"forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. it has been a week since my last confession."
a grunt sounds from the other side of the cage-like mesh that separates you from your church's priest. your thighs press together, and you chide yourself for the reaction it incites. you're disgusted with yourself at your sin, yet you cannot stop the thud beneath your ribcage that excites at the thrill.
"back so soon?" his words are merely teasing, condescending, unlikely for a priest, but simon tends to get off script. "what is it this time, kid? steal again?"
no. you shook your head despite the wall that separates you. the silence is deafening, save for the creak of the chair you're sat it, wood carved with delicate curves and ornate crosses.
"no, Father. forgive me for my lust and the actions I have committed."
"lust, you say?" he goes silent, save for the rustle of fabric on the other side. it makes you anxious, even more guilt-ridden than before. you swear you can feel his judgement through the wall that separates you. "go on."
a shaky sigh escapes you, your knuckles turning white with your clenched fists in your lap. "yes, Father, lust. I... viewed pornography."
red hot embarrassment coats your skin, much like the blood of those who died for your sin. you were a meek teenage girl, barely eighteen with insatiable urges and an inappropriate crush. you could only confess one of those sins, for the latter is the more shameful one of the two.
a sound of interest cuts the silence. "what was the pornography? a video? a photo?"
"videos, Father."
"multiple?"
"yes." you admit shamefully, biting your lip. you still remembered how your dainty fingers circled your clit, riddled with disgust as you got yourself off on the religious display of porn. a priest and his devotee.
a satisfied hum comes from the other side, and you want to die of mortification. "describe the video."
"wh...what?" you blanched.
he surged onwards without a hint of awkwardness or shame. you couldn't begin to imagine the expression on his rugged face. "describe it. how many people were there?" he queried.
"there...was two people, Father. a man and a woman."
"where were they?"
your face burned further. you almost didn't want to admit it, but silence was a greater sin than admittance and pleading for forgiveness. with a hushed mumble, you spoke into your chest. "a church."
"what was that?" he pushed. "speak up, kid. can't hear ya when yer mumblin'."
"a church." you hated how the words seemed to echo off the walls, lingering within the silence that consumed and gnawed at your conscience. like the whole world needed to hear your sin.
he hummed with interest. "is that so?"
"yes, Father."
silence stretched. it was unbearable, an uncomfortable itch settling beneath your skin that, along with your urges, you could scratch. he finally spoke, "who were they to the church?"
"I...I can't say."
"you are ashamed." it was more statement than question because it was obvious from the way you stuttered, to how your words shook, to how you refused to go onwards. "'ts okay. best thin' y'can do is ask for forgiveness. get it off yer chest."
"yes, Father." you said, but it was a mere whisper. you didn't want to confess, for it would unveil the true nature of your indulgences—not just the fact you'd watched videos of people fucking but that they were of a priest and his devotee.
your fantasies were immoral and shameful, something to be deeply ashamed of, but your body couldn't help but react. it was wrong, you knew it, and indulged it anyways. rewarded your body with your fingers circling your swollen clit and plunged deep in your soaking pussy, replacing them in your mind with the thick, rough fingers of your priest. his hand strong, veined and capable of providing you with everything you craved and ached for.
but you couldn't admit it. couldn't admit your priest was the source of your sin, with his tall stature that towered over your meek in comparison frame. thick muscles that strained at the seams against his cassock and clerical collar—because there wasn't a size available to fit without constraint. you could only imagine how mouth watering his bare skin was—carved like marble to create a masterpiece. the epitome of sin. veins that flexed and rippled under his pale skin with his every word.
he cleared his throat, killing the silence. you had forgotten to continue, leaving you two in a deafening quiet until he reminded you. "talk to me, baby. who were they?"
your pussy fluttered at the pet name, forcing your thighs to clench together. the dampness in your panties was apparent, arousal sticking to the cotton and your skin. it shouldn't affect you this much, considering he called all the young kids at church some sweet endearment—sweetheart, honey, baby. it was innocent, but to your debauched conscience, it was anything but.
"it was..." you begin, the words catching on your tongue. with a shaky sigh, you forced it out. "a priest and someone from the church."
he didn't say anything, letting the creak in the wood speak for them. the harsh rustle of fabric whenever either of you moved an inch. you could never come back here, you decided. overran by your debauched immorality, you'd have to find a new church, forget about the brutish priest with sharp features and alluring eyes.
"hm." was the only sound he made for a while, letting you soak in the filth of your indulgences, brew in the depravity you couldn't help but live and breath in.
after an agonizing handful of minutes that felt like years, he finally spoke. "you wish to seek forgiveness?" the words caused a flutter, static rushing your ears. it drowned out the sound of a zipper and the soft clank of metal.
you breathed out in soft relief, nodding with an unmatched amount of desperation. "yes, Father. please."
a sharp slap of wood hitting wood filled the air, coming from beneath the lip of the confession booth. you peeked your head underneath, heart thudding so hard, you feared your ribs would break and allow your heart escape.
there was a small, circular hole that opened up to the other side. on the other side, a familiar, veiny hand strained around a thick, aching cock dripping with pre. it throbbed an angry red, and it twitched with every squeeze of his hand. you froze in shock, but couldn't help the way your mouth watered.
"get on your knees and pray for forgiveness then, baby."
synopsis: simon finds you stranded on the side of the road and your desperate enough to accept his help
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+), explicit language, hitchhiking, manipulation, dubious consent, past abuse, referenced alcoholism, age difference, power imbalance, mental illness, etc.
a/n: hello! i posted this on ao3 a while ago but i’ve been wanting to start posting my writing on tumblr again so here we are. you can read it on ao3 here if you’d like. hope you enjoy!!
-
Something about that day didn't feel right. From the moment you opened your sand-covered eyes, to the moment you waved your uncle goodbye. There was something off in the air. A heaviness. Perhaps it was the heat, dry and thick. Blistering as it dragged its way in and out of your lungs.
Leaned back against the side of your uncle's old truck, you stood, shoulders slouched with a menthol cigarette wedged in between your dirty fingers. White smoke from the kindled end swirled and danced up toward the dimming sky.
It’s too hot, you thought. Much too hot for this time of day.
Raising the cigarette to your cracking lips, you took a long, methodical drag, not helping to ease the weight of the burdening air that oppressed you. But you had been driving all afternoon, and your addiction escaped you, only to return with vengeance the second you stopped for gas.
What time is it anyway?
A loud clunking sound pulled you from your absent-minded thoughts. Your gas was finished pumping, and your cigarette had been burned down to the filter. Probably shouldn’t be smoking at the pump, you thought as you glanced down at the glowing dregs of tobacco in your hand. Shrugging, you turned around and tossed it on the blacktop, stomping it out with your used-to-be-white shoe.
You jumped back into your truck feeling sated, still vibrating from the lingering buzz of the nicotine. It was a long drive back home. Not long enough for the sun to catch you, though. Fifty miles to merge onto the interstate, then it was a straight shot. You would make it by morning. But something was off in the air, and you should’ve seen it coming.
An hour jones to the next town, then a little over one hundred miles on the interstate. That would soak up the rest of your daylight. Most were understandably weary about driving on I-40 after dark. The number of people who went missing along the endless stretch of road was enough of a deterrent for anyone who still had their wits about them, but you had made the drive dozens of times before.
You left the grimy gas station parking lot with your head held high. Mark Kozelek’s voice ricocheted off the walls of the truck like a spray of gunshots blasting from the old speakers. Harsh and grating, much too loud for the occasion, but it kept the buzz alive. Your heart raced as you cranked the knob to roll down your window. Feeling the hot air lash at your face and watching the dust kick up beneath the tires as you sped down the old road had your skin tingling. This is probably what doing coke feels like, you laughed to yourself.
You were about thirty miles down the old back road when fate revealed its conspiracy against you.
One day god’s gonna pop that swelled head of yours like a balloon.
Your daddy told you that once. About a week before he kicked the bucket. You thought it was funny back then. You distinctly remember having to hold back your laughter at the wake. But even in death, he still had to have the last laugh. The fucker.
All hubris you had evaporated from your body the moment you felt the truck sputter. It was only a matter of time before it broke down for good, and in the back of your head, you knew it. Cursing under your breath, you slowly steered the giant piece of scrap metal off to the side of the road and sat defeated as you longingly listened to the staticky voice of Mark Kozelek fade away and die alongside the truck.
“Fuck,” you deadpanned, lazily unbuckling yourself and reaching into your glove box for another cigarette. Maybe he made a deal with the devil, you wondered, shaking your head and fumbling around in your pocket for your lighter.
You didn’t know jack shit about cars. Propping open the hood to figure out the problem was practically like asking you to perform brain surgery. So, you lit the end of your minty cancer stick, slouched back against the torn-up seat, and wallowed. Smoke filled the stiff air inside the truck as you picked apart every single mistake you had ever made in your life, one cigarette at a time, and rolled them around in your head until your brain was mush.
You were an idiot for dropping out of college, you were an idiot for ever thinking that your momma would somehow get better, and you were an idiot for driving alone so close to dark.
An hour of misery and a half a pack of menthols later, the sky shifted from blue to pink, and you were about ready to sign your life away to the man in the clouds. Slipping out of the hotboxed truck in defeat, you felt the cooling desert air bite at your exposed skin, and you sighed. “If you take me now, I promise I won’t scream,” you prayed, leaning against the side of the truck bed. You waited with a bated breath, half expecting a white light to descend from the sky and smite you, but after a few minutes of waiting, you exhaled. “Ain’t no way I’m gettin’ into heaven,” you chuckled cruelly, rubbing your chapped lips together and nervously biting the skin off.
Half an hour later, when the sky became orange and streaked with red, you sat on the road beside the remains of your truck, gravel stabbing into your skin with every shift of your legs. Your last cigarette was wedged between your fingers, and you finally let your tears fall, salty and painful as they burned their way through the cracks in your dry skin.
Fucking pathetic. Useless.
The hopelessness hit you all at once like a bomb. A nuclear explosion that eviscerated your being until you were nothing more than a shadow carved forever in the asphalt. You understood then and there why your daddy drank so much. You would have given a limb for a bottle at that moment. You could have drank yourself to death, just like he did.
The air stilled for a moment, and your parliament burned the last of its life away.
Then the earth shook as if it were shattering.
Snapping your head up, you discovered the force that moved the earth to be a motorcycle. A man on a motorcycle. A real living person with a working mode of transportation. Clumsily, you scrambled onto your feet, tossing the corpse of your cigarette on the ground in a pile with the rest of them, and waved your hands frantically. “Hey!” You cried, yelling as loud as you could muster, just loud enough to be heard over the roaring engine. For a second, you were sure that he would pass you. Leave you on the side of the road to fend for yourself. But by the grace of God, he slowed.
The engine of his mechanical steed lulled to a rumbling purr, riding down the road like a horseman with a thick layer of miasma cloaking him.
Behold the pale horse. Its rider's name was death.
The large man killed the engine after he parked the bike behind your truck, and you bound over to him on shaky legs. Friendly, you reminded yourself. All men are the same.
You approached the man, softening your eyes as he glared back at you. Well, you were almost sure he was glaring. Most of his face was concealed by a large helmet with a skull design intricately painted on it. You were just barely able to make out his eyes. They were a deep hazel, framed by thick, blond eyelashes. He had a smell to him as well. It was pungent, and distinct like nothing you had smelled before. It was industrial but earthy all the same, like car grease and wet soil. Gross.
“Sorry, um, my truck… there’s somethin’ wrong with it. Uh, could you maybe gimme a ride to a gas station? If it’s not too much trouble, of course!”
The man looked conflicted by your words. He ran his gaze over your shaking frame. “Hm, that right?”
“Yeah…” you trailed off, darting your eyes away from him. “Been out here for an hour. Haven’t seen anyone else…”
His eyes gave you the chills. They were dark and calculating, almost hungry, and certainly unimpressed. He gave an annoyed huff and shifted his shoulders. “Your askin’ for trouble out here, kid,” he grumbled in heavily accented English.
Appalled, you fought to keep a straight face. The last thing you wanted was to argue with him. “C’mon, please,” you pleaded, dropping your shoulders. “I just need to get to a gas station or the next town… I ain’t got no service and it’ll be dark soon.”
He narrowed his eyes and gave a gruff, “Get on, then.”
Your breath hitched as you processed his request. He met your eyes with an impatient stare. “Oh! O—okay, lemme grab my bag,” you stammered, quietly clambering into the passenger side of your truck and pulling your bag over your shoulder.
You hesitated for a second as you paced back to him, digging your nails into your palms. His goliath-like body hoarded up most of the seat. “Don’t waste my time, girl. Get on.” Reluctantly, you obliged him, offering a meek thank you before squeezing onto the seat behind him. You knew better than to trust a stranger, especially one like him, rugged and seedy. But beggars can’t be choosers.
The engine of the beast roared back to life and rattled beneath you, sending vibrations surging through your legs and up your spine. You jumped at the sound, gasping and locking your arms around his abdomen as he revved the engine. “Hold on,” he shouted, clutching the gas. You obeyed without a second thought. Falling off a motorcycle seemed like a nasty way to go, and you had no helmet. The vivid mental image of your corpse sprawled on the road with your brains splattered like roadkill had you holding on for dear life.
As you sped further down the road, you said a mental goodbye as the truck faded from view. Leaving the cigarette graveyard behind, you closed your eyes and ducked behind the man’s towering frame to shield your face from the wind and dust. You prayed that the devil or your daddy had an ounce of mercy left for you.
-
Once the sun goes down in the desert, God shuts his eyes and buries his head in the dust.
Another one of your daddy’s drunken sonnets. For a man who had never read a book in his life, he really did have a way with his words. Your daddy was no savant, not by a long shot, but he was no fool either. He always had a knack for people. He knew exactly how they worked and how to sway them, whom to avoid, and whom to keep around. It was astounding, really. You never understood how he did it. How he made people believe that the mask he wore was real. How he could see through the masks of others.
As you sat across from the brutish monster who plucked you off the side of the road in a shabby, moth-eaten diner, you spitefully wished that you inherited your daddy’s superpower.
The man sat uncomfortably still in the rickety booth, thick arms folded over his equally thick chest as if he were trying to show off. Like you suspected, his hair was blond like his eyelashes, buzzed nearly down to the scalp. His eyebrows were blond to match, nearly unnoticeable in the dim, flickering light of the diner. His face was stone cold and undecipherable, features sharp but with visible signs of age. Scarred and grim with a perpetual scowl, surely he was the same age as your uncle. Objectively, he was handsome, but there was a certain dreadfulness about the man. His mere presence was foreboding. Your heart rattled against your chest harder as you waited.
The two of you sat in vigil for minutes. The silence that surrounded you began to close in, crushing you under its weight. “So,” you tested, clearing your throat. “Is there a gas station… or like a motel nearby? I’m just tryin’ to get back home, so—“
“Have you got any idea where you are, girl?”
The question stunned you. You blinked and bit the flesh of your cheek. “Yeah, course I do.” It was a half-truth, but you were no good with people. The man saw right through you.
“Hm, alright,” he nodded. “Where’s home, then?”
“Albuquerque.”
His face remained unchanged, eyes never faltering. “You’re a long way out.”
You looked away, fixing your eyes on the paper menu on the table in front of you. “Yeah, I—“
“What can I get started for y’all?”
The feminine voice of the waitress made you jump out of your skin. You snapped your mouth shut and raised your head to meet her eyes. She was a Diné woman, made obvious by her long black hair and intricately beaded earrings. You shot a look at the man, unsure of what to say. He ignored you, focusing his attention on the waitress instead. A look of familiarity crossed his face. “An omelet,” he answered, polite but direct.
The woman nodded, jotting down his order on her notepad. “Your usual?” He nodded at her, no unnecessary words needed.
The woman then turned her attention toward you, smiling with her eyes. “And you?”
You sputtered, unsure of what the correct answer was. “Oh, I’m not—“
“She’ll hava short stack. Two sausages.”
Astonished, you whipped your head to the man, opening your mouth to protest. But he beat you to it.
“Thank you, Audrey,” he said, handing her his menu.
The woman smiled again. “No problem, Simon,” she replied, taking your menu with her as she left to put in your orders.
Simon, you thought, tossing the name around in your head. It suited him.
“You’re not very sharp, are ya?”
You furrowed your brows. “Excuse me?”
“Makin’ a drive like that at this hour, in that old banger. Dead stupid decision, that.”
He was right. You knew that. You were a fool. How many stories had you heard about girls going missing along the highway? Too many to count. Girls just like you, alone and desperate enough to accept help from a stranger. You wanted to sink into the floor. “I’ve done it plenty. Never had any problems.”
He scoffed, lifting his marred lips into a smirk. “Yeah, and now you do have a problem.”
“I know. I just—“
“Askin’ a bloke like me for help… Daddy never told ya not to talk to strangers?”
What a fuckin’ creep.
“Stop tryin’ to scare me.”
“M’not doin’ anythin’, love.”
You couldn’t have asked for a better time for the waitress, Audrey, to return with your food. The heavy ceramic plates clanked against the table as she gracefully placed them in front of you. A short stack with two sausages for you and a loaded omelette for him. “Can I get y'all anythin’ else?”
Simon shook his head. “No, Audrey. I think we’ll be alright.”
“M’kay,” she hummed, turning on her heel. “Just let me know.”
Simon didn’t wait a second before he started eating. He snatched the tarnished silverware, dwarfing the utensils with his enormous hands. He held his fork like a toddler, shoveling eggs and meat into his mouth like he had never eaten a day in his life, huffing and smacking. It was abominable. He didn’t notice you staring until he was halfway finished. “Somethin’ wrong?” He asked, grease smeared on his lips.
“No! Nothin’s wrong. I’m just not really hungry,” you mumbled, staring down at your steaming plate of fat and carbohydrates.
“Hm, that’s bullshit.”
“Huh?”
“S’bullshit, love. You haven’t eaten anythin’ for hours. Could hear your stomach. Stop bein’ mousy and eat your scran.”
Your leg bounced under the table against your will, fear clawing its way to the surface. “You shouldn’t have brought me here. Just wanted to get to a gas station.”
“It’s my dinner time,” he declared, mouth full of food. “Not gonna let some little girl disrupt my dinner time.”
“Simon—“
“Eat your food, girl.”
You decided it would be best to play along, not wanting to set the man off. He could strangle you blue if he wanted to, but his motives remained a mystery. Men like him didn’t take strange women to dinner for the hell of it.
Picking up your fork slowly, you carefully cut a chunk loose from the stack of sugar-laden bread, grinding your fork back and forth against the plate. You raised the food to your awaiting mouth with a trembling hand, wincing at the sickeningly sweet flavor of the syrup. It was Mrs. Buttersworth. The too-rich flavor was unmistakable. It was then that you began to sweat. “Is it hot in here?”
“No,” he grunted, mouth still stuffed to the brim.
“Right,” you quipped, shifting in your seat and forcing another mouth full past your dry lips.
He rolled his eyes, sat up straight, and haphazardly wiped his face clean of food debris. “Audrey,” he called, paging the woman from behind the counter.
She practically teleported back to your table. “Need something?”
“Just some water,” he said, throwing a look at you. “And the bill if you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. Be right back with that.”
You needed to get the fuck out of that diner.
You took a deep breath, hooked the strap of your bag over your shoulder, and shuffled to the edge of the booth. “I— uh, think I’m gonna go to the bathroom—”
“Sit down, girl,” he scolds, a warning look in his eyes. Audrey whisked by the table, slipping Simon the check and setting an overfilled glass of water in front of you before disappearing for the final time.
“I really have to pee,” you pleaded desperately.
“You can later.”
“Simon, I—”
“Fuck sake, just drink your water, girl. The whole lot. Won’t say it again.”
You were fucked. Damned in every which way. There was no other way of looking at it. You gripped the slick water glass with a shaky hand and chugged, gulping loudly as the smooth liquid emptied itself into your gut. You shuddered at the coolness of it as some of it escaped your mouth and dripped onto your chin.
Holy fuck, you thought, finishing the last of it and slamming the empty glass back on the table. I don’t wanna die.
“Alright, c’mon,” he urged, slapping two twenties on the table and exiting the booth. He rose to his full stature, towering over you like a god casting judgment.
The chances of finding a victim drop by ninety percent if they’re taken to a second location.
You heard that on the television once.
“Um, actually, I think I’ll be okay. Uh, if you could just point me to a motel or somethin—”
“Have you even got any money for a motel?”
Maybe I could make a break for it. Surely Audrey would help, or maybe screaming would be easier?
“Yeah… I got plenty.”
He stared down at you unmoved. “So, you’re skint.”
You buffered, left without a rebuttal.
“You’re a terrible liar, love,” he tisked, rolling his eyes. Then his hands were on you like flies on roadkill.
“Wait! No! Get off—”
“You want me to leave ya here, girl?” He fumed. You could practically see his face turn red. “I’m doin’ ya a fuckin’ favor, love. How d’you think you’re gonna get to Albuquerque with no money, hm?”
He jostled you by the arm, attempting to wrangle you out of the booth, though not without struggle. “I don’t care! Just get the fuck off me!”
With an unrelenting pull, he yanked you by your bicep, pulling you onto your feet. He started toward the door with you unwillingly in tow. The two of you were halfway outside when another feminine voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Simon, everythin’ alright with y’all?”
You snapped your head toward the woman. She was short, her hair unnaturally blonde with pink nail polish you could have spotted from across the room, and she wore an apron just like Audrey’s.
You were about to open your mouth when Simon spoke over you. “Yeah, everythin's alright. She’s just a bit out of it.”
The woman raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Uh-huh. You alright, sweetheart?” She then asked, shifting her eyes to you.
Thank god.
“N—no, I just— I’m not from here, and I need to get home, but I don’t have enough money, and—”
“Picked her up off the side of the road, Georgia. Was gonna let her stay at mine. Take her to Roy’s place tomorrow. Fix her truck, n’ all that.”
“Oh yeah? That’s tough luck, sweetheart. I’m sorry ‘bout all that. Roy’ll fix you up good though. You’ll be back on the road by tomorrow.”
You tried to keep your tact about you. Showing apprehension with men like Simon only incentivized them more, made the chase more thrilling. Men like him hunted for sport, not necessity, but all of your composure was shattered by the nonchalance in Georgia's voice. She was going to let him have you. An ignorant bystander.
“No, no!” You yelled, flailing in Simon’s grasp. “It’s not okay! None of this is okay! I don’t— I can’t—”
“Fuckin’ hell, girl,” he groaned. You could practically hear his eyes roll. “Calm down. Some fresh air’ll do you good.”
He hauled you out of the diner before you could vomit out another word. You caught a final glimpse of Georgia as the New Mexican night swallowed you for good. She stood there, stiff as a board. Her eyebrows knitted together in a pattern of confusion before she eventually turned around, letting the reaper drag you further into the night's maw.
You almost felt bad for her.
What would she think to herself when she catches news of a body found in a ditch?
“What the hell is wrong with you, girl?” Simon seethed. His biting eyes were blown black in his fit of rage.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off me!” You wailed back at him. The sound of your voice echoed and dissolved into the empty void, solidifying your near solitude.
“Get on the fuckin’ bike,” he growled deeply, malicious warning coating his words. “Tryin’ to fuckin’ help ya.”
With the meanest look you could muster, you glowered back at him. “D’you think I’m a fuckin’ idiot?”
He tilted his head. “S’cuse me?”
“D’you think I’m stupid?”
He breathed out an airy laugh. “Don’t think ya want me to answer that.”
“Fuck you. I know what happens next,” you muttered, salty tears rolling down your face. “I know what men like you do.”
“Men like me? How d’you know what kinda man I am?”
I don’t need to know.
“Girl, if I wanted to hurt ya, I wouldn’t have brought ya here. Too many witnesses. You’d be buried out in the dust by now.”
“You talk like you’ve got experience.”
He rolled his eyes. “Get on the bike, girl. Y’can stay here if ya want, but good luck gettin’ your truck fixed with no money. Roy’s not generous like I am.”
You swallowed deeply, letting the thick saliva slither its way down your tight throat. He looks at you, still perturbed, but with a hint of calculated smugness. No where to run.
You nodded, face still sticky with the remnants of your tears. The bike wobbled a bit as you swung your leg over. Simon kept his eyes on you, watching until he was satisfied. To your surprise, he slipped his helmet over your head, securing it tight. Your head bobbled like a toy at the sudden weight.
“Hang on,” he repeated, starting the engine, and ushering you away to your death once more.
-
Simon’s house was small. Quaint and compact, with minimal decor. It was unfitting for a man of his stature. He seemed to tower over everything, like he was a giant forced to live in a human's home. You imagined him ducking through doorways and napping with his feet hanging off the edge of his bed. Unexpectedly, he had a cat as well. Her name was Minnie.
“Hope you’re not allergic,” he huffed and shrugged off his jacket, revealing his massive biceps. “She likes attention.”
You watch him, eyes wide and churning with awe. The muscle he packed onto his body was something you had only seen in movies. Fibers rippled and veins bulged underneath his tattooed skin as he casually strolled around the small space. He’s a beast. Blood rushed to your face and neck as he locked eyes with you, anticipating an answer to his question.
“No,” you rushed out. “I’m not allergic.”
He loosened his belt buckle and pulled it through the loops, throwing it carelessly on the couch along with his jacket. “Good,” he hummed and meandered his way to the kitchen. He looked completely out of place, offhandedly rummaging through cabinets and drawers until he found what he was looking for. A box of tea and a mug. “Ya just gonna stand there?”
His words startled you. You hadn't moved an inch since you arrived, only observed him quietly. A spirit that had wandered into the wrong house. An unwelcome guest. “I wouldn’t wanna impose.”
He looked up from his task, meeting your eyes with a dead stare. “Well, I’m gonna have a cuppa. You want one?”
“A what?”
“Tea. Do you want a cup?”
You tilted your chin back in acknowledgment. Of course. Tea.
“Sure.”
The sound of running water clanging against his old tin kettle fills the room, causing Minnie to lift her head off the countertop to identify the source. “Sit down then,” he insists, nodding his head at the small kitchen table. “Take your shoes off first.”
Apprehensively, you obeyed, kicking off your shoes and biting the inner flesh of your cheek until you drew blood.
Autocannibalism.
You learned about it in psychology class.
It didn’t take long for the water to start boiling. Simon had cranked the burner to the highest setting. Even so, he watched it impatiently like he had something better to do.
“It’s chamomile,” he states, plopping two tea bags into two mugs, one larger, one smaller. “It’s good for sleep. D’you know that?”
You shook your head, pulling the old chair out from underneath the table. It made a horrible shrieking noise as it slid along the tiled floor and an even more unsettling groaning sound as you sat your weight on it.
“Here then,” he deadpanned and handed you the steaming mug.
You took it by the handle and set it in front of you, watching the plant particles dance around in the water, tinting it a deep orange.
“I’ve not got a TV,” he called, drawing your attention back to him. He switched on a timeworn radio sitting like a monument in the corner of the kitchen. It was something that you would find in a pawn shop, bulky and impractical, likely meant for industrial use.
He expertly flicked through the channels, turning the knob back and forth until he landed something satisfactory. Country Classics, made apparent by the Willie Nelson song flowing through the speakers.
Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.
He sauntered his way over to the table, setting his mug down and sitting himself in the chair across from you. You were impressed that the chair was able to hold his weight. “I like this channel,” he remarked, leaning back slightly. “Not fond of a lotta the shit people are puttin’ out these days.” You nodded along to his speech, watching him blow the steam away from his cup and take a large gulp. After a few seconds, he caught you staring. “What d’you think?”
At first, you shrugged, glancing sideways.
He wasn’t satisfied with your silence. “Can’t have a conversation with myself, love.”
“You don’t normally have conversations with yourself?” You snarked back. It was blatantly obvious that he lived alone and lacked basic social etiquette. How many friends could he possibly have?
“Usually just talk to Minnie,” he shrugged, taking another drink. “But I‘ve got company now, haven’t I?”
Misery loves company.
“I like this song,” you eventually answered. “I like Willie Nelson.”
“Good. Don’t trust anyone who doesn't."
Under normal circumstances, you would have smiled. If he had asked you on a date and brought you back to his place after, perhaps the butterflies in your gut would have been caused by excitement and not dread.
Without saying another word, you awkwardly took a loud sip of your tea. Despite letting it remain untouched, the substance was scorching as it coated your mouth. The wound on the inside of your cheek tingled with unpleasant fury. The taste didn’t make up for it either. It was earthy, like drinking perfume with a slightly bitter afterthought. You physically shriveled in on yourself, closing your eyes and scrunching your nose in dismay.
Your spectacle earned you an unsavory grimace from Simon. “Not a fan, then?”
You frowned and slid the cup away from you. “M’sorry.”
“Eh,” he grunted, pouring the remnants of his cup into yours. “Suppose you’re tired, then…” he trailed off, mumbling to himself. “Y’can use the bathroom to wash up. Round the corner, left side.”
You took his cue of dismissal without a second thought, rising up off the rotting wood chair and scurrying away, unremorsefully leaving the man abandoned with his thoughts and a full cup of tea.
-
You were unsure how long you stayed in the bathroom for. It could have been two minutes, or it could have been two hours. Time seemed to stop in the enclosed space, like a portal between dimensions covered in chipped, decorative tile. The lights above the sink glowed a primeval light, bathing you in a sickly yellow as you lost yourself in the smudged mirror.
It was quiet, so quiet, in fact, that the only sound that could be heard over the electrical hum of the lights was the sound of your own breathing. In the enclosed room, you were the only being in existence, floating in a universe all your own.
Stop lookin’ at yourself in the mirror so damn much!
You could practically hear your mother’s words as if she were in the room with you. She never really made much sense, even before her screws came loose.
Vanity’s a sin, y’know? What d’you think God would do if he could see himself in the mirror?
“Girl, you alright?”
Simon’s bellowing voice and firm knocking instantly shattered your mirage. No longer were you a god in an empty void. You were a simple girl trapped in a creepy man’s bathroom in a tiny, backwater town in the middle of the New Mexican desert.
“Yeah, m’alright,” you called, voice watery.
There was no response from Simon on the other side. Only a faint groan of the floorboards under his feet. For a few heartbeats, you waited with your shoulders tense. Then the door knob rattled, and terror lapped at your feet like fire. You took an instinctual step back, inadvertently making way for the door to swing open.
There, your judgment stood waiting in the blackened void of the hallway, only illuminated by the unsightly yellow emanating from behind you.
Nothing on earth or in heaven could have prepared you for the sight of him.
The man stood in the doorway in all of his brutish glory, half-nude with only the thin fabric of his boxer briefs to cover his bulging manhood. At full stature with his shoulders pushed back in a manner that accentuated his hairy chest, he leered down at you with daggerlike eyes. He had the build of a war god, muscular with a healthy layer of fat around his midsection, an indicator of his age.
Your throat closed up and your body shook, trembling under the weight of his oppressive presence. The yell that you had been mustering stayed trapped at the base of your neck. This man is fucking deranged, you thought, looking him in the eye with a sick grimace.
“I— I locked the door,” you sputtered, fear stealing the proper words from you. You took another step back, and he reciprocated with a step forward.
“Broken,” he told you, raising a hand to fiddle with the knob.
“You still shouldn’t be in here,” you gritted through your teeth.
Simon knitted his brows together. “S’my bathroom,” he maintained, callousness layered beneath his words.
Surely this man was raised by dogs.
“You were takin’ too long. I’ve gotta piss, haven't I.”
Your head was buzzing, skin driven numb by hypoxia. You spiraled as you fought to get a breath in.
“Left some blankets on the couch for ya,” he continued, pushing his way to the toilet. His mass was much too large for the small room, and you were subsequently pushed to the corner. “I’m a light sleeper, so try not to make too much noise at night. I’ll be mardy in the morning."
Even if you could speak, you had no words for him, and the moment you caught sight of his hand reaching for the hem of his underwear, you legged it.
The sound of Simon’s urinating seemed to fill the entire house. You could hear it even when you made it to the living room, piss splashing against water, echoing off the ceramic vacuum. A taunting reminder of the graveness of your situation. Nowhere to run.
You couldn’t even pin the blame on your daddy or any other unseen malevolence. You could have ditched him at the diner. You should have.
Second Location. Stupid girl.
-
It was the witching hour when you gained consciousness again, sprawled out on the couch with a rough, quilted blanket haphazardly tossed over you. The living room was dark, save for the soft light of the kitchen peaking through the archway. Darkness weighed down on you heavily like you had woken up at the bottom of the ocean. Wet and hazy. You physically cringed at the slickness of your skin. Too fuckin’ hot for this shit, you thought deliriously.
You squirmed, achingly uncomfortable with the state you found yourself in. Digging your fingers into the cat-torn cushions of the sofa, you wrenched yourself up into a sitting position. “Fuck,” you slurred, mouth dryer than the desert air, letting your heavy head fall slack against the supporting cushion. You could barely recall falling asleep in the first place. You didn’t have time to dwell on that thought for long, though. An icy chill ran straight through your veins as you felt the all too familiar pang of a full bladder.
Holy shit, you panicked. Should’ve pissed when I had the chance.
Cursing yourself for your negligence, you crossed your legs and clenched your thighs, desperately attempting to banish the unwanted sensation. It was an idle endeavor. You slowly reared your head towards the lightless hallway, twisting your neck in an unnatural manner. The unsettling thought of using the bathroom again crossed your mind but only for a moment.
I’ll be mardy in the morning.
Another chill down your spine, another pang of need between your legs.
Fuck me.
Sucking in a deep breath, you slowly stood up off the couch and stalked your way to the front door, guided by the light of the kitchen. The floor was like ice against the soles of your feet, sending more electricity through your already agitated nervous system, causing the urge to relieve yourself to exacerbate by the second. You contemplated making a run for it, but Simon’s gruff warning played in your head like an evil mantra.
I’m a light sleeper.
With careful steps, you made it through the kitchen and past the threshold, catching the time displayed on the digital clock on the radio. 3:24 am. The devil’s hour.
Face to face with the door, you gripped the handle, knuckles white and hands clammy. You twisted it slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until you heard the telltale click of the lock. Keep it together, you scolded yourself.
The door was ancient. The hinges probably hadn't seen a drop of oil in your lifetime. You knew that already. You knew what to expect, but in the still silence of the house, the sound that rolled from the aged, rusty hinges was ungodly. A heart-stopping sensation, like nails on concrete. So vile, you could feel it in your teeth. Screwing your eyes shut, you continued to pull on the handle ever so slightly, inch by agonizing inch until the gap was barely a foot wide, just enough for you to squeeze through.
The moment you took a step outside and felt the warm night’s breeze, breathing in the dusty air, the feeble grip you had on your restraint slipped away, right through your sweaty fingers. Throwing all your caution to the wind, you dashed off the porch, footsteps heavy on the wood as you felt a trickle of pee soak into your underwear.
You just barely made it off the steps in time, unbuttoning your jeans, wrenching them down your legs, and squatting forward. Then you let go. The solace was near-orgasmic. Streams and streams of piss rushed out of you and pattered against the dirt like rain. You couldn’t help but moan under your breath, digging your bare toes into the soft earth as you felt your bladder empty itself.
The night fell moribund as you finished, completely silent save for the faint chirping of crickets somewhere in the distance. Your solitude was palpable. The darkness smothered you like a warm blanket. A nostalgic kind of safety.
He can’t hurt me if he can’t see me.
You would whisper that to yourself all the time. When your daddy would return home from a bender, wreaking havoc on your household like some kind of eldritch monster, you would hide yourself under your bed. Wrapping yourself in a blanket, you would pray. Pray for God to turn you invisible for just one night. The beast always found you, though. Every single time.
After all that time, you should have learned to change hiding spots.
“What the hell are you doin’ out here, girl?”
Your shield of darkness was ripped away from you as quickly as you acquired it, just as it always was, eviscerated by the orangey glow of the porch light.
You thought that you could hide?
The scream that you let out was truly one for the pictures. The theatrical, blood-curdling shriek that resonated from your mouth was enough to send any grown man running in the opposite direction, but Simon was no man. He was a monster.
“Fuck!” You yelled, frantically hoisting your bottoms up your legs. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
He was seething, fists clenched at his sides as he stomped his way to you. “What the fuck is wrong with me!?” He bellowed, wrapping his meaty hand around your bicep hard enough to bruise. “You’re out here, middle of the bloody night, with your pants down at your ankles, and you’re askin’ what’s wrong with me?!”
“Had to piss,” you explained, glancing at the stained dirt at your feet. Evidence of your debasement.
The look of confusion on his face didn’t waver. “Coulda used the bloody bathroom! What the hell were you thinkin’ comin’ all the way out here?!”
“You said you were a light sleeper,” you reminded him. “Didn’t wanna wake you up.”
He closed his eyes and let out a breath. An attempt to grasp at the last of his composure. “Well, you’ve woken me up anyway, haven't ya? And probably everyone else in a hundred-mile vicinity with all your noise. Stupid fuckin’ girl.”
“I didn’t mean to,” you mumbled lamely, curling in on yourself and away from your aggressor.
“Well, fuckin’ obviously,” he scoffed with an eye roll. His hand around your arm squeezed tighter at your apprehension as he forced you onto the porch steps. “Sit,” he commanded, and you obeyed, sitting ashamed at the man's feet like a child caught scribbling on the walls. You kept your head hanging and your eyes closed, obscuring your face from his view. Patiently, you waited for his wrath to rain down upon you. More silence passed, your heartbeat thumping louder by the second. No words of vitriol hit your ears, however. Only the sound of the door opening and closing.
He had returned by the time you lifted your head, still only underwear-clad, but with a pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter clutched in his giant paws. He glowered down at you without a word, slipping a cigarette from the pack and lighting it. You let your eyes linger on him, studying him while a lump formed in your throat. He studied you in return, unfaltering in his conviction. He then sat himself on the step next to you, impudently shoving you to the edge to make way for his mass.
Huffing smoke from his nose like a bull, he sat there, bare legs spread wide enough that your thigh was flush with his. His content was threatening. The capriciousness of him made it so.
Just say something.
“Uh, Simon,” you tested, letting his name fall off your lips like you hadn't meant to say it.
He lulled his eyes toward you, giving you a lazy, unimpressed scowl.
“I’m sorry. I know I should—”
“Here,” he grumbled, cutting you off with a half-smoked marlboro held up to your lips.
Stunned, you shot a look at him, then back to the butt of the cancer stick looming in front of your face. It was slick with his saliva, the paper slightly darkened by the moisture. You sat with distaste watching the tobacco burn away in his hand, but he never retracted the gesture. You didn’t dare refuse. Reluctantly, you slowly wrapped your trembling lips around the filter, cringing at the foreign wetness of it. You then braced yourself and took a deep breath, filling your chest with the carcinogens. You fought off a gag, flinching at the taste. You only smoked menthols.
Simon brought the filter back to his own lips, inhaling slowly, and savoring the last few drags before tossing the glowing butt into the dust. Then he cleared his throat. “Were you born in Albuquerque, then?”
His unanticipated question confused you. It was the aloofness of it. Him speaking to you as if it were mundane, as if you weren’t fearing for your life.
“Yes,” you answered, providing no further details.
He continued his interrogation, not missing a beat. “Why were you on the road?”
You answered again, blunt like before. “Was visiting my uncle in Oklahoma.”
“Hm, how was that?”
“What?”
“Your visit,” he clarified. “How was it?”
“Uh, it was alright, I guess.”
He nodded, taking your words between his teeth and chewing on them. “Just alright?” He asked, tasting the bitterness.
“Well, my cousin just had a baby.”
“Good for her,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah,” you lamented, swallowing your heart. “Would be super cute, but she thinks that her son is the reincarnation of Dale Earnhardt.”
For the first time that night, a genuine laugh left Simon’s lips. Well, as close to a laugh as he could muster. “That right?”
“Uh-huh. She’s a nut case. Think it runs in the family.”
Your words were a jest, something your uncle always laughed about. Think it only affects the women, he laughed. Your clock’s tickin’ down, girlie.
You were starting to believe it was true.
“You callin’ yourself a nut case?”
You shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Bloody fuckin’ hell,” he sighed, scratching his scalp. “Would explain a lot.”
Simon’s words hit you like a comet. A white light shone behind your eyes as it all burned away and revealed itself. What the hell am I doing? You thought of your mother then, your poor, schizophrenic mother. What if you never made it back home? What would become of her then? A thread of guilt softly tugged on your heart before it snapped. It was then you realized that you didn’t have the capacity to care anymore. What was the point? You were just going to end up like her anyway. Doomed from the beginning.
Might as well set myself on fire.
“You’re not from around here, are you Simon?”
“No,” he admitted. “Manchester. In England.”
“What made you wanna leave?”
“Eh,” he grunted, leaning back against the wood. “Dad was an evil fucker. Couldn’t stay there, could I?” He shook his head. “No, had to make somethin’ of myself.”
“So you came here?”
“No,” he scoffed, as if the answer were obvious. “I enlisted.”
“In the military?”
“Yes, love. In the army.”
“Did you have any other family?”
“Yeah. My mum and brother,” he said, not a shred of guilt in his tone.
“And you just left them behind?”
“Nothin’ I could do to help ‘em. Realized that when I left. You can’t help people who don’t wanna be.”
“Didn’t you feel bad?”
“At first I did. It’s outta my hands now.”
Out of his hands. You mulled the words over, dissecting them fully. Was your mother out of your hands? A lost cause, not worth fighting for? It displeased you to think about people like that. Their lives not worth the effort. But it made sense for him to think that way. He was in the army after all. You wondered how many people thought that about you. Your uncle surely did. Your clock’s tickin’ down, girlie.
“I don’t think I wanna go back home, Simon.”
“Then don’t.”
“My mom, she’s not right in the head. Like my cousin.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’d be throwin’ her to the wolves.”
“I dropped outta college to take care of her. Work my ass off to make ends meet. Should be out livin’ my life, and I’m wastin’ it.”
“Listen, girl. I’m not the kinda bloke you should be takin’ advice from, but if you wanna do something, you might as well do it.”
“Are you content with your life, Simon?”
“Mostly.”
“Even though you’re alone?”
“S’fine by me. I’ve got Minnie.”
By then, you had lost count of how many times you cried that day. More tears were shed from your eyes in the span of twelve hours than you had shed in your entire lifetime. You were sure of it. It embarrassed you. It was out of your nature, and this man, Simon, was witnessing a woeful, hollow shell of you.
“Jesus, you’re a right crybaby, aren’t ya?” He patronized, leaning in closer to your shaking form, close enough that you could feel his hot breath caress your neck. A spine-melting sensation, like a lesion in the brain. You knew you should have moved away from him, then. You should have been thoroughly repulsed. A man like him behaving this way with a young woman in distress was deplorable. It was distasteful, predatory even. You knew that, somewhere in the back of your head.
Then a warm, solid arm snaked its way over your shoulders, concrete and grounding. You leaned in closer, your subconscious id hungry for more, overriding your superego. A benevolent comfort you were neglected in your early years. Whatever it was, you never knew how much you craved it until then. His hands were gentle with you and methodical with their intentions. His body heat was blistering, melting you like soft wax in his palms, only to cling to him once you eventually cooled.
Simon’s diligent fingers soon found their way lower, wrapped around the indent of your waist, digging his short nails into the flesh. His breathing grew deeper, and yours did the same when he settled his free hand on your face, rubbing away your tears. “Cryin’ ain’t gonna make things better, will it?” You shook your head, burying your cheek into his calloused palm. “That’s right, girl,” he praised as your breathing evened out, guiding your head to rest on his chest. You scrunched your nose at the feeling of his chest hair on your raw cheek. “Just tryin’ to help ya.”
His keening hymns were music to your ears. They reduced you to liquid, splitting you open to expose a soft, pink, vulnerable inside that he could sink his crooked teeth into. You were rendered completely obsolete, brain soft like cotton, soaking up his words like water.
You almost didn’t register his hand wandering.
Almost.
“Simon,” you cautioned, throat constricted.
He held you closer. “What is it, love?”
“What are you doing?”
“Helpin’ a little girl I found on the side of the road,” he states, innocence feigned as he trailed further, resting his palm on the flesh of your ass.
“You said that you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“S’right. M’not hurtin’ you, am I, love?”
No, you thought, he wasn’t doing anything to harm you, and he hadn't the entire night. Despite it all, his presence shook you to your core.
“What’s wrong, girl?” He spoke again, as if he could read your thoughts.
You opted to tell him the truth.
“You scare me, Simon.”
A moment passed, followed by an amused huff. “Hm, do I?” He asked with wonder, acting with obliviousness, but he knew the game he was playing. You just couldn't catch on to the rules in time.
“Yes.”
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and craned your head to look you in the eye, picking you apart even further, until there was nothing left of you save for some gristle on the bone. “I think you like bein’ scared. Don’t you, love?”
You flinched. “No,” you spat out, rebuking his claim. “I don’t. Why would you say that?”
“S’not your fault. You don’t know any better.”
Part of you wanted to be offended, but he was right. You didn’t know any better. All you knew was fear, and you were complicit in it, comforted by it, even. You weren’t sure if you could exist without it. So, you leaned into it, let it wash through you. It turned out bittersweet.
“Just need someone to lean on, eh?”
You nodded, silently pleading for more.
Ultimately, he betrayed you.
“Alright then,” he exhaled, unwrapping himself from you with a quick pat to your ass cheek. “Should get you back to bed. You’ve got a long day ahead.”
Your chest squeezed with something you hadn't felt in years. It was something you didn’t have the words to describe, but you hated it. The way it made you feel like a little girl. A helpless child at the mercy of the world. You weren't a little girl anymore.
Simon stood up from the steps, leaving you blindsided. You watched him stroll his way to the door, making eye contact as he watched you in return, waiting on the stoop expecting you to follow behind him. “C’mon,” he beckoned with a tilt of his head. “Don’t be cheeky.” Mindlessly, you stood on shaky legs, trailing after him with your tail between your legs. He guided you inside, maneuvering you through the dark living space with a hand ghosting on your back like he had never touched you in the first place. You awkwardly shuffled your way along when you realized that he had steered you past the living room and into the hallway.
You stopped in your tracks, digging your heels into the floor. “Simon, wait—“
“What now, girl?” He grunted, shoving you forward with his size.
“The living room,” you panic. “We passed it.”
“Yeah,” he deadpaned, forcing you a few steps forward. “I know my own house.”
“Simon—“
“Don’t fuckin’ argue, girl. Can’t have ya wanderin’ out again. There’s coyotes out here. They roam around at night.”
“I won’t! I won’t go outside again. I promise! You don’t have to—“
“Just told ya not to argue, kid.”
He followed close behind, nudging you irritatingly in the right direction. You couldn’t see much of anything in the inky darkness, even as your eyes adjusted, but you could still feel how small the room was as you stepped over the threshold. The air was thicker, it smelled of him, and his voice reverberated off the walls like a prison cell.
“Take your clothes off,” he instructed, tone flat, as if he were asking you a mundane favor.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not dirtyin’ my bed sheets. Take ‘em off.”
You could have scoffed at that. It seemed ironic, a man as grungy as him practically calling you dirty. The audacity.
“Are you serious?”
“Don’t play stupid, love.”
Despite the heavy air, you shivered where you stood, adrenaline wracking your body as you debated making a run for it. You quickly pushed the thought away. You could hardly see where you were going. You wouldn’t make it past the hallway. Your decision was made for you when you heard the door click shut.
“Quit wastin’ my time and do as you're told,” he chastised you again. “You’ve already wound me up enough. Fuckin’ hell.”
Your fingers trembled as you fumbled with the button on your shorts, pulling them down your legs for the second time. You reluctantly shed your shirt as well, leaving it in a pile next to the bed along with your shorts. Clad only in a thin, worn-down bra and your ill-fitting underwear that left nothing to the imagination, you stood there in silence, saying a mental prayer for the darkness of the room.
The sound of the bed creaking as Simon slipped under the covers snapped you out of your head. “In ya get,” he coaxed, pulling the covers back to give you space.
You lowered yourself onto the mattress, feeling the plushness of it dip under your weight. Much more comfortable than the couch. You felt like you could sink right to the floor.
Your shuffling around was halted when you felt a soft mass connect with your foot at the end of the bed, followed by a soft meow. Of course he sleeps with his cat. Her dark-colored fur served as excellent camouflage.
“Try not to kick her,” he warned. “She bites sometimes.”
You rolled your eyes, curling your legs up into a fetal position and scooting as far to the edge of the bed as possible.
This will all be over tomorrow, you told yourself over and over as sleep finally claimed you.
-
You woke up sweating. The sun illuminated the room through the cracks in the curtains. It was morning, that you were sure of, but there was no clock to tell the time. You lifted your head to find Simon and Minnie missing from the bed. A permanent dip in the mattress marked the spot where he slept.
Climbing out from the covers, you reached down to grab your discarded clothes only to find them missing as well. Your gut lurched. You had no doubt that Simon was the culprit. You could feel your eye twitch involuntarily as anger swarmed your body, stinging your nerves like angry wasps.
The bedroom door was left ajar, a mocking illusion of freedom. A trap set for a naked lamb. Once again, you found yourself cornered.
You slowly stalked your way out of the bedroom and down the hall. The comforting smell of food and the voice of a female singer grew stronger as you neared the kitchen. Your stomach flipped at the smell. Fuckin’ hungry, you thought. Anything but pancakes.
Arms wrapped around your body in a feeble attempt to shield yourself from Simon’s sinful eyes, you stepped into his line of sight. Though he seemed to pay you no mind, too engrossed in the eggs he was frying in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, singing off-key to Golden Ring by Tammy Wynette. The sight of him was almost comical. Still only in his underwear, he held Minnie in one arm as he worked, her claws digging affectionately into the thick meat of his shoulder. He remained unflinching at the sting. It would have been a sweet moment if he were anyone else but him. The sight of a tall stack of thick pancakes sitting on a plate next to him sent you over the edge.
“Simon,” you called, tongue sharp.
He continued without missing a beat, eyes fixed on the eggs.
“Simon,” you yelled again, loud enough to be heard over the music.
He turned around then, drinking you in under the full light of the sun shining through the windows. His eyes were unreadable save for the slight dilation of his pupils. It unnerved you all the same, the way his eyes seemed to linger.
“Mornin’,” he grunted, turning away from you.
“Where are my clothes?”
“In the wash,” he states. “They needed it. So do you.”
You frowned and balled your fists. “You callin’ me dirty?”
“Eh,” he shrugged, shutting off the stove. “Food’s ready. Sit down.”
You eyed your bag sitting by the door, remembering the extra clothes you packed.
“You didn’t have to wash them. I packed extra.”
“I know. Washed ‘em too. They were rank.”
The last thing you wanted to do was provoke him, but you couldn’t help the words that left your lips. “You went through my shit!?”
“Not really, just your clothes.”
“You don’t dig through a woman’s things, you sick fuckin’ pervert!”
Minnie let out a small yelp, scrambled out of Simon’s grip, and pranced off down the hallway.
“Quit your shoutin’. You’re scarin’ the cat.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your fuckin’ cat!”
“Watch your fuckin’ toungue with me, girl,” he spat, charging you with full vigor, his imposing body backing you into the sharp edge of the stone counter. The cry that escaped you was woeful, stark in contrast to the feigned confidence you wore like armor just a moment prior. “I’ve taken you in, fed you, offered to help you back home, and all I get in return is your bitchin’.”
He had you pinned, physically and mentally, forcing himself upon you in a show of unmatched authority. That was a game you knew well. “Get the fuck off me!” You screamed, beating your fists relentlessly against his bare chest in another desperate attempt to free yourself. He proved to be unmovable. “You’re disgusting! Sick in the fuckin’ head!”
“Disgustin’ am I?” He sneered with a mean grin, revealing his rows of twisted teeth.
You looked away, utterly disturbed by the sight of him.
“No, no, love,” he chided in your ear, engulfing your jaw in his hand and twisting your head back to him. “Want ya to look at me,” he said. You obeyed, left without choice. His hazel eyes had been completely blown black, wild and frenzied. “Tell me why.”
“Why?”
“Yeah, tell me why I’m disgustin’. In your own words. Be honest.”
The answer to you was obvious, but you struggled to find the words.
“The diner,” you began, meek and unsure. “The bathroom, the porch, the way you touch me, the way you look at me.”
His eyes unfocused as he appeared to reminisce, fondly, it seemed. Then he spoke, accent thick and voice low. “Y’know, I could’ve had you last night, in my bed,” he cooed, running his thumb over your cheek. “I could’ve had you on the porch too, and in the bathroom, and on the sofa. Fuck, could’ve had you on the side of the road if I really wanted.”
As vexed as you were, in a way, you were almost thankful. He was finally saying the quiet part out loud. Another bout of tears escaped your eyes. Leaning in closer, he laid a soft kiss on your cheek, wetting his lips with your tears. “There you go cryin’ again.” Your face went hot with shame. Agonizing as it was for you, Simon relished in it. “Think you liked our time out on the porch last night.”
“No,” you denied, shaking your head. “You scare me, Simon,” you reiterated again, tone imploring as your armor cracked even further.
“Don’t lie now,” he warned. “You’re not very good at it, love.”
“Simon…”
His eyes were knowing, anticipating your next words with unbridled excitement.
“Go on, girl. Tell me what ya wanna say,” he taunted, a sinister smile still painted on his face. You were going to apologize, but the words died in your mouth when it dawned on you that you didn’t know what you were going to apologize for. I’m sorry for being a naive fool, you wanted to say, but that wasn’t an apology meant for him. It was meant for yourself. “S’alright, love,” he soothed, knowing you had nothing left to say. “I’ve got ya. I know what you need.”
You gasp, unable to react in time as he buried his face into your neck. He inhaled deeply, pulling in the scent of you like a line of white powder. Then he moaned, almost pathetically, and swiped his tongue across your sweat-marinated skin. A shiver shot down your back at the soft wetness of it. “Simon—”
He cut you off with a chuckle, wicked and patronizing as he pushed further. He laid a kiss on the wet patch where he tasted you, then another, followed by another, open-mouthed and debauched, grooming you like a cat would until the entire side of your throat was covered in a thick layer of his saliva. You struggled through it, squirming and clawing at him. He only retaliated by pressing himself into you further, trapping you under his weight while he had his fill, allowing you to feel the omen of his growing erection stabbing you through his boxer briefs. “Feel that, girl?” He asked, as if he could read your mind. “Feel what you’re doin’ to me.” He drove his point home, rutting his hardness into the soft meat of your lower abdomen. “Little fuckin’ tease, you are.”
“Didn’t mean to,” you sniffled. “Really, I didn’t. Please, Simon—”
“I know, kid,” he consoled. “Know ya didn’t mean it. Just wanted to get back home, yeah?”
You nodded into his shoulder, hiding your face. He held you there with a heavy hand on the back of your head.
“Pretty thing, you are. D’ya know that?”
You shook your head that time.
He scoffed, dismissing. “M’not used to pretty things.”
Silence lingered between you after that, though his hand stayed planted on your head. You didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was trying to tell you. What did it matter if you were pretty or not?
“Y’can still go home if you want,” he finally said. “I can take you to Roy’s. He’ll fix up your truck. Send you on your way.” He then pulled away from you, cradling your face in his palms like he was holding a piece of treasure. “That what you want? Wanna go home?”
Perhaps twelve hours ago, you would have said yes. You would have nodded with enthusiasm. Yes, please sir, just wanna go home, you would have told him, stupidly eager to return back to the endless cycle of keeping your mother in check, work, sleep, and repeat, but Simon's words echoed in your head like sirens. Can’t help people who don’t wanna be.
“No,” declared firmly, the final nail in the coffin.
Simon’s jaw ticked, surprised by your answer. “Thought you were scared of me,” he chaffed, returning his rough hands to your bare skin, letting them roam. You didn’t move. “Thought I was disgustin’, hm? A sick pervert, s’what you called me, didn’t ya?”
His words made you shrink in on yourself. That didn’t stop his hands from slipping lower. “I didn’t—”
“Yeah, girl. I know you didn’t mean that either. You’re not a good liar. Told ya that.” Before you could get another word in, Simon unceremoniously snaked a hand between your legs, casually like he had touched you a thousand times before. Your breath caught in your throat. A strangled noise of shock left your lips. “Can’t lie to me, love,” he tutted, running his thumb along your clothed slit as the fabric of your underwear dampened with evidence of your need. “Not with a wet little snatch like this.” You whimpered and jerked your hips back, stomach flipping as he stroked you. He didn’t take kindly to it. You knew he wouldn’t. “Stop movin’, girl,” he rumbled, sinking to his knees. “Just wanna get a look at ya.”
“You shouldn’t,” you protested, attempting to wrench your legs together as he leaned in, even though your clit throbbed in spite of your will. “I’m gross.”
Your words fell on deaf ears as the brute continued on anyway, taking a deep inhale and running his nose along the moist fabric where it began to stick. “It don’t matter nothing’.”
He’s disgusting.
Simon hooked a curious finger under the lining of the garment and gave it a firm tug. You cringed, gut churning, as you could feel the fabric desperately cling to the soft curls on your mound as he peeled it away. His eyes grew more frenzied by the second. “Look at that,” he mumbled to himself. “Look how pretty she is.” His praise made your chest swell.
I’m disgusting.
Letting your underwear pool on the floor, Simon rose to his feet, but not without taking you with him. You yelped as he threw you over his shoulder, flinging you around as if you were the size of his cat. All the blood in your body rushed to pool in your head as you found yourself upside down, though it only lasted for a moment. The wind was knocked out of you seconds later. “Ah— fuck,” you wheezed, landing back-first on the couch.
You attempted to inch back, using your elbows as leverage, eyes wide on the beast above you as he drew nigh. You didn’t get far, not that you expected to. He crawled to you, going for the kill, locking his arms around your thighs and dragging your hips close so that he was face to face with your core. Anticipation chilled you. Your insides twitched at the hotness of his breath against your folds.
“Fuckin’ hell, girl,” he groaned, impudently so, nudging his nose against your clit, savoring the moment. “Need it bad, don’t ya?”
Delirious with arousal, you buried your guilt in the dust, letting the desperation of the moment surface and take its place. “Yeah,” you admitted, forcing the bile down as it bubbled in your gut. You remembered his words from the night prior. Just tryin’ to help ya. You wondered if they were sincere or if you were just desperate enough to believe them.
Simon bit his lower lip, catching the flesh on the crux of his canines. He looked like a man possessed, completely beside himself and running purely on instinct. Then his tongue lolled from his mouth, lazy and heavy as spit pooled at the tip, only to drip down and land with a soft ‘pat’ against his awaiting meal. You didn’t even have time to breathe before he sunk his teeth in.
He started slow at first, dragging the wet muscle agonizingly through your folds. He took his time ripping you apart, peeling you back layer by layer. You found yourself pulling him closer. Legs locked around his neck in an effort to egg him on. Get it over with. He didn't protest, to your surprise. He leaned into the sway, allowing your illusion of control. He dove in, tongue first, dipping the tip into your clenching slit before sliding up to latch onto your clit. Your hips twitched in his hold at the sudden onslaught, and he moaned, like you were the best thing he’d ever tasted. You moaned right back, completely overtaken by his depravity. It infected you like a disease. Terminal, you were sure of it.
Gentleness was no longer a skill he possessed, it seemed. His once methodical ministries were quickly replaced with rapture. Simon sucked cruelly on your clit, already pulsing and painfully swollen as he dragged you closer to the edge of the pit.
I saw the beast crawl out the earth! He’ll take your soul, girl! Chew you in his teeth and spit you out in the lake of fire!
For the first time in your life, your momma’s psychotic ramblings started to make sense. Too late now, you thought. You were already falling.
Your eyes screwed shut, the image of your momma’s face fading further out of view as you sunk deeper until you could no longer make out what she looked like. The shrill sound of her voice grew muffled too, drowned out by the sound of Simon’s feasting.
Then the world went still, as if it stopped spinning on its axis, and the fire engulfed you. Your orgasm rippled through you like magma, syrupy slow and all-consuming. You pulled the man closer to you, more than you thought physically possible, and thrust your pulsating cunt into his mouth. He rejoiced, digging his claws into the flesh of your legs. He didn’t allow you to ride it out, though. He was greedy with it, drinking down all you had until you had nothing, until you were nothing but a mess of flesh and blood, overstimulated and twitching beneath him as your cunt pulsed weakly under his tongue.
“Simon,” you pleaded, voice small. “Hurts. You gotta stop.”
He did, stop, that is, by the grace of god. “Shit,” he slurred. “Messy little girl, aren’t ya?”
Upon opening your eyes, you were met with the sight of him. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat that glowed under the sun's rays. His dirty blond hair became nearly translucent, as well. He was beautiful; he was shameless like the sun.
In the midst of the glorious silence, you could hear him licking his lips clean of you, full and satisfied, savoring every last drop. “Pretty set of tits ya got on ya, too,” he remarked, looping a finger under your old, flimsy bra. He only gave it a few hard tugs before the clasp gave way. He discarded it on the floor like trash then ran his thumbs over your pebbled nipples, and you shivered. “What’d I do to get so lucky, hm?”
Wouldn’t call it luck.
You flinched on instinct as he brought his hand to your sex. Admiring his work, he stroked you, running two fingers along your sore hole, then to your throbbing clit before finally petting the hair that was thickest at the top of your mons. “Did so good for me, pet,” he praised again, and like before, you soaked it up like water. “Look how swollen she is f’me,” he said, nudging at your clit again. You couldn’t help but spasm in his grip. “Sensitive little thing,” he chuckled. “Ya came so quick.”
“M’sorry, Simon,” you lamented, watching him untangle himself from you and rise back to his full stature, eclipsing the sun with his body.
“Don’t be sorry, kid. Couldn’t help yourself, could ya?”
You nodded, eyes glassy.
“S’alright,” he reassured. “Just need some love, is all.”
Simon’s next actions stole your breath from you. Casually, almost sluggish, he reaches his hand beneath the waist band of his underwear. It was easy to see how his manhood strained against the fabric, practically screaming for attention. He hissed out a harsh string of curses when he finally freed himself. What you were met with was surely inhuman. A cock to pull all others to shame.
It was incomprehensibly large, veiny, and uncut with an impressive circumference and a heavy hanging ball sack to match, all framed by a bush of coarse, curly, blond hair.
That can’t be normal, you thought, teeth clenched as you watched him stroke himself. You had never seen anything like it, perhaps only in one of your daddy’s magazines you found by mistake. You didn’t want to believe it was real, that someone could walk around carrying a weapon like that between their legs, but the sight in front of you was undeniable, and you knew he meant to fuck you with it.
“What’s with the face, kid?”
You’re a monster.
“I— I don’t think…”
“What, girl?” He pressed impatiently, dropping his boxers to the flood and kicking them aside.
“It won't fit,” you implored, forcing yourself into a sitting position as panic struck you once more.
He simply laughed at your concern, shaking his head as he approached you, as if the thought were ridiculous. “It’ll fit, girl,” he said, cock still heavy in his hand. “Don’t gotta worry.” Then he pushed you back, ignoring your frantic gasps for air, forcing his body between your legs to keep them open. You laid sprawled out before him, wide open and obedient. An offering to gain his favor. No warning was given to you when he folded your legs back and dipped his cockhead into your slit, breaching your entrance with a soft squish. The shock made you jump, unaliening yourself from him. He grunted and shook his head. “Hold still, girl,” he chided, inserting himself once more. “Just gotta relax, yeah?”
You whined as he pushed deeper, slowly gaping you open inch by inch. A low rumble sounded from his chest like a purring animal. He was pleased, but you couldn't bear it. “S’too big, Simon.”
He soothed you with a soft hush, placing a hand over your stomach. “Halfway there, love. Just a bit more.”
Halfway.
“Takin’ it so pretty. Knew you would.”
More tears gathered in the corners of your eyes as you were stretched beyond what you thought possible. Inch by agonizing inch, the invader between your legs plowed through your walls, brutally molding you to the shape of him. Stars filled your eyes when you finally felt his hips meet yours. With one last thrust, he fully ruined you, damning you for good. The beast above you groaned gutterally, elated in his euphoria. You could feel the tip nudge at your cervix as he settled in like a punch to the gut. “You’re real snug, babygirl,” he breathed, gliding a finger along your cunt’s rigid edges.
You could feel yourself flutter at his words, cunt pulsing in time with your rapidly beating heart. “Too much,” you choked. “Simon…”
“Deep breaths, kid,” he said, dragging his monstrous shaft back to the tip, and with a punishing jerk of his hips, you were filled with him again. Whatever amount of air you managed to take in was quickly fucked out of you, ripped from your lungs with a gut-wrenching cry, over and over until you bloomed for him like a flower. “Sloppy little cunt you’ve got on ya,” he grunted, and he was right. The brazen squelching sound that filled the room accompanied by the slapping of skin was repulsive. “Stainin’ my damn sofa.”
“Ugh— god, fuck!” You cried, focusing your blurry vision on the sight between your legs. A mistake, you soon discovered. The sight was unbecoming, the way he had you split open, gaping wide for him with every piston of his hips, your slick frothing and leaking from your hole onto your thighs, then between your ass cheeks, and inevitably onto the cushions below. You wished you never looked. It was a sight not meant for your eyes.
Simon, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to look away. “You’re a filthy fuckin’ thing, y’know? Lettin’ a bloke like me in this pussy. You’ve got it bad, love.”
“M’not,” you cried, lying to yourself. “I’m not, I’m not.”
“S’okay, kid. Nothin’ to be ashamed of.” His rough thumb found your clit then, rubbing tight circles. “Your daddy was a bad man, wasn't he? S’why you’re such a crybaby, ain’t it? So, skittish.”
Your eyes widened, not believing your ears.
The father of lies and deception!
“Poor thing,” he crooned as your walls squeezed around him, an omen of your impending orgasm. “I was like that too, y’know? All shy, scared of the world.”
Your back arched off the couch, as if you were struck by lightning.
“I’ve got you now, girl,” he told you. It was supposed to be comforting. “Don’t gotta be scared.” It was then that you came undone for the second time by his hand, your jaw slacking at the crushing weight of it all. It hit you like a truck. Unlike before, your orgasm was a sledgehammer crashing into you at full force. It was punishing, but it left as quickly as it came.
“Atta girl,” Simon praised, laying a quick slap on your ass cheek. “Lemme see ya.” You whined mournfully when he unsheathed himself from you, your now widely stretched hole quivering at the loss while still convulsing from the aftershocks.
“Simon… m’dirty,” you gasped, watching him inspect you, fascinated by the way you fluttered and clenched around nothing.
“Don’t be like that now, babygirl,” he reprimanded, once again catching your whinges and discarding them over his shoulder. “Haven’t even filled you up yet.”
His statements offered you no solace, rather the opposite. “No no no, Simon! Please, I can’t!”
A telling look crossed his eyes, baneful and demoralizing. Don’t cross me now, girl.
You squeezed your legs back together, only for them to be pried apart by Simon’s barbaric strength. He growled as he fussed over you, fighting to keep you how you were. You put up an honest effort, kicking and squirming in his hold. You were nearly able to slip off the couch. “Where the fuck d’you think you’re goin’, girl?” He growled, ultimately sick to death of your disobedience. He manhandled you back under him, flipped face down, pinning you to the sofa with the weight of his body and wrapping his tattooed arm around your head and the other under your chin, effectively trapping you in a headlock. “No more shit, y’hear? Had enough of your bitchin’. You’re gonna be good for me now, yeah? No more misbehavin’?”
Jaw slack, you managed to force a groan from your chest and nod, face squished against his thick bicep as he smothered you.
“And you’ll say thank you when we’re finished, like a good little birdie, alright?”
You nodded again, wordless.
“That’s right,” he breathed, seemingly satisfied with your answers. “You’re a good little girl.” Slight relief filled your lungs when he loosened one of his arms, only to be snuffed out a heartbeat later when you felt his engorged cockhead prod at the entrance of your sex. He whispered something else in your ear, most likely equally as depraved and perverted as what he was saying before, but his words became lost on you as he impaled you on his shaft. No longer wasting time with formalities or soft words of encouragement, he began rutting into you like a feral dog, plowing you open to sow his seed.
The stretch was bearable that time, which you were thankful for, but the angle was atrocious. Far too deep and mind-numbingly overwhelming. All you could feel was him, incredibly hard and burdensome as he rearranged your insides around him. “Simon, fuck!” You gurgled, drool threatening to escape the corners of your mouth when his hand found its way back to your clit. He drew quick, rough circles on your oversensitive nub with the tips of his calloused fingers.
“Fuckin’ hell, kid,” he moaned in the shell of your ear. “Tight little pussy. Takin’ me like fuckin’ champ, you are.”
You let out a haggard, “Uh-huh,” feeling your stomach roll as the all too familiar licks of fire lashed their way from your core through your body. Nerve endings set ablaze, you swayed your hips in time with his thrusts to chase the end of it, an end you feared would never come.
Simon fucked like he was on a mission, lethal and determined, like it was life or death. He braced himself with his knees, using them as leverage to pound into you properly, setting an unyielding pace. Completely at his mercy, your ears rang and your skin tingled as you felt yourself lose control. The muscles in your legs grew sluggish like you drank your weight in liquor.
“She’s stranglin’ me, baby,” he gritted through his teeth. “Gonna cum f’me again, yeah? I can feel ya.”
You would have laughed if you had the energy. No , you’re strangling me. Instead, a garbled, “Ah ah ah,” left your throat as you felt your orgasm, or what you assumed was an orgasm, build in your lower gut. “Simon, Simon!” You yelled, digging your nails in his skin as a warning. “Gonna cum— ah fuck, Simon!”
“Fuck— that’s it, girl. Go on, show me what you’ve got.”
His name became a mantra in your head.
Simon, Simon, Simon.
The word echoed in your thoughts like it was the only one you knew.
“Simon—”
You cried his name, toes curling and eyes rolling.
“Shit, fuck— cum on my fuckin’ cock, kid. That’s it, that’s it, girl.”
He didn’t need to tell you twice.
Your spine bowed against his belly as you came, mouth open in a silent scream.
You gushed for him, spraying your release all over his cock, further marking the sofa with your sins.
The brute above you keened, moaning a guttural moan as he shot his hot cum inside your awaiting cunt. You fell limp in his hold as it flooded you, filling you to the brim and drooling out onto your thighs, adding to the mess. Simon’s weight nearly doubled on top of you as he finished, riding out the aftershocks. He kept his cock buried in you, though, crushing your body under his for minutes as his dick softened in the warmth of your walls. “Did good f’me, kid,” he offered, petting the top of your head. “Didn’t think ya had it in you, squirtin’ on my cock like that.” He unwrapped his arm from you and slipped his cock out of you finally with a soft squelch, lifting himself away from you.
Gasping in relief, you remained limp as you caught your breath.
You could see Simon kneeling over you from the corner of your eye. He seemed content, admiring his masterpiece. You could see his hands wandering, however. “S’alright, love,” he said, kneading the soft flesh of your ass as you flinched away from his touch. “Just lookin’ at ya.”
He pulled your ass cheeks apart, watching your hole clench at the exposure to the air, and you let him. Even as he circled his thumb around your rim, even as he gathered the mess of cum that pooled between your legs and smeared it over your taint, even when he pushed an experimental finger inside, you leaned into it, letting him show his affection in the way he knew how.
“What d’you say, babygirl?” He asked, probing his digit further in. “You remember.”
Oh, right. Of course.
“Thank you, Simon.”
He smiled. It was genuine.
“You’re welcome, love.”
-
You didn’t speak another word until a few hours later. After you were washed and fed, you and Simon laid back on the couch, sharing a cigarette, floating in a world of your own, Patsy Cline emanating from the radio. He held you close, your back against his chest as you inhaled the harsh smoke of Simon’s awful Marlboros. Minnie decided to join you too, curling herself in a ball of fur in your lap.
“Simon,” you called, watching the smoke dance in the rays of the sun.
Did you really mean what you said earlier? That you’ve got me?”
Simon hummed and took the dwindling cigarette from your fingers, pulling a drag.
The anticipation could have killed you. Stiff in his arms, you waited. In the three seconds he took to inhale and exhale, you heard a thousand different answers. Would he let you stay? Would he dump you at Roy’s and wash his hands of you? Were you even worth the trouble? You wouldn't fault him for it if he did. That would be hypocritical of you.
Your heart skipped a beat when he hummed, giving you his answer.
“Yeah, kid,” he said, giving your head a pat. “I’ve got ya.”
content w: 18+ nsfw teasing, licking through panties, f reader, implied free use
as you're lazing about on the mattress and watching tv, your husband steps inside from the hallway.
he doesn't say anything yet, merely lets his gaze wander from your outstretched legs to your slowly rising and falling chest.
your eyes are still glued to the tv. an essayist talking about some game you've never heard of before, but still grabs your interest.
he's made it further inside, calmly making his way to where you sit. he sits down at the foot of the bed, turned at the hip to just watch you. his eyes keep falling down to the same spot; right where your nightgown has ridden up and stops just below your stomach, revealing a sliver of your panties.
at this point you feel his unmoving eyes on you, not that you mind. your hand rests atop your stomach, idly scratching near your navel through the soft fabric of your attire.
"hi, hun." your words are plain, distracted. he answers with a quiet hum and a nod.
he gets up to reposition himself, now sitting right next to where you're laying, facing you now. the warmth radiating from your skin seeps into his own.
his big hands slowly guide their way to your legs, gliding up over your calf and then to your thighs. he sinks his thumbs in the giving flesh, watching as his digits bounce up when he releases.
"having fun?" you hum, almost bored. but he can tell you're just interested in tv at the moment.
he responds with another short grunt and nod, expression unreadable.
then he's pushing your nightgown up and out of the way, giving himself a clearer view of your light panties, and the way the fabric is taking shape of your plush lips.
his finger slowly drags along your inner thigh to trace up and over your mound.
there's some fluttering of your lashes, yet you remain mostly relaxed. still and calm despite the now steady growing arousal in your system.
he's too busy staring between your thighs to look at your reactions. his index finger presses down right where your clit is hidden beneath the soft cotton, causing your thighs to twitch.
he drags both hands to your waistband and gives it a small upwards tug, making your panties cling to your folds. your clit press against the fabric, warmth pooling and making it tacky.
the tight feeling makes your breath hitch, gaze briefly falling to where his hands sit, before looking away again.
are you acting shy now?
no matter, he's more focused on leaning down, bringing his face near. his lips close around your pulsing clit through your soft panties, sucking the sensitive bud into his mouth, dragging his tongue flat over it to taste you. his breathing is measured, hot against your skin while he huffs your scent.
"h..honey.." you moan, hips quickly twitching and squirming.
he doesn't move away, continuing to tongue you through the light patterned cotton, licking up any slick that's starting to seep through and mix with his saliva. "hm?"
"mmh.. making a mess of my– ooh.."
your eyes flutter shut, hips arching towards his eager mouth.
he pulls away with a wet smack of his lips, leaving a warm, wet spot there that's growing bigger. the cool air in the room blows against it, causing a shiver to run through you.
he soon starts pulling your panties down, peeling the soaked thing away from your folds like unwrapping a gift, then tosses them without breaking eye contact with your pussy. he lays flat on his stomach between your legs, resting those big hands on your thighs, thumbs caressing your skin.
his nose bumps against your clit, mouth hovering slick folds. his eyes–heavylidded–slowly trail up your body before meeting your gaze. "i'll clean up the mess then."
a/n: tryinggg n failing to get back into writing smut. everyone just gonna be teased in my fics idk
simon riley would never admit it out loud, but really he's a simple man when it comes to you. the little things make him happy.
like the short nightdresses you wear in the summer months.
soft silk that moves through his fingers like melted butter. the lace trims that frame the plush flesh of your tits. the way fabric clings around your hips as you move; slips up over your thighs when you climb out of bed to make the first cup of tea of the morning.
but the best part? you never wear underwear with them. so when you get too warm in the night, push the covers off, and roll onto your side - your nightdress riding up - he gets the most perfect view of your ass.
and if he's lucky, a little peek of your cunt too.
tags | abusive relationships, reader is married to another man, blood, religious guilt, infidelity, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, murder, please read at your own risk, 18+
final chapter | masterlist | ao3
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Simon Riley has had years of practice.
The beast that used to live inside of him, an impulsive thing with gnashing teeth and an ugly vengeance, is tucked away in his chest now. It's grown into something controllable. Something that's grown sense and direction.
A moral compass of sorts.
His younger self would've had your husband skinned in the back of his butcher shop the first night he saw you. He still remembers it now, the way you peered at him with wide eyes. A hummingbird heartbeat in your chest because you were afraid of finding another man other than your husband attractive.
Those first words too— 'I have a husband.'
Like it ever mattered to a man like Simon Riley. He might've even called that whole ordeal a meet-cute if he hadn't immediately decided your husband and your fate that exact moment.
Truthfully, he expected you to shy away, create space between the two of you, but then you showed up with a bowl of food for him. It was quite the bold move on your part, and then you went on to tell him you cooked it for your husband. And that ugly beast in his chest perked up at that. How could it not?
Your husband hadn't been deserving enough of that meal, so you thought to bring it to him. That was all the confirmation he needed that you were something worth pursuing and Simon always takes his pursuits seriously.
He was bold for you after that. Dirty thumbs and all. He didn't think you would say yes, but he did anyway because he wanted to see how you would squirm, eyes dilating to hide the lie you muttered to him.
He waited. Patience has been built into a man like him. Another routine he faced until you built enough courage to face him again. He'd wait forever for you; he knew you'd come.
And then you did, his pretty bird built up the courage to walk into his shop, burying the overwhelming thoughts of your husband somewhere deep. That was an issue he'd deal with another day, for now, the only thing that mattered was rewarding your bravery. What better way was that than to make you forget your husband's name on his fingers and tongue?
You were so pretty on his butcher block too. A sweet lamb, tangled into the arms of two men who were probably too corrupt for you. It made you taste better; the sweet sap right from the core, tinged with bravery and courage.
You were too naive. Why wouldn't you trust him to drop you off at home? Except now he's got your address and there's no way the beast in his chest could control the obsession he had with you. He watched you through the window, sad eyes in the morning when your husband left for work.
And your husband? The sorry loser had no idea that another man was watching the both of you, that there was another man between your legs most nights. No idea that you came to him all by yourself with a drooling mouth to taste the skin of his cock.
Simon plotted after that, mulling over how he would finally do it.
You surprised him again, then. You beat him to the punch and maybe that's why he chose you.
You had looked at him with so much fear, and the beast inside of him roared. You came to him for protection?
This was the easiest part. Simon's a practiced man in blood and flesh.
Even then, his main concern was always you. Staring with tears down your cheeks that clump your lashes together. And maybe the feeling in his chest is wrong, foul. He's sure of that because he shouldn't be jealous of the fact that he wasn't the one to make those tears collect at your collarbones. Shouldn't make his dick twitch in his jeans.
Your husband is an issue for a later moment. Right now, he's got you clinging to him for support, and he's never really been someone's safe space. He shouldn't be yours, but you're a bit too naive to realize that. Too used to the mistreatment from your husband that you don't see the sick and twisted thoughts swimming in his brain.
He takes you to his, of course, makes you at home. And maybe he should stay, make you the priority right now, but he leaves you in his kitchen with a kiss to your forehead and a promise of being back in an hour.
Business is what he calls it.
You're in the shower when he comes back and you don't even react when he joins you. His shower isn't built for two people, especially of his size, but he forces himself in. You can't move much, not like you had plans other than standing in the water and letting the water wash away the stains of your husband's fingertips. The waters hot, like it could scald the sins right off your tainted skin.
Simon replaces them then, hands probably more rugged than your husband's, who's had more blood on their fingertips, but you let him because at least it isn't his. And the sick and twisted version of your chest likes it because at least it's not your blood.
His calloused hands feel nice on your skin and it helps you forget. Forget everything your husbands ever said to you. Unworthy. Harlot. Going to hell. Forget the way his hands felt around your neck trying to drain the life out of you. How his hands felt on your body at night when all you could imagine was Simon.
Marriage is a funny thing, isn't it? Something sacred, meant to twine two souls together for eternity. It's not a fragile thing. Your husband managed to taint it all. Push you into the arms of a man who you're sure doesn't deserve it either, but he's put you first and that's more than your husband's ever done.
You don't think God intended this for you. Didn't put Simon in your life because he was your soulmate and he doesn't act like he's the son of God. Your mother would hate him, take one look at his gangly teeth and scarred lips and shun the both of you. You don't really care, how could you when she's played a part in the abuse you've faced from your husband for years?
You chose you when you chose Simon.
Maybe you shouldn't; you don't know much about the man. Like how he got all those scars decorating his body. That's why marriage is a funny thing, how can a man you know nothing about treat you better than your husband?
You do know that he lets you act on your desire. That he practically controls those desires in the palm of his hand. That his chapped lips on your neck, nipping at the bruises left by your husband, feel better than anything God has ever promised you. That his fingers, trailing down your stomach and slipping between your thighs, make your core tighten in a way you've never felt.
The both of you don't even think about waiting, let you gather your emotions from the night you just had. You'd rather have him fuck your mind blank, and the slick he's greeted with is enough proof of that. Truthfully, there's this part of you that likes it even more, that it's wrong, that your husband's lying on the shed floor while you've got another man's fingers curling into your waiting cunt.
You can't find it in yourself to really care.
Simon likes it more too. You barely know him outside of the way he makes you cum, but you're not entirely ignorant despite the way your husband promises you are. You know the type of man he is, one who likes corruption a little too much.
He's not a saint. He's no angel.
Not with fingers like this or a mouth like that.
You're fine with that, you'll do anything he asks as long as he keeps your mind foggy and a little melted.
"Not here." He speaks for the first time since he's joined you and it makes you jump. "The bed."
You hadn't even realized you were grinding your ass against him, his cock pressed between the clefts of your ass.
It doesn't have to be anything sweet. You're not losing your virginity and Simon hardly knows how to be gentle, but that's not what you need. Not right now. You want it to hurt, to feel any sense of guilt for what you’re about to do.
You're impatient when he lays you out on his bed and takes his time like he hadn't taken you apart layer by layer more times than you can count on his butcher block. Like he hadn't had his tongue pressed against your clit for hours or mapped out the spot that makes your toes curl and back arch.
He laughs when you push at his head with a whine, "Just want you already."
He remembers when you first denied him, when you held on to your dignity and told him you weren't hungry. That dignity was lost somewhere in between all this. Now it's got you impatient and demanding.
Simon obliges, of course. He'll deny you another time, make you beg and twitch with overstimulation when it doesn't feel this urgent. When you aren't shaking in the palms of his hands because the memory of your husband is still at the corners of your eyes.
He'll make you forget.
You don't even know what he's done. That he's got your husband's blood under his nails and slabs of meat in the back of his freezer. What will you think of him when you find out? Will you thank him for finishing the job for you? Or will you look at him with fear?
He glides his length along your slit, dragging down until his head notches at your entrance. He keeps it there, for a second too long, to watch the way you part so prettily for him, slick pouring out over the sides of his tip. You squirm, hips shimmying in annoyance because he's still dragging it out too long for your liking.
Finally, finally, when he breaks the barrier and pops through your walls it's worth it all. You fist the sheets, tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth, throat tense to stop the way you want to drop it in bliss. And when he bottoms out, you swear you see this God everyone's been telling you about since you were a little girl. Maybe it's because you died then and there, split in half by the massive girth of Simon and you're face to face with judgement.
You think you did, or maybe you just held your breath for so long that everything around you started to get blurry, white specks falling before your irises. But then, Simon's there, gangly face invading your space, tapping your cheek with his knuckle.
"Jesus—bird." It's through gritted teeth. "Bloody breathe."
It's not enough, not until he presses his palm on your chest and pushes down. It makes you stutter, the breath stuck in your throat finally escaping. You gasp; it's loud and burns, but it brings you too.
Simon's there and he's real, and he's got his cock pressed so far inside of you that you feel his heavy balls pressed at the base of your cunt. Your fingers clammer to his shoulders in a panic and he thinks you're regretting this but your next words are rushed.
"Move, Simon, move-- please, god hurry."
You know you haven't died when his hips move, slow and languid, sliding just far enough to give him room to thrust forward again. He's so big it hurts at first, tears welling in your lashes and maybe you should've let him finger you for longer. You don't regret it though, not when the pain from your marriage, from your husband, melts away to this.
A tangible pain.
A pain worth feeling for once.
It makes the thought of your bloody hands, the poor bunny, the years of pretending for other people finally fade away. All that's left is Simon. His weight pressed to your chest, almost suffocating you with his scent. Larger frame curling over you like a prey, shoulders so wide you can barely see over them, blocked by his chest and collarbones, and thick neck, and all the scars that litter his body. Fat cock kissing your cervix with each thrust, bullying his length into you so harshly that you think you'll be ruined forever.
That's what he wants isn't it? To ruin you for anyone else. Leave you with nowhere to go but back to him. You can't even find it in yourself to care, not when his thumb finds your clit and his filthy mouth finds your ears and presses words into your skull you've never even imagined. They're possessive, growled into your skin like you're his territory, an angry indicator over the fact that your husband didn't appreciate you enough. That your husband even had you at all.
But that's why he likes you, isn't it? Damaged goods is what your mother would refer to you as. A divorcee and a sinner. Simon doesn't mind. He likes you that way. He's a stray too after all.
A particularly harsh thrust does it for you. Teeth in your neck, thumb on your clit, and cock pressed against the sweet spot in your cunt. Your toes curl, your voice escapes you, jaw slack.
"There ya go," Simon groans, voice tight.
He's putting up a front you can't even recognize because you're much too far gone to realize anything but the way the sweet honey in your core has turned fire hot, burning and scalding your skin. It makes it sticky, hot honey molding the pleasure into the exact shape you need.
Everything goes white after that. Everything is forgotten and all that matters is that you can feel Simon. Urging you on, praise on his lips and the tip of his tongue.
He lasts much longer than you, fucking into you even when you go limp, muscles loose, and morphed into the mattress under you. You don't mind, not when the drawl of his hips keeps you in that fuzzy state where the only thing in your human brain is the primal urges of release.
When the morning comes and you've got his cock snug in your cunt again, you ask, breathlessly,
all these fucking fools on my dashboard talk about how they love bats but only show pictures of fruit bats fuck you start posting pictures of all bats i can’t stand this fucking bat erasure
Yo, you want some adorable non-fruit bats? Gotcha covered, pals!
Long Eared Bat, huge ears and an adorable face!
Mexican Free Tailed Bat, named for the fact that their uropatagium (back leg membrane) doesn’t cover their tail, leaving them with a teeny mouse-like tail.
Gould’s Wattled Bat, they got some pearly white sharp teeth, but they tell great jokes and always laugh at yours too.
“HAHAHAHAHA!”
Hoary Bat, AKA the bat that looks like they’re covered in powdered sugar.
Bulldog Bat, a bulldog… with wings <3
Vampire Bat, often seen as creepy, but they’re actually really cute. Also fun fact, vampire bats live in a social structure where able-bodied bats go out and feed and then share part of their meal with old/weak/sick members who cannot forage themselves. No survival of the fittest here, every bat helps every bat out <3
And lastly, the Painted Bat, and yes, those are its actual colors. Can’t get any more Halloween than that <3
A personal favorite of mine: Honduran White Fruit Bat, also known as ‘Marshmallow Bats’! These tiny cuties make tents by nibbling on the leaves until they fold down, and they snuggle close underneath it!
Bumblebee Bat! The smallest bat species and often considered the smallest mammal on Earth!
And the newly discovered Pied Bat!! I couldn’t find much about them, but gosh, they are adorable!!
Simon is building a bookshelf, which really shouldn't be a problem.
It's flatpack. IKEA. Forty quid and a bag of wooden dowels. A normal, boring, adult activity that millions of people do every weekend without incident.
But Simon is building it shirtless, because he got warm, and he's sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with the instruction manual spread across one beefy thigh, and he's wearing reading glasses—the ones he thinks you don't know about, the ones he keeps in the junk drawer next to his side of the bed—and he's holding a tiny Allen key between two fingers that could crush a man's windpipe, and he's frowning.
Not his scary frown. Not the operational, someone-is-about-to-die frown.
The little one.
The one where his split brow furrows and his lips press together and he looks like a very large, very dangerous man who is mildly inconvenienced by step seven of twelve.
And you're standing in the doorway.
You've been standing in the doorway for four minutes; hands clenched at your sides, and a feeling building in your chest that can only be described as rage.
"Whot," Simon says, without looking up, because of course he clocked you the moment you approached the room.
"Nothing."
"You're starin'."
"I'm not."
"Y'are. Can feel it." He picks up a wooden dowel, examines it, checks the diagram. Pushes his glasses up his nose with one knuckle. "Either help or stop hoverin'."
The glasses adjustment. The calloused knuckle. You want to bite him. You want to sink your teeth into his stupid massive shoulder and shake him like an overstimulated dog with a squeaky toy.
"I hate you," you say eventually.
He looks up slowly; one eyebrow raised above the glasses. "Whot?"
You start gesturing wildly. "I hate you. I hate your face. Put a damn shirt on."
"... No?"
"Put a shirt on or I'm going to do something insane, Simon Riley!"
He sets the Allen key down and looks at you properly. There's a smudge of saw dust on his cheekbone and his dirty blonde hair is pushed back from his forehead and the reading glasses make his dark eyes look bigger and you are going to lose your entire mind.
"You olright?" he asks, with the same cautious tone he'd use on an unstable IED.
"NO! No, I'm not alright. You're sitting on my floor building me a bookshelf in your reading glasses with your stupid arms and your stupid frown and I can't—I literally cannot—" You gesture at him incoherently. "How DARE you!"
His eyes flick down to the bookshelf, then up again. "How dare I... build furniture?"
"How dare you look like THAT while building furniture! You look like a—like a domestic—like someone's HUSBAND—"
His frown drops. "I am yer husband," he deadpans.
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!"
He stares at you, and the ghost of a smile is pulling at the corner of his mouth now, which makes everything worse, because Simon Riley almost-smiling in reading glasses is a federal crime.
Simon clicks his tongue. "C'mere," he says.
"No," you retort petulantly, arms crossing again.
"You're goin' to come here, sit in my lap, and tell me exactly whot's wrong with you."
"What's WRONG with me is that you're—" You cross the room in three furious strides, drop into his lap, grab his face with both hands, and kiss him so hard you nearly knock the glasses off. He catches them. Catches you. One strong arm around your waist, holding you steady while you kiss him like you're trying to absorb him through osmosis.
When you pull back, you're breathing hard. He's not, just watching with that smug expression of his.
"Better?" he asks calmly.
"No. I'm still angry."
"About the bookshelf?"
"About your ENTIRE existence, Simon."
"Noted." He puts the glasses back on. Picks up the Allen key. "Step eight requires a Phillips head. Make yerself bloody useful and pass it."
"I hate you."
"Y'mention that." He kisses your temple without looking up from the manual. "Phillips head. Top of the box."
You pass it and stay in his lap. He builds the rest of the shelf with you sitting between his legs, silently furious about the way his pale forearms flex, tendons twitching, when he tightens the screws.
"Unbelievable," you mutter, and you can feel him smiling against your hair behind you.
cregan stark likes to watch his spoiled, pampered wife bathe
"You are in no need of more oils, wife," Cregan mutters, grey eyes watching bedrugingly as you pour yet another vial of scented concoctions into the milky bath water you are lounging in.
He swears it must be the tenth one you added. How a woman can even breathe with so many cloying, flowery smells stinking up the bath chambers is beyond his comprehension. Cleaning oneself needs to be a simple, efficient affair, not a godforsaken parade of every single lotion and oil you own.
"If you are so slighted by it, husband," you lilt, leaning back into the water with a soft, pleased sigh, closing your eyes as you let yourself relax fully, body submerged up to your shoulders. "You may leave and allow me a moment of peace without your brooding."
"I am not—"
"But you are," you interrupt, humming, lifting a hand to thread your fingers along the surface of the water as you speak. "Every time you join me, you do nothing but stand there and brood," the sound of your tongue clicking follows, as if expressing your distaste for this odd tradition your lord husband has instilled in the moons you have been wed. "It disturbs my repose."
Cregan scoffs, having half a mind to not roll his eyes at your audacity. He should be used to it by now, seeing as you have never shied away from making it abundantly clear how much you love being indulged and enjoying your reprise without a single interruption.
And yet, he was not going to allow you to discard him with a flick of your hand and a defiant tilt of your chin whenever you wished to be undisturbed. He was your husband, and if he wanted to be in attendance at whatever ridiculous southern pompous customs you had, he would.
That's why he had asked the servants to put an armchair in your bathing chambers, close by the tub, where he shall sit every time he has the luxury of disregarding or postponing his duties for a while, just so he can watch you bathe and pamper yourself. Cregan did not care if word filtered through the walls that The Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North spent part of his pastime sitting splayed out in a chair in his wife's bath chambers, feasting on one of the most exquisite viewings in the Seven Kingdoms. Let them talk and whisper. He did not need to explain himself to anyone, least of all to gossiping servants and sycophants alike.
His wolfish gaze was shameless as it traced the damp, dewy skin of your neck and shoulders, fingers drumming onto the wooden arm of the chair, faltering in rhythm just a tad whenever you shifted, the water lapping at your curves. He swore sometimes you were moving with the intent to drive him to madness, even if it was the most minute gesture.
"Disturbs your repose," he parroted, lips twitching with amusement at your feigned disdain for his presence. "My apologies for being such a pest to my own wife," Cregan continued, "I was not aware bathing oneself required such solitude."
Your expression shifted, a scowl marring your pretty features as your chin tipped upwards, as if his words had no place even reaching you. "It always requires solitude. You are just adamant to perturb it," you complained, sighing, as if the mere thought exasperated you, which made Cregan's mouth curl further, dripping with mounting enjoyment. "You stand there watching me like some kind of lecher," you accused, scowl deepening, a scoff leaving your plush mouth. "It is unbecoming of a husband to ogle his wife so shamelessly. You northerners have no decorum."
And oh, the way your lips curled every time you mentioned his culture, tone haughty and dipped with venom at the edges, as if spitting out the very word, made his blood sing.
"Just brutes with no finesse," you finished, chin raising just a bit higher, showing him you were above such things, above him, above his culture.
Gods, he wanted to haul you out of that bath and spank you until you cried those fat, pretty tears again, cheeks flushed and voice wet from babbling at him to stop. Cregan was not a man given to punishment easily, especially with the woman he was bound to by law and vow, but he came to understand that there were few ways he could make his wife see reason, and even then, only if you wanted to give in to his whims and relent.
"If you wanted a soft southerner lord with nough but a flaccid cock and no mind of his own, wife," he spoke, lips curling into that slow, wolfish grin, the one where his canines peeked through. A wolf showing his teeth without biting, but making it clear he could if provoked further. "You wouldn't have accepted my proposal so readily, riding for Winterfell not even a fortnight after our sigils were put on parchment."
You scoffed, rolling your eyes in that infuriating way Cregan loved and hated in equal measure, as if his words were nothing but white noise you were forced to listen to. "It was in my best interest to accept," you protested, inclining a little higher, leaning back against the tub, the water lapping at the tops of your damp breasts. A muscle in Cregan's jaw twitched as his eyes followed the movement. "Why would I be the lady of some lesser lord when I can be Lady of Winterfell?" The words were accompanied by a hum, evidently pleased with the title you possessed. "I am nothing but a woman of great ambitions, as you're well aware, husband."
Cregan huffed, more amused than anything, head tilting, not taking his eyes off the way he could make out the pebbled shape of your nipples just shy of peeking above the milky, fragrant water. He knew what you were doing. This little game of yours was as old as time.
You were losing ground, not pleased with the way he was biting back at your attempts to unnerve him, and had no other alternative but to call to his most primal, animal instincts that reside as deep as the marrow of his bones. He was a man, after all, and no stranger to the cravings of the flesh, more so when it came to his infuriatingly enticing wife, bare and glistening, lounging in the tub, indulging his eyes with glimpses and flashes of your body, willing to make him falter in his resolve.
"You never cease to remind me of the fact, wife," he said, feeling his chest puff up a tad at the way you huffed at his words, clearly displeased that he was not indulging your whims still. Not yet. Cregan was enjoying this more than he wanted to admit. "No woman in the Seven Kingdoms can rival you in that regard."
"What about other regards?"
Cregan's mouth twitched again, but he reigned in his expression for now. "Other regards?" He feigned confusion, tilting his head to the side, dragging his eyes from where they traced the shape of your damp breasts, up to your narrowed, inquisitive gaze. "I fear I do not follow. Must you be so kind as to specify, wife?"
Your brows furrowed, body shifting slightly into the tub, the water lapping at your skin, wetting it anew, drawing Cregan's eyes towards every patch for a few moments, rough fingers twitching onto his armchair, but he won't be baited this time. Raising one eyebrow, he waited, grey eyes now solely focused on yours, keeping you ensnared until you gathered the words to throw back at him.
"Am I rivaled in other regards by the women of the Seven Kingdoms?" You asked, chin held high, trying to absolve yourself of the vulnerable undertone woven into the question, gaze sharp, narrowed. But the way one of your hands lifted to grip the edge of the tub, curling around it, gave you away. You needed to ground yourself for this sort of fragility, and it made Cregan's heart soften just a tad every time, melting the frost of the North around it and giving way to the ceaseless warmth you brought with you from the South.
He huffed, letting his mouth form that tender, soft curl reserved only for you, grey eyes crinkling at the edges with barely concealed fondness. "No, wife," Cregan said, tone glazed with honeyed affection, letting his eyes feast on the way your chest heaved with a soft breath, as if his words had eased an unknown burden curled beneath your breastbone. "There is no woman in all the Seven Kingdoms who could dream of besting you."
And still, you scoffed, protest ready on your tongue, bristling in the milky water, never one to cease when you wanted certainty. "If your words are baseless, you may keep them, for I have no use for-"
"Not in my eyes," Cregan interrupted you, tone lowered but firm, halting your tongue before you could descend into yet another one of your haughty deflections.
It was ever pleasing, the way you faltered in the face of his sincerity. Blinking akin to a startled doe, your expression passing from one emotion to another, offense to confusion to reluctant preening. He could see it. Your chest heaving with soft breaths, plush mouth parting, pupils dilating wide enough to encompass the color of your eyes, leaving behind pools of black. And then, the flush. That warmth spreading from the tops of your breasts and climbing up, up, up your throat, splotching over your cheekbones and reaching the tips of your ears.
Mhm, he got you good this time. Cregan might have to ride the high of such an accomplishment for the fortnight to come, if he was lucky. The Gods were ever so merciful to grant him such a gift and let him savor it, too.
"The smell of the bathing oils must've affected you a great deal, husband, to say such theatrical musings," you mumbled, not meeting his eyes for a heartbeat, two, before looking into that northern gray you preached you found so insufferable. "It makes you sound like one of those flaccid men you mentioned earlier."
Cregan could only huff, amused, watching as you tried in vain to deflect and throw whatever attempt at diffusing the meaning of his words back at him. "Sound, maybe," he said, offering you a slow, wolfish curl of his mouth, baring just enough hint of teeth to allude to a threat, but not bestow it. "But I am anything but flaccid, wife. You, of all people, should be familiar with the hardness of—"
"Silence!" You shrieked, one hand dipping beneath the water's surface and swatting upwards, sending droplets of water towards him, attempting to will him into silence. "Have you no shame, you brute? To speak of such things in the company of your wife?"
But he was not perturbed; on the contrary, his lips pulled into a smirk, pleased and smug. Making you bristle truly was the thing he favored most, aside from the feel of your body and the sound of your voice. "Should I speak of such things in the company of someone else, then?"
"Don't you dare! Gods, you're giving me a headache," you fussed, swatting water at him again, eyes narrowed as you demanded. "Help me bathe, so you may amend for your wrongs."
And who was Cregan to refuse such a decree from his wife?
The heat woke you up before John got the chance; the room gone thick with it, fan dead since two in the morning. You awoke in a body that wasn't entirely yours anymore — one leg slung over his thigh, your cheek glued to his shoulder with a film of dried sweat, the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed, twisted into a rope over your ankles.
You could smell the night still on the both of you. Him mostly. Salty, sticky skin, the back-of-the-throat musk of a man who'd just come home off a four month run somewhere he won’t name, fallen on top of you before he'd even got his boots all the way off, worked you over thrice, then slept like the dead in the heat he created without so much as wiping either of you up with a washcloth — his cum and your slick gone tacky between the press of your thighs, pulling at the flesh when you shifted.
Everything ached the way it only ached after him: low in your belly, raw where he'd been, a bruise coming up on the back of a knee from where he'd folded you in half, thick fingers pressed into the meat of it sometime past midnight.
You wanted to get up to finally rinse.
To feel like a person again.
But his calloused hand came down flat on your hip the moment you moved, before your knee had even cleared his leg.
"Where?" is all he managed, voice wrecked and low and gravelly with sleep, the word barely fully formed on his tongue.
"I'm disgusting," you complained, a whisper.
"Mm." His thumb moved across the jut of your hipbone, finding crust of himself there. His eyes hadn't opened yet. The corner of his mouth had, though, dragging up at one side. "Yeah… y'are."
"I'm glad you're happy with yourself," you huffed sleepily.
His hand kept going, palm dragging down over your hip and around the back of your bent thigh, and then up again into the real mess of you, fingers finding where you were still half-open and swollen from last night, slipping through the sticky wet, the pad of his middle finger circling your sensitive entrance. It was too much and not enough at once — the drag of him over flesh that hadn't settled, a wince folding straight into something hotter, your hips pushing into his hand.
He made a sound; pleased, throaty, his brows pulling in for a second.
"Look at that," he murmured against your temple. "Bet you don' even wan' it cleaned up, do you?"
"Shut up," you half-heartedly murmured.
"Mm-mm," he protested.
Then he rolled, the whole heavy heat of him coming over you in one move, knee shoving your thighs apart before you'd even agreed to anything, and the air between your bodies went humid and ripe, his chest sticking to yours, the dense hair on it dragging over your tender nipples. And your body answered him — thighs falling open the rest of the way, some primal part of you glad of his weight, glad to be pinned under it, glad he was solid and here and breathing on you. He braced up on a forearm and looked down at you, cyan eyes cracked open and bloodshot, lashes still gummed together. He looked like hell. But so did you, you were sure, and he was staring down like you were the best thing he'd ever seen.
He spat into his own hand without breaking from your eyes, crude, and reached down between you to slick his cock with it. You spread more open for him, your hands coming up to his back where sweat was gathered at the base of his spine.
He sank all the way in on the first stroke, stretching your sore walls, an obscene wet crackle of air pushing out to make room for him, Your whole body remembered him in one shoved open rush. He dropped his forehead to the side of your neck and let out a long breath through his nose.
"Four months," he rasped, almost to himself, the syllables coming apart as they fell. "Four months this was the only thing in my fuckin' head." Then, against your mouth, the gravel coming back into it, his throbbing cock bumping your cervix, your nails scrabbling over his sweaty skin for purchase: "That's it, dove. You can take it. You can take it, look at you, you've had worse than this off me."
You could hear his grin.
"Since last night?" you managed to get out. "Or— generally?"
A huff against your lips, almost a laugh, his hips not stopping. "Both."
He fucked you like he hadn't slept it off at all, like four months of going without you had only stored it up, his cock dragging thick and deep through the wreckage he'd already made of you. Every push of it pressed the sweat-slick of his furry belly against your clit so you got it both ways at once, inside and out, until your spine wanted to leave your body.
He talked the whole time — clipped, half-swallowed, filth pouring out of him like silver.
"Feel that," he asked. "That's last night still in you, that is. Didn't go anywhere." His teeth caught your jaw, dragged, overgrown beard scratching at your skin. "Gonna add some more to it." A deep grind of his hips that pushed the breath out of you. "Was lying there, every night, in the dark thinking about this. You under me, made a mess of, soaked through and still begging for more. Had to think about something else quick or I'd've embarrassed myself." His mouth is in your ear, hot and foul. "Four months of that. And now here you are. Wetter than the inside of my own head."
"John— you're so—," you couldn't get anything else out before he'd angled up and a moan tore out of you instead.
"Gross? Annoying?" he offered, hips snapping now, the bed knocking the wall, his hand slipping between you and the mattress to cant your cunt to his liking. "Yeah. And yet you're clenched down on me like you've never been happier. Funny, that."
It built faster than it had any right to. You'd stopped being able to do anything but hold on — one hand fisted in the wet sheet, the other clamped to the flexing muscle of his ass, your heels skidding down his back for purchase that wasn't there, every thrust knocking another broken little sound loose from a throat you no longer had any say over. And when you came you spasmed around him with your nails dug into the meat of his shoulders and your mouth open on a noise you'd have been embarrassed by if your brain hadn't been simmered down and reduced to nothing. He cursed and pushed his face into your throat and licked the salt off it, tongue flat against the tendon, groaning into your flesh as you fluttered and squeezed and dragged him over the edge with you.
He spilled deep with a groan you're not sure you've ever heard from him before, and then stayed there. Heavy. Crushing. His heart going hard against your chest, his breath sawing at your collarbone. Neither of you moved — both of you a single disgusting glued-together animal. Roadkill, maybe.
Underneath the slowing wreck of your own pulse, the feeling you'd been fending off since he walked through the front door finally claimed you — he was home. Your throat went tight, and you turned your face into his damp hair so he wouldn't catch the sound that squeezed out of it.
He exhaled a warm gust against your throat, then he dragged his lips to the corner of yours and kissed you — sloppy, tasting of sleep and salt and the both of you mixed past telling each other apart.
shout out to the girls that hate their bodies but are trying really really hard to find the beauty and comfort in them because that shit is hard and takes a lot of time and is emotionally exhausting. i’m proud of y’all.
You get injected with an unknown toxin and now your loyal teammates are determined to help ease your suffering.
— pairing: Task Force 141 × fem!141!Reader
— cw: 18+ | sex pollen; dubcon/fuck or die; dd:dne; medical & military inaccuracies; pining; hurt/comfort; angst; fluff; cum and orgasms as the antidote; wc: 12k+
author's note: This has been in my drafts for two years 💀 And she would've said yes to all of them.
"We need some answers, Kate. Now." Captain Price's voice booms inside the spacious briefing room.
He's practically pacing in front of the desk like some anxious K-9, arms folded over his plate carrier as he keeps his sharp eyes trained on Laswell and the two scientists sitting behind their laptops, staring at their respective screens.
Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.
You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.
You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.
You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.
Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.
Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.
"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."
Bioweapon.
Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.
"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.
"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."
Apparently?!
You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.
"That is correct, sir. She won't die."
Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.
"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."
A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.
"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.
"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.
When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.
It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.
And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.
What the hell is happening?
Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.
Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.
"What kind of bloody toxin?"
"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."
The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.
"The reports say it turns men—"
Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Turns them what, doc?"
It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."
The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.
"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."
Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.
Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.
"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.
"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"
Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.
Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.
"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"
A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.
"I feel weird."
You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.
Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.
Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.
"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.
Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.
The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.
You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.
And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.
Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.
"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.
In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.
Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.
"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.
Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.
"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.
"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."
Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.
It's his.
"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.
"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.
Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.
"Cap'n! What do we do?!"
You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.
Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.
Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.
All that matters is someone touching you.
Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.
"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."
"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.
"I'll call the senior consultant."
Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.
Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.
"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.
Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.
"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"
Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."
Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.
"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"
Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.
Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.
"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.
"She can't consent!"
It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.
"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"
John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.
"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."
His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.
"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.
He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.
"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."
Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."
"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.
"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.
"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."
The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.
Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.
"But sir—"
Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.
"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."
Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.
The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.
Not asked, ordered to.
He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.
He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.
This doesn't feel like any of those things.
He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.
"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.
"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.
Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.
This is not how he'd imagined it.
He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.
He hadn't planned any of that.
Fucking liar.
You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.
"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"
"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."
He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.
You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.
He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.
You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.
Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.
"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.
Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.
You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.
Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—
"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.
"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.
Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.
He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.
His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.
You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—
No. He's not going there.
"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."
He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.
His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.
You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.
"M-more, Kyle, please!"
Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.
Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.
He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.
"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."
He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.
Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.
"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."
You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.
Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.
He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.
When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.
"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"
He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.
"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."
"Please—"
"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."
He drops to his knees instead.
The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.
He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.
The sound you make is devastating.
Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.
Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.
He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.
But he doesn't stop.
Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.
"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."
Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.
But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.
He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.
"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."
You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—
And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.
"Soap!"
The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.
Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.
"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"
Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."
"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.
"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.
"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.
Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.
"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."
Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.
Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.
He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.
Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.
There is no need to.
Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.
He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.
By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.
It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.
"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."
And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.
That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.
Christ, you're beautiful.
He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.
He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.
He's thought about it a lot.
But not like this.
"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.
Close enough.
"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."
He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.
He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.
"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."
He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.
Let them hear.
His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.
"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."
He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.
Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.
He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.
His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.
But he doesn't stop.
He is physically incapable.
You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.
"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"
He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.
The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.
"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"
"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"
He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.
Inside his combat pants.
His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.
He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.
"MacTavish."
Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.
Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."
"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.
"Get yourself sorted. Now."
Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.
Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.
"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.
"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.
You don't notice the shift at first.
One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.
You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.
A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.
"Don't."
One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.
Ghost.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.
Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.
You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.
He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.
Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.
"Simon…"
His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.
"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.
"Don't want—"
"Wasn't bloody askin’."
He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.
Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.
Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.
Trust.
You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.
Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.
"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.
You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.
"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.
You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.
You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.
"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."
"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.
He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.
You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.
Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.
Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.
But.
His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.
Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.
You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.
"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.
"Yeah."
"It hurts."
He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.
He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.
Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.
Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.
Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.
It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.
So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.
You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.
He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.
Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.
Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.
In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.
"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."
Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.
"It's not enough, is it."
It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.
"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."
The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.
"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.
"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.
"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."
He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.
"And we tell Ghost."
Ghost doesn't agree.
He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.
And then: "No."
Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"
"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."
Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.
Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.
"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."
No one dares to argue.
Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.
The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.
You look small.
That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.
You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.
But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.
He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.
"Sergeant."
You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.
"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"
"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."
He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.
You'll keep hurting. Under his command.
He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.
"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."
His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.
This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.
He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.
This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.
He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.
"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."
He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.
Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.
You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.
It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.
Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.
He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.
Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.
He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.
"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.
"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."
You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.
He lowers you onto him slowly.
The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.
You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.
You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.
Almost.
He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.
And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.
He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.
Hates that he doesn't want to stop.
Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"
His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.
You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.
For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.
Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.
He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity
He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."
You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Garrick. You're up."
Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.
Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.
The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.
Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.
He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.
"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."
He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.
He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.
"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"
The condoms run out after Soap's first round.
Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.
"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."
Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.
"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."
It should be simple, and it’s anything but.
Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.
"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"
He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.
Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.
"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."
"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."
And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.
Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.
The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.
The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.
You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.
Ghost enters the room without being asked.
He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.
He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.
He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.
You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.
Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.
"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.
You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.
"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."
Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.
In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.
Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.
How is she?
He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.
Handled. Debrief in the morning.
He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.
Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.
The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.
The third thing is the balaclava.
You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.
Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.
You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.
The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.
And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.
Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.
The shower. The water. Voices.
John.
Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.
You lie very still.
The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.
You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.
Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.
Neither of you says a word.
His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.
"How do you feel?"
You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.
"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.
Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."
His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.
Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.
You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.
