overcome all odds and create, are a kind of passed-along technology. "We are survivors, and once we know that, we are unstoppable," she tells me one evening, as the sun makes it look like there are long, Dalí-like threads attached to her sequined sneakers. "I always said I wouldn't be no other color, because if there's one thing about us, we never really had, but we know how to—we know how to survive."

Missy survived abject poverty and years of abuse by tucking herself into sound. She was young, but when she listened to music, she found it impossible to be casual about it. Instead, she immersed herself in the process; she became the song's student. From her father, she learned to listen to the Temptations and Marvin Gaye. "I remember when 'Sexual Healing' came out. It made me listen to a record like that and think of how to do records like 'Pussy don't fail me now,' " she said, quoting her song "Pussycat." "I was trying to find creative ways of doing stuff.… And my mother had the gospel side, where I sat and studied their harmonies."

When she wasn't studying, she practiced. Missy Elliott had no Joe Jackson. She was no man's babe in the woods. She was self-actualized, self-realized, self-taught. There was no father to her style, but she had many mothers and sisters: Queen Latifah, Donna Summer, and Grace Jones. By the time she reached high school, Missy had started cutting class to invite friends over to rehearse in her living room, and her once-high grades plummeted. All of this alarmed her mother, who'd packed up a moving truck after her father had left for work one day; the two were living on their own. Her mother knew Missy was intelligent and just wanted her daughter to do the right thing, not realizing yet that for her daughter, music wasn't a sign of delinquency, but her path toward the only future she could envision for herself.

We were discussing her rocky years in school, during which she was identified by her school district as having both a "genius" IQ and being in extreme danger of failing every subject, when Missy asked me if I had ever heard of Poe.

"You know Poe?" she asked me, with an urgency that caught me off guard. "The Raven?" she added, smiling to conceal her slight impatience.

"Edgar Allan Poe?" I asked.

"Yes, so I studied, locked down—cause I knew I could do it…and when I had to do The Raven, I turned it into a rap, had one of my friends beatbox. I turned it into a rap! Got an A!"

"Are you big poetry person?" I asked her, since hip-hop is black America's repurposing of the poem.

"Uh, well… I wouldn't say that necessarily," she said, laughing. Then she stopped to think, and she got reflective. "You know, maybe I did like it. Because I murked that. I murked that."

It was around then, in high school, when her friend Magoo connected her with Timbaland and Pharrell Williams. Timbaland, she said, "had a little Yamaha keyboard, and Tim's hands are humongous. He was able to take the claps, the little dog sounds, and make beats with it. Then I just started rapping and singing over him playing with the Yamaha. Tim was very quiet. Pharrell was way on planet Mars. And, you know, I was just whatever. I was kind of crazy. But for whatever reason, we all understood each other."

The geography of Virginia—Southern, hanging off the edge of the East Coast—also inadvertently fortified their sound. They had very little access to what was trending, and it set them free to experiment and make music from what they had. "We got everything so late," she recalled, "it also allowed us to be different because we didn't hear. I will never forget when I first met Pharrell, even being from Virginia, he always was so different. I remember him coming into the studio, and he had some jeans on, and he had the cuffs where they came all the way up to his knees! And I had never seen cuffs that big in my life! And I was like, 'What part of Virginia he from?' "

At the time, Pharrell and Timbaland were in a group called Surrounded by Idiots, and Missy had an all-female rap group called Fayze. When Fayze found themselves in contact with the road manager for Jodeci, who at the time were the biggest force in R&B music, Missy devised an elaborate plan to audition for the group in outfits that matched the ones that Jodeci was famous for. Missy had never performed for anyone this famous before, but she knew what people like James Brown and Tina Turner had done. She took that workhorse approach and told the other girls, "I will need y'all to kick a leg up and put that cane on the floor!" It worked: Fayze soon had a record deal and an invitation to join Jodeci at their house in New Jersey.

Alice Walker once asked in her essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens": "How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write?" Imagine the discouragement, the slights, and the drudgery that were directed toward these women when they, too, contained art. "Listen to the voices of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Aretha Franklin, among others, and imagine those voices muzzled for life." Because so many of them couldn't express themselves, "our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see: or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read." When she was little, Missy's mother had been offered a chance to tour the world singing gospel music, but Missy told me that when her mother saw her daughter in the window crying, she put her bags down and walked back in. When Missy walked out the door of her mother's house in 1991 and drove away from Portsmouth, she was doing what her mother could not. She has what Walker described as "the living creativity some of our great-grandmothers knew, even without 'knowing' it." And like those women, but with the dream of performing on bigger stages, Missy Elliott "never had any intention of giving it up."

When Katy Perry asked her to appear for exactly 2.5 minutes in the middle of Perry's set at the 2015 Super Bowl, it was Missy's first big appearance in years. Missy hadn't released an album since 2006. She's said that backstage, having had a panic attack that required medical care the night before, she swore to herself, "If I can get over this [first] step, then I know all my dance steps will be on point." Twenty-four hours later, "Get Ur Freak On," "Work It," and "Lose Control" would be downloaded about 20,000 times each, taking turns hitting the number one spot for downloads on iTunes.

Missy Elliott's mind thinks in bloom, and ideas emerge like buds pushing up from the ground. The Super Bowl story prompts her to tell me that typically she would be most comfortable having this conversation sitting on the floor.

To stay grounded?

"Yes, to stay humble."

Or maybe to remember that this adulation was not always there. The first big song she wrote was for Raven-Symoné in 1993, but when it came time to shoot the video for "That's What Little Girls Are Made Of," for which she rapped a verse, she didn't even receive a call about it. In the video, a thin, light-skinned model who has swallowed Missy's voice raps along with Raven. The rejection was so painful that Missy gave up on trying to be a star and devoted herself to songwriting. Three years later, she and Timbaland would write and produce the majority of Aaliyah's classic album One in a Million. When the record labels circled back around, this time they understood: They were signing someone who wanted her own imprint, with complete creative control over her music and the ability to freely write and produce for others. Missy Elliott was 24 when she got what she wanted from Sylvia Rhone, the CEO of Elektra Entertainment Group at the time, and she called it her new record label Goldmind Inc.

There is an early New Yorker profile of Missy that once referred to her look in "The Rain" as being that of a "cyber mammy." But Missy has never served or played servant to anyone in her life. There is nothing about Missy now, or then, that could belong in anything but a prosperous, liberated future. She even sings in "Work It": "Picture blacks saying yes sir, master? No!" A mammy as a trope was never a self-defined, self-articulating, sexualized woman. We knew nothing of her pleasure. If anything, the trash-bag suit in "The Rain" was about taking it all with you—the rarely spoken-about black woman's pleasure principle. (And who has written more songs about being sexually satisfied and self-satisfying than Missy Elliott?) The knowledge that you are beautiful. It is having been denied, and returning tender, exuberant, monumental, and hyperdimensional. "To me," Missy explained a few days after our first conversation, "the outfit was a way to mask my shyness behind all the chaos of the look. Although I am shy, I was never afraid to be a provocative woman. The outfit was a symbol of power. I loved the idea of feeling like a hip-hop Michelin woman. I knew I could have on a blow-up suit and still have people talking. It was bold and different. I've always seen myself as an innovator and a creative unlike any other."

What is off-putting about some of the interpretations of Missy Elliott's style is that they apply a retrograde framework to a woman who is so firmly from the future. And in doing so, they put undue, incorrect emphasis on her body, and assume things that tell us nothing about her and everything about the erasures that occur to women like her. In the late 2000s, she began to feel ill and suffer dizzy spells and unexplained weight loss. This played a large part in her taking time off. She was diagnosed with the thyroid condition Graves' disease, but when she did an interview with a New York radio station and tried to explain her condition, the host described her weight loss as the upside of her getting sick. To be a woman is to know that your flesh can matter more than your brilliance.

Double-face cashmere track jacket, Marc Jacobs, $3,425, visit marcjacobs .com. Wool and cashmere hat, Stephen Jones for Marc Jacobs, $599. Brass earrings, Jennifer Fisher, $275. Styled by Samira Nasr. Mark Seliger

All world-building is an act of construction that requires real effort and no shortcuts. Perhaps because producing necessitates a specialized understanding of music, Missy the Producer doesn't get as much play as Missy the Performer. Both are solidifying elements of her autonomy, but the former guarantees her ability to be the architect of her own sound. Because it's a science to produce—it's a kind of alchemy to sit in a studio and bring forth music from nothing—women are discouraged from doing it. They are ignored when they master it, and, like any other science, they are underrepresented among those who are thought to be the best at it.

There is an interview that Björk did years ago for French television in which she describes the stress of being a woman and containing a certain rare level of musicality. "When somebody comes to make great music, I feel like I have less work to do," she confessed. "When Missy Elliott or, like, Peaches arrives with something good, I would be like, yes! It means I can do other things. Maybe I don't have to worry or stress about rhythmic music anymore because they are taking care of that." Young women are regularly taught how our bodies can be of service or put to work toward the desires of others, but rarely are we instructed how to be in charge of our art. "I remember," Björk has said, "seeing a photo of Missy Elliott at the mixing desk in the studio and being like, aha!" That Missy can draw all of the music out of herself, and work the board, write the music, and execute her ideas often goes undiscussed, but it makes her an aberration and a lighthouse. "When I was a kid, I wrote raps and I wanted to sound just like Missy," Syd, the lead singer of the R&B group the Internet, texts me one morning. A Grammy-nominated polymath, Syd sings, writes, produces, and engineers the majority of her music (and for years did so for her band, Odd Future). And like so many young black women in music, she knows she is a direct descendant of Missy Elliott's quiet revolution in the studio. "But I was even more inspired by her when I got older and learned how much other music she had written and produced. She is definitely one of my biggest role models in music. She's a genius…and her attitude shines through."

Missy Elliott has written more than 500 songs, produced music for Ciara, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston, and taken just three vacations in her entire lifetime. She has written gospel songs that seem ready to break all the stained glass in the chapel with their high notes and full harmonies, and she has written a song where she implores her "pussycat" not to fail her. In her "Sock It 2 Me" video, she became the black woman who promised a new generation, just like Uhura did in Star Trek, that not only would we survive the new millennium and be found in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, we would be there fighting aliens in Teflon spacesuits, cracking up with our girls, smacking our gum, and looking good while doing it.

In her videos, Missy Elliott taught us how to move to her sound, to bop, to bounce along with her. "Missy was making films, you know? She was making three-minute films, working with the best technology at the time, and she still does, by the way," Pharrell explains. "And it felt like there were no bounds to what she could do, and she continued to teach people over and over again, you can do this, you can do that." And we learned to enjoy watching her. "I know my dances are going to be the puzzle," she says, "so even if you thought it was weird, I put the visual in your face so now you see how you're supposed to move to it." What she did with her body is move it as a dancer and performer. And her moves seem natural, like you could try it and not make a fool of yourself. But really she is possessed of a very singular ability as a choreographer: She knows how to put us all on the moon to dance with her without self-concern or a care in the world, and that is what only the greatest pop artists have done.

What is disarming about her in person is that all of these parts fit and feel rooted. She is a businesswoman, a flashy rapper, but she has a songwriter's need for solitude that brings to mind the moods of Kate Bush, Laura Lee, Sade, and Laura Nyro. The need to retreat and go deep and remain exceedingly private. "I'm probably like the lamest but still sauciest artist out there," Missy says. "I don't know how that works, where you cannot do nothing and still be saucy, but my friends, they always tell me when they come to the house, 'Ohh, you don't need to be an introvert' and 'Dude, you gotta get out, like you don't do nothing but just sit in the studio.' But you know, for me, I find comfort in that for whatever reason. It's, like, therapeutic for me."

Until it flooded, Missy spent a great deal of time at her mountain house near the Poconos, where bears would wander into her front yard and, because she was alone, she would have to wait until they wandered off to go outside. She tells me she likes to drive her cars and listen to old soul music.

She has worked with Timbaland since she was a teenager, but even he has never been in the studio with her when she records. "I'm private about recording, because it allows me to be myself and not have to worry. The energy has to be right for me, if I'm in that booth and somebody's energy is off and not really, like, moving their head or something, it may make me start to doubt what I'm doing. You gotta be careful in the energies that you let come in the room, because it will begin to make you doubt and fear and not want to take that risk."

"We been quiet too long lady-like very patient," she says in an interlude on her 2002 album, Under Construction. And there is a moment in her VH1 Behind the Music special where Missy's mother cringes. She is discussing Missy's decision to reveal the sexual abuse and violence that barbed itself around her childhood. "When Missy went open about the abuse," her mother says, "I was like, This is our secret; you don't tell the world what happened." Her mother was not being malicious. She was just afraid for her daughter. For many years, her mother lived with her in her house in Virginia; they are very close. But this is a generational reminder, a well-worn mode of discretion that most black girls hear at some point in their lives. It comes in many forms, a whisper in your ear to always keep your panties clean so if you are killed in an accident they will know you aren't a dirty woman, a curt warning not to tell your business in the street—these silences, this keeping it quiet, are supposed to let the world know who we are. I realized that what Missy had done on a very basic level is decide that those good intentions—meant to beckon us toward being flatter than we are, quieter than we are—wouldn't work for her as a rapper or a songwriter.

In 1983, Octavia E. Butler, the first major black woman science fiction writer, published a story, "Speech Sounds," that imagines a world where almost everyone has lost their voice, and because of that they no longer remember how language works. One of the few exceptions is a woman named Rye, and as the story progresses, she comes to realize that even though is it dangerous to speak, she has to, and she has to help the children who have been left behind, who like her are still trying to form words and express themselves under such perilous conditions.

On Missy's 2015 song "WTF (Where They From)," there is a sample of a young girl speaking. The voice belongs to Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin who was on the phone with him when he was murdered. Missy doesn't bring this up, I do. She goes almost mute when I say that by sampling Jeantel's voice, Pharrell and she have done a remarkable thing that has reversed what usually happens to the words of girls who look like Rachel Jeantel. They have preserved them for the record, credited her for her voice and her words, and made sure she got paid. The witness becomes the writer. From the test comes the testimony.

And so a shy girl rises to the occasion, to speak, to write, and she becomes herself—because who else is going to explain why it is imperative that women don't put up with lousy lovers, or show us that we can wear sneaks every single day and still desire to get those nails done every other day? (Her nail tech, Bernadette, tells me: When it comes to glam, Missy is the most feminine artist of all time.) Missy is a multiplatinum artist who views Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu as her creative peers; she is an icon who likes to sit on the floor. This is what she does best: convince others that all of this is contained inside of her, while still finding a way to remain herself.

Across the street from the photo studio, the Chelsea Piers are turning themselves over to the night. And Missy's publicist and team are in a hurry to make sure I'm not taking up too much of her time, but Missy herself doesn't seem rushed to go anywhere yet. If anything, she seems deliberate. She sips through a straw from a cup of fresh-squeezed juice, and then she holds the cup with both hands. Her baseball cap is cocked to the side, and her two-inch nails are painted iridescent blue. Her legs are open but locked at the ankle. She looks in command—even more so because she is smiling.

I want to know more about her absences from the spotlight. What is it like to re-enter a world where Twitter can determine who becomes president, where music can feel like it was created to last for exactly for one minute and then disappear into the ether?

Yeah, it is a brave new world, she agrees. But she isn't despondent. Not at all.

"One thing I won't do is compromise." She takes another sip of juice and thinks for a moment. "I will never do something based on what everybody else is telling me to do. And have to kick myself in the ass every night," she says, drawing her head back and shaking it.

"Nah. I have to make sure that it's right," she continues. "I've been through so many stumbling blocks to build a legacy, so I wouldn't want to do something just to fit in. Because I never fit in. So…."

I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn't. Her smile just grows into a laugh, a shy one, and then she shrugs. As if to say, Take it or leave it, love me or leave me.

It's a blueswoman's confidence, the realest shrug in the world, a gesture that comes from knowing full well that most of us made our choice about her a long time ago.

#missy elliot #culture #hip hop #rap #music #us history

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