Aspen: she/her, elder millennial of forty years. writings, musings, fandom flailing, and smut. I DO NOT INTERACT WITH USERS UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE. MINORS AND SERIAL LIKERS WILL BE BLOCKED.
Here's the official guide to who I am, what you'll find around here, and the guidelines for being a good visitor to the forest...
UPDATED JUNE 2026
CHIEF FORESTER: ASPEN
Elder Millennial/40 years of age, she/her
THINGS ASPEN KNOWS WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT
Trader Joe's, Disney Parks, Great British Bake Off, CBS Survivor, Plants
IN THIS FIELD GUIDE YOU WILL FIND:
↠ Maps & Masterlists: my writing
↠ Forest Rules & Regulations: my guidelines and boundaries
↠ Visitors to the Forest: my approach to asks, requests, and tagging
↠ Upcoming Expeditions: projects I'm working on
↠ Tree Classification: my current tags
↠ Tales of the Teller: more about me and my writing
↠ THE FOREST OF FICS
latest & greatest, challenges and events I've done, links to my specific fandom areas
↠ Bucky Barnes Boreal Forest
↠ Steve Rogers Streamside
↠ Orchard of Other Marvel Characters
↠ Sebastian Stan Savanna
↠ Chris Evans Coppice
↠ I do not interact with minors. It's not safe for anyone under 18 in these woods, and I'm honestly more comfortable knowing folks are over 21 because of the nature of things around here.
↠ I do not consent to having my works translated or posted to other platforms. If I wanted to, I would.
↠ I will block at my own discretion. This is my forest, and I set the boundaries. Underage? Blocked. Pornbot pigeon? Blocked. Bigotted? Blocked. Rude? Blocked. Comments of only "more" or "part two" etc? Blocked. Serial/succession of empty likes? Blocked. Just be a reasonable human over the age of 18, and you'll be free to roam the woods.
↠ ASKS
Always open. I adore asks! Send thoughts, thots, questions, gifs, pics... Asks are NEVER a bother and you can ask about anything - questions about my existing works, stuff I'm working on, fandom things, my life... I'll answer within reason (no spoilers, I'm semi-open about my life but do keep some things private, etc). FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm not rare prompt with answering. Some have inspired fic or drabble ideas, and sometimes that writing goes fast, sometimes it goes slow, and there are a few that are sitting in my box that are "future" parts of current WIPs. But the hope is to always get to everything eventually.
↠ REQUESTS
Closed. Periodically I may host a request fest (as I have in the past for my 300 follower celebration or for other occasions in the future).
↠ TAGLIST
As the forest of fandom is exceedingly vast, I do not maintain an official taglist. HOWEVER, you can follow @buckets-and-stories and turn on notifications to know when I post new writing. On this secondary blog, I reblog ONLY the initial posting of my stories and nothing else.
↠ THE GREAT BUCKY BAKE OFF: a Bucky x Reader episodic story with a Great British Bake Off format (coming fall 2026)
↠ FOREST NAVIGATION: field guide, masterlists, story collections
↠ AN ASPEN THING: when I post something more to do with me than anything fandom
↠ ASPEN MILESTONES: ONLY YOU CAN CREATE THESE FOREST FIRES
↠ ASKpen: responses to things from my ask box
↠ ASPEN IS WRITING: any commentary, sneak peaks, progress posts
↠ ASPEN WROTE SOMETHING: new writing post (fic, drabble, chapter)
↠ WRITER COMMENTARY: commentary either as a response to an ask or in a reblog
↠ OMG REBLOGGED THANK YOU: responding to or thanking people for reblogging my fics
↠ READING: my reblogs of other people's fics
↠ MY MOOTS: flailing about or responding to one of my mutual friends
↠ HISTORY OF ASPEN
I grew up in a family that was steeped in all things stories: grandparents, aunts and uncles always telling stories at family gatherings; parents read to me before bed; watching too many movies and cartoons; staying up way past my bedtime trying to sneakily keep the light on to read and read and read; playing elaborate imagination games after school with my best friends (house, princesses, orphans, dance coaches, etc). I wrote my first story in my eighth grade English class where one day in the computer lab we were assigned to write a mystery that was at least one page. I loved it. My teacher said it was good...
That summer our family moved - mere days before I started my freshman year of high school - so that fall before I made friend friends, I read a lot and I started writing. I was desperate for the next Harry Potter book to come out, so I started writing my own... the next year I learned about fan fiction on the internet and that it was a thing. I was drawn into Lord of the Rings fanfic, then I wrote a Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic, and then I went back to Harry Potter and actively wrote in that fandom for around six years.
In college I majored in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing because while I was writing fan fiction, I was also occasionally dabbling with original fiction... the dream was to be a famous writer.
↠ WHY BUCKETS-AND-TREES
Buckets because I thought I'd be writing almost exclusively Bucky and Trees because Aspen. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
↠ ASPEN NOW
In summer of 2022 I aggressively reclaimed HAVING hobbies in an effort to re-establish Aspen having a life outside of work. I love my career and I've worked incredibly hard to establish myself in the professional world, but... I needed to be more than just my work again.
So, again I write.
Throughout 2023 I started venturing out and participated in A LOT of challenges, which was so much fun in pushing my creative boat out into new waters. In 2024 I wrote nearly 300k and explored many tropes and themes that stretched what I thought I was capable of. So now with few to no excuses left, in 2025 I plan to DO THE DAMN THING and write a novel. I've always intended to, and I've got about five solid ideas I've been stewing on for years, but 2025 will be the year. Maybe 2026 will be the year. I maintain that writing is my hobby, so I won't force it or do it unhappily whether it's fan fiction or original fiction.
↠ MY WORK
Primarily I'm writing MCU fan fiction - typically Bucky Barnes or Steve Rogers; I have written some pieces with Sam, Natasha, Matt Murdock, Namor, and Wanda; I have some ideas for Thor, Carol, and M'Baku that I may or may not ever get around to. I also routinely write for a slew of Sebastian Stan and Chris Evans characters and that's mostly where my muse lives.
I write a range of fluff, smut, soft-dark and dark. Nearly all of my work has mature elements whether that's stronger language, sexual situations, or mature themes. HEED THE WARNINGS FOR EACH WORK AND DO NOT READ IT IF IT'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T LIKE. If I miss tagging something properly in the content warnings, please send me a message or an anonymous ask and let me know.
Nearly all of my stories feature a reader insert. Reader is typically female, but when the reader is gender neutral I will designate accordingly! The majority of my readers are also plus-sized, though their size is rarely a plot point - just that I'm going to write the men they're with appreciating their rolls and curves and not pretend like they're waifs. Striving to write an inclusive reader as much as possible, but if I stumble, please send me a message or an anonymous ask and let me know how I can grow.
Characters/Pairings: soft!dark mafia Andy Barber x curvy Millennial female!reader; surprise introduction of an additional platonic CEvans character
Word Count: 5.8k
Summary: Honeymooning with Andy sprawls into actual honeymoon bliss as the two of spend time simply being married.
Author Note: Time for another IYM!Monday update - a little Monday eve for some of us again, but I'm so eager to share this chapter! I'm sure this link won't be active forever, but for reference, this is the Italian villa on Lake Como that Andy just purchased and where the two of you are spending your honeymoon.
Previous Part | Full Collection
The first thing you notice, waking from a nap on the floating bed in the pool, is that Andy is gone.
Not gone gone, just not on any visible axis of the infinity pool, nor on the adjacent stone terrace, nor peering at you from the shade of the loggia the way he sometimes does, as if he’s making a private study of how thoroughly the Italian sun kisses your skin. You hear the distant echo of his voice, maybe a phone call, maybe not, and the hush of water lapping gently under your body—then, nothing but bird noise and the lethargic patter of an October breeze, already shifting the air toward winter.
You close your eyes and count each lapping wave, the buzz of distant bees, the punctuation of a single, insistent fly spiraling nearby is the only irritant these days. It’s nearly impossible to believe this is your life now, but three weeks in, the unreality is smoothing into a different genre of normal.
The days have been long and slow, a sequence of luxuries and heat, the kind of leisure you used to think only existed for other people. You and Andy fuck constantly, everywhere—on the bed, the pool steps, once on the sun-warmed hood of the vintage Maserati that he’s aquired for this house. There is no schedule, no work—or rather, your work is to be together, to weather the strange storm of his affection and your own disbelief that you are, in fact, married.
The rhythm of the days is built around meals and sex, though not always in that order. Some mornings you wake to croissants and espresso, some to the weight of Andy’s body already moving inside you, his mouth flattening any chance you had at protest. There’s a kind of athleticism to it now, a drive that’s less about conquest than about seeing how far the two of you can dissolve into each other before you lose track of who’s who.
And here there is just time: for sleeping in, for reading entire novels on the terrace, for walking the estate’s perimeter in silence, hand-in-hand, or apart but within each other’s sightlines.
Only twice in these three weeks has Andy vanished, usually for less than an hour, silent and grim, striding off with his phone pressed to his ear. Each time you think you should be annoyed, resent the way he leaves you alone, but shouldn’t you want the alone time? Regardless, the sense of abandonment never quite blooms. He always comes back to you, faster than you expect, with a heat in his eyes that insists you are the thing he wants most.
You learn the gentle rhythms of the house. The gardener, Ugo, arrives at sunrise, and if Andy’s not already up and prowling the study, you’ll often find him barefoot on the dew-wet grass, talking with Ugo in a tangle of Italian that sounds almost like music. You learn that the best breakfast is not at the marble table but at the ancient wooden bench near the back door, looking out over the lake with your legs over Andy’s lap, watching the chop of early light on the water.
The villa is built on a steep slope that plunges into Lake Como, all pale stone and terracotta roof tile, the kind of property purchased only by those who intend to keep it for generations.
Andy is softer here, in a way that doesn’t mean gentle. He is more relentless, if anything, but less guarded. He will spend hours reading in a chair beside you, or spiral into long monologues about Roman history, or sleep like the dead, one hand always on your skin, as if the long habit of possession won’t dissolve even under a Mediterranean sun.
You get out of the pool, towel off in the sun and walk toward the second floor bedroom you share with its view onto the glassy blue lake. You peel off the swimsuit, and change into a loose linen shirt and soft drawstring pants, and even this luxury feels excessive. Since your engagement, Andy has thrown out half your old wardrobe, replacing it with indecently fine things that you pretend to resent but wear anyway. It makes your skin buzz, the way he dresses you for both your pleasure and his.
You tidy your hair in front of the wide, low vanity—a walnut table, ancient, with a marble top. It’s the kind of thing you would have rolled your eyes at a year ago—the velvet stool, a beveled oval mirror, and an array of perfumes and powders, all staged with an artful disregard for clutter. But you’re drawn to it every day, primarily because of the golden brush and hand mirror that sit at its center, a vintage set that Andy gifted to you the first morning here in Lake Como.
He presented them to you the very first morning. They’d been in a heavy walnut case lined with blue silk. “It belonged to my grandmother,” he’d said, watching your reaction with the same intensity he brought to every other element of his life. “My mother used it every day. I think she’d rather you have it than leave it locked in a safe.” The set was shockingly beautiful—brushed gold handles, and fine porcelain painted with an intricate flower pattern. The bristles are impossibly soft. The mirror refracts your face into something both clearer and less familiar. Every morning, you brush your hair with it. Every morning, you catch Andy watching you in the reflection.
He is in the doorway now, arms folded, his own shirt liberally unbuttoned down the front. You didn’t hear him come up. He has a look you know: right on the seam between hunger and amusement, as if the sight of you is a surprise every time, but never unexpected.
“You’re lurking,” you say. In the mirror you watch Andy tilt his head very slightly, a fox reading a threshold.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He approaches and stops just behind you, not touching you yet, but close enough that you feel the warmth of him.
He watches you finish brushing your hair all the way through, slow, deliberate strokes until the ends fall perfectly straight. Setting down the brush, you turn and face him, waiting.
“You look like you belong here,” he observes.
You arch a brow. “Didn’t you hope it was an inevitability?”
“I don’t leave things to hope.”
He bends and kisses your shoulder—slow, savoring—then lingers, breathing in the scent at your neck. Despite your engagement and these three weeks, you are not yet immune to this. He knows it, too, the way every nerve in you wakes up and goes hunting for more.
But today, he does not escalate—he holds you, chest pressed to your shoulder-blade, and lets the moment dissolve without claiming it. You wonder if he’s in a rare mood of restraint, or whether some part of him is truly, for once, at peace.
You pivot in his arms—quick, surprising him—until you face him fully. The top three buttons of his shirt are undone, exposing the familiar whorl of dark hair, a constellation of fading scars, and the lick of some of his tattoos exposed.
Andy’s hands settle at your hips, his thumb pressing the linen flat to your skin. “We’re having company tonight,” he says, almost offhand, but you catch the flicker of something in his face—a signal flare if you care to read it.
You blink. “Who?”
He feigns a sigh, but there is almost the hint of a smile around his mouth. “Someone we can’t avoid any longer.”
“That sounds cryptic and ominous,” you say, though not entirely without humor. “Are they dangerous?”
Andy tilts his head as if considering how much he wants to reveal before confirming, “Not to you.”
You frown. “Who is it, then? Another family? A business rival?” You half expect to hear a name you’ll have to Google later, some ancient consigliere or a senator’s nephew with a gambling problem.
Andy hesitates longer than you expect, then finally, “My stepbrother.”
Your brain stutters, reboots.
Stepbrother?
Not a word you’d ever heard applied to the realm of Andy. You comb through every memory of his disclosures, minimal though they have been thus far, and come up empty. You shake your head, as if a drop of pool water still clings to the inside of your ear. “You never said—” you start, but Andy is already laughing, soft and sharp.
“Didn’t seem relevant, until now.” He grins, his hands tightening at your hips as if to steady you through the shock. “He’s an acquired taste.”
“So, is he coming for dinner, or for war?” you ask.
He shrugs one shoulder, brushing off the gravity even as you feel an undertow. “He’ll be here at seven. He’s in Switzerland, claims traffic, but really he’s just never been on time for anything like this.”
You lean back against the vanity. “Why now?”
The answer is a smile, but not one that reaches his eyes. “Curiosity.”
You process this. Maybe you should be mad, but if Thea read way too many mafia romance novels, you’ve read just as many mafia and non-mafia romance novels to have where the heroine manufactures outrage over nothing, and you’ve always found it exhausting—the obligatory fight, the unnecessary tension, the reconciliation that changes nothing.
And you’re not actually mad at all that he hasn’t told you about a stepbrother. There’s a long list of things you haven’t told him about because you don’t want to.
So really, you’re just genuinely shocked at a stepbrother’s existence.
“Should I be nervous?” you ask. You’re already running the math in your head: whether this stepbrother is the mold Andy was cast from, or the thing he was cast against. Whether they’re estranged or just whatever the word is for two men who have learned to exist in separate countries.
“You’re not the nervous type,” Andy says, though there’s a sweetness in it, a note of reassurance. He tugs you closer, hands molding you against his chest. “It’s just a meal. He’s not the enemy, he’s just…” Andy trails off, one hand sliding up and down your waist. “Don’t let him get in your head,” he says, softer now. “He’s got a talent for it.”
You know a warning when you hear one.
Seven isn’t so far off. You spend a bit more time trying to care about what to wear, but finally just keep on the linen, Andy insisting that you don’t need to dress up. Your husband, without comment, switches out his shirt for another almost as lazily unbuttoned.
At precisely 6:58 pm, Andy’s phone vibrates where it’s been abandoned on the edge of the sideboard, humming a predatory sound against the wood. He glances at it, then at you, and the look—dry, resigned—tells you more than words could.
“He’s early,” Andy says, but doesn’t move to get the door. Instead, he lets you lead, and you do, padding barefoot down the stone staircase, the cool tile sending a charge up your calves.
The villa’s front door has already been opened by one of the Italian security detail, and waiting on the threshold is a man who waits, arms crossed, with a patience that broadcasts itself as challenge.
The men are nearly the same height, but the similarities differ endlessly between them. Where Andy is all cool blue flame, this man is severe angles and a sharp, surgical presence, muscles hardly contained by his frame. His blue eyes are nearly black, set under straight, unyielding brows—nothing of Andy’s bright, sly smile here. His nose is as straight as a blade. Even his hair is a darker, more exacting version of Andy’s, trimmed so close at the sides it’s nearly military, but longer on top and combed back with obsessive precision.
His clothes are immaculate, but in a way that feels less tailored and more engineered: a black shirt, jacket fitted so closely it suggests armor. Ex-military, you think immediately, but then you see the tiny glint of gold at his left wrist, a watch so expensive and so quietly worn that only someone who doesn’t need you to notice it would ever put it there.
And that mustache.
That’s certainly its own personality trait altogether.
Andy’s stepbrother is attractive, but not in any safe or approachable way. If Andy is handsome in a way that draws you in, this one is repellent, polar, a negative charge that wants to spark or burn.
Even his name, when Andy says it, carries its own weight: “Lloyd.”
“Andrew.” The greeting is a handshake, but Lloyd’s eyes dart sideways, taking you in with an efficiency that’s almost anatomical.
He clocks you in less than a second, blue eyes cutting across the foyer before you can even finish your first, startled blink. A once-over that would be offensive if it weren’t so openly, audaciously clinical. You feel yourself stand a little straighter, some competitive impulse sparked by his entrance, so you paste a smile on your mouth and force yourself to hold his stare.
He doesn’t smile back. “The wife,” Lloyd says, like a fact he’s verifying on a checklist.
You offer your hand because it’s the only move that gets you both out of the standoff, and he takes it in his own, the grip surgical and dry, yet with a voltage that makes your wrist bones hum. He doesn’t give his name or prompt you for yours, just releases and steps inside, sweeping the room with a predatory calm. When he’s satisfied, Lloyd turns his attention back to Andy, and whatever conversation occurs between them is nonverbal but absolutely deafening.
“Congratulations,” Lloyd says, and the word lands somewhere that feels simultaneously genuine and hideously sarcastic.
Andy only smirks. “Let me get you a drink.”
You watch them move into the library off the foyer, and you follow in their wake, observing Lloyd as he glances at the rows of rare books like he’s casing the place for weak spots.
“Scotch?” Andy asks.
“Negroni, if you’ve got a proper vermouth.”
Andy doesn’t dignify this request with a joke, just flips open a lacquered sideboard and pulls down a cut-glass decanter of gin, a bottle of Campari, and an unfamiliar squat bottle with an Italian label. “They make this two kilometers from here,” he says, pouring with a reverence that is almost priestly.
Lloyd, meanwhile, has found the one chair in the room that could double as a throne and seats himself with a proprietary air. Without invitation, he props a booted foot on the low table, surveying you over steepled fingers. He says nothing, but the silence is medical in its sharpness, and you sense he is running diagnostics with each flick of his gaze. You perch on the leather couch next to where you know Andy will sit, knees angled out, showing Lloyd you’re not planning to shrink beneath a family dynamic you have just now learned exists.
It is an old, beautiful library, full of rare bindings and the smell of dust and oil, but the air between the men is fresher, the distinctions newer. Andy sets Lloyd’s negroni before him, then offers a glass of your favorite drink to you, settling in beside you.
“So, Lloyd,” you try, figuring you might as well trot out some kind of conversational opening gambit, “how long are you in Italy?”
He weighs the question for sport. “I’m based out of Switzerland. But till Friday. Then Tokyo.” He sips the drink, his mouth compressing to a tight, precise line, then finally flickers a look your way. “I’ll admit,” he says, “I did not think Andy would ever get married again.” He makes the word again do all the work of a punchline.
Andy’s face does not move, but you sense him recalibrating in the space beside you.
You shrug, as if immune to the dig. “I was as surprised as anyone.”
“You must have really good dirt on him,” Lloyd says, turning to you with a wry arch of his eyebrow. “Otherwise, I can’t imagine him tying himself down at this stage of the game.”
You sputter, shocked since it was exactly the opposite. But Andy intervenes, with a hand on your thigh. “She doesn’t need dirt to get what she wants from me,” Andy says, just on the edge of a threat, but it seems to be a warning to Lloyd, not to you. “She’s the only woman who’s ever really tempted me.”
You blink at Andy, a little surprised, warmth squirming through your chest, unsure how to catalog what he’s saying, and if it’s just for Lloyd, or if it’s actually true.
You’re still processing what even to say to that, but before you can land a response, Lloyd sets his glass down with a decisive clink and leans forward, elbows on knees, gaze slicing into you with surgical clarity.
“So, what do you actually do, then? Wife of Andrew Barber.” The way he says it, with the capital W, makes it clear he sees it as a job in itself. You cock your head, deciding whether to play petulant, sincere, or unvarnished.
“I sleep in, I swim, I read too much. Apparently, I get kidnapped from my life in Boston and flown here for undetermined weeks of forced relaxation.”
Lloyd surveys you, a flicker of amusement passing across the frost of his face, then turns to Andy. “I really hope ‘forced relaxation’ is code for indecent amounts of honeymoon sex or else I’ll have to object to everything this marriage stands for.”
“Lloyd!” Andy’s tone is the admonishment of an older brother, but also a little exasperated, as if Lloyd is forever blurting the worst possible thing at the best possible time.
You can’t help but laugh, which seems to catch Lloyd off guard. “Oh, it’s absolutely code,” you say. If Andy’s hand tightens a fractional increment on your thigh, it’s matched by the up-curve at the corner of his mouth.
Lloyd throws his head back and barks out a single, cold laugh, and then, abruptly, all the armored tension in the room fractures. He shoots you a look that’s almost warm—impressed, maybe, or at least entertained—and Andy, feeling the shift, leans more comfortably into the sofa.
“For a second, I thought you’d be one of those tragic, blink-twice-if-you-need-rescue brides or a total waif and a bore,” Lloyd says. “But I think I’m going to like you. You’ve got bite. A spine. Under different circumstances we might’ve had a one-night-stand.”
You say nothing to that—what can you say?—and take a slow sip of your drink. Lloyd grins, animate now, as if he’s been waiting for a worthy audience all along.
Andy glances over, reading the beat of your silence, and says to Lloyd, “She’d have eaten you alive.”
“She’s doing that now, Andy,” Lloyd says, tipping his glass at you.
The more Lloyd talks the more you see—he’s not so much Andy’s shadow as his negative. Where Andy is tactician, Lloyd is dismantler. Maybe even a little unhinged, but in a way that’s technically useful. You can see why Andy can’t ignore him, but also why he’s arranged his life at a safe distance.
“Tell me, Lloyd,” you say, enjoying the game, “what do you actually do? And do you bring this much charisma to all your diplomatic functions?”
Lloyd refills his own drink, swirling the red liquid with a kind of absent, precise menace. “Officially, I’m a strategic consultant. Audit committees, risk and compliance, that sort of thing. Unofficially… Let’s say I help people find their limits, sometimes by exceeding them.”
You smile, liking this more than you should. “So, you’re the fixer.”
Lloyd shrugs, a gesture of such exaggerated modesty it circles around to arrogance. “I fix things, sometimes. Break them, sometimes. It’s the same art, in the end.” He slouches further in his chair, all calculated ease. “But unlike Andy, I don’t long for power. I just want to see how everything works. People, organizations, the occasional marriage.” He flashes a brief, knife-sharp smile. “I’m here because I couldn’t miss the spectacle.”
Andy groans before throwing back the rest of his drink. “Let’s get this dinner over with.”
It’s late, and the moon is a white saw-curve over the lake, when you and Andy finally give Lloyd a send-off in the gravel half-moon of the drive, hand in hand.
Lloyd had commented on every course over dinner, praising the risotto, bemoaning the use of an olive tapenade as an accompaniment to the roasted vegetables (to which you had to agree), and providing a two-minute oral history of the grappa served afterward (“Never drink it after midnight, unless you want to wake up in another country, married to a Turkish heiress, with a contract out on your spleen”). He did not attempt to murder Andy, nor did he try to seduce you, though there was a blank period in the middle of the evening where he became weirdly intent on teaching you the difference between “threat” and “risk” (both as a business concept and a party game).
Lloyd catches your eye, and for a moment you see the flicker of a new alliance—something conspiratorial. You suspect the two of you are possibly the only two people in existence to challenge Andy so much, and the shock of it seems almost to delight him.
“How long’s this honeymoon gig scheduled to last for you lovebirds?” Lloyd asks.
You, of course, don’t know, so you turn to Andy, who responds with a simple, “Undetermined.”
Lloyd raises both eyebrows. “If that’s true, that’s a first for the mastermind of our operation.”
Andy doesn’t react to the dig—just shrugs, unbothered—but you catch the way his grip tightens imperceptibly on your hand. Lloyd’s grin is the most honest expression he’s worn all evening, something primal and delighted lighting his face.
“Listen, don’t you ever let him win at anything,” Lloyd says, blatantly baiting Andy for maybe the eightiegh time this evening.
“Careful,” Andy says, “You’re going to make a friend out of my wife, and I wasn’t the marrying kind, but we all know you don’t do friends.”
“No friendship here,” Lloyd laughs. “Maybe an ally though,” he says with a ridiculous wink.
You grin, and at that moment you know you’ve not only survived an impossible dinner, but recruited a kind of secret weapon—one more unpredictable variable in a world where all bets have been, for so long, placed in advance.
You’re not sure what you expected from Andy’s stepbrother—less terror, more frat boy turned finance bro smarm—but the actual Lloyd is something more dangerous. The air always feels as if it’s about to spark, but you’re reassured with the knowledge that the threat is mostly performance. He is less a bomb than a demolition analyst, carefully always looking for the support beams to test.
Lloyd shakes Andy’s hand, the briefest clamp of muscle around bone, then holds your gaze a half-second longer than is polite. “Next time,” he says, tilting his head at you, “let’s try for lunch. Or something more dangerous.”
He stalks off into the dark, coat slung over his shoulder. His footsteps barely crunch on the gravel; you imagine he never leaves a trace.
You and Andy linger at the end of the drive until the taillights are just two points of red at the base of the hill. There’s static in the air, a lingering voltage that belongs to the aftershock of Lloyd, but maybe to something else, too.
“Are all your family gatherings like that?” you ask.
Andy chuckles. “Not even close. He’s the only family I really have left, and that’s the most time I’ve spent with him in years.”
“Really?”
He hums in the affirmative. “Lloyd’s dad married my mom when the two of us were in our last two years of high school. We put up with and defended each other in equal measure. Built trust. Still stuck with each other even though both our parents are gone.”
You soak this in as you walk back into the villa, side by side, Andy’s pinky hooked in yours as if he doesn’t trust the night not to take you. The air’s gone cool, the breeze off the lake hinting at woodsmoke and dying leaves. You’re so full of food and conversation that you could float, but you also sense the edge of some deeper story curling beneath everything Andy’s said tonight.
Upstairs, the master suite is all golden lamp light and the faint scent of warm linens and cypress from the trees outside. You kick off your sandals near the door and watch Andy cross to the low settee at the foot of the bed. He sits, elbows on knees, head bowed in that posture you’re learning means he’s prepping to tell you something he hasn’t told anyone in years.
You open the window wide, let silence in with the night air, and begin your bedtime routine. You’ve learned that it soothes Andy to watch you. You move through it slow, deliberate—untangling your hair, massaging lotion into your legs, washing your face, brushing your teeth. When you glance in the mirror, you see he’s still hunched, lost in the linen folds of his shirt, and you feel a pang that is half affection, half something harder.
Whatever the complex mix of what’s brought you to this point, he is your husband, and there’s a solid, warm weight about that fact that exists in the cavity of your chest now, unquestionably.
You finish by the window, looking out at the moonrise over the lake, and say, “Tell me about your mom and Lloyd’s dad.” You don’t mean it as a challenge, only an invitation.
He stretches his legs, slides his palms down his thighs, then says, “He was widowed, and she was divorced, of course.” He glances up, eyes catching on yours, then flicking away. “The man who ws my father was put behind bars for murder when I was eight. Looking back I can see that the man put us through too much for her to ever want to tie herself to a man again. But when she met Lloyd’s dad—Henry—he found her compelling enough to put in the time, talking, showing up, respecting her boundaries for months before she finally agreed to go out with him. He was aggressive, but not creepy. Just… very determined, reliable.” Andy huffs a laugh. “They were ridiculously happy together. Lloyd and I hated each other at first, but we saw our parents were too happy to ruin it for them. I thought he was a sociopath; he thought I was a pretentious little shit. We were both right.”
You laugh before you can stop yourself, the sound bouncing off the bedroom’s high ceiling. “You still hate each other?”
Andy’s mouth twitches. “We still keep each other sharp.” There’s a thread of pride in it, or something very close. “He’s the only person alive who can predict my moves.” He’s quiet for a moment, then stands and begins to undress for bed as well. “He tests everyone, all the time. You saw that. But if you pass, he’s loyal.” He glances up at you. “Loyalty means something different to him than most people.”
“So you trust him?”
“Essentially,” Andy says flatly. “He’ll always do what he says he will do. That’s almost the same.”
You study Andy’s face as he peels away his shirt—watch the uncanny way his body sets itself at ease, all muscle and self-discipline. He rakes a hand through his hair, the thick, floofy strands that your fingers easily melt into in your intimacies.
“Lloyd’s dad was killed in a hit-and-run accident. My mom made it clear she still considered him a son, but then she only made it two more years—we discovered she had advanced and aggressive breast cancer. We couldn’t save her. He was there for her for every moment at the end. You could say we were trauma bonded.”
Though it’s a stripped-down recounting, you intuit just how much more is unsaid. It’s not happenstance that’s kept these forced-brothers bonded, but a gravitational choice not to sever the association. What they have makes sense given the context of what you know of each man.
And then there’s his mother. Though he’s spoken only rarely of her, the way he speaks of her, you know he loved her with a ferocity that was rare and consuming. You saw it in the reverence with which he gifted you her brush set, in the way he measures his words about her now, in the fondness you’ve seen in his eyes the handful of other times he’s told you something about her.
Now, in the huge, moonlit room, Andy undoes his belt and lets the sound of the leather sliding free punctuate the silence. He steps out of his trousers, as at home in nakedness as in a suit. There is no shame in him, no self-consciousness—only the expectation that you will watch and be affected.
You could, if you wished, make a study of him for hours. You have, some nights: lying sated beside him, or else propped on an elbow, watching the way breath shifts the shadows across his ribs, or how his chest rises and falls when he is, on the rare occasion, truly asleep while you’re still awake.
Andy pulls back the covers and slides in. You move instinctually to join him, crossing the room, barefoot, skin prickled from the open window and the cold stone underfoot. You watch his eyes track your movement, the intensity in his gaze a physical thing, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.
You climb onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath your weight. He reaches for you, but he has no need to draw you in tonight. You want him.
You straddle him, sliding over his hips with the smooth confidence of repetition. Andy’s cock is half hard, and the moment your thigh brushes it you feel him tense—a preemptive shudder that assures you how deeply he wants you, never mind that he had you three times earlier in the day. His hands close around your waist, greedy, guiding you down until the heat of him notches against you. You sink down slow, unhurried, taking him inch by inch.
He hisses through his teeth, eyes slitted, watching your face for every flicker of sensation. When you bottom out, you pause, savoring the fullness. His hands grip tighter, thumbs digging into the soft flesh at your waist, insistently rocking you forward. You let him set the rhythm at first—he always wants to be in control—but you slide your hands against his chest and demand the kisses you want in tandem with the slow fucking.
Your lips and tongues are devoted to devastating each other. You fuck him the way you’ve learned he likes best, slow, steady, a kind of deliberate mutual detonation, nothing performative, just the honest, hungry slide of your bodies.
It hasn’t escaped you that the reason he likes this the best is likely because he knows the level to which it completely undoes you.
You rock into him, savoring the friction, feeling every inch. Andy’s lips roam your jaw, your throat, his hands possessive at your hips, thumbs stroking small, private circles into your skin. You move together in a rhythm that’s almost lazy, but the heat underneath is anything but.
Andy’s cock pulses inside you, warm and thick. He slips one hand up to your breast, kneading it gently, running his thumb over your nipple until it’s stiff and aching. You arch into him, letting your head tip back, throat bared, and you hear the catch in his breath—the way he loses a thread of composure whenever you let him see you undone.
You ride him, your nails leaving crescents in his chest, the thick, slow grind so deep you could weep from the goodness of it. When your orgasm comes, it’s not a thunderclap but a long, exquisite ache that blooms out slow and stays. Andy holds you tight through it, riding your shudders, his hips rolling up to meet yours in perfect counterpoint until he comes, not with violence, but with a decisive, shivering surrender. He pulls you down with him, chest to chest, his arms locked around your back, the world narrowing to the feel of his pulse under your fingertips, the aftershocks echoing through both of you.
After, you lie together without talking, your cheek pressed to his heart, his hand running lazy paths over your shoulder, the length of your arm, the line of your spine. You are so tired you think you might sleep, but there is a question lingering, and you decide to put it out there, wondering if he may deign you with an answer.
“What did you mean when you told Lloyd the length of our honeymoon was ‘undetermined?’”
Andy doesn’t answer immediately, but he doesn’t tense or look away, just keeps stroking your shoulder, his fingers tracing patterns that feel like a signature.
“I meant it exactly as I said,” he murmurs, settling a little deeper into the pillow. “We have no return date. I haven’t set one. There’s no obligation for us to go back until we want to.”
You frown at him skeptically. “You don’t have obligations and business you have to get back to?”
Andy’s smile is lazy, almost smug. “Perk of being the one that runs the show,” he says. “I decide when I’m needed. I decide when I’m not.” He nudges your ankle with his foot under the covers, a quiet intimacy that feels more too normal to belong to the two of you. “If anyone has a problem, they’ll take it up with me when I feel like answering.”
You settle your cheek into the warm spot above his heart. “I didn’t realize crime lords had PTO.”
“Not PTO,” Andy says, his voice rumbling against your ear. “Sabbatical. Indefinite. I worked for years to keep the world in order enough that I could disappear for a while, if I wanted. Most days I didn’t want to. Now, I do.” He doesn’t have to say with you; it’s so palpable in every gesture, every way he rearranges the days around the shape of your body.
You’re quiet, surprised by how much you don’t want to leave this place either, not yet. Not ever, if you’re honest. The luxury is lovely, but it’s the feeling of waking up every day with nothing to do but want and be wanted that you’re afraid to lose.
He catches your silence, fingers tightening a fraction at your arm. “I like us here,” he murmurs reverently into your ear.
He says it so matter-of-factly, with no expectation or agenda, that you go absolutely still, unprepared for how real it lands.
But then you melt, and admit, “I do, too.”
Anyone joining me with a little swooning?
ALSO
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW! MWAHAHAHA!
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Hey, lovelies. I hope I am being overly cautious, but I made a backup blog at @stargazingwriter18 just in case all this nonsense with Dumblr escalates and my beloved blog gets terminated. You may want to follow me over there, just to be safe.
I'm going to try to appeal the shadowban and see if I can work with them to get my blog back to normal, but I worry that may actually escalate things, since trying to go back and label my stories as mature content is triggering a bunch of flags and removal, even on posts that aren't explicit.
As you can imagine, all of this has been super upsetting and stressful. This blog has been my much loved fun place and reprieve for almost seven years. I've put countless hours and so much love, energy, and creativity into cultivating this space and sharing it with all of you. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of words I've written across all of my stories over the years. I'm really sad this is happening, and even more so a couple of weeks before my birthday event, because now not everyone who may want to participate can, and honestly, I have had zero writing inspiration or motivation at all as a result of this.
I'm not sure what will come of any of this, but what I do know is that I am going to fight to save my blog, because it's so much more than that to me. It's a community I truly cherish, my absolute favorite creative outlet that I've ever had, and--as silly as it may sound--a part of who I am.
And I'm really grateful you're here with me. Thank you ❤️
No pressure tags to help spread the word. Thanks again.
The warmth and friendship that you so diligently give to so many in our corner of fandom is real and generous and has changed the lives of me and so many others. Don't doubt that. The creative stories you share with us is honestly just a bonus. Incredible bonus - lottery type of bonus - but you and your heart and your care for us is so treasured. Don't doubt that.
Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
This Lloyd would purposely tease you, as well provide that protrctive and possessive vibe, but never initiate full on physical things because he wants you to admit you want him and make that move (or prettily ask for it).
One morning Lloyd comes into the kitchen for breakfast and tells you casually - BUT IN EXTREME DETAIL - about the sex dream he had about fucking you last night. How good it will be when he finally gets to curl his fingers up inside your cunt and stretch you so you'd be ready to take his cock and how good it will feel when he fills you up.
...and when his toast is done and he's poured his coffee, he just gives you a peck on the top of your head and heads off to work, leaving you thre gripping the counter and trying to kep your brething even and now sink to the floor because you're so weak in the knees.
Lloyd: You won’t. [he chuckles] But while we’re on the subject of sleeping, I’m into somnophilia. Both ways. Consent agreed on beforehand though.
You: Lloyd!
Lloyd: I think you would like the idea of control slipping out of your hands and into someone else’s. Have the world narrow down until there’s nothing left of your choices except the ones I make for you.
You: [you tense, glaring up at him, jaw tight] You don’t know a damn thing about what I want.
Lloyd: [Stepping closer, voice dropping low] Don't I? You spend your whole day fighting everyone in the room, holding the wheel so tight your knuckles turn white. It must be exhausting. You're just waiting for the second you don't have to pretend you're steering anymore.
You: Stay out of my head.
Lloyd: You can hold out as long as you want to, but don't look at me like that and pretend you want me to back off. You want to see what happens when the lights go out and you aren't expected to fight back.
Hoe’kay, I’ve had a thot 👀 Cedar Trees AU drabble + make it a/b/o 😏
This really just stems from this horny visual that won’t leave my whore mind: Steve scenting Reader’s throat for the very first time 😵💫🤌🏻🫡🫠
Oh! Siri!
If this man....
GOOD LORD
okay
So let's play with this.
If the Cedar Trees AU were an omegaverse...
So King Steven Rogers, strong and dutiful alpha... let's say he's come to his kingdom in kind of an Arthurian way, being chosen by destiny/winning the throne. He's beloved by his people. He spent ten or twelve years on the throne because he was devoted to serving his people, making peace for his kingdom, learning his duties, becoming the king he would want to serve if he weren't wearing the crown. He didn't turn the heads of anyone as a somewhat scrawny adolescent of unremarkable upbringing. Once the crown was thrust on his head, everyone was watching. He was always smart, and he stayed grounded. He also grew into his very remarkable adult alpha male body. (because duh)
Given all of this, he didn't let himself get distracted by the attention. He worked hard not to let himself get taken advantage of by anyone in or out of the kingdom while he was learning how to be king, either. He told everyone marriage was a long way off. Many people tried to argue that he needed to acquire his queen and establish his position with an heir for stability. He said there was nothing the existence of a child could do if there wasn't a stable kingdom for them be born into, and true stability would be achieved by him doing the work expected of him as a king.
Bucky, his number one, his right hand, is the one who assured him (and kept pushing him) that it was finally time to look to marriage - that at this point in his reign, there aren't any excuses of duty that he can make anymore. They discussed - because he trusts Bucky with everything and to keep his head right - that it needed to be a logical political alliance to strengthen two kingdoms, a smart woman who could even possibly be an asset in court and fostering royal relations. And she'd need to be an omega, but Steve both knew AND didn't mind in the slightest that he wouldn't end up with the much romanticized idea of a true mate. It was uncommon enough for someone without a crown, but laughable for a king.
But as alpha and omega dynamics do rely on primal chemistry at least to a point, after initial negotiations had been deemed suitable, there was a day planned for Steve and his delegation to meet you, your parents, and the rest of your advisors/delegation. This took place at a neutral location - another palace with friendly relations to both of you. Things began with a royal lunch, hosted by the king and queen of the land you were both visiting. A chance to break bread and everyone just share a meal and warm up the familiarity.
And then a royal walk around the gardens for the potential marital parties and a chaperone each. Does this sound formal? Yes. Because it was. It was you and Steve with Bucky and someone from your family following ten feet behind, and it took place outdoors because this kind of walk before final negotiations is solely for two partners to test whether or not there's hormonal compatibility, informal scenting, and if it's not going well, the parties are spared having that confined to a room, and anyone can make some excuse of a loose shoe, too much heat, being exhausted, etc, to shorten the walk.
But the walk with you is pleasant from beginning to end. The conversation is nothing deep, and neither of you went in for overly engaging, but it was the kind of conversation that he occasionally experienced with visiting dignitaries who didn't have business with him. Easy, natural.
It's only when he realizes that the two of you are almost back to the palace and he hasn't actually gotten the read on scent compatibility that he worries a little. He has to do something. Pleasant conversation was not the point of this walk.
So just as you re-enter the foyer and are about to part, he takes your hand to politely bestow a kiss over the back of it, it should allow him to scent your wrist appropriately but not overtly.
Only when he does catch your scent, he discovers that it was something floral that he though had been the garden, something so enticing that he holds his breath in that moment, and his hand holds yours a little more tightly, and a second or two longer than expected.
He looks up to your face again, and your lips are pressed together with just a hint of timidity behind the soft curving smile. You are trained - as he has been - to keep an open face, but one that doesn't tell everything. But he can see in your eyes just a hint of a spark.
This will work.
He wants to turn your hand over and truly scent the inside of your wrist, press a kiss to that spot of tender flesh and feel your pulse beneath his lips, that's how much your scent compels him.
But of course he won't do that.
The two of you part, and when Bucky asks if it's a favorable assessment for the final arrangements for the marriage to go forth that afternoon, Steve nods and affirms it.
He sorts his thoughts logically - it's just a very fortunate compatibility. The coupling will be compatible.
He has no idea the two of your are meant for growing together and sincerely enriching each others lives - that you are his true mate.
He still won't even believe it over the honeymoon.
It will be that period after when he realizes he's in love with you, and even being in love, it will still take more time - a few heat cycles and ruts together, and just being together for him to ultimately realize it. And then when he looks back, it will be as plain as day.
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I do not do tag lists, but FOLLOW @buckets-and-stories and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS to be updated any time I publish a new work!
🥰 how could I forget about when I spun this AU of the AU idea and how besotted these babes would be for each other and the elements of how that would play out if omegaverse?!
Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
This Lloyd would purposely tease you, as well provide that protrctive and possessive vibe, but never initiate full on physical things because he wants you to admit you want him and make that move (or prettily ask for it).
One morning Lloyd comes into the kitchen for breakfast and tells you casually - BUT IN EXTREME DETAIL - about the sex dream he had about fucking you last night. How good it will be when he finally gets to curl his fingers up inside your cunt and stretch you so you'd be ready to take his cock and how good it will feel when he fills you up.
...and when his toast is done and he's poured his coffee, he just gives you a peck on the top of your head and heads off to work, leaving you thre gripping the counter and trying to kep your brething even and now sink to the floor because you're so weak in the knees.
Lloyd: You won’t. [he chuckles] But while we’re on the subject of sleeping, I’m into somnophilia. Both ways. Consent agreed on beforehand though.
You: Lloyd!
Lloyd: I think you would like the idea of control slipping out of your hands and into someone else’s. Have the world narrow down until there’s nothing left of your choices except the ones I make for you.
You: [you tense, glaring up at him, jaw tight] You don’t know a damn thing about what I want.
Lloyd: [Stepping closer, voice dropping low] Don't I? You spend your whole day fighting everyone in the room, holding the wheel so tight your knuckles turn white. It must be exhausting. You're just waiting for the second you don't have to pretend you're steering anymore.
You: Stay out of my head.
Lloyd: You can hold out as long as you want to, but don't look at me like that and pretend you want me to back off. You want to see what happens when the lights go out and you aren't expected to fight back.
Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
This Lloyd would purposely tease you, as well provide that protrctive and possessive vibe, but never initiate full on physical things because he wants you to admit you want him and make that move (or prettily ask for it).
One morning Lloyd comes into the kitchen for breakfast and tells you casually - BUT IN EXTREME DETAIL - about the sex dream he had about fucking you last night. How good it will be when he finally gets to curl his fingers up inside your cunt and stretch you so you'd be ready to take his cock and how good it will feel when he fills you up.
...and when his toast is done and he's poured his coffee, he just gives you a peck on the top of your head and heads off to work, leaving you thre gripping the counter and trying to kep your brething even and now sink to the floor because you're so weak in the knees.
Characters/Pairings: King!Steve Rogers x Queen!Reader
Word Count: 7.2k
Summary: You were raised to be a queen, the wife of a king, and with that to weather the storm in duty should he ever be called away to war. But it had always seemed a distant thing, certainly not a horror and hardship that would harrow within the first year of your marriage, and all of that preparation came before you fell in love with your husband and king. Yet you face your duty with diligence each day.
Content/Warnings: royal au, early pregnancy, smut (unprotected vaginal intercourse), discussion of war
Author Note: At long LONG last, I'm here to continue their story after Steve was called away to face the threat of Hydra in the north. It only took seventeen months to update after that cliffhanger... sorry.
Previous Part | Full Collection
“Your Majesty,” Coulson starts, “If I may…”
“Coulson,” you acknowledge, tone belying your hesitance. You know exactly which matters the King’s private secretary wants to broach with you now that the business of the day has been covered, and you do not with to address then, but you nod, granting permission for him to proceed.
“It is nothing unexpected, but there are rumors brewing. The people are ever eager for news of their sovereigns, and the palace is not a monastery. I have managed, thus far, to dampen speculation and keep any possible news of your condition from being made public before you wish it. But,” he gives brief pause, “we are approaching the time when discretion will fail.”
You meet Coulson’s eyes, a clear blue only a few shades lighter than Steve’s, though where Steve’s gaze is all earnestness and passion, Coulson’s is distilled into a kind of conscientious precision. You sigh. “You are right,” you say. “It is only a matter of days or weeks, perhaps a month if providence is good to us, before gossip and speculation align with circumstantial clues and a growing belly that can no longer be ignored for what it is. And though I do not wish to keep it a secret from the people, I did not want to make such a pronouncement without the king.”
It’s not just the ceremonial appropriateness of it, it’s that your heart aches to see Steve’s face when the news is given to his people, at how they would rejoice.
After a few moments, Coulson’s voice, gentle but firm, closes the moment of contemplative silence. “We are in uncertain times, Your Majesty. There are few things more potent than hope when the shadow of war is on us. The kingdom would rally behind this good news. If I may be so bold, the sooner the people are allowed to celebrate, the brighter the light we can hold against the darkness of our present shadows.”
Your hand drops to your stomach, fingers brushing over the barely-there bump coming along as you ponder his words, feeling the press of their truth. Still, you are still reticent.
“Thank you, Coulson. I will consider it with all due diligence and urgency.” You try on a smile for him, and he recognizes it for the closing of the matter for now that it is.
“The other matter I hoped to discuss with Your Majesty is the celebration of Summer Solstice, there are many matters pending final decisions, and some we cannot hold off on much longer.”
“I am aware.” Your own voice comes out tired and more vulnerable than you would like, but Coulson does not exploit this.
The Summer Solstice was a cornerstone of the kingdom’s calendar, something the people reveled in and clung to fiercely, even as their rulers, affairs, and fortunes changed over the generations, matched only in sentiment and fervor by the Winter Solstice.
“Did His Majesty leave instructions?” you ask, though you can imagine the answer. There would have been no time and no priority given for Steve to leave notes about Summer Solstice festivities while he was marching out the door to face an emerging Hydra threat. It would have been that last thing from his mind.
Coulson’s response only confirms your further thoughts that any elements made tradition by him would already be assumed into the planning already underway.
“I reviewed His Majesty’s previous preferences and communicated these directly with the staff. Everything that can be done according to House Rogers’ customs is being done.” Coulson doesn’t hesitate to add, “His Majesty trusts your judgment implicitly, and in all matters of statecraft, especially those that touch the people most directly, he would welcome a queen’s hand in the details.”
There’s a warmth that moves through you. For all the weight of the crown, the court life, even the threat of war pressing at the border, there are moments like this—small points of light, where trust is not only spoken, but practiced. It is one thing to have the wishes of the king on record and followed because it’s the duty of Coulson and others to serve, but it is another to feel the undercurrent of genuine belief, trust, and devotion, something that extends beyond obligation to loyalty.
You say, “I am not ready as yet to venture into decisions about the Solstice, but I appreciate your candor and your counsel, Coulson. I rely on it, and I will take it on advisement to revisit these matters soon. Now what of Hydra?”
His face draws somber. “Still no news since the messenger arrived three nights ago.”
The last secure message communicated that Hydra’s forces appeared to be holding outside the border, Steve’s troops still holding them at bay and countering any offense with the assistance of some allies, but they were not easily countered, and perhaps far from conquered.
“I would wager,” Coulson says carefully, “that His Majesty has not risked further dispatches in order to prevent interception. The Hydrans have spies everywhere in the north. They may even have sympathizers among the townships along the border.”
“Keep me apprised. Let me know directly if any word arrives, day or night.” You stand, which has become an incrementally more laborious affair in recent days. Coulson moves to steady you, but you wave him off with a gentle shake of your head.
“Of course, Your Majesty. I am at your service,” he says, voice softening.
"Thank you, Coulson. Are there any other matters that require my attention?”
“No, Your Majesty. But know that if you should wish to speak further on these things, or anything else, never hesitate to call on me.” He hesitates himself—just for an instant—then bows and turns and takes his leave.
You are grateful for him, for the rare certainty that he does not merely see you as a vessel for a future king, nor some accessory to the crown, but a living, breathing, valuable half of the crown.
After a moment, you arch your back, wincing at the mounting stiffness. Your fingers span over the your lower belly. “Now what words are you keeping so carefully to yourself over there in the corner, Duchess?” you ask, turning to Natalia.
The Duchess had been silent throughout the exchange, withdrawing to the fringes of the room so as to be present, available, but not to encroach. She always carries herself with the hyper-vigilance of a cat, but now she drops her hands from where they’d been folded against her gown. “Only that women know when the tide is about to turn,” she says, stepping forward. “I commend you for holding back the announcement until you are ready, that you wish for our king to return before you make it, but I also caution you against this perpetual stasis of waiting in uncertainty.”
You frown and sigh.
“I do think you can still delay one matter if you will indulge another. Engage in the preparations for the Summer Solstice, build up the festivities and celebrations that can be a worthwhile focal point for the people. There is a bit of old wisdom, Your Majesty—plan for joy and you bend the future towards it. If you pour yourself into what comes next, your heart will have at least one safe harbor in this storm, and you may very well be able to extend that to your people.”
You recognize that Natalia’s advice is no mere platitude. The Solstice is less than ten days away. The entire kingdom will arrange its hours and appetites and ambitions around the coming festival, and you, as their queen, could harness it like a prism: channel hopes, quell the worst of the anxieties, and—perhaps most selfishly—give yourself a purpose beyond waiting for word from the distant king and the uncertain border.
Natalia’s eyes remain intent on your face, as if searching every muscle for the precise flavor of your reluctance, and when you do not answer right away, she asks gently, “What is it, truly? I feel you are holding something else behind your careful words.”
You pause, searching for the how to convey your thoughts, then admit, “The Summer Solstice is not only beloved because it is the peoples’ tradition, but because it was my introduction to this kingdom, to these people. You know as you were assigned to by my escort, though I suspect it was as a trusted spy,” you jest, but know it is undoubtedly also true—if Natalia had doubted your character or potential for the kingdom, the Duchess would not have held back her assessment from the king. There is a hint of a smirk in the soft smile on Natalia’s face, and you shake your head, but continue. “The talks for betrothal had taken place, but kept private and not fully agreed upon until the king and I met.” Other visiting royal dignitaries had been present, the normal extension of invitations to foreign friends and allies a useful guise so as not to rouse suspicions for your attendance.
“But I remember last year,” you continued, “how every street, every home, every remote village in Brooklyn was awash in lanterns, in ribbons and banners, in music, in flowers, in an anticipation so thick it crackled in the air. Steve said his kingdom was made of people, not palaces, and I saw it in every element of those festivities. It was my first time seeing what I myself might become part of, but I was only focused on experiencing, evaluating. My every moment was colored by the formalities of courtship, the politics, the scrutiny.” You smile ruefully. “I assumed I would have Steve to share the preparations and customs with me the following year, to guide me. Instead—”
“Instead, you are alone, and expected to be at the center of it.” Natalia finishes for you, but not unsympathetically. She steps to your side, voice low.
“No one expects you to give the people a show, Majesty. They expect you to be a beacon. If you are afraid, they will know. If you are excited, they will follow. If you are grieving—even for a husband who is not dead, only away—they will rally to support you. Let yourself want the joy of it. All the rest will fall into place.”
You swallow past the knot in your throat. Selfish as it maybe, you let spill the other confession you have not allowed yourself to say aloud till now.
“I ache to see him. I am surrounded by purpose, by duty, by constant reminders that this crown is not for myself alone. I can do all that’s required—I will, and will do it well—but I do not know if I can hold on for so long without news. Or if…if he does not return.”
It comes out in more of a whisper than a proclamation, and your hands clench in the fabric of your gown.
Natalia’s presence, always so composed and self-contained, suddenly softens. She touches your elbow, and the lines of her face crease in a rare show of empathy. “You may not realize it, but your courage is what will keep the kingdom steady,” she says. “It is not wrong to long for your husband. It is not even so wrong to show that longing.” She adds, more gently, “You do not have to shoulder every ache alone, especially not now.”
You nod, once, and squeeze Natalia’s hand where it grasps your arm. She holds steady for a few seconds, then steps back, and with that, the connection is reset—she is again the Duchess, your shadow and your shield.
You take a deep breath and square your shoulders. “Tell Coulson to set a meeting with the festival stewards for tomorrow.”
Over the next week you throw yourself into many elements of the Summer Solstice preparations.
You delegate, arbitrate, and—when the festival stewards look at you with unmasked hope—promise more than a little magic. Your days become a whir of meetings, decisions made in earnest, and hours spent reviewing every facet of the plans, from the musicians and revelers for the great public parade, to the composition of the Midnight Feast, to the allocation of food and shelter for those who would travel from afar. In the past, this would have been ceremonial and light. Now, with troops fighting in the north, full-blown war breathing down the neck of the kingdom, you embrace how much it is a matter of holding the fabric of the kingdom’s hope taut and bright.
It’s soothing, almost addictive, to lose yourself in work. The days pass quickly, and the routine is a balm to your restless bones. You spend hours in the library with the castle’s archivist, combing through the records of past solstices, learning the nuances of old custom and new expectation.
The loneliness is its own living thing, gnawing at you in the hours between midnight and dawn, clawing up memories of his hands and his voice and the constant, solid comfort he gave without even thinking about it. At night, you lie awake, sometimes for hours, listening to the shivering hush of the palace. It is never truly silent, but Steve’s absence stretches through it, amplifying every hollow gap, leaving a ghostly ache in the walls and in your chest. You dream of Steve, sometimes in his full armor, sometimes laughing shirtless by the river, sometimes with his head bent against your shoulder so softly it feels like a memory from another life.
When you rise in the mornings, your hands reach for the spot beside you, searching for the heat of his body. Sometimes there is a phantom pressure: his palm coming to rest on the small of your back, his lips pressed to your hair, his steady breath against your neck.
The night before the Solstice, you fall into bed feeling the good kind of exhausted, and you dream again of Steve. This time he is kneeling at your bedside after a campaign, his hair damp and wild, his tunic stained dark with sweat and the velvets bedraggled from travel. He kneels not as a king but as a supplicant, and his large, warm hand brushes softly over your cheek, thumb tracing the bone as if to memorize the shape. You lean into the comfort of his touch and the longing it stirs, the ache so powerful you feel it in your throat, as if you will choke on it.
You inhale deeply, expecting the scent of him—soap, ink and parchment, the faintest hint of old cedarwood. Instead, the smell is pungent with sweat and horses and old leather, overpowering the lavender sachet tucked in your pillowcase.
For half a second you are convinced this is only the dream’s cruelest trick, the longing so deep it has conjured even the reek of what he would smell like after hours on horseback and days without a bath. But the scent intensifies, crowding the air.
It is not a dream.
The shock hits you with a physical violence, and you bolt upright and launch yourself into him, clear out of the coverlet and straight into his arms. Steve is on his knees, kneeling at the side of your bed with the battered, travel-worn look of a man who has not slept for days and crossed hundreds of miles to get here. There is sweat and old blood and something earthen on him, and you bury your face in the crook of his neck, both of you shaking. He holds you against his chest, arms caging you, rigid as iron, and you sense immediately that if he could, he would rip open his own ribs and place you, the baby, the whole world inside for safekeeping.
You feel the bowstring tension in his body, the trembling weariness shuddering through his hands, the fever-heat of his skin. His lips find your temple, your cheek, your jaw—hungrily, as if he’ll never get enough.
Then he says your name.
It comes out rough-edged and low, and the sound burrows into the marrow of your bones, releases every caged heartbeat you have kept on reserve.
You clutch him even closer, pressed together so tightly it aches. His breath rasps against your ear and you are shaking, but then you realize it’s him—he is shaking—and the riot of trembling in his arms makes you feel for the first time since he left not just loved, not just wanted, but necessary.
At length, you draw back, just enough for your hands to find his face. The light from the moon outside casts a blue glow on the edges of his jaw, and in his eyes—oh, your heart—you read a rawness so stark it’s practically palpable. The blue of his eyes is bloodshot, rimmed raw with fatigue and the kind of pain he would refuse to let anyone else see. In that moment he is not a king at all, only a man desperate for home, desperate for you.
He searches your features as if he must check that every line, every lash, every bone is unbroken and real; as if he will believe in nothing else until he is sure.
Then his lips are on yours, nothing gentle, just need—crushed, frantic, fervent.
You don’t realize you’re crying until you taste the salt on your tongue, don’t realize your hands are in his hair until you feel the sticky matting of it, dark with sweat and travel. You want to ask if he’s alright, if he’s wounded, but your lips can’t form words, only gasp in what little air you can snatch between his kisses.
He surges off his knees and hauls you up with him, mouth never leaving yours, lifting you onto the bed as if you weigh less than the air itself. You feel the urgency in him, no ceremony, no preamble, just hands and breath and heat. His fingers tangle with the ties of your nightdress, and when they will not yield fast enough, he tears at the fabric, yanking it away. You cannot help but laugh, but it is a wet, wild sound, strangled with both relief and want, and even as you reach for him—buttons, buckles, leather protection, the salt-stiffened linen of his shirt—you are aware that your hands are shaking too.
When the last of the clothing is gone, you are left with naught but the night air and weeks and weeks of longing between you. Your hands, mindless, frantic, slip up his arms, his shoulders, over the ridges of his back, cataloguing every knot of muscle and scar, taking inventory against the old, searching for if there’s anything new, but you’re too frantic to process any of it in the dark.
The mattress yields beneath you as Steve presses you down into it, pinning you to the moment and erasing every other ache except for this one. The hunger. The need. The wild, animal want that banishes any remnant of decorum, anything but your true, unadulterated connection. The scraping of his beard against your neck burns, but you welcome it, tilt your head to bare more of your throat, and he marks a trail—jaw, pulse point, clavicle—devouring every inch.
You taste salt on his shoulder and on your own lips. The taste of him is different tonight, blunter, earthier, and it makes you shiver. He thrusts into you, burying himself to the hilt, and the cry that rips from your throat is a release. You wrap your legs around his hips, welcoming him home.
Joined once more in the most intimate ways, Steve holds the reclaimed ground, hips, chest, foreheads pressed fully flush together while he’s inside you. You breathe each other in again and again. There’s a need for more, but not yet, for this suspended moment, the need is only this.
When he finally moves, his thrusts are not gentle but they are not rough. You rake your nails down his ribs, feeling him shudder, feeling his breath explode from his chest with every drag of your hands, every flex of your thighs. You want to savor him but you cannot, not when he’s all over you, around you, inside you, every sense drunk on the reality of his presence after so long spent with only the memory of him.
“Gods, I missed you,” he murmurs, voice torn with hunger. He covers your mouth with his, and these kisses are like drawing breath, necessary. His weight on you is everything you need, as he thrusts into you. Each stroke lands somewhere deeper, somewhere more intimate, more needed. It’s frantic, then it’s tender, then it’s frantic again, the pulse of it building inside you, between you.
He grunts, the sound breaking apart as he rocks into you. Your own voice is at once desperate and meek. “Please, please, I need…” but the words die there, replaced by a shuddering moan you cannot swallow back. The violence of it ricochets through Steve. He seizes your hips and you feel him, every inch, thick and hot and trembling.
In your first year of marriage, he has come to know your tells, the signs of your body gathering, all the places and rhythms that unspool you. But it’s a new thing now, a new tension, a new tightness in the walls of your cunt, a hypersensitivity that stuns you nearly to tears, and Steve notes it, the change, the powerful difference of you. His hand spreads over the new curve at your belly—he had not said a word yet, not even looked down, but the way his thumb strokes over it makes it clear: not only has he been thinking of you both, you and the tiny human growing in your womb, he loves the physical sign of it, worships it as a natural extension of all the other ways he has loved you.
You arch up, trying to get closer, though there’s nowhere left to go. It is too much, and not enough, and you are sobbing his name, “Steve, Steve, Steve,” as if it is the only anchor in the world. He thrusts deeper, harder, and you sense in the frantic cadence of his hips the fever pitch of his own desperation for you. The only sound is breath and flesh and the splayed, unbridled honesty of two people who have been sundered too long.
You explode around him, a tidal wave of sensation that rolls through every limb, your toes curling and fingers clawing into the thick muscle at his shoulders. Steve groans into the hollow of your throat, the sound raw, and you feel the shudders wreck his frame as he spills into you, a heat that pulses and pools deep inside. For a heartbeat, your vision blurs white, and you float, lost in the moment, in the pounding of your heart, the rhythm of his hips, the scent of sweat and salt and iron and sex.
When you collapse together, there’s no distinction between your bodies. You’re just a knot of tangled limbs and tangled hearts, breath mingling, sweat mingling, tears and laughter and devotion99eds——-rtf all pressed into the same narrow space. It’s not until you’re gasping for air that you realize you’ve never truly needed anything in your life the way you need this man—his presence, his weight, the simple, grounding comfort of his body anchoring you, his soul sewn into every cell of your being.
For a long time, you lie in the hush that follows, the storm of your hearts ebbing slowly to a sated quiet. His hands drift over your skin, drawing slow, worshipful lines. You feel the way his palm roams down your ribs, spans the rise and fall of your belly, lingers there—an unspoken promise, an offering, a vow renewed and renewed and renewed with every breath. Your own hand follows his, and you let your fingers tangle together, threading over the place where new life is growing.
“Are you alright?” The words are rough, but the way he says them—tender, reverent—makes you want to cry again.
“Better than alright,” you manage, and it’s a wonder you can speak for the surging in your chest. You touch his cheek, tracing the path over the overgrowth of the beard usually so well kept. “Are you alright?” you echo his query.
He swallows, a clenched jaw working under your fingers. “I am,” he says, and you hear the lie of omission in how the words catch. You arch a brow, and he releases a stiff breath. “I am now,” he amends. “It was—” He searches the ceiling as if the right word is up there in the architecture, then settles on you. “Worse than worse than we anticipated. Too many dead, too many close calls.” His voice cracks, and you realize this is a wound you cannot salve, not with all the kisses in the world.
“You’re here. That’s all that matters.” You stroke the line of his jaw with your thumb, careful with the tenderness that wells up. You ask again, softer this time, “Steve. Are you hurt?”
He closes his eyes, as if the question itself is a mercy, some moment of gentleness he’d gone too long without. “Not in any way that will last,” he says, then, after a heavy silence, “but there are wounds and scars endured by my men, horrors I would not have had them face in their lifetime.”
There’s a quiet knock on the door, but it still startles you.
“Yes?” Steve calls out.
“Your Majesty, the bath you requested has been prepared,” you recognize the baritone of his groom.
“Thank you,” Steve responds, and you whimper quietly. He smiles at your pout, and asks, “What is that frown for?”
“You do reek dreadfully, but I don’t want you away from me and leaving for your chambers so immediately.”
He laughs. “It is a good thing I had the foresight to ask the tub in your bath chamber to be prepared, especially as you scant smell any better than me now,” he growls into your neck, before scooping you up from the bed and into his arms.
He carries you effortlessly—despite the travel and the exhaustion, he is still a force, solid and kinetic, the momentum of his desire to be close to you overcoming anything so trivial as fatigue or soreness.
The bath is drawn high and steaming, fragrant with eucalyptus and mint from the castle gardens, the tendrils of vapor curling through the candlelit air. Steve doesn’t put you down even then, instead, he sits you gently on the bench beside the basin, kneeling at your feet to help you shuck what little fabric remains—he mutters apologies for how he’d torn your nightdress, but the glint in his eyes as he peels it away makes clear that he is not sorry at all.
Then he draws you to your feet guides you into the tub. The heat and warmth of the water is its own bliss, and you sigh happily as you sink down, drawing your legs close to your chest so there’s room for your husband to join you. But your eyes rove over his body with the additional light afforded from the candles all around. His big frame is battered and taut, an altar of old and new wounds. The bruises are vivid, purple and ochre blooms against his ribs and limbs, and there’s a long, slick scar bisecting the length of his thigh—a new addition, pink and angry. Your hands go there, trembling, and you gently dare to brush over it. “Did this—?”
“A saber, but only a graze,” he assures you as he folds himself into the hot water before you.
You reach for the soap and, with hands steadier than your heart, begin to wash him. You are methodical, a surgeon’s precision in the way you map every contusion and cut, each new story etched into his skin. He keeps his eyes closed, breath even, but when you press a little too close to a darkening bruise at his ribs, he inhales sharply, and you murmur a quiet apology.
Steve’s head tips back, a breath escaping him as your hands knead over the muscle. “Don’t worry,” he says at last, “looks worse than it ever felt.” He’s lying, but you forgive him for it, and your hands continue up, methodically, as you chase away the grime and bruises with the warmth of your touch.
“Talk to me,” you say, voice as gentle as your hands. “Tell me what happened. All of it, or as much as you can bear.”
He sinks, for a moment, into the steam, and exhales. “We pressed north with two hundred, mostly foot soldiers, some cavaliers. Sam led the advance. Bucky rode the left flank, and I took right.” Steve’s words thicken with the memory, and your hands, moving over the breadth of his shoulder, pause to let him speak. “We gained ground at first, too easily, and that was itself a warning. Hydra never leaves the doors open unless they’ve set a trap on the other side.” His jaw works, silent for a moment, so you urge him with a subtle scruff of the soap up the plane of his chest.
“We lost the scouting party, and nearly the whole west flank. Sam doubled back, drew a third of their force away long enough to let us regroup, but it was—” he pauses, then resumes, “but Sam’s unit had it worst.” The lilt of regret, heavy and bitter, is thick in Steve’s voice. “Hydra cycles their men like ghosts. You think they’re beaten, but they come back. They set up false camps. They sent false surrenders, decoys, even children as messengers.” He rubs his face, the sound rasping over his stubble, and you ache with the urge to fold yourself around him, to protect what’s left unscathed.
You wait, patient, as he rakes a wet hand through his hair, as if the gesture might physically clear the images from his mind. “For a time, the only way we could keep ahead was to match their malice with our own terror. Every morning, I expected to hear Bucky or Sam was gone, or that Hydra had burned another town or hanged another farmer for the example. But after a month, we stopped losing men. We learned Hydra’s rhythms, their favorite tricks and forgeries. We started living in the loopholes, but it was difficult to know if we were making any progress or only playing games. Bucky’s men became shadows in their own right, impossible to pin down, and Sam—” He shakes his head, pride and worry perfectly commingled. “Sam learned to trade wounds for ground, and he never let the enemy see the same move twice.”
You urge Steve to turn his back to you so you could wash his hair, fingers gently kneading his scalp, and he groans warmly. After you rinse the suds from his hair, he leans back against you, sighing through the ache of memory. You gather him closer, folding your knees to bracket his hips beneath the surface. He lets you pull him down to rest between your thighs, his head heavy on your chest, your arms closing around his torso.
“After we learned to survive,” Steve goes on, voice low, “it was a stalemate. Hydra would not break us, but we could not find their center. Every time we tried to press the advantage, they shifted—like smoke through a sieve. I started to worry that their real aim was only to keep us locked there, bleeding months and men into the border, until they could break the kingdom from behind. And the longer it went on, the worse I thought it would get, until—” his expression shifts, and you see a flicker of reluctant gratitude. “Until it didn’t. Until we got help.”
“Help?”
“From the east. The Wakandans. I never even saw them coming, and neither did the Hydrans.” He opens his eyes at last, and you’re startled by how alert they are, how alive. Steve sits up and turns, reaching for a clean cloth next to the tub and taking the soap from your hands before he begins to clean your skin. “King T’Challa and his people had been watching for years, waiting until Hydra showed itself as enough of a threat to risk intervening.”
You feel a cold thrill run through your arms. You’d heard the legends of Wakanda—every child had, the kingdom that never fell, the city disappeared into legend. The scholars called it the dream of a utopia. Most everyone else called it a fable. No one in your lifetime had ever seen a Wakandan, let alone fought side by side with them. Yet, here is Steve, speaking of them not as rumor, but as comrades in arms.
“Bucky made the contact. He snuck away without my knowledge or permission after midnight, escaping through the woods. He went in alone and was gone almost six days. When he returned, it was with the Black Panther T’Challa himself and his advance guard, the Dora Milaje. They didn’t bring an army—didn’t need to—they brought knowledge. Maps, codes, infiltrators. One week with them by our side and we gained back what we’d lost in a month. We crushed their lines, liberated two towns, and forced the Hydrans into retreat before they could torch the wheat fields for the year’s supply.”
You shiver. “Are they gone?” Steve presses a warm, soapy cloth to your back, working methodically, his hands slow and gentle.
“Hydra? Never gone.” Steve’s mouth is a thin, exhausted line. “But for now we’ve at least bought time and freedom for our corner of this realm.”
He dips the cloth, wrings it out, traces the line of your spine. “T’Challa found me alone the night we finally prevailed. Said he had ridden out our way for three days before encountering Bucky, wanted to see if I was worthy of the throne I claimed.”
The line of his hands on your back is steady as a metronome, but you feel the tiniest tremor in his fingers—a tell you’ve come to know, rare as a celestial event in your resolute king. “And you are,” you say resolutely, voice barely more than a hush above the bathwater’s surface, but you know he hears you.
He presses his lips to the nape of your neck, murmuring your name like a prayer and a secret, and then, as if reluctant to break the spell of closeness, simply breathes you in for a long moment. You listen to the slow force of his heartbeat, the steady cadence of his breathing as it stitches the two of you together, crowned and made new by the intimacy of this moment.
“But the Black Panther said what?” you prompt, the words barely audible against the hush of the bathwater.
He smiles—a small, tired thing, but real. “T’Challa agreed with you,” he says, and at last a glimmer of warmth creeps in. “He said he expected a king and found a man with his heart already outside his own body. Said any ruler who needed every man to make it home, every village to survive, and who would not quit even when he ought, was a king Wakanda could respect.”
Now you turn and wrap your arms around his shoulders, faces close. “You earned it from the hour you took it. T’Challa sees what I see, what your people have seen for so many years.” You thumb another drop of water off his cheek, this one less bath and more the gleaming edge of emotion, though he blinks and it’s gone as if it never existed. He touches your jaw, and you realize he is searching for reassurance—your faith in him, not as a king, not as a hero of blood and iron, but as a man.
You let your words be the kiss you press to his mouth, letting him breathe it in, letting it fill whatever void the campaign carved. He kisses back with a fervency that tells you he hasn’t let himself need this softness, not in all the weeks gone. When his lips break from yours, he draws you up from the bath and pulls a towel around you, enfolding you close together until your body is pressed to his, toweling off your chilled arms as the steam clings to your skin and your knees all but buckle from that first step onto the flagstone. Steve’s big hands span your ribs, steadying you, and you realize for the thousandth time that no matter how battered the world leaves this man, he will always, always be careful with you.
You half-collapse onto the nearest cushioned bench, and he kneels in front of you, draping thick terrycloth over your shoulders, running his hands up and down your arms as if he could physically rub the exhaustion out of your bloodstream. You let yourself soak up all his diligent care, letting your forehead rest against his.
After Steve dries himself, he reaches down, and you tut when he tries to carry you again. But you do lean into him as you pad alongside him back into the bed chamber.
He tucks you into bed, drawing the blankets up to your chin, before climbing in beside you. The heat of his body radiates through your bones and into your marrow. The silence between you is companionable, but it is also thick. You feel the press of unspoken things, secrets still caught and locked away in the web of his breathing. There are always losses in war, and these will weigh on Steve the most, some he may still never share, but clearly some still on his mind at present—so you ask, softly, “How many did you bring home?”
His arms tighten once, a reflex, and he hesitates. “Most,” he says, but it is a careful word, and you feel the lack of completeness in it. “We lost fewer than we would have, and returned sooner than we would have if not for the Wakandans. The men did everything asked and more. The kingdom won’t forget what they endured, or what they gave.”
You twist, catching his gaze full-on. “And what are you still weighing whether or not to speak of now?”
He does not answer immediately. The air in the room shifts, a chill rolling in around the edges, and you tense. He turns you toward him, brushes the back of his knuckle down your cheek, but his eyes do not match the gentleness of his touch. They are hollow now, haunted.
“Steve?”
He looks away, jaw clenched. “Bucky didn’t come back with us,” he says.
You gasp, the sound violent in the hush, a thousand terrors flickering through your. Your breath is gone, enormous panic and sadness all at once clawing at your chest. “He’s—” but you can’t finish the word, as if saying it aloud will make it true.
But Steve sees the panic, and his hands close around your shoulders, anchoring you, voice urgent. “He is not dead. I am sorry—I should have said. He lives.” The relief is so sharp you nearly sob, and you clamp your mouth shut, forcing yourself to focus as Steve continues. “It was the last push, near the end. Bucky was at my side, spearheading the charge. He caught a Hydra blade that should have killed me. The bastard nearly took off his arm—nearly all the way to the socket. T’Challa and the Dora Milaje took him back to Wakanda. They said there is hope, real hope, that their science and magic could fix what was ruined.”
Relief floods through you in a tidal wave so strong you sink into the mattress, and Steve holds on to you, anchoring both of you in the moment. You press your face to his shoulder, and he’s tense again, and you realize it’s not from cold, not from want, but from the toll of weeks without rest, without certainty.
You take three deep breaths, in and out, remembering that you are two hearts, and you are here for each other, wanting to soothe his weary soul. You kiss him, soft and slow, and when you pull back, you cup his jaw in your hands so that you can anchor him to you, steady his rarely-wavering heart with the constancy of your own.
“If anyone can survive that,” you say, “it is Bucky, and if anyone can heal him, it must be Wakanda.” You run your thumb over the sharp ridge of Steve’s collarbone. “He will come back to us. I know he will. But you owe him nothing less than your full faith, and your rest, until then.”
Steve’s brow pinches, a flash of pain in the blue of his eyes, but it softens as you stroke your hand down his arm, careful around a constellation of bruises. “We lived through things I will never want you to see,” he says, “but I need you to know this: I thought of you every day. Every day, you kept me coming back through the mire and the blood. No matter how bad it got, I would see your face and—” he pauses, as if pulled back, then exhales. “It was not the idea of the kingdom, or duty. It was just you. Only ever you, and our future.” The last words are accompanied by his hand spanning the swell of your stomach, the life growing there. The words are lead and gold, both a confession and a benediction, and you hold them in your heart like an amulet. The two of you kiss, fervent, treasured.
After a long, close silence, Steve sighs, the last of the tension leaving him with the exhale. Suddenly, you realize he has grown deadweight against you. The steady rise and fall of his chest turns slower, deeper, and in the hush between heartbeats you realize he’s falling asleep, right there in your arms, battle-bruised but finally at peace. You feel the urge to let him drift, to watch him as you often did in those early months, but now it’s different, even more tangible. Now you see every crease, every new scar, every effort he made to haul himself home to you, and you understand that the kingdom you two are building is not made of stone and banners, but of this—of the bodies and the hearts that come together and re-forge themselves in these moments. You are not merely king and queen, but husband and wife. And because you know he would never let you keep watch alone, not even in his sleep, you close your eyes, too, and let yourself drift with him, twin stars fused against the hush of what’s left of the night before dawn.
My heaaaaarrrrrt! I thought of these two often, and I knew the shapes of what I wanted, but it took so long to sort them out, and we can all thank @stargazingfangirl18 for helping me figure out the bits that were sticking for me and my muse.
BUT KING STEVE! I love him with my whole chest! I'm glad I finally got to share him with you again.
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Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
This Lloyd would purposely tease you, as well provide that protrctive and possessive vibe, but never initiate full on physical things because he wants you to admit you want him and make that move (or prettily ask for it).
One morning Lloyd comes into the kitchen for breakfast and tells you casually - BUT IN EXTREME DETAIL - about the sex dream he had about fucking you last night. How good it will be when he finally gets to curl his fingers up inside your cunt and stretch you so you'd be ready to take his cock and how good it will feel when he fills you up.
...and when his toast is done and he's poured his coffee, he just gives you a peck on the top of your head and heads off to work, leaving you thre gripping the counter and trying to kep your brething even and now sink to the floor because you're so weak in the knees.
This August, prepare yourselves for some shameless hoe shenanigans: Siri’s Birthday Bash: Favorite Things Edition 🤭
The event will be August 15-18, but I wanted to post info now so writing challenge participants have lots of time to work on their stories. Writing challenge submissions will be accepted starting August 15 and through the end of August (or later if needed; I’m flexible and don’t want you to stress ❤️)
There are two ways to participate in my birthday bash (you can do both, or just one, whatever you want!):
The writing challenge
Submitting your Superior AI Custom Order
🤭 That’s right, my good hoes, since the theme of my event is my favorite things, I wanted my “party favors” to be inspired by one of my favorite verses to write! Please note that Superior AI Custom Orders are limited to one submission per person, and that submissions will only be accepted during the event dates noted.
All event details and the Superior AI Custom Order Form are beneath the cut. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! Thank you so much! Can't wait to have some birthday fun with you all ❤️
GENERAL EVENT DETAILS
When: August 15-18
*Writing challenge submissions will be accepted through the end of August (or later if needed).
How to Participate:
🎁 Birthday Gifts aka the writing challenge
🎉 Party Favors aka Submit Your Superior AI Custom Order
🎁 BIRTHDAY GIFTS (AKA THE WRITING CHALLENGE) 🎁
Rules for Fic Entries:
500 word minimum, 5,000 word max. (Please put your story under a cut after 150 words.)
Original works only. If your story is part of a series, it must be able to be read as a standalone piece.
Please tag me @stargazingfangirl18 when posting your story.
Include the tag #happy birthday siri 2026 on the original post of your fic (not on reblogs or reblog replies, please.)
Any genre accepted! Can be fluff, angst, smut, comedy, AU, dark, soft!dark, whatever you want.
Please stick to the CE characters listed below, and no RPF.
Reader insert stories only. LGBTQ+, BIPOC, & interracial stories are welcome and encouraged!
No toilet stuff, no necrophilia, no snuff, or bestiality. Non-con and dub-con must fall within commonly posted dark fics. (FYI: I personally don’t read daddy kink, mommy kink, spit kink, lactation kink, harsh degradation, dumbification, or anything focusing on health/illnesses/medical details/scenarios.)
Please include warnings as needed for explicit language, explicit sexual content, non-con, dub-con, dark fic, trigger warnings, 18+, etc.
Odds & Ends:
Each writer can submit a maximum of 3 stories.
Writers DO NOT need to claim prompts.
Smut writers and characters must be 18+.
Writers can also submit a Superior AI Custom Order but please keep it to one submission per person.
You do not need to write smut, I know it’s not everyone’s jam.
I reserve the right to not read or reblog anything that makes me uncomfortable.
Writing Challenge Babes & Prompts
BABES
Andy Barber
Ari Levinson
Bryce Langley
Cole Turner
Curtis Everett
Frank Adler
Jake Jensen
Lloyd Hansen
Pete Brenner
Ransom Drysdale
Reverend Drew
Robert Pronge (aka Mr. Freezy)
Steve Rogers
PROMPTS
Pick at least 1 prompt. You can pick more than 1, and you don’t need to claim prompts:
SCENARIOS:
Being a predatory babe’s prey (in a sexy way, not a hungry way lolll)
Sweet and/or Vulnerable!Reader x Scary!Hot!Babe
Being blackmailed by someone unlikely
Scary babe is only soft with you
Commitment phobe!babe is high key obsessed with you
A titillating encounter with a monster!babe
You’re an actual human disaster, but soft!dark babe finds it charming
Emotional constipation
Making a deal with the devil
Meet!oops or fail
Sacrificing yourself to a dangerous babe to save someone else
Being betrayed by someone you trust
DIALOGUE:
“I was just going to punish you, but now? Now I’m going to annihilate you.”
“Oh my god, how can someone be so fucking oblivious?!”
“You have no idea what your scent does to me.”
“That’s it! I’m done! No more adulting, no more responsibilities, no more anything! We’re just going to lay here and cuddle and hide from the rest of the world.”
“You picked the wrong man to steal from.”
“I have no idea what the future holds, but what I do know is that I want you by my side for every second of it.”
“I’ve never had someone so innocent, but by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be as corrupted as me.”
“Did you just… propose to me?”
“You know I reward loyalty and good work, and I thought she would make such a sweet, pretty gift.”
“Please, just give me one more chance. I know I can be better, for you. I would do anything for you.”
“The only thing you have to offer that’s of any interest to me is that sweet, warm place between your legs. So strip and show me just how badly you need my help.”
“I know I’m the last person you want to see right now, but we really need to talk.”
KINKS:
Breeding kink (non-pregnancy version)
Size kink
Praise kink
Somnophilia
Prone bone
Squirting
Manhandling
Oral sex (f receiving)
Anal play/sex
Overstimulation
Monster fucking
Creampie
TROPES:
Omegaverse
Mob AU
Good girl x bad boy
Biker AU
Delulu babe or Reader
Mercenary AU
Human disaster!Reader or babe
Conqueror AU
Friends to lovers
Sugar daddy/baby AU
Guard dog!Babe
CEO AU
🎉 PARTY FAVORS (AKA SUBMIT YOUR SUPERIOR AI CUSTOM ORDER) 🎉
Rules for Submission:
Submissions will only be accepted during the event dates of August 15-18. Those sent before or after those dates will be discarded.
You must submit your order by sending me an ask that answers the questions below.
There is a limit of 1 submission per person (please respect this limit, even if you request on anon; I don’t want to be overwhelmed or stressed).
Odds & Ends:
If you’re new to my Superior AI verse, you can check it out here.
Even if your babe of choice isn’t an AI in my verse, you can still request them for your custom order. Think of these resulting drabbles as AU :)
I may not get to every submission within the event timeframe, but I’ll try my best to answer all of them eventually, so please be patient.
Submit Your Superior AI Custom Order Form
Send me an ask with the following info, and I will write a (likely AU) Superior AI verse drabble starring the CE!babe of your choice! I’ve written these questions in one paragraph to make it easier for you to copy/paste, but you can space them out when you send your ask. Thank you!
Superior AI Custom Order Request: 1) Your CE!babe of choice (If you’d rather I pick the babe for you, let me know). 2) What are the top 3 reasons why you are ordering an AI? 3) Soft, soft!dark, or dark? 4) Smut or no smut?
Thank youuu. But also, happy birthday to me 🫠 lolll.
—
Tagging some fellow hoes who may be interested or want to signal boost the event, no pressure though! (Sorry if I forgot anyone, I’m awful at tagging lol.) ❤️
Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
This Lloyd would purposely tease you, as well provide that protrctive and possessive vibe, but never initiate full on physical things because he wants you to admit you want him and make that move (or prettily ask for it).
Aside from having fun tracing that tattoo with fingertips and tongue while Lloyd is asleep, sprawled on his back and gloriously naked 🫠
I'm thinking of being his reluctant fiancée, huffy and hissy. But then in the middle of one of the arguments (well, you are arguing, Lloyd is amused), he makes a move that causes his shirt to ride up and you get a first glimpse of that tattoo. Your brain instantly glitches 😳
It might take him 1.2 seconds to figure out that you have glitched, but only another .3 seconds to determine why.
And then he'll remind you that part of this whole engagement thing comes with certain benefits, which you know very well you're allowed to access the second you decide to stop resisting him. 😏
Because the only reason he's withholding is because he's waiting until you enthusiastically want him. Not need him.
Want him.
Because he knows he's not worth any less than that.
He's eager to have you, but only when you're ready to want him as much as he wants you.
a short series featuring Andy Barber as a soft dark mafia boss who set his sights on you and never plans to let you go
While Andy Barber was well-known in Boston, there are whispers of a darker side, but few know his morals know no bounds. He's successful, he's charming, he's generous, and you're about to find out just how dangerous he can be.
Content Warnings: [check individual parts for their respective warnings]
DUBIOUS CONSENT, extortion, explicit smut (see individual parts for detailed warnings), power plays, manipulation, financial spoiling, forced marriage
COLLECTION:
I'm Your Man [3k]
Morning Radiance [750]
Prepare for Takeoff [1.5k]
Don't Look Too Far [6.4k]
Burned Off the Haze [4.5k]
Cracking Locks [5k]
Dangerous Desires [6.3k]
Only Your Actions Talk [5.9k]
By the End of the Night [6.2k]
ANDY'S POV You Should Know [800]
Currents Sweeping Through [3.8k]
Different Things [3.9k]
Last Vows Before the Altar [7.5k]
ANDY'S POV For Better and For Worse [1.7k]
parts that jump ahead of the timeline and may or may not remain cannon to this AU:
ask: a moment on your honeymoon [350]
Make Her Glow [1k]
EXTRAS:
↠ will Andy let the reader work?
↠ what if Andy were forced into marriage with the reader?
↠ what if sweetheart tried to get rid of her engagement ring?
↠ does Andy have ulterior motives?
↠ did Andy pick you to be the mother of his children/did he watch you before?
guuuuuuurl, the way this version of Andy haunts me, too?! trust me, I'm absolutely feeling you. I had no intention of his story sprawling out into so much plot and development, but we are only into act two of what I have planned!
(I just finished writing the chapter for next Monday, and I can hardly wait to share!)
Characters/Pairings: soft!dark mafia Andy Barber x curvy Millennial female!reader
Word Count: 7.5k
Summary: You make a discovery you never anticipated during the rehearsal dinner - a dinner Andy disappears from with no explanation.
Content/Warnings: forced engagement; use of pet name (sweetheart); smut (brief mutual masturbation, unprotected vaginal intercourse); mafia themes
Author Note: I've been working on this chapter for a long time and thinking about it for even longer. I think there will be moments you love and hate, but it's certainly full of elements that are moving us into the next phase of their story.
Previous Part | Full Collection
There are eighty-six people in attendance at the rooftop restaurant, and you are only sure you know the names of maybe a third. The rest are here because of Andy—to witness or test alliances, play in the ongoing power games, weigh old debts or new risks. It’s the rehearsal dinner for one of Boston Mafia’s elite, so the guest list was meticulously refined for Andy’s part. Yours as well, but not with the same intent or stakes to be considered.
Andy doesn’t own Contessa—the restaurant atop The Newbury Hotel—but he does own the hotel, so it was seamless for your team to arrange this part of the wedding nuptials there. While you and Andy aren’t having a full society affair wedding with all the bells and whistles and three or four days of events and traditions, you do have few significant event pieces woven into the wedding weekend, this being one of them. No one had asked you what to include, but you were part of the overall conversations, and if there had been anything you truly wanted to refuse, you think you might have been able to say so. But your team knows you well enough to create elements you appreciate.
And, annoyingly, so does Andy.
The room is a riot of velvet and silk and black wool, the exact social armor you expect at a pre-wedding gathering of this sort. And yet you can tell this doesn’t scream mafia to the people who don’t know the predators they’re intermingling with. It’s all too reminiscent of how you dismissed the barely-hushed rumors of Andy Barber’s potential connections before he revealed he was one of the kings of organized crime in the city. And for the sake of your parents, your friends, your family, you’re relieved and hope they remain ignorant.
Tonight will be a monumental tell for the future and whether or not you can pass, or rather, who you have to be while passing. You scan the clusters of guests and realize you should have always been able to spot true mafia at ten paces, even when they’re disguised as board members and development officers and venture capitalists. There’s a particular gravity, neither ostentatious nor shy. Men in Brioni suits who know how to vanish into the background, women with hair so immaculate it could have been sculpted from silk.
Andy’s hand has been heavy at the small of your back most of the evening, and it’s somehow almost comforting, an anchor. Occasionally you feel his thumb graze the bare inch of spine between velvet and skin, a touch so subtle it’s only for you.
You look across the room and spot your parents lingering near a tray of passed champagne, your mother straightening the lapels of your father’s jacket with the hopeless affection of people who have been married long enough to know that preening is just another form of devotion. Your mother’s dress is a shade of navy so dark it reads black, and your father looks as if he was born inside a suit, so naturally does this one fit him.
Suddenly Thea is in front of you, plucking a glass of champagne off a passing tray and handing it over, flanked by your other two other bridesmaids. Thea gives you a once-over, and says, “You look like a goddess, a terrifyingly pretty one.” You mutter a thank you, and Thea rolls her eyes. “Please pretend you believe it, just a little bit. You’re a gorgeous bride-to-be whether you want to be or not.”
She’s the only one who knows about your hesitations, and even then you’ve only indulged a fraction.
She winks at Andy, linking her arm through yours. “I’m stealing your fiancé.”
He smirks. “At least you're conceding she’s mine.”
“You wish,” Thea replies, and with a toss of her hair of her shoulder, she leads you away.
The entire evening is a kind of lucid dream. Greetings, handshakes, hugs, careful double-cheek kisses dispensed by those in attendance as you circulate the room. In reality there was no rehearsal for tomorrow’s ceremony, tonight it is merely a small gathering staged for … well, from what you gather, for the sake of it. For those closest to you, it’s to keep up the illusion that this is a wedding you want. For Andy’s world, it seems to be a necessary ritual to confirm the ranks of his order—his trusted soldiers and a handful of his choice allies.
You don’t register that your uncle Rob isn’t there until suddenly he is, and by then, the room has already begun the low-pressure phase transition from cocktails to dinner. The movement is organic—someone dims the lights, the waiters begin the subtle herding, and you are being gently, almost imperceptibly, shepherded toward the long, low banquet table at the far end of the room.
You are halfway to your seat, with Thea close behind and Andy once again at your side, when the double glass doors at the restaurant’s entrance hiss open and Rob strides in, in a full three-piece suit and with the off-kilter swagger of someone who seems to have truly rushed directly from the airport. He gives you a nod and a warm smile, though even at this distance you note it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
You wave him over, ignoring the subtle tightening of Andy’s hand on your hip. Rob moves quickly across the room to you, and immediately drops a palm on your shoulder, squeezing—warmth, family, genuine affection. “Am I horrifically late or just fashionably disruptive?” he asks, and before you answer, he’s already deflecting. “You look tired but good. He treating you right?”
Your uncle’s gaze bores into yours for a half-second, searching for something reassuring. You nod and give him a smile. He softens, but only infinitesimally.
“Uncle Rob, this is—”
“Andy Barber,” he supplies, and his gaze flicks to your fiancé, settling there a half-beat too long, cataloging him. You don’t know what’s transpired between them, but you sense something clearly has as there’s a palpable undercurrent, like two strong magnets meeting, neither yielding.
Uncle Rob gives Andy a stiff nod, but Andy merely meets the moment with an open hand. You sense the silent exchange—neutral ground, white flag for tonight, or maybe just a kind of mutual agreement not to detonate inside a room full of witnesses.
It feels strange, but it’s only another line on the list of things that aren’t normal for this entire affair. The exchange goes unnoticed by nearly everyone else since all in attendance are finding their seats, and Uncle Rob falls in among them and takes his assigned seat by your parents.
The food is dazzling, course after course in small, perfect compositions. You try to taste things, to remember flavors, but you are more conscious of the shifting dynamics around you. You are aware of Andy’s hand ever present—on your knee, tracing patterns on your arm, once just lightly gripping your wrist as if keeping you tethered to the table, to himself. You wonder if it’s meant to keep you under control, but the gesture genuinely feels more like reassurance than possession tonight.
Flanked by Andy on your left and Thea on your right, both seem engaged in a subtle contest to out-maneuver each other in their attempts to manage you. Sometimes it’s by steering the conversation, sometimes by way of silently passing you the better part of a shared dish, with Thea by gambling how much she can make you laugh given the current company and whether the moment is suitable for choking on your wine. You’re not sure if you resent this orchestration or if it’s a balm. Maybe both.
At intervals, you glance over at Uncle Rob. The smile he flashes the room is the same as ever, but his eyes seem to rove the room, always taking stock, never fully at rest. He watches Andy most of all, the way a hunter watches a rival predator—admiring and calculating, never blinking outright. At one point, your eyes meet and Rob lifts his glass in a toast, not quite a salute, but you feel the force of the message: he’s here, for you, and he’s not leaving until he’s sure you’re safe. He’s always been more protective of you than anyone else in the family, but this seems more intense, even for him.
Halfway through the meal, Andy excuses himself to confer with two men in dark suits who materialize at the edge of the room, and you find yourself, for the first time all evening, feeling alone at the lack of him. Thea leans in. “You doing okay?” she whispers, but with a smile on her face so it reads as idle gossip.
“It feels like someone else’s wedding,” you mutter back. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
She gives you a look that is both knowing and impossibly gentle. “If you want to run, just say the word. I have five hundred dollars in cash and a getaway Prius, and that’s enough to get us at least to New Hampshire before anyone notices.”
You snort-laugh, a little louder than you meant to, and feel lightheaded for an instant. There is some relief in naming it, even as a joke, even though you don’t question she’s serious about the Prius and the cash.
There is a moment, a half-second, a single synaptic twitch, in which you consider the offer or vanishing into an Uber for Logan Airport. But the urge passes. You already jetted away once and came back.
And that coming back was your choice.
It doesn’t make sense to escape again now.
The rest of dinner passes in a spiral of rich food and laughter that from most people seems to be unforced. Andy returns, all courteous apologies, and places his warm palm on your back again as if plugging back into a vital organ. He leans in and presses a kiss to your temple, his voice pitched only for you. “I’ll need to disappear for a bit after dessert. Business.” He says it lightly, but the tension is a wire behind each syllable. You nod, and at the same moment he gives your leg a squeeze under the table, as if to say: Don’t worry, I’ll be back. For you. Always that emphasis.
When the meal ends, the room doesn’t thin so much as it condenses. People abandon their seats in favor of looser, more volatile clusterings near the bar or moving out onto the balcony. You sense the shape of the next hours—a kind of shadow afterparty, drinks and ritual toasts and the swerve toward dysfunction that all close social gatherings eventually take. Andy fields a last volley of congratulations, then gives you a look that says thirty seconds, and moves toward a private door near the kitchen, shadowed by his men. You watch him go, feeling again the negative space at your side.
It’s at this point that your uncle finds you again.
“You sure about this?” he murmurs, like you’re trading nuclear secrets instead of making polite familial small talk at your rehearsal dinner. “Not too late to call it off.”
You set your jaw, then, because the answer is yes. Or as close to yes as you’ll ever have. If there’s a question curled up in the base of your spine, it’s quieter now—not gone, but quelled by Rob’s questioning.
You find yourself saying, “I’ve made my decision.”
Uncle Rob’s expression is unreadable, then softens just enough to let a sliver of affection through. “Your folks are damn proud. Just so you know. You do know that, right?”
You give half a shrug and a nod.
“And you know that you can always come to me, for anything.”
“Even ashes and body disposal?” you ask, letting a smirk break through the anxiety. He huffs a laugh, but you can see he’s not disarmed by it, not really.
“Especially that,” he says. But then, gentler, yet more serious, he says, “You ever want out, you just say so. Don’t matter what anyone else wants, least of all him. You come to me. You hear?”
You nod, only then realizing, “You know who he is.”
He nods and knocks his glass lightly against yours. “I’m only a phone call away. Fuck the protocols.”
You don’t know exactly what his ties to Andy’s underworld are, or how long he and Andy may have known each other, but some unexplained parts of Uncle Rob’s past make a whole lot more sense if he’s involved with the mafia. You imagine the more you trace back, the more certain absences and behaviors could ultimately be explained.
You don’t allow yourself to ask the next rush questions assembling in your mind. Instead, you clink glasses with Rob again, and when Thea reappears at your side, he makes an excuse and fades back into the crowd. You watch him go, feeling heavier and lighter at once.
“You want air?” Thea asks, as if the answer could ever be no.
Out on the balcony, you stand at the stone parapet for a while, each of your with a glass in hand, the city shining beneath you. Over the railing, half the Back Bay looks like a jewelry case, all neat squares and gold filigree light.
Thea tips her chin out into the dark. “So what’s it like standing up here, knowing you’re about to be a married woman?”
You roll your eyes, but there’s a nervous tickle in your chest. “About the same as it is being an unmarried one, only with more witnesses.”
You expect her to laugh, but instead she fixes you with a sly, assessing stare. “He scares me a little, you know,” she says, so matter-of-fact it undercuts any drama. “Not for anything he’s said or done. More in the way those security guys all treat him like he’s royalty. Which, I guess, he basically is, right? Mafia royalty?”
You hesitate, glass at your lips. Did you ever say it to her? You don’t think you did, because you went to Stockholm on the heels of signing the pre-nup which included the NDA elements… You race back through every conversation, every running-on-fumes phone call, and there’s nothing you can recall that would have spelled it out. But your silence lingers half a second too long.
Thea’s face splits in a grin that’s bright and wolfish at the edges. “I KNEW it,” she crows, as if you’ve just confirmed a conspiracy theory about the moon landing. “Oh my god. I knew it. I KNEW IT! Don’t even try to deny it.”
You gawk. “What are—how did—”
You try to look innocent, but Thea is already cackling, delighted with herself, her elbows resting on the parapet like a triumphant detective. “Please,” she says, waving her hand at the party inside, “He’s waaaaaaaaay too rich, I’ve read way too many mafia romance novels, and you had a security detail when you visited me in Stockholm using his private jet. I was 99% sure, and your hesitation there hesitation gave me the last percent.”
You consider protesting, but technically you’ve broken nothing in the contract, and the fact that your best friend knows—that anyone knows—feels like an instant balm.
You clamp a hand on Thea’s wrist. “Promise me you won’t say a word. Seriously. Not to a soul. I mean it. Not a joke, not even a whisper or a meme reference.” There’s an urgency in your voice, and Thea, reading the shift instantly, sobers.
The brightness in her eyes dims by an iota, the seriousness of your tone cutting through the fizz of her delight. She nods, solemnly, and you know that as cavalier as she can sometimes be, she doesn’t question the gravity of your insistence. “I won’t,” she vows, putting her hand over yours.
In the shared silence, you feel her searching your face for something she doesn’t want to say. You let the air prickle between you, each steadying the other just by being present, until Thea finally asks, “Does he make you happy?”
You don’t answer, not at first. You stare into the bright helix of city lights and let the question slide down your spine and settle into your gut. You want to say yes, or even no, anything definitive, but instead you just tell her, “He makes me feel alive,” and hope she hears the ambiguity for what it is.
She nods, lips pressed together. “I’m still not sure why you’re doing this, but I will admit that even though I still have questions, one of those questions is not how much that man cares for you.”
Thea fixes you with a look so curious and gentle it makes you want to squirm out of your skin. “It doesn’t look like any love story I’d picture for you,” she says. “It’s not the type people write poems about or that you see on Pinterest boards. I don’t even know that it’s love, but it’s definitely fierce, and runs deep.”
“Thea,” your voice is a little choked.
“He looks at you like you’re the last thing on earth he thinks is worth burning for.” She shrugs and takes another sip of her champagne. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s true.”
You’re grateful, even if you can’t manage the words to say so outright. Thea is one of the few souls you trust without hesitation in this world. You study her face in the city-dark, finding closeness there that reminds you, with a pang, of who you were before all this.
“I’m glad you’re here,” you say. You mean it harder than it sounds.
Thea bumps shoulders with you. “I’d literally stand in front of a bullet for you.” She glances toward a distant rooftop bar, probably scouting for snipers. “Metaphorically, but also probably literally.”
You stay there together a little longer, the gentle thrum of summer and the humid glow from the party behind you, breathing easier for the reminder that not all loves are fairy tales, that some are knife-edges, and open secrets, and best friendships.
Shep slides out the glass door with the hush of someone practiced in not disturbing an armed perimeter. He doesn’t interrupt, just drifts into the range of your awareness and waits. When you finally realize on a conscious level that he’s there, turning your head and giving him a small, tight-lipped smile, he says, “Time to make our exit, if you’re ready.”
There’s a quiet emphasis on the word “our,” and you realize how long you must’ve been out here.
“Where’s Andy?” You look over his shoulder, expecting to see him somewhere in the glow and tangle of the party, looming, waiting for you expectantly, but he’s not there. You’re surprised at how keenly you feel his absence. Then you ask Shep, “He’s not coming back tonight, is he?”
Shep shakes his head, a single, precise movement. “He wanted me to see you home. Mark’s already downstairs.” He hesitates, then softens with a half-smile, reading some of your reluctance to leave. “You can have ten more minutes if you want them.”
You take the ten.
It’s enough time for Thea to finish her glass and for you to make the rounds of the party, saying goodnight to your circles of friends and family who were invited to be part of tonight.
Your mother is waiting for you near the coat check, her dark eyes shining, twin tears perilously close to the edge. She pulls you in for a fierce, almost painful hug, her perfume sealing around you like a memory from childhood. “You’re my treasure,” she says into your ear so hard you forget to breathe for a second. She pulls away, fixing your hair with a trembling hand. “Just tell me he’s as good as he looks. That’s all I ask.” Her voice breaks on the last word, and you bob your head, not trusting yourself to say anything more.
Outside, the night air is a slab of heat. Shep guides you to the waiting Range Rover with a balanced mix of deference and I’m still your bodyguard. Mark already has the curbside door open, and you buckle yourself in, feeling the exhaustion of the night releasing through your limbs. You lean your head back against the headrest and close your eyes. As complicated as your feelings are around Andy, his absence gnaws at you in a way you didn’t expect. Especially tonight.
When you walk into the mansion, the silence is as sharp as a slap. You expected it, or something like it, and yet standing in the cavernous hush of the marble entry, clutching your tiny evening bag, you’re overtaken by an urge to slam the door hard enough to wake the dead. You don’t, though. You click it shut, toe off your heels and hook them on your fingers, and walk barefoot through the dark to your rooms upstairs.
Andy’s absence is complete and total—no jacket left half-flung on the banister, no ghost of movement or glass of half-drunk bourbon left somewhere. You resist the urge to immediately check your phone, because you want to feel the ache fully, let it sharpen until it outcompetes the dull, unanswerable questions that have circled every day since you said yes, but especially tonight.
You go to the bathroom and take a long, methodical shower. You take your time as you finish getting ready for bed, drifting through the mechanical rituals of skincare and pajamas and teeth-brushing, but you take no comfort in the delicate, orchid-scented candle you light, or the feel of the silk on your skin.
You check your phone, eventually. There’s a text from him, timestamped an hour ago.
ANDY: I’ll be late, don’t wait up.
You want to scream. You want to hurl the phone at the wall or at least send an angry string of messages to force some reaction from him, but you don’t. You sit at the end of the bed with your phone in your palm, glaring at the glow as if it can blink first. Don’t wait up, as if this is remotely normal. You know he’s got business, but he’s never missed an evening with you, never let you go to sleep without him there, touching you, fucking you, just being with you. And now he’s gone the night before your wedding?
You thumb your phone off, toss it face-down onto the bed, and stand for a moment in the hush. You are lit by moonlight coming by moonlight coming in a narrow spill through the vast window, alone with the hum and pop of baseboard heat, a ghost in your own life. You want to be sated by this, to have the sudden expanse and absence feel like relief, but instead it gathers pressure inside your chest. Under the thin silk of your robe, your skin feels hypersensitive, almost electrical, and the wet ends of your hair drip cold water down your spine.
You don’t want to admit how badly you want him here—how quickly your anger at his text has curdled into a more woeful, sticky missing. It chafes to need him.
You try to zone out streaming something on TV, but nothing cuts through to capture enough of your attention in the absence. You’re so used to the energy of Andy’s presence—the kinetic hum of him near you, whether he’s angry or amused or simply radiating power from the next room—that the void he leaves behind is almost audible.
Eventually you are able to at least focus on reading, legs tucked up under you on the settee.
You must have fallen asleep, because the next sensation is not the passage of time but abrupt displacement.
You’re in mid-dream when you sense the shift, the weightless suck of gravity before the realization: someone is lifting you. You twist, half-awake, to find Andy’s arms locked under your knees and back, carrying you with the unthinking efficiency of someone who has probably hauled bodies at some point. You mutter something into his shirt, a syllable heavy with sleep and protest, and he just keeps moving, your head lolling against his chest, too groggy to fight him off at first.
Then you thrash, not gently. You elbow at his chest, catch his ribs with a knee, and hiss, “Put me down.” You mean it. You’re not just startled—you’re still feeling that lingering anger—and Andy, to his credit, sets you down with more care than you expected. You sway and nearly lose your balance, but he catches your wrist, keeping you upright.
“Easy,” he murmurs, voice absurdly gentle, and that somehow pricks worse for all its reasonableness.
You rip your hand away. “Don’t do that. Don’t just—pick me up.”
He studies you, searching your face with an unreadable patience. “You were sleeping,” he says.
You steady yourself and glare up at him, refusing to let your fatigue soften the edge of your voice. “You missed the whole rest of the night, Andy. Where were you?”
Although his expression remains the same, the tension around his eyes tightens. “You know I’m not going to tell you that.”
You scoff. “How do I know that?”
Maybe it’s the sleep, maybe it’s the hunger you’ve been stifling, but it lands with a new kind of sharpness, how Andy answers a question only by hollowing out the possibility you’ll ever ask again. But you refuse to fold into that silence tonight.
“I want you to tell me,” you say.
Andy closes the gap between you with a slow step, his gaze not leaving your face. “Tomorrow’s our wedding,” he says, low and thick in his throat, a softness that isn’t practice so much as exhaustion. His hand goes to your shoulder, thumb pressing the knot between bone and tendon, and you flinch at the intimacy of it, at how easily he can make you want to forgive him. You step back, and he lets you, his arms falling to his sides in a slow, theatrical surrender.
“Don’t do that,” you say again, voice thin this time. You hate the tremor more than you hated his absence.
He tilts his head, studying you in the low light. “You’re angry.”
He smiles, weary but pleased. “You’re angry because you missed me.” He says it not as an accusation, but a simple, delighted observation, like he’s just solved a riddle in your presence. “You care.”
You make a sound, a cross between a snort and a huff, and turn your head before he can get a better look at your face. “I’m angry because you’ve insisted on all of this—me, the wedding, pulling me into your life—and then you desert me the night before we’re supposed to get married? Leave me during the rehearsal dinner? And all I get is a ‘don’t wait up’ text?”
You hate that your voice rises, hate the heat behind your eyes. Andy comes closer, and you want to slap him and also want him to hold you. You flex your jaw, force your gaze to stay away.
He listens. He lets you say it all, and when it’s out of your mouth, tumbling and ugly, he says, “I know. But there are things I can’t and won’t tell you. I can’t ever expose you to certain things. I won’t allow them near you.” His voice is all iron and velvet. “I’m protecting you, even if it doesn’t look or feel like it.”
He lets the pause hang, then takes a slight step closer—close enough that you nearly shiver at the radius of his heat.
There are things I won’t shield you from, either. You told me to never lie, so I won’t pretend I’m made another way. But I will always come back.” He says it softly, neither a threat nor a comfort.
After a lengthy moment of silence, you tell him, “I don’t want another night like this. I don’t want to ever be stranded in the dark.”
He considers it. Not with a smirk or a challenge, but real intent, a resolution hardening. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I’m not good enough,” he says, and it is the flattest, most relentless admission. “But I am what you’re marrying.”
You should laugh. You almost do, at the incredulity, the audacity, the unfairness of his answer, of this entire situation, but then he reaches out, just a single knuckle under your chin, and you’re suddenly taking in a shaky breath.
You hold his eyes for a full count, your body picking up the stutter of your pulse, anger and want running convergent through your system. You want to turn away, to break the connection, but you can’t.
“Then show me. Make it better,” you say, and your voice is a command, not a plea.
You let him guide your face up. His thumb travels a gentle path down your jaw. He leans in, pressing his words, and his mouth, against your skin. “You want more than this? I will never give you less.” The last of it is a murmur, not a vow, but it lives in the hollow between you, nudging the edge of promise.
He kisses you behind the ear, slow and intentional, and your whole body contracts around the point of contact. You hate how even this controlled display of contrition draws you in. Were you less tired, were it not the night before your wedding, you may have pushed him away. But he knows exactly how to pull on the string that unravels you, and you can’t leave it at that, so you cup his face and press your mouth against his, not sweet or apologetic but with a frustrated need to bite, to mark. He lets you, opens willingly, tongue flicking yours, and the pressure he uses to guide you toward the bed is insistent. You pull him with you, backwards, the two of you bumping knees, bumping hips, his hands already finding the tie at your robe and making short work of it.
He pulls it from your shoulders, lets it float to the carpet with exaggerated gentleness that’s belied by the urgency of his mouth and hands. You take brief satisfaction in yanking at his shirt buttons, two of them tumbling somewhere onto the bedding, but Andy just shrugs out of the rest and lets it fall to the floor.
He is, as you’ve come to expect, taller and heavier than you in the moments that matter. He pins you beneath him, stretching your arms above your head, taking his time as if you both aren’t aching with a violent need. He kisses you with a patience that does not match the tension in his body, hands working down your ribs, touching and teasing the places he’s learned draw your responses.
You let him press you down, let him grind against you, clothed below the waist but with a bare chest and a punishing grip as he presses one of your thighs up and open for him. Your silk nightgown is tangled above your hips, ruined for decency, and the sheets under you bunch as you wrap your leg around him.
You are not even sure when you stop resisting—the anger, the loneliness—maybe when he murmurs, “I’m here,” into the shell of your ear, or maybe it’s before that, at the familiar drag of his teeth across your shoulder. You want to snarl at him, but you can only gasp and tear one of your hands away so you can grab for his waistband, the zipper, too impatient for finesse.
The button resists for half a second before you hear the pop. Andy’s hips cant, the gesture half involuntary. He is, unlike you, a master at not showing his hunger—unless he wants you to see it, and tonight he must, because the restraint rubs your skin raw in a way that’s almost a dare. You dig your heel into the mattress, lift your pelvis to grind into the urgency that’s thickening between your bodies. He lets you, but barely; his hand catches your thigh, squeezes, and you wonder if there will be marks tomorrow. You hope so.
He pulls back, and you make a desperate, wordless noise—appalled at the empty space, the abrupt loss of him. Andy grins, a glint of teeth in the dark, and then he’s dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed, eyes black and bottomless. “Patience,” he says, voice low and hoarse. “I want you naked for me. Completely.”
You’re tempted to resist him, to force him to earn the reveal, but you want the heat and the gaze and—more than anything—the feeling of him unraveling for you. So you tug the nightgown up and off, shimmying as best you can.
Andy reaches out to assist, dragging your panties off in a single, practiced movement, leaving you splayed open and vulnerable in the spill of moonlight, the air cold and sharp against your skin.
He stands, shucking his pants and boxers with ease. His cock is already hard, and he takes himself in hand, stroking slow, almost lazy, but you can see the tension in his jaw, the way his forearm tightens, every line of his body at the edge of restraint. He stands there for a moment, head tipped, just watching you with that focus, just this side of feral. It should alarm you. It should, maybe, make you recoil, the ferocity in him, so unlike the men you’ve known before. It’s a look that should have scared you from the beginning—but no one has wanted you the way he wants you, and you’ve grown addicted to how Andy’s hunger works.
You want to wipe that look of composure from his face, and you know exactly how to do it. You arch your back, knees falling apart, and bring your fingers to your cunt—slow, deliberate. Andy’s mouth parts the barest inch, but he doesn’t move to stop you. You circle your clit with two fingers, the slide easy and slick, and moan just loud enough that you know he’ll hear it for days. He watches, lips parted, and the tension in his neck sings.
“Is this what you want?” you ask.
You don’t wait for an answer. You drag a slick, purposeful circle with your fingertip, then roll your hips up again, forcing his attention onto the precise spot you want it. Your other hand moves to your breast, pinching a nipple until the ache flashes through your belly. You moan again, longer, keeping your eyes pinned to his as though you can draw out his release through sheer insistence.
Andy comes closer, his hand sliding up your calf, kneading the inside of your knee with enough pressure to make you gasp and lose the rhythm of your own touch. He takes your wrist in his, slows your movements, and brings your fingers to his mouth. He licks them, savoring your taste, then sucks the tips into the heat of him, eyes trained on yours the whole time. “You want to make me lose control?” he murmurs. “You’re close, sweetheart.”
You shudder, half from his voice and half from the pleasure needling up your legs. “Then what are you waiting for?”
“Flip over,” he says, and you obey. Not because you care to perform for him, but because this is the only language you speak fluently with each other.
You turn, face pillowed in moonlight, the curve of your ass arched and on display. The sheets are cool under your cheek. Andy’s hands find your hips, not rough but absolute, his palms broad and braced. He kneads you for a long moment, a brief, silent exhibition of ownership, before running his thumb down the seam of you, spreading you open with the same clinical certainty he uses to carve out secrets.
He fucks you in one smooth, relentless motion, every inch filling you until your body feels engineered for the shape of him. You groan from the fullness, and he groans being sheathed inside your cunt. He leans forward, curling over you, and presses a kiss into your neck.
He holds you there, pressed hard against the mattress, your knees bracing apart as his cock drives into you with a steadiness that’s almost brutal but never crosses over into pain. You have only ever known men in this position to get greedy, to lose their pacing almost immediately, but Andy’s rhythm is a ruthless metronome, each thrust a little deeper, a little harder, calibrated to keep you right at the edge.
His weight is a gravity you loathe and crave; you let him press you into the bed and hold you there. You’re still angry, still trembling, but everything is blurred with your arousal, your hunger, the lines so tangled you can barely see the difference.
You try to deny him your pleasure out of spite, but it’s a losing proposition—Andy finds the angle he wants, rocks into you so that you choke on a half-sob, and holds there until you scratch at the sheets, half-crazed. The sound you make is ugly and desperate, and the only thing worse is how much you want him to hear it, to be stoked by it, to see what he does to you. He seems to sense this, his voice a gravel scrape against your shoulder blade. “Take it, sweetheart. Let me hear how much you want it.”
His thumb finds your clit, presses in tight, and for a few strokes you somehow resist, but then your hips buck and your vision splotches out, and you do let him hear how much you want him. It’s exquisite. He continues to fuck into you, working your clit, every nerve burning, every muscle tightening in a white, brutal wave. He fucks you through it, groaning, not letting up until a second, sharper quake rips through your body. Then and only then does Andy let himself go—slamming into you, his hand a vise around your hip as he spends himself, jaw pressed to your spine. The shudder of him fully inside you is shocking, almost convulsive, and he bucks in you until the last aftershocks fade and the only sound in the room is two desperate people fighting for air.
He doesn’t pull out right away. He just stays there, draped over your body, letting you catch your breath, his weight an absolute. When he does finally move, he’s slow and careful, laying beside you and rolling you into his arms, not a word spoken. You’re still too fogged by want and exhaustion to move, content to let him hold you close, the press of his cheek against your hair. Neither of you speak for a very long time.
But there are thoughts you still need him to hear.
You find your voice in the hush, not loud or demanding but plain, with the rough edge of sleep and aftershock. “I don’t want more nights like this,” you say, and you can feel the way Andy’s chest stills under your hand. “I didn’t want to be coerced into your bed, I didn’t want to be forced into an engagement, I didn’t want to get married like this. You exploited the attraction, you’ve made me weak for you, but please,” your voice breaks, “please don’t make me the wife who has to wait up alone for you.”
Andy doesn’t speak, not at first, and the silence unsettles you, but you make yourself hold it—make yourself show that it matters. You refuse to shrink or swallow the need. If he’s going to be the kind of man who pulls you into his orbit, he’s damn well going to know he can’t just leave you in the dark. Not without a fight. He’s made slow but small shifts in some areas you’ve pressed with him. Maybe you can have resonance here, too.
He smooths a hand from your shoulder, down your back, each pass gentler than the last. He’s thinking, you know. Not just brushing off what you said, but actually holding it up to the light, inspecting the seams. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and soft, but firm.
“I meant it when I said I’d do my best,” he says. “I don’t want you to be her—the wife who waits at the window. But I also can’t give up what I am.” His hand lingers at your waist, a heavy presence.
You sigh, too thoroughly boneless to summon the right words, so you simply roll over, and it’s too natural how your body melds against him as he curls his arm around you and pulls your back flush against his chest. All you can do now is hope your sentiments will start to seep into him through osmosis.
You let the silence ride a little longer, curled together as if this is some and listen to the slowing cadence of his breath, to the metallic taste of words you didn’t say, and you wonder if this is what love might be—the willingness to be furious and still stay.
And you wonder if this is love—not because it’s gentle or clean or what you imagined, but because it has weight, because it has teeth, because it sits in your chest like a stone you keep reaching for. Because you are angry and ruined and held, and somehow all three of those things are the same thing. Because no one has seen you the way he does. Because no one has made you feel so wanted, even if it’s infused with possession. But even through the moments you know there are things he isn’t telling you, you know he’s never lied to you. Even when he says things you don’t want to hear, he speaks to you openly. Even when his actions are incendiary and disagreeable, they’re still somehow for you now.
He says your name. It’s a quiet thing, a soft push through the dark, but it lands with a rattle in your chest.
“I want to tell you something,” Andy says. “Not because you asked, but because if you’re going to be my wife, you will need to know.”
You swallow, knowing instinctively that to interrupt is to lose the tiny, trembling momentum inside him. He never initiates these confessions. He’s all action, never exposition. You hold your body still, afraid any breath will snap the thread.
“They brought me in tonight to consult on a sit-down. Not a war, but something close. One of the families in Jersey—Lupo’s people—made a move on Levinson’s properties—of one of our allies—along the North River. Not a huge play, but enough to draw blood. No one got shot. But next time, someone will.” Andy’s hand flexes at your hip, tightening like a vise. “If that happens, everything changes. This life, the way we can have it, ends. The only thing that keeps us—keeps you—safe, is the order.” He breathes out, a single tight exhale. “If the peace goes, I can’t guarantee anything. Not for you, not for me. And that’s not something I’m willing to risk.”
You lie there, staring at the ceiling, sheets cooling under your legs, and you realize what he’s giving you is not reassurance, but the truth of his world, knife-sharp and blood-warm. It should terrify you. It does, to a degree, but you’ve had a security detail, you know there are six loaded guns hidden here in the master suite. There is nothing normal about any of this, but the fact of Andy’s world is that it remains obsessively ordered only so long as no one has reason to start a war.
“When I have to go, I have to go, and I’ll never apologize for that,” he adds when you don’t say anything more.
Thea joked about reading mafia romance novels, but this is not a genre, this is your life now. When you let the reality land, it isn’t just gravity, but something like inheritance: no matter what you wanted or didn’t, you’re marrying into all of this.
And yet, as you lie there, taken apart and held tightly yet again, you find a calm in yourself you didn’t realize you could access. Maybe it’s the spill of adrenaline draining away, or the simple fact that Andy—your future husband, in a matter of hours—has finally handed you the truest thing he’s ever said. Everything is always at risk.
But if the world really is this dangerous, you’ve no doubt you’re held by the most powerful man you’ve ever met, and since he stopped at nothing to secure you, he will stop at nothing to keep you secure.
Uncle Rob! Thea! Andy! A Levinson name drop?!
There are so many things here that I've been plotting for ages, and so I think it's half the reason it took me so long to finish this chapter. Back in May I had written what I thought was about 3k to make up the first half of the chapter, but something about it just wasn't working, so I pulled it apart, kept a few of the scraps, and went back to the drawin board. I'm pleased where it finally ended up, and even though I know parts of this story are frustrating (coughSOMEOFANDY'SBEHAVIORcough), I do hope you all like the chapter.
And I know this is at the verrrrrry tail end of Monday for the first of what I'm hoping will be I'm Your Man Monday, but we made it! So we'll see if I can make this happen and get you another update next week!
NEXT PART: For Better and For Worse
↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest
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I’m just getting caught up on this series and omg did it suck me right back in!
Sometimes I can’t get into reading characters that are super manipulative so I avoid them. But Andy’s combination of manipulation and genuine feelings (even if he wouldn’t call it love) is so engrossing! I still don’t know which side I fall on with him, I guess we’ll have to see what happens next. But this line from Thea is sticking with me-
“He looks at you like you’re the last thing on earth he thinks is worth burning for.” She shrugs and takes another sip of her champagne. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s true.”
Surely a genuine love for his bride is a liability in his world, but you can’t tell me he’s not already in deeper than he anticipated!
On another note, I am really hoping we learn more about Uncle Ron’s backstory and possible connections to Andy’s world.
I'm right alongside you with not being on board with characters who are all manipulation and nothing else, so I've definitely had my own preferences in mind when writing Andy and trying to make it more than that, giving him layers of complexity and having his own outlook sloooooowly shift as he lives day by day with you actually in his life. But yes. Can a tiger totally change his stripes?
And I'm over the moon hearing you loved that moment of Thea. It was one of my favorite elements for this chapter!
Surely a genuine love for his bride is a liability in his world, but you can’t tell me he’s not already in deeper than he anticipated!
What?
A liability?
😏
It's like you've read a mafia romance before! 🤣
On another note, I am really hoping we learn more about Uncle Rob’s backstory and possible connections to Andy’s world.
Mwahaha! Just you wait and don't you worry! It's 100% a seed I planted now for a plot point I have planned for later/soon. 😏
I love when I send an ask and the person takes months to reply, because when they finally do I get the best surprise ever! I don't even remember sending it, but he'll yeah this is awesome! 😆
This was the very first ask you EVER sent me, and I remember I shrieked with excitement because THE Eva had sent little old ME an ask! I answered it almost immediately. 🥹
I love when I send an ask and the person takes months to reply, because when they finally do I get the best surprise ever! I don't even remember sending it, but he'll yeah this is awesome! 😆
