#woolen spinning

[thecozycuttlefish]

I'm very excited about the progress I've made this week! My granny square blanket is halfway done!

Come check out The Cuttle Corner!

[ezekiellsplayground]

@knitbelove & I visited Benlea Farm (Aotearoa NZ) yesterday for a farm tour. We met the pet sheeps who love salt&vinegar chips before helping out with the farm chore of moving a sheep herd to a new paddock over the road. We also were shown the shearing shed and got to sample some wool cuts, which was super cool as we got to show the farmer how spindle spinning worked! It was also my first time spinning in the grease (as expected, I’m not a real fan but it was interesting experience).

[yarn-o-palooza]

Rolags to yarn! Just experimenting with this fiber prep. LOVED the spin on them. I didn’t love the purple bleps, but I’m weird. They are pretty, just not my taste.

[prettyboykatsuki-moved]

teeth | i. rin

✮ tags ; afab + fem!reader, marking, sexual tension, dry-humping, cumming through clothes, 18+

✮ wc ; 1.5k

✮ a/n ; a flash comm for @1bananabread. thank u for your patience!!! i tried to focus as best i could on tension.

this is a snippet so it won't show up in the main fic at any point!! it can be an extra in that way!!! and it is from the fujoverse tag on this blog - a blog au abt fujoshi + recovering neet reader and rin.

Across the room, you give Rin a look.  

One that he’s starting to recognize without trying to. It makes his jaw clench when he sees it. Big, wet eyes like a baby deer and the soft undertone of desperation. He’s becoming good at knowing your ticks, mostly against his will. How you chew your lip, how you tap the pen of your tablet, how you draw in a frenzied anxious way when you want something from him and don’t know how to open your mouth and ask.  

It’s irritating. But it’s going to get under his skin even more if you keep it up. 

“What.” He grits. You startle. Jump in your skin like you’re surprised he even noticed you, as if you’re not staring at him. You open your mouth, then close it. “Spit it out.”  

You look flustered. You always look that way. But right now you embody it. He can’t imagine what your request could be at this point that would incite this much embarrassment.  

By now, Rin has “helped” you with a number of things. Too many to recount and all of them too close, too personal for plausible deniability. Helping you take photos for references takes up a majority of your requests - but it always ends in something more. Rin tries mostly not to think about it. Not to think about where its led and how normal you still seem to act despite it.

The fact you keep making these requests reason enough to make him seethe. Just a little.  

You take a shaky breath and give Rin a look from above the frames of your glasses.  

“C-can I give you a hickey?” 

Rin pauses. Opens his mouth before he can even think about what the appropriate reply might be. His words come out like a hiss.  

“Why?”  

You seem surprised that he asks. That he cares to. That alone feels reason enough for him to shake some sense to you. Grab you by the shoulders until it clicks.  

(He doesn’t interrogate what it is that he wants to click for you. Just that he wishes it fucking would already.)  

“Well. Uhm.”  Your feet rub together under your desk. Woolen socks worn until they’re matter as you fidget endlessly. Rin holds his stare until you crumple just slightly under the weight of it. “There’s n-not a particular reason. It’s not for my book or anything, I just uhm—wanted to do it. To you,”  

There’s a brief moment there where the world stops spinning entirely. Rin breathes. A sharp, steadying breath. Chest tight, dizzy with an emotion that wells up from the depths of him. He can’t think of anything clever to retort with, or really any good way for him to respond. He sits across from you at a complete loss.  

The next words that come out of his mouth leave before he has a chance to make sense of them. He swallows a lump in his throat.  

“Fine,”  

Your eyes go wide again. Shocked like you weren’t the one who ask. Tension lingers in the air, but Rin can’t figure out what to do about it. How to settle it. He doesn't know if he fucking can.

“A-are you sure?”  

That’s the first time you’ve asked him that. Most of the time, you’re shameless in your asks. You do it for work, just work  - and it’s always Rin who ends up….going further. Because it frustrates him to see you cower over it. Rin is used to you, by now. How you have the demeanor and general anxiety of a small shelter dog. He’s been over it all already one hundred times but—

It’s like something clicks hearing you ask him that. If he's sure. You can be so thick. It’s not like Rin doesn’t fucking know. But it’s the first time it he realizes the brunt of it.

You two are on completely different pages about your relationship.  And he's pissed about it, but not at you. Not really.

“I wouldn’t say it was if it wasn’t,” 

You look so surprised for a minute he wants to bite you. Take his teeth and dig them into the place your pulse is just to see you squirm. It’s always like this with you but right now it feels like something searing. Pressed up right against his ribs and threatening to puncture his lungs.

“Are you gonna do it or not?” He snaps, meaner than he wants. You nod, movements stiff, and clamber onto your feet before walking his way. Rin watches as you approach him nervously. Your eyes meet and you hold his gaze.  

Then, without word, you crawl into his lap. Straddling him - just barely fitting over his wide frame as both of your knees end up on either side of his thigh. Rin watches you silently. Piercingly. Your movements are trembling.  

You kiss him first. This shocks him into total silence. He returns it just so you don’t pass out from nerves. It’s clumsy like he knew it would be but it’s the first time you’ve done completely of your own accord. Normally you ask him to kiss you, beg with teary eyes.  

But you’ve got both of them squeezed shut now, kissing him with your hands fisted at his chest. Something stirs in his jeans, and you yelp when it presses against you. You gasp, low and quiet.  

“You’re—“ 

“Shut up.”  

You nod. Keep kissing him, opening his mouth up to slide your tongue in. It’s sloppy and unpracticed. You have no grace whatsoever.

Rin feels himself get so hard he’s lightheaded.  

You pull away, gently kissing the corner of his mouth. Down the line of his jaw. Mimicking something he’s sure you’ve read in your stupid doujins at one time or another. He can feel the nerves radiating off of you in waves, feel the way your body shakes in his lap. How uncertain you are. There’s that feeling again. Gnashing, possessive, mean. Not that Rin has ever been someone especially saintly.

But it’s not cruelty he wants to expose you to. It’s something else, far more demanding.  

His hands find your hips in a single breath. Pushing you down onto his lap until your full weight is rested over his hard-on. You whine when he presses up against your core, clothed cunt protected through ratty PJs. Rin doesn’t say anything, buy you know better than to stop now.  

Kissing down slowly, sweetly - you scrape and lick along his skin until you’re just underneath where his jaw and neck meet. Your eyes flutter open to look at him. It's too much for him.

Rin grinds his hips up in retaliation until you whimper. He does it over and over, steadily until you’re both rocking against each other in tandem. All clothes and hot heaving breaths, layers of fabric acting as barrier for what he's after.  

You’ve done everything under the sun aside from sex. This barely counts as foreplay by now. Even so, he’s bucking up into you with every ounce of his strength, unspoken desire shredding his sense. His hands gripping your hips, jaw grit - pleasure coiling in his stomach and wound so tight.  

“Fuck,”  

You’re crying out against his shoulder before you remember what you were trying to do.  

Your lips find his neck again trying not to be too noisy. Latching on with a soft kiss, Rin hisses as your teeth finally sink into the flesh. Your mouth is small. It’s all he can think about. He feels your incisors scrape against the skin, tongue tracing a vein. Before long, you’re sucking hard on the same spot. He can feel it. A bruise forming, broken capillaries blooming in deep dark hues of purple and red. Rin groans at the feeling. You give it every ounce of effort, holding onto his bicep tight when you do. It aches in a pleasant way.  

Pleasant enough to make his hips buck. A jolt of desire and want rips through him like a shockwave - until he’s pushing you down against the hard outline of his cock and forcing you to grind against it. It’s hard and sharp, fingers bruising. 

He cums hard. Seconds later, like a flash of lighting. His stomach flips and something rips through him and—

It’s the first time he’s cum before you. Fuck, h can feel his own cum seeping through his boxers and jeans. It’s so intense his vision blacks out for a minute before returning to him, chest heaving as you pull away and stare.  

“You—“  

Horror washes over him. Rin puts a hand over your mouth, angry and irritated. Red up to his ears to his ears and internally having the worst crisis of his life for the third time over.

He looks at your face and there's that feeling in his chest. But he recognizes it this time. Knows exactly whats making him like this, forced to confront it for the first time.

“Shut up,” He hisses, breathing heavily. “Not a fucking word,”  

You nod at him docile. Rin forces himself steady as he thinks of pinning you down and taking you.

Like he knows you'd let him. Like he fucking knows he wants to.

[zetsubo-billy]

𝚃𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴

genre(s): ¿comedy?, nsfw but no smut, college!AU — all characters are 20-ish y/o

pairing(s): eventual hanamaki takahiro x reader, eventual matsukawa issei x reader, eventual hanamaki takahiro x matsukawa issei

summary: frustrated after an argument with your now-ex-fuck buddy, you find yourself asking your two best guy friends the forbidden question

content warnings: sex talk, that’s literally it, that’s the fic, reader has a few stray horny thoughts, one (1) joke about feminism, sexual tension, a lot of mentions of oral sex

word count: 2.2k

MINORS AND AGELESS/EMPTY BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT! DO! NOT! INTERACT!

“Okay, but, do you guys think girls taste weird?”

You have no idea why you say it. Usually, you let Mattsun and Makki have their lively discussions of recent sexcapades while you listen passively. Maybe you’ll laugh at them here and poke fun at them for something silly there, or just nod along. You never pipe up and tell them about your own experiences, no matter how many times they grill you about the guys they’ve seen you with, but the past week has made you reach your breaking point. You couldn’t stop yourself.

“What?”, Makki asks as his and Mattsun’s conversation reaches a sudden halt, tilting his head at you from where he sits on the other end of the creaky old sofa in their shared apartment. “Like, your pussies?”

Heat flashes up your neck and you quickly look away from him, busying yourself with fingering at the hem of the woolen blanket you bought him and his housemate as a housewarming gift. Your pussies. He means girls’ pussies in general, you’re sure. It’s not like you have several vaginas. But it still felt oddly targeted. Then again, you’re the only one in the apartment with that anatomy, so of course it’s a little bit targeted. He sure wasn’t talking to Mattsun, at least.

Makki and Mattsun’s intense eyes seem to burn holes into your being as they both stare at you. Makki, expectantly, and Mattsun, curiously. Your mind spins as you try to focus on how to answer. “Well… yeah”, you mumble, embarrassed. You shift in your seat, pulling your knees closer to yourself.

Absolute silence fills the boys’ living room for a few seconds. You’re just about to wave your question away and say that you were just kidding, it doesn’t matter what they think and wow that was a stupid question, when Mattsun speaks up.

“Not really”, he says in his deep voice. He sits in between you and Makki, the (sometimes) calm between two storms, in the middle of the couch. One of his arms is stretched out along the back of the sofa, behind you, while he scratches lightly at the back of his neck with his other hand as if in thought. “I mean, there’s not really another taste like it. But it’s not weird, no.”

“Yeah, no other taste like it”, Makki agrees, leaning over the armrest on his end of the sofa. “I love it. It’s not weird, it’s just… purely her. I think it’s hot as fuck that everyone tastes different.”

A heat starts to boil deep in your gut at the same time as it blossoms in your cheeks. You hope they don’t notice. “R-really?”, you ask, and you internally curse yourself for stuttering.

“Yeah, really”, the strawberry blonde continues. If you look at him, you know he’ll be grinning teasingly. “Why’re you asking?”

Dread starts to mix in with the warmth in your stomach, and you shift again as you pull the blanket closer to yourself. It’s not at all cold in their apartment anymore, though. Now you only have the blanket for comfort, like a toddler who’s grown too old to have a pacifier but doesn’t want to throw it away.

“Oh, uh, no reason”, you mumble, hoping they’ll let it go.

They, of course, don't.

“Really?”, Mattsun pipes up, and you can hear the smirk that’s plastered across his stupidly handsome face as he speaks. “No reason at all that you suddenly decided to talk to us about sex after we’ve been trying to get you to open up since high school?”

Curse him and his attentiveness.

“Mhm”, you force yourself to answer. The blanket isn’t comforting anymore but suffocating, the warmth of the wool combined with your flushed embarrassment — and let’s be honest, a little bit of arousal — and the way Mattsun and Makki are looking at you makes it too hot in the living room. You tug the blanket off, throwing it at Makki. “No reason, let’s forget about it.”

Makki’s volleyball reflexes allow him to easily catch the blanket in his hands. He balls it up and shoves it in between the sofa cushions. “No reason, huh? You sure about that?”, he asks, and this time you do look at him. And, what do you know, he is grinning just as stupidly just as you thought. “Not even a little bit of a reason?”

You shift in your seat, looking away from him again, but you don’t answer.

Cold, long fingers brush against the hot back of your burning neck and you shiver almost violently in your seat as you snap your head around to look at Mattsun. He’s looking at you with his deep brown eyes, and just the way he looks at you makes you shiver again. He wets his lips with his tongue before speaking up, still gently caressing the back of your neck with his fingers. “Don’t tell me that guy you go out with tells you he won’t eat your pussy ‘cause he doesn’t like the taste.”

You swallow thickly and avoid his gaze, shaking your head. “No reason, is what I said. Let’s just forget about this whole—”

“Uuuugh, god!”, Makki cuts you off exasperatedly, making you jump slightly in your seat. “I fucking hate guys like that! They act like they’re saints for fingering their girlfriends for, like, three minutes before they fuck, but then they still expect to get sucked off every night!”, he continues, letting his head fall back against the sofa. “Fucking assholes. They’re the reason we still need feminism.”

Despite yourself, and despite the odd conversation, you can’t help but giggle at his last sentence. He’s… not exactly wrong. “I’d argue the reason we still need feminism is because of the patriarchy”, you tease, and watch as color drains from his face. “But I guess you’re right, too”, you finish as Mattsun’s gentle touch at the back of your neck moves to your hair, playing with a few loose strands. “And there are so many guys like that. Hell, I’ve never been with a guy who wasn’t like that.”

And then you remember that they’re not your girlfriends ranting about sleazy men but your childhood guy friends.

This is the first time in a long time that the three of you have managed to fit all of your schedules together since you started at different universities, different majors, different after class activities and different weekend jobs to pay the rent. They still live together, and presumably see each other every day, while you live with two girls you met in your first year in college. You swallow thickly, embarrassment eating away at you again as you, once again, pull your knees closer to yourself and shrink away from Mattsun’s hand in your corner of the sofa. “Umm, forget I said that.”

“No way I can forget that”, Makki quickly answers, and there’s a tone in his voice that you’ve never heard before.

Before you really know what’s happening, he’s flying up from his seat and kneeling on the floor in front of you while Mattsun follows you into the corner of the sofa to be able to start tracing shapes over the back of your neck again. Makki’s hands are gentle and warm as they land on the tops of your bare knees, resting there. “You’re telling me, the god of pussy-eating—”, Mattsun snorts at that and the strawberry blonde sends him a glare, “— that you’ve never been eaten out?”

You feel suddenly cornered, as if they caught you doing something bad, as if they’re about to scold you. “Uh… well… not exactly…”, you mumble, eyes flitting between Makki and Mattsun before settling on your own nails as you start to slightly pick at your cuticles, nervous. “No, I have, I just… never came from it. Max says I take too long and… that he doesn’t… like how my, uh… how I taste.”

When you look up again, Makki looks just about ready to murder your now-ex fling, and you feel the way Mattsun tenses up beside you as he momentarily stops playing with your hair.

“Tell me, how much do I need to pay you to let me kick his ass?”, Makki grumbles, hands balling into fists where they still rest on your knees.

You smile sheepishly. “Well, um, nothing. I broke it off with him this morning after we got into a really bad argument. It started out about oral, actually, but then it just sort of… spiraled… and then I told him to fuck off.”

Makki’s jaw drops while Mattsun heaves a humored sigh. “So that’s why you got into this conversation from the start”, the taller one states, his fingers tickling you behind the ear. You shiver and try to shy away from his touch, but he doesn’t let you.

Again, you’re reminded of the heat in their apartment. You’re only wearing a pair of sweatshorts, old and ratty and something you wouldn’t be caught dead in around any other creature of the male species but Makki and Mattsun, and one of their soft t-shirts with a worn print that you stole several years ago — none of you remember which one of them it originally belonged to since they usually swap t-shirts back and forth, and they stopped pestering you about giving it back a long time ago.

“Well… yes?”, you find yourself saying.

Makki’s hands unclench and grip your bare knees gently, drawing your attention back to him from Mattsun. He’s grinning up at you, and there’s a darkness in his eyes that makes your stomach flip. “So… you want us to give you an oral orgasm?”

Your jaw drops as you stare at him, wide-eyed. Admittedly, you had considered the both of them in that light, several times, over the years. Just look at them! Over six feet tall the both of them, athletic, fast and with nice features. It should be illegal to be so physically gifted. Horny teenage curiosity and more recent dry spells had led you to long nights with your hand between your thighs, imagining how one of their hands would feel in its place; or better yet both of their hands.

Their fingers are thicker, longer, than yours, so they would undoubtedly reach deeper. Stretch you wider. But how would they go about it? Would they be soft and careful? Hard and rough? Would they be different from each other?

Of course the two would be different. But how different? Would one of them be fast, the other slow? Or would it be the softness-contra-roughness that differs, rather than the pace? And let’s not get started on the question of their size. You’ve seen them lounge about in sweatpants sometimes, it doesn’t happen often, and every time you have to force your eyes up to their faces. You know it’s a stupid assumption, but they have big hands. And large shoe sizes. It’s only fair to assume that—

Mattsun’s large hand lands across the back of your neck, squeezing lightly to get your attention. It’s such a simple gesture, yet you feel like you melt into the palm of his hand. “Hiro asked you a question, sweetheart”, he mumbles right into your ear. He’s so close you can feel his breath against the side of your face. “I think he’d like an answer.”

Only then do you realize that you got lost in your own thoughts for several moments. How long? You don’t know, but you don’t dare to dwell on it. You swallow thickly, raising your gaze from where you’d zoned out while looking at Makki’s hands on your knees until you meet his eyes. He’s smirking that usual cocky smirk of his, but his eyes are swimming with something you’ve never seen in him before. His hands are warm on your knees, and you shiver in your seat as Mattsun squeezes gently at the back of your neck. They’ve literally got you cornered on their shitty old couch.

“U-um, could you repeat the question?”, you stutter out, hating the way your voice wavers and sounds so airy.

But Makki grins, squeezing your knees in his hands. “Sure thing, babe”, he says teasingly. “I asked if you wanted me and Issei to eat your pussy until you cum.”

Oh. Right. That.

Your jaw drops again and this time around, they both laugh. Not meanly, not at your expense. They just laugh lowly, and you feel like the sound makes your entire being vibrate.

“I— umm, I mean, I, hah…”, you stammer, trying to get out a complete sentence.

“Only if you want to. And it doesn’t have to be both of us, you can take your pick. Promise we won’t be mad”, Makki continues, squeezing your knees gently. “Right, Issei?”

Mattsun huffs in agreement, his palm still heavy and warm and comforting against the back of your neck. “Right”, he echoes his friend’s statement. “If you're not comfortable, neither of us want it. Don’t pressure yourself.”

Makki nods along, and starts talking about something that you only half-hear because your mind is reeling. They don’t want to pressure you. They’re waiting for your word. But the way they pose it, it’s like they expect you to say no. It’s like they’ve already given up, even though you haven’t even answered yet. Or, well, technically you have, but that embarrassing stutter of a reply you gave just a moment ago doesn’t count. Not really.

Just as Makki leans back slightly, about to get up from the floor as his hands lift from your knees, your hands dart out to grab his wrists. His eyebrows shoot up as you firmly place his hands high up on your thighs, but he still grins.

“Well, self-proclaimed god of pussy-eating”, you start off teasingly, and he rolls his eyes at you as Mattsun chuckles beside you. Makki’s eye roll is cut short as you suggestively spread your legs slightly, his gaze zeroing in on where your pussy hides beneath your bottoms. “Do your worst.”

[godihatethiswebsite]

Tethered Bonds

✽ Poly 141 x f!reader (Omegaverse AU)

A lucky stroke of fate led you right into the arms of your alpha soulmates. But is it everything you dreamed it would be or just the continuation of a nightmare?

Main Masterlist ✽ Ao3

✽ Part One - A twisted fate

I'm gonna be honest: this came to me in a tired, period induced haze and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing but the bunnies would not let me stop until I finished it. Was supposed to be a oneshot... until it wasn't XD Hoping this is just gonna be a short little pet project on the side. Lemme know if I missed any triggers!

Trigger warnings: SA (not by the 141), biting, claiming, angst, depression, self harm

[Edit 7/16/24: updated relationship tags]

The parking lot was a certified mess to navigate, a veritable winter hellscape with the continual snowfall keeping the pavement slick and churning around spinning wheels to create a thick dirty slush. Packed cars fought for spaces towards the front of the store, wanting to avoid the headache of trudging through sloppy sleet, heavy carts overflowing with expensive gifts and last minute groceries.

Parents loaded up their trunks for their upcoming banquets. Little ones chattered in youthful exuberance about brightly wrapped packages and a jolly fat man. Festively dressed bell ringers exhausted their muscles for the cause of charity, offering joyous smiles to those passing by gracious enough to offer a token. Even six inches of heavy wet snowfall were not enough to deter shoppers from their mood. Coupled with the obnoxiously boisterous music that met you at the door it was almost impossible not to get swept up in the infectious holiday spirit.

Almost.

You hadn’t bothered joining the chaotic dominance for prime parking, opting to choose the very last row towards the street instead of wasting precious minutes yelling profanities out the window to an uppity pack trying to steal your spot. The harsh wind burned your face and nipped at your skin, pulling the woolen scarf tighter around your neck and up over your bitten nose. You avoided eye contact with the chipper lady at the front, not wanting to feel guilty for not donating when you barely had enough to scrape by as it is.

Normally you avoided venturing out this close to Christmas unless absolutely necessary. Holidays haven't meant much to you in recent years since your parent’s untimely passing and you hated the constant reminder of ‘the most wonderful time of the year’. Sure, there were still your other two alpha fathers, but they’d opted for someplace warmer in their age and visitation was difficult with your busy work schedule. Your younger brother wasn’t almost worth mentioning with his new prissy family somewhere up north. That bridge was burned the day he called you a harlot.

Needless to say, you’d become something of a grinch.

You’d been miserably sick the week prior and ate through most of your stockpile of hoarded food, not enough remaining to keep blowing off shopping with the bustling crowds. If you wanted to last past New Years then a trip into town was unavoidable.

The intense blast of hot air from the overhead heaters thawed your aching bones upon entering the store, shaking the accumulated dampness from your head and shoulders but leaving the thick cloth covering the lower half of your face. It would help you in your endeavors to get through the aisles expediently without irritating your delicate omega olfactory senses. 

It got harder to distinguish the source of fragrances this time of year, when folk spent their days burrowed away from the bitter cold surrounded by the comforts of the season. A chilled glass of rich subtly spiced eggnog, smokey cedar logs crackling in the hearth, sweet woodsy pine wreaths and garlands wrapped around thick oak banisters, trees decorated with peppermint candy canes and dried strings of popcorn. 

Gingerbread, mulled wine, cinnamon, orange, clove; a bountiful buffet of complementary aromas. Your own father had smelled of cranberry sauce once upon a time (it made the holidays that much harder when he was gone). And with so many people filling the space - even with the heating fans working overtime trying to filter out most of it - it could get difficult trying to figure out whether a boozy scent originated from a lovely beta or the soaked rum cake she was placing in her cart.

Honestly if it weren't for the outrageous delivery fees you would've had the groceries dropped off instead of enduring the aggressive pheromones floating through the air. Alas this was one of your few exceptions to your hermit lifestyle.

Truthfully, it wasn’t just December that had you hesitant to leave the sanctuary of your meager apartment. 

For the past few years, you’d been battling a severe case of agoraphobia, something you’d been working on wholeheartedly with a therapist since the accident that made you so. It had crippled you to the point that even daring to have the blinds open on your windows sent you spiraling into that dark abyss of cackling distress, panic consuming every last ounce of breath until you found yourself minutes later curled up on the bathroom floor, lightheaded and queasy.

Nausea was a constant in your life, along with the cold sweat that had you sleeping on a towel just to keep from ruining your bedsheets. Lethargy was embedded in your muscle fibers. A searing ache in your throat. The painful deep tugging in your chest an ever present reminder of the uphill battle you fought each time you opened your crusty sleep filled eyes. Depression was your best friend, curled around you in a false sense of comfort where it was easier to slip into a maladaptive headspace than face the truth of your harsh reality.

But despite the physical manifestations of your trauma, you’d made good strides so far with your weekly sessions. It had been a difficult road getting to this point and your therapist praised you for your dedication to not letting it hinder the life you had ahead. You weren’t sure what it looked like, but you tried all the same.

Like a hound that heard you calling, that ominous presence that filled you with dread came crawling into the back of your skull, mittened hand discreetly itching at the wool around your neck and scratching the irritated skin beneath. Forcing yourself to take a few deep breaths until it settled, you grabbed one of the many baskets available and began the trek weaving down the rows of food.

Christmas was about a week away and the mobs were out in full force. Thankfully the items you were on the hunt for were not the same ingredients needed by everyone else. There was the occasional overlap of things like milk, eggs, bread, etc. But there was no call for a full sized turkey or spiraled ham; no sweet potato casserole or chocolate yule log to bake. Just some bologna, shredded cheese, a couple packs of ramen, and a few other household things here you were running low on. 

Maybe for the hell of it you’d stop in the frozen section and find yourself a mini cheesecake to splurge on for when you inevitably opened that bottle of fireball sitting on the shelf come next Tuesday, forced to listen to your upstairs neighbors' horrendous attempts at Christmas caroling.

Halfway through the store, your browsing was interrupted by an alluring scent swirling somewhere nearby.

Citrusy. Acidic. Sweet. Airy. 

Your scarf had slipped off your face when you bent down to grab something off the lower racks, exposing you to the freshly baked goods across the way. Someone nearby was carrying a batch of lemon cupcakes, your mouth watering as the scent invaded your tastebuds and forced a pleasant hum from the back of your throat. 

Something curled in your chest like a finger beckoning forward, begging for an acknowledgement that had you standing at rapt attention. Your body seemed to move on its own, head swiveling like a rickety chair, scanning the nearby vicinity - for what, you couldn’t say. The inner omega that prowled just underneath the surface vibrated restlessly, choking back a needy whine while your eyes swept over the closest individuals. Something primal had called out to you, throwing your hormones out of whack, piecing together invisible clues so obviously standing right in front of you. 

The summery concoction felt so out of place in the harsh winter months, swirling and nagging at the base of your spine, urgent and loud and taking up too much space until you felt like you could drown in its tang–

Your muscles locked in place, gaze affixed to something - someone - at the end of the aisle. 

A big someone. An alpha.

And he was massive.

There was a natural musculature that came with the inherited alpha genetics. Beta’s could grow to a similar size if they worked at it, but there was a casual arrogance that was impossible to mistake with the former designation. Even still, this man towered over most others in the vicinity, lesser alphas giving a wide berth to the intimidating figure currently staring down at his phone screen. Thick grey hoodie pulled up over his head, a black military jacket layered over top. Dark wash jeans led down to warm boots hefty enough to stomp a man’s skull in. Messy dark blonde hair peeked out from up top, a black surgical mask covering the lower half of his face from view.

He couldn’t have given off any more ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibes if he had it tattooed across his forehead. There was nothing sinister about his bearing per se - one hand casually shoved into a coat pocket as he leaned back against one of the dessert displays - but there was a coiled alertness that gave you the distinct impression he was more aware of his surroundings than he led you to believe.

One thing was for certain: you were never more sure of anything in your less than perfect life that that man was your scent match.

Your lungs expanded in your chest to drink in more of his scent. Palms turned sweaty, hair on the back of your neck prickled, the weight of the basket on your arm all but forgotten. Your throat parched at the prospect of getting to shove your face against his scent gland and taste the delectable lemony goodness right off his skin. 

People went lifetimes never meeting their perfect scent matches. The odds of you ever encountering one wasn’t even worth holding out hope for. Over seven billion people on the planet and you had to win an epic fucking lottery to get as lucky as you just did. Bonding ceremonies like that made the news for how rare it was. You’d never even dreamed of this happening, making peace with the idea that mates only existed in fairytale romance.

You just about dropped your groceries when he was joined shortly thereafter by another gorgeous male, slightly shorter by a few inches and not as broadly built. Rich dark skin, effortlessly cool street style, short black curls, and a dazzling pearly white smile.

This new alpha didn’t seem to flinch in the presence of the other, lemon cupcake glancing up only briefly to acknowledge the newcomer whose toasted coconut aroma barrelled right into you, colliding like a runaway freight at an unguarded intersection. Gulping down mouthfuls of air like a fish heaving on dry land, your head spun wildly at the nutty intrusion; smokey yet sweet, conjuring images of a warm evening bonfire on a lush sandy beach. 

Hope bloomed in your chest something fierce and bright. Your omega preened in unbridled delight, pawing at the surface, eager to get her hands on the two beautiful specimens whose every atom screamed ‘mine’. Tears stung behind your eyes, a mixture of relief and elation, vibrant like bursting fireworks and twinkling Christmas lights. 

What would you say to them? Do you approach them first? Should you wait for them to scent you back or try to pretend you didn’t smell them yet? What did their voices sound like? You could see their lips moving, even if the ones’ were hidden behind a surgical mask. Tenor, baritone, rumbly bass? What were their names? Where did they live? Was this really happening right now?! 

Something twisted and gnarled sunk its claws into your subconscious, rearing its ugly head in protest at the newfound revelation, but for the first time in years you didn’t fucking care. 

They were here. Your alphas. Your pack. Your salvation.

“Babes!” 

Decadent chocolate floated past you, a small apology from her lips as the omega brushed by, bumping her arm against yours on the way to her intended destination. You’d hardly noticed, too caught up in your own inner monologue and girlish fantasies to barely manage a quiet ‘no worries’.

For a split second, your eyes met coconut’s beautiful luscious brown, breath catching in your throat as the object of your desire finally seemed to take note of your existence. It was like gazing into the threads of the universe, pulling taut between you in a cosmic symphony that brought your stardust back together from whence it scattered at the dawn of time. 

A perfect part of an incomplete whole.

…until those shimmering umber pools shifted left, aimed at the bubbly figure headed right towards them. 

Huh?

Confusion as both alphas turned their full undivided attention to the dark haired omega, holding out a box of something for them to inspect and smiling when it met their approval, an affectionate pat on the head from lemon for her success that left her beaming with pride. 

That’s when you noticed it - peeking out underneath the collar of her elegant peacoat. A faint white crescent moon shaped scar, standing out against her lightly tanned skin, a matching one a little farther down. 

Mating bites. A bonded omega. 

And your scent matched alphas were gazing lovingly at her as if she’d hung the stars. 

She was theirs. They’d already found their mate. 

And it wasn’t you.

Something died in your chest, a broken scream torn silent from your soul as it condensed into a burning black hole. Agony unlike anything you’ve ever known, piercing your fragile heart and burrowing like a plague into your veins until the sickness had spread to every corner of your being. Your omega clawed at her eyes, willing the visions in front of you to vanish like a twisted mirage, begging for a bullet to erase the image of coconut planting a soft forehead kiss before wrapping an arm around her waist and turning to leave. 

A dejected whine ripped from your throat as you took an unconscious step forward, hand vaguely outreached, instincts screaming to chase after them and make them choose you instead of her. But you did no such thing. You watched helplessly as the alphas who were supposedly destined for you by the stars turned their backs on your pathetic existence.

This couldn't be happening. Why was this happening?! Please turn around!!!

With the same circulating air that had guided their scents to you, the wind in the store shifted.

Lemon cupcake went ramrod straight, whipping his head around so fast you were worried it’d go flying off his shoulders. It was uncanny the way he immediately zeroed in on your poor trembling figure, standing in the middle of a crowded aisle, uncaring to the concerned glances of the other shoppers as he unknowingly ruined your life. 

Recognition sparked deep behind voided irises before going completely neutral, steeling his expression but remaining unmoving as stone. It’s like the two of you were locked into place, orbiting each other by an invisible tether, watery eyes begging the ones staring back to please… please not leave you behind.

Coconut halted in his own step at the end of the aisle, sniffing the air for a moment with a furrowed brow, glancing over his shoulder at lemon, asking him something too far away to overhear. You can only assume the contents of his reply, the slightest shift of his mask the only tell he’d responded before coconut turned to face you as well.

This time garnered more of a physical reaction than the last, jaw dropping while staring just as unabashedly as his alpha companion. Eyes swept from head to toe, cataloging every minute detail the same as you’d done to them. Pupils dilated exponentially, nostrils flaring taking in the crisp pear scent you exuded, memorizing every facet and swallowing it down like a ravenous predator.

What a sight you must’ve made; eyes red and puffy from the tears that now flowed freely from suffering instead of the earlier jubilation, meek and sheepish and falling apart at the seams. What a piss poor impression to give the men fated to be your mates.

There was a brief moment where coconut seemed to match your initial energy, a flash of something saccharine and longing, only for it to collapse under the grueling weight of our fatalistic reality. There was an internal struggle in the crease of his brow, the downturned expression souring behind clenched teeth and tight fists. But more than that there was pity - pity at how you couldn’t have met sooner. Pity that you’d had to discover them like this, a woman on their arm and bite marks on her neck. Pity that they hadn’t had faith that they would be the lucky ones in a packed society.

You can make out a question on the chocolate omega’s perfectly pouty lips, trying to put the jigsaw together as to why her alphas were suddenly acting this way while glancing between the three of you.

Ignoring her, coconut takes a half step forward; you take two steps back. There’s an apology in your watery eyes, a hushed ‘merry christmas’ too strained for their ears. Your heart’s beating too loudly, your breath comes too shallow. You don’t even realize you’re sucking in heaving sobs until a gentle hand of a passerby lands on your shoulder, snapping you out of the chaos of your psyche. 

You can’t take it any more; the shame, the embarrassment, the gut wrenching defeat. 

The basket falls to the floor with a loud clatter, startling the people nearby who let out shrieks and gasps of surprise as the spilled contents inside break open and shatter. Eggs crack, milk pours onto the mud trekked tile, a fragile jar of strawberry jam splatters across someones pristine boots with an indignant shout.

A smooth tenor voice calls out ‘WAIT’, but you’ve already rounded the corner, barreling through the crowds of happy smiles and ecstatic giggles, too torn up inside to feel anything but desolation at the future so cruelly ripped from your fingers.

The crisp frigid air smacks the breath from your lungs, winter boots slapping on the slushy frozen ground. The squeal of brakes accompanies you as you sprint uncaringly through the bustling traffic, horns honking and voices shouting, muffled and far away as you drown in the whirlwind of your mind. It’s a miracle you’re not hit by a car, an even bigger one that you make it back to your own unscathed.

Slamming the car door shut, you smack your padded palms repeatedly against the steering wheel, banshee wailing your vocal cords raw in despair. The dark presence creeps in once more, a mocking chill down your spine as it caresses your fractured soul. The nausea comes back full force, the tugging on your chest, the burning in your throat. There’s a desperation as you tear your fitted mittens off, reaching under the woolen scarf and incessantly scratching at the irritated skin until it shreds under your nails. The pain doesn't register through your emotional torment, blocking out the inner voice until it inevitably slinks back into the shadows after its bitter lick of victory.

Panting hard, your head slumps back against the cloth headrest, stewing in the silence of misery and defeat, the distant joyful bells of Christmas the only company you have on this cold winter’s night.

It takes a few tries to fit the key in your deadbolt, blinking through tears now frozen to your eyelashes. There’s no recollection of how you even made it home in your brittle mental state. For all you knew were twelve civilians flattened like pancakes on the side of the road and a warrant out for your arrest. 

Wouldn’t that be nice? A break from having to pay bills and function like an adult.

Stumbling through the door, the sparse furnishings of your minimal studio glare at you, flipping them off as you shuck the damp outer layers from your frail form. A mess to be cleaned up another day.  

It wasn't just the rejection of your fated mates you were facing. It was the knowledge that your entire future had been ripped away and no amount of hot glue could piece it back together. Today’s revelation was the final nail in the coffin for the rest of your life.

The bathroom lights flickered with dying bulbs, something that had been on your shopping list tonight and was now being swept off the floor along with everything else you’d left behind. It didn’t stop you from locating the first aid kit under your sink, setting it on the ceramic counter and pulling out the well loved supplies inside.

You avoided staring at your gaunt reflection, not wanting to see the person looking back as you tugged at the thick scarf looped around your neck. The constricting material tore away with ease, falling into a discarded heap on the floor, revealing the torn mottled flesh hidden underneath. 

Your own set of crescent shaped scars - where the line of your neck connected to the meat of your shoulder, long since healed over and faded with time. The area surrounding it was now swollen and inflamed, raised angry red lines dotted with scrapes like a bad case of road rash, bloody from where you'd furiously clawed at your neck on the car ride home. The only time the fucker in your head shuts up - the connection tethering you emotionally gone silent once he got tired of feeling physical pain across the bond.

Memories came unbidden. Flashes of that fateful encounter coming home late from work, dragged into a sequestered shadowy overhang a few meters down the darkened alleyway. A feral alpha hopped up on something illegal, tearing into your clothes and violating the virginal space between your thighs. The muffled cries as he overpowered you, panting through a rut with his greasy fingers shoved down your throat to silence you, gagging on the musky taste. The scream as his teeth pierced your flesh, the bond snapping taut and stealing your future from you without a thought to your own wishes.

He’d fucked you ragged that night, waking up with your cheek pressed into the damp pavement and his arm slung around your waist from hours earlier. There’d been no one to turn to, no one who would care. By law now you were his - no matter the means it had been done. 

A mating bite was binding. 

You’d crawled away from him, your outfit in tatters hanging loosely over your bruised form, dried blood stuck to your neck and a stabbing pain at your apex. You felt dirty and used and wanted nothing more than to strip the skin from your bones. The unconscious form of the– your alpha flopped prone on his back, crimson stains around his mouth and his flaccid cock still half out of his trousers. The pinpricks on his arm told the tale of a junkie. It’s possible he hadn’t even been fully aware of the crime he’d committed. 

You didn’t stick around to find out.

But you paid for that decision harshly, opting for a life not attached to your abuser, at a steep tormented cost. Bonds weren’t meant to be strained for so long. It starts to cause negative impacts on the pair, the omega bearing the worst of the brunt. Nausea, sweating, pain, dizziness, fatigue. The chronic illnesses you endured day in and day out would stay with you for the rest of your life. So long as he was up and walking free - alive somewhere on the other side of the country - his greasy claws strumming your senses through the connection tethering you eternally.

Only a perfect scent match could override the original bite and free you from the oppressive bonds that shackled you to an invisible alpha - the last remaining hope you had at any semblance of happiness.

And you just lost it.

>> ✿ Next ✿ >>

[theegyal]

⛧ 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝖔𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝕰𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖊 +18,

ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝟸 : 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℜ𝔦𝔱𝔲𝔞𝔩

warning : Soft gore, voyeurism, domination, implicit murder, smut, vampire lore

When she came back to herself, the first thing Annie registered was the grain of the wood pressing into her back. The second was the dull, pervasive ache in her legs. She blinked, the dim library lights swimming in her vision like hazy, distant stars. She was lying on the long reading table, her woolen skirt rucked up around her hips. A disoriented, dreamlike fog clinging to her syrupy thoughts.

Her panties were still damp. Her inner thighs were sore, tender in a way that made a flush of heat crawl up her neck. She didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t remember climbing onto the table.

The last thing she recalled was organizing the upper shelves—then… what? Coldness. A voice. Something slick and velvet clicking her psyche. But it slipped from her brain like water through cupped hands.

A specific sting drew her attention. She sat up, her head spinning, and lifted the hem of her skirt. There, on the deep brown skin of her inner thigh, were two precise crimson punctures, already beginning to swell. “Damn mosquitos,” she cursed, her voice raspy. “Little bastards. Hope you choked on it.”

Still, something about it didn’t sit right. There was no swelling. No itch. Annie was used to mosquitoes especially the ones in the south and if she had to compare, these ones seemed pretty inoffensive.

As she slid off the table, her legs shaking slightly, her eyes caught a faint, rusty smear on the polished mahogany. Without a second thought, she grabbed the corner of her apron and wiped it away, the motion quick and furtive, an instinct to erase evidence she didn’t understand.

Then she left—because if she lingered a second longer, she’d start asking questions.

And questions, she’d been told, were a very bad idea.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

In one of the north-wing offices, Elijah stood in staring into the hearth long after the fire had died. His suit was immaculate, his collar starched to quiet perfection, but his fingers flexed restlessly behind his back. Outside, the dusk dripped in like spilled ink across the tall windows. The air in the estate held a tension he couldn’t name yet—but he felt it.

The door creaked open. He didn’t need to turn to capture the presence of his twin.

Elias sauntered in, barefoot, he sprawled on a burgundy armchair, seizing the glass of red-not wine placed on the crystal table next to him. He swirled it, watching the viscous fluid cling to the glass and sipped it.

“Elijah,” Elias sang, the name curling like smoke. “You always find the most boring rooms to sulk in.”

“I wasn’t aware I needed to be entertained.”

“Hmm. You need to hunt,” Elias said, circling the armchair “Or perhaps a new toy to play with”

That earned Elias a flicker. Elijah turned slightly, his gaze sharp and narrow. “Get to the point.”

“I sampled the maid,” He said casually, like one might mention a new wine.

Elijah didn’t respond. He wasn’t surprised. His younger brother had always been reckless. He was the main reason no maid could stay longer than months. Elijah was tired of scolding that fucker.

“She was humming in the library,” Elias continued, “skirts bunched high, her big thighs glistening with nervous sweat. She looked pleased, certainly too much.”

“She’s not my type,” Elijah affirmed,lifting his long fingers up to shut his brother up, forbidding him to continue with nonsense.

Moreover, he did tell the truths. This woman, as much as beautiful she was, didn’t meet the criteria to stir his interest.

“Mmm. That’s what I thought. Until I tasted her.” Elias totally ignored his brother dismissal and continued.

This confession made Elijah’s gaze shift—barely. A side-glance, knife-thin and unreadable. Not that he wasn’t used of his brother little recreative activities but the dandy never felt the need to share stories of his degeneracy.

Elias lips twisted wider. “She’s a virgin.”

The fire cracked. That new information sparked Elijah interest.

1666 years without devouring anything pure. Virgins were exquisitely rare. They were kind of delicious libation yet their catch was perilous. Even Lord Dracula was never granted the chance to consume one.

And, now, his brother was telling him that such nymph was living in the same mansion as them ?

“You’re very aware to not spit such pleasantries Elias Moore. Are you sure ?” Elijah rose his voice, his lips opening slightly, drool leaking out his lacerating ivory fangs.

“Absolutely.” Elias played with his glass, watching the liquid dance inside. “Trembling. Cautious. Her blood fresh and never shared. It knew only her. She clenched like she’d never been touched before. And when I bit her—”

Elias knew better than swallowing the rest of his words. Elijah didn’t need to know the part of her he had bitten. Especially not now, he was in an ecstatic state.

“—shoulder, I could see her soul pleading release.”

Elijah drifted his gaze to the servants quarters. He closed his eyes after staring minutes long at the opened door then laughed devilishly. His left palm slammed on the right half of his beautiful face, hiding the abyssal color of his eye. His boring life shouted to be more pleasant.

“Ah,” Elias chortled in return. “So now she’s your type.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

That night, the Moore Estate felt different. Not louder—never that—but deeper. The sconces along the corridor burned lower than usual, their flames swaying like they were trying to whisper secrets into the halls.

Annie didn’t know where she was walking. She had left the kitchen to “check the linens in the guests wing” or at least that’s what she told herself. Truth was, her body had been restless since dusk, her nerves prickling like they’d been tortured. Her thighs still throbbed with an ache she could not fully explain.

The bath she took earlier had done nothing. Neither had the cocoa butter she’d rubbed on her skin. She’d changed her panties. Twice. But the heat between her legs had refused to cool.

As she carried the stack of folded sheets down the long, shadowed hallway, Elijah emerged from one of the study rooms, tall, poised, wearing a night robe,unbuttoned.

His gaze, usually cold and impersonal, landed on her and stayed. His brown eyes lingered, tracing her form with an unnerving intensity.

Flustered, her heart suddenly hammering against her ribs, pulse stammered in her throat like a guilty secret. Annie pressed herself flat against the wall to let him pass. The damask wallpaper was cool and rough against her back. She didn’t speak. She didn’t dare.

He passed her without acknowledging her further, his stare sufficed. His presence lingered behind him like sage incense.

That gaze. She told herself not to read into it, that he was merely waiting for her to move.

But hours later, in her too-thin bedsheets, Annie was still awake. She still felt the hotness of his eyes and the greasy liquid between her thighs.

Her fingers gripped the sheet tight.

She caught herself wondering—unwillingly—what his mouth might feel like between her ass cheeks, tracing the tight circle of her hole, What his breath might sound like against her spine. If he’d touch her with cruelty or care. The thought alone made her clench.

“Annie Franc ! You here to work ! Don’t piss me off” she threw her hands in air, talking to the ceilings.

Too late, her nipples were already stiff. And her panties drenched, again.

Frustrated she flipped onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing Morpheus to take her away.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

𝙼𝚘𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝙴𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝟽 : 𝙿𝙼 𓅓

The next evening, the twins had a guest. Annie caught only a glimpse of her through the sheer curtain at the vestibule window—a tall blonde wrapped in fur, lips cherry-red, eyes glossy with invitation. She giggled when Elias took her coat, and leaned in close as he murmured something into her ear. She could tell, even from a distance, what kind of night it was going to be. Aristocratic or not, these twins were men, and surely no different from the crackheads back her neighborhood in the south.

The blonde didn’t seemed confused, she looked happy, satisfied.

“A little slut.” Annie hissed between her teeth, then immediately felt childish for it. Regardless of her not open-minded opinion, that perfect mistress was a guest and her, the maid who was ordered to brew some teas.

She returned to the kitchen, hands shaking slightly as she poured hot water over the steeping jasmine. She balanced the tray with practiced care and moved through the hallway. Her feet slowed as she neared the lounge. The door had been left ajar.

She shouldn’t have looked. But she did.

The blonde woman completely naked was straddling Elias, her thighs spread indecently wide, grinding on him shamelessly.

Her lipstick was smeared halfway across her cheek. She laughed breathlessly as he gripped her breasts, thumbs crushing over her pink nipples. His free hand between her legs, he was playing with her clitoris like an instrument. His cock thrusting inside her vagina came in and out, shining red.

Behind the blonde stood Elijah.

Dressed in an elegant, gentleman suit. He clutched a fistful of her platinum hair, yanking her head back with an unnatural strength, that her spine arched like a breaking bow. His expression was unreadable, blank, focused. He believed in pleasure coming from precision, not mess. At least when he wasn’t starved.

Annie watched, terrified, as Elijah leaned down and sank his lacerating fangs into the woman snowy neck. His butchering ivory teeth penetrated into her throat with a squelching noise, a vicious splash.

The blonde prey’s lamentation turned into libidinous screams as her whole body jolted in orgasm.

A sea of blood poured down her chest, streaming between her boobs.

Elias laughed, delighted. “You always greedy Smoke.”

Smoke ? Such a peculiar nickname.Annie thought.

Elias, bent forward and licked the blood from her sternum, never stopping slamming the woman’s bleeding cunt, his fat cock fully fitting her.

The older twin didn’t stop feeding. He kept drinking liters after liters. The woman broke down. Her eyes rolled blank, white. She was coming again—or maybe dying. Annie couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to know.

Annie’s eyes burned.

The tea tray shook in her hands. Her whole body tensed. Her brown nipples stiffened beneath her clothes. Her mouth watered, inner walls fluttered with insistence. Heat invaded her stomach and butterflies knotted around her throat.

Arousal—shameful, helpless, undeniable—poured into her core like molten syrup. Her thighs pressed together so hard it hurt.

She imagined Elijah feeding on her. Forcing her head back too, clenching at her coiled afro hair. Alongside with Elias, spreading her thick thighs open, jamming recklessly inside her untouched cherry.

Horrendously, Annie got interrupted in her foggy fantasies. Elias looked up directly at the door, at her. She dropped the tray.

It didn’t crash. Her reflexes caught it just in time—but the cup tipped, spilling scalding tea over her wrist. She gasped and stumbled back.

She ran back to the kitchen, where she set the tray down with quavery hands. Her chest rose and fell in ragged bursts.

She’d just seen something impossible. Something vile. Something that made her stomach twist. Something that stirred her need to vomit.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

Thirty two years on this planet and she never witnessed such abomination. Annie washed her burnt wrist in the kitchen sink and ran quickly to her room, locking herself inside.

Annie laid flat on her back, panting like she’d run ten blocks uphill.

She hadn’t even undressed. The wool of her uniform clung to her sparkling ebony skin, the apron still tied askew around her waist. Her panties were full of greasy creamy and translucent fluids—sticky and hot, clinging between her legs like glue.

Her chest rose and fell in jagged bursts. The image wouldn’t leave her—the way the blonde had cried out of ecstasy. Her back arched. Her legs trembling as Elijah’s mouth fastened to her throat. And Elias—laughing, licking blood from her tits, driving his swollen cock inside her.

Annie closed her eyes shut, as if sleeping could help. Duh, obviously it didn’t. The obscenity grew louder, clearer, filthier.

She shoved her hand beneath her skirt. Her fingers found her drenched panties, squelching softly as she caressed herself through the damp fabric. Her clit was erected, swollen, claiming friction. She whimpered and rocked her hips against her own palm, desperate and wet. Definitely too wet. Her semen had already watered down to the crease of her ass.

“Don’t move.”

Elijah fantasied voice, she materialized in her psyche, hit her like a gunshot.

“You wear depravity beautifully dear Annie”

She gasped, fingers pushing the cloth aside, spreading her folds. She was drenched—shamefully so. Her wetness made lascivious, juicy noises as she circled her clit, her breath ragged, hips lifting off the mattress with every stroke.

She imagined his hands spreading her thighs open. His fingers digging into her meaty flesh. His mouth finding her throat, then lower between her legs, his sharp teeth grazing her cunt as she trembled beneath him.

And Elias was there too, sucking her open from behind, chuckling into her ass, tongue lapping at her asshole like it was cream.

Her fingers sped up. Her whole body writhed now, the pleasure cresting too fast, too high, too hard.

“Look at me,” Elijah ordered in her mind. “Don’t close your eyes. I want to watch you fall apart.”

“Fuck,” she whimpered, fingers plunging into herself now—two, knuckles-deep, pumping hard as her thumb slammed her clit.

Her pussy breathed around her fingers, fluttering, convulsing. Her juices gushed down her wrist. Her ass lifted from the bed in wild jerks.

She stared at the ceiling, totally drenched, her sheet wet with juice. Her fingers still buried inside. Her heart racing.

She hated herself.

Hated what she’d seen. Hated how her body had reacted. Hated how much she’d liked it. Unfortunately not enough to regret.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

𝙼𝚘𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝙴𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝟾 : 𝟹𝟶 𝙿𝙼 𓅓

The air smelled sex and tobacco. She sure didn’t smoke but degraded herself to a point she never thought possible.

Annie stood in the sparse bedroom, toweling the last beads of bathwater from her thighs. Her skin still tingled. She didn’t dare look at the sheets behind her. Her mess.

An hour and half had passed since she witnessed the most demonic act she only thought possible in series and edgy teenager’s films.

Her manager forgot to mention that the new clients were vampires. Even spelling their natures felt wrong in her mouth.

Mosquitoes, huh ? She was seeing clearer now. The punctures between her thighs were not insects deeds.

In front of the mirror above the sink, she moved lazily, methodically, as if keeping a routine would cleanse her shame. She buttoned a clean uniform—crisp, pressed, pulled from the wardrobe near the stairs. She tied the apron tight around her waist. Wore a polished pair of black shoes, slicked her coiled hair back in a strict fashioned-bun.

She did everything by the book, respecting the etiquette. Everything excellent, except one detail : she left intentionally her panties on the dresser.

The idea of fabric between her legs, pressing against her lips and over-sensitive clit, made her nauseous. She’d already changed them twice today. No point repeating the cycle. Moreover, the superhumans were pretty occupied with their guest, she surely safe and her coonie could rest from all this debauchery.

Annie crossed the hall to the servants’ wing, slipping through the narrow back corridor that led into the velvet amber kitchen.

Her uniform chafed against her bulky thighs with every movement. The cool air violently brushed her bare intimacy, burning her with a salacious sensation. God—she did feel everything. The beat of her swollen pearl, glide of her wetness and the cling of her folds.

She swallowed hard, trying to ignore the heat pooling low in her belly.

‘Your imagination remains tame’

Wild stance to tell her they preferred eating beings alive. Annie snatched the raw pig meat from the fridge.

‘Not sure they were hungry after what happened hours ago.’ She judged

The animal was still warm, surely died not long ago. Questions burnt her tongue and nerves but she wouldn’t risk her life asking.

And honestly, who could answer her interrogations, she was the only staff in this haunting prison.

Annie wiped her hands on her apron and unsheathed the long knife.

The first slice split the flesh clean. It bled sluggishly across the counter, oozy and syrupy, pooling at the base of the cutting board. Her stomach lurched. The strong odor of iron and musk assaulted her nostrils, nearly tipping her into retching.

She washed the meat under cold water, but it didn’t help. The texture stuck to her fingers. Viscous, gummy. She could feel the sinew split under her palm as she kneaded the salt into the grain, massaging the muscle the way she imagined Elias had worked the blonde’s thighs. Her breath caught. She slammed the pan down harder than necessary.

Butter. Thyme. Garlic. The skillet hissed.

She mashed the potatoes next. Left the skins in. Poured in cream excessively.

By the time the plates were arranged, Annie was ready to settle the supper. She loaded the onerous silver cart with steak, mashed potatoes, hot rolls, dark wine and pushed it into the hallway.

Her sweaty thighs grazed each other with every step dragging along her meaty clit against the harsh seam of her uniform.

She pushed through the grand archway into the dining room. It was a chamber of polished blackness and cold air. The same long mahogany table, gleamed like a black mirror, dominating the space, set for two. The only light came from a candelabra in its center, whose flames threw long, dancing shadows against the walls.

“Even Ms Lolly farm was livelier…” she coughed, melancholic.

Annie bent forward to set the first plate of mashed potatoes, her wide hips shifting beneath the stiff uniform. Her skirt rode up just enough to expose the curve of her lower ass. Her deep brown complexion totally exposed to the haunting walls glare. The faster she finished this the quicker she could return her quarters without confronting the mansion’s masters.

A filter of wind penetrated her gaped cunt, making her flower sing a queefy lullaby.

She persuaded herself that she decided to not wear any drawer to prevent changing them again, however the truth lies somewhere else. A place she couldn’t put foot on yet. A urge to please them—him, a way to conquer his acknowledgement.

The next seconds after she grabbed the platter of bloody steaks — the heat warming her palms—, her own juice leaked, flowing along her thighs, then dropped on the floor in a viscous plop.

The squelch immediately evaporated in the air, that abruptly turned glacial. The atmosphere shifted. All her surroundings stunned, frigid — except for the steamy, burning meat plate she was holding in her bare palms.

Annie’s plush body bounded immediately, tied to the glassy platform of the table. The very air skimmed around her velvet curves, raking up her skirt—higher.

“ I used to ingest bolder courtesans. Must admit none ever dare greasing my floor with their dirty, gushing cunt”

Annie couldn’t move.

Her body was no longer hers—every muscle seized, every nerve humming in brutal suspension. Nonetheless, her arms remained stretched forward, palms searing against the silver cart.

The plate pulsed with an impossible heat. Her palms stung. Then seared.

She tried to pull away but her hands didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her wrists locked, veins taut under the skin, paralyzed by a force she could neither name nor see. She blinked—once, twice—but her arms held stiff. Fire built in her flesh, spreading like molten metal through her nerves.

Then came the smell of her own skin, beginning to cook.

She opened her mouth—to scream, to plead, to moan—but nothing came. Her tongue stayed dumb, her throat frozen mid-breath. Only her eyes moved, wide and wet, flicking desperately around the chamber.

Another huge wave of cold wind came and ferociously spread Annie’s voluptuous thighs, making her sloshing pussy slurped.

“Oh dear, we got a chatty one there.”

No doubt. The older vampire twin was there.

In almost two days she was only used to the tone of Elias, he was the one who speak the most. However, this aura was different. She had seen it with the blonde prey. Elijah never lost himself in teasing.

“P—please” Annie struggled to beg.

Her burning palms completed perfectly with the hot waves inside her belly. Her mouth watered, tongue warm and slick, her tits strained the fabric of her uniform threatening to break free.

One moment the king sized dining chair was empty. The next, Elijah sat—legs crossed, his brown figure carved in stillness at the head of the table, as if he’d always been there.

“Do you fancy pornography Ms Annelise Franc ?” He asserted, lighting his pipe. Ignorant of her squirms, complains.

Elijah drove his predatory stare directly at her. Matching her teary eyes with his deep brown owns.

“I’m s—sorry—please st—stop” Annie was more begging her own body than the monster sitting in front of her.

Agony coupled with degeneracy. Pain lying with lust. The woman felt her labia gaping wide then closing. Her vagina turned into a baker, producing milk and cream. Her bruised bud claiming friction, throbbing with desperate need.

“I do appreciate the profanity in it.”

Charmingly he lifted his right long index, commanding the gloomy atmosphere, submitting the oxygen. When he put the finger down, Annie choked. Deprived of it. No air was filling her lungs, her eyes began to whitening, slowly, drool dripping from her hearty lips.

“ That’s it. You’re so depraved Annelise”

His eyes gleamed with lewdness. River of lava flooded inside him. Lust coiled through him like molten sin, thickening into a brutal ache between his legs—veined, hard, alive with hunger. He hardened with satisfaction of a butcher. His fat penis monstrously fed by her misery, her sobs, the ugly and helpless fluids of her shame.

Fuck. He needed more. He will claim more.

Elijah released the suffocating space allowing the maid to catch a breath.

His gaze slithered to her breasts—fleshy, weighty things that heaved with her every panicked inhale.

His beautiful, honeyed pecan features twisted into a carnivorous smile. His thick lips peeled back, offering his fangs to a barbaric display.

This time, he lifted his left index finger. The room obeyed. A brutal wind slammed against her chest, ripping her uniform.

He religiously watched her huge tits spilling free with a sultry bounce, jiggling, clenching each other — slick from sweat, deep chocolate brown nipples stiff and flushed by fear and excitement. He couldn’t care less about which one was it.

“Sin taste better when it’s pure Annie”

Not Annelise. Not Ms Franc. He abandoned any kind of courtesy.

“I supposed you are, too, another sinner.”

Annie carcass betrayed her consent again with another slurp,wetter than the first one. Her walls fluttered, her pink hole inhaled and exhaled on it own, following a diabolical rhythm. Heavens—! Even her tight anus twitch, craving a stretch.

It because of him

He trapped me

Fuckin bastard

She kept thinking vehemently.

Elijah laughed. Sinister.

“ I didn’t touch you, Ms Annie. Neither did I command your gushing pussy to bark, but she still doing it like a bitch in heat”

The vampire drew his feline fingers, tapping his temple “You own your desires and filth, Annelise. Exactly the same manner you fist your cunt thinking about Elias inside. Or me, devouring you whole”

Annie’s heart skipped a beat. How did he find out ? It’s impossible, they were feeding when—

“Ha. You wished to know, isn’t it Annelise”

She never get the chance to explain or fight back, something shove inside her, painfully, pleasurably.

Impossible, he was still sitting in front of her, puffing on his tobacco.

The invisible thrusts deepened, sharper now—her drenched walls clenching tight around nothing but air. Pain twisted through her gut, tearing her open until she spilled watery semen, rinsing the floor beneath her.

“See ? It was all in your head”

Her temperature back to normal.

The plate carefully placed on the dining table.

Her burnt palms ? Smooth, no trace.

She looked around her : Nobody. Not a faint presence.

She lowered her hands between her thighs. Sweat only.

“ I—I need to get out there”

Tag list :

@ultralspblr , @brownskincheyenne , @numb1smokeanniestan , @shamansha @tamagotchibra , @girlsneedlovingfanfics , @lizbehave , @underated345-blog @wakandamama @prettypinkprincess29 @katezy2x @mindyouthisismyaccount @lilchubbs @hdfen2474

Play Disturbia , Rihanna

[your-local-simp-writers]

Mistletoe

Word Count: 1456

Warnings: None

Silver the Hedgehog x Fem! Reader

Note- You are mobian, a silly little hedgehog!

Also yall should check our our latest poll ︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

The little town seemed plucked straight out of a snow globe. Rows of quaint timber-framed shops, their rooftops blanketed with snow, lined the cobblestone streets. Wreaths adorned every door, strings of golden lights looped from lampposts, and the scent of roasted chestnuts and spiced cider wafted through the crisp air. Silver and you strolled side by side, your breath visible in soft puffs as you took in the festive scene.

Silver adjusted his scarf, glancing down at you with a small, content smile. The lights reflected in his emerald eyes, giving him an almost ethereal glow. “This place is amazing,” he murmured, his voice soft but filled with awe.

“Isn’t it?” you replied, spinning in a circle to take it all in. “I love how everything feels so alive, like the whole town is celebrating together.”

The two of you wandered toward the bustling Christmas market, a maze of wooden stalls brimming with holiday treasures. Each booth seemed to tell its own story—one sold handmade candles in scents like pine and cinnamon, while another offered colorful woolen scarves and mittens. A nearby vendor was carving tiny figurines out of ice, his skilled hands moving with precision despite the cold.

“Oh, look at that!” you said, tugging Silver toward a stand displaying jars of sparkling snow globes. You picked one up and shook it, watching as tiny flecks of glitter swirled around a miniature village scene inside.

Silver leaned closer to observe, his hand brushing yours as he steadied the globe. “It’s like holding a little piece of this town,” he said softly, his tone filled with wonder.

You grinned, setting the globe back down. “Maybe you should get one, then. A way to remember today.”

He chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “I think just being here is something I won’t forget.”

Further down the street, the two of you passed a bakery where the windows were fogged with warmth. The display was filled with gingerbread houses, their frosting decorations so detailed they looked like real cottages. The smell of freshly baked pastries made your stomach rumble, and you couldn’t resist pulling Silver inside.

The bakery was cozy and bustling, with shelves lined with loaves of bread, trays of cookies, and steaming pots of hot chocolate. A friendly baker greeted you, offering a tray of free samples. You eagerly grabbed a tiny cinnamon roll, savoring the sweetness as you turned to Silver.

“Try this,” you said, holding one up for him. He hesitated for a moment before leaning down, taking the bite you offered. His eyes widened slightly, and he nodded in approval.

“That’s really good,” he admitted, his cheeks tinting pink—not from the cold, but from the closeness of the moment.

After leaving the bakery, you found yourselves in front of a toy store, its window display filled with plush animals and colorful trains. A group of children pressed their noses against the glass, their laughter ringing through the air.

Silver paused, watching them with a soft smile. “It’s nice, seeing everyone so happy.”

You nodded, slipping your hand into his without thinking. “It really is. It’s like the holidays bring out the best in everyone.”

Your touch startled him, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers curled gently around yours, his warmth a comforting contrast to the chill in the air.

As the evening went on, the two of you explored more shops—a tiny bookstore where the owner’s cat dozed on the counter, a craft store filled with handmade ornaments, and a quaint apothecary selling herbal teas and scented sachets. Each place felt like a treasure trove, and you found yourself drawn to the little details—the soft hum of holiday music in the background, the way the shopkeepers greeted you with warm smiles, and the simple joy of sharing the experience with Silver.

Eventually, as snow began to fall more steadily, the two of you found yourselves walking down a quieter street. “Any idea what you want for Christmas?” Silver asked, glancing down at you with a soft smile. His breath puffed out in visible clouds, and his silver fur seemed to catch the glow of the lights, making him look even more radiant than usual.

You grinned, your breath hitching slightly as you adjusted the scarf wrapped snugly around your neck. “Silver, I can’t tell you that. You have to guess!”

His ears twitched, and he tilted his head in thought. “Guess? How am I supposed to—”

“Imagination, my dear hedgehog!” you interrupted, laughing as you spun on your heels, gesturing dramatically at the market stalls lining the street.

He chuckled, the sound light and genuine. “Alright, fine. Let me think.” His gaze wandered over the nearby shops, his expression growing serious as he genuinely pondered the challenge.

As you walked, the two of you passed a stall selling handcrafted ornaments. You paused, admiring the delicate work—intricate glass figurines of snowflakes, reindeer, and stars, all painted with shimmering colors that caught the light beautifully. Silver noticed your fascination and stepped closer.

“These are incredible,” you murmured, reaching out to gently touch one shaped like a crescent moon. The cold glass felt smooth under your fingertips, and you smiled softly, imagining how it would look on a tree.

Silver watched you with quiet intensity, his green eyes flicking between your expression and the ornament. “Do you want it?” he asked after a moment.

You blinked and turned to him, shaking your head quickly. “Oh, no. I was just looking. It’s beautiful, but I don’t need it.”

He frowned slightly, but before you could protest further, he handed the vendor a few coins and carefully picked up the moon ornament. Turning back to you, he held it out with both hands, his cheeks slightly pink. “Here. I want you to have it.”

Your heart swelled at the gesture, and you hesitated for a moment before taking it. “Silver… Thank you. It’s perfect.”

The two of you continued strolling through the market, the glow of the lanterns and the twinkle of lights making the evening feel almost surreal. Silver seemed to relax as the evening wore on, his usual shyness giving way to a playful curiosity as you explored the stalls.

At one booth, you found a set of carved wooden figurines shaped like little forest animals. Silver picked up a tiny hedgehog, holding it up with a grin. “This one looks just like you.”

You laughed, nudging him playfully. “And this one must be you,” you said, holding up a sleek silver fox.

“Silver the Fox? I don’t think it has the same ring to it,” he replied, laughing as he put the figurine back.

As the snow began to fall heavier, the two of you ducked into a cozy café at the end of the street. The warmth of the fireplace inside was immediate and soothing, and the scent of cinnamon and cocoa wrapped around you like a comforting blanket. The café was decorated with wreaths and garlands, and a small Christmas tree stood in the corner, its lights twinkling merrily.

You and Silver found a small table near the window, and soon you were both sipping on steaming mugs of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon. You sighed contentedly, gazing out at the snow-covered street.

“This is perfect,” you said softly.

Silver nodded, his gaze fixed on you rather than the view outside. “It really is.”

After finishing your drinks, the two of you made your way back outside. The town had grown quieter, but the festive lights still glowed brightly, reflecting off the freshly fallen snow. As you walked down a narrow alley lined with garlands, something caught your eye—a sprig of mistletoe hanging just above you.

You stopped, looking up at it with a sly smile. “Oh, look at that,” you said, pointing.

Silver followed your gaze, his expression shifting from curiosity to sheer panic. “Oh… uh… I mean… th-that’s… um…”

You laughed, stepping closer to him. “What’s the matter, Silver? You’re not afraid of a little tradition, are you?”

“I-I’m not afraid!” he stammered, his cheeks turning a brilliant shade of red.

“Well, then?” you teased, tilting your head playfully.

He hesitated, his green eyes darting between you and the mistletoe. You could see his hands fidgeting nervously, his usual confidence completely gone. Smiling softly, you reached up, standing on your tiptoes to gently press a kiss to his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Silver.”

He froze, his blush spreading all the way to his ears. “M-Merry Christmas,” he stammered, his voice barely above a whisper.

Taking his hand once more, you gave it a reassuring squeeze as you continued walking. The snowflakes danced around you, the town’s lights casting a warm glow over everything.

[eternalstrigoii]

Sé Abú (It is Forever) - I

Playlist / Chapter By Chapter / AO3

summary: There's a beautiful full moon over Neshoba County, Mississippi, and you are in love with a horrible vampire. word count and warnings: 7,348 ; Presence of firearms. canon-typical violence and bloodshed, canon-typical cunnilingus. Penetrative sex. Monster imagery. Tags update as necessary.

. October 16th, 1932

Remmick couldn’t think. His shaking hand could barely wind the chain he’d worn around his neck – caked with dried blood and flecked with dark-burned flesh – through the claws of your interlaced hands. His were still long and sharp, stained with blood and swamp and carnage; yours were daintier, somehow. Dense and canine. There was still mud under them.

Your eyes were half-closed as you whispered into the hot, muffled brightness. If this was to be a wedding, then it would be a marriage from both sides – the thick, woolen blanket Chayton had heaped over the both of you offered minimal reprieve from the sun, but it had come from home.

It should’ve been different. Should’ve been something of yours and something of his braided together for the handfasting, the union that formed the whole.

There were prayers that should’ve been said. Ones you couldn’t deliver yourself.

But this was enough.

His still-glinting chain between your trembling fingers. The blanket that passed from grandmother to father to you for his shield.

I love him, you said to any spirit who would listen, I bring him before you as you brought him to me.

The words were there for him, then, tumbling in a gentle chorus from his lips as he clutched your hand, triggered by the sound of yours. Half a prayer remembered – delivered, once, to someone who was not you.

I’ve joined with him. I’ve tasted him, and he, me. His blood is in my veins.

There was something to be said for second chances. Even when what was meant to be eternal resided within numbered days, he would not have traded a moment of them. Not then, and certainly not now – no matter what they’d bring.

Whatever he is, he and I are one and the same. He is mine and I am his.

The truck jostled sharply on the unpaved road. Your bodies pitched, scraping the hot bed; disturbing the slow-healing wound through his midsection and making the world around you spin. The quiet sounds you both made – agony and nausea, a stab of fear poorly staunched with desperation – couldn’t crest the rumbling engine.

So much for gathering yourselves enough to escape. Shit.

“Are you covered?” you uttered on a ragged breath.

He thought so. The sun’s oppressive heat was subsiding, anyway; you must’ve entered precious, forested shade. It gave him just enough reprieve for his body to attempt to close the gaps where still-hot lifeblood pooled. He tried not to think of how quickly you must’ve been approaching Neshoba. How little time you might have left.

He tried to meet your eyes, to speak without having to put the words in his rough, half-human voice, but you had tucked your head against his shoulder.

“Not yet.” His long claws ghosted along your bloodied jaw, fitting to the nape of your neck to bring your head aloft. “Come on, love. Stay wit’ me.”

The ghost of a smile crossed your perfect mouth. The teeth inside were still jagged, kin to the shredding likeness of his own. “Until the end and after.”

“Until the end an’ after.”

He laid his head back on the uneven metal. It still sang with heat that made his already-splitting skull throb in time with your pulse. He let your head lower into the crook of his neck as you curled your body into his. Let your fastened hands lower against his battered chest.

You wanted, so badly, to be able to shield his body with your own. To drape yourself over him until your blood in his veins worked well enough for him to move unfettered, but the sun, and the scent of garlic on his proffered clothes, promised that recovery would take time. Time you didn’t have. You gave him everything you could in order to keep him alive, and it hadn’t been enough.

At least a silver bullet to the head would be quick. They might even have the sense to shoot you both at once.

 “Bhfuilis soranna sorcha,” he tried to sing, though the words mangled in too many teeth,  “Ach tagais 'nós na hoíche, trína chéile le chéile, claochlaithe.” Although you are the light, you come to me like nightfall; together, transformed.

“I love that,” you whispered, your own voice hoarse. “I love how you sound when you sound like you.”

He loved those words. How closely they resembled your name. You transformed something in him, you and he together…

The old truck’s tires slowed.

There was no point in mentally cursing, though he did; every sawed-off, hateful thing that could rise to him in the moment tightened his grip as he pulled your body closer by the hem of the shirt he’d worn two nights before. He was weak, but he would fight. He would fight because you couldn’t, because you deserved the chance to live—

 “I love you,” you whispered, and the decision was made. You had not moved despite the tacky blood dried on his skin, the lingering scent of burning flesh. He still smelled like himself, underneath. People only thought of rot in terms of fresh decay; he smelled like soil. Like life in its first stages.

“I love you,” he agreed. It was both apology and promise. This time, no one would run. Not as the driver’s door opened. Not at the approach of boots on soil.

You squeezed his fastened hand. He laid his cheek against the top of your head.

And the blanket gave to blinding day.

. Neshoba County, Mississippi

. April 13th, 1932

The rocking chair creaked, slow and even.

Chayton’s shotgun was within reach. The tip barely kissed the glass of his daughter’s bedroom window – so close, yet left at a great enough distance to only pose a threat. Some part of you wondered if it was meant to be that way. If he thought about it when he set himself up for nights like these. The Blackberry Moon had only just surpassed the canopy of new leaves, peering down upon one of the last still-cool nights. It cast him in silver pallor down to the plaits of his braid. Made the chips in his tin cup glint when he raised it for a drink.

 The coffee smelled burnt. He always burned it when he did it himself.

 “I can see you,” he called. He never bothered to raise his voice. He knew he didn’t have to.

You stood and stretched, disturbing the leaves, unfurling a body much too long and large for its old skin. You were the color of smoke above the fire, with eyes as bright as the harvest moon. Your bones crinkled when you moved, decompressing; hands too large, fingers too long, too sharp, Not Right, like the way your spine sometimes pressed too close to the surface. Like an animal not quite starving.

He did see you, then. You always knew when his eyes found the shape of you in the dark. His heart always betrayed him.

You emerged from the brush with practiced patience, deliberately slowing down your steps. The sort-shorn grass was wet with dew, tickling underfoot.

There was meat on the last step. Deer, freshly dressed on its own hide. No hickory smoke, just the raw, red meat and sharp, white bone.

Not enough to sustain you. But he had a family to feed.

You settled where the grass was worn thin at the base of the steps, where his daughter must’ve run between the house and the freshly-turned garden when the sun was high. You could still smell them on the wood and in the water; the way his wife must’ve lingered near that spot.

Scent could only tell you so much. Had she been the one to lay a cover down to keep the wood from staining? Did his daughter even know what it was they prepared for? What did he tell them? What did he tell anyone?

Your teeth came down on the first set of ribs. The sound was enough to call your thoughts home.

Chayton watched. The rocking chair’s even rhythm persisted.

You looked up at him from time to time. You lay like a dog – chest to the ground, arms up on the soft hide. It must’ve unnerved him to see you alternate between eating like an animal and using your hands. Must’ve, though his expression betrayed nothing; he drank the coffee. Looked at you. Looked up at the distant sky.

You said little to one another.

You picked the carcass until it was as near to clean as it could be left. It never took long. Then you gathered the edges of the hide and rolled it inwards, folding the dented bones into a neat pack. Tucked it against the railing with the hem on the bottom so it wouldn’t unfurl.

Your brother moved in your periphery. Set his half-empty cup on the windowsill.

You stilled.

He had unanswered questions. Ruminations that could’ve, should’ve, broken the communal silence.

The tension coiled in your stomach burned his face into your eyes. He was starting to look his age. Older than your father ever got to be.

“Kayla…” he began. A dozen thoughts started and stopped. When you left, you would not return until the moon was yet again at its fullest; he wasn’t sure he would know you outside of your wolf-skin. He hoped you did. He hoped that you did not mistake fear for apathy, distrust for disdain. He hoped you knew that the only thing yet capable of rendering any of your people, in their proud legacy of oration, inarticulate was you. He hoped that you knew your people still called you his sister.

It was the only way they felt comfortable referring to you.

You waited long enough to ensure he was not going to pick up the shotgun before you moved. You backed off slowly, refusing to take your too-bright eyes off of him until you’d put in enough distance to slink back into the shelter of the dark.

Neither of you heard the other let out the breath you’d been holding.

The deer sat like carrion in your stomach until you were satisfied with your aloneness. You kept your breath light and steps soft while you listened to the other night-creatures pause at your passing. How quickly they resumed reassured you that only animals used the slick stones of a tenderly trickling creek for a footpath; that the deviation in routine did not a coordinated ambush bring.

It still felt wrong.

It all felt wrong to you. Why had he waited until now to try to break a silence more than fifteen years in the making? How could he look at you from the same place, month after month, year after year, both of you seemingly unchanged beyond the presence of a thicker coat, and say nothing?

You would’ve liked to meet Dinah. Properly. Birdie, too, though she was far less wary than her parents; you’d seen the top of her head crest the window ledge when she was small. Her eyes were wet-earth-brown, nose short and flat – or, at least, it had been while she was still growing into her features. She slept better, now. Slept like you did when you didn’t have to make sure a war party wasn’t in your future.           

A half-rotten, lightning-split log marked the spot where the creek became home. Your spine rolled pleasantly as you stood. You combed your wet hands through your hair only to bend again, gathering a cupped handful of the shallow water to wash away the worst of the blood.

You had a month to mull it over.

You’d let the wolf-skin slip by the time you’d reached the field around your home. All that fur harbored more ticks than you were willing to deal with; you’d much rather run soap over your skin beside the outdoor spigot than bother with the wash tub and comb. You’d left the kitchen-bar wrapped in a towel on the porch, and you swung yourself around the banister to get it before anything that had crawled onto you could crawl off instead of getting drowned in the tap.

The water was cold. The air dressed you with gooseflesh. You bathed until the earth squished underfoot. By the time you’d made your way inside, you could smell a distant fire.

He’d skipped another meeting to see you. Just one more thing to add to the never-ending list of things they could hold against you.

You dressed for bed in a button down older than you were, whose threadbare elbows would do nothing to block the cool that had seeped into the wood of your favorite porch chair. You had a routine, however loosely committed you were to it: you started a fire of your own in the woodstove, just enough to get the house warm, and gathered up the book you were reading for the third time to go sit outside until your still-wet hair became unbearable. It wouldn’t be long until the pleasant chill gave to oppressive heat, and you intended to savor every moment.

So you did. You went back outside and sat in a curl with your ankles tucked behind the old chair’s arm rest, holding the book from the top. The world was quiet enough that you almost expected to catch the rhythm of a distant song.

“Hey, there!”

The sound of another person tore you back into reality as abruptly as though the book were yanked from your grasp. You sat up, the old chair creaking; never once had you doubted your senses, but whatever fleeting blame you’d placed on being too interested fled at the smaller, softer noise.

There was a white man cutting across your yard.

There was a white man cutting across your yard and he wasn’t making a sound.

The grass brushed against his pant legs, of course; his steps were soft, but they were there – gently treading. You could hear him breathing, but not…

Not the sound of a heart. Not the way it should’ve beat. Something moved blood in that man’s veins, made the breath from his lungs feed his still-flushed body.

He saw you looking and raised a hand to wave, like he’d expected your wide-eyed silence. Like he was neutralizing the threat of his presence before he’d gotten anywhere close to the porch – which some part of you reminded you that he absolutely should not do.

You didn’t move.

You were too busy reeling. You should’ve heard him coming long before he’d become visible, even from inside the house.

He didn’t give you long to wonder what manner of spirit he could be. The scent of him reached you before he did – of rot, rich and cool like turned earth, like leaf-mold and spent bergamot. Nothing human, but nothing without form. There was blood on him, in him, somewhere. You could smell it under the starch in his clothes.

He stopped several paces from the porch.

He caught scent of you, too, and you were mouthwatering. Sweet and deep like viscera pulled apart by starving hands. Like lovers’ tangled embrace. The violence of birth, the cradle of death, and the ash-and-tallow soap meant to keep it buried.

You unfurled yourself slowly, unhitching each ankle from behind the chair’s arm. Adjusted to set your feet on the floor. Your heart beat your ribs like an animal in a trap, but you managed to fold down the corner of your page and set the book on the chair when you stood.

“Evenin’.” The word came in an accent you didn’t know and carried more weight than it should’ve.

“Little late for evenin’,” you replied.

He wasn’t dressed for this. There were no roads close enough to wonder if he’d been in a car that had broken down; he would’ve walked for miles, and there were no dirt stains, no clinging insects, no grass awns or exertion-rumples. It didn’t even look like he’d worked up much of a sweat. Certainly didn’t smell like it.

“S’pose so.” He was watching you, too. Trying to understand what it was that some part of him recognized. It was no labor to look at you. He tried to be subtle about it, though the movement of his eyes could only be so contained. Most people were beautiful in some way or another, that was true – but most people, at least in this age, also wore more than a shirt repurposed for a nightdress. Your husband must’ve been tall. The way the fabric clung to your upper arms didn’t match the way the aging hem brushed your lower thighs. Aging hem – maybe not a husband.

“I didn’t mean t’ scare you. I didn’ think anybody lived this far out.”

The cadence of his voice didn’t match. You weren’t sure how you knew that, the words just didn’t have the right rhythm. The longer he stood there, the more certain you were that nothing good could come from this.

“They don’t.”

You tried to draw a boundary with those words. You meant to say, in no uncertain terms, that this was your land – he was not the first white man to come onto it and he would surely not be the last, but none had ever been welcome.

What you said, to him, sounded a little more to the tune of no one but me.

That would’ve made things easier, had he been able to figure out what it was about you that made him feel like he should retreat.

“You Choctaw?” he asked. Quite possibly the most idiotic thing that could’ve come out of his mouth – he knew it even before the look that crossed your face said more than either of you managed to convey in words thus far.

“What are you, the census bureau?”

His mouth betrayed him. You saw the flicker of a smile make it twitch – he thought you were funny, even if he knew he couldn’t laugh.

(It gave you some bare-bones pleasure to know you could still trade quips.)

His posture eased just a little. You weren’t sure if you liked that, but you had to allow it. “That’d be a shame. I’m lookin’ t’ meet with the tribe, an’ it might be forward of me, but—”

“What do you want with the tribe?” You had to kill whateverwas about to come out of his mouth before it went somewhere it couldn’t come back from.

He should’ve known a well-placed barb wouldn’t ease your skepticism. Rightfully so. He prepared to speak in half-truths, to let you in just enough—

But you noticed the way the moonlight hit his eyes. The flash of sanguine red.

“What are you?”

The redness vanished. He blinked. He quirked his head like he didn’t know what you meant, though you knew he did.

You let your own eyes brighten. Let the anxiety hammering your heart into your ribs become the emergence of thick claws and too-sharp teeth. “I’m not gonna ask again: what are you?”

He held up his open palms a little further ahead of him than a simple surrender necessitated. Some part of him must’ve recognized that you were as much of a threat to him as he might’ve been. “I’m not lookin’ for a fight.”

“Then answer me.”

There was no version of this standoff where either of you got out of this unscathed, was there? He must’ve known what you were the whole time, and he still never faltered. Your only consolation was—

 “I need t’see your Fire Keeper,” he finally said.

Now the rhythm of the words made sense.

“I came here, from Ireland, twenty-one years ago.” His breath was a little shallow; he couldn’t find the balance between the truth and the gentler version, though he tried. “The land of my father didn’t exist anymore. Invaders kept comin’ – stealin’, pillagin’, takin’ away what made us who we were. Your people an’ my people went through horrors at the same time – ours wasn’t a famine no more than your people willin’ly left their land.”

That didn’t answer your question. Either of them. Not fully. It put a pit in your stomach that you couldn’t force down, but it didn’t – couldn’t – make you stupid.

You started to ask why those things were connected when he continued, “Your Fire Keeper can conjure spirits. Me, I’m trapped here – what I am doesn’t get the privilege of seein’ home again.”

“That’s not true.” You didn’t know if it was, but you didn’t believe it. Didn’t want to.

“It is. Half’a Ireland was wiped out less than a hundred years ago. More an’ more before that. We used t’ be able to reach the other side ourselves.”

He was looking at you, but he wasn’t just looking at you. That pit in your stomach was a gaping chasm; you felt naked, laid bare and vulnerable in a way he never should’ve known you were. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was just you. Maybe he had no idea that he was not looking at you, not looking through you, but seeing you.

It scared the hell out of you.

“Your people sent help when you had nothin’. I came t’ask for help one last time. I’ve got no family left. There’s barely anythin’ like me.”

You believed him.

“I’ve been alone for a long time. I jus’ need t’see my people. Just once.”

You believed him. There was absolutely nothing in his tone, or his posture, or the unnaturally fluid way he moved, or the way his words lilted in his human-looking mouth that gave you any inclination of insincerity, and that frightened you worse than a stand-off.

“Please.”

He touched the porch railing. You didn’t fully process how close he’d gotten until he was there, until you should’ve been pushing him away.

“What are you?” you repeated.

“I thought you weren’t gonna ask again,” he quipped back.

It didn’t dissolve whatever was between you this time. You took a step forward of your own; you felt uncertain of your legs, but that wasn’t how it looked. Not to him. Your hand reached out to brush the railing not too far above his as your bare feet landed on the step, and you were so close that the radiant heat of your body felt like summer on his skin. You were so close that he could’ve stroked your claws.

“Vampire,” he replied. “An’ you?”

There was another name for it, but you doubted he knew a word of your language. “She who wears wolf-skin.”

“Werewolf,” he said, almost automatically. There were plenty of names for it, maybe as many as there were for him.

“I guess.”

You didn’t move and neither did he. He was different, up close. Less average looking than you’d thought. His face was sort of round, sort of chiseled, neither angular nor plain. His ears were a little big, hair a little too neat. The things you didn’t like about him were the ones that seemed the most contrived. His shirt didn’t fit him properly, straining across his chest like it was meant for a man with less broad shoulders.

You were so beautiful he felt as if he were staring into the sun. The soft, fresh-earth brown of your eyes had lightened to a rich, unnatural amber. Your mouth was soft, hair the satin of a raven’s wings falling in a curtain down your back. A little spilled over your shoulder. Your curves were softness upon muscle, and the shape of your face was meant to be held in someone’s palm.

“I’ll see what I can do,” you said, though you shouldn’t have.

You really shouldn’t have.

He stared at you like he had no idea what you were talking about.

“You need to be patient,” because you knew there was no way you were going to pull this off, “But—”

“Thank you.”

He said it on a breath, on an exhale, like he had never dreamed you’d say yes. He had no idea how many barriers still stood between him and his purpose, but one of them – arguably the most important – no longer did.

“Thank you, miss…?”

“Kayla.” You’d never heard yourself say your name like that before. “Kayla Marsh.”

“Remmick,” he replied.

You nodded, aware that it was only one name, but not asking. Not yet.

“Kayla.” You had also never heard anyone say your name the way he did, like it was something meant to be savored. “Thank you, Kayla.”

You were still looking at him as his fingers ascended the railing. It was a slow gesture, one you should’ve caught in your periphery; you didn’t realize he’d moved until he was touching you. His fingers weren’t as warm as they should’ve been, and they startled you, and you did absolutely nothing about it as he, so carefully, so deliberately, moved them under and around your own in order to take your hand in his.

“May I?” he asked on another breath, and you nodded without thinking.

The step he took didn’t just put him in your immediate proximity, it put the two of you nearly chest to chest. Your hand pressed to his shoulder on instinct; you weren’t sure if you were trying to stop him, or yourself, or just this, because you weren’t stupid, you did know what this was, what was between you, and why you should not do it.

His eyes were the color of blood on the surface of a fresh wound. Ironic, considering that was how he made you feel.

“May I see you?” His fingers moved along the seam of your shirt, ascending your thigh from the bare skin just above your knee. He was asking and inviting all at once, and some horrible, greedy part of you wanted him to reach out and start undoing your buttons one at a time.

“Only if I can see you, too.”

He brought your knuckles to his lips. His eyes glinted with promise.

You let your hand fall. The tips of your claws made thin runs in the fabric of his shirt, only half-noticed; his lashes lowered in response to your touch. You thought about recreating that flash of fantasy on him, flicking each button open even if it meant you’d sever every piece of thread. It was the only thing you could think about; he was more solid than he’d seemed. You ran your palm down his chest. Over his stomach, which quivered when you passed his ribs.

You stopped short of reaching his belt.

His eyes returned to focus as you, still holding his hand, retreated back up the steps. The tether of your touch coaxed him to follow you, to let himself be guided, though he only managed to last until he’d reached the solid floor.

With no warning, your back collided with the nearest beam. His hands were under you, boosting you onto the railing’s edge.

You obliged, settling against it. His eyes caressed the expanse of new skin bared to him as your shirt hitched up.

His hands went to his. It took him no time at all to liberate the neat, white undershirt beneath. His suspenders fell, like reigns, against his thighs. The chain he wore looked old. Expensive. You couldn’t focus on any one thing if you wanted to pay attention to the way his deft fingers flicked open the buttons at his cuffs. It bordered on obscenity.

 He, too, stopped just short of his belt; you’d drawn your lower lip in between your sharp teeth like you’d forgotten they were there. He hoped you didn’t have faith that he could stop himself if you broke the skin.

He couldn’t take that chance.

One last, low breath passed between your lips and his. His mouth closed over yours – softly, at first. Your hand came up to cradle the back of his head, claws carding slowly through his hair.

He kissed you like you deserved to be kissed. Coaxed your lips apart with the gentle brush of his tongue. You obliged, even if you had to bite back the urge to recoil in disgust at the viscosity of his saliva. The taste of it wasn’t the problem, though you knew that familiar red-meat game had been born of foreign reason. It was the way it touched your tongue. Like plasma.

He rutched your shirt a little higher. The cool air found where you were warmest, and you felt a full-body flush come over you. You really should’ve waited, should’ve grabbed up your book and taken him inside even if it was in no way wise.

He drew back just enough to lick the wonderfully rough callouses on the pads of his fingers, and every hesitation quieted under the weight of a hitched-breath, “oh.”

He met your eyes as his dampened fingers traced the seam of your cunt. His touch was unhurried – you were soft, warm and wet; he felt your inner muscles flutter and savored parting you around the first knuckle of two fingers.

 “D’y’like that?” he murmured. The pad of his thumb brushed over your clit, and the gasp it caused made all of his blood gather in his cock.

“Yeah,” you managed. “Yes.”

He kissed you again. Harder, this time.

His fingers rocked inside you as your nails pressed into his upper arm. You couldn’t get enough of him. Didn’t want to. You flicked your tongue against his to invite it back into your mouth, and he moaned. You’d never heard a man moan like that. Fuck, you’d never heard a man moan at all. You wanted him closer, wanted to push your feet through the loops he’d made of his suspenders and –

He dropped to his knees. The thin band of saliva that connected his mouth to yours drew taut until it broke.

He held your hips against the railing as his fingers withdrew; you would’ve broken the grasp of a mortal man. He rubbed damp circles into your skin as he leaned in to nuzzle the sweet little button of your clit. It made your thighs twitch. His tongue darted out to taste you, and the sound you made as your heels hit the wood was all the encouragement he desired.

 That’s right, he coaxed with gentle, persistent ministrations; he let one of his too-strong hands fall to your thigh to boost it over his shoulder. There you go. He kept you there, a hand on your hip and one on your thigh, so close that your throbbing pulse deafened him.

His tongue fucked you slowly. Flattened. Curled. Fit to your clit like he was made for you as he drew it between his slick-wet lips. He kissed your cunt like he was kissing your mouth, and your strung-taut muscles and quick, shallow breaths sent the thrill of praise through him.

“There,” you gasped, your hand knotting in his hair without warning. You pressed him closer, demanding he keep pressure on the spot that made your vision hazy.

He obliged, of course. He ate you slow and messy, flicking his tongue, teasing that spot that made your eyes roll back and your hips arch against his mouth. You were losing your senses, consumed with the wonderful heat building in your nerves. That’s it, he coaxed, the words sending wonderful vibrations into you, through you, your  heel pressing into his back to spur him forward.

He loved that. His teeth grazed your clit, just soft enough to tease. Just sharp enough to make your breath hitch.

You didn’t, couldn’t, warn him. You just came.

He groaned like your orgasm brought upon his own. The sensation of it, of his encouraging, persistent licks made you clench and quiver. Made your thighs close in as he buried himself between them, tasting your release like it could sustain him.

It took him a moment to let go of you. His inhuman claws had begun to emerge, unnoticed until then; they pressed into the swell of your hip until blood beaded at their points. It was just enough to wet them, to leave the taste of you in two different forms on his skin.

“Was that alright?”

You laughed. Wasn’t much of one, considering how hard you had to fight for the ability to breathe, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “You’re the only other person who’s ever made me cum, so. Yeah. More than alright.”

He thought you were joking. He rubbed the small, quick-healing marks where his claws had pierced your skin as he stood. The tenderness of the gesture kept you quiet.

It also made you look at him like he hung the moon, not that either of you were willing to acknowledge that.

“I don’t know why you asked to see me,” you said, maybe just to break the silence. “We never finished taking off our clothes.”

“Didn’ mean it like that,” he replied, voice thick like honey. “I wanna see you as you are.”

It took him a moment, but he let himself change. It started with his hands – they shifted from the blunted shape he had known as a mortal man into the claws of a predator. It went in stages, sharpening and lengthening until the shifting bone felt as if it had re-settled into its proper place. His teeth did much the same in a jaw that had to dislocate in order to make room for all of them. He was unnatural. Inhuman. His eyes were like coals in the fire, lit, somehow, from within. It was different from the redness he’d already shown you.

It was the first time you’d ever seen a face like your own in someone you didn’t know.

You reached out – without hesitation, he noticed. Your fingers brushed along his jaw as if searching for a new swell in the still-tender flesh. You didn’t ask if it hurt; your eyes were softer. A little darker, but still bright. Still not human.

You held out your upturned palm. It took him a moment to recognize that you wanted him to place his hand into it. Your fingers lingered upon his face, and it struck him as a cruel irony that they were in no way calloused. You healed from all wounds, then, even the ones made to protect you.

He lay his palm tentatively into yours, spreading his fingers so that the sharp, dark claws would frame your wrist.

“You’re beautiful.”

He laughed. It was low, bitter, and a lot more intimate than it should’ve been.

It made sorrow twinge in your chest.

Your fingers did the same, around his. You brought him close to you, again, by the gentle hook of your claws against the heel of his palm. His lashes lowered over his back-lit eyes, and the sight of him, so sincerely devastated by simply touching you…

You kissed him. Again. Your soft mouth was so patient with his; he did not know if he could handle kissing you like this, but your tongue was careful as it passed his parted lips. You brushed it along the points of his teeth like you were taking note of how sharp they were, that all of them were. You were still cradling his jaw, the claw on your thumb raised just enough to avoid breaking the skin.

His arm encircled you. He drew you to the edge of the railing, almost right against the simple buckle on the leather belt he wore. He’d pilfered. He wore clothes from several different men, few of which fit as well as he’d hoped.

You let your hand drop from his to undo it, and he had to help you lest you stop touching him. He had no reason to worry about that – he’d barely started taking off his pants before your warmth found the spot where his cock strained against the fabric. A low, needy moan escaped him.

“May I?” you asked without retreating, your lips brushing his as you spoke.

He nodded rather fiercely. He was so hard he ached.

You tugged his unbuttoned shirt from his shoulders, then his undershirt over his head. He undid your buttons quickly, only fumbling a little; he could not resist the urge to put his mouth on your collarbone the moment it was bared to him. To move from it to your shoulder, then up your neck – kissing, tracing his sharp teeth along the path of your pulse until you were so close to him that you couldn’t even shiver without him feeling how it raced through you.

You stroked his cock the way you’d stroked his jaw, your hand cradling his length as your thumb traced a path from about-midway to the ridge of his tip. It jumped a little, leaking as readily as his drool had connected your mouths.

You found that undeniably hot.

“Kayla,” the chest-reverberating timbre of his voice drew your eyes back to his. “Please…” You’d let his tip linger near your clit, and the urge to gently buck his hips – to take over, slip inside of you and fill you – consumed him.

You brushed your nose against his. Were you nuzzling him? He could hardly process it before you had your thighs settled at his hips.

“Take it slow.” You let your hand return to one of his strong arms as he settled himself against you. He rocked his hips lightly, watching your eyes change as you felt him slick himself in the wetness he’d caused. He liked them brighter, like this. You were so beautiful, but somehow more, still, when there were no barriers between you.

He nodded. Slipped a hand under you to brace you where he needed you to be, and slid inside of you like he belonged there.

Your claws broke skin. It was one thing to touch him, another entirely to feel him seat himself to the hilt inside of you – his cock pushed your limits in all the right ways.

“Easy,” he breathed, but it was so wrought that you weren’t sure if he was talking to you or himself. He rolled his hips shallowly. The railing creaked. The claws of your free hand sunk into it like the wood had gone soft. Your eyes were aglow behind your half-lowered lashes, and only you seemed to be aware that his had gone ember-bright.

Again.

The railing protested. Your breath caught on a little moan. You were trying not to dig your claws in, but there was so much of him it made you lose track of yourself.

Again. Your toes curled. Pleasure shot through you like sparks, made all the worse by the heavy, delicious drag of his thrusts. You were so wet for him, so welcoming; your body didn’t want to feel him retreat.

“Remmick..”

The sound you made of his name drove him half-wild. He shifted his angle slightly, but all for the better – you keened like an animal as your head fell back. He did it again and again, the tempo of his steady rhythm increasing. You were senseless and nothing but your senses, both overwhelmed by him and enraptured with him. You let go of the ledge to wrap yourself around him, to let him lift you up off of it so he could hit that perfect spot that made you moan like he was the only man who could deliver such pleasure.

“Feels so good,” slipped out.

“Yeah?” The word was almost automatic. He tried to gather himself enough to express a coherent thought, but the desire to put his mouth back on your skin, to taste the frantic throbbing of your pulse, won, instead.

“Yeah…”

You lost yourself in the sweet little licks he left along your throat. The way his teeth asked permission for something you weren’t sure if you wanted to give, but would’ve. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses from the hollow of your throat to the spot just below your ear only to keep going along your jaw, back to your mouth. Back to another round of smoldering kisses that made it all the harder to resist the hot flush that came over you, made pins and needles intensify in the backs of your calves. It felt like changing, like you were on the cusp of where your skin and the wolf skin were about to alternate though you knew you weren’t.

“Please,” you breathed into his mouth, your knees pressing into his sides just above his hips. “Remmick, please—”

His thumb brushed your clit. You cried out, your back arching as he held you as close to him as he could make you stay. Your claws dug into his back to form thin, quick-healing slashes. He was so close, all of a sudden – it was too much to feel you and to feel how even a light touch worked you toward your peak. You were clutching him the way your cunt clutched his cock, and he wanted nothing more than to join you at the heights of ecstasy – so much and not enough.

He pulled your hips flush with his and ground into that soft, perfect place that alighted every nerve. You howled. Your heels pressed into the backs of his thighs, demanding he join you, begging for him not to pull away, to fuck you through it, to keep going even if it made no sense to.

Your orgasm pushed him over the edge. He had to brace you against the porch railing so his knees wouldn’t buckle; he made a plaintive sound that might’ve been your name.

His cum didn’t feel the way you thought it should’ve. It wasn’t cold, at least. Friction had probably warmed him up enough to make it not-tepid, though it didn’t exactly feel right.

You shifted a little. His hands flexed, keeping you firmly where you were. He was too overwhelmed to move, yet; his heavy breath and slackened muscles needed another few moments’ recovery.

You stopped trying to move when he held you still. Tried, and failed, not to dwell on how insufferably hot it was to have his hands on your hips while he twitched inside you. While he filled you with his cum. You had no business enjoying it.

He met your eyes again, after a moment, and the way his widened with surprise at the intensity of your gaze should’ve made you blush. Should’ve, but didn’t; turns out, you really did like the half-ruined look on a man.

“I was just about to settle in for the night, if you wanted to stay.”

He blinked. Quirked his head just a little, like, after all that, he still wasn’t sure if he’d heard you correctly.

You picked up your shirt from where it had been draped, forgotten, over the railing. The way your body shifted made Remmick’s lashes lower again, though he knew he ought to withdraw. You were surely going to dress for bed, again, and…

You draped your shirt over your arm as you sat up, bracing a hand on the nearest beam so you could kiss him. It wasn’t deep, wasn’t lingering, but you kissed him of your own volition all the same. It left him reeling so intensely that he did nothing to stop you from separating your bodies, climbing off the railing and grabbing your book off the chair. You hesitated, just for the length of a heart’s beat, before grabbing his clothes, also.

He really shouldn’t let you do that. He didn’t know what you knew, let alone what you might think when you found out the extent of his limitations. What left him vulnerable to you, let alone the cool, night air.

You reached the door before he’d even taken a step to follow. “Are you coming?”

That was an invitation. One you arguably shouldn’t have made. He nodded, pausing to gather his shoes before he did. As if bending didn’t make you tilt your head to admire him in all the ways his un-altered pants didn’t convey.

You waited. Only when he’d joined you did you let yourself in, and Remmick, ever grateful, closed the door behind you.

© eternalstrigoii / N.V. 2025.

dividers by me, cafekitsune, olenvasynyt, saradika-graphics and kaitsawamura

tag list: @draconicks, @ally-thefandomperson, @ircngrip, @shutupwyl, @unbetrayal

[justgarb]

Post-war-of-the-rams I decided to wash all of the woolens using a 5 gallon bucket with cold water, laundry detergent, and dawn dish soap. I use this on a much smaller scale for wool socks so I thought I would give it a go.

After two years my *visibly* clean woolen tunic produced the most disgustingly brown water I have ever seen from a piece of laundry

UNTIL

My Army-navy green wool blanket cloak produced near black water.

None of it stank, but jesus christ that was nasty. I ended up soaking every woolen garb piece for an hour with mild hand agitation, then spin cycling and soaking in fresh, repeat, until the water ran almost clear. My cloak *feels* so much lighter, but that may be the disgusting fire-retardent chemical masked with febreeze making its way mostly out. My tunic has no fire-smoke smell what so ever and I love it. An almost new wool blanket leached so much dye, without even fading, that I am worried about what would have come out if it had gotten wet. Don't let anyone lie to you - you NEED to wash your woolens. Not all of the time, but occasionally - it's good for them, good for you, and good for anything they may leach onto if you happen to get wet.

[ezekiellsplayground]

I will always love how round & plump a 4ply yarn is. These have been plyed and wet finished, so I’m just waiting for the skeins to dry before I can start using them to make a crochet beetroot bag.

[dangerphd]

Handspinning for Warp

Between The Project, and some recent pre-TdF discourse, I revisited some articles about spinning for warp yarn (that second page is about commercial yarns, but all the advice is great and the evaluation of so many different fibers is supremely useful).

I am not sure the breed of sheep really matters in the long run...at least not nearly as much as the method of fiber preparation and method of spinning - e.g. a worsted spun finewool of similar grist/weight will be as strong as a woolen spun longwool (if they fit in the heddles it shouldn't matter that much, but the worsted would also be able to withstand abrasion better).

The things I worry about most are uneven lumps being abraded in the heddles or reed, or even just spinning too fat for the eyes and then the entire string is constantly abraded under tension. But articles like this one about handspinning for band weaving warp remind me that humans have managed to pull it off for thousands of years. 😹

So I think for The Project, what I really need to know is the diameter of the eyelets-to-be-threaded/the width of the gaps in the reed so I can aim for smaller than that and let it be the rate-limiting-factor, and let the sett be derived from a lack of abrasion as the strongest priority...am also considering a hefty whack of sizing (the flour kind, not the milk kind) to ameliorate abrasion before sending it off to The Weaver.

🤔

[bluegekk0]

FPK AU Outfits: Vyrm

Part one of the alternate outfits for the AU characters!

Other character outfits: Grimm

(From left to right)

Old royal cloak - Vyrm's old cloak worn during his rule, and the only remaining layer of his royal robes. The cloak is made from soft, warm material, and has darkened over the years he spent in hibernation. He wore it during his time in the wilderness, and as a result, it became torn and raggedy, though it is still perfectly suitable for wearing. Vyrm usually wears it at home, or outside during the warmer months of the year. The collar has a hidden button allowing him to freely take the cloak off.

Casual cloak - given to him by Grimm as a birthday present, this woolen cloak is particularly soft and comfortable and has enough buttons to allow him to put it on and off without trouble. Vyrm only wears it at home, especially during colder months or when he feels overwhelmed, as the softness of the fabric helps him calm down.

Formal outfit - a set of clothes designed by Divine as a wedding anniversary gift, alongside a matching set for Grimm. It is composed of a button-up tunic sewed from soft fabrics and a fancy light cloak with a slightly fluffy collar. Vyrm reserves it for special occasions, such as holiday celebrations, dates and his rare visits to the City.

Winter outfit - the clothes Vyrm wears during the coldest months of the year, composed of two layers: a button-up woolen tunic and a warm cloak with a fur collar. To additionally protect his hands and feet from the cold, he often puts on warm wraps

Gathering outfit - a simple green tunic Vyrm wears whenever he goes gathering, or to stop by the market. It is accompanied by a belt which holds his geo purse or any additional pouches, a shoulder bag, and a pouch belt wrapped around his tail. This allows him to collect small items such as any tools or materials he bought at the market, or herbs and fruits that he collected on his occasional gathering trips with Hornet.

Modern AU outfit - his main clothes in the modern spin-off of the AU, which illustrate his general clothing preference.

(20.01.25 update) Comparison with the old version!

[witch-hazels-musings]

Hi Hazel! Hope you are doing well! 🤗

Could I request a Divination for Childe sandalwood, dalmation stone, and cinnamon? Thank you! ❤️

Sandalwood (ceremony), Dalmatian Stone (loyalty, family), Cinnamon (love and prosperity) Childe x gn reader | Divination Ritual warning: none! its super fluffy :D

"We're going to be late," you hummed against his lips.

"Are we?" he asked, his hands flush against you, grip possessive, tight.

You pulled back from his seeking attention and smirked at the look on his face. "Do you not want to go?" He clenched his jaw. "Your sister put in a lot of work for this. She'd be upset if you didn't show up."

"These things can go on for hours. Who cares if we are a little late," he replied and made a move to your jaw. His lips caressed your skin while his fingers tugged at your new clothes.

"It took me forever to put this on."

"And you look good in it. Almost too good," he said against your neck.

"Childe, come on." You pushed against him, the woolen fabric of his decorative tunic made your palms itch. "I don't want your family mad at me."

"That could never happen."

"Yes, well, I'd rather they keep a good impression so - get - off," you shoved him back playfully. He retreated, though he looked like a wounded. As he often did when he didn't get his way. You turned back to the mirror and fussed with your clothes. "I wish I'd asked Tonia to show me how to wear this. Does it look bad?" You flared out your hands so he could see you. It wasn't the first time you'd worn Snezhnayian garb but it was the first time you'd put it on yourself.

Childe appeared over your shoulder while you fussed at the collar, tugging at the wrap around your waist. You adjusted the long sleeves and waited impatiently for Childe's opinion.

"You look perfect," he said, his voice low and steady as his eyes captured you in the reflection.

"It just feels off somehow. I guess I'll get used to it." You moved onto your hair, adjusting it so it wasn't sticking up anywhere wildly. Every time you moved the bells on the ends of your sleeves jingled a happy tune. When you felt as put together as you could be, you glanced at Childe.

He seemed frozen, lost in the reflection. His gaze longing, enchanted. He stared at the two of you, together in the bonds of his land.

"Hey." Your voice drew him back. He kissed you on the temple before pulling away from the mirror. It took you a second to compose yourself.

Clearing your throat, you made for the door while Childe wandered around the room, head on a swivel.

"What's up?"

"I've lost my coat. Have you seen it?"

"No. Did you hang it up like I told you to?" you asked, grabbing yours from the hook near the door. It took a minute to get your arms through the sleeves and the extra bulk made you feel like you were shoved into a pillow, but it was worth it not to freeze. "Check the bedroom, I'll look out here."

Childe made his way down the hall and you quickly scanned the living space for his coat. It took you almost no time to find it. Draped over the back of a random chair in the corner. You shook your head, laughed, and were about to call him when something fell from the pocket.

A small box.

Ornate.

Richly blue.

Curious, you reached for it, and though you weren't sure what was inside, your hands couldn't stop shaking. You could hear Childe in the back rooms rummaging through his things. There was time.

The lid lifted to reveal a ring shimmering in ice blue, adorned with pure gems that caught the light. You lifted it to your face, stunned.

"It's not back here," Childe shouted from the hall, startling you. You slammed the box closed and shoved it back into the pocket. Spinning on your heels just in time to face him. "Oh hey, you found it." He made his way to you. Every step caused your heart to beat more frantically than the last.

You gazed at him. His sun-freckled cheeks warmed in the yellow light of his home, his ruffled hair and crooked smile. The small scar under his left eye told of a wild childhood in the snow.

The man of your dreams.

"Ready?" he asked, his hand held out for you to take it.

You placed your fingers in his grip, hoping he couldn't tell you were shaking. "More than ready," you replied.

Thaumaturgy Anthology (October 11-13, 2024)

This event is based on spells and rituals. Inspiration does not equal understanding; liberties have been taken. All content is owned by Witch Hazels Musings, theft of these images and stories will result in immediate action.

[guardevoir]

Tour de Fleece 2025, Day 1

or: ah fuck, here we go again

So, remember last year's Terrible Horrible Green Glitter Time?

Yeah. So. That was 400g of green glitter merino (150 of it spun during TdF), as a nice, medium, woollen-ish 4-ply. This year?

200g (of 300g total) of FINE. WORSTED. BLACK. MERINO. Plus!! 50-ish grams of the same thing in red. PLUS!!!!

600

grams

of

this nonsense

... halp ;A;

"But Guardy why would you do this"

Because I love my most excellent, dearly beloved gremlin of a partner (requester of the fine 3-ply merino) and also appreciate my very loyal and generous fiber arts buddy (requester of the fuckin' grey sweater spin).

Also, ADHD tends to give you a -5 to Wisdom saving throws.

Anyway, let's see how far I get this TdF.

The main issue here is going to be the worsted-spun stuff; I can knock out 50g of woolen, from-the-fold spinning in a day pretty easily with this fiber if I don't get sidetracked. That really, REALLY doesn't work with worsted and fine spins. They're fiddly, I gotta work super precisely since this yarn's meant for weaving and every noil and random thick spot is a potential torn warp thread, and it's so hard to keep my focus up. But hey, I did get 100g of this project done a while ago, so I know it is possible in a reasonable timeframe.

Day 1 isn't over just yet but won't be super productive either; I lost a bit of skin next to my nail on my left index finger (happens a lot), which makes spinning kinda painful and imprecise, and I also hurt my foot by falling over an uneven concrete paver a couple days ago which isn't helping either*. Yes, the same foot I dropped a knife on during my 100 day art challenge. No, not the same foot I dropped my thesis on a couple weeks before that. Yes, I'm really tired of this nonsense too.

Anyway! Behold, 100g of annoyingly noily black dyed merino:

And today's extremely middling progress thus far:

So, uh... wish me luck, folks?

*this wouldn't be a problem if I had the spinning wheel with the NICE, SENSIBLE SINGLE TREADLE CONFIGURATION set up, but alas I can't fit 100g of fiber on my vintage wheel. The stupid double treadles truly are the only downside to the KIWI 3.

[12g4ugegirl]

Onding. (Sova x Reader)

Summary: You wake at an odd hour to Sova not there. It takes some convincing to get him back to bed but reader eventually does.

Genre: Light fluff, light angst?

Pronouns: NONE

Word Count: 1.4k

CW: I don't think there is anything? (if there is smthn lmk)

A/N: I love wintry men. First fic in a LONG time bear with me. also lmk if you want more I have more ideas for a plot line for this ehe.

You woke softly, reaching a hand behind you, patting the still-warm space. It was cold without him. You let out a small groan, gripping at the fleece blanket to try and absorb more of its warmth, it wasn’t enough. You blink slowly trying to convince the weariness of sleep to leave you, at least for now. It’s still dark. The pale lonely moon staring down at you from the window. You rolled over to where he should have been, his empty pillow and the comforter lovingly bundled around you. You let out a small sigh, turning back and looking at the window.

It was snowing.

It wasn’t a heavy storm, a light dancing snow decorated the treeline below the moon. You rolled over once again, facing the closet. The small hearth in the corner of your shared bedroom flickering dimly. You nodded to yourself, your eyes still protesting being open. You forced yourself up, grabbing your phone from the nightstand and checking the time, 3:42 am. You rubbed the side of your face, stretching your eyelid. Your feet slid into your woolen slippers, shedding the warmth of the fleece and comforter. You shivered as you stood, holding your elbows as you grabbed a fluffy robe draped on the closet door, wrapping it around yourself. You clenched your robe close to you as you began to walk around, peeking out of the bedroom. The hallway was dimly lit, fading light erupting from the large fireplace in the living room. Your hand slid across the wall as you approached the warm glow. You checked the corners of the living room as your hand hit the threshold. You saw him, Slightly right of the doorway, a tall figure stood in front of the kitchen sink, hunched over, staring out the window. You took a couple of steps forward before calling his name quietly.

“Sasha?”

You peeped. He didn’t turn to you. You exhaled through your nose in a sort of sigh. You shuffled up to him, your slippers dragging against the wood grain. Your hand lightly rested on his bare shoulder. He had slept in a white beater and a pair of long flannel pants. He was much better accustomed to Russian winter than you were. His gaze intently focused on the treeline, watching, waiting. He had the gaze of a hunter as he watched, his prosthetic eye glowing dimly in the moonlit kitchen.

“Sasha”

You called quietly next to him, your hand lightly rubbing up his shoulder and to his back, your eyes leaving him to watch the tree line.

“I know, ласточка, I know.”

When you turned back to him, his gaze was soft, his attention on your features, on you. You held his gaze briefly before that sweet goofy smile crept across his face. His posture has straightened from how he had hunched over, staring at the trees past the property. He was calm again. You knew the look he had in his eyes.

“Sasha-”

He had pounced on you. Muscular forearms wrapped around your waist, lifting you off the floor and spinning you in a subtle bear hug. He held you close to him, his joyful chuckle escaping his throat. Something that made you smile as you reciprocated. Your arms instinctively wrapped around his shoulders as he adjusted his grip to hold you more comfortably. You cupped his jawline, pressing a kiss to his forehead. His face lit up, pink dusting his pale complexion in the moonlight. You giggled, watching him get flustered from something so small. Your thumb ran over his cheekbone, feeling the divot his scars left.

“Come back to bed, please?”

You whispered. He smiled at you, his eyes squinting with his smile. His silken blonde hair fell over his shoulders giving him an angelic glow in the moonlight. Your eyes are desperate to grasp, to hold every moment of him in your memory.

“Soon, ласточка.”

He nodded, setting you on your feet. You kept your hands on his face, stealing a quick kiss from him. The pink dusting across his cheeks and the tips of his ears grew more vibrant. He didn’t know how to react. Cute, you thought, releasing him from your icy grip. He ran his hand along the backside of his neck, glancing back to the window. You frowned at his almost longing look. He was worried.

“Work again, Sasha?”

You interrupt his thoughts, his gaze jumping over to you. He nods sheepishly.

“I know you can’t talk about what you do Sasha, but it’ll be okay.”

You ran a hand over his forearm, leaning your head against his shoulder as you tried to deduce what was out in the woods.

“I’m sorry, ласточка.”

He mutters, his arm wrapping over your shoulder and pulling you closer to him. You nuzzle your head against him,

“It’s okay Sasha,”

You reassure him, taking his hand in yours, and giving his larger hand a little squeeze. He nods, clearly wanting to say something, but keeping his mouth shut. You followed his gaze out once again to the snow-dusted woods. You couldn’t see it in this weather but you knew out there was a mountain, one Sasha warned you of several times. You tipped your head, looking up at him, the blue glow ever striking now. You didn’t want to disturb him, he was deeply focused. You stared with him, out that window at the light snow, the dusting piling up on the outside of the pane, briefly losing yourself in the piling snow. You felt a kiss gently pressed to the top of your head, an exceedingly delicate kiss. You turned your head to Sasha, his gaze solely on you now.

“Ready to go back to bed now?”

You whispered, a smile reaching your lips once more. Sleepiness was creeping back into the space behind your eyelids.

“Yes, ласточка.”

He nodded, and an equally warm smile was returned. You wrap your arm around his own, leading him away from the window and down the hall. He follows along like a large puppy, keeping up with your pace with his longer strides. Dragging him into your shared bedroom, you ditch the larger robe, flopping down onto the bed with a contented sigh. Sasha follows suit, waiting for you to roll over to your side of the bed before falling onto the bed. You laugh as he rolls over to look at you. You brush his silken blonde strands from his face, his awkward little smile awaiting you. You exhale through your nose with a little smile in response. Before long his arms wrap around your midsection, pulling you to him. His face is buried in your chest, your hands playing with his long platinum hair.

“Sasha,”

You chimed softly in a sing-song voice, his arms pulling you tightly to him.

“Ласточка.” 

He mumbled into your chest.

“Hm?”

You hummed, still running your fingers through his long hair.

“I love you, ласточка”

He didn’t look up to you, his face still hidden in your form.

“I love you too, Саша”

An attempt to pronounce his name closer to his home language.

“Promise me you won’t let anyone in when I’m not home, ласточка”

A common demand of his, reasonable though, you thought. His line of work wasn’t the greatest, one of a more military background. He had a lot of enemies, he wanted you to be safe.

“Yes, Sasha, I promise.”

You chuckled, stroking his hair as he held you close. He nuzzled his face deeper into your chest.

“Even if they look like me, ласточка”

“Mhm”

You hummed, your finger twirling his hair as sleep slowly crept over your gaze, you didn’t quite catch the last thing he said.

“Ласточка, promise me, please.”

You blinked wearily.

“Yes, Sasha, I promise.”

You mused in your sleep-polluted headspace, your eyes fluttering open and shut, your hand still intertwined with his pale blonde hair. You adjusted, resting your cheek on his scalp with a contented sigh. You got one last glimpse of the tall Russian holding you, his fair coloring accentuated under the moonlight. His grip is firm and protective, unwaveringly loyal. A little smile crept across your face as you drifted into a dreamless sleep.