good morning and TGIFFF ☀️ shawn flaunting those fingers and smoothing his sensational cinnamon and sugar curls is making me feel felicitous and flirty on this fat fingered friday 😃😏😍🥰🫦
please write another Orm fic. i love them so much 😩
Thank you 👉👈 And yeah, I'd LOVE to, I just don't have an idea storywise for it rn. If anyone has requests just let me know :)) (also other characters ofc)
SAVE HAVEN
ed warren x reader ✦ 20,243 words ✦ 18+
WARNINGS: explicit smut, supernatural horror, possession/demonic themes, religious imagery, blasphemy, rough sex, unprotected sex
NOTES: Well, this happened. I wanted to write something shorter, but it just... happened. Anyway, this is deranged, and I don’t know what my brain was thinking. Also, I've been dabbling in HTML. Let me know what you think!
Based on an ask from @imobsessedwithslipknot.
SUMMARY: Your house has become a prison of whispers, footsteps, and sleepless nights. With nowhere else to turn, you call the Warrens, hoping they’ll rid your home of whatever’s haunting it. What you don’t know is that inviting Ed Warren inside might be the most dangerous thing you’ve done all week. Instead of investigating the thing in your bedroom, Ed gets a little too distracted from the case.
OR: Ed investigates you thoroughly.
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦
The Warren sedan came up the gravel drive with a slow and deliberate crunch, its dark body catching the afternoon light in long, wavering reflections. It was an old thing, broad and heavy, the sort of car that seemed less driven than brought to bear upon a place.
The engine ticked softly beneath the hood as it cooled. Somewhere beyond the hedges, cicadas rasped in the summer heat, their sound thin and ceaseless, like a wire drawn too tight.
The house stood at the end of the drive, larger now than it had seemed in the photographs you had mailed weeks before. Time had gathered upon it with an almost visible patience as ivy clung to the weathered boards. One shutter hung a little crooked, rattling in the wind. The upstairs windows reflected the pale sky without giving anything of themselves away.
Then the driver’s door opened, and a man stepped out with an ease that did not belong to the house at all.
Ed Warren was not what your imagination, sharpened by weeks of bad sleep, had prepared for.
Tall, broad through the shoulders, composed in a way that made the air around him seem steadier. The dark green polo he wore clung lightly across his chest before falling loose at the waist.
The sleeves ended well above the elbow, exposing forearms marked by sun and work alike. When he reached back into the car, the muscles in his arms shifted beneath the fabric with an easy strength that made the heavy equipment appear deceptively light.
His jacket rested over one arm despite the warmth of the afternoon, and at the open collar of his shirt a silver cross lay against his chest, shifting almost imperceptibly with each breath. When the sun found it, it flashed for only an instant before disappearing again.
His hair was dark and carefully combed back, and strong sideburns framed his jaw.
He was, you realised with some annoyance, a remarkably handsome man.
Not in the polished, self-conscious fashion of actors or magazine covers, but with the quiet attractiveness of someone entirely unaware of it. There was nothing rehearsed in the way he carried himself. No studied confidence. No expectation that he would be looked at.
And maybe just because of that, you found yourself looking.
He looked ordinary.
That was what unsettled you first.
Not because he was plain. But he looked like a man one might meet at a church picnic, or outside a school, or beside a stalled car on the road. A man who would ask if you needed help before you had to ask for it.
Not a television ghost hunter. Not a man chasing proof. Not someone eager to name the darkness before he had listened to the people living inside it.
Just a man.
The sort of man who smiled before he spoke, and that made it unexpectedly difficult to look away from him. It seemed an entirely inappropriate time to discover that the man you had invited to investigate your haunting was, in fact, exceedingly handsome.
It was absurd.
For weeks, your thoughts had been consumed by footsteps where no one stood, doors opening of their own accord, whispers that dissolved whenever you tried to follow them. You had invited one of the country’s most respected paranormal investigators to your home because you feared something inhuman might be sharing it with you.
And your first coherent impression of him was that he had remarkably broad shoulders and astonishingly blue eyes.
You looked away almost at once, mildly irritated with yourself for doing so.
“You must be Miss…?”
His voice carried easily across the drive, warm and steady without ever becoming overly familiar, and when he extended his hand, there was such effortless sincerity in the gesture that you accepted it almost before realising you had moved.
You gave him your name.
His handshake was firm, and his palm warm and rough enough to betray years spent carrying equipment, repairing things, and working with his hands rather than merely writing about such work.
“Ed Warren,” he said with an easy smile, though there was hardly any need for the introduction. “Thank you for inviting me.”
It should have sounded strange. Who thanked someone for asking them to come to a haunted house?
Yet there was no false politeness in it. Only a sincere and almost disarming kindness, as though he understood that the invitation had cost you something.
“I’m sorry Lorraine couldn’t make it,” he said as he reached back into the sedan for another case, his voice carrying the sort of easy steadiness that seemed to belong more to bright kitchens and Sunday afternoons than to the shadowed front of your house. “She’s helping with a family matter today. She sends her apologies.”
“It’s alright,” you replied, though the words came out with less certainty than you would have liked.
“I told her I’d manage.”
There was no boastfulness in the statement, no careless dismissal of what you had written to him about, no masculine bravado offered up before a frightened woman and a decaying house.
He did not look at the place as if it were harmless, nor did he look at you as if fear itself were an embarrassment. Instead, his gaze moved over the porch, the windows, the drawn curtains and warped boards with the sober attention of a man regarding a storm that had not yet broken.
He seemed to understand that whatever waited inside was not to be mocked or underestimated, but neither did he appear inclined to surrender to it before he had even crossed the threshold.
That should have reassured you only in the ordinary sense. Instead, it unsettled you in another way entirely.
There was something deeply, inconveniently attractive in that calm.
Perhaps it was the breadth of him against the uneasy stillness of the house, or the way the summer light caught along the strong line of his forearm when he moved, or the simple fact that he seemed so solid where everything in your life had lately become uncertain.
The dark green polo pulled slightly across his upper arms, and you noticed the vein running over his biceps.
You looked away before he could catch you looking.
The porch boards groaned beneath your feet as you led him towards the door, and the sound seemed too loud in the waiting afternoon.
“I should probably warn you,” you said, attempting a laugh that emerged thinner and more brittle than you intended, “it usually starts after sunset.”
His expression changed only slightly, but you felt the whole of his attention settle upon you.
“Usually?”
“The footsteps.”
He nodded once, not with surprise, and not with disbelief, but with that careful patience which had already begun to make you feel both safer and more exposed than you wished to be.
“When did they begin?”
You fitted the key into the lock, though your hand hesitated before turning it.
“About three months ago.”
“No renovations?”
“No.”
“No work done in the walls, the pipes, the roof?”
You shook your head.
“No deaths in the family? No illness? No objects brought into the house before it started?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
He listened while you spoke, and that too became oddly difficult.
You had expected questions, perhaps even professional scepticism, but you had not expected to be watched with such complete and gentle attention. He did not pounce upon your answers as if each might prove some theory of his own. He did not scribble over your fear in a notebook. He allowed you the time to speak badly and still be understood, and that was somehow more intimate than comfort should have been.
Then, very gently, he said, “You haven’t been sleeping.”
The observation stopped you just inside the hall.
“What?”
“The circles under your eyes,” he pointed out, not unkindly, but with awareness.
Heat rose into your face at once, absurd and swift, made worse by the fact that his voice contained no judgment. You became conscious of it, all at once, of your own appearance, of the sleeplessness you had tried to disguise, of the way you must have looked to him standing there in the stale, dim air of your own front hall.
“I’ve managed.”
“I don’t think you’ve had much choice.”
There was no pity in his expression, and that caught you off guard. Pity could have been defended against or have been resented and pushed aside. But this was just concern, plain and unadorned, and it had the terrible softness of something you had not permitted yourself to want.
You had not realised how badly you needed someone to notice.
The air inside the house was cooler than outside, but not with the blessed coolness of shade after heat. This was a denser cold, one that seemed to have lingered too long without movement.
It lay beneath the staircase and along the closed doors; it collected in the corners where the afternoon shadows had become too still, and even the dust motes turning in the weak light seemed reluctant to drift.
Ed paused, and his gaze moved slowly around the foyer, but there was nothing dramatic in the gesture. He did not stare at every darkened corner as though expecting a face to form there, nor did he raise his voice or lower it for effect.
He merely took in the house with quiet precision: the family photographs along the wall, the scuffed stair rail, the dust gathered at the baseboards, the worn runner on the floor, the grandfather clock standing silent against the far wall.
“You stopped winding it?” he asked.
You blinked. “How did you know?”
“It hasn’t stopped at twelve.”
You looked at the clock properly for the first time in what might have been weeks.
Half past four.
“I didn’t even notice.”
A faint smile touched his mouth, not amused, not condescending, only gentle once again.
“People stop noticing ordinary things when they’ve been frightened for a long time.”
The words settled in you with uncomfortable precision.
They were not grand words, nor especially strange ones, and yet they seemed to find their way beneath every excuse you had made for yourself. You had stopped winding the clock. You had stopped opening certain curtains. You had stopped going upstairs after dark unless you had no choice.
One by one, without ceremony, the ordinary territories of your life had been surrendered.
“So,” he said, setting one of the equipment cases on the dining room table with a soft, careful thud, “would you mind showing me where you’ve experienced the most activity?”
You showed him the kitchen first, where cabinet doors had begun to stand open in the mornings despite your certainty that you had shut them the night before. Then the hall, where the light flickered even after you changed the bulb. Then the staircase, where footsteps crossed the upper landing almost every night, slow and deliberate, though no one lived above you and no one had reason to walk there.
He asked practical questions as you moved from room to room. Times. Patterns. Temperatures. Drafts. Whether the neighbours had heard anything unusual. Whether you had pets. Whether the activity worsened when you were alone, or tired, or frightened.
His voice remained calm through it all, but it was not detached. He had a way of listening that made every answer feel as if it had been placed carefully into his hands.
Never once did he make you feel silly.
By the time he began unpacking his cameras and recording equipment, some of the nervousness you had carried all afternoon had, almost against your will, begun to loosen. It did not disappear; the house would not allow that. But it had shifted, making room for another awareness, one you were far less prepared to admit to.
Because Ed Warren, for all his calmness, kindness, and grave professional attention, was still very difficult not to notice.
The room was dimmer now than it had been when you entered, and in that softening light, he looked even more solid, more disarmingly human.
His sleeves sat snug around his arms when he reached to unfold a tripod, and the movement drew your eyes before you could stop yourself.
There was strength in the width of his shoulders, in the broadness of his hands, in the way he handled each piece of equipment with a controlled ease that suggested he knew precisely how much force was required and never used more than that. The silver cross shifted at his chest when he bent over the case, catching a pale glimmer of light from the window.
“You don’t have to help,” he said, glancing over.
“I’d rather stay busy.”
Something softened in his face, and you had the unsettling impression that he understood the confession beneath the words: that standing still in this house allowed too many things to catch up with you.
You picked up one of the cases before he could protest. But the handle slipped immediately when it was heavier than it looked. Before it could strike the hardwood floor, another hand caught it.
His.
For one brief second, both of you held the weight together, your fingers caught near his on the worn leather handle. You looked up, and the nearness of him struck you with such sudden force that the room itself seemed to narrow.
He was closer than you had realised.
Close enough that the details of him became inescapable: the faint scent of aftershave beneath coffee and old leather, the neat darkness of his hair with only a few grey strands, the sideburns framing his face, the small lines at the corners of his eyes, the warmth radiating from him in the cool, unpleasant air of the house.
Close enough to see the silver cross resting against his chest, moving with the measured rise and fall of his breathing. Close enough that you became aware not only of his strength, but of your own hand still holding the case beside his, and of the fact that neither of you had stepped back as quickly as you might have done.
For an instant, the house receded.
The cold corners, the silent clock, the upstairs landing, the footsteps that would come after sunset, all of it seemed to draw away, leaving only the absurd intimacy of shared weight and his quiet gaze upon your face.
“You alright?” he asked.
His voice was low, meant only for you, though there was no one else in the room to hear it.
You realised you were still looking at him.
“Yeah,” you said, and the softness of your own voice betrayed you.
He released the handle first, though not abruptly. His fingers withdrew from yours with a care that made the brief contact feel more deliberate than it had any right to be.
“Let’s not have our first casualty be my equipment,” he said.
You laughed, and the sound surprised you because it was real.
His smile deepened at once, slow and warm, and for a moment, he looked not like the man who had come to confront whatever haunted your house, but like someone who had been pleased to find you still capable of laughter.
“There,” he said, lifting the case safely onto the table. “That already sounds better.”
“What does?”
“You.”
The silence that followed was not awkward, but it was not simple either. Something had shifted, almost imperceptibly, and you felt it in the way he looked at you and then looked away, in the way you became suddenly conscious of the space between you, in the way the house seemed to hold its breath around that small, impossible warmth.
Outside, the afternoon light dimmed as clouds slowly drew over the sun.
Then, somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Neither of you had moved.
_____
For the next hour, Ed Warren turned your house into something that hovered uneasily between a chapel and a laboratory.
He moved through the rooms with the practised efficiency of a man who had learned, over many years, that fear became less shapeless once it was measured.
Cases were carried from one place to another, latches pressed open beneath his thumb, lids lifted, wires uncoiled, tripods unfolded, and cameras positioned with a care so exact it seemed almost ritualistic.
There were tape recorders, thermometers, small black instruments whose purpose you did not know, and lengths of cable that he laid along walls and beneath furniture with patient, workmanlike precision.
A camera in the dining room, its glass eye trained toward the hallway.
A tape recorder at the foot of the stairs, where the first steps so often began.
A thermometer near the kitchen doorway, where the cold spots gathered in the evenings like invisible water.
Another camera facing the staircase.
You followed him more than you intended.
At first, you permitted yourself the sensible explanation that this was after all your house and that you had every right to know what was being done within it. You told yourself it was practical to learn where the wires lay, where the cameras pointed, what instruments might begin clicking or whirring after dark.
But explanations, however sensible, have a way of becoming transparent when one stands too close to the truth, and after a while, you could no longer pretend that practicality was the whole of it.
The truth was that Ed Warren made the rooms feel less hostile by merely standing in them.
It was ridiculous, and you knew it was ridiculous.
He had not altered the house in any fundamental way. The wallpaper still curled at the seams where damp had found it. The grandfather clock still stood silent in the foyer like a witness that had refused to speak. The upstairs hall still waited above you with its stale darkness and its listening doors.
Yet with Ed moving from room to room, broad-shouldered and calm, his dark green polo drawn slightly across his chest whenever he bent over a case, his muscular arms flexing, the house seemed, for the moment at least, to have been compelled into obedience.
“Do you always do this alone?” you asked as he adjusted the height of one tripod.
He glanced up from the camera, and the soft light from the window found the side of his face, catching along the strong line of his cheek and the dark sweep of his carefully combed hair.
“Not usually.”
“Lorraine helps?”
“She does.” His mouth softened when he said her name, not in a way that felt distant or unreachable, but with the quiet fondness of a man acknowledging a truth so established it required no display. “She sees things I don’t.”
“And what do you see?”
The question escaped before you could decide whether it was too personal.
Ed paused with one hand still resting on the tripod, his fingers curled loosely around the metal fitting.
For a moment, you thought he might dismiss the question or answer it in some professional way that would restore the proper distance between you. Instead, he looked at you fully, and you felt again that unnerving steadiness of his attention.
“I see patterns,” he said. “Places where fear repeats itself. Where people begin changing their habits around something they don’t understand.”
Your throat tightened.
“Like not sleeping.”
“Like not sleeping,” he said.
You looked away first, embarrassed not because he had caught you in some lie, but because he had seen the shape of your life too accurately. He did not press the point, and that restraint was becoming one of the more dangerous things about him.
Instead, he tightened the tripod screw and lifted the camera a fraction higher.
“I’ll need to put one upstairs as well.”
Your stomach pulled tight before you could stop it.
“Upstairs?”
“If that’s where most of the activity happens.”
“It is.”
“Then yes.”
You nodded, though your fingers had already curled into each other.
Ed saw that too, of course. He saw everything, or seemed to, and yet he said nothing at all. He only straightened, the movement drawing your attention unwillingly to the breadth of his shoulders and the easy strength in his arms as he lifted the case again.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he said.
A small, humourless laugh escaped you.
“I live here.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to be brave every second.”
The gentleness of it struck you more deeply than you wanted it to.
It was not pity, nor indulgence, nor the sort of comfort offered by people who wished to quiet distress because it inconvenienced them. He said it as if courage were not a performance owed to him, or to the house, or even to yourself, and for one dangerous moment, your throat ached with the childish, humiliating desire to believe him.
Because standing there silently seemed worse than moving, you stepped toward the staircase.
“I’ll show you.”
The stairs creaked beneath your weight.
They always had, even before the house became what it was now; before the nights began to arrange themselves around listening; before you learned the sound of each board well enough to know when one of them complained beneath your foot and when something else was crossing the landing above you.
In daylight, the staircase ought to have been merely old, merely wood and nails and dust, but the sound of it rising beneath you now seemed to travel ahead into the upper hall, and return changed.
Ed followed one step behind, not close enough to crowd you, but close enough that, should you stumble, you suspected he would catch you before you had time to fall.
His gaze moved past you and towards your partly open bedroom door.
You hated that at once because you never left it open anymore.
“I closed that,” you said.
Ed’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
“When?”
“Before you arrived.”
He waited.
That was another thing you hated and trusted in equal measure: the waiting, the way he allowed silence enough room for the truth to stand up inside it.
“I know I closed it.”
“I believe you.”
Those three words affected you far more than they should have done.
Most people asked whether you were sure, or whether you might have forgotten. Even when they meant well, it left some small space for the possibility that fear had made you unreliable.
Ed did not.
He moved past you slowly, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed yours, and for a brief, improper instant, you were aware not of the open door but of his warmth and his scent. Then he nudged the bedroom door open with two fingers.
Nothing happened.
No shriek tore through the air.
No sudden slam answered him.
No figure waited in the corner.
There was only your bedroom, dim beneath the greying afternoon light, exactly as you had left it and yet, by the fact of the open door, no longer entirely yours.
You remained in the doorway as Ed stepped inside.
It was strange watching him there, stranger than you had expected. Your bedroom had become the one room in the house you both feared and clung to, the last territory of privacy in a place that had begun to trespass upon every private thing.
There were your unmade bed, your clothes folded over the back of a chair, the book lying open on the nightstand because you had been trying, unsuccessfully, to read yourself into exhaustion.
And now Ed Warren stood in the middle of it, respectful, careful, and impossibly solid.
He looked first at the window, then at the closet, then at the bed. His attention lingered nowhere improperly, and somehow that made your awareness of him there even worse.
A careless man could have been resented. A vulgar one could have been dismissed. But Ed’s restraint made the intimacy of the room sharper, because it forced you to acknowledge that the discomfort was not coming from him.
It was coming from you.
“Do you hear the footsteps from here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Above you?”
You shook your head.
“In the room.”
His eyes returned to yours.
“In here?”
You nodded.
“At night, it sounds like someone pacing around the bed.”
Ed said nothing for a moment, and in that silence the bed behind you seemed to become more present, more revealing, as though the mere mention of it had drawn attention to the shape of your sleep and the loneliness of those hours.
Then he set the camera case on your desk.
“I’ll place one in the corner facing the door and part of the bed,” he said. “Not the whole room.”
Your face warmed before you could prevent it.
He seemed to realise how that sounded at almost the same instant, and for the first time since entering the house, something like awkwardness touched him.
“I don’t need to invade your privacy,” he added quickly. “Only the area where you’ve reported movement.”
“I know.”
And you did know.
Yet knowing did not prevent the sudden, acute awareness of everything around you and the fact that this man, calm and handsome and kind in a way that made kindness feel perilous, was standing close to where you slept.
Ed turned his attention to the equipment, perhaps out of mercy.
He extended the tripod legs, adjusted their height, glanced through the camera lens, then towards the door, then back again. His professionalism ought to have made the moment easier.
But if anything, it made it worse.
Because he was trying very carefully not to make you uncomfortable, and that care made him impossible not to watch. Your eyes found the steadiness of his hands, the concentration gathered between his brows, the way his forearms flexed when he tightened the mount. When he bent slightly to adjust the angle, the silver cross swung forward from his collar.
You looked away, unable to bear it any longer. Afraid he'd somehow know the inappropriate thoughts in your head just by glancing at you.
“Would you mind standing near the bed for a second?”
Your eyes snapped back to him.
“For the camera,” he clarified, though his mouth twitched faintly, as if he knew exactly how unfortunate the phrasing had been.
“Oh.”
You moved to the side of the bed.
“Here?”
“A little to your left.”
You stepped left, and he looked through the camera.
“Half a step back.”
You obeyed, and the backs of your knees touched the mattress.
Something about that small contact felt absurdly intimate. You were merely helping him frame a shot; you knew that. He knew that.
Still, the room seemed to close around the two of you, narrowing itself to the bed, the camera, his lowered voice, and the careful way he did not look at you except through the lens.
“Good,” he said. “That gives me the doorway, the foot of the bed, and the closet.”
“The closet too?”
“You said it opens sometimes.”
“Right.”
Your voice sounded too tight.
Ed looked up.
“Has it opened while you were in the room?”
You nodded.
“At night?”
Another nod.
His expression softened in a way that made your chest hurt.
“No wonder you’re tired.”
You tried to smile, but the effort failed before it reached your mouth.
“I keep telling myself it’s just a house.”
“And do you believe that?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly, too honestly, and for a second neither of you spoke.
Then a soft click came from behind him.
Both of you looked toward the closet.
The door had moved.
Barely an inch, perhaps less, but enough.
Ed straightened slowly, and you forgot to breathe.
Another click followed, small and precise in the stillness, and the door opened wider.
Not fast. Not violently. Slowly, as though someone inside had curled their fingers around the edge and pulled.
Ed moved before you could.
He did not rush, and he did not panic. He simply stepped between you and the closet, his body placing itself in the line of whatever might emerge with such instinctive certainty that your fear momentarily tangled with something far warmer and more dangerous.
“Stay where you are,” he said.
His voice had changed. It was still calm, but lower now, firmer, carrying a command that seemed to belong not to authority but to protection.
You should have listened, but as he approached the closet, you left the bed and followed him.
He noticed immediately. “I asked you to stay there.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s my bedroom.”
He looked back at you, and for one suspended moment fear and something else passed between you so quickly it might have been mistaken for the shifting light.
Then, unexpectedly, he gave the faintest nod.
“Fair enough.”
He reached for the closet handle.
You stood close enough behind him to see the tension gather across his shoulders beneath the green of his shirt, close enough to notice that his breathing had slowed deliberately, as though he had commanded his own body into steadiness. His hand closed around the handle and the muscles in his forearm moved as he opened the door.
Nothing waited inside.
Only hanging clothes. Shoes. A box of old photographs on the upper shelf. The ordinary contents of an ordinary closet.
Ed reached inside and pushed the clothes aside carefully, checking the back wall, the floor, the upper shelf, the places where an explanation might have been hidden if the world were kinder. There was no panel. No animal. No draft stirring through the plaster. No visible trick by which a door might decide to open itself.
Then the bedroom door slammed shut behind you. The sound struck the room like a gunshot.
You startled so violently that you stumbled forward, and Ed turned quickly. His arm came around you before you could collide fully with him, one hand closing at your waist while the other braced your shoulder.
The movement was immediate, protective, and for a heartbeat, you were pressed against him in the dimness of your own bedroom.
Nor by choice, nor by design. Only because the house had frightened you, and his body had been the nearest safe thing.
But safety, you were beginning to understand, could be dangerous in its own way.
Your hands had landed against his chest. Beneath your palm, his heartbeat was steady, not calm exactly, but controlled, a living rhythm beneath the fabric of his shirt. His silver cross was trapped between you, cold through the thin material of your blouse, and the contrast of it against the warmth of him made your breath falter in a way that had very little to do with the door.
“You’re alright,” he said.
The words were meant to soothe, yet it wasn't.
Your breathing was too fast, your heartbeat loud in your ears in a way that has nothing to do with what has just happened.
His thumb moved once at your waist, almost absently, not quite a caress and yet too gentle to be nothing. It was reassurance, perhaps even instinct. The kind of touch one gave without thinking when someone had been frightened.
Still, it moved through you like a spark. When your breath hitched he seemed to realise where his hand was.
He released you carefully, as though any sudden movement might break something neither of you had named.
“Sorry.”
You shook your head.
“No. Don’t be.”
He looked at you then. Not as a client, not merely as a frightened woman standing in a haunted house.
Just as you.
And for the first time since Ed Warren had arrived, you wondered whether the thing in your house was the only danger you had invited in.
Silence reclaimed the bedroom after the closet door had ceased moving, but it was not the gentle silence that follows a storm or the ordinary hush of a room settling toward evening.
Ed finished adjusting the camera in the corner and remained bent toward the small monitor for several seconds, watching the grainy image of the room with a concentration that made the line of his brow deepen.
The faint light from the window touched the side of his face, catching the clear blue of his eyes when he glanced between the screen and the room itself. There was something striking about his face in that uncertain light, something more arresting than simple handsomeness, though he had that too in a way that made it difficult not to notice.
His features were strong without being hard, his mouth capable of warmth even when set in thought, and the calm intelligence in his gaze gave him the look of a man who had trained himself to see past the obvious shape of things.
For a while, nothing happened.
The image on the monitor remained steady.
“You’ll want this running all night,” he murmured, more to himself than to you, though his voice was low enough to seem shaped for the room.
You folded your arms and kept your gaze fixed on the closet, as if staring at it might prevent it from making another quiet, deliberate movement.
“I don’t think I’m sleeping tonight.”
Ed looked over his shoulder. The motion brought his eyes to yours, blue and attentive beneath the shadow of his brow, and even then, with the room still cold and your nerves still trembling beneath your skin, you were conscious of the absurd unfairness of him being so composed and so utterly handsome at once.
“No?” he asked.
You gave a quiet laugh, though there was little humour in it.
“I haven’t really slept in weeks.”
There was no self-pity left in your voice now, only exhaustion, worn down to its plainest form.
Ed seemed to hear that, because his expression altered almost imperceptibly; the professional alertness remained, but something softer moved beneath it, something that looked too much like concern and made your chest tighten.
He closed the equipment case with a soft click and set it beside the dresser.
“I was planning to stay awake and monitor the recordings,” he said. “Most activity tends to increase after midnight.”
“And you’ll stay downstairs?”
“For now.”
The answer came easily enough, practical and calm, until he noticed the change in your face. Your shoulders had drawn tight again, your eyes moving past him to the hallway beyond the bedroom door, where darkness would gather first, and footsteps would begin later with their slow, hateful patience.
“You don’t like that idea,” he said.
“I don’t like...” You stopped, embarrassed by the childishness of the confession before you had even finished making it. “I don’t like being alone.”
He nodded, not quickly, not dismissively, but as though you had offered him something serious and he meant to treat it as such.
“I understand.”
“You probably hear that a lot.”
“I do.”
“And?”
His gaze did not leave yours.
“And fear rarely concerns itself with whether it is reasonable.”
The words settled over you gently, and because he had not tried to soften them into something false, they comforted you more than reassurance might have done.
He did not tell you there was nothing to fear. He did not tell you that you were safe because safety, in that house, would have been an insultingly fragile promise.
He only acknowledged that you were afraid, and somehow the honesty of it made the fear easier to bear.
You looked around the bedroom. The camera stood quietly in its corner, its small red light steady as an unblinking eye. The recorder rested on your dresser.
Everything had been prepared with methodical care, every wire laid, every angle measured, every instrument set to witness what you had endured alone for weeks.
“I could stay outside your door,” Ed offered after a moment, and there was a caution in his tone that told you he understood the delicacy of the offer before he made it. “If that would make you more comfortable.”
You considered it. The hallway. The long dark strip beneath the door.
The sound of footsteps crossing the landing, pausing, returning, sometimes stopping just outside your room as if whatever made them knew exactly where you lay awake and listening.
“No,” you said.
“I can sit in the chair.”
You looked at the chair beside the window, narrow and wooden and placed too far from the bed to make any difference to the panic that had already begun imagining itself in advance.
“No.”
A faint crease appeared between his brows, not impatience but uncertainty. In that expression, the steadiness of him became more human.
The blue of his eyes seemed darker in the dim room, his face caught between professional concern and some private calculation he was trying very hard to keep from you.
“The bed’s...” You cleared your throat, and the heat that rose into your face felt wildly inappropriate in a room where a closet door had just opened by itself. “It’s big enough.”
The sentence did not fall so much as remain suspended between you.
Ed looked at you for a long moment, contemplating.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” he said at last.
“I know.”
His expression remained patient, but not unaffected. That was the dangerous part. If he had been stern, you might have retreated into embarrassment; if he had laughed, you might have taken offence and found safety in it. But he did neither, just looked at you with that grave, blue-eyed attention, and the gentleness of it made the room feel smaller.
“I’m not asking for...” You searched for the word and failed because the thing you were trying not to name had already made itself present. “Anything.”
A small, embarrassed smile touched your mouth, though it trembled at the edges.
“I just don’t want to wake up by myself if something happens.”
For the first time since he had arrived, Ed Warren looked genuinely uncertain.
It was there only briefly, but you saw it: the conflict passing across his face, the duty that held him back and the instinct that drew him forward.
He had come here as an investigator, a man with cameras and recorders and questions, a man whose work depended upon boundaries as much as belief. Yet he was also standing in your bedroom with your fear laid bare before him, and whatever professional distance he had maintained all afternoon seemed suddenly much thinner than either of you had expected.
His gaze moved once toward the closed door, then to the camera, then back to you.
At last, he exhaled quietly.
“Alright.”
Relief crossed your face so quickly that you could not hide it, and his eyes softened when he saw it.
“But only because I don’t think you would sleep otherwise,” he said, his lips curved into a soft smile.
“I wouldn’t.”
“I suspected as much.”
There should have been comfort in the decision, and there was, but it arrived braided with something else, something warmer and more perilous than relief.
The house remained silent around you, listening from its corners, while Ed stood near the foot of your bed with the silver cross at his throat and the last of the afternoon light resting across his face.
For a moment, neither of you moved.
Then he looked away first, as though some boundary had to be preserved by the simple act of not looking too long.
“I’ll keep the recorder running,” he said, his voice returning with effort to the practical. “And the camera stays on.”
You nodded.
“Okay.”
“And if anything happens, you wake me.”
The instructions should have sounded ordinary. Instead, spoken in the dimness of your bedroom, it felt almost intimate.
You managed another nod.
Ed picked up the equipment case and moved it from the bed to the floor, careful not to touch the folded nightgown at the foot of the mattress.
That small courtesy, that quiet refusal to make himself at home in your private space, made something tighten low in your stomach. He was trying so hard to remain proper, and because of that, you became more conscious of every improper thought you had been trying not to have.
_____
By the time evening settled fully over the house, the last of the daylight had withdrawn from the windows, leaving only a dull reflection upon the rain-darkened glass before surrendering altogether to night.
The bedroom was altered with the fading light.
During the afternoon, it had merely seemed neglected by the sun; now it belonged wholly to the shadows, which gathered patiently in the corners beyond the reach of the single bedside lamp. Its warm amber glow stretched across the bed and little else, leaving the wardrobe, the closet door, and the far wall to dissolve into uncertain darkness.
You changed in the adjoining bathroom, exchanging your clothes for an oversized sleep shirt that fell well below your knees. You remained there longer than necessary, splashing cool water over your face and lingering before the mirror in the foolish hope that it might somehow quiet the nervousness gathering beneath your ribs.
It did not.
When you finally opened the bathroom door, Ed had only just returned from making one last circuit of the house.
He paused upon the threshold.
He had changed out of the clothes he’d worn that afternoon, exchanging the dark green polo for a simple white T-shirt and loose striped pyjama trousers he had evidently packed among his equipment.
The shirt fitted him with an almost unfair simplicity, the plain fabric stretched comfortably across his broad chest, while the short sleeves clung to his big arms more than the polo did. The silver cross still rested against his chest.
Without the careful neatness of his daytime clothes, he seemed somehow younger.
More approachable. Dangerously handsome.
The warmth of the bedside lamp softened the strong planes of his face, drawing gentle shadows beneath his cheekbones and along the firm line of his jaw.
His dark hair, still combed back though no longer quite as immaculate as it had been that afternoon, left his forehead open. His eyes, clear, impossibly blue even in the dim light, lifted to meet yours with the same quiet attentiveness they had held all day, and there was something about the kindness in them that made looking away unexpectedly difficult.
He was, you realised with some irritation, even more striking dressed like this than he had been before.
There was nothing formal left to hide behind.
Only an ordinary man standing in the doorway of your ordinary bedroom, broad-shouldered and quietly uncertain, looking as though he belonged anywhere but a haunted house.
His gaze wandered briefly around the room before returning to you.
“I’m afraid,” he said, offering the faintest, almost apologetic smile, “this still feels rather unusual.”
“It does.”
For a moment, neither of you seemed entirely certain how to proceed. So you climbed beneath the blankets first, drawing them carefully over yourself before settling close to one edge of the mattress, leaving what must have looked like an unnecessarily generous amount of space beside you.
Ed hesitated only a second longer before crossing the room.
Even the simple act of sitting upon the bed seemed to require deliberation. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, and you became acutely aware of the distance between you, not small enough to permit an accidental touch, yet not quite large enough to ignore another person's presence.
“I suppose,” you said at last, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you while the rain whispered against the window, “this isn’t how most investigations usually go.”
The corner of Ed’s mouth lifted before a quiet laugh escaped him, low enough that it scarcely disturbed the stillness of the room.
“No,” he admitted. “I can’t honestly say that it is.”
“You’ve never shared a client’s bed before?”
His eyebrows rose with unmistakable amusement, and for a fleeting moment the solemn investigator disappeared, replaced by the easy, good-humoured man you had begun to glimpse beneath the day’s work.
“No,” he repeated, a smile lingering in his voice as much as upon his face. “That is certainly a first.”
Colour rose faintly across your cheeks. He looked away first.
A slight clearing of his throat followed, and with an almost endearing awkwardness, he attempted to steer the conversation somewhere safer.
“So…” he started. “Tell me about the house before all of this.”
You did.
You spoke of childhood summers spent chasing fireflies through the garden until your mother called you in after sunset. Of birthdays celebrated around the old dining-room table beneath paper decorations, your father always insisted upon hanging crooked. Of Christmas mornings when the staircase had echoed with laughter instead of footsteps, and evenings when the rooms had glowed with lamplight instead of shadows.
As you spoke, the house seemed almost to reclaim those memories for itself.
For a little while, it ceased to be merely haunted.
It became the place where you had learned to walk, where you had scraped your knees, hidden beneath blankets during thunderstorms, and fallen asleep to the reassuring murmur of your parents’ voices downstairs.
Ed listened without interruption.
There was something extraordinary in the way he listened, as though every memory, however ordinary, deserved to be received with care. He asked no needless questions and offered no interruptions, allowing the stories to unfold at their own pace while his attention remained entirely yours.
When at last your voice grew quiet again, he answered not with ghosts but with people.
He spoke of frightened families whose names he never mentioned, of lonely farmhouses and crowded city apartments, of parents who had stayed awake for weeks because they feared what waited outside their children's bedrooms.
He never made himself the centre of those stories. If anything, he spoke far more often of the courage of ordinary people than of anything he himself had done.
“People deserve to feel safe in their own homes,” he said quietly, his gaze resting somewhere beyond the rain-streaked window.
“You really believe you can give them that?”
His eyes returned to yours.
“I believe everyone deserves someone willing to try.”
The simplicity of the answer settled somewhere unexpectedly deep inside you. There was no pride in it, no self-congratulation. Only conviction.
“You really are exactly as people say.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“I sincerely hope not.”
“Why?”
“They usually leave out all my faults.”
You regarded him with unconcealed scepticism.
“You have faults?”
He laughed, and the sound was richer this time, filling the room with a warmth that felt strangely at odds with the cold pressing against the windows.
“Oh, plenty.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m afraid that’s because you’ve only known me a day.”
“I’m beginning to think one day has been enough to make up my mind.”
His smile lingered a little longer than before, and for reasons you could not have explained, neither of you seemed inclined to look away.
Then a heavy thud sounded somewhere above the ceiling. The noise cracked through the quiet so abruptly that you flinched before you could stop yourself.
Without thinking, you turned towards him, your hand closed around his forearm. The muscles beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt tightened instinctively beneath your fingers, firm and warm against the chill that had settled over your skin.
Ed reacted just as naturally.
His arm came around your shoulders with calm, reassuring certainty, drawing you nearer without urgency, without hesitation, simply because you had reached for him and every instinct he possessed had answered in return.
“It’s alright,” he murmured.
His voice was low, steady, close enough that you felt it almost as much as heard it. You nodded, though you were not entirely certain you believed him.
Gradually, your breathing slowed, settling into the same measured rhythm as his until it became difficult to tell where your nervous trembling ended, and his quiet steadiness began.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered after a long while.
He looked down at you.
“What for?”
“I keep…” A faint, embarrassed smile touched your lips. “I keep finding excuses to cling to you.”
Something softened in his expression.
“If it helps you feel safe…”
The sentence drifted away unfinished as you lifted your head and found he was already looking at you.
There was something different in his face now. Somehow the professional reserve that had accompanied him into the house had not vanished entirely, but it had become gentler somehow, giving way to an affection so quiet that it almost escaped notice.
“You’ve been very kind to me today,” you said softly.
“I’ve only done what anyone ought to.”
You shook your head.
“No.” The word emerged almost before you realised you intended to speak it. “They didn’t.”
For a moment, he said nothing, did not ask who you meant or what had happened. His blue eyes searched yours with a tenderness that somehow understood more than questions ever could.
Almost hesitantly, you raised one hand. A loose strand of dark hair had escaped across his forehead sometime during the evening. Your fingertips brushed it gently back into place, lingering for only the briefest instant against his temple.
You meant to withdraw quickly, aware that you were overstepping already and that that fine line you were tiptoeing on was already blurred. But he was faster, his hand rose and enclosed yours with extraordinary care. His thumb rested lightly against the back of your hand, neither holding you there by force nor letting you go.
He searched your face in silence, and there was no haste in him.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
It was not permission he sought for himself. It was a reassurance that you wanted this as much as he did. You answered with the smallest nod, not trusting your voice.
His gaze lingered upon you another heartbeat, as though committing your expression to memory before he leaned towards you so slowly that you would have had enough time to change your mind. That you could stop this with every inch he came closer.
But you never did.
His lips met yours with a gentleness so profound that, for one suspended instant, you forgot the house entirely.
His hand came up to cup your jaw, thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone with a tenderness that seemed almost reverent, and you felt the trembling stop, not because the fear had vanished, but because something stronger had taken its place, something warm and bright that spread through your chest like the first light of morning.
His lips moved against yours with a slowness that asked nothing and offered everything, and you found yourself responding, pressing closer, your fingers curling into the fabric of his white t-shirt, feeling the muscle flex beneath your grip, holding on as though he were the solid ground and you were the one adrift.
When he pulled back, his eyes searched yours in the dim light, blue and deep and full of something you could not name but recognised instinctively, the way one recognises warmth or safety without needing to be taught.
Then he pressed his forehead against yours.
The contact was simple, intimate, more so even than the kiss.
The warmth of his skin met the cool of yours, and you felt his breath mingling with your own, uneven, shallow, carrying the faint tremour of a man who was not as steady as he appeared.
His eyes closed. You felt the weight of him settle against you, not heavy but present, as though he were letting you hold him up for just a moment, letting you feel the shape of his own need.
His thumb still traced slow circles against your cheekbone, and you could feel the roughness of his palm where it cradled the side of your face.
Then he kissed you again. But this time, there was force behind it.
His lips pressed against yours with a hunger that had not been there before, still controlled, still Ed, but no longer asking, rather telling.
His hand slid from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, gripping just firmly enough to make your breath hitch.
His mouth moved against yours with an urgency that tasted of holding back, of nights spent lying awake in rooms like this one, of the particular ache of wanting to protect someone and realising that protection was not enough, that what you truly wanted was to hold them so close the darkness could not find a single inch of space between you.
You gasped against his mouth, and he took the sound like an offering, deepening the kiss, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips before slipping inside with a sureness that made your spine arch, your body pressing flush against his.
You could feel the heat of him radiating through the fabric, the swell of muscle beneath your palms where your hands flattened against him, and his arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer still, eliminating every remaining inch of distance until you could feel his heartbeat against your own.
No longer slow and steady but quick now, quickened by you, by this, by the thing that had been building between you since the moment he walked through your door.
Your fingers twisted tighter into his shirt, pulling him down towards you, and he came willingly, his weight settling over you with a controlled pressure that was both shelter and claim.
The kiss deepened further, his mouth moving from your lips to your jaw to the sensitive skin beneath your ear, and you heard yourself make a sound - small, helpless, wanting - that seemed to belong to someone else entirely.
His mouth found the curve of your neck, and you tilted your head back against the pillow, eyes half-closed, the ceiling above you a dark blur you no longer cared about.
His lips traced a path from beneath your ear to the hollow of your throat, and each press of his mouth left a warmth that sank into your skin like a brand, slow and deliberate, as though he were mapping you.
His hips shifted against yours, and the hardness of his dick pressed against your thigh, hot even through the worn flannel of his pants.
A sound escaped your throat, something between a whimper and a gasp, and you felt him pause, his breath hot against your collarbone, his body going still with the careful control of a man who was measuring himself against the edge of something he could not easily come back from.
There was a terror in that, that he might stop, that he might remember what he was and what you were and the professional distance he was meant to keep, and the terror was not unlike the fear that had driven you to him in the first place, except that this fear was warm and aching and rooted not in the dark but in the terrifying prospect of being wanted.
“You feel that?” he murmured against your skin, his voice rougher than it had been, stripped of its earlier steadiness. The words were low, meant only for you, spoken into the space between your jaw and your neck where his lips still hovered. “That’s what you do to me.”
Your fingers tightened in his hair, and he groaned. A sound that vibrated through his chest and into yours, and his hips pressed forward again, harder this time, the thick length of him grinding against your thigh with a slow, deliberate friction that sent heat pooling low in your belly.
You felt yourself flush with something that was not embarrassment, not quite, but a kind of astonishment, that this man, this steady and certain man, should be undone by you, should be holding himself back because of you, should be hard and aching because of you.
“Ed…” His name left your mouth like a prayer, breathless and incomplete.
“I know,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle again, but there was something beneath it now, a command wrapped in velvet, a directive that did not need volume to be obeyed. “I’ve got you. You’re going to let me take care of you tonight. You understand?”
You nodded, but it wasn’t enough.
His hand slid from your hair to your chin, tilting your face toward his, and those blue eyes held yours in the gloomy darkness, burning with something that made your pulse hammer against your ribs.
You felt, in that gaze, the same quality you had felt when he first walked through your door and told you he would help you: the unshakeable certainty of a man who believed in what he did.
Only now that certainty was turned upon you, upon your body, upon the trembling creature you became beneath him, and it was almost too much to bear.
“Say it.”
“I understand,” you whispered, and the words came out trembling, but not from fear.
His mouth claimed yours again, and this time the kiss was deep and slow and consuming, his tongue stroking against yours with a rhythm that left no room for thought.
His hand slid down from your chin to your shoulder, fingers catching the loose neckline of your oversized sleep shirt, before moving even lower.
The cool air touched your stomach where his hand pushed the fabric upward, and you shivered from the sensation of his rough palm dragging across your bare skin, warm and calloused, moving with a slowness that was almost unbearable.
He pulled the cloth up over your ribs, his knuckles brushing the underside of your breast, and you arched into his touch with a sound that you swallowed against his mouth.
He drew back just enough to pull the garment over your head, and then his lips descended down your throat, across your collarbone, trailing heated kisses along the slope of your tits until your back bowed off the mattress and your fingers clutched at the sheets beneath you.
Then the cross touched you.
The silver chain slipped from his neck as he leaned down, and the small metal pendant dragged across your bare chest, cool against your flushed skin, a shock of sensation that made you inhale sharply.
It rested there between your breasts, rising and falling with your own breath now, and the weight of it was strange and sacred and obscene all at once, a holy thing pressed against the unholy heat of what was building between you.
You thought, with a clarity that surprised you, of all the rooms he had entered with that cross around his neck, rooms full of darkness and malice and things that defied explanation, and now here it was, resting against your bare skin, warm from his body, a small cool weight that seemed to anchor you to something older than fear.
Ed glanced down at where it lay against your skin, and something shifted in his expression, darkness and devotion tangled together, a man who had spent his life in service to something greater now kneeling before something he could not exorcise.
“You have no idea,” he breathed, “what you look like right now.”
Then he straightened, kneeling between your legs, and reached behind his neck to pull his t-shirt over his head in one swift motion.
The sight of him stole the air from your lungs.
His chest was broad and taut, muscles defined beneath a smattering of dark hair that trailed down the centre of his abdomen toward the waistband of his flannel pants.
His shoulders were even wider without the shirt, thick and powerful, the kind of body that spoke of physical labour and quiet strength. The cross hung against his sternum again now, silver against skin, and you could smell him. Something raw and intoxicating that made your mouth water and your thighs press together.
You felt, looking at him, a thing you had not felt in a very long time: safe.
Not because the darkness had left the house, not because the haunting had ceased, but because in this moment, in this bed, with this man above you, there was no room for anything else.
The fear had not been conquered; it had simply been displaced, pushed to the far corners of your mind by the overwhelming reality of his body, his hands, his breath, his eyes.
His hands moved to the waistband of your panties, and you felt his fingers hook beneath the thin cotton, the backs of his knuckles grazing the swell of your hips with a deliberateness that made your stomach clench.
Ed did not rush but drew the fabric down slowly, inch by inch, as though unwrapping something sacred, and the cool air of the room kissed the wet heat between your thighs as he exposed you.
His breath caught, a sound so quiet you might have imagined it, had you not seen the way his jaw tightened, the way his blue eyes darkened to something deeper than hunger.
His fingers traced the curve of your inner thigh, feather-light, reverent, trailing upwards through the slick wetness that had gathered there. You whimpered, hips lifting toward his hand without your permission, and he made a low sound in his chest.
“So wet,” he murmured, and his voice was rough, stripped bare.
His thumb brushed through your folds, parting them gently, and the sensation was so acute that your hands flew to the sheets, fingers twisting in the fabric.
He explored you with the same patience he had shown in learning your mouth, your neck, your breasts, mapping the wet terrain of you with careful strokes, circling the swollen bud at your centre until your thighs trembled on either side of his broad shoulders.
Then his mouth followed, or so you thought.
His lips pressed against your inner thigh first, warm and deliberate, kissing a path upwards through the trembling flesh. You tensed, waiting, aching, but he stopped short.
His breath ghosting hot over your cunt without touching it. The nearness of his mouth was unbearable. You felt every exhale like a brand against your swollen flesh, and your hips bucked upward, seeking contact, and he pulled back just enough to deny you.
“Not yet,” he said, and the words were spoken against your pussy, his lips so close that the vibration of his voice rippled through you.
You whimpered, thighs shaking, and he smiled; you felt it more than saw it, the curve of his mouth pressing into the crease of your thigh.
His tongue traced a slow line along the outside of your cunt, never parting it, never giving you the pressure you needed, and you let out a broken sound that was half sob, half moan. He kissed the mound above your pussy with the same reverence he had kissed your mouth, his lips lingering there.
“You want my mouth on you,” he murmured against your skin, and it was not a question. His thumb brushed your clit, barely, just enough to make your spine arch, and then withdrew. “I can feel how badly you want it. Like a prayer you haven’t spoken yet.”
The cross swung against his chest as he shifted, the cool silver catching the dim light, and you watched it sway there. This man, who had spoken of God and faith and protection with such conviction, was now lying between your spread thighs with his breath hot against your soaked cunt.
The sacred obscenity of it made your head spin.
“Ed, please.” The words fell from your mouth broken and breathless.
He pressed a single kiss to your outer cunt, chaste, and then pulled back entirely. You nearly sobbed at the loss, at the cruelty of it, at the way his blue eyes held yours with a patience that bordered on devotion.
“You’ll have what you need,” he said quietly. “But you’ll come to me for it.”
His hands gripped your waist, and the room tilted as he rolled, pulling you with him in one fluid motion until you were astride him, your knees on either side of his broad chest, your hands braced against his shoulders.
He settled beneath you, his blue eyes finding yours in the dim grey light, and his hands slid up your thighs to rest on your hips, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh there.
“Sit down.”
The command was quiet, neither a request nor a suggestion. A directive spoken in the same steady voice he had used to tell you he would take care of you, and your body responded before your mind could catch up. You shifted forward, trembling, your knees bracketing his head, and you felt his breath hot against your inner thigh, then hotter still as you hovered above his mouth.
He didn’t touch you yet. He simply breathed against your cunt, close enough that you felt the heat of every exhale soaking into you, and the waiting was agony.
“Lower,” he spoke, and his voice was a low rumble that vibrated through the air between your legs. “Give yourself to me. Like an offering.”
A shudder ran through you at the way he said the words, reverent and commanding all at once. His thumbs pressed into your hips, guiding you down with firm, steady pressure, and you obeyed, lowering yourself inch by inch until your cunt hovered a breath away from his mouth.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his lips brushing the wet skin of you, and the vibration of his voice nearly undid you. His hands directed you down the final distance, until your cunt was properly pressed against his mouth and his tongue found you.
You gasped, hands flying to the headboard above him, fingers curling around the wood as his mouth sealed over your clit and sucked. The angle was different, somehow deeper, and more complete. You felt yourself grinding against him without shame, chasing the pleasure that coiled tight in your belly.
His hands gripped your ass, pulling you harder against his face, and you heard him groan beneath you, felt the sound hum through your body like a second heartbeat.
“Christ, you taste like salvation,” he breathed against you, and the words were so profane, so sacred, that they broke something open inside you.
His tongue pressed deeper, fucking into you with a rhythm that left no room for thought, and you felt yourself clenching around him, chasing the pressure, and he seemed to know, because his thumb replaced his tongue at your clit, rubbing slow circles while his mouth sealed over your pussy, drinking you in.
The cross lay against his chest beneath you, its edge pressing into your thigh, and you thought dimly, through the haze of sensation, that you had never felt so exposed, so claimed, so utterly at the mercy of someone who would never let you fall.
His tongue swept through you with a hunger that contradicted every measured patience he had shown before. Broad, flat strokes that lapped at your wet cunt like a man dying of thirst that diminished every logical and illogical thought you’ve had.
You heard the wet sounds of his mouth between your thighs, obscene and slick, and each stroke pulled a sound from your throat that you barely recognised as your own. His jaw worked against you, tongue curling deep inside you, and the stubble on his chin scraped the tender flesh of your inner thighs raw with the kind of burn you would feel for days.
“Ed…” His name broke from your lips in a sob, and your hips rolled against his mouth of their own accord, grinding down onto his tongue as it fucked into you.
He groaned in response, the vibration rippling through your cunt and up your spine, and his hands tightened on your hips, pulling you down harder against his face. He was relentless now, his earlier teasing replaced by a devouring urgency that made your vision blur at the edges.
Then his fingers joined, thick and calloused, slipping inside you with a slowness that was almost cruel after the frantic rhythm of his mouth. You felt them stretch you, felt the way your walls clenched around them as they curled upward, stroking the slick flesh inside you with a deliberate pressure that made your thighs shake violently on either side of his head. His tongue returned to your clit, circling it in tight, wet strokes while his fingers fucked you with a patience that bordered on cruelty.
You moaned loudly, unguarded, the sound echoing off the walls of the haunted room, and your hands left the headboard to grip the sheets on either side of his head, fingers twisting in the fabric as your body bowed. The pleasure built in your belly like something holy, something terrible, and you could feel every stroke of his fingers inside you with a clarity that made your head spin.
That was when you saw it, the gold band on his ring finger, glinting in the dim light as his hand worked between your legs. The metal caught a sliver of light with each thrust, and the sight of it sent a jolt through you that was equal parts guilt and dark, burning arousal.
His wedding ring. He was wearing his wedding ring while his fingers curled inside you, while his mouth devoured you like a man who had forgotten every vow he had ever made.
The obscenity of it made you clench around his fingers, and he made a low sound of approval against your clit, his tongue flicking faster as though he knew exactly what you had seen, exactly what it did to you.
“That’s it,” he murmured against your swollen flesh, his voice rough and wet. “Take what you need. Let me worship you.”
His fingers thrust deeper, curling with a rhythm that matched the strokes of his tongue, and the dual sensation was too much. Your back arched, your thighs clamped around his head, and you felt yourself grinding against his mouth with a shamelessness that should have mortified you but didn’t.
Nothing existed except the pressure building inside you, the wet heat of his mouth, the thick stretch of his fingers, the cold press of his ring against your entrance as he drove them home.
“Ed, I’m - “ The words fractured before you could finish them, and he seemed to understand, because his mouth sealed over your clit and sucked hard while his fingers curled against the spot inside you that made your vision go white.
The orgasm hit you like a wave breaking; your whole body seized, thighs trembling violently around his head, and you felt yourself gushing against his mouth and fingers as the pleasure ripped through you in pulsing waves.
Ed didn’t stop, though. His tongue worked you through it, lapping at your pussy with eager, wet strokes, drinking every drop of you like it was the finest wine while his fingers continued to fuck you slowly, drawing out the aftershocks until your body went limp above him.
His mouth pressed one final kiss to your oversensitive clit, and then his fingers slipped free, leaving you empty and trembling. You felt the wetness on his hand as it returned to your hip, the slick evidence of your release smeared across his skin, and somewhere in the haze of your fading pleasure, you heard him exhale. A long, shuddering breath that sounded almost like a prayer.
His blue eyes found yours in the dim light as he looked you from under you, and they were dark, pupils blown wide, his lips still glistening with you.
His hands found your waist, and with a strength that should not have surprised you but did, he lifted you up, sliding you off his face and back onto the mattress beside him.
Your body crumpled against the sheets like something boneless, still trembling in the aftershocks, thighs slick and shaking, breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps that sounded foreign to your own ears.
The room swam. The ceiling above you was grey and cracked with age, water stains spreading like dark bruises across the plaster, and for one disorienting moment, you could not tell whether the darkness pressing at the edges of your vision was anything otherworldly or simply the blood rushing back to your skull.
Ed shifted beside you, and you felt the mattress dip under his weight, felt the warmth of him settle close. Not yet touching, just near enough that his body heat reached your bare skin like a promise. His breathing was heavier than before, controlled but audible, and when you turned your head on the pillow to look at him, you saw the hunger still written across his face.
His jaw was tight, lips still wet, still shining with you, and the sight of it made something clench deep in your belly despite the exhaustion already turning your limbs to lead.
He reached for you with his left hand, lifted it slowly, deliberately, and you watched as he brought it to your face. His knuckles brushed along your jawline, rough and warm, tracing the curve of bone beneath your skin with a tenderness that made your chest ache. Then his fingers turned, and you felt it; the cool, smooth press of metal dragging across your jaw.
His ring.
The gold band caught against your skin, not painfully, just enough that you felt every millimetre of its path as it traced from the hinge of your jaw to the soft dip beneath your ear.
Your breath hitched in a sharp, involuntary sound, and your whole body shuddered beneath his touch, a tremor so visible that you saw his eyes darken in response. Blue gone nearly black. His gaze dropped to where the ring met your flesh, watching the metal drag across you with the same reverent attention he had given your cunt, and the corner of his mouth curved, not quite a smile, something darker, something that knew exactly what it was doing to you.
“You do that every time. Every single time.” His thumb followed the ring’s path, pressing the band more firmly against your skin, and you shuddered again. You couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. And his breath came out in a slow, satisfied exhale. “Like something in you recognises what it means. What I’m doing here with you.”
He leaned closer and you could smell yourself on his breath, and the scent sent a fresh wave of heat through your wrecked body. His lips hovered near your ear, close enough that the warmth of each word landed on your skin like a touch.
“You think God isn’t watching this?” he whispered, and the words settled into you like a blade, cutting through every defence you had left. “You think He doesn’t see you falling apart under my hands? See how wet you get when you feel this ring on your skin?”
His fingers traced down your throat, the metal cool against your pulse point, and you felt your heartbeat hammering against the gold like it wanted to confess something. “He sees. And you don’t care. You’re still here. Still trembling. Still opening for me.”
Then his other hand moved to his own chest. He gripped the silver cross hanging from his neck, pulled it free from where it rested against his sternum, unclipped it from around his neck, and pressed it flat against the bare skin just above your collarbone.
The metal was warm from his body, and it seared into you like a brand, not painful, but present, undeniable. Your breath caught audibly, your eyes flying to his, and you watched his expression shift into something almost predatory as he registered your reaction.
“There it is again,” he murmured, watching your face with those dark, hungry eyes. He pressed the cross harder against your skin. Not enough to hurt, just enough that you felt every edge, every contour of it burning into your flesh. “That little breath. That look in your eyes.”
He tilted his head, studying you the way he might study a haunting, patient, meticulous, cataloguing every detail. “You like this. The blasphemy of it. The wrongness.” His thumb stroked over the cross where it met your skin, and the gesture was so gentle, so at odds with the words coming from his mouth, that it made your head spin. “You want to be corrupted, don’t you? Want me to make this sacred thing filthy?”
He didn’t wait for an answer; rather, he simply watched you. Taking in how your chest rose and fell, the way your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets and how your body betrayed every word your mouth refused to say.
The silence stretched between you like a held breath, thick with the weight of everything his words had laid bare. You lay there, wrecked and trembling beneath the sheets, your body still humming with the aftershocks of what his mouth had done to you, and you watched him with eyes that felt too wide, too hungry, too honest.
Ed’s hand left the cross and your skin. The absence of his touch made you whimper, a small sound that was so unlike you.
He shifted, rising onto his knees beside you, and his hand moved to the waistband of his pants that were stretched tight across the bulge of his dick. He paused there, fingers hooked beneath the elastic, watching you.
“You’ve been looking at me all day,” he said, his voice low and rough, scraped raw with want. "Every time I touched you, you kept looking at what you couldn’t have.” His thumb traced along the waistband, slow, deliberate, drawing your eyes down to where his hand rested. “You want more.”
He pulled the pants down and slid them over his hips, down his thighs, until his cock sprang free.
The head was flushed dark, slick with precum, and the sight of it made your mouth go dry, and your cunt clench at the same time. He was thick enough that you felt an echo of anticipation in your pussy just by looking at him, and you pressed your thighs together, trying to ease the ache.
Ed kicked the pants aside and settled back against his feet. His hand wrapped around his cock slowly, fingers circling the shaft, and he stroked upward once, a long, deliberate pull that drew a groan from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Watch me,” he commanded, and his eyes found yours. “Don’t look away. Don’t close your eyes. You watch what you’ve done to me.”
His hand moved in leisurely strokes, fist tightening as it reached the head, thumb smearing precum down the shaft. The sound of it filled the quiet room, punctuated by the ragged edge of his breathing. His hips rolled slightly with each move, muscles in his thighs tensing, and you watched the way his dick twitched in his grip, the way his balls drew up tight beneath his fist.
“You think this is just for you?” he said, voice strained now, rougher. “You think I didn’t know what I was getting into when I came here?” Another stroke, slower, and his jaw clenched. “I knew. I knew the moment you opened that door, trembling in broad daylight, looking at me like I was your salvation.” His thumb circled the head of his cock, spreading the slick, and his breath hitched, barely controlled. “I’m not your salvation. I’m the thing that's going to ruin you.”
He paused, and his gaze dropped to the gold band on his finger, the ring catching light with every stroke. “You know what this is,” he said, and his voice dropped lower, rougher, something almost dangerous threading through it. “You know I’m a married man. You've known it since the moment you saw me.”
His hand moved again, slower, letting the ring flash in the dim light. “She’s at home right now. Sleeping. Trusting me to be here, doing God’s work in this house.” His jaw tightened, and a sound escaped him - half groan, half something darker. “And here I am. Hard as a sinner in a whorehouse, stroking myself in front of a woman who isn't her.”
You couldn’t move or breathe. Your hands gripped the sheets beneath you, knuckles white, and you felt your cunt throbbing in time with his strokes, empty and aching, wanting. He was making you watch, making you feel every stroke like it was happening inside you, and he knew it. Could see it in the involuntary shift of your hips and the heaving of your chest.
“Stay still,” he murmured, and the command landed in your chest like a physical weight. “Don’t touch yourself. Don’t touch me. You just watch. You take what I give you.”
His hand moved faster now, strokes shorter, harder, and the muscles in his forearm flexed with each movement. Precum on his knuckles, and the wet sound of it made your thighs clench together so hard they trembled.
“You like that, don’t you?” he said, watching your face with those dark, knowing eyes. ”You like knowing I'm married. That I took vows - before God, before her - and here I am breaking every single one.” His hand moved faster, the ring glinting with each pass. “I promised to forsake all others. And I’m looking at you right now, thinking about how badly I want to bury myself inside you, and I don’t feel an ounce of remorse.” His voice cracked on the last word, raw and honest. “What does that make me?”
“Ed,” you breathed, and the sound of his name in your mouth made him groan, low and rough, his head tipping back.
“Every time I stroke myself, you watch it. You watch a married man touch himself for you. A man who stood before God and swore himself to another woman.” His thumb dragged across the head of his cock, and his hips bucked. “Lorraine trusts me. She trusts me with her life, her soul, everything she is. And I’m here, hard and aching for you, wanting to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name.”
Ed slowed, his grip loosening and tightening in a rhythm that made your breath catch with every shift. “I’m going to go home tomorrow,” he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. “I’m going to walk through my door, and she’s going to ask me about this house. And I’m going to lie to her. I’m going to tell her about the haunting and the spirits and leave out every single time I made you come.”
Then eyes locked onto yours, hungry and unbearably honest. “I’m going to kiss her with the same mouth that worshipped your cunt tonight. And I’m not going to feel guilty about it.”
He wasn’t going to come, you could see it in the way he held himself back, the way his jaw clenched against the release building in his body. He was denying himself just as much as he was denying you, and the knowledge of it made something dark and hungry unfurl in your chest.
His hand stilled and you could see the way his cock pulsed in his grip. It jerked with need, thick and flushed, and he simply held it there, letting you look and the want build until it pressed against the inside of your skull like a scream that could not be uttered.
Then he let go entirely.
His dick stood rigid against his stomach, flushed and slick, curling slightly upwards now.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he shifted closer to you, and his body heat washed over you like a tide, warm and solid and inescapable, carrying with it the scent of him. Sweat and skin and something faintly ecclesiastical, as though the prayers he'd spoken over the years had seeped into his pores and become part of his very flesh.
His hand grazed the skin of your stomach with a touch so light it made your muscles jump beneath the surface, a small involuntary revolt of nerve and sinew.
“You’re still shaking,” he murmured, and his fingers traced upward, following the curve of your ribs with maddening slowness, each rib counted like a bead on a rosary. “I haven’t even started yet.”
His fingertips brushed the underside of your breast, and your breath stuttered. The sharp, broken sound which escaped you seemed to delight him, and made his mouth curve into something that wasn't quite a smile but rather the expression of a man who has discovered something precious and intends to keep it. “There it is. There’s the sound I wanted.’
He cupped your breast with his rough palm, calloused from years of work that had nothing to do with tenderness, and his thumb dragged across your nipple in a single, slow stroke.
The sensation shot through you like a current, traversing the length of your body with an electric urgency that seemed to originate not at the point of contact but somewhere deeper, somewhere primal and unguarded.
Your back arched off the mattress in an involuntary, desperate thing that pressed your chest into his hand with a need you could not disguise and would not have even if you could. He didn’t give you more, just letting his thumb rest against the hardened peak, letting you feel the weight of his palm without moving, without granting the friction your body begged for.
“Ed, please!” The words came out wrecked, barely a whisper, the voice of a woman who had been dismantled by gentleness.
“Patience,” he said, and his thumb moved in a slow circle, deliberate, tracing your nipple like he was drawing a halo around it with the reverence of a man anointing something sacred. “I told you. You take what I give you. When I give it. How I give it.”
His voice dropped lower, a rumble that seemed to vibrate through the mattress and into your bones. “And what I give you now is this. Just this. My hand on you. My voice in your ear. The knowledge that every inch of your skin belongs to me tonight.”
His other hand reached for the cross beside you. His fingers closed around the chain, lifting it, and the silver pendant swung between you. A pendulum, catching what little light the room offered, turning slowly in the darkness like a compass needle seeking a direction it could not find.
He watched it turn for a moment, his expression unreadable, the blue of his eyes darkened to something approaching black in the dimness, and then he lowered it.
The metal touched your chest just below your collarbone, and you gasped. It was cool, somehow cooler than before and then it should have been, as though it had absorbed not merely the temperature of the room but something else, something that existed between the physical and the metaphysical. He pressed it against your skin like a brand in reverse, a cold kiss from something holy.
He dragged it downwards, slowly, the chain pooling in the hollow of your throat while the cross itself traced a path between your breasts. The sensation was unbearable as the smooth metal slid over flushed skin, the faint chill of it contrasting with the heat of his breath as he leaned closer, watching the path it carved with the focused intensity of a scholar examining a text written in a language only he could read.
“You feel that?” he whispered, his mouth close enough to yours that you could feel the words as much as hear them, each syllable a small disturbance of air against your lips. “That’s been against my skin for years. Every exorcism. Every blessing. Every night I held my wife and prayed for forgiveness for things I hadn’t done yet.”
The cross reached your nipple, and he pressed it flat against the hardened peak, holding it there with a pressure that was neither cruel nor kind but something in between that existed in a space where sanctity and sin had become indistinguishable.
The cold bit into you, and you whimpered loud and shameless, your hips rolling against nothing, seeking friction that was not there.
“And now it's on you. Where I want to be. Where I should be. Where a married man has no right to want anything at all, and yet…” His breath hitched as he trailed off, the first crack in his composure. “Yet here I am.”
He bent his head and kissed you.
His mouth crashed into yours with a violence that stole the air from your lungs, and you felt the groan he made vibrate through his chest and into yours, a resonance that passed between your bodies like a shared confession. His tongue pushed past your lips, tasting you, claiming you, and your hands flew to him.
Fingers tangling in his hair, gripping the back of his neck, pulling him closer until there was nothing between you but heat and sweat and the cross trapped between your bodies, pressing its cold edge into your skin like a reminder that would not be silenced.
His weight settled over you, heavy and grounding, and you felt his cock press against your thigh. He was so hard, impossibly so, the slick head dragging across your skin as he shifted, leaving a trail of heat and wetness that made your cunt clench around nothing with a ferocity that bordered on pain, desperate for him.
The contact made you both groan into each other’s mouths, a shared sound of mutual ruin, and his hips rolled, grinding himself against you with a slow, deliberate pressure that was not seeking release but rather asserting presence. As if reminding you with each drag of his dick against your skin that he was here, that he wanted you, that the wanting had become a thing he could no more control than the tide.
“This is what you do to me,” he growled against your lips, and his hand tightened on your breast, fingers pinching your nipple around the cross still pressed there, the metal biting into the tender flesh. “Feel how hard I am for you. A married man, hard as iron, grinding against a woman who isn’t his wife, leaking against her skin like a boy who can’t control himself.”
His mouth found your jaw, your neck, teeth grazing skin, and his voice dropped to a rough whisper against your pulse, each word a hot exhalation that seemed to sear itself into your throat. “I swore to cleave only unto her. Before God and the congregation. And here I am, cleaving myself to you…pressing myself against you like an animal, wanting to bury myself so deep inside you that I forget my own name, forget my wife’s name, forget every damn vow I ever made.”
His hips pushed forwards again, cock sliding against your thigh with a wet sound, and you felt the precum smearing across your skin as if marking you in a primal and unmistakable way. His hand slid from your breast down to your hip, fingers digging into the flesh there with a grip that was no longer gentle but possessive, the grip of a man who had decided that what he held was his.
“You’re going to take everything I give you,” he murmured against your neck, his lips brushing the place where your pulse hammered beneath the skin. “Every touch. Every word. Every sin I commit against your body tonight.”
His cock jerked against your thigh, and he groaned. A sound that seemed dragged from somewhere deep and unwilling. “And I'm going to take everything too. Everything you’ve never given anyone. Everything you’ve been saving.” His teeth found the tendon of your neck and bit down, not hard enough to break, but hard enough to claim. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand,” you breathed, and the words came out not as surrender but as offering. A voluntary descent into whatever abyss he was leading you towards.
Something shifted behind his eyes at that, a flicker, brief and bright, like a candle flame caught in a draft. His grip on your hip loosened and then tightened again, fingers pressing crescents into your flesh that would bloom purple by morning.
“Say it again,” he said, and his voice had gone rough, scraped raw, as though the words had to climb over broken glass to reach his mouth. “Say my name like that again. Like you’re giving me something no one else gets to have.”
“Ed.” It was barely a sound.
He made a noise low and guttural, something that belonged more to the dark corners of the house than to any civilised room, and his mouth crashed into yours again, tongue pushing deep, tasting and taking with a desperation that had abandoned all pretence of restraint.
His hand left your hip and slid downward, rough palm skimming the outside of your thigh before hooking behind your knee, lifting your leg, opening you. The shift in position pressed his cock against your cunt. Not yet inside, just there, the thick length of him nestled against your wetness, the heat of him searing against the slick, swollen flesh that had been aching for him since the moment his lips first touched yours.
You both went still, and the sensation was overwhelming.
The sheer pressure of him against you, the way your arousal had coated him in a single slick glide, the way his dick pulsed against your entrance with a need that matched your own heartbeat for heartbeat.
He pulled back from the kiss, his breathing ragged, his forehead pressed against yours, and you could feel the tremour in his arms where they braced against the mattress. He was shaking.
The man who had held you through your terror with steady hands and a steadier voice was shaking, and the knowledge that you had undone him, that your body had become the thing that broke his composure, it sent a surge of wet heat flooding between your thighs, coating him further, making the slide of him against you obscene and slick.
“I should…” he started, his voice thick, and you felt him shift, felt the head of his cock notch against your entrance, felt the first inch of pressure that made your body open for him like a door that had been waiting for its key. “I should get something. Protection.”
He stopped speaking, just pressed his hips forward another inch, almost instinctually, making you both gasp.
“Fuck it,” he said, and the words were quiet but final, spoken with the gravity of a man who had weighed his soul and found it wanting. “No. I’m not going to put anything between us. Not tonight.”
His eyes found yours in the darkness, and what you saw in them was not hesitation but something far more dangerous; it was certainty.
“If God wills it, then He wills it. If He puts a child in your belly because of what I do tonight, because I couldn’t stop myself, because I wanted you too much to be careful -” His voice cracked, and his hips push forward again, sinking deeper, stretching you open around his thick dick inch by inch. “Then that’s His judgment on me. And I’ll carry it. You will carry it.”
“Ed!” His name broke apart in your mouth as he moved again, your body resisting and yielding in equal measure, the stretch of him bordering on pain, a fullness so complete it felt like being unmade and remade simultaneously.
“I want you to carry it,” he growled, and his hand found your hip again, gripping hard enough to bruise once more, holding you in place as he sank the rest of the way inside you with a single, deliberate thrust that buried him to the hilt. “I want you to carry something of mine. A mark. A memory. A child.”
His mouth found your ear, and his words came hot and broken against the shell of it. “I want to look at you in this house, in this bed, weeks from now, when I check up on you and know that my seed is inside you. That part of me is living in you. Growing in you.”
You arched beneath him, a cry tearing from your throat that was not entirely pleasure and not entirely pain but some unholy communion of both. Your cunt clenched around him, involuntary and fierce, and he groaned raw and animal and utterly without pretence.
“Christ,” he breathed, and it was not an expletive but a prayer. “You feel like…you feel like…” He couldn’t finish, just pulled back, slow, dragging against every nerve ending inside you until only the tip of him remained, and then he thrust forward again. Harder this time, deeper, a stroke that punched the air from your lungs and sent the headboard rattling against the wall. “Like you were made for this. Made for me to find in the dark.”
Ed set a rhythm that was not gentle but was not cruel, with each thrust measured and deliberate, the pace of a man who was memorising something, who knew that what he was doing could not be undone and was determined to make every second of it count. His mouth found your neck, your shoulder, the curve of your breast, teeth grazing skin between words that were half prayer and half profanity.
“Protect her,” he muttered against your collarbone, and you realised with a jolt that he was not speaking to you. “Protect her from what’s in this house. From what I’m doing to her. From me.” His hips snapped forward, and you sobbed, nails raking down his back, leaving welts. “Forgive me for wanting this. For needing this. For being unable to stop.”
His hand found the cross where it lay beside your head, the silver chain pooling against the pillow like a serpent waiting to be lifted, each link catching the thin moonlight that bled through the curtains in a pale, uncertain ribbon. Deliberately his fingers closed around it slowly, the way a man might grasp something he feared would dissolve at his touch, and you watched the pendant dangle from his grip, turning lazily in the dark air, casting a thin line of reflected light across your collarbone like a scratch made of moonlight.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, but his hips never ceased their rhythm, driving into you with a steadiness that made your thoughts scatter like ash from a fire long burned down. Each thrust was measured, the kind of controlled force that spoke of a man who wanted to lose himself but refused to. At least not yet, not until he had wrung every shuddering note from your body first.
You felt him fill you completely, the thick tip of his cock pressing deep against the place inside you that made your vision blur, stretching you open with a fullness that bordered on too much and somehow never quite crossed over.
The wet sound of your body accepting him filled the room, obscene and rhythmic, punctuated by the soft creak of the bed frame and the shallow, ragged edge of his breathing.
“Tell me if this is too much.”
Even if it were too much, the words wouldn’t come. They had gathered somewhere behind your sternum, a tangled knot of syllables that refused to arrange themselves into anything resembling speech. Instead, you tilted your chin up, baring your throat to him in a gesture that was older than language.
Just pure submission, trust, the exposed vulnerability of a creature choosing to be held by something larger than itself. You felt the tendons in your neck stretch taut, the thin skin over the jugular, and you offered it to him anyway, the way one offers a hand to a fire without knowing if it will warm or burn.
Your lips parted, but no sound emerged, only a trembling exhale that carried the shape of his name without giving it voice.
Ed’s breath hitched abd you felt it in the pause of his hips, the fraction of a second where his control wavered like a man standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down , but not with fear, rather with the terrible, magnetic pull of wanting to fall.
His eyes, dark and liquid in the dim light, fixed on the column of your throat with an intensity that made your skin prickle, made the fine hairs at the nape of your neck rise as though some ancient instinct recognised the look of a predator who had decided not to bite.
His free hand came up, rough palm settling against the side of your neck, thumb resting just beneath your jaw where your pulse hammered against his skin like a trapped bird.
“You don’t know what you’re offering me,” he murmured, and his voice had dropped into a register you hadn’t heard before. It was low, almost guttural, scraped raw from somewhere deep in his chest where restraint and desire warred like two dogs pulling at the same rope.
His thumb pressed, not enough to choke, just enough that you felt the pressure against your arteries, felt the way your breath had to work harder to pass, felt the dizzying warmth that began to creep up from your chest into your skull.
His hips drove forward again, harder this time, and the combination of that deep, filling pressure and the careful constriction of his hand made your back arch off the mattress, made your hands claw at the sheets beneath you.
Then he lifted the cross.
He brought it forward slowly, letting the chain unspool between his fingers until the pendant hung low enough to graze the hollow of your throat. The silver was cool against your overheated skin, and you shuddered at the contrast with his hand, hot and rough, the metal cold and smooth, both of them pressing into the same vulnerable space.
He looped the chain once around your neck, not tight, just present. A collar of faith and surrender that rested against your collarbone, with a weight heavier than silver should be.
The cross itself settled into the hollow of your throat, right above where his thumb still pressed, and when he thrust into you again, the pendant bounced against your skin in a rhythm that felt like a benediction and a condemnation tangled together.
“You feel that?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, rough and thick with want. His thumb shifted, pressing the cross more firmly against your throat, and you felt the edges of it dig in. A reminder of every sacred thing he was choosing to defile with every stroke of his dick inside you. “That’s mine. And right now, so are you.”
A moan broke from you then, dragged out from somewhere you couldn’t control. Your hips rolled up to meet his, desperate and graceless, chasing the friction that was building something unbearable in the pit of your stomach.
The cross pressed harder as your throat moved beneath it, swallowing, gasping, trying to form words that still wouldn’t come. His hand tightened just enough that the edges of the pendant bit into the soft skin beneath your jaw, and the world narrowed to the points of contact: His cock buried deep inside you, his hand on your throat, the cold silver cross pressed between his palm and your pulse.
“Ed - “ you managed, just the one word, broken and breathless, and the sound of it seemed to undo something in him.
His mouth crashed into yours again. Raw, consuming, the kind of kiss that tasted like surrender and sin and the desperate need to crawl inside another person and stay there.
His tongue swept past your lips, claiming the inside of your mouth with the same deliberate force his hips were claiming the rest of you, and you tasted salt and heat and something that might have been desperation. The cross shifted against your throat, the chain catching in his grip, pulling just enough that you felt the silver links press into the side of your neck like a leash being gathered.
“Stay with me,” he growled against your mouth, and you weren’t sure if it was a command or a prayer.
His hips snapped forward, driving deep enough that you felt him in your stomach, felt the head of his cock drag against that spot inside you that made white sparks bloom behind your eyes. “Stay right here. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”
You hadn’t even realised they were closing. So you forced them open, found his gaze inches from yours. It was dark, wet, and burning with something that looked like it was eating him alive from the inside out.
His rhythm faltered for the first time, became ragged, less controlled, and you felt the tremor run through his arm where it braced against the mattress, felt the way his fingers dug into the pillow beside your head as though he needed something to anchor himself against the pull of his own release.
“Good girl,” he breathed, and the words landed against your skin like a brand. His thumb pressed the cross tighter against your throat, and you felt the edges leave faint impressions in your skin. Marks that would be there in the morning, small silver ghosts of this moment pressed into your flesh like a signature. “Take it. Take all of it.”
His rhythm shifted as if something had broken open in him, some final thread of restraint snapping beneath the weight of your surrender, and his hips drove into you with a force that made the bed frame shudder against the wall.
Each thrust was deeper than the last, harder, the kind of relentless pressure that stoked the fire already burning low in your belly until it roared up through your spine like a flame finding oxygen. You felt him everywhere.
The thick stretch of his cock filling you, the slick heat of your own arousal coating your thighs, the rough grip of his hand still holding the cross against your throat like a leash he had no intention of releasing.
“Come on,” he growled, his voice wrecked, barely human. His free hand found your hip, fingers digging into the flesh there hard, more relics you would find tomorrow.
He used the grip to angle you, to tilt your hips up so that every stroke dragged the head of his cock against that spot inside you he hit earlier. “I felt you getting close. Don’t you dare hold back on me now.”
You couldn’t have held back if you had tried.
The pressure was building again, faster this time, cresting like a wave that had already broken once and was somehow gathering itself for a second, larger swell.
Your walls clenched around him, greedy and desperate, and the sound of your bodies meeting filled the dark room like a hymn sung in a language only flesh understood. The cross pressed harder against your throat as you swallowed, as you gasped, and you felt the edges of it bite into the soft skin beneath your jaw with a sharpness that blurred the line between pain and pleasure until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“Ed - God -” The words tore out of you, ragged and raw, and your hands flew up to grip his arms, nails raking down the hard muscle of his forearms. You felt the tendons beneath his skin flex with each thrust, felt the sweat gathering in the hollow of his collarbone, felt the way his entire body was coiled tight like a spring about to snap.
“Good girl,” he breathed, and his thumb pressed the cross even harder into your throat, not choking, but holding you there, pinned between his hand and his cock and the weight of everything sacred he was defiling with every stroke. “Let go for me. Let me feel it.”
The orgasm crashed through you like something holy and violent at once, ripping a cry from your throat that you barely recognised as your own voice. Your back arched off the mattress, your body bowing beneath him, and your walls contracted around his dick in rhythmic, desperate pulses that you had no control over.
The world went white at the edges, then dark, then a blinding rush of sensation so intense it felt like being unmade and remade in the same breath. You felt yourself clench and release around him in waves, felt the wet heat of your own release coating him, and the cross bit into your throat as you swallowed hard against the scream that wanted to escape.
Ed groaned from somewhere beneath his chest as his hips stuttered, lost their rhythm, and you felt the moment his control finally broke. His hand tightened on your hip, and he drove into you one final time, burying himself to the hilt as his body tensed above you.
“Take it,” he rasped against your ear, his voice shattered and raw, and you felt the first hot pulse of his release flood inside you. Thick, deliberate, a warmth that spread through your core like communion wine blessing a hollow vessel.
His cock jerked within your cunt, and you felt every ridge of him swell and throb as he spent himself, each pulse distinct, each one a claim he was stamping into the deepest part of you. He didn’t pull back, didn’t withdraw, just held himself there, buried deep, as though making certain every drop stayed where he’d put it.
“Take all of it. Every drop. You wanted to be saved tonight…this is how I save you.”
His jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck corded tight, and a low, broken sound escaped him, half groan, half prayer. His hips ground forward in slow, deliberate circles, not thrusting now but pressing, nudging himself even deeper as another thick rope of cum pulsed from him into you.
You felt the heat of it pool against your cervix, felt your walls flutter around him as if drinking him in, and his whole body shuddered with the effort of holding still while the pleasure wracked through him.
“You feel that?” he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of your ear with each word. “That’s not sin. I told you what this was. I told you what I’m doing here.” His voice cracked on the last word, and you felt his cock twitch inside you again. Another pulse, weaker but no less deliberate, as though his body was squeezing out every last offering it had to give. “This is the only sacrament I have left to give you. And I’m giving it all.”
Ed’s hips jerked once more, grinding himself deeper still, and you felt the overflow, his cum leaking out around his cock, slicking your thighs, dripping down onto the sheets beneath you. He shuddered above you, his breath coming in broken gasps, and his lips found your ear again.
“If the Lord means for this to take,” he whispered, his voice wrecked and trembling, “then it takes. And if He doesn’t? Then I’ll keep trying. Every night. Every night until this house doesn’t scare you anymore, until you’re not alone in that bed, until there’s a child in your arms that came from this…from us. From something that shouldn’t have happened but did.”
His hand slid from your hip to your stomach, pressing flat against your lower belly where the heat of his release pooled inside you. “You feel that warmth? That's where it’s going to stay. That’s where it takes root.”
The cross pressed against your throat one final time as he collapsed forward, his weight settling over you with a heaviness that felt like shelter rather than burden. His forehead dropped to the hollow of your shoulder, and you felt his breath against your damp skin.
His hand released the chain, let it fall loose against your collarbone, but the pendant stayed pressed into the soft hollow of your throat, warm now from both your bodies’ heat, resting there like a seal. His other hand stayed pressed to your stomach, holding the warmth of his release inside you like a benediction.
The room was quiet except for the sound of breathing. His deep and slow, yours shallow and trembling. Ed’s heart hammered against your chest, and you felt it through the thin barrier of sweat-slicked skin, a rhythm that matched your own racing pulse beat for beat until they slowly, gradually began to sync into something steadier.
His hand came up and brushed the hair back from your face with a gentleness that seemed almost impossible after the rawness of what had just passed between you. His fingers lingered at your temple, tracing the damp line of your hairline, and when he finally lifted his head to look at you, his eyes were dark and soft and full of something that looked like it terrified him.
He didn’t pull out, though.
You felt the thick, softening weight of his dick still buried inside you, still plugging the warmth of his seed deep within your body, and when you shifted slightly, his hand pressed flat against your stomach again, holding you still.
“Don’t move.” His voice was low, wrecked, barely above a whisper, and his lips dragged against your shoulder as he spoke. “I’m staying right here. Do you understand me? Right here, all night.”
You swallowed hard against the cross still resting at your throat, and the motion made your walls clench around him involuntarily. His hips shifted, not thrusting, just settling deeper, adjusting himself within you as though finding a position he intended to hold for hours.
The weight of him pressed you into the narrow bed, his chest flush against yours, his legs tangled with yours, and you felt pinned, held in place by his body and his cock and the sacred mess of what he’d left inside you.
“I mean it.” His arm slid beneath your shoulders, curling around you, pulling you tighter against him until there was no space left between your bodies. The cross pendant shifted against your throat, sliding on sweat and heat, and his breath came warm and slow against your temple. “I’m not leaving you alone in this house tonight. Not with those doors closing on their own, not with whatever you saw in the hallway. I’m staying right here,inside you, where nothing can get to you.”
His heartbeat thudded against your chest, slow and sure now, and you matched your breathing to it without thinking, each inhale drawing in the scent of him sweat and flannel and something woodsy, something that smelled like safety and sin all tangled together.
“Ed…” you started, but his fingers pressed against your lips, silencing you.
“Shh. No more talking. Not tonight.” His thumb traced your lower lip, then drifted down to your chin, tilting your face toward him. In the dim light filtering through the curtains, his eyes were heavy-lidded, dark with something that looked like devotion and exhaustion in equal measure. “Tonight you just breathe. Just feel me holding you. That’s all you need to do.”
His hand slid from your chin back to your stomach, pressing flat, and you felt the warmth of his palm seep into your skin. His fingers splayed wide, claiming that space, and his thumb traced slow circles against your flesh. Gentle and reverent, like he was tracing the outline of something that hadn't taken root yet but might.
“I’m going to keep you full like this,” he murmured, and his voice had dropped to something raw and intimate, a sound meant only for the dark and for you. “Keep you warm. Keep everything I put inside you right where it belongs.”
His hips shifted again, a slow, deliberate grind that made you gasp, his cock still thick enough to feel despite the softening, still stretching you, still holding his release sealed within your walls. “And when morning comes…”
He paused. His jaw tightened, and you watched something move behind his eyes; hunger, faith, a need so deep it seemed to frighten him.
“When morning comes, I’m going to do this again.” The words fell from his lips like a vow spoken at an altar. “I’m going to wake you up with my mouth on you, and I'm going to fill you again before you’ve even opened your eyes. And the next night, and the next, until this house doesn’t dare touch you anymore, until everything inside these walls knows you belong to me.”
His hand pressed harder against your stomach, and you felt his dicktwitch inside you. A slow pulse of warmth leaked from him, and you felt it spread through your core, thick and heavy, mixing with the overflow already slicking your thighs.
“You know what this is?” His voice dropped lower, rougher, and his wedding ring caught a sliver of moonlight as his hand splayed wider across your belly. That band of gold, the one he’d never taken off, not once, not even when he had pushed inside you, not even when he had spilled himself bare and groaning into your body.
“This is a sacrament. The truest one I know. Not the kind they teach you about in church, not the kind I’ve spent my life chasing through haunted houses and demon-infested rooms.” His thumb pressed into the soft flesh below your navel, and his cock pulsed again. “This kind. The kind where a man empties himself into a woman and means it. The kind where God himself couldn’t pull me out of you right now.”
His lips found your ear, and his breath was hot and unsteady. “Lorraine…she’s my partner. She is my gift. But she can’t touch what lives inside me when I’m with you. She sees things, she feels things, but she doesn’t know this. She doesn’t know that the moment I walked into this house and saw you shaking in that doorway, something inside me cracked open like a sealed tomb.”
His tongue traced the shell of your ear, slow and obscene. “She doesn't know that I’m lying inside another woman right now, buried so deep I can feel your heartbeat through my cock. She doesn’t know that I’m keeping my cum inside you like a fucking offering.”
You shuddered beneath him, and your walls clenched around him again, a desperate grip that made him exhale a ragged breath against your neck.
“That’s it. Hold me. Hold me like you’re holding a prayer inside you.” His hand slid up from your stomach to your chest, fingers finding the cross pendant still resting against your throat. He lifted it, pressed it between your collarbones, and kept it there.
“You know what the Church would call this? What they would call a man who fucks his client in a haunted house and tells her she belongs to him?” He laughed softly, but there was no humour in it, only hunger, only the raw edge of a man who’d stopped pretending he was anything but desperate.
“Adultery. Sin. Damnation.” Each word landed like a nail driven into wood. “But I’ll tell you what I think. I think God made you for me to find. I think He put you in this house, trembling and afraid, so I’d walk through that door and know exactly what salvation feels like. And salvation…” his hips rolled, slow and deep, pushing his half-hard cock against your slick walls, “ -salvation feels like this. Like being buried so deep inside you that nothing else matters.”
The house creaked somewhere down the hall, and you flinched, but his arm tightened around you, his cock pulsed inside you, and his voice came low and steady against your ear.
“Nothing’s getting through me. Not tonight. Not ever.”
His ring finger traced your jaw, and the cool metal made you shiver, pressing against skin he’d already claimed with his mouth, hands and cock. He noticed it, and something dark flickered across his face.
“That’s my vow. That’s the promise I made in a church with Lorraine standing beside me, and here I am pressing it against your skin like it belongs to you.” He turned his hand, let the ring drag slowly down your throat, over your collarbone, across the swell of your breast.
The metal was warm from his skin but still cooler than your flushed flesh, and the contrast made your nipples tighten. “I’m a married man. I wear this ring like a chain, and I’ve never once wanted to take it off. Until you.”
He paused, and his voice dropped to something barely audible. “I still won't take it off. But God help me, I want you to feel it every time I touch you. I want you to know that every inch of you I claim is claimed by a man who already belongs to someone else. And I want you to want it anyway.”
His breathing slowed, and his body grew heavier against yours, his weight settling like a blanket, a wall between you and whatever waited in the dark. His hand stayed pressed to your stomach, fingers splayed wide, wedding ring glinting faintly in the dim light, holding his warmth inside you like a promise sealed in flesh.
And slowly, trembling, held open and full and sheltered beneath him, pinned by the weight of a married man’s cock and a married man’s cum and a married man’s promises that tasted like blasphemy and salvation all at once, you slept.
NOTES:So...this is the last one (only a few days too late). I dragged myself into my office for you with the pc that also doubles as a heater, which is a grand gesture in this fucking heatwave. It's only fitting this chapter is hot and smutty then!
SUMMARY: Doctor Jack Abbot had survived grief, war and the daily violence of the Pitt by learning how to keep himself separate from the things he wanted. Then you transferred to nights with your careless hands and your impossible warmth, touching him like it meant nothing while looking at him like it might. He told himself that a man like him had no business wanting someone like you. But restraint is only useful until it breaks.
OR: When Jack’s carefully held control slips, you know you’re in for a ride.
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦ chapter 1 ✦ chapter 2 ✦
The walk there was not graceful.
You stumbled after him, your wet feet slapping against the cold floorboards of his hallway, each step sending shocks up your calves that made you gasp and almost laugh under your breath. Not because anything was especially funny, but because your body seemed to have become too full of sensation to sort one thing properly from another.
The towel you had grabbed in the bathroom was already slipping, barely knotted at your chest, and you clutched it with one hand while the other found the wall for balance.
The plaster was cool and slightly textured beneath your fingertips, and you noticed, with that strange, crystalline clarity that sometimes arrived in moments of chaos, that the hallway was narrower than you had expected. That the walls were painted a muted grey, that there was a photograph hanging crooked somewhere behind you.
A landscape, perhaps.
A shoreline.
Something with water, distance and weather.
You would look later. You would catalogue it later, when your skin was not still warm from the shower, and your cunt was not throbbing with need. Right now, there was only the cold floor, the damp towel, and the broad expanse of Jack’s back moving before you.
His hand stayed firm on your waist, his grip steadying your unbalanced steps.
He moved with purpose despite the towel riding low on his hips, despite the water still dripping from his grey hair onto his shoulders and flowing in trails downwards, darkening the fabric where it fell.
You could see the muscles of his back flex with each step, the shift of his spine, the way his shoulder blades moved beneath his skin like wings folded tight against his body. There were scars there too, you noticed, small, pale marks scattered across his lower back, remnants of something you didn't yet know the story of.
You wanted to trace them with your fingers. You wanted to trace them with your mouth.
“Jack…” you started, and then your heel caught on nothing at all. On air, on your own clumsy anticipation, on the impossibility of walking calmly down a hallway while half-dressed and shaking from the weight of his nearness.
You laughed once, a bright, startled sound that seemed too loud in the quiet of his apartment, and nearly backed into the wall. Your shoulder blade met the plaster with a soft thud, and you were still laughing, breathless and giddy, when Jack turned.
He didn’t laugh.
His eyes darkened, the brown-green of his irises swallowed by black, and something in your chest tightened at the sight. At the sudden visible snap of whatever last thread of composure he had been trying to carry with him from the bathroom to the bedroom.
Then his hand left your waist and found the wall beside your head.
He stepped forward, closing the distance you had accidentally created, and his body came close enough that the air between you warmed immediately.
He caged you in with one arm without trapping you, his other hand returning to your hip as if it belonged there now, as if every retreat he had made over the past weeks had only taught his hands exactly where they wanted to go once he stopped denying them.
His mouth was on yours before you could draw another breath.
This kiss was nothing like the ones in the bathroom.
This was hunger, raw and unguarded. His breath left him in a rough sound when your hand caught at his shoulder.
His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugging, and you heard yourself whimper into his mouth. A sound you didn’t recognise as your own, desperate and trembling.
His free hand found your hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh, pulling you against him.
You felt the hard length of him, pressing against your belly, hot and insistent even through the barrier of fabric. Your towel had slipped, one breast bare to the cool air, nipple tight and aching, and you didn’t care.
You didn’t care about anything except the way his tongue swept into your mouth, the way his hand slid up your ribcage, calloused palm grazing the underside of your exposed breast.
“Jack,” you gasped when he pulled back just enough to breathe, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath ragged and hot against your lips. Your voice came out wrecked, barely a whisper. “Didn’t you say - bed?”
He made a sound against your throat, something between a laugh and a groan, and you felt it vibrate through his chest into yours. His mouth dragged down the line of your neck, teeth scraping over your pulse point, and you felt your knees buckle.
Only the wall at your back and his hand at your hip kept you upright. The fluorescent lights of the hospital were miles away, in another life, and here there was only the soft glow filtering from his bedroom and the sound of your own heartbeat thundering in your ears.
“I did,” he murmured against your skin, and you felt the words more than heard them. “I’m starting to question that decision.”
Your fingers found his hair, threading through the damp strands, pulling him closer. You felt the towel at his hips slip lower, felt the brush of coarse hair against your stomach, and then the burning, hard press of his cock against your bare skin. He groaned into the hollow of your throat, his hips jerking forward once before he caught himself, muscles rigid with restraint.
You said his name again like a prayer, like a plea. Your other hand slid down his chest, over the damp hair, over the scarred plane of his stomach, and wrapped around the thick length of him.
He swore, low and rough, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. His cock twitched in your grip, slick at the tip, and you felt the wetness smear against your palm. You stroked him once, slowly, and his whole body shuddered.
“You keep -” His voice broke. He lifted his head, eyes black with want, jaw tight. “You keep doing that, and I’m going to come right here in this hallway like a fucking teenager once again.”
You stroked him again, thumb brushing the sensitive head, and watched his eyes flutter closed. “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t stop you. His hand covered yours, guiding your rhythm, his grip tighter than yours had been. “Because I want to be inside you when I come this time. I want to feel you around me. I want…”
He cut himself off, kissing you again, harder this time. His hand left yours to grip your thigh, lifting it, hooking your leg around his hip. The angle opened you to him, and you felt the head of his dick notch against your entrance, slick and blunt.
“Jack,” you breathed, and you felt him tremble.
“Tell me,” he said against your mouth, his voice wrecked. “Tell me you want this…”
“I want you.” The words tumbled out, breathless and desperate.
He pushed forward, just an inch, just the tip, and you both moaned. The stretch was exquisite, a bright, burning pleasure that made your head fall back against the wall.
“Bed,” he gritted out, even as his hips pressed forward another inch. “We need-”
Jack pulled back after that.
It cost him. You saw it in the tremor that ran through his arms, the way his jaw clenched like he was physically paining himself. His cock slipped from your pussy, wet and aching, and you made a sound of protest that was half-whimper, half-growl.
“Jack…”
“No.” His voice came out low, rough, barely more than a breath against your mouth. His forehead pressed to yours, his eyes closed, his chest heaving. “I already - earlier, in the - “
He stopped and swallowed. You watched his throat work, the flush that crept up his neck to his ears, that deep red you’d learned to read as embarrassment and want tangled together.
“I came in my scrubs,” he said, the words rushed and quiet, like a confession dragged from somewhere deep. “Like a goddamn teenager. Just from…you, on my lap, your…” He exhaled sharply. “I need to make this good for you. I need to take my time. I’ve been thinking about this for so long, and if I fuck you against this wall right now, I'm going to come in thirty seconds, and you’ll never forgive me.”
You stared at him.
The admission hung between you, raw and vulnerable. Jack Abbot, who carried himself like a man carved from stone, who kept his face carefully blank through traumas that would break lesser men, had just admitted to losing control. Because of you. Weeks of wanting, and he’d shattered the moment you had touched him.
“Jack,” you said softly, and your voice cracked on his name.
His eyes opened. The hazel was nearly black, his pupils blown wide, but there was something else there too, something fragile, almost pleading.
“Let me take you apart properly,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw. “Let me do this right.”
The towel at his hips had given up entirely. It pooled at his feet, forgotten, and he stood before you fully bare, his cock hard and flushed and curving up towards his stomach. The head glistened, slick with want, and you watched a bead of moisture gather at the tip and drip down the span of him.
You reached for him again without thinking and without saying anything.
Your fingers had found his back now, exactly where you had been looking moments earlier, and when your touch moved over the pale scars scattered there, his kiss faltered for half a second.
Not from reluctance. But from the shock of being touched where he had not prepared himself to be touched gently. Your fingertips traced one old mark near his shoulder blade and then another lower down, careful even in the middle of all that heat, and the tenderness of it struck him almost harder than the wanting.
His forehead dropped briefly against yours, his dick twitching.
“Careful,” he breathed.
You swallowed, your hand still spread against his back. “With what?”
The question was soft, nearly innocent.
“With me.”
The honesty of it seemed to surprise him as much as it did you.
The edge had softened into something deeper, something that made your free hand rise to his face, your thumb brushing the wet line of his cheekbone with such unguarded tenderness that Jack looked almost undone by it.
“I am,” you whispered. “I will be.”
He closed his eyes briefly. Long enough for the words to enter him.
Then he kissed you again, and this time the hunger came threaded with something more vulnerable, something that made the force of him feel less like possession than surrender. His hand slid from your hip to your waist and then to your back, gathering you closer, and your towel slipped from you completely.
Your skin was still damp from the shower, your nipples tight from the cool air and the heat of his gaze. He looked at you like you were something holy, something he couldn't quite believe was real.
“Bed,” he said again, and this time it wasn't a question.
But word had lost its earlier practicality. Now it sounded like the last remaining structure in a house already on fire.
You nodded, though you were not entirely sure he could see it from how close he still stood.
“Bed,” you agreed.
He lifted you.
It was effortless, the way his arms slid beneath your thighs and pulled you up against his chest. You wrapped your legs around his waist, your arms around his neck, and felt his cock press against your belly, hot and insistent. The solid breadth of his chest against yours. The faint scrape of stubble when his cheek grazed yours.
He carried you the few remaining steps towards the bedroom with a purpose that would have looked controlled from a distance, if anyone had been there to see it, but you were close enough to know better.
You felt the unevenness in his breath. The minute tension in his shoulders. The way his mouth moved from your neck to your collarbone, then to the soft place beneath your ear, as though he could not stop touching you now that he had begun and could not quite forgive himself for how much he wanted.
The bedroom was dim, lit only by the light spilling in from the hallway.
You registered it in fragments because your attention had become an unreliable thing: clean lines, minimal furniture, a chair near the wall with a folded shirt over the back, a book facedown on the nightstand, the bed taking up most of the room with its plain sheets and dark blanket pushed slightly off-center, as if Jack had left it that morning without any expectation that someone else would see it by dawn.
It looked like the rest of his apartment. Functional. Quiet. Carefully lived in.
Lonely in a way that made your chest ache even through the heat of him.
He laid you down on sheets that smelled like laundry detergent and something faintly herbal, something clean and private and his, and then he was above you, braced on his forearms, caging you in without quite letting his full weight settle.
Even now, even with his mouth parted and his eyes dark and his body drawn tight with wanting, there was care in the way he held himself over you.
There was always care. It seemed built into him as deeply as the scars, as deeply as the old injuries, as deeply as every fear that had made him step away before finally, finally reaching for you.
For a moment, he only looked at you.
The light caught the damp silver in his hair and the freckles scattered across his shoulders. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths that did not fool you. His mouth was swollen from kissing. His cock was hard and flushed, framed by the neatly trimmed curls.
His expression had gone very still, but not distant; overwhelmed, perhaps, by the sight of you in his bed, by the fact that this was no longer imagined or delayed or interrupted by alarms and patients and the fluorescent cruelty of the Pitt.
“I’ve thought about this,” he repeated, his voice low and rough against your mouth. “Every night shift. Every time you touched my arm. Every time you smiled at me like - “ He stopped, swallowed. “Like I was someone worth smiling at.”
“Jack.” Your hands found his face, cradling his jaw, thumbs brushing over wet stubble and warm skin, and the moment you touched him, his eyes flickered as though the tenderness had struck deeper than anything else. “You are.”
For one breath, he looked almost pained by the relief of it, as though kindness still had to pass through old scar tissue before he could feel it as comfort.
He kissed you.
Slowly, this time. More deliberately.
His tongue traced the seam of your lips, and when you opened for him, he swept inside with a gentleness that made your chest ache.
Your hands tightened at his face, then slipped to his shoulders, feeling the heat and strength of him beneath your palms, the wet warmth of his skin, the uneven rise and fall of his breath when you kissed him back.
His hand slid down your side, over the curve of your waist, the flare of your hip. The palm was broad and warm, his fingers roughened and careful, and every inch of that descent seemed to cost him another piece of restraint.
His fingers found the wet heat between your thighs, and he groaned into your mouth when he felt how ready you were.
“Christ,” he breathed against your lips. “You’re soaked.”
“For you,” you whispered. “Always for you.”
Jack’s mouth left yours for one breath, not far, only enough for him to look at you, and what moved across his face then was not triumph or certainty or anything so easy.
It was awe. Awe, and fear, and want held so tightly it trembled.
“You have to tell me,” he murmured, his forehead lowering until it almost touched yours, his hand still at your hip, his body still held with impossible discipline above you. “If anything is too much.”
You looked up at him through the dim light, at the broad scarred shape of him, at the man who had carried his wanting like a wound for weeks and still asked, even now, even trembling, to be trusted only as far as you wished to go.
Your fingers tightened gently in his hair.
“I will.”
Jack closed his eyes briefly.
“I’m going to make you feel so good.”
And he did not make you wait again.
His mouth left yours and traced a path down your throat. Lips and tongue dragging over the sensitive skin with a hunger that made your breath stutter. You felt everything - the scrape of his stubble, rough and deliberate, grazing the column of your neck, and you tilted your head back without thinking, giving him more access.
Jack’s teeth found your collarbone, biting down just hard enough to sting but not to really hurt. Nevertheless, a sound between a gasp and a moan escaped you.
“Jack!”
Undeterred, he moved lower until his mouth found the curve of your breast. His tongue traced slow circles around your nipple before his lips closed around the peak. He sucked hard, pulling the sensitive flesh deep into his mouth, teeth gracing your areola with enough pressure to make you cry out.
Your hands flew to his hair, fingers tangling in the salt-and-pepper strands, coarse and thick beneath your palms. You pulled, and he groaned against your skin, the sound vibrating through your chest.
“You have no idea,” he said, lifting his head to look at you. His eyes were dark, blown wide with want, his mouth wet and swollen from his attention to your body.
“Every time you leaned over a patient’s chart. Every time you stretched, your scrubs pulled tight across your ass. I thought about this. About what you’d look like underneath me. What sounds you’d make when I finally got my mouth on you.”
His hand slid down your stomach, fingers tracing the soft skin below your navel with agonising slowness. You felt your muscles clench in anticipation, your thighs falling open without conscious thought, in an invitation.
Finally, his fingers found your cunt.
But he didn’t give you any relief, just started to trace the wet seam of your pussy, spreading your slick arousal over you with unhurried strokes. He circled your clit with maddening lightness. His touch was barely there, not enough to bring you closer to your peak but enough to make you whimper and arch against him.
“Look at you,” he breathed, his gaze dropping to where his hand touched you. “So wet for me. So fucking ready. You’re dripping.”
“Because of you,” you managed, your voice breaking on the words. “Jack, I need…I need you inside -”
He pushed one finger inside you, silencing the words that tumbled from your mouth.
The stretch was slight, but the feeling was overwhelming. His finger was thick enough that you felt every ridge and callus, every line of his skin as he pressed into you. Rough in a way that made your nerves light up, friction in places you’d never felt it before.
You clenched around him, your body adjusting to the intrusion, and he groaned low in his throat. His cock twitched against your thigh, hard and hot, and you felt another pulse of wetness coat his finger in response, desperate to get more.
And he relented, pushing a second finger into you.
His thick fingers filled you in a way that made your breath catch in your throat. He curled them inside you, searching for that spot that would make you see stars. The calluses on his fingers dragged against your inner walls, rough texture stimulating nerves you didn’t know you had.
His thumb found your clit again, pressing in tight, firm circles, and you felt the pressure begin to build deep in your pelvis, a tightening coil of pure want.
“Shit, Jack…oh God!”
“That’s it,” he murmured, his voice dropping to a low rumble that you felt in your bones. “Let me feel you. Let me watch you fall apart on my hand.”
He started to move his fingers. Slowly at first, dragging them out until only the tips remained inside you.
Then he pushed back in with deliberate, devastating force, curling them as he thrust, hitting that spot inside you that made your vision blur. The wet sounds of your arousal filled the room; slick, obscene, intoxicating.
You heard your own breathing, ragged and desperate, and beneath it, the low groans Jack couldn’t seem to stop making in response to seeing and bringing you such pleasure.
His mouth returned to your tit, his tongue laving your nipple in time with the thrust of his fingers. He sucked, hard, while his fingers worked you open.
The dual sensation was almost too much. Your hands fisted in the sheets, knuckles white, your back arching off the mattress, your thighs trembling around his thick wrist.
In response, he pushed a third finger into you. The width of them was substantial enough that your body strained to accommodate him. You felt the edge of pain and pleasure blur together, your body clenching around him as he fingered you with relentless patience.
“I can feel you getting close,” he said against your skin, his breath hot and ragged. “Your pussy is squeezing my fingers so tight…so fucking tight. You’re going to come for me, aren’t you? You’re going to come all over my hand like a good girl.”
His thumb pressed harder on your clit, grinding in tight circles. His thick fingers curled deep inside you, finding that spot, and he rubbed it with firm, relentless pressure, over and over and over, refusing to let up.
The coil in your belly tightened, tighter, tighter, until you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think -
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice low and rough and absolute. “Now.”
You shattered.
Your orgasm crashed through you in waves, your walls clenching around his thick fingers in rhythmic pulses, your entire body shaking beneath him.
You cried out his name, again and again, a broken prayer on your lips. He worked you through it, his fingers never stopping, drawing out every last tremor until you were limp and gasping on the sheets, your chest heaving, your thighs still twitching.
He pressed a kiss to your sternum, then looked up at you.
His fingers were still inside you, still feeling the aftershocks of your release. His cock was hard against your thigh, leaking, untouched, flushed dark with need.
His cheeks were flushed, and his curls were dishevelled from your hands. His expression was raw, hungry, and almost desperate, like a man starving finally allowed to feast.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he said.
He rose over you again, his body settling along the length of yours, and you felt the full weight of him pressing you into the mattress. His cock slid against your thigh, hot and hard, leaving a smear of pre-cum on your skin.
You reached for him without thinking, your hand wrapping around his shaft, feeling the thick, heavy weight of him in your palm.
He moaned in response.
The sound was raw and unfiltered, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. His hips stuttered forward, pushing his cock through the ring of your fingers before he could stop himself. You felt him throb against your palm, a vein running along the underside that pulsed with every beat.
You stroked him slowly, feeling the length and girth of him. He was thick and curved upwards even more now, the head flushed a deep, angry red, leaking steadily against your wrist.
You twisted your hand on the upstroke, spreading the slick pre-cum over his shaft, and his whole body shuddered.
“Jack,” you whispered, your free hand coming up to cup his jaw. You felt the coarse stubble beneath your palm, the tight clench of his jaw muscle as he fought for control. “I want to make you feel good too.”
“No.”
The word came out strangled, immediate, almost desperate.
Jack pulled back just enough to look at you, and the expression on his face nearly stole the breath from your lungs. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide enough that only a thin ring of colour remained, and there was something wild in him now that had nothing to do with lack of control and everything to do with how violently he was trying to keep it.
He looked hungry, yes, impossibly so, but beneath that hunger was something older and heavier, some grief-shaped instinct that seemed to believe wanting for himself was dangerous while wanting for you could still be made noble.
“No,” he said again, lower this time, rougher, as if the word hurt on its way out. “I want… I need to make you feel good. You deserve it. You deserve…”
His voice broke quietly, at the edge of a sentence he couldn’t quite finish.
His hand came up to cradle your face, his palm broad against your cheek, thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone with a gentleness that trembled despite his effort to steady it.
For a moment, he just looked at you.
Like he was trying to find words he hadn’t already used. Like everything he felt had been said before, in different ways, on different nights, and still somehow never felt sufficient.
His thumb brushed your cheek again.
“You know,” he said quietly, voice rough around the edges, “I keep telling you this.”
A faint, helpless shake of his head with a gruff laugh.
“And every time I do, it still doesn’t feel like enough.”
His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth before lifting back to your eyes.
“I wanted you for a long time,” he murmured. “You know that. God, I’ve probably told you that a dozen different ways by now.” His expression softened, something almost rueful passing through it.
“But I don’t think you understand what that actually felt like. Seeing you every day. Trying to be good. Trying to be sensible. Trying not to look at you too long because once I started, I didn’t always trust myself to stop.”
Jack swallowed hard, his throat working, his eyes still fixed on yours with a kind of wrecked honesty that made the room feel too small around both of you, his dick throbbing against you.
“And you…” He stopped, breath catching once, almost like a laugh but without any humour in it. “You kept being near me... Your fingers at my wrist when you said my name like it was nothing.” His mouth tightened, and for one second, he looked almost angry with himself for needing to say it. “Do you have any idea what that did to me? A man my age… God, a man like me? And you kept -”
“Jack.” You turned your head, pressing a kiss to his palm. “I wanted you too. I always wanted you.”
His hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair with more urgency now, gripping just tightly enough to make your breath catch. He pressed his forehead harder against yours, his nose brushing yours, his mouth hovering so close to your lips that every word seemed to pass directly into you.
“You deserve everything,” he murmured, his voice wrecked and honest in a way you were not sure he could have survived beneath brighter light. “Every good thing I can give you. Every careful thing. Every selfish thing I’ve spent months trying not to want.”
Your hand tightened at his jaw.
Jack closed his eyes briefly, as if your touch had gone through him.
“I want to take my time with you,” he said, and the restraint in his voice was so thin now that it sounded almost like pain. “I want to make you forget every second you ever wondered whether I wanted this. Whether I wanted you. I want to make you feel so wanted you can’t mistake it for anything else.”
His breath caught, and when he opened his eyes again, the look in them was devastating. “God help me, I want to be worthy of you.”
“You already are,” you breathed.
Then your lips found his.
The kiss was desperate, hungry. His mouth opened against yours, his tongue sliding past your lips to tangle with yours.
His cock pressed against your stomach, hot and hard and leaking, and you felt him twitch against your skin as you kissed him. He groaned into your mouth, and his hips stuttered again without conscious thought, just seeking friction, seeking you. The thick length of him slid against your belly, leaving a wet trail, and the heat of him made you arch up into his touch.
“Please,” he whispered against your lips, the word barely audible. “Tell me what you want. Tell me how to make you feel good. I’ll do anything - anything - you just have to tell me."
His cock throbbed against your skin, and he pulled back just enough to look at you. His eyes were on you, his chest heaving, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself still.
“What do you need?” he pleaded, his voice rough and wrecked. “Tell me. Whatever it is…I’ll give it to you.”
“I just want you,” you whispered, and your voice trembled with the weight of everything. The confession scraped against your throat like something dragged up from deep within your chest, from that place where longing had calcified into something sharp and unbearable. “Please, Jack…I just want you.”
He groaned.
The sound came from somewhere deep in his chest, raw and desperate, a vibration that seemed to originate beneath his ribs and rise through his throat like a wound reopening. Something shifted in his expression then, subtle as a fault line settling before the quake.
The uncertainty, the fear, the endless cycle of self-deprecation that had kept him from reaching for you; it cracked. eyes
Something darker, hungrier, more confident surfaced in its wake, rising through the fissures like water through broken concrete. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and the hand in your hair tightened its grip just enough to make your breath stutter in your chest.
“Just me?” His voice dropped, rough and low, vibrating against your throat like a physical touch. “You gotta be more precise, sweetheart.”
His hips shifted.
You felt his cock slide down your stomach, a slow, deliberate descent that left a slick trail across your skin. The blunt head of him pressed against you, found the entrance of your cunt, and stopped.
He didn’t push inside but rather held himself at the threshold, the flushed tip of him kissing your slick pussy. He groaned again, louder this time, his whole body tensing with restrained want.
He dragged himself through your wetness then, the length of him sliding between your cunt lips with agonising patience, coating himself in your arousal, the ridge of his head catching against your clit with each pass, sending sparks of sensation through your nerves like current through copper wire.
“Fuck…you’re so soaked.” The words came out strangled but certain, almost wondering. “Feel that? Feel what you do to me?”
Your hands flew to him, finding his shoulders and digging into the hard muscle beneath his skin. Then your palms slid down his chest, feeling the coarse hair beneath your fingertips, the rapid percussion of his heart beating against his ribs like something trying to escape its cage.
“Jack…” You squirmed beneath him, desperate, your hips lifting of their own accord, chasing the heat of him. The movement was instinct, pure animal need, your body acting before your mind could catch up, before reason could intervene. “Please, I need -”
He made a low sound, half laugh and half groan, and his hand pressed your hip back down into the mattress.
“In due time, baby.” His voice was rough, wrecked. “I won’t last…I need you close. Need to feel you first again, okay?”
You couldn’t form a coherent string of words, so you just whimpered. Raw and shameless and utterly desperate, a noise you didn’t really recognise.
Jack was fucking you without entering you; it was just his hard cock sliding through your slick cunt, coating himself in your wetness and driving you insane.
“You like that?” he murmured against your throat, and there was something almost wondering in it, like he couldn’t quite believe he got to have this. “Tell me.”
Your back arched off the mattress. “Jack-”
“Tell me,” he repeated, and his hips rolled again, slower this time, his dick dragging through your wetness. “Want to hear you.”
“Yes!” The word broke from you like a prayer. “God, yes, I like it - I need..”
Your cunt was soaked, your arousal smearing across both of you, and every glide of his cock through your folds sent another wave of heat pooling in your belly, another pulse of need clenching around nothing, an emptiness that demanded filling.
His mouth found your pulse point, teeth grazing the thin skin there before his tongue soothed over the mark. His cock slid through your folds again, almost revenant, and he groaned like he was the one being touched, like every glide was undoing him as much as it was undoing you.
“I always wondered” he breathed against your skin, and his voice was wrecked, scraped raw like something dragged over gravel and left to bleed. “What you’d feel like…What you’d sound like when I finally got you underneath me.”
What he didn’t say was how you and your small touches had become the only thing tethering him to his own body. How he’d go home after nights when you’d smiled at him across the nurses’ station and stand under scalding water, trying to wash away the feeling of your fingers on his forearm, failing every time.
Another stroke, another maddening glide through your slick cunt, the head of his cock catching at your entrance before sliding up to roll over that swollen bud again, a thick blunt pressure that sent electricity cascading through your nerve-endings, and your whole body jerked beneath him like a current had passed through the very marrow of your bones.
“Jack…”
You’d said his name a thousand times before: Dr. Abbot in the hallway, Jack in quieter moments, Jack whispered to yourself in your car after shifts when the wanting got too loud, but it had never tasted like this. Desperate. Wrecked.
Like you were drowning and he was the only solid thing in the world.
He shifted his weight onto one arm, his free hand sliding down your body with aching slowness as he stopped moving against you. Over the curve of your waist, the flare of your hip, his calloused palm rough against your soft skin until his fingers found your pussy.
He pressed two fingers against your entrance, not pushing in, just feeling, just testing the state of your arousal.
“Fuck,” His forehead dropped to your shoulder, his hair tickling your collarbone. “You’re dripping. I felt it…felt you soaking against me, felt you getting wetter every time I rubbed against your clit.”
“Because of you.” The words tumbled out before you could stop them, honest and desperate and stripped of every defence you’d ever built.
And it had been. From how he cared for a patient to how you’d gone home after shifts and pressed your own fingers between your thighs, imagining his hands instead, never quite able to replicate the feeling you craved.
He groaned like you’d wounded him, like your confession had found the softest part of his underbelly and pressed.
His fingers pushed harder, just the tips slipping inside, and your cunt clenched around nothing, desperate for more, your walls fluttering around the meagre intrusion. You tried to rock your hips down, to take his fingers deeper, to impale yourself on even that small mercy, but his weight pinned you to the mattress with unyielding certainty.
“Please..” Your voice cracked, fractured like glass. “Jack, I can’t…I need…”
“What do you need?” He lifted his head, and his eyes were dark, intent, searching your face like he was memorising every detail, every flutter of your lashes and part of your lips. “Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”
“I need you to fuck me.” The confession burned in your throat, but you couldn’t stop now, didn’t want to stop, not when you’d waited so long and wanted so much. “Please, Jack…"
His jaw tightened, the muscle there jumping beneath stubbled skin.
For a moment, he just looked at you, and his throat worked around a swallow, and something shifted behind his eyes, some final wall crumbling into dust like ancient mortar giving way.
“Okay.” The word came out hoarse, almost broken. “Yeah. I’ve got you.”
He shifted his hips, rose up on his knees between your spread thighs, his dick was slick with your arousal, glistening with the evidence of how badly you wanted him.
You felt the blunt head press forward, and your breath caught in your chest like a bird in a cage. He didn’t push in immediately. Instead, he held himself there again, trembling with restraint, his gaze locked on your face like he needed to see every moment of this, like he needed to witness your surrender to believe it real.
“Tell me if...”
“Jack.” You grabbed his face with both hands, pulling him down until your foreheads touched, until his breath mingled with yours in the small space between you.
He kissed you.
Soft, at first, a brush of lips that felt almost like a question, a prayer. Then his tongue swept into your mouth, claiming, consuming, and his hips pressed forward with inexorable pressure.
The head of his cock was finally entering your pussy.
You moaned into his mouth at the stretch. The thick, insistent pressure of him opening you inch by inch, your body yielding around the intrusion.
He was bigger than you thought, even if you had already touched him, and your cunt resisted for a heartbeat before giving way with a wet, obscene sound that made your face burn even as your pussy pulsed with desperate need.
Jack broke the kiss with a gasp, his head lifting, his eyes squeezing shut as he focused on the feeling of the wet heat of you surrounding him, your body opening to take him in.
“Fuck” His voice was strangled, barely recognisable as the calm attending who had directed trauma bay with steady hands. “You’re so tight - so fucking wet.”
He pushed deeper.
Slowly. So slowly it felt like torture, like he was trying to memorise every fraction of your body giving way to him, every ripple and clutch of your inner walls around his shaft.
Your cunt fluttered around his length, adjusting, stretching, and the fullness was overwhelming. Not just physical, but something deeper, something that made your chest ache with the rightness of it.
“Jack.” His name tore from your throat like a sob. “Oh god! Jack -”
He was shaking above you, his arms trembling where they braced against the mattress, his scarred chest heaving with each ragged breath. “I know…fuck!”
His hips pressed flush against yours, the trimmed hair at the base of his cock grinding against your slick pussy, the coarse texture a maddening counterpoint to the smooth heat of his dick buried within you.
For one moment, neither of you moved. He dropped his forehead to yours, his breath warm against your lips.
You could not stay still any longer. It was beyond your capacity, beyond the reasonable demands of patience or dignity or anything that might have restrained a person less desperate, less starved.
Your hips shifted before you could arrest the motion, an instinctive, desperate roll that sought more of him, deeper, harder, anything to relieve the coiling tension that had been building for months like pressure in a wound.
Your cunt clenched around his thick shaft, greedy and clinging, and you felt every inch of him respond, the heavy length of his cock twitching inside you, swelling against your walls.
“Wait!” His hand found your hip, pressing down with firm, unyielding pressure, his grip hard enough that you would wear the marks tomorrow. “Give me a minute.”
You whined, desperate for more. Every nerve ending in your body screamed for movement, for friction, for anything.
“You feel incredible.” His voice was shredded, gutted, like something had reached inside his chest and torn the words out by the roots. “So fucking good…”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing above you, and you watched the muscle in his jaw jump as he fought for control. A bead of sweat traced a slow path down his temple, catching the low light from the bedside lamp.
“If you move right now, I’m going to come…again” The admission came out rough, almost pained, and something in his expression cracked open, vulnerability bleeding through the hunger. “And I don’t want this to be over. Not yet.”
He stopped. Swallowed again. His eyes, when they met yours, held something raw and terrified.
“Not when I’ve been so afraid I’d never get to have this”
His hand left your hip.
Slowly, with aching deliberation, his palm slid up your waist, tracing the curve of your ribs through your skin.
Each inch of skin he touched seemed to ignite beneath his fingers, nerve endings firing in cascading waves that made your breath catch and your cunt clench around him in helpless response.
“You have no idea.” His mouth found your neck, hot and open, his breath damp against the sensitive skin beneath your ear. “No idea what you do to me. How beautiful you are. I’d look at you across a room and forget how to breathe. Those eyes. The way your mouth curves when you’re trying not to laugh. The way you look at me…”
His teeth grazed your pulse point, and your cunt clenched around him again. Involuntary and helpless, a spasm you could not control. He groaned into your throat, the sound vibrating through you, and you felt his cock throb inside you in response, a heavy, pulsing reminder of how close he was, how barely contained.
“Jack,” You were begging now, shameless, your hands clutching at his shoulders, your nails digging into scarred skin. The muscles beneath your fingers jumped and tensed, a map of old injuries and older survivals.
His mouth travelled lower, pressing open kisses along your collarbone, his stubble scraping rough against the delicate skin. “Please. Just let me feel you for a minute. Let me have this. Let me believe it’s real.”
His hand continued its exploration. Up the column of your throat, along your jaw, his thumb brushing over your lower lip. The calloused pad dragged across the sensitive flesh, sending sparks cascading down your spine.
You opened your mouth without thinking, taking the pad of his thumb between your teeth, and his breath hitched audibly above you, a sharp intake of air that spoke of control fraying at the edges.
“Christ, you’re gorgeous.” His hips jerked forward, just once, and the movement drove him impossibly deeper, the head of his cock pressing against something inside you that made stars explode behind your eyelids. “You’re going to kill me. You’re going to fucking destroy me, and I’m going to let you.”
You released his thumb, your tongue dragging over the calloused skin before letting go. “And you’re going to drive me insane”
His laugh was breathless, broken, a sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised you. When he lifted his head to look at you, his eyes were dark with want and something softer, something more terrifying, something that looked like devotion, like surrender, like a man laying down arms he had carried for so long he had forgotten they could be set aside.
“Bossy.” But he was smiling, just barely, the corners of his mouth twitching up even as his chest heaved with the effort of holding still. “I like it. God help me, I like everything about you. Every damn thing.”
His hands found your waist, gripping hard enough to bruise, and you felt him shift above you, felt the tension in his thighs as he braced himself, felt the tremor run through his arms where they caged your body against the mattress, felt the way his whole body shook with the effort of restraint.
Then he moved.
The first stroke was slow, dragging, his cock pulling back until only the head remained inside you. The thick ridge caught at your entrance, stretching you open, before sliding home again in one long, devastating thrust.
The fullness was overwhelming. The stretch of him, the way your walls clung to every inch, the obscene wet sound of your bodies meeting, the slick heat of where you were joined, it was too much and not enough and exactly right.
“Jack!”
He did it again. And again.
Building a rhythm that was maddening in its deliberateness, each thrust deep and grinding and purposeful, as if he was trying to reach some place inside you that no one else had ever touched.
“You feel…” His voice broke on the words, his forehead dropping to press against yours, sweat-slicked skin sliding against skin. “You feel like everything I’ve been missing. Everything I was afraid to want. So beautiful. So fucking beautiful, and I-”
Your legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into the backs of his thighs, pulling him closer, deeper. The angle shifted, and suddenly he was hitting that spot inside you with every stroke, a place that made your vision blur and your breath catch and your cunt clench around him like you would never let go.
“There!” The word tore out of you, desperate, pleading. “Right there, Jack, please!”
“I’ve got you.” His mouth found yours, kissing you messy and deep, his tongue sweeping past your lips in a rhythm that matched his hips. “I’ve got you. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere…not ever again.”
His pace quickened.
The slow, deliberate strokes gave way to something harder, more urgent. His hips snapped forward with a wet slap of skin against skin, driving into you with a force that pushed you up the mattress.
The bed frame creaked beneath you, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet of his apartment, and you did not care, could not care, not when he was finally ravishing you the way you had dreamed about for months.
You ground your hips harder against him, matching his thrusts with a desperate hunger. Every stroke drove the breath from your lungs, every impact of his hips against yours sending shockwaves through your body that seemed to originate somewhere deeper than flesh, somewhere in the tangled mess of want and loneliness and hope you had carried for so long.
You could feel yourself clenching around him with each movement, as though your body had decided independently of your mind that it would never let him go.
“More…” The word tore from your throat, barely recognisable, stripped of coherence by the relentless rhythm he established. “Jack, please, more!”
His hands roamed your back, gripping sweat-slicked skin as he fucked you deeper and faster, his fingers digging into the curve of your waist, your hip, the soft flesh of your thigh where it wrapped around him with a desperation that mirrored his own.
You knew you would wear his fingerprints tomorrow, purple and blue blooming across your skin like strange flowers, and the thought made something primal and possessive surge in your chest, a territorial claim your body was staking on this man who had tried so hard to keep himself apart from you.
“Taking everything I give you.” His voice was shredded, guttural, barely human, the voice of a man who had held himself together through sheer force of will for too long and was now finally, irrevocably coming undone. “So fucking good! Taking it all...”
Your breath hitched. Moans spilt from your lips without permission, growing louder with each thrust, your voice raw with urgent, desperate need that had no patience for dignity or restraint.
The coil of tension in your belly wound tighter and tighter, a spring compressed to its breaking point, and you could feel the tremors beginning in your thighs, in your cunt, in every nerve ending he touched, your body preparing for something that felt less like release and more like annihilation.
“Say it again.” Jack’s demand came out rough, almost pained, his cock pounding relentlessly inside you with a desperation that spoke to all the nights he had spent convincing himself he was not worthy of this, of you, of the softness you had offered him so freely.
The headboard slammed against the wall with each thrust, a staccato rhythm that matched the frantic beating of your heart. “My name. Say it! Want to hear you fall apart with my name on your tongue.”
You were downright sobbing now, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes, overwhelmed by the intensity of sensation and emotion crashing through you like waves against rocks, each one eroding something you had built to protect yourself. “Jack, Jack, I’m, oh god…I’m going to…”
“Look at me.”
The command cut through the haze of pleasure, and your eyes flew open to meet his.
What you saw there nearly undid you; raw hunger and desperate tenderness and something that looked terrifyingly like love, all tangled together in the depths of his gaze like a knot that could not be unravelled, only accepted.
His face was flushed, his jaw clenched, sweat dripping from his temple onto your chest, and you thought: this is what he looks like when he stops running. He was beautiful. Broken and beautiful and yours, finally, impossibly yours, and the impossibility of it made your chest ache.
“Come for me.” His thumb found your clit, pressing in tight circles that made your vision go white at the edges, sparks of light dancing in your periphery like stars being born. “Come on my cock! Want to feel you…Need to feel you! Please.”
The plea was your undoing, and you crumbled.
Your orgasm crashed through you like a wave breaking against rocks, violent and absolute, and your cunt clamped down around his cock with a force that made him groan.
A low, guttural sound that seemed torn from somewhere deep in his chest, from the place where he had buried every want and every fear and every tender thing he dared not examine too closely.
Your back arched off the mattress, your heels digging into his thighs, your hands clawing at his shoulders as pleasure consumed you whole, burning away everything that was not him, not this, not the impossible reality of finally having what you had wanted for so long.
“Jack, fuck, Jack!”
He followed you over the edge two thrusts later.
His hips stuttered, lost their rhythm, and then he was burying himself as deep as he could go. His cock pulsing inside you, thick and hot, flooding you with his cum in waves that seemed to go on and on, as though his body was trying to give you everything it had, everything he had held back.
The sound he made was broken, almost wounded, a noise that belonged to an animal in extremis, and his whole body shuddered above you as he came harder than he had in years. Maybe harder than he had ever come in his life, though he would never have the courage to tell you that.
“Fuck.” His forehead dropped to your shoulder, his breath coming in ragged gasps against your sweat-damp skin, each exhale a small confession of exhaustion and release.
He could not utter any more words as his arms gave out.
His full weight settled onto you, heavy and warm and trembling, and you felt the last pulses of his orgasm twitch inside your oversensitive cunt, each one a small aftershock that made you gasp.
You were both shaking. Both gasping. Both just trying to remember how to breathe after drowning for so long, and finally finding air in each other.
His heart hammered against your chest, a frantic rhythm that matched your own, and you thought you could feel his fear in it, his disbelief that this had finally happened, that you were real and here and staying.
You could feel the dampness of his sweat mingling with yours, the scratch of his chest hair against your breasts, the way his cock softened inside you but made no move to withdraw, as though even now, even after, he could not bear to separate himself from you.
The only sounds were your breathing and the distant hum of the city through his thin walls. His hand found yours beside your head, fingers intertwining, squeezing tight, and you felt the slight tremor in his grip.
Jack’s breath slowed by degrees against your neck.
Each exhale arrived a little steadier than the last, a little deeper, as though he was learning, relearning, how to inhabit a body that had just spent itself so completely.
You felt the tension draining from his muscles like water from a sponge, the rigid line finally softening against your chest, and something in your own chest tightened at the realisation that this was what he looked like when he stopped bracing for impact.
Your free hand drifted up his back, tracing the ladder of his spine, feeling the ridges of old scars beneath your fingertips. He shivered at your touch but did not pull away, and you took that as permission, let your fingers wander across the geography of his wounds with the same tender curiosity you had shown in the shower, the same quiet reverence.
Neither of you spoke.
Words felt inadequate to the moment, too small and too clumsy to contain the enormity of what had just transpired between you. So you lay in silence instead, your bodies cooling gradually in the air, his cock a warm weight that kept his cum inside you.
“Stay,” he whispered again, the word muffled against your skin, and you realised he was not asking for tonight. He was asking for something larger, something that terrified him, something he did not have the vocabulary to articulate but could not stop himself from reaching for, the way a plant reaches towards light it cannot see but knows exists.
Your lips found his temple, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, soft, unhurried kisses pressed to sweat-damp skin, tasting of salt and warmth.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The promise settled into the space between you, fragile and fierce, and you felt him exhale against you.
His cock twitched inside you at that.
Half-hard still, or perhaps hardening again, and the sensation made your breath catch, made your cunt clench around him in response. A reflexive squeeze that sent a ripple of sensation through your oversensitive tissues.
He groaned, low and quiet, and you felt the moment his body began to respond to yours again. The slow, inevitable stirring of desire that had been denied for so long it had become a kind of starvation, a hunger that no single feeding could satisfy.
“Jack…” Your voice came out wrecked, breathless, and you felt his lips curve against your throat.
“Give me a minute.” The words were rough with exhaustion and something else, wonder, or disbelief that this was real, that you were real, that the woman he had spent months convincing himself he could not have was lying beneath him with his cum inside her and her hands on his scars and her voice in his ear promising to stay. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“You’re perfect.”
The words slipped out before you could stop them, and you felt him still above you, felt the way his breath caught and his fingers tightened on yours.
For a moment, you thought you had said the wrong thing, that you had broken whatever spell had allowed him to let you in, but then he exhaled, long and slow, and pressed his forehead to your shoulder, the weight of him settling more fully against you like surrender.
“You really are going to ruin me,” he murmured against your skin, and there was no fear in it, only resignation and a kind of awe. The wonder of a man discovering that ruin, in the right hands, might be a form of salvation. “You know that, don’t you? You’re going to ruin me for anyone else.”
Whatever answer you might have offered was interrupted by a sound so sudden, so loud, and so thoroughly at odds with the charged stillness of the room that for one startled second neither of you seemed capable of understanding where it had come from.
Your stomach growled.
Not delicately, and certainly not in any manner that could have been ignored or mistaken for the distant plumbing of the building, but with the prolonged and indignant complaint of an organ that had apparently endured enough romance and now demanded practical consideration.
The silence that followed lasted precisely long enough for humiliation to arrive.
Jack went still above you, his brows knitting as he looked at you with the grave concentration he might have given an unfamiliar monitor alarm.
Then his shoulders began to shake.
The laughter started small, a tremor in his chest that you felt more than heard, a vibration that travelled through where his body was still joined to yours.
Then it grew, building into a low, rough sound that was equal parts exhaustion and genuine amusement, and when he lifted his head to look at you, his eyes were bright with something that looked almost like joy, crinkling at the corners in a way that made something in your chest catch and hold.
“Hungry?” His voice was gravel-rough, stripped raw by everything that had passed between you, and the single word carried an intimacy that made your chest ache.
“I haven’t eaten since yesterday,” you admitted, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks. “Neither have you.”
“We should fix that.” He pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then your collarbone, each touch lingering like he could not quite bring himself to stop. “But first…”
He slowly, carefully withdrew from your body, a sensation that made you both inhale sharply, oversensitive and aching.
You felt the loss of him acutely, the sudden emptiness where he had been, and the slow trickle of his cum slipping from your cunt onto your inner thighs. You clenched around nothing, your body mourning the absence, and Jack must have seen something in your expression because he groaned low in his throat and pressed his forehead to yours.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he murmured. “I’m starving, and if you keep looking at me like that, I'm going to forget that you need food more than you need me inside you again.”
“Debatable,” you whispered, and his laugh was a huff of warm air against your lips.
Before he rose, he shifted down your body, pressing a kiss to your sternum, then your ribs, his breath warm on your sweat-damp skin.
Then he got up and disappeared briefly into the adjoining bathroom, and you heard water running, the soft sound of a cloth being wrung out. When he returned, he was carrying a warm, damp washcloth, and he settled between your legs with a care that made your breath catch.
The first touch of the warm towel against your inner thigh made you jerk slightly, oversensitive and exposed. Jack’s free hand came to rest on your hip, holding you steady, his thumb stroking a soothing pattern against your skin.
“Just let me take care of you,” he murmured.
He cleaned you slowly, thoroughly, the cloth dragging over your swollen cunt, catching the evidence of your shared pleasure where it had slipped from your body.
You watched his face as he worked: the furrow of concentration between his brows, the way his jaw tightened slightly when he saw you flinch from overstimulation, the softening of his expression when you relaxed into his touch.
He was hard again; you could see the length of his cock stirring against his thigh, but he made no move to address his own need, focused entirely on you.
“Jack,” you breathed, and he glanced up at you.
“Almost done,” he said, his voice low. “Just want to make sure you’re okay and that you won’t drip on my floor.”
You stared at him for a beat, caught between incredulity and the sudden, desperate urge to laugh.
“Ass,” you said, but there was no heat in it, your voice thick with affection.
His mouth twitched. “Accurate.” He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee. “But practical.”
The cloth moved lower, cleaning the slick from your thighs, the mess that had spread between your bodies. He took his time, his touch feather-light when it needed to be, firmer where you could take it. When he finished, he tossed the washcloth in the direction of the bathroom.
“All done”, he said, settling beside you again, his hand finding the curve of your waist.
He pulled you against him, your back to his chest, and you felt the steady thump of his heart against your shoulder blades. His arm draped over you, possessive and protective, and his nose pressed into the hair at the nape of your neck.
“I think I’d rather still be inside you…” His voice was rough, his lips brushing your skin.
“Food first,” you said, though you made no move to leave the circle of his arms.
“Food first,” he agreed.
You stayed like that for a bit, the quiet of the apartment wrapping around you, before Jack finally stirred, pressing one last kiss to your shoulder before rising again.
You watched him go, the long, lean line of his back, the scatter of scars that you now knew by touch if not by sight, the way his prosthetic leg forced a slight adjustment to his gait that he had long since stopped apologising for. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants from a drawer, pulled them on without underwear, the grey fabric hanging low on his hips, and turned to offer you his hand.
You took it.
Rose on shaky legs, your body still humming with the echo of pleasure. He found you a t-shirt, soft, worn, smelling faintly of laundry detergent and something that was just him, and watched you pull it on with an expression that made your stomach flutter for reasons that had nothing to do with hunger for food.
“Come on,” he said again, and led you towards the kitchen, his fingers laced with yours.
The contents of Jack Abbot’s kitchen proved, upon inspection, to be deeply alarming.
You had entered it expecting something sparse but ordinary, perhaps a nearly empty refrigerator, a neglected loaf of bread, and the sort of condiment collection accumulated by a man who considered black coffee an adequate substitute for breakfast.
Instead, when you opened the first cabinet, you found yourself confronted by several rows of canned soup arranged with a precision that suggested military training or an impending natural disaster.
“Oh, my God.”
Jack glanced over with the wary attention of a man who had already survived one exhausting shift and suspected his kitchen might now be preparing an ambush of its own.
“What?”
You continued staring into the cabinet.
The overhead light cast a warm glow over the polished metal tops of the cans. Tomato. Chicken noodle. Vegetable beef. Cream of mushroom. The organisation was so meticulous that it felt less like opening a pantry and more like discovering evidence.
“Jack.”
“Hm.”
“There are twenty-four cans of soup in here.”
“Twenty-five.”
You turned towards him slowly.
The correction had come without hesitation, offered in the same tone with which he might have amended a dosage or pointed out a missed fracture on an X-ray, and Jack appeared entirely unaware that this made the situation considerably worse.
“You corrected me.”
“You undercounted.”
“I was off by one.”
“You were still wrong.”
You looked from him to the cabinet and back again, trying to reconcile the man who could command a trauma bay with the man who apparently maintained an emergency reserve of condensed soup large enough to feed a small and deeply unhappy army.
“Why do you own twenty-five cans of soup?”
Jack looked genuinely puzzled by the question.
“Because sometimes I don’t want to cook.”
“Obviously you don’t cook at all.”
“I can cook.”
“When was the last time you cooked?”
The answer did not come. Jack’s eyes shifted briefly towards the counter.
The kitchen itself was unexpectedly clean. Not sterile, exactly, but orderly in the way the rest of his apartment had been. The sink was empty except for a single coffee mug. A dish towel had been folded with unnecessary precision beside the drying rack. There were no dirty pans, no evidence of recent culinary ambition.
His mouth tightened with the subtle defensiveness of a man who had just realised that the truth might not support his argument.
“Jack.”
“Does heating soup count?”
“No.”
“It should.”
“It absolutely should not.”
“It involves heat.”
“So does a house fire. That doesn’t make it dinner.”
Jack folded his arms across his bare chest and gave you a long, dry look that might have unsettled a resident into immediate silence.
Here, in the soft grey light filtering through the kitchen windows as dawn slowly brightened the city outside, it only emphasised how tired and faintly amused he was.
His hair had dried messily, silver-dark strands curling slightly at his temples. There were shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of sleep ever seemed to erase completely. The broad line of his shoulders looked less imposing without hospital scrubs and authority wrapped around them.
You turned back to the cabinets before the warmth gathering in your chest could become too obvious and opened the next one.
Then you froze.
“Jack.”
There was a pause behind you. The kind that suggested he was beginning to understand that allowing you unrestricted access to his cupboards had been a serious tactical error.
“What now?”
“You have enough coffee in here to survive the apocalypse.”
Jack frowned, apparently offended less by the accusation than by the implication that the quantity might be excessive.
“It's practical.”
“There are six bags.”
“They were on sale.”
“There are three different coffee makers.”
“They serve different purposes.”
You looked from the automatic machine to the French press and then to the small stovetop moka pot arranged beside them.
Each had been cleaned and returned to its designated place. Each sat with the deliberate seriousness of surgical equipment.
“You sound like an addict.”
Jack drew himself up slightly.
“I'm a physician.”
“That is not a denial.”
“It is absolutely a denial.”
“Jack.”
His expression remained grave for another second. Then something at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
“It’s a partial denial.”
You laughed and shook your head, because the whole situation had become so absurdly domestic.
Only hours earlier there had been blood, shouting, alarms, the terrible brightness of the Pitt and the violence of wanting something neither of you believed you were allowed to have; now you were standing barefoot in Jack Abbot’s kitchen, wearing one of his old shirts and conducting an inquiry into his caffeine dependence while the man himself defended his coffee equipment with the solemnity of an attending presenting a difficult case.
Jack did not say anything at first.
He simply looked at you.
His gaze moved over the messy fall of your hair, the bare feet planted against his kitchen floor, the hem of his shirt resting against your thighs, and the way you stood among his groceries as though the room had not been arranged for years around the expectation of solitude.
There was no hesitation in your posture, no careful awareness that you were a visitor in a life built for one person; you had opened his cupboards, mocked his soup, insulted his coffee habits, and somehow made the quiet space feel less invaded than inhabited.
The sight touched him with a force he had not prepared for.
He had imagined you in his bed, shamefully and often. He had imagined your mouth, your hands, your body close to his in the dark, because desire was simple enough to contain when it remained physical.
He had not imagined this. He had not imagined you laughing in his kitchen with your hair untidy and his shirt on your body, treating the peculiar little systems of his solitary life as things to tease rather than reasons to leave.
That was far more dangerous.
“What?” you asked when his silence began to feel less amused and more intent.
“You fit in here.”
The humour caught abruptly in your throat.
You looked around again, though now the kitchen seemed altered by the sentence: the coffee stacked, the twenty-five cans of soup, the absurd number of crackers gathered on one shelf, the single bowl left drying beside the sink, the tired man leaning against the counter and watching you as if he had never quite expected to see another person laughing in this room.
“This?” you asked softly, gesturing towards the cupboard with the soup still in your hand. “My God, Jack. Your standards are painfully low.”
A surprised laugh escaped him, rough and brief, but it faded almost as quickly as it had arrived, leaving something quieter behind.
“My life, I mean,” he said.
The words were not dramatic, nor rehearsed, nor spoken with any obvious intention of becoming a confession. They were simple, almost painfully so, and because of that simplicity, they seemed to settle into the kitchen with more weight than anything grander could have carried.
You looked at him then, really looked, at the uncertainty he had never entirely learned to hide from you, at the hope that kept appearing in him despite his refusal to trust it, at the little anticipatory flinch with which he seemed to wait for you to discover that the ordinary realities of his life were less desirable than the man you had imagined beneath hospital lights.
Then you crossed the kitchen.
Jack watched you approach with the wary stillness of someone who did not yet know whether he was about to be kissed or gently informed that canned soup constituted grounds for intervention. You took the can from his hand, set it down on the counter with quiet finality, and looked up at him.
“We’re ordering pizza.”
His gaze shifted towards the abandoned soup and then returned to you.
“Can we get garlic knots?”
You stared at him.
“You have opinions about garlic knots?”
“I contain multitudes.”
A laugh burst out of you before you could stop it, and Jack smiled then, not one of the small, almost-smiles he had been allowing you in careful fragments for weeks, but a real one, crooked and tired and warm enough to transform his whole face.
It was beautiful.
Not because it made him younger, exactly, but because it made age irrelevant for a moment, revealing something open beneath the exhaustion, something almost shy in its happiness and all the more moving because he seemed unaware of how clearly you could see it.
His hand lifted without thought.
His fingers tucked a damp strand of hair behind your ear, the backs of his knuckles grazing your temple before his palm settled briefly against the side of your face. The motion was automatic, tender, and so domestic that it touched you somewhere deeper than all the desperate kissing had.
He squeezed your hand, then reached towards the counter for his phone without fully releasing you, as though even the practical business of ordering food did not quite justify losing contact now that he had finally been allowed it.
“What do you want on it?” Jack asked, and although the question was ordinary enough, his voice was still rough from exhaustion and kissing, scraped down to a lower register that made even a discussion of pizza toppings travel along your spine like a physical touch.
You leaned against the counter beside him, close enough that your bare thigh brushed the soft fabric of his sweatpants, and although the contact could easily have been mistaken for an accident in the narrow kitchen, neither of you believed that it was.
“Pepperoni,” you said, watching the tired concentration of his profile as he scrolled through the options, the grey in his hair catching the pale kitchen light. “Mushrooms. Extra cheese.”
Jack made a low, thoughtful sound, and his thumb hovered over the screen as though the information deserved more consideration than a pizza order reasonably required.
“Pepperoni and mushrooms,” he repeated, glancing at you from the corner of his eye. “That’s your usual?”
“It’s classic,” you defended, and the faint twitch at one corner of his mouth told you that he had heard the seriousness with which you offered the word and intended to make use of it.
“Classic,” he echoed, not mockingly, but with the careful attention of a man filing the detail somewhere he expected to need it again. “What else?”
You looked at him. “What do you mean, what else?”
“What’s the thing you never order because you assume no one else wants it?”
The question was asked lightly enough, but Jack’s gaze had already left the phone, and the moment he turned fully towards you, the kitchen seemed to narrow beneath the force of his attention. You knew that look. You had seen him direct it towards scans, frightened patients, residents on the verge of making the wrong decision, every fragment of evidence gathered and weighed until the truth had nowhere left to hide.
Now, apparently, he had turned that same formidable concentration towards the private matter of what you wanted on a pizza.
You blinked at him. “How do you know there’s a thing?”
“Because there’s always a thing.”
His answer came with such quiet certainty that you almost laughed, but the intensity of his gaze held you still.
“Everyone has something they want and don’t ask for because they’ve already decided it will inconvenience someone else,” he continued, his voice losing some of its teasing roughness and becoming something more thoughtful, more revealing. “So what’s yours?”
The question felt larger than the open ordering app in his hand.
Perhaps Jack knew that. Perhaps he did not. He had spent so much of his life asking people what hurt, what happened, what they needed, while making himself nearly impossible to question in return, that he may not have understood how intimate it sounded when he asked what you secretly wanted and then waited as though the answer mattered.
“Pineapple,” you admitted at last, heat rising unexpectedly into your cheeks. “But people judge.”
Something flickered across his face, warm and almost wondering, as if he had expected a more complicated confession and found himself unexpectedly moved by the harmlessness of this one.
“Pineapple,” he repeated. “You want pineapple on your pizza.”
“If you’re going to judge…”
“I’m not judging.”
He turned fully towards you then, his phone all but forgotten in one hand while the other came to rest on the counter beside your hip. The posture enclosed you without trapping you, his broad body close enough that the warmth of him moved into your side, his face near enough for you to see the lingering fatigue beneath his eyes and the softer thing that had begun to replace it.
“I’m cataloguing.”
“Cataloguing,” you repeated.
“Learning you.”
His voice dropped on the words, going low and rough enough that your stomach tightened for reasons that had very little to do with hunger. His thumb brushed the edge of your hip in a contact so slight it might have been dismissed if either of you were still interested in pretending.
“I’ve spent months trying not to pay attention to what you like,” he said, and the confession came more easily now than it once would have, though you could still see the momentary strain in his jaw whenever honesty carried him farther than he had intended.
“How you take your coffee. Which patients make you go quiet afterwards. What makes you laugh when you’re too tired to guard it. The way you touch people when you’re trying to make them feel safe.”
His eyes held yours.
“And the way you kept touching me.”
The words were not accusatory. If anything, they carried a weary kind of wonder, as though he still could not quite believe that all those small gestures had belonged to him in any meaningful sense.
“Now,” he continued, his thumb moving once more against your hip, “I get to stop pretending I don’t want to know.”
Your throat tightened.
“Jack.”
“Half pineapple,” he said, turning back towards his phone before the emotion in his face could become too visible, although his body remained close to yours and his free hand did not leave the counter beside your hip. “Half pepperoni and mushrooms, extra cheese over the whole thing.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
The answer came immediately, and he looked at you again, the simple certainty of it more affecting than any grand declaration could have been.
“I want to.”
He tapped through the order with the same quick, efficient movements he used when the world demanded decisiveness from him, though there was nothing clinical in the way his shoulder remained pressed near yours.
“I want to know what you like,” he said, quieter now. “Not what you’ll settle for because it’s easier, not what you think won’t be too much trouble, but what you actually want.”
His jaw worked once, and the next admission seemed to catch against something old inside him.
“I want to do this right.”
The words settled heavily between you, because neither of you mistook them for a statement about pizza.
Jack looked down at the screen as though it had suddenly become safer than your face. The delivery estimate glowed there in plain white numbers: forty-five minutes.
Then he set the phone down and turned to you fully, his hands coming to rest on your hips, his thumbs tracing slow circles against the soft cotton of his borrowed t-shirt. You could feel the heat of his palms through the fabric, the pressure of his fingers, and your body responded with a rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the apartment's temperature.
“Forty-five minutes,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your mouth.
“That’s a long time,” you said, your voice coming out breathier than intended.
“It is.” He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing yours, and you felt the hard length of his dick pressing against the thin fabric of his sweatpants. Still half-hard, still wanting, and the knowledge of it sent a pulse of heat between your thighs. “Whatever will we do with ourselves?”
His mouth found the curve of your neck before you could answer, his lips warm and slightly chapped, dragging a path from your shoulder to the sensitive spot just below your ear. You shivered, your hands coming up to rest against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath your palms.
“Jack,” you breathed, and he hummed against your skin.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he said, his voice low, each word a vibration against your throat. “About you. In my apartment. In my clothes,” His teeth grazed your pulse point, and your knees threatened to buckle. “About all the things I want to do to you when I don't have to worry about anyone walking in.”
His hands slid under the hem of the t-shirt, his calloused palms dragging up your sides, leaving trails of fire in their wake. You gasped, your head falling back, giving him more access to your throat.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I really was serious before.”
“About me ruining you?”
His hand came up to rest on your cheek.
“No.”
His thumb brushed once beneath your eye, and the smile faded from his face without taking the warmth with it.
“About not knowing what to do with someone staying.”
Something in your chest ached at the honesty of it, at the way he said staying as though it were not merely a matter of remaining through breakfast but an unfamiliar condition requiring instruction, something he had learned not to expect because expectation had so often proved cruel.
You covered his hand with yours.
“Then maybe,” you whispered, “we start with pizza before we both starve. And then we go back to that nice bed of yours, and when we wake up? We’ll get you some actual groceries.”
Jack looked at you for a long moment, his expression caught between disbelief and amusement and the deeper, more frightened tenderness that appeared whenever you offered him something ordinary enough to resemble a future.
“Actual groceries,” he repeated, as though the phrase itself were vaguely threatening.
“Yes, Jack. Vegetables. Fruit. Food that doesn’t remain edible through several presidential administrations.”
The corner of his mouth moved, but his eyes did not leave yours, and beneath the humour, you could feel him still considering the shape of what you had said: pizza, sleep, waking up together, groceries afterwards, a sequence of small domestic events joined into something that extended beyond the next hour.
“And after the groceries?” he asked.
The question was light in tone and anything but light beneath it.
You looked at him more carefully then, at the tension returning around his mouth, at the way his thumb had gone still beneath your eye, at the guarded hope he had never learned to hide quickly enough from you. He was asking about more than errands. You both knew it.
“After the groceries,” you said slowly, “I suppose we should talk about what this is.”
Jack’s expression changed at once, not with alarm exactly, though alarm was there, but with the wary concentration of a man bracing for a difficult diagnosis.
“Do we need to?”
You blinked. “Need to?”
“I mean…” He paused and looked away for half a second, visibly irritated by the fact that language had once again become less cooperative than medicine. “Is there something to decide?”
The simplicity of the question startled you.
Jack’s gaze returned to yours, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and rough, but there was no evasion left in it now.
“I want this.”
His hand shifted from your cheek to the side of your neck, fingers settling there with quiet certainty.
“You,” he continued. “I want you. Not only this morning, not only because we’re exhausted and half-delirious and apparently incapable of feeding ourselves properly. I want the difficult version too. The inconvenient one. The one where we have to work out what this looks like tomorrow and the next night and every day after that.”
Your throat tightened.
“As long as you’ll have me,” he said, and although the words were offered steadily, you felt the fear beneath them, the terrible vulnerability of a man who had survived by expecting less and was now asking for more than he knew how to hold.
You searched his face.
“How long is that supposed to be?”
Jack’s mouth pulled faintly at one corner, though his eyes had gone very still.
“I don’t know,” he said, then gave a small, helpless exhale. “Forever seems excessive.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“Excessive?”
“Statistically ambitious.”
“Jack.”
He looked at you, and the humour thinned into tenderness.
“Forever,” he said more quietly, testing the word as though it belonged to a language he had once known and forgotten. “If you want that.”
The tenderness of it nearly undid you, not because the word was grand, but because Jack said it without grandeur, without promises polished into unreality, simply as a man who had already been imagining your coffee beside his, your laughter in his kitchen, your hand reaching automatically for him in crowded hallways and now found himself unable to pretend he wanted any ending to it.
You smiled through the ache in your chest.
“Yeah no,” you whispered. “That sounds reasonable.”
Jack looked at you for a long moment, his expression caught between disbelief and amusement and the deeper, more frightened tenderness that appeared whenever you offered him something ordinary enough to resemble a future.
“Reasonable,” he repeated. “Forever is reasonable, but pineapple on pizza is apparently controversial.”
“Those are completely separate ethical questions.”
“Of course they are.”
Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead.
It was warm and lingering, filled not with the frantic hunger that had undone both of you earlier, but with something quieter and somehow more frightening: the careful beginnings of belief.
His mouth rested against your skin as though he were allowing himself, for one breath, to imagine that you might mean it, that staying could become more than a word and forever might be assembled not out of dramatic declarations but out of pizza, sleep, grocery lists, and the repeated astonishment of waking to find you had not gone.
When he lifted his head, his hand remained against your neck.
“So,” he said, the roughness in his voice softened now by something almost like peace, “pepperoni, mushrooms, pineapple, and extra cheese?”
“Half pineapple.”
“Right. I’m still learning.”
“You have forever.”
Jack looked at you then, and the expression that crossed his face was so open, so disbelievingly tender, that for once he did not attempt to hide it behind humour.
NOTES:Well, here it is, chapter 2 FINALLY - the bad news? I had to split it up because it's almost 30k. I got carried away so badly. So there'll be another chapter with all the smut then. At least it's almost done, and I just gotta prove read it! ALSO: The new content we got the past few days were scrumdiddlyumptious.
SUMMARY: Doctor Jack Abbot had survived grief, war and the daily violence of the Pitt by learning how to keep himself separate from the things he wanted. Then you transferred to nights with your careless hands and your impossible warmth, touching him like it meant nothing while looking at him like it might. He told himself that a man like him had no business wanting someone like you. But restraint is only useful until it breaks.
OR: When Jack’s carefully held control slips, you know you’re in for a ride.
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦ chapter 1 ✦ chapter 3 ✦
The next few hours before the shift ended passed in a blur as the Pitt just opened its mouth and swallowed you both again.
The hospital and its chaos did not stop. It didn’t care that Jack’s mouth had been on yours and that you could still feel the shape of his hand at your waist, the stubble beneath your palm. And yet under everything, the unbreakable awareness of each other remained.
You caught Jack constantly looking at you. Not the way he had before, with restraint and shame painted across his features, but rather hungry now. Hungry in a way that made your hands unsteady as you taped an IV line.
And you looked for him as well, and you always found him already watching, not darting away anymore. And that was the thing that really undid you.
Jack Abbot, who had spent weeks retreating with the grim dignity of a man denying himself what he wanted, did not look away anymore.
His eyes moved over your face with a slowness that felt almost like touch, and even from several feet away, you could see the tension held in his jaw, the exhaustion in the slope of his shoulders, the dark, unmistakable wanting he no longer seemed capable of disguising completely.
He looked like a man still at war with himself, but the war had changed shape. Before, he had fought desire because desire was forbidden. Now he fought it because the world was full of witnesses and patients and consequences, and because the first taste of being allowed had made restraint not easier, but almost unbearable.
And when you finally stepped out the sliding doors with your bag heavy on your shoulder, dawn had begun to wash the street in grey.
Jack was waiting beside his truck, and you spotted him immediately. He stood by the driver’s side door with one hand shoved deep into the pocket of his jacket, and the other braced absently against the truck, fingers resting on the metal as if he needed something solid nearby.
His shoulders were bowed slightly under fatigue, broad even under the worn olive canvas jacket he had pulled on over his scrubs, the fabric darkened in places by the wet air and creased in that practical way. It sat heavy across his shoulders, the collar turned up a little against the morning chill. Beneath it, you could see the dark edge of his shirt at his throat.
A backpack hung from one shoulder, the strap cutting diagonally across him, practical and battered and strangely intimate in the way ordinary objects became intimate when they belonged to someone you wanted too much. It made him look less like the immovable attending who commanded trauma bays and more like a man with keys in his pocket, a change of clothes somewhere in a bag, a body that got tired, a life that existed beyond fluorescent light.
The sight of it did something to you that the scrubs never quite had.
When he saw you approaching, Jack straightened at once and then glanced down once, briefly, as if gathering himself from somewhere near his boots. Then he exhaled through his nose and looked back at you.
“Hi.”
It was downright sweet. The memory of him kissing you breathless earlier collided violently with the almost shy roughness of his voice now, looking at you like he had survived the night only to be undone by the fact that you had actually come.
You smiled at him. “Hi yourself.”
His hand tightened once around the strap of his backpack, the veins standing faintly along the back of it, and the small, controlled movement sent a vivid memory through you of those same hands at your waist, your face, your arm; large, careful hands that had trembled not because he was uncertain of wanting you, but because he was terrified of wanting you too much.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
His voice was low, roughened by lack of sleep and everything still unsaid between you.
“Yes,” you said.
Jack held your gaze for one long second.
Then he nodded, once, as though accepting an order he had no intention of disobeying, and opened the passenger door for you with a care so ordinary it nearly broke your heart.
You slid into the seat with your bag at your feet, and Jack waited before you were fully settled before closing the door so it didn’t catch your coat or the strap of your bag.
Then he closed it carefully, not with the distracted slam of a man impatient to leave, but with a controlled gentleness that seemed part habit and part hesitation, as though some portion of him still could not quite believe you were inside his truck, after everything that had happened.
You watched him through the windshield as he walked around to the driver’s side. He opened the door, lifted the backpack from his shoulder and set it behind the seat before climbing in beside you and closing the door.
The radio played quietly as he drove off. One hand stayed on the wheel, tendons visible beneath the skin each time his fingers adjusted their grip. The other rested tense and motionless beside the gearshift.
Jack tried to appear relaxed, but he felt you beside him with an intensity that bordered on pain. His body remembered you too vividly now.
You looked at his hand and wondered what would happen if you touched it. And so lightly with enough care that he could pull away if he needed to, you brushed your fingers against the back of his.
He turned his fingers beneath yours, his palm opened, letting your slip against his until your hand settled into his. Then he gently closed his large hand around yours. His thumb moved once over the side of your hand and then stopped.
You saw how the tension in his shoulders seemed to drop as though the simple permission of holding your hand had grounded him. And you realised he had been afraid. Not of wanting you or touching you, but rather that once the heat had passed, you might regret him.
That you might sit beside him in his truck and discover that he wasn’t worth it.
_____
Jack did not let go of your hand until he really had to.
He did not let go when he turned into the parking lot beneath his building, though the movement required him to steer one-handed with more care than was strictly convenient. He did not let go when the truck came to a stop, or when the engine clicked itself into silence, or when the radio died mid-sentence and left the two of you sitting in a quiet so complete it felt almost deliberate.
His hand remained around yours.
He squeezed it once before muttering, “You don’t have to…”
You turned towards him, but he was not looking at you, eyes fixed on the windshield. He was offering you escape with the sincerity of a man who believed that one day you’d be grateful for it. It was clear he wanted you to be free to leave if that was what you wanted, even though he looked as though the thought of you actually leaving might undo something in him.
Instead of asking him why he thought that or doing anything like that, you just squeezed his hand back.
“I know,” you said. “I want to be here.”
The words settled between you with dangerous gentleness.
They were not dramatic. They did not attempt to solve anything. They did not promise that the future would be simple, or that the hospital would not exist tomorrow, or that grief and age and work and all the locked rooms inside Jack would not still be waiting somewhere beyond the door.
But they answered the only question he was really asking.
Jack closed his eyes briefly, as though the relief of them hurt.
Not because he doubted you, exactly, but because belief itself seemed to strike him as dangerous. He had spent so long bracing for refusal, for regret, for the moment when wanting would turn into evidence against him, that acceptance entered him less like comfort than like something bright pressed against a bruise.
When he opened his eyes again, the restraint was still there. But something beneath it had shifted.
“All right,” he said.
Two words, quiet and rough and insufficient for the feeling that moved through his face.
Then, after another second, Jack seemed to remember the mechanics of the world and released your hand to get out of the car. You watched him come around again and open the passenger door for you.
The moment you stepped down from the truck, he took your hand again and led you to his apartment building.
You made your way to the elevator, and he muttered an apology before you even stepped inside it.
“It sticks sometimes.”
You looked at the narrow metal doors and smiled despite the strange awareness that you had crossed some threshold long before entering the building.
“Sounds dangerous.”
The door closed, and Jack remained beside you in the cramped space, broad and warm and safe. Your hand was still in his; his thumb rested against the side of your hand without moving, just being present. And when the elevator jolted once, his fingers tightened around yours automatically as if telling you this was normal.
By the time you finally reached the door of his apartment, he had to let go of you. The absence was immediate, and you hated that you noticed.
Jack fumbled with the keys, and it was such a small thing that you nearly smiled, because it was ordinary and human. That Dr. Jack Abbot, who never lost his cool and could adapt to any situation so quickly, had to try twice before the key found the lock.
“Don’t,” he said without looking at you.
You blinked innocently, now unable to suppress the soft smile, “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
With that, he opened the door.
His apartment looked a lot like he was. It wasn’t unlived-in but rather carefully lived-in, as though only certain parts of existence had been permitted permanent residence there while others had been packed away, locked up, or deemed too dangerous to leave in the open.
The couch looked comfortable rather than stylish, dark and broad, and slightly worn at the corners in a way that suggested use rather than decoration. Medical journals occupied most available surfaces: stacked on the coffee table, folded open on the arm of a chair, half-buried beneath a pair of reading glasses and a mug that had not quite made it to the sink.
A heavy wool blanket had been folded with military precision over the armrest, its edges so exact that you could picture Jack doing it absently, perhaps late at night, perhaps unable to sleep, imposing order on the one small thing willing to obey him.
Near the door, a pair of boots sat neatly side by side. His backpack landed on a chair with more care than ceremony, practical and battered and still slightly damp at the seams. A dark jacket hung from a hook. There were keys in a shallow dish, a stack of mail opened with surgical neatness, a book turned facedown on a side table, and beside it another coffee cup, this one empty, as though caffeine had become less a habit than a structural support.
The place smelled faintly of coffee and laundry detergent and something warmer underneath that belonged only to him.
Jack shut the door behind you and immediately looked faintly uncomfortable.
“It’s not -,” he started, then stopped.
“What?”
He rubbed one hand at the back of his neck, fingers disappearing into the dark-silver curls there, the gesture so awkwardly revealing that you had to fight the urge to soften towards him too obviously.
“It’s not exactly impressive.”
The confession's vulnerability startled you. Not because the words themselves were dramatic, but because of the quiet defensiveness beneath them, the faint flinch tucked into the sentence before you even had the chance to judge anything.
It was like he had already entered the room ahead of you in his mind, already looked at the worn couch, the journals, the bare walls. The evidence of a life stripped down to use and endurance.
You looked around again deliberately. The apartment didn’t feel unimpressive. It felt lonely, and somehow that was worse. It was not empty, not neglected or sad in any obvious way. There was warmth and order, traces of an ordinary life. But nothing seemed chosen purely for joy.
“I like it,” you said as you stepped further inside.
He looked sceptical but didn’t comment on it anymore.
You were still smiling when your gaze caught on the side of his head.
“There is still blood in your hair.”
Jack lifted a hand automatically, fingers brushing through the curls near his temple, where the hair had dried slightly stiff. “Probably not mine.”
“That… is not as comforting as you think.”
“No?”
“No.”
He smiled, a tiny one that still crinkled his eyes in a handsome way, and he looked down at your hands. Somehow, after opening the door and the nervousness, his hand had found yours again. His thumb moved across your knuckles.
“You should sit,” he said, though his voice was softer now. “You’ve been on your feet all night.”
“So have you.”
With that, you stepped closer and reached up, brushing your fingers lightly through the blood-matted section of hair. Jack went still once again, but his eyes remained on you. Something in them altered, darkened and softened now.
It was thicker than you expected, damp still in places from rain and sweat, grey threaded through the darker curls, coarse enough to catch lightly at your fingertips. The dried blood had stiffened a few strands near his temple, and when you touched it, his jaw tightened as though your gentleness had found a bruise nowhere near his skin.
“It’s dried,” you murmured.
“I know.”
“You’ll have to wash it out.”
His eyes lowered briefly to your mouth.
“I know that too.”
The silence that followed was not empty.
You swallowed, your fingers still resting lightly in his hair, close enough now to smell the rain drying out of his jacket, the faint metallic trace of blood, the soap at his skin, the coffee on his breath.
“I could help.”
The words came out softer than you meant them to. Jack’s hand tightened around yours. For one second, he looked almost pained by the offer, as though tenderness remained the one thing his body did not know how to withstand.
Then, because he was still Jack, and because surrender apparently required one last attempt at dry humour, he said, “Is this part of the nursing care package?”
You smiled, relieved by the invitation to breathe.
“Only for difficult attendings.”
“I’m difficult?”
“Famously.”
There it was again, that small, almost-smile, rare enough that it felt like something given rather than merely shown. Then the smile faded, leaving something rawer beneath it, the spirit receding to reveal the shyness it had been trying to cover.
“You don’t have to,” he said. Again.
You touched his cheek with your free hand.
The stubble was rough beneath your palm, his skin warm, the tension in his jaw still held so tightly it made your chest ache. His eyes searched your face, and you understood then that he was not only asking about the blood in his hair. Not really.
He was asking whether you still wanted to be here now that the door was closed, now that he had brought you into the quiet place where his life looked smaller and lonelier than the man he was at work, now that there was no shift to blame and no emergency to interrupt.
“I know.”
Jack closed his eyes briefly, just long enough for your thumb to feel the small movement of his breath against your palm, the almost imperceptible shift of his face as he let himself be touched and did not turn away from it.
When he opened them again, the shyness was still there.
“Bathroom’s this way,” he said.
The bathroom was larger than you expected.
Not luxurious, or so but rather functional. Almost thoughtfully arranged and shaped with the precision of a room that had been made to serve a body that did not always forgive carelessness.
The shower took up most of the far wall, broad and level with the floor, its glass door pushed back, the tiles clean and pale beneath the light. A narrow bench had been built into one side beneath the spray, just like Jack must have chosen it after learning exactly when standing became too much. The floor tiles had indents to prevent slipping and water collection. Beside the toilet, a low shelf was positioned at just the right height to brace against.
“You know, you can still change your mind,” he said, voice careful.
You stared at him. “Are you planning on asking me that every five minutes?”
“Maybe.”
The corner of your mouth twitched, and his expression softened in response. But he still looked unsure what to do with his hands, which was absurd and cute, because you had seen those hands save a patient and hold your face while kissing you like his life depended on it.
Then, without any words, he reached for the hem of his shirt, suddenly remembering why you were there. The fabric lifted slowly over his stomach, then his chest, dragging briefly over the breath of his shoulder before he pulled it free.
For a second, your mind was void of all thoughts as you looked at him.
He was broad through the shoulders and chest, solid in a way that looked earned rather than sculpted, muscle shaped by endurance and necessity more than vanity. There was strength in him, yes, obvious in the heavy line of his arms and the firm slope of his chest, in the way his body seemed built to carry weight whether it wanted to or not.
His skin was flushed faintly from the long shift and the warmth of the room, freckled in places across his shoulders and upper arms, scattered marks catching your attention precisely because they made him look so human. Your fingers itched to trace the constellation of them.
Old scars lay pale against his skin, some fine and narrow, others less neat, quiet evidence of injuries that had healed without disappearing.
Jack was beautiful in a way that startled you with its immediacy.
He tossed the shirt onto the counter beside the sink. When his hand settled briefly at the waistband of his pants, it stopped there, thinking.
“You should know,” he said, voice quieter now, “it’s not exactly graceful.”
You frowned faintly. “What isn’t?”
A dry little exhale escaped him.
“This.”
His hand gestured vaguely downwards, towards himself, towards everything he did not quite know how to say without making it sound smaller first.
Your hands found his chest again automatically. The skin was warm beneath your palms, the rhythm of his heart steady and the faint rasp of hair under your fingers as you spread them out.
Jack looked down at your hands like he still could not quite believe they kept returning to him voluntarily.
“You keep doing that,” he said quietly.
“Doing what?”
“Touching me like it’s nothing.”
It was wonder, fear disguised as observation. The bewilderment of a man who had spent too long treating his body as a thing to be managed, endured, and apologised for when necessary, and who now could not understand why your hands came to him without reluctance.
“It’s not nothing.”
Jack’s eyes lifted back to yours at once. Whatever he saw there made him look away almost immediately afterwards. His throat moved once.
Then, slowly, he unbuttoned his scrub pants.
You watched carefully now, not because you were judging, but because he was still waiting for judgment somewhere beneath all that practised composure, and some instinct in you wanted him to see that your gaze would not become cruel simply because he had allowed you closer.
Then, with a breath that seemed to require enormous effort, he pushed the scrub pants down over his hips and stepped out of them.
He stood in tight black boxer shorts, the fabric clinging to thick thighs that carried him through long shifts and longer nights.
The prosthetic came into view with familiar practicality.
Black, sleek, functional, incorporated into him not as spectacle but as part of the architecture of how he moved through the world. It did not make him less himself.
His body, all of it, seemed suddenly more beautiful for being real: scarred and freckled, broad and tired, powerful and adapted, marked by loss and still insistently alive.
Still, Jack’s shoulders remained slightly tense. Not because he thought you would recoil, or at least not entirely. Because he cared now whether you did.
The realisation hurt. So you stepped closer again, and he looked up just as your fingers brushed lightly along the scruff on his jaw.
“You okay?” you asked softly.
A complicated expression crossed his face then. Too tired to hide everything. Too honest, suddenly not to try.
“Working on it,” he admitted.
You smiled faintly.
“That bad?”
“You’re standing in my bathroom looking at me like that.” His mouth curved slightly, weary and helpless all at once. “So yes. Little bit.”
Warmth spread through you instantly.
“You know,” you murmured, “for someone who spent weeks pretending not to like me, you’re very bad at this.”
Jack made a low sound beneath his breath.
“I was never pretending not to like you.”
“No?”
“No.” His eyes dropped briefly to your mouth before lifting again. “That was very much the problem.”
Your hands slid from his cheek to his waist.
Jack inhaled quietly through his nose, every muscle in him tightening once beneath your touch before easing again by degrees. His skin was warm under your fingers, the firm line of him yielding not in weakness but in trust, and when your thumbs brushed the faint scars and freckles near his sides, his eyes closed for half a second as though the tenderness were more difficult to withstand than hunger.
“You’re overdressed,” he murmured.
You huffed a laugh.
“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Abbot?”
“I’m trying to.”
“You look deeply distressed about it.”
“I am deeply distressed about it.”
That finally pulled real laughter from you. The sound visibly unravelled him.
It moved through his face the way your touch moved through his body, loosening something he seemed to have kept braced for years. For a moment, he only looked at you, shirtless and tired and scarred beneath the bathroom light, his grey-threaded hair still marked with someone else’s blood, his mouth softened by the effort of not smiling too much, his eyes dark with wanting and fear and a tenderness so exposed it made your breath catch.
You reached for the hem of your own scrub top then, slower suddenly beneath the weight of his attention. Jack watched you with startling stillness, his gaze fixed on your hands as you pulled the fabric upwards, exposing first your stomach, then the curve of your ribs, then the shirt cleared your head and dropped beside his on the counter.
Jack exhaled softly, “Jesus.”
“What?”
He shook his head once, eyes still fixed on you. “Nothing.”
It was very obviously nothing. His gaze travelled across your collarbones, the swell of your breasts beneath the cotton of your bra, the soft plane of your stomach. He looked at you the way a man looks at water after days in the desert with desperate, disbelieving thirst.
You reached for your scrub pants next, pushing them down over your hips, stepping out of them until you stood in just your bra and panties. Simple cotton, nothing special, the kind of practical undergarments that made sense for a twelve-hour shift. But the way Jack looked at you made you feel like you were wearing silk and lace.
You stepped closer until your bodies nearly touched again. The heat of his skin radiated towards you, warming the small space between you. His chest rose and fell with unsteady breaths.
Jack’s hand lifted carefully to your waist, almost tentative despite everything that had happened already. His fingers spread across the soft skin above your hip, thumb brushing the edge of your ribcage with agonising slowness, and then his mouth was against yours with a low, rough sound that seemed dragged unwillingly from somewhere deep inside him.
You kissed him back just as desperately. Your hands roamed over warm skin and old scars and the broad, tired shape of him beneath the bathroom light. The hair was softer than you expected, silver and sparse, and you dragged your nails through it gently.
He shivered under your touch. No one had touched him like this in a long time, no one had taken the time to explore him with such a tenderness.
His hands moved from your waist to your hips and then your face, as if he could not quite believe he was allowed to touch you like this. His thumbs brushed your cheekbones with an aching delicacy that did not match the heat in his mouth, and when his fingers slipped into your hair near your temples, he held you as though he wanted desperately to draw you closer and was terrified of asking your body for too much.
His mouth lingered briefly at the corner of yours before he pulled back just enough to breathe, the faint scrape of stubble dragging over your skin, his lips still close enough that each exhale touched you.
“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. The word was half groan, half prayer.
Your lips parted, and his tongue swept inside. You pressed closer, your tits flattening against his chest, the cotton of your bra the only barrier between you. The fabric dragged against your sensitive nipples, sending little sparks of pleasure down your spine.
Jack’s hands slid to your back, palm against your spine, dragging upwards with intentional slowness. His fingers traced the curve of your ribs, the dip of your waist. Mapping you like he was memorising every inch.
When his fingers found the clasp of your bra, he didn’t hesitate and opened it smoothly. You felt the sudden looseness as the band fell away from your back. Jack’s hands slid to your shoulders, fingers hooking under the straps, drawing them down your arms with excruciating slowness. The cotton peeled away from your tits, baring you to the cool air and his hungry gaze.
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his gaze dropped down to your breasts. Full and soft, nipples tightening in the cool air and under the weight of his attention. His jaw worked silently, the muscles in his face tight with restraint. He lifted his gaze again, and his eyes were dark, pupils blown wide with want.
“You’re so beautiful,” Jack’s voice was rough. The words tumbled out as they surprised him, like he had spoken them out loud instead of just thinking. He had never been good at this part, the saying of things, the naming of feelings that lived beneath the surface.
You felt the flush spread along your chest, warming your skin. “So are you.”
He laughed once, almost self-deprecating.
“No, don’t do that. You’re Jack.” You stepped closer again, pressing your bare chest against his. The sensation made you both inhale sharply, your nipples dragging through the coarse hair on his chest. “That’s enough. That’s everything I want.”
His control broke completely, and he kissed you fiercely, his mouth claiming yours.
His hands cupped your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples, rolling the sensitive peaks until you arched into his touch with a moan. He swallowed the sound, tongue delving deeper, mapping every corner of your mouth. His palms were rough from years of washing his hands raw in hospital sinks, and the abrasion against your tender skin made you gasp.
“Jack,” you breathed between kisses.
He responded by walking you backwards, his prosthetic clicking against the tile floor, a hollow, rhythmic sound that punctuated each step, until your back met the cool bathroom wall. The tile was cold against your shoulder blades, a sharp contrast to the heat building between you.
He pinned you there with his body, one leg pressing between yours, the rough hair of his thigh dragging against your cunt. Even through the thin cotton of your panties, you felt the heat of him, the solid muscle.
Your own hands drifted downwards. You found the waistband of his boxer shorts and slipped beneath the elastic. Jack groaned against your lips as your fingers wrapped around his cock, thick and hard, the skin burning hot against your palm.
He was already slick at the tip, and you spread the moisture with your thumb, feeling him twitch in your grip. The veins beneath your fingers pulsed with his heartbeat, and you could feel the fine tremor running through him.
“Shit, sweetheart,” his voice cracked. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, breath coming in ragged pants against your skin, hot and uneven. His hips jerked involuntarily, pushing himself into your grip.
You stroked him slowly, feeling the way his breath hitched when your thumb circled the sensitive head. His hands braced against the wall on either side of your head, forearms flexing as he fought to keep control. The tendons in his neck stood out, corded and tight, and you could see the flush spreading down from his ears to his chest.
“Wait…” His hand shot out, catching your wrist, stilling your movement. His breath was ragged, chest heaving. “You need to stop. I'm not going to last…”
He swallowed hard, jaw tight.
“I don’t want to cum like that,” he said roughly, meeting your eyes. “Not in your hand. Not when I’ve wanted you for so long. Not when I’ve had that accident earlier at work.”
You released him slowly, letting your fingers drift up his hip, tracing the edge of bone. “Then how do you want to cum?”
His laugh was breathless, strained. “Inside you. If you’ll have me, I want to fill you up, buried deep.”
The words sent a pulse of heat straight through you, and you clenched around nothing.
“Yeah,” you whispered, nodding.
You pushed the boxers down over his hips with your free hand. They fell to his ankles, and he stepped out of them without breaking contact, the fabric joining the growing pile on the tile floor.
Your panties were next. Jack’s hands found them, fingers hooking into the fabric at your hips. He paused, looking at you with a question in his eyes; a need for permission, for confirmation that you wanted this as much as he did.
When you nodded again, he drew them down slowly. The cloth slid over your thighs, past your knees, pooling at your feet before you stepped free.
“I want…, “ he started, his eyes on your bare cunt. He stopped and swallowed. His throat worked visibly. “I want to touch you. Properly. I want to make you feel good.”
He reached between your bodies, his fingers brushing over your pussy. His middle finger traced your entrance, gathering your wetness, then slid upwards to find the swollen clit at the top. You gasped, and your knees buckled slightly, your back sliding against the cool tile wall.
He circled it slowly, watching your face, reading every twitch and sigh, every flutter of your eyelids. His other hand came up to cup your breast again, thumb rolling your nipple in time with his fingers below. The dual sensation made you clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into scarred skin, leaving crescent marks in their wake.
“We…we should...” You could barely get the words out, your breath coming in short pants. “Shower. First.”
He withdrew his hand slowly, bringing his fingers to his lips. Your breath caught as he licked them, his eyes closing briefly at the flavour, a low groan vibrating in his throat.
“You’re right,” he agreed, voice rough.
His forehead dropped briefly against yours. For several seconds, both of you simply stood there, breathing into the narrow space between your mouths.
Then he pulled back and glanced at the shower. The shift was small and practical, a return of thought into a room that had briefly been all heat and hands and mouths, but you felt it.
“Give me a second,” he said.
He opened the glass door and stepped in first, still wearing the prosthetic. He turned, braced one hand lightly against the tiled wall, and lowered himself onto the shower seat with the rehearsed control of a man who had performed this same movement so often alone that it had become muscle memory.
And yet when he looked up at you, there was something guarded in his expression now.
Then, with rehearsed movements, he adjusted the straps and released the prosthetic. Jack watched your face while doing it, because he was so still and so careful and so clearly waiting for some flicker of judgment he pretended not to expect, the tenderness of the moment nearly overwhelmed you.
He held it out towards you.
“Can you put this outside the door?” His voice was almost even.
You took it carefully, not reverently, not as though it were fragile or frightening or symbolic in a way that would make him regret asking.
“Of course.”
You set it outside the shower within easy reach, angled the way he could get to it later, close enough that he would not have to ask, close enough that the act said what you did not want to make too large by anything saying aloud.
Then you stepped back towards him and closed the glass door behind you.
“There.”
His mouth pulled faintly at one corner. “Efficient.”
“I’m very employable.”
“That remains under review.”
You smiled, and the small, ordinary joke did what both of you needed it to do.
You stepped in front of him, positioning yourself between his parted thighs. From this angle, he had to look up at you - this man who always seemed so tall, so imposing, now seated and vulnerable and gazing at you like you were something holy.
The air was cool against your bare skin, raising goosebumps along your arms. His cock stood rigid between his legs, flushed and stiff. He hadn’t softened. If anything, he looked harder now, aching, the head glistening with residual wetness.
Jack's gaze travelled over you slowly, drinking in every detail: the slope of your shoulders, the swell of your breasts, the soft curve of your belly, the smooth, bare skin between your thighs. His throat worked as he swallowed hard.
“This,” he said quietly, and then stopped, as though the sentence had outrun the version of himself that preferred to keep such things contained.
You tipped your head. “This what?”
His mouth moved in something that was nearly a smile and nearly pain. “This is a very bad angle to be trying to keep my dignity.”
The line was dry enough to be familiar, but the roughness beneath it gave him away. He meant it as a deflection, and yet not entirely. Sitting there beneath you, looking up, hands at your hips, he felt stripped down in more ways than the obvious ones.
Your smile softened.
“You’re doing terribly,” you murmured.
A breath of laughter escaped him, warm and reluctant, and because he was already looking up at you, because your body was close and your hands had not left him, the laugh changed almost at once into something quieter. His fingers tightened at your waist. His eyes dropped to your mouth, then lifted again, the movement so familiar by now and still no less devastating for it.
“You are not helping,” he said.
“I’m not trying to.”
“No,” Jack said, and the word came out lower than he intended, threaded with something darker and far more honest. “I noticed.”
You slid one hand from his shoulder into his hair, then, gently, careful of the dried blood still caught near his temple, and the effect on him was immediate. His head tipped almost imperceptibly into the touch, and his eyes closed briefly.
When they opened again, there was no defence left in them that either of you believed in.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” you said softly.
The sentence should have given him control. In a technical sense, perhaps it did. But what Jack felt in that instant was not power.
It was the unbearable tenderness of being asked, of having your hands in his hair while you offered him the chance to halt what he had spent weeks trying and failing to prevent. He could have said stop. He knew that. He could have turned his face aside, reached for the shower, made some weary practical comment, and both of you would have obeyed the lie.
Instead, his hands slid to the small of your back, drawing you a fraction closer into the space between his knees.
“No,” he said, barely above a murmur. “Don’t stop.”
His thumbs traced once, slowly, along the back of your waist, and then he tipped his head until his forehead came to rest lightly against your sternum, just for a second, just long enough to breathe.
When he lifted his head again, his gaze found yours.
“You’re staring,” you whispered.
“Yes.”
He turned his head, pressed his lips to the soft skin below your ribs. Not quite a kiss, just contact. Breathing you in.
You didn’t comment on it anymore and just reached past him, arm brushing his thigh, and turned the knob.
Steam gathered quickly inside the shower, softening the hard lines of the bathroom until the glass walls blurred at the edges and the room seemed to draw itself inward around the two of you.
Warm water ran over tile and skin and the long accumulated exhaustion of the shift, carrying with it the sharp, sterile scent of hospital soap and the fainter traces of blood, rain, sweat, coffee, and all the things the night had left behind on both of you.
It struck Jack’s shoulders first, then broke over the slope of his chest, threading through the freckles scattered across his skin and following the pale raised paths of old scars before falling in narrow streams toward the drain.
For a few moments, neither of you spoke, not because there was nothing to say, but because the sound of the water filled the space gently enough that silence no longer needed to be managed.
Jack was looking up at you from beneath damp, grey-threaded curls, his expression held carefully in place and yet not unreadable to you anymore, not after weeks of watching the smallest failures in him become more honest than words.
Your hands found the edge of his shoulders first, smoothing warm water over skin still tense from too many hours awake.
He was solid beneath your palms, broad and warm, his muscles knotted from the long shift. The water made his skin slick under your hands. Your fingers moved over the strong line where his neck met his shoulder, over freckles and over the faint unevenness of scars.
Jack watched you quietly beneath lowered lashes, his eyes bright in the dim light, mesmerised by how you touched and looked at him.
“You’re the one staring now,” his voice was low and rough with exhaustion and steam and the dangerous comfort of being touched without having to beg for it.
“What can I say, you’re awfully distracting.”
“That sounds almost concerning.”
You smiled.
Jack’s mouth moved faintly in response, not quite a smile but close enough to make your chest ache, because there was something almost boyish hidden beneath the fatigue when he allowed himself humour.
The water had already begun to loosen the blood from his hair, thin reddish ribbons slipping from the darkened strands near his temple and disappearing down the side of his face, over his cheekbone, along the line of his jaw, before vanishing into the water at his chest and then toward the drain.
Gently, you reached for the small bottle of shampoo resting on the corner shelf.
“Tilt your head back.”
Jack looked at you for one suspended second, searching for permission, for reassurance, for evidence that this was real.
The request was simple. Practical. Almost clinical, if either of you had still been capable of making this clinical. And yet something crossed his face at the sound of it, something quiet and unguarded, because there were many ways to be touched and not all of them required surrender, but this did.
Then he obeyed.
The trust in that simple movement reached you unexpectedly hard.
His throat lengthened as he tipped his head back, water sliding down the exposed line of it, over the hollow at the base, across the freckles and faint marks scattered over his chest. His eyes remained open for a second longer, fixed somewhere near your face, and then his lashes lowered against the steam as if even looking at you while receiving this much tenderness had become too much to bear.
You could see the flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. The trust in it made something ache behind your ribs.
You squeezed some of the shampoo in your palm and worked it between your hands before sinking your fingers into his damp hair.
His hair was thicker than it looked when dry, coarse and curling beneath your fingers, grey woven through the darker strands in a way that made him seem both tired and beautiful and unbearably real.
You worked slowly around the matted section near his temple, loosening the dried blood with the pads of your fingers, careful not to pull, careful not to make the tenderness too reverent in case that embarrassed him. Foam gathered pale against his hair and then thinned under the water, taking the last red-brown traces with it.
A low breath left him, not performatively but rather instinctively.
It was not a moan, not exactly, not something easily reduced to desire, though desire was there too, unmistakable and warm beneath the surface. It was the sound of tension leaving a body that had forgotten it was allowed to soften.
It was Jack, who had held trauma bays together and held himself apart from you for weeks, losing one more small piece of the battle against being comforted.
His hands, which had been resting at his sides, twitched and gripped your thighs, fingers digging into the soft flesh as if grounding himself against the sensation, as if afraid he might float away entirely. The pressure was firm, possessive, almost a counterpoint to the gentleness of your touch.
“You okay?” you asked, massaging the lather into his scalp with slow, deliberate circles, feeling the anatomy of his skull beneath your fingertips.
He opened one eye slightly.
“You ask that like this isn’t possibly the best thing that’s happened to me all year.”
The laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
His eyes opened fully at the sound, softer now than you had ever seen them at work, and for a moment, he simply looked at you through the steam and warm water as though the laugh had reached some place in him that medicine and duty and survival had left unused for too long.
“There it is,” he murmured.
“What?”
“That laugh.”
The quiet honesty of it startled you.
It startled him too, perhaps, because something in his expression shifted immediately afterwards, a small vulnerable tightening as though he had said more than he intended. But he did not take it back.
He only sat there beneath your hands, water streaming over his throat and shoulders while your fingers continued slowly through his hair, and allowed the words to remain between you like another kind of touch.
Beneath your hands, he seemed to be unwinding by degrees, because you were touching him, you could sense each layer of tension as it left him.
Then his hands settled more firmly at your waist. His palms were large and warm through the water, fingers spreading carefully along your sides. His thumbs rested at your hips, moving once, almost unconsciously.
It sent a spark through you, heat pooling low in your belly, reminding you that you still wanted him. It was so swift that you had to pause for a second, hands still in his hair.
Jack looked up, seated, and desire moved visibly across his face again, slower but no less intense.
It was not the frantic hunger of the staff room, not the sudden snap of a thread pulled too long. It was more dangerous for being quieter, for being held inside a look he did not immediately turn away from.
His eyes moved over you with careful restraint and unmistakable want, down the line of your throat, back to your face, to your mouth, as though he were allowing himself to see you in pieces and finding each one more difficult to survive than the last.
“You’re still sure?” he asked again, quieter this time, the words nearly lost beneath the water.
Maybe you should have been exasperated by the repetition. He had asked before, several times by now, in various forms. As though certain that at any moment you would come to your senses and realise what you were doing.
But instead it moved you, because you understood that beneath the question lay not hesitation nor reluctance but the genuine disbelief of a man who had long ago accepted that certain things were simply not for him.
That warmth and softness and the particular intimacy of being cared for were luxuries belonging to other men, better men, men who had not been broken and remade so many times they had lost count of the pieces.
“Jack.” You cradled his face in your hands, thumbs tracing the stubble along his jaw, feeling the slight tremor that passed through him at the contact. “I’ve been sure for months. I was sure before you kissed me. I was sure every time you pulled away because you thought you weren’t enough.” His eyes darkened, something raw flickering behind them. “I’m sure now.”
Then, with a tenderness that made the heat of it almost unbearable, he turned his face into your hand and kissed the inside of your wrist.
His hands slid from your hips to your waist, and he pulled you forward, guiding you until you straddled his lap.
The water was hot against your back; his cock, half-hard, was pressing against your bare cunt. The contact drew a sharp breath from both of you. You felt the thick length of him, the heat radiating from it even through the warmth of the shower.
Jack’s head fell back against the tile, his eyes closing for a moment as though overwhelmed by the sensation. You could feel him twitch against you, flesh warming and thickening where your bodies met, growing harder by degrees.
The hair at his temple was wet, plastered to his skin in dark waves, and his chest rose and fell with breaths that came faster now. Water droplets clung to the salt-and-pepper hair across his chest, catching the fluorescent light.
“Jack-”
“Wait.” His fingers flexed on your waist, digging into the soft flesh almost hard enough to leave marks. “Just wait.”
You stilled, fighting the urge to move, to chase the friction your body already craved. Through the steam and the warm water cascading down your back, you watched him. The scarred terrain of his torso: the old bullet wound puckered and pale, the surgical scars that spoke of repairs both internal and external, the burns that had healed into shiny patches.
The way his throat worked as he swallowed. The flush spreading down his neck, disappearing beneath the hair-dusted plane of his chest.
He was beautiful.
Not in the typical way one would describe beauty, but in the way of things that had survived. That had been broken and rebuilt and still chose, against all evidence, to remain soft in places. There was a particular tenderness to the way his belly rose and fell, the vulnerability of a body that had been penetrated by violence and medicine both.
His eyes opened slowly, dark and heavy-lidded, fixed on your face with an intensity that made your stomach tighten.
“I have to…” He stopped, jaw clenching. His thumb traced a slow arc across your hip bone, the calloused pad catching on your wet skin. “You washed my hair. I need to return the favour.”
The words were absurdly formal for the situation; this man, hard beneath you, speaking as though you were exchanging professional courtesies rather than sitting naked in his lap. But the intent behind them was unmistakable. He wanted to touch you. He wanted to care for you in the same careful, deliberate way you had cared for him.
“It’s okay…You don’t have to…” You started using the same words he always seemed to utter when he was unsure.
“I want to. Please. ” His voice dropped, rough and low. “I’ve wanted to for months. Every time you walked past me in the corridor. Every time you touched my arm during rounds. Every time you looked at me like…” He broke off, something raw flickering across his features. “Like I was worth looking at.”
Your heart clenched. You had looked at him that way because he was. Because there was something in the set of his shoulders, the exhaustion carved into his face, that made you want to press closer until you understood what had put it there.
His hands released your waist, sliding upward with agonising slowness. Over the curve of your ribs, mapping each bone with clinical attention. Along the sides of your breasts, thumbs brushing the undersides in a touch that made you shiver despite the heat.
Up, up, until his fingers tangled in your wet hair, cradling the back of your skull with a tenderness that seemed at odds with everything else about him, the scars, the calluses, the years of damage written into his skin.
He reached past you, fumbling for the shampoo bottle on the small tiled ledge. His chest pressed against yours as he moved, and you felt the hard plane of him, the coarse hair, the raised ridges of old wounds against your softer curves.
His nipples hardened against your tits, and you felt the involuntary twitch of his cock against your inner thigh.
“Lean back,” he murmured, guiding you with hands that trembled slightly despite their steadiness.
You let your head fall back into his palms, trusting him to hold you. The water sluiced over your shoulders, down your spine, pooling in the spaces where your bodies pressed together.
Jack’s fingers worked through your hair slowly, methodically. Massaging your scalp with a pressure that bordered on too much and then softened, reading your responses with the same clinical attention he brought to everything else.
His fingertips traced the shell of your ear, the curve of your skull, working the shampoo into a thick lather.
“Good?” he asked, voice rough.
“Yeah.” The word came out breathier than intended. “Good.”
His hands continued their slow exploration. Working the shampoo through your lengths, careful not to tangle, careful not to pull.
You could feel his cock hardening further against you, the length of him pressing more insistently into the junction of your thighs, but he made no move to rush. No move to take more than you were offering. The thick head of him nudged against your entrance, not pushing in, just resting there.
His fingers continued their slow, methodical work through your hair, and you let yourself drift. The pressure of his touch was steady, almost clinical in its precision but tender in its intent. Each stroke of his fingertips against your scalp sent small shivers down your spine despite the heat of the water.
You opened your eyes halfway, watching him through the steam.
His face was lowered, focused on the task. The furrow between his brows had softened from its usual deep-set exhaustion into something almost peaceful. His mouth was slightly parted, his breath coming slow and even. Water ran in rivulets down the planes of his face, catching in the grey at his temples.
He looked, you thought, like a man performing a sacred rite. Something he had been waiting his whole life to do.
Jack felt the weight of your gaze. It was a physical thing, heavy and warm, settling over him like a second skin.
Your hands moved without thought.
One moment, they were resting against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart. Next, they were drifting outward, tracing the hard curve of his shoulders. Your fingertips found the definition of his biceps. The muscle there dense and firm beneath skin that bore its own history.
Jack’s breath caught. He had grown accustomed to hiding this body. The scars, the burns, the evidence of a life lived at the sharp edges of the world. But you touched him like you were reading braille, like every line and imperfection was a word you needed to know.
There was a scar near his left shoulder. Thin and pale, almost surgical in its precision. You traced it with your index finger, following the line of it towards his deltoid.
Jack’s hands stilled in your hair for a moment, a small intake of breath the only indication that he had noticed. He watched your finger move, feeling the ghost of sensation where your skin met his ruined tissue.
“Shrapnel,” he murmured. “Years ago.”
You hummed softly, letting your fingers continue their exploration as he washed your hair.
Down along the thick cord of his bicep, over the bend of his elbow where the skin was softer, more vulnerable. The hair on his arms was coarse, dark in some places and silver in others.
Jack found himself cataloguing your responses: the way your breath quickened when you found a new scar, the way your hips shifted almost imperceptibly when your fingers brushed sensitive skin.
He was hard, painfully so, his cock trapped between your bodies and leaking a steady trail of slick against your belly. But he did not move, did not rush. He just let you explore, even as every nerve ending screamed for more.
Another scar, this one on his forearm. Larger, more jagged. You traced its edges with your thumb.
“Glass,” he said quietly. “Car accident. A lifetime ago.”
His voice was low, not distant or sad but rather just factual. It was clear that he had made peace with it, but underneath the words, you heard something else. A kind of wonder that you were asking at all…that you wanted to know.
You could feel the thick length of his cock against your belly, the head now nudging just below your navel. Every small movement you made shifted him against you, and you could feel the involuntary twitch of his hips when you traced a particularly sensitive spot.
This slow exploration felt like something he had been starving for, and he realised with a kind of quiet devastation that no one had ever touched him like this. Not with curiosity or tenderness.
Your hands found another scar, high on his right bicep. This one was smaller, round. A bullet wound, entry or exit, you couldn’t tell. You pressed your thumb against it gently, feeling the raised tissue.
Jack's breath caught. His whole body went still.
“That one-” He stopped. Swallowed. The memory rose unbidden; the desert, the heat, the sound of his own body hitting the sand. “That one almost killed me.”
You leaned forward and pressed your lips to it in a soft kiss, barely any pressure. Just contact.
His whole body shuddered beneath you. Jack’s eyes closed, his jaw clenching against the sudden surge of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. No one had ever kissed his scars. No one had ever treated his ruined flesh like something worth cherishing.
“Christ,” he breathed. His hands tightened in your hair, not pulling, just holding. Anchoring himself to you, to this moment, to the impossible reality of your mouth against his skin. “You’re going to kill me.”
You lifted your head, meeting his eyes. They were dark, pupils blown wide, but underneath the hunger, there was something raw, something almost frightened. Jack felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nudity. You were seeing him - all of him -, and he did not know how to survive that kind of witness.
“I’d rather not,” you whispered. “Wanna keep you around much longer.”
His laugh was rough, almost pained. The sound scraped against something tender inside you both. “Same.”
Your hands continued their slow journey. Over the swell of his shoulders, down the planes of his chest. You traced the salt-and-pepper hair, feeling the coarse texture against your palms.
His nipples hardened under your touch, small peaks that drew another sharp breath from him when you brushed them. Jack’s hands migrated from your hair to your shoulders, his grip tightening with each pass of your fingers.
“Sensitive,” you murmured, teasing him.
“Apparently.” His voice was strained, barely more than a growl.
You could feel the tension coiling in him. The effort it was taking to stay still, to let you explore. His fingers gripped with a pressure that bordered on painful, and you understood then how much restraint he was exercising.
Your fingers found the worst of the scarring, burns that had healed into shiny, uneven patches across his left side. You traced them without hesitation, mapping the ruined terrain of his skin.
Jack’s jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble. He waited for the flinch, the hesitation, the inevitable moment when you would pull away, when your fingers would still, and your face would twist with that particular combination of horror and pity he had seen so many times before.
But you did not flinch or pause. You touched him like his scars were simply part of him, no more remarkable than the hair on his arms or the calluses on his palms.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.” His voice was rough. “Not anymore.”
You leaned in and pressed another kiss to the worst of it, feeling him flinch beneath your lips. Not from pain but from something far more dangerous.
“You don’t have to…”
“I know. I want to.” You echoed his earlier words back at him. “I’ve wanted to for so long.”
His breath escaped in a rush. His hands slid down your back, pulling you closer until your chest pressed against his again.
The hard length of his cock was now fully trapped between you, hot and insistent, and you felt another bead of slick leak against your belly. Jack’s forehead dropped to your shoulder, his breath coming hot and ragged against your skin.
He was fighting himself, you realised. Fighting the urge to lift you up and take what he wanted.
Your hands drifted lower, tracing down his side, following the curve of his hip. You felt the shift of muscle beneath your palms, the way his body tensed as your fingers approached the place where his leg ended.
The residual limb was there, just below his knee, the skin smooth and carefully healed, the result of skilled surgical work and years of adaptation. Your fingertips grazed the scarred tissue, feeling the smooth, tight skin where his leg had been amputated.
Jack’s whole body seized.
You felt the sudden rigidity in his frame, the way his breath stopped cold in his chest. Your fingers had barely brushed the residual limb, just the lightest contact, but his reaction was immediate. His hands froze on your back. His jaw clenched tight, and his eyebrows furrowed.
And then, before you could process what was happening, he was pulling back.
His hands dropped from your skin as if you had burned him. His whole body shifted away, creating distance where there had been none. The warmth of his chest disappeared from yours. His cock, still hard, pressed uselessly against your belly as he turned his face away.
“Jack-”
“Don’t.” His voice was flat, controlled. The same voice he used with difficult patients. “You don’t have to force yourself.”
The words hit you like cold water.
“Force myself?” You stared at him, at the rigid line of his shoulders, the way he wouldn’t meet your eyes. “Jack, I’m not…”
“I felt you hesitate.” Each word was clipped and precise. “You don’t have to pretend. I’ve seen that reaction before. The moment you realise what you’re actually touching.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “The moment you decide if you can stomach it.”
Your heart cracked open.
“Jack.” You reached for him, but he flinched. Actually flinched from your touch. “Look at me.”
He didn’t. It was quiet for a second, only the running water filling the void.
“Jack, please.”
Slowly, reluctantly, he turned his face back towards you. His eyes were hard, guarded, the same walls he had spent months constructing. But underneath, you could see it. The raw, bleeding wound of his belief. The certainty that you would look at his ruined body and find it wanting.
“I didn’t hesitate because I was disgusted,” you said softly. “I hesitated because I wanted to touch you properly. Because I wanted to learn every part of you, and I was trying to figure out how.”
His jaw tightened. “You pulled away.”
“I pulled back to look at you.” You held his gaze, willing him to understand. “I wanted to see, Jack. I wanted to see all of you. Not look away. Not pretend it wasn't there. I wanted to touch you exactly as you are.”
His breath came shallow, uneven. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’ve been saying it for months.” Your voice was steady, even as your chest ached. “Every time I found an excuse to be near you.” You reached up, cupping his face in your hands. He went rigid, but he didn’t pull away. “I see you, Jack. All of you. And I don’t want to look away.”
His eyes searched yours, desperate and disbelieving. You could see him wrestling with the lifetime of belief that he was not enough. That he could never be enough.
“The scars,” he rasped. “The burns. The-” His voice broke. “The leg.”
“I know.” You brushed your thumb across his cheekbone. “I’ve always known. And I still wanted you. I still want you.”
He exhaled shakily. His hands, which had been frozen at his sides, rose slowly to grip your hips. Not pulling away this time, just holding on.
“You're not disgusted.”
“No.”
“You’re not staying out of pity.”
“Jack.” You leaned in, pressing your forehead to his. “I’m staying because I want you. Because I’ve wanted you for months. Because every part of you…every scar, every line, every imperfect, beautiful inch is exactly what I want.”
His breath shuddered out of him, and his grip tightened on your hips again, almost bruising now.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
“I want you, Jack. All of you. Exactly as you are.”
He kissed you then, hard, desperate, claiming. His mouth crashed against yours with a hunger that had been caged for too long. His hands slid up your back, pulling you flush against him, and you felt his cock pulse hot against your belly, your cunt clenching around nothing.
When he finally broke the kiss, you were both gasping.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said against your lips. “About you in my lap. About your hands on me.” His voice dropped lower, rougher, and you felt the sound vibrate through his chest. “About what it would feel like to be inside you. To watch you fall apart.”
Heat pooled low in your belly. Your thighs tightened around him where you straddled him on the bench, and you felt his cock twitch in response. “Jack…”
“I’ve thought about making you come so hard you forget your own name.” His thumbs pressed harder against your skin, possessive and demanding. “About hearing you say my name like that. Like you did earlier.”
You swallowed hard, your throat suddenly dry. “We could…”
“Not yet.” His eyes opened, dark and intent. He lifted his head from your shoulder, meeting your gaze with a fierceness that made your breath catch. “Not yet. I'm not done with you.”
His hands rose to your hair once more, returning to the task he had abandoned moments ago.
The shampoo was already there; he had worked it through your strands before you had touched him, before he had lost his careful composure and let himself be pulled into the depths of your mouth.
Now his fingers resumed their slow, methodical assignment. The soap had begun to dry at the edges, and he added a handful of water to reactivate it, working the suds through with renewed focus.
You let your head fall back against his shoulder, offering him the full length of your throat. The position was vulnerable, almost exposed, and you watched his eyes darken as he took in the sight of you.
Water ran in rivulets down your neck, pooling in the hollow of your collarbone, tracing the swell of your breasts before dripping away.
Jack’s thumbs pressed against your temples, easing the tension that had accumulated there over weeks of night shifts and sleepless days.
You felt the weight of your own body against him, how small you seemed folded into his lap, your thighs bracketed by his, pressed firm against his chest.
“Relax,” he murmured. “Let me finish.”
His fingers worked through the length of your hair, untangling knots with a patience that seemed impossible given the hunger you had witnessed in his kiss.
He was hard against you still; you could feel the insistent press of his cock between your bodies, thick and hot even through the cascade of water, but he did not rush.
He took his time, rinsing the soap from your strands with cupped hands, letting the water run clean.
Jack’s mind had gone quiet, he realised. For the first time in months, perhaps even years, the constant tally of his failures and inadequacies had stilled.
There was only this: the weight of you in his lap, the trust in your posture, the impossible reality that you had chosen to be here with him.
Steam curled between you, thick and obscuring. Through it, you watched his face reflected in the chrome of the shower fixtures - the furrow of concentration between his brows, the slight part of his lips as he focused on the task.
His grey hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked younger like this, somehow, less guarded with the lines around his eyes so softened.
What he felt was difficult to name. Not quite happiness - he had forgotten what that tasted like - but something adjacent. Something like peace, if peace could coexist with the desperate throb of want low in his belly.
When the last of the soap was gone, you opened your eyes fully and found him watching you.
Neither of you spoke.
His hands stilled in your hair, cradling your skull.
Your palms rested against his thighs, feeling the hard muscle beneath wet skin, feeling, too, the uneven terrain where flesh met scar tissue, the legacy of wounds he carried.
He wondered if you could feel how fast his heartbeat was. Wondered if you understood that you were the first person in decades to touch him like this. Like he was something worth holding.
You turned your head as if aware of his thoughts, and your lips met his with a tenderness that belied the heat pooling low in your belly.
Jack’s mouth opened to yours, and the kiss deepened, turning hungry fast. His tongue swept past your lips, tasting you, sliding against your own with a desperation that made your breath catch.
You felt the vibration of his groan against you, a low sound that resonated through you both.
Your hands slid upwards and back, tangling in the wet hair at the nape of his neck. His grip tightened in response, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you.
The slick slide of your bodies against each other, skin on skin, wet and warm, sent sparks of sensation cascading down your spine.
Your nipples dragged against his chest, the friction making you gasp into his mouth.
Jack’s hands left your hair, trailing down the curve of your spine.
His palms were wide and calloused, rough against the softness of your skin. He traced the valley of your back, fingers dipping into the hollow above your buttocks before sliding lower to grip the swell of your hips.
You arched into him, pressing your back harder into his touch, and felt his cock jump against your cunt, hard and insistent.
“Jack…,” you breathed against his mouth, the word barely audible over the rush of water.
He reached for the soap, and you watched as he lathered his hands over your shoulder.
Then those hands were on you, sliding over your shoulders, down your arms, across the swell of your breasts. His touch was thorough, unhurried, mapping every inch of you with a reverence that made your chest tight.
Jack was cataloguing you, memorising each plane and curve as though you might be taken from him at any moment. As though this was the only chance he would have to learn the geography of your skin.
When his palms cupped your breasts, you gasped. He weighed them in his hands, thumbs brushing your nipples, already peaked from the cool air and the heat of his gaze.
He rolled the stiff peaks between his fingers, tugging gently, and the sensation shot straight to your cunt. You felt yourself grow wetter, the slick mixing with the water running down your thighs, your pussy throbbing with need.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. The word was rough, almost angry, as though he resented how much he meant it.
You reached for the soap in turn, working it between your palms until they were thick with suds.
Your hands found his thighs, tracing the hard muscle, the scars that mapped his history. You lingered on the damaged skin - not avoiding it, not ignoring it, but touching it as you touched every other part of him.
Jack’s breath caught each time your fingers passed over scarred flesh, but he did not pull away. He forced himself to stay still. To let you see him.
You washed him with the same deliberate care he had shown you. Over his shoulders, down his arms, across the ridges of his abdomen, where you could reach.
Your fingers dipped lower, tracing the sharp lines of his hip bones, and you felt his muscles clench beneath your touch. Lower still, your soapy hand wrapped around his cock, reaching back between your bodies, and he hissed through his teeth.
“Fuck -” The word was torn from him.
You stroked him slowly, feeling the velvety skin slide over the hard length of him. He was thick in your hand, the head flushed and slick with more than water. You traced the ridge beneath the crown, and his hips jerked forward, pressing himself harder against you before tugging your hand from his cock.
He took the soap from your hands, and his fingers descended. Over your ribs, counting each one. Across the soft plane of your stomach, dipping briefly into your navel. Lower still, through the bare skin between your thighs, and you felt yourself part your legs wider without conscious thought, spreading yourself open across his lap.
His touch was clinical in its precision, and yet devastating in its intimacy. He washed you thoroughly, fingers sliding through your cunt, parting you open.
He traced the entrance, circling the tight muscle, and you whimpered at the teasing pressure, not pushing in, just tracing, just promising. Then, higher, brushing against the sensitive bud at your apex, and your hips bucked forward.
“Jack - “
“Shh.” His voice was low, commanding. “I’m just touching…”
His fingers continued their maddening exploration - sliding through your slick pussy, pressing against you but never sinking in, circling your clit with featherlight pressure that made you tremble. You tried to press closer, to force his fingers inside you, but he held you firm, his other arm wrapped tight around your waist.
“Please,” you breathed, desperate for anything at this point.
He leaned close, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “When I get you in bed,” he murmured, voice rough with want, “I’m going to take my time. I’m going to spread you open and taste you until you’re begging. And then I’m going to fuck you with my fingers - slow, deep - until you come apart on my hand.”
You shuddered against him, a whimper escaping your throat. Jack felt the tremor run through you, and something savage and satisfied curled in his chest. He had done that. He had made you shake.
“Then I’ll do it again,” he continued, fingers still tracing, still teasing. “And again. Until you’re shaking and can’t take any more. And only then -” his thumb pressed firmly against your clit, making you gasp, “ - only then will I give you my cock.”
His mouth found yours, swallowing your desperate sound. He held you through it, kept you anchored in his lap when your body threatened to arch away, hands continuing their slow, agonising exploration without ever pushing past that final boundary.
When he finally pulled back, his eyes were nearly black with want. Yours were glassy, unfocused, beautiful.
“But not here,” he said, and the words came out against your mouth, roughened by steam and restraint and the terrible effort of not simply forgetting every sensible thought he had ever had. “Bed.”
“Then take me there,” you whispered.
Jack made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost pain, some low, breathless fracture of disbelief and want and exhaustion, because he wanted exactly that, had wanted it with increasing violence for weeks, and yet the mechanics of getting there still mattered in the most absurdly human way.
“I would love to,” he said, his forehead dropping against yours for one breathless second while water ran from his hair down the side of his face and over the freckled, scarred slope of his shoulder. “I need about thirty seconds to be boring first.”
A laugh broke out of you, helpless and warm and too bright for the thick steam around you, and Jack’s eyes opened at the sound as though your laughter had pulled him back from some edge he had been standing on without realising how close his feet had come to leaving the ground.
For a moment, he only looked at you, wet and flushed and devastatingly near, with water caught in your lashes and your mouth still close enough to undo the last of his good sense, and the laugh seemed to do more to him than your hands had, precisely because it made the moment suddenly livable.
“Boring?” you repeated.
“Practical.”
“Very sexy.”
“You have no idea.”
You were still laughing when he reached past you and turned off the water. It sputtered and died, leaving only the drip of excess running down the tiles.
Rising from his lap took more effort than it should have.
Your skin clung to his, slick with water and heat, and the absence of his warmth against you made you shiver before the cooler bathroom air had even reached you properly. When it did, it raised goosebumps across your arms, your chest, your thighs, a sudden fine tremor that had less to do with cold than with the shock of separation.
You stepped carefully over the low threshold of the shower, water streaming down your legs and pooling beneath your feet on the tile floor, and felt Jack’s gaze follow you with such undisguised hunger that it seemed almost physical against your back.
His hand found your hip before you could move away.
His fingers pressed into the soft flesh there, not hard, not pulling you back exactly, only holding you in place with the small, helpless insistence of a man who could not bear to let the distance become complete. You looked down at him, still seated on the built-in bench, water darkening his grey-threaded hair and running along the hard line of his jaw, his chest rising and falling with breaths that looked controlled only because he was forcing them to be.
His cock stood hard against his stomach, flushed and thick, the head dark and slick, and he made no move to hide it. His balls hung heavy between his spread thighs, and you could see the faint twitch of muscle as he fought the urge to reach for himself.
Jack’s hand stayed on your hip.
His thumb moved once, slow and involuntary.
“You keep touching me,” you murmured.
His gaze lifted to yours.
“You keep letting me.”
That stole the smile from your mouth.
Then Jack exhaled, long and unsteady, and pulled himself back from whatever edge he had nearly stepped over again.
“Towel?” he said.
You opened the glass door and reached for one, passing it to him without stepping very far away, because neither of you seemed capable anymore of creating more distance than the task absolutely required.
His eyes tracked every movement you made. The lift of your arm. The sway of your breasts as you leaned down, nipples hard and tight in the cool air. The curve of your waist. The way your thighs pressed together, slick and glistening, your arousal still evident between them.
He took the towel from you, but his gaze never left your face.
“You’re doing a terrible job of being boring,” you said.
His mouth twitched.
“You’re standing there naked in my shower. I’m adjusting my expectations.”
You smiled, but your breath caught when his eyes dragged back to yours.
There was nothing casual in his face now. Only want held in place by discipline so thin it had begun to tear.
“Prosthetic?” you asked softly.
“In a second.”
He sat back on the shower seat, towel low around his shoulders, and reached for the liner with hands that were steady only because he forced them to be. The motions were practised, familiar, not shameful, not hidden, not offered up to you as tragedy or warning.
You held the glass door open and passed him what he asked for when he asked for it, no reverence, no fuss, no softening your face into pity, only attention, just careful, practical attention, the kind that told him you were neither frightened nor pretending not to see.
That appeared to undo him more than anything.
At one point, your fingers brushed his as you handed him the prosthetic.
Jack stopped just for a second.
The pause was small, but the whole room seemed to gather around it. His hand remained near yours, his wet lashes lowered, his mouth parted slightly on a breath he did not quite finish taking. You watched the muscles of his thigh flex as he secured it, the way his jaw tightened with concentration, his cock still jutting from his lap, untouched and aching.
Then he looked up at you and said, very quietly, “If you look at me like that, we’re not making it to the bed.”
Your pulse kicked hard.
“Then hurry.”
A low breath left him.
“Dangerous woman.”
“Apparently.”
He gave you a look - dry, fond, hungry - and finished securing the prosthetic with a precision that somehow felt more intimate than undressing had. When he stood, you handed him another towel. He wrapped it around his waist, the fabric sitting low and practical against him, then caught your wrist before you could step back.
“Still with me?”
The question again.
Softer now. Less afraid of the answer, perhaps, but still needing it, because Jack Abbot could order a trauma bay into obedience without blinking and still seemed to require your yes at every threshold, every change in light, every new intimacy that might ask more of you than the last.
“Yes.”
He pulled you against him, and you felt the hard length of him press against your stomach even through the thin cloth, hot and insistent. And then his mouth was on yours again.
This kiss was different from the ones before. Less desperate, more deliberate.
He kissed you like he was memorising the shape of your lips, the softness of your mouth, the way you sighed against him when his tongue slid past your teeth. His hands cradled your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones, and you melted into him, your naked body pressing against the rough towel, your hard nipples dragging against his chest.
He pulled back just enough to look at you. His eyes were soft in a way you had never seen them, open and unguarded. The lines around his mouth had eased, and for a moment, he looked almost young. Almost at peace.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let me take you to bed.”
NOTES:And another old man to add to the collection. I may have or may not have binged The Pitt in my time off… (maybe also binged a shitton of Shawn Hatosy thrist traps) But seriously, he is CRIMINALLY hot. I need peepaw in ways that are unimaginable. I had… ridiculously much fun writing this and just really trying to paint Jack’s emotional state. Anyway…I feel like Abbot would yearn for someone he shouldn’t have. So yeah this is that: a lot of yearning and fluff. And then smut. Ofc.
SUMMARY: Doctor Jack Abbot had survived grief, war and the daily violence of the Pitt by learning how to keep himself separate from the things he wanted. Then you transferred to nights with your careless hands and your impossible warmth, touching him like it meant nothing while looking at him like it might. He told himself that a man like him had no business wanting someone like you. But restraint is only useful until it breaks.
OR: When Jack’s carefully held control slips, you know you’re in for a ride.
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦ chapter 2 ✦
The Pitt never really slept; it only changed its shape.
It swelled and recoiled upon itself, though the hours of the day like some great wounded organ under electric light. At midnight, it was all sharp, almost hectic movements and shouted orders; at three in the morning, it gave way to some kind of delirium, low and airless, soaked in the bitter smell of antiseptic and cold coffee.
Three ambulances had rolled in within the last twenty minutes. Somewhere beyond the partition curtains, a man was screaming in great bursts while a monitor answered in shrill protest.
The waiting room had long since overflowed with bodies occupying every chair, every stretch of the wall. The air itself was stiff and stuffy, as if it had been handled too many times.
Doctor Jack Abbot, the attending physician of the night shift, stood in the middle of it all with drying blood beneath his fingernails and the blunt iron ache of exhaustion driving steadily beneath his left eye.
The overhead fluorescent lights caught the silver in his hair and turned the curls fallen across his forehead damp with sweat into something almost feverish-looking. His scrub top hung slightly crooked beneath the weight of the stethoscope. There was a hard line set to his mouth that had settled sometime around hour ten of the shift and probably wouldn’t leave until he got home.
“Abbot.”
He looked up at once.
You were crossing the department towards him with a patient chart tucked beneath one arm, weaving through motion with the unconscious certainty of someone long accustomed to catastrophe. A strand of your hair clung to your temple.
You stopped close, closer than most people ever came to Jack willingly anymore.
Without hesitation, you reached up and caught the folded edge of his scrub collar between your fingers, straightening it with a small, distracted frown as though the gesture belonged to habit.
“There,” you murmured with a smile. “You looked insane.”
Your knuckles brushed the side of his neck as your hand fell away.
It was hardly anything, almost only the barest contact. A passing warmth against skin still cold from over-air-conditioned hallways and way too many hours on feet.
And yet Jack felt it with almost embarrassing certainty.
The rough drag of your finger against the pulse in his neck. The faint pressure of your palm briefly brushing over his shoulder as you adjusted his collar. The clean, sharp smell of hospital soap clinging to your skin beneath the copper-rot scent of blood that saturated the entire department.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up. Every muscle in him tightened at once. His breath caught somewhere low and hard beneath his rips.
For one terrible instant, he became aware of himself with unbearable precision: exhaustion humming under his skin, sweat cooling at the base of his spine, the sudden, violent thud of his pulse against the place you had touched.
You were already moving away before he remembered how speaking worked, disappearing towards Trauma Two while calling something over your shoulder to Lena.
Jack just remained where he was. Neither moving nor speaking.
Simply staring after you with the stunned disorientation of a man struck unexpectedly across the mouth.
“You good?” Shen asked after a moment.
Jack blinked hard. Only then did he realise that the other physician had been watching him. He dragged his gaze away from the doorway.
“Fine,” he said roughly, but the lie sat heavily in his throat.
Meanwhile, trauma two had swallowed you at once as you slid into the room, bright and hot and appallingly alive beneath the white glare of the overhead lamps.
There was a man on the table with rainwater still darkening the shoulders of his jacket, one paramedic talking too quickly at your left, another trying to untangle a blood pressure cuff from the mess of tubes and blankets. Somewhere behind you, a monitor had begun its beeping.
Dr. Ellis was already there with one hip braced against the bed, listening and assessing.
“Motorcycle versus guardrail,” the paramedic was saying. “Helmeted at least. But brief loss of consciousness at the scene. Pressure’s soft, pulse one-thirty. Decreased breath sounds on the left.”
“Chest tube tray,” Ellis said, without looking away from the patient, blood darkening the torn front of his shirt in a widening, theatrical bloom.
You were already reaching for it before she had finished her sentence.
There was comfort, in a strange and grim way, in the shape of instructions. In the crisp obedience of the body when the mind might otherwise have chosen panic. Clamp. Gauze. Betadine. Gloves snapped at the wrist.
The world narrowed itself to hands and numbers and the thin animal sounds of pain.
You had been on nights for less than two weeks, not long enough for the altered rhythm of the place to feel natural, but long enough to understand that the Pitt after midnight was not the Pitt of daylight. It was another creature entirely.
You moved because there was moving to be done. You smiled because sometimes people needed a human face more than they needed another instruction shouted over their bodies.
And if, sometimes, your hand found a shoulder or a wrist or the back of someone’s arm while you spoke, it was only because people were less likely to drift away from you when they could feel that someone had hold of them.
At least that’s what you told yourself.
Outside Trauma Two, Jack remained where you had left him for half a second too long.
It irritated him, that half a second.
He was not a man prone to standing uselessly in corridors because a nurse had dared to straighten his collar. He had been shot at, cut open, widowed, rebuilt, and put back into rooms where people died noisily under his hands. He had survived the great, crude indifference of the world in more forms than he cared to name.
And yet the ghost of your fingers at his throat persisted.
He stood long enough that Shen said his name again, more pointedly this time.
“Abbot!”
“What?” Jack blinked, a bit annoyed, having acknowledged his colleague already.
“Trauma One needs you.”
“Then why are you still talking to me?”
Shen lifted both hands and wisely retreated.
Jack moved then because Jack always moved when he was needed. Whatever strange paralysis had taken him released at once, vanishing beneath the old machinery of training and fatigue. His expression sealed itself, and his shoulder squared.
The man who had forgotten language at the brush of your fingers disappeared completely as if he had never existed.
There was a patient waiting, a pressure dropping, a room full of people who would obey him if he spoke clearly enough.
That, at least, he understood. You, unfortunately, he did not.
In Trauma One, there was an elderly woman with a fractured hip and a blood pressure that would not behave, and Jack gave himself to the work with almost punitive focus.
Orders came clearly from him.
“Two large-bore IVs. Type and cross. I want repeat vitals in five.”
His hands were steady, his voice calm. Nothing in him betrayed the absurd fact that a few rooms over, the ghost of your hand was still lingering.
It was ridiculous.
It was, if he was honest, worse than just ridiculous. It was borderline humiliating.
He was too old for this, too tired.
You had likely already forgotten the moment. You had probably straightened three collars that night, squeezed five shoulders, leaned against half the department in passing.
That was the cruelty of this, he thought. Not that you touched him. But that you touched him as though it cost you nothing.
“Dr. Abbot?”
He looked up. The resident beside him had gone slightly pale, waiting with a syringe in hand.
Jack blinked once, hard, trying to regain his composure that he seemed to lose at only the thought of you.
“Now,” he said, and hated the roughness in his own voice. “Push it now.”
The old woman stabilised by slow degrees, and the room settled. The monitors, having exhausted their shrill objections, returned to a rhythm that suggested not peace exactly, but permission to breathe once again.
Jack stripped off his gloves and dropped them into the bin with more force than necessary.
Then he heard you laugh. Neither loudly nor carelessly.
It came from Trauma Two, brief and breathless, tucked between Ellis’s clipped instructions and the patient’s groans. A small sound, almost absurdly human in the middle of all that blood.
He turned before he consciously decided to.
Through the open doorway, he saw you at the patient’s side, one hand braced against the mattress while Ellis and the intern worked.
There was a smear of red across the blue of your glove, another at the edge of your wrist. Your hair had loosened further, escaping in damp strands at your neck, and your mouth was set in that concentred line he had begun, against all sense, to recognise.
You were good. And that was the part that made it more dangerous.
Not merely warm. Not merely beautiful. Not merely younger than him in the way that made him feel the years in his own bones with particular cruelty.
You were good at the work. You listened before you answered. You learned quickly. You touched frightened patients with the same unthinking steadiness with which you touched everyone else, as though your hands carried with them some private conviction that people were still people even when they were bleeding under fluorescent lights.
Jack wandered to Trauma Two and told himself he was there because Ellis might need an attending.
Instead of going in, he stopped at the doorway. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, one shoulder braced against the metal frame of the entrance. Fatigue had settled into him, roughening the edges of his expression.
And yet there remained in him something unmistakably alert, almost controlled. The sort soldiers carried long after wars had finished with them.
You did not notice him at first.
You were standing beside Ellis at the patient’s side when someone handed you a suction tube, and you took it without hesitation and without needing instruction, calm amidst the ruinous choreography of the room.
Jack just watched you move. Not openly enough to be caught by it. His gaze moved here it ought to move - the monitor, Ellis’s hands, the ultrasound screen - but it always returned to you afterwards with the stubborn inevitability of a tongue seeking the gap left by a missing tooth.
You tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear with the back of your wrist.
His jaw tightened.
He had seen prettier scenes than this. God knows he had. Women untouched by the fluorescent hospital lights and way too long shifts, and the strange erosion this work inflicted upon the soul.
But none of them had ever looked at him the way you did, touched him the way you did.
And that was the problem.
Ellis glanced up, relief in her eyes when she saw him, unaware of his inner struggle, “Abbot, perfect. Stop haunting the doorway and take a look at this ultrasound?”
You looked up at the sound of his name, too.
Your eyes wandered over him, taking note of how he stood half inside the opening. The overhead light flattened the colour from everything around him, bleaching the walls and turning the air itself a tired grey, but somehow it sharpened him instead.
The black of his scrub top stretched across the breadth of his shoulders; his forearms, bare and muscular, the tendons at his wrist standing out where his fingers tucked against his bicep.
He looked tired. Not just ordinarily tired or sleepless. It seemed like the tiredness had settled deep into his bones.
And still, absurdly, he was devastatingly handsome.
Of course, you had noticed it before; it would have been difficult not to. Everyone noticed Jack Abbot. Some because he was brilliant. Some because he was intimidating. Some because grief clung to him in ways people sensed before they understood. But you had noticed him because of his stillness.
The Pitt was full of loud men. Jack never needed to raise his voice.
Your gaze caught briefly on the rough shadow of his jaw, the silver threaded through his curls, the slight crease between his brows that deepened whenever he was concentrating. Or worrying. You had not yet learned which.
Then his eye lifted fully to meet yours, and something in your stomach shifted.
“There you are,” you said, your voice kind and soft as if you had been expecting him.
Something unreadable moved briefly across his face, and then he crossed the room.
The space around the trauma bed was cramped with carts and tubing and bodies moving in practised collision. Ellis angled the probe again while you stepped automatically aside to make room for him, your hip brushing against the metal rail of the bed.
That was what he would remember later. Not that you meant to touch him. Not that you intended anything by it.
Only that your body, without pause or question, made place for his.
Your shoulder brushed his arm as you stepped closer to the bed. The contact was brief, compressed by necessity, but your warmth passed through the thin cotton of your sleeve with indecent clarity.
Jack looked at the ultrasound screen.
He did not look at you, but you were suddenly aware of him beside you in a way that felt almost grave. You kept your eyes on the patient because that was what the patient deserved, but your attention was split in two. And only one half remained useful while the other noticed Jack Abbot breathing.
“Free fluid?” you asked, because speech was safer when it belonged to work.
“Maybe,” Jack answered, his voice was steady while his pulse was not.
Ellis angled the probe. The dim screen flickered with its lunar shades and swimming uncertainties “Here, see that?’
You leaned in for a better look, and the movement brought you closer still. Your arm crossed Jack’s for one second as you reached for a packet of gauze near his elbow.
“Sorry,” you mumbled.
It should have ended there.
And it would have ended there, if you hadn’t almost lost your balance, if the room had not been as crowded as it was, if his presence had not seemed to take up more space than his body alone could explain.
Instinctively, your hand found the centre of his back as you steadied yourself around him.
It was nothing. It was everything. Under your palm, Jack went still.
Not enough for Ellis or anyone else to notice. Not enough for the room to falter. But you felt it: the minute arrest of muscle beneath fabric, the sudden held breath of a man who had learned too well how to conceal reaction and not quite well enough to conceal it from touch.
So your fingers spread slightly before you thought better of it.
Warm. Solid. Tense.
“Sorry,” you said again, this time quietly as you withdrew your hand, “I’m in your way.”
No, thought Jack. The word rose in him with an immediacy that was almost violent.
You were not in his way. You were, perhaps, too close. Too perceptive. Too capable of disturbing the delicate machinery by which he moved through the shift. But you were not in his way.
But the thought remained soundless, imprisoned somewhere behind his ribs.
He gave the ultrasound another hard look, as though the answer to the catastrophe of his own body might be hiding there amongst the grainy shapes.
His jaw tightened as the patient groaned faintly.
At least he said, “Call surgery. Now!”
The order cut clean through the air, and everyone moved. The other nurse moved first, then Ellis shifted the probe. Someone reached for the phone. The stretcher wheels gave a protesting click as another pair of hands appeared at the rail. The room, which had been suspended for half a breath around the uncertainty of the scan, abruptly became motion again.
You moved too. You had been trained for this, knew how to fold yourself back into function, how to become hands and eyes and clear speech, how to take everything human and inconvenient and set it aside because the body on the bed could not wait for anyone’s private confusion.
But before you turned fully away, your eyes flicked back to him once more.
It was barely a glance, quick and questioning beneath your lashes, there and gone so fast that anyone else might have missed it. Yet Jack saw it. And for a moment, he did not look away.
By the time the patient was wheeled out towards surgery, the room had been stripped of its emergency and left with the strange, intimate wreckage emergencies always seemed to leave behind.
There was torn packaging scattered across the counter, bloodied gauze abandoned in a shallow metal tray, a smear of red where the stretcher was and the flattened impression of a human already gone elsewhere.
The air still held the sour metallic trace of blood beneath the sharper notes of antiseptic and plastic.
You stripped off your gloves and threw them into the bin.
Jack was still near the foot of the bed, speaking low to Ellis, his body angled half away from you. His voice had resumed its usual steadiness, that low, clinical economy that gave very little away.
There was a smear of crimson near his collar. It sat just below the line of his jaw, stark against his skin. You took a clean wipe from the counter, not really thinking about what you were doing.
“Hold still,” you said to him.
Jack stopped speaking and looked at you with furrowed brows.
Ellis, mercifully, had already turned her attention to the chart, her pen moving with precision.
You stepped closer to him, almost on autopilot, driven only by the need to help and lifted the wipe to the side of his neck.
“There,” you murmured, “Blood. You’re collecting bodily fluids, Doctor Abbot.”
Something in him locked at once. It was immediate and humiliatingly complete, the hard, instinctive stillness of a body that had learned too much about pain and restraint; like the stillness of an animal that froze beneath unfamiliar hands.
Your fingers were cool through the thin material of the wipe.
He felt them anyway. He felt the precise place where your hand hovered near his throat. The light pressure of the wipe. The nearness of your knuckles once again.
A moment ago, the room had been all noise and utility: Ellis speaking in clipped phrases, equipment rolling, wrappers tearing, shoes moving briskly across the floor.
Somewhere to his left, someone was still saying something. Beyond the door, someone pushed a cart down the corridor, one uneven wheel tickling faintly with each rotation.
But Jack heard it all as though from underwater.
You meant only to wipe the blood away and step back. He knew that. Of course, he knew that.
You had seen the mark, taken a wipe, stepped close and done what any decent colleague might have done in the brief pause after a shared emergency. There was nothing in the gesture that required interpretation.
But that knowledge did nothing to save him.
The antiseptic smell of the wipe rose faintly between you, clean and chemical and impersonal. And beneath it, maddenlingly, was something warmer - the scent of your skin after too many hours under hospital lights.
It should not have registered. It should not have mattered.
His throat moved once beneath your fingers. A swallow, involuntary and unforgivable.
He saw the instance you noticed.
Not because your expression changed much, you were too controlled for that, but because your hand hesitated. Only slightly, only long enough for the pad of your thumb to settle, absurdly, right against the side of his pulse.
Jack had stood in rooms full of blood and screaming and stayed steady. He had walked into danger with a clear head. He had made calls that would have shaken younger doctors to the core. He had endured fear, grief, violence, exhaustion, and the long, grinding attrition of a life spent pretending that the body could simply be willed to continue.
Shit, he had endured gunfire with steadier nerves than this.
His jaw tightened, and he could not decide where to look.
Your eyes were dangerous because they were too close, and he didn’t want you to know how affected he was by this. Your mouth was worse. Soft with concentration, parted faintly around the quiet breath you had taken before speaking, close enough that some ungoverned part of him began measuring the distance without permission.
There was a loose strand of hair near your cheek, dampened at the end by sweat or sink water or the long brutality of the shift. It clung there, out of place, human in a way that nearly undid him.
The urge to reach for it came so suddenly and violently that his hand almost moved.
Almost.
He imagined tucking it back. Not with purpose or with excuse. Only with the slow, careful intimacy of his fingers at your temple, the back of his knuckles near your cheek, your face turned slightly towards his hand.
The thought was somehow even worse because it wasn’t desire, it was tenderness.
He wondered, not for the first time, whether you understood what you were doing to him.
Whether some part of you had begun to recognise the small betrayals his body committed in your presence. But Jack had never considered himself an easy man to read…life had taken care of that. And the hospital had taken care of the rest.
Yet you just kept finding him.
Not all of him. Not the whole ruin of him, not the darkened rooms he kept locked even from himself.
But enough.
You found the place where his breath caught. You found the pulse beneath his jaw. You found, with the terrible innocence of touch, the part of him still capable of wanting.
So perhaps you did understand. And that possibility was somehow more terrifying than ignorance.
Because if you understood, then Jack no longer knew which outcome frightened him more. That you wanted him back. Or that you did not.
That you knew exactly what you were doing and had chosen him anyway. Or that this was nothing to you beyond the kind of careless warmth you carried without knowing what it could do to those who had learned to live without it.
That you might be playing not cruelly, maybe, but lightly. And that could wound too.
He was ashamed by the thought as soon as it came, since you had given him no reason to suspect cruelty.
In fact, it was quite the opposite.
Your kindness was not theatrical, which he had learned in the short time he knew you. It did not announce itself. It was almost instinctively, almost before thought, towards whatever looked hurt. A frightened patient gripping the rail too hard. A resident blinking too quickly after a reprimand. Ellis pretending not to be exhausted. A fellow nurse quietly swallowing tears in the medication room.
You noticed such things. You just noticed the small fractures people tried to hide beneath competence.
Perhaps that was all this was. Perhaps Jack Abbot was only one more damaged creature in a long line of damaged creatures. Perhaps the shape of your hands had simply learned to soothe.
But God help him, he wanted to be more than that.
He wanted to be more than another injury your kindness had found. More than a tired man at the end of a shift. More than a guarded colleague whose silence invited your gentleness.
He wanted, shamefully and with a force that made him almost whole again, to be singular to you. Not merely cared for. But chosen. To be the person you touched, not because he needed gentleness, but because you could not quite keep yourself from giving it to him.
The desire was selfish. He knew that. Still, there it was. And it terrified him.
“Got it?” he asked. The question came out lower than he intended, the words scraped by the roughness in his throat, and the sound of his own voice irritated him immediately.
It gave too much away. Not to anyone else, perhaps. Ellis would only hear impatience. The room would hear only efficiency. But you would hear the fracture beneath it.
You should have stepped back then.
Jack wanted you to step back.
He wanted the relief of distance, the restoration of ordinary air, the clean simplicity of no longer feeling the almost-touch of your thumb against his pulse. He wanted professionalism to return with its familiar walls and bright, sterile surfaces. He just wanted to be Dr. Abbot again, which was easier than being Jack under your hand.
But you did not immediately step back.
You’d later blame it on the tiredness or the adrenaline. In the end, it was because he was looking at you with that terrible, restrained intensity, the kind that suggested a man holding a door shut from the inside. Because some reckless, increasingly curious part of you had begun to suspect that Dr. Jack Abbot was not nearly so unaffected as he pretended to be.
Your fingers lingered another heartbeat at the edge of his collar. It was barely anything, just a breath of contact.
“Mh-hm,” you murmured softly, and Jack’s gaze dropped to your mouth.
Only briefly, but not briefly enough.
And he wondered what it would be like to kiss you, what it would be like to stop resisting.
Then Ellis cleared her throat, and the sound cut through the moment with surgical precision.
You withdrew your hand at once. Heat rising unhelpfully beneath your scrub top, spreading from your chest to your throat. You turned towards the counter and started to busy yourself with the discarded wrappers there, gathering torn plastic and empty gauze packets with a concentration far beyond what the task required.
Jack stood there frozen for a second longer; he remained exactly how you left him: shoulder still, jaw set, head angled slightly aside. Cold rushed unpleasantly into the place your touch had occupied, and he felt the loss with humiliating clarity.
Then he turned away. But not before you saw his hand flex once at his side.
It was a small movement, almost nothing. His fingers opened and closed against empty air, controlled again almost as soon as it happened. You noticed because you had spent enough hours beside him now to understand the scale of his restraint. It looked like there had been something he almost reached for or something he had almost pushed away.
The thoughts arrived so suddenly that you almost dropped one of the wrappers.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute, maybe less.
Thirty seconds, if anyone had been cruel enough to count them. Thirty seconds from the instant you stepped closer with the wipe to the instant Ellis’s throat-clearing returned you both to yourselves.
That was all. Nothing, really. If there were an official report of everything that happened during the shift, it would not have appeared at all.
The patient went to surgery.
He gave a few more orders.
Someone cursed at a jammed supply drawer.
The hallway swallowed the stretcher, and the room emptied by degrees and became once again just a trauma bay waiting for its next occupant.
Nothing had happened. Nothing that mattered. Nothing that anyone else could have named.
And yet, Jack carried those thirty seconds out of Trauma Two as though they had the weight of the world. As though they had been folded into his pocket. As though they had been ingrained in him now.
This irritated him greatly, because nothing had happened to him.
You had seen blood. You had wiped it away. Your hand had been steady. Your voice had been low because the room had quieted, not because there was anything secret in it. Your thumb had rested at his pulse by accident, because bodies had edges and hands needed somewhere to go.
That was all.
Nothing except the sudden, catastrophic awareness of how long it had been since anyone had touched him with such unguarded care.
Nothing except the disgraceful fact that for one wild instant, he had wanted to turn his face into your palm.
Neither metaphorically nor sentimentally, but rather physically, shamefully. With the tired, aching hunger of a man who had spent too many years convincing himself that wanting comfort was a private weakness, best hidden under confidence clipped instructions and the occasional funny remark.
He could only hope that you hadn’t noticed.
Jack moved towards the sink, washed his hands even though they were already clean and kept his eyes on the water until the rush of it was louder than the memory of your voice.
But he suspected that your words and the simple act of kindness would trouble him for the rest of his shift.
_____
After that, the nights began to arrange themselves around small catastrophes.
Not the visible kind or the ones that seemed to announce themselves in alarms and rapid footsteps, that summoned surgery from upstairs or left blood drying in the seams of the floor. Those catastrophes belonged to the hospital, and Jack knew how to meet them. He had built a life out of meeting them.
They had protocols, names, and consequences. They demanded action and, therefore, gave mercy in some twisted kind of way.
No, the kind that devastated him in ways he could never have imagined were the smaller things. The quieter things.
The brush of your hand against his in an overcrowded room when you both reached for the same box of gloves. Your fingers closing briefly around his wrist as you passed him a pen without looking up from the chart. The absent, thoughless pressure of your palm between his shoulder blades as you slipped behind him at the nurse’s station, murmuring behind you under your breath, as though the warning could possibly prepare him for the touch.
And those moments only existed in the narrow, treacherous space between bodies too tired to maintain perfect distance and too aware to call that failure meaningless.
With each day you worked nights, the department made more room for you with the unconscious certainty of a place recognising one of its own. A mug appeared in the cabinet that no one else used. One of the residents began saving the last decent pudding cup because you had once mentioned liking it. The charge nurse started giving you the complicated patients because you understood quickly and did not rattle easily.
But it was not an easy thing, belonging there.
So you learned the nights’ own grim and tender rituals, when the coffee turned bitter enough to become a warning instead of a comfort. You learned where the extra blankets were hidden, when the warmer ran empty, which supply drawer jammed unless struck with the heel of the hand.
You learned the routines of every resident and fellow. Which ones panicked loudly and which ones panicked in silence.
And despite every sensible boundary and every professional instinct screaming at you, you learned Jack’s rhythms too. Perhaps it was just impossible for you not to.
Dr. Jack Abbot did not make himself easy to know. He offered little freely and even less when pressed. His silences had edges. His patience, though real and kind, was often disguised as irritation so that sometimes new colleagues mistook the two. He had a talent for appearing immovable even when exhaustion had hollowed him from the inside.
But you watched. Never obviously or enough to shame him. Only with the steady, quiet attention you gave to all you did.
So you learned that he took his coffee black when the shift was bad and abandoned it half-finished when it was worse. How he rubbed the bridge of his nose before giving bad news, not afterwards, as if preparing his face to become something useful.
You noticed how he grew quieter when the pain threaded itself into his leg, his words becoming shorter, his movements more economical, the line of his mouth tightening in increments too small for most people to see.
He never asked for help unless the asking could be disguised as an order:
Hold this. Come here. Tell Ellis to check her patients. Tell Shen I need another line. Walk with me.
And you noticed it all too well.
Against all sense and every better judgement he had ever possessed, Jack learned yours as well.
At first, he told himself it was just observation. Occupational habit. The natural consequences of working alongside someone in a department where the difference between competence and collapse could be measured in seconds. He noticed everyone, that was, after all, the job.
But there was noticing, and then there was knowing.
The way you hummed under your breath while restocking cards, always so softly that he suspected you may not even realise you were doing it. Sometimes it was a song he knew. More often, it was something shapeless, a thread of sound pulled through fatigue.
He became aware of the way you touched people before you asked them to breathe - fingertips to a shoulder, a palm, to the back of a trembling hand, a physical reassurance offered before the instruction came.
He even learned that you laughed differently after three in the morning.
Earlier in the shift, your laughter came quick and bright, a spark struck against the roughness of the place. But later, when the halls thinned and the lights seemed harsher, it softened.
The tiredness changed you. Not in the way that you became less capable, if anything, the fatigue stripped you down to something more instinctive, more honest. Your voice grew gentler. Your movement slowed by fractions.
You forgot, now and then, the careful distances other people kept as if your body, once exhausted, returned to some older language of warmth and nearness.
When you were tired, you leaned closer to patients, to Ellis and Shen and the residents, when they looked ready to come apart.
And most dangerously towards him. Especially towards him. That was the intolerable part.
Because Jack could have survived your kindness if it had remained general, he could have endured being one more recipient of your impossible gentleness, one more tired colleague steadied by your hand in passing, one more creature briefly warmed by the careless mercy you gave everyone.
But did it feel general? He wasn’t so sure anymore.
Not when you glanced at him across the nurses’ station before smiling at whatever Ellis had said, as though some private part of the joke belonged to him. Not when you brought him coffee without asking and set it near his charting hand, black and no sugar, exactly as the night demanded.
Not when, after a brutal case, you appeared beside him without a word and pressed two fingers lightly into the file he was holding, pushing it down so he would stop pretending to read it.
“Jack,” you had said softly.
Not Dr. Abbot. Jack.
And he looked at you because he had forgotten how not to. That was the true shape of the catastrophe.
The slow, impossible accumulation of these things. The way each small contact refused to remain small. How every ordinary moment gathered weight because it belonged to you.
The night shift, with all its fluorescent cruelty and exhausted mercy, had begun to feel less like a place he survived and escaped and more like a place where he might be seen.
Jack did know what to do with being seen.
He only knew that each night, when you came into the department, it seemed to alter around him. The coffee tasted worse. The lights seemed brighter. His pulse became less obedient. And all the catastrophes began anew.
_____
There was the night you fell asleep for eight minutes at the nurses’ desk.
Eight minutes, not more. Jack knew because he had looked at the clock when you head first began to dip, and then, for no reason, he refused to examine too closely, looked again when you finally started awake.
You had not meant to sleep, that much was obvious. The night had been quiet, and you had been charting with a stubbornness that was becoming increasingly decorative, your cheek propped against your fist, pen still resting between your fingers, eyes lowering and opening and lowering again until your body gave you the pretence of being governed by will.
For eight minutes, you were still.
Jack had passed you once and did not stop. Then he passed again with coffee.
He set the cup beside your elbow, not loudly enough to startle you but close enough for the heat of it, or perhaps the smell, to reach whatever portion of you remained on duty.
Your eyes opened, startled and confused by the world’s reappearance, before you saw him.
“You looked dead,” he said dryly.
Your mouth curved slightly, “Oh, you say the sweetest things.”
You reached for the coffee, and your fingers closed briefly over his before taking the cup.
There was nothing deliberate in it, Jack told himself once again. After all, you were still half asleep.
Your hand had just gone where the coffee was, and his fingers happened to be there too. That was all, no mystery, no invitation, no evidence of anything except fatigue and proximity. Just the careless imprecision of a person dragged back from sleep too quickly.
That’s what he told himself as he returned to his chart. What he told himself again when you took the first sip and made a face at the taste, then drank it anyway.
He told himself this a third time, hours later, when he realised he could still feel the warm, loose weight of your fingers closing over his.
Another of those catastrophes happened the night a combative patient caught you hard in the shoulder.
It happened quickly, as such things always did. One moment, the room was crowded with negotiation, restraint, the careful voices of people trying not to escalate fear into violence. And the next, the patient twisted with surprising force, and an elbow struck the upper part of your arm with a dull sound, Jack felt in his bones.
You stepped back neither far nor dramatically.
But Jack’s voice sharpened as it cut through the turmoil in the room. “Enough.”
Ellis and your fellow nurse looked, not because the word was unusual. Jack gave orders all the time. He corrected, interrupted, redirected, and cut through panic with the clean brutality of certainty. But this was different, too fast, too hard and too stripped of its usual professional distance.
The patient stilled shortly after, beneath the hands restraining him.
Afterwards, in the narrow stretch of hall where the light always seemed worse, you rolled your shoulder and tried to laugh it off.
“I’m fine.”
Jack looked at you, unconvinced, “You always say that.”
You blinked, then tilted your head at him with an expression so dry it might have been amusement if he had not also recognised the tenderness under it. You just stepped closer as if the distance between you had been decided badly and required correction. Your hand came to his forearm, fingers wrapping lightly around the muscle there, gentle and sure.
It was not gratitude or reassurance. Rather, it felt like forgiveness. As if you had understood the worry in him, the sharpness of his voice, the way concern had risen too quickly to be made polite and had decided not to punish him for it.
He watched your hand leave his arm again, and the absence seemed unreasonable. Absurdly, he felt bereft.
And then there was the night rain battered the ambulance bay doors so hard the whole department seemed to breathe around it.
Water came down in sheets, turning the windows black and restless. Every arrival dragged the weather in with it: wet shoes, damp hair, the cold mineral smell of the street.
The floors grew slicer near the entrance no matter how often someone mopped them. The wind pressed itself against the building, and each time the automatic doors opened, the night outside flashed with rain.
The ache in Jack’s leg had started before midnight. By two, it had become difficult to ignore. By three, ignoring it required enough concentration that he grew quieter than usual.
You noticed, because of course you would.
He should have known that you would eventually pick up on it. Pain altered people in small, specific ways, and you had become uncomfortably fluent in reading his silences by then.
So you saw the shorter stride, the careful stillness when he stopped walking. The hand braced against the counter for one second too long before he let it drop.
But you said nothing in front of the others.
That was another thing about you that unravelled him. You had a talent for protecting dignity while tending to injury.
You did not ask if he was all right in the hallway, where he would have had to lie. You did not fuss at him near the desk, where he would have had to make you stop.
You simply appeared beside him in the empty staff room some minutes later, carrying two paper cups of terrible coffee and a packet of ibuprofen tucked beneath one thumb. And you placed both on the table in front of him.
Jack looked at the packet and then at you, “You always this bossy?”
“Only when people are being stupid,” you retorted, raising one eyebrow.
He should have resented it. He survived in stubbornness for too long not to recognise an attempt to manage him. And how he disliked being read, being handled. Above all, he disliked the sensation of needing something that someone else had seen before he could disguise it.
And yet? The coffee was warm. The pills necessary. Your face held no pity, only attention. So instead of getting up or ripping into you, he remained seated.
You took the chair beside him, close enough that your knee brushed his for the length of one quiet breath before you shifted away. And he wondered whether the contact was just accidental.
The staff room hummed around you with the old refrigerator’s incessant buzzing. Somewhere outside, someone called for transport. Neither of you spoke for a while as he took the ibuprofen and drank the coffee.
Perhaps it would have been easier had you remained ignorant.
Not ignorant of medicine, nor of pain, nor of the thousand small ways people revealed themselves under pressure. But ignorant of him. That would have been safer.
If you had never learned where his restraint thinned. Never noticed how his body betrayed him when yours came too close. If you had continued to believe that Jack Abbot was simply difficult, competent, tired and impenetrable.
He was controlled and disciplined. A man built out of restraint and old damage, every sharp edge held carefully beneath the practised calm of a physician who had seen too much and learned to continue anyway.
But control was not indifference. And after enough nights beside him, you began to recognise the tiny failures.
The way he went still when your hand touched his arm, not with rejection but with the stunned obedience of someone touched where he had forgotten he was lonely.
The way his eyes dropped, unwillingly and only for a moment, to your mouth when you stood too close.
The way his voice changed when he said your name after a difficult patient.
The way he looked away first. Always first. And Jack Abbot did not look away from much.
You did not know what to do with that knowledge. It frightened you to no end, though not because you didn’t like it. Rather, because each small discovery felt less like proof of conquest than proof of responsibility. If he yielded, even by a fraction, it cost him something.
And, god, if you were honest, you had begun to want him to yield.
You did not want to corner or embarrass him, did not want to make him feel hunted. There was too much damage in him for that. Too much restraint that seemed less like pride to you and more like survival. And yet you wanted to know whether the thing passing between you was only your foolish invention or whether he felt it too.
So for a while, you did nothing at all - almost nothing.
For Jack, it turned out, almost nothing was still enough to ruin him.
You never crossed any line. No breach of professionalism that could be examined beneath the cold light of sense and condemned accordingly. But there was none of that. There was only almost nothing.
And that had become impossible for him. He endured it because he had not yet found a way to ask you to stop without revealing how badly he wanted you to continue.
_____
By the eighth week, Jack had begun to dread and anticipate you in equal measure, which disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Dread, at least, was familiar and something he could understand. It had shape and function. He had known it in operating rooms and field hospitals, in the seconds before bad news was spoken out loud, in the thin silence after a monitor changed its rhythm.
Anticipation, on the other hand, was another matter.
It was unreasonable. Undignified. It had no place in a man of his age and temperament, certainly not in a man who had taught himself, over the long and punishing course of his life, to expect little and need even less.
He had endured months in the desert heat with torn skin and less physical awareness of his own body than he now possessed whenever you stood too close beside him.
And that irritated him to no end.
He despised how some part of him had quietly made a study of you and could no longer stop. It was as if the night had begun to arrange itself more sensibly when he knew you were within it.
If you were busy with another resident, he found reasons to pass by.
Good reasons, of course…defensible ones. He was the attending after all, and there was always a chart to check, a resident to correct. A patient whose labs he wanted to review personally again, even after Shen already did it.
Jack was not stupid enough to wander aimlessly after you like a boy, so he wrapped every detour in purpose and carried it with sufficient authority that no one questioned him.
Except you. You had begun to look up when he appeared. Not obviously, of course. But sometimes your eyes lifted before he spoke as though some part of you had started to anticipate him as well.
That was dangerous enough to make him avoid you for almost an entire hour one night. But of course it did not help.
If your name was not on the night roster, the ER seemed colder.
That was absurd. He knew it was absurd. The temperature did not change because you were absent. The lights remained the same merciless white. The coffee tasted just as shitty. The stretchers rattled, the monitors beeped, and the residents panicked with ordinary regularity.
And yet the place seemed altered without you. Emptier in some quiet, structural way.
As though someone had removed a source of warmth he had not meant to depend on.
If you laughed with someone else, something old and unbecoming moved in him before he could will it into silence.
Jealousy.
It disgusted him that he was jealous over laughter of all things. Over the tilt of your head towards a young resident. Over the easy touch you gave Shen on the shoulder. Over the way, a paramedic leaned too close while telling you some story from the ambulance bay and was rewarded with a tired but nonetheless delighted smile.
It was ridiculous and downright shameful.
As if he had any right. Made any claim on you. Had offered anything that might justify the dark, brief tightening of his chest when your warmth turned elsewhere. As if standing still beneath your hand and then looking away first constituted a promise.
He had no right.
None.
And even if he had wanted one, what exactly did he imagine he could offer you?
A complicated body. A leg that punished rain and long shifts and the arrogance of pretending he was younger than he was.
A dead wife whose absence still occupied rooms in him, he rarely opened.
A history full of locked doors and old wars, of choices made under pressure and consequences that had outlived the circumstances that created them.
A temperament built more for endurance than joy. And exhausting that had settled so deeply into him, it might as well have been character.
You, meanwhile, moved through the department with your tired eyes and your quick hands and your reckless tenderness. Young enough still (or so he told himself) to expect that life might give something back if you loved it hard enough. You deserved someone unburdened. Someone uncomplicated. Someone who could take your warmth without flinching as though it were a wound.
After all, he was sure that there was someone waiting for you at home. A boyfriend, perhaps or more.
Jack imagined someone decent. Someone with clean hands and an unbroken history, someone who texted you before your shift and kept dinner warm badly but honestly. Someone who did not measure desire against grief and guilt and the arithmetic of age, Someone whose body didn’t ache.
Someone who could accept your careless affection without making a religion of it.
Your imagined partner served a purpose. He transformed restraint into decency, into professionalism, into something cleaner than fear.
Wanting a woman who belonged to someone else was pathetic enough, but reaching for her? That would have made him cruel. And Jack, wherever else he had been, whatever he had failed at, refused to be cruel to you.
So he let the imagined man stand between you as a useful ghost.
He disliked the idea of him with an intensity that embarrassed him every time it surfaced.
But he needed him. Because the man made restraint noble, sensible, clean.
And, god, Jack was desperate for cleanliness in a thing that had begun to feel anything but clean.
Because the truth, when stripped of all its careful justifications, was far simpler and far more humiliating:
When you touched him, he wanted.
Not in a weird philosophical way, nor a tragic one and neither in the elegant, distinct manner of a man nobly suffering from some doomed attachment. But rather, he wanted with a terrible simplicity.
Wanted your hand close there when your fingers brushed against his. Wanted your knee touching his when your legs touched under the table. Wanted to hear you say his name - Jack, not Dr. Abbot, in a room where no one else could hear it.
Every time that wanting rose in him, all his noble restraint began to change shape into something that looked less like virtue or decency. Less like the necessary discipline of an older man protecting a colleague from the ruin of his own desire.
Instead, it began to look very much like fear. Fear of being seen. Of being wanted. Of not being able to refuse you when you reached for him with any true intention.
And worst of all, fear that you would not reach for him at all.
You examined this thing between you way too much.
You thought about him while washing your hands. While restocking carts. While walking home in the pale, exhausted morning after a shift, when the city looked too clean and unreal, and your body still felt tuned to the artificial brightness of the Pitt. You thought about the impossible carefulness of him, the way he let you come close and then seemed furious with himself for wanting it.
You were afraid you’d misread him, that all his stillness was not wanting but discomfort.
So you gave him chances, touched him, and then left space for him to move away. Smiled and let him look first. He never stepped away, never hardened against it, but also never reached for you either.
And you were blissfully unaware that Jack had conjured up a man by your side in his head that, over time, had become strangely useful to Jack. Because as long as this ghost existed, the thing growing steadily and silently between the two of you remained impossible by default.
He could stand beside you at the nurses’ station while your shoulder pressed warm against his arm and tell himself that the warmth belonged to someone else. He could endure the small, unbearable mercies of your touch because they were, in the end…. Harmless.
They had to be just that because you were unavailable. That made restraint simple… simpler. But not easy.
You continued touching him with the same careless familiarity that had first disturbed the machinery of his peace weeks earlier. Each contact lasted seconds and remained with him absurdly long afterwards.
The worst of it all was that the touches did not remain the same.
Maybe they did, and Jack was only losing the ability to interpret them sensibly. That was a possibility.
After all, he was tired, older than he felt, and more affected than he wished. And desire had a way of falsifying evidence. He knew that. A starving man could make a feast out of crumbs.
And yet, to him it seemed that your hand sometimes lingered. Not long enough to name or accuse. But only a fraction longer than they should remain. Your eyes sometimes held there for one dangerous heartbeat too long, as if you were waiting for him rt do something with the silence between you.
He refused to examine this too closely, because he didn’t want to chase after hope. He had no patience to deal with the fact that hope would inevitably soften the walls that kept him functional.
So he returned to the boyfriend again and again to keep himself in check.
Until Thursday night.
The Pitt had settled into one of its uglier moods, and the waiting room had become its own nation of misery. Someone was vomiting loudly into a plastic basin near triage, Lena was threatening a resident with bodily harm over misplaced paperwork and from the tone of her voice, Jack suspected she had advanced beyond metaphor. Ellis had sworn at two separate monitors and the wall itself. Shen’s mood was just as bad, with Dunkin’ having closed due to a burst pipe and him not getting his sugary coffee in before the shift.
Jack himself had perhaps slept three hours, and that would be the explanation he’d later use.
He was due upstairs shortly before surgery, already running through labs and images and the sequence of calls he had to make today, when you appeared in front of him with that focused look you wore when your body had decided before your mind had finished justifying it.
The night had scraped your nerves raw, and you were tired of pretending you did not want excuses to touch him.
“Hold still,” you said.
Jack should have stepped back. Should have taken the chart in his hand and used it as a shield. Should have turned towards anything else. Should have said something dry enough to restore the distance between you before your fingers reached him.
But he did none of those things, and you stepped into his space before either of you could pretend it had happened by accident. One hand catching the edge of his collar when it had twisted and smoothing it back into place with absent concentration.
It was the same gesture as before, but then your palm flattened once briefly over the centre of his chest.
Warmth, through cotton and t-shirt and skin and bone, Jack felt it everywhere,
The exhaustion of the week, the months of hunger carefully buried beneath professionalism. The imagined boyfriend standing between Jack and the thing he wanted. All the structures he had built around restrained all the arguments he had polished until they looked like virtue, all the locked rooms in him that had remained obedient for years.
Something simply gave beneath the pressure of your hand.
He looked down at your palm resting against his chest as though it had some right to be there.
“Does your boyfriend know you touch people like this?” The words were out before he could recall them.
Silence, not long but long enough for the full, catastrophic stupidity of the sentence to reveal itself.
Jack felt the room stop around him, though of course it had not. The hospital carried on with its usual indifference, but between the two of you, everything became still.
You could not make sense of the words at first. It landed between you as an object dropped from a height, strange and heavy and weird.
And so Jack experienced the full humiliation of what he had done. The jealousy. The nakedness, the pathetic hope dressed badly as accusation. He had asked a question he had no right to ask in a tone that he could not quite excuse as professional.
He had dragged the imagined man into the space between you and, in doing so, revealed precisely how long he had been thinking about him.
About you.
His jaw tightened, and he prepared himself for the worst: offence, withdrawal and the measured kindness with which you might decide to spare him.
Part of you wanted to laugh at the misunderstanding; there had been no one for years. But another part of you, quieter and more vulnerable, hurt with the knowledge that he may not feel the same. And yet you realised that beneath the edge of his words, something frightened and exposed had taken root in him. Something that made your irritation soften before it could fully become irritation again.
So when you looked up, you didn’t look offended, just startled with a flicker of understanding and something softer still that Jack was suddenly far too frightened to name.
“Jack,” you said slowly and a little breathless with the sudden rearranging of everything you thought you knew about his silence, “I’ve been single for years…”
Years. Years.
That word struck him almost with physical force. Not now or recently or between things.
For a moment, Jack felt suspended. The air between you became too close, too warm, too full of all the meaning he had spent weeks refusing to gather.
You watched all that move through his face almost invisibly. The brief blankness, the tightening in his jaw, the way his eyes sharpened as if the room had tilted.
Behind you, Ellis shouted for him from down the hall, but neither of you moved.
Your palm remained on his chest, and you could feel his pulse under your hand, fast and thumping. And you looked at him as though the rhythm had answered a question you had not yet dared to ask aloud.
You saw him realise that you were not beyond reach, and the sight frightened you because it did not make him look triumphant. It made him look undone.
Not dramatically, but enough. His jaw had gone slack slightly. Just enough to soften the hard line of his mouth to make him look less like the man who cut through emergencies and more like someone who had been struck by a truth he had not prepared himself to survive. His lips parted as if there had been a response in him once, but it had vanished before it could reach the air.
And his eyes - god, his eyes.
They had gone distant and exposed, fixed on you with a kind of stunned uncertainty as though he were looking not merely at your face but at the sudden collapse of every careful assumption he had built between you.
You saw the muscle in his throat work one. Saw the small, almost helpless shift of his mouth as he thought he might speak and could not decide whether spelling would save him or ruin him faster.
The fluorescent light caught in the tired lines at the corner of his eyes, the rough shadow along his jaw, the silver threaded through his hair and all at once, he seemed unbearably real to you.
Not distant, not untouchable, not safely contained between the authority of Dr. Abbot.
Just…Jack.
A man standing very still under your hand, with his pulse beating hard and fast, realising that the person he had been denying himself was not safely beyond reach.
And that realisation did not make him look victorious. It made him look afraid.
As though the one thing that had protected him from hope had been removed without warning.
So at least you stepped back, your hand falling from his chest, and cold air replaced it.
The surroundings returned to Jack in a rush, and he could only muster a soft sound to comment on what you had just revealed, “Oh…”
Under the circumstances, it was an exceptionally inadequate response, but it was all he could say right now, and you wouldn’t push for more.
Your mouth twitched slightly at one corner as Ellis called his name again and shattered the moment around both of you.
You walked away first because you had to. If you stayed, you were afraid you might say something neither of you could take back. Something too honest for the hallway and too soft for the Pitt. Something like I thought you knew, or There really is no one, or even I don’t touch everyone like that.
So you turned towards the noise of the department and made yourself useful.
Jack remained where he was for several seconds longer, staring at the space you had occupied as though your absence had left a visible outline in the air. The place where your hand had reset still burned through his scrub top. His pulse had still not recovered.
The man he resented for weeks did not exist. There was no boyfriend, no decent man waiting at home.
The realisation continued to move through him, but he didn't feel relief or joy or anything so simple. It was too complicated for that, too threaded with fear and hunger and the brutal awareness of consequence.
But beneath it all, low and sickenly warm under his ribs, something dangerously close to hope had begun to unfurl from its coil. And Jack hated it instantly.
And you, walking away with your hand still tingling from the shape of his chest, felt hope, too, but you did not hate it.
But it did scare you enough that you did not look back.
_____
After that question, Jack became careful, and you noticed almost immediately.
He didn’t withdraw with the intention of punishing you, and somehow that made it even worse. Because it meant he believed he was doing something decent. Something responsible. Something that hurt both of you and therefore must, by some grim equation of his, be right.
He changed so subtly that no one else in the department would have paused over it, and yet sharp enough that you felt it almost at once.
He stopped lingering beside you after hard cases.
Before, there had always been those few quiet seconds when the patient had gone, when the room looked wrecked, and the two of you stood in the aftershock together. He would remain near, not speaking much, pretending to study a chart, wiping his hands, or listening for someone calling his name.
You learned the language of that lingering. It meant I am still here, that was bad, or maybe even stay near me while I remember how to be ordinary again.
Now? He left first and always with some reason in his hand.
He no longer reached for the coffee you handed him. He glanced at it, then at you, and seething shuttered behind his eyes.
“Thanks,” he said. Polite. Careful. Awful.
When your arms brushed in crowded hallways, he moved aside first now. And that was maybe what bothered you the most because the hospital was cramped and bodies collided. It was perfectly ordinary.
But Jack began avoiding even the ordinary. He gave you space with the grave courtesy of a man offering an apology you had not asked for.
You hated it. And Jack? He hated it too. That was maybe the worst part.
You could see it in him, the cruelty of knowing someone too well. He was not unaffected by what he was doing. If anything, the carefulness had made him more visibly strained with his jaw tighter and his silences harsher.
He didn't watch you as often anymore, and yet when he did, it was with such hunger quickly disguised as restraint that it felt almost unbearable to catch him at it.
Distance was supposed to restore proportion, which had been his intention at least. To step back before the thing growing between you acquired enough shape to be named. Before it became visible to Ellis, to Shen, to anyone with eyes and the misfortune of being awake at three in the morning.
Before it ruined you.
Not himself. Jack had very little patience for his own preservation, had dragged his body and soul through worse things than longing and expected no sympathy for it. But you were different. Younger, warmer, and still capable of giving tenderness without flinching from it first.
And he would not be the thing that taught you to.
To Jack, the department felt wrong without your nearness in it. He noticed the missing warmth of your shoulder, the way you laughed without catching his gaze afterwards, and how you stopped reaching for him as easily.
The last one should have relieved him, but it did not. Instead, it irritated him with the sheer unfairness of a self-inflicted wound. He had created the distance and now restored the shape it made around him.
It was pathetic, really. At his age, desire ought to arrive with dignity or not at all. But it had just reduced him to someone measuring entire shifts by the accidental proximity of a nurse.
You deserved someone lighter than him. That thought followed him everywhere. Through the endless hours of his shift. Through the ambulance bay. Through the staff room. Through the brief moments when he washed his hands and found himself staring too long at his own reflection in the dark window above the sink.
Someone younger, whose body did not ache with old injuries. Someone who could still stand at the end of a brutal shift and imagine dancing or breakfast, or sunlight without first calculating how much pain the next hour might cost.
Someone who did not carry war quietly in the set of his shoulders.
Someone who did not carry widowhood in the exhausted caution of his hands.
Someone who could offer you uncomplicated things. Mornings untouched by nightmares, intimacy untouched by grief… a future not assembled awkwardly from surviving pieces.
He feared all of that because wanting you made him feel breakable.
So he thought he could endure wanting you. Because wanting was private and could be locked away. He had survived worse than wanting, so he could survive this, too.
What he could not endure was the possibility that you might actually want him back, because then restraint would no longer be noble, but rather a refusal. He wouldn’t protect you; he would actively hurt you.
You missed the moments between the two of you immensely, and you suspected he felt the same.
Twice during this week, you caught him looking at you with an expression that made your pulse stumble.
One time, you had been laughing at something someone said near the medication station, tired enough that the laughter came out softer than usual. When you looked up, Jack was watching you from across the department.
Not with the ordinary irritated attention he gave noise in a place already too full of it. He was looking at you as though he had forgotten that looking could be seen.
The second time was sometime after four in the morning. You were standing together at the nurses’ station, close but not touching, both exhausted. His shoulders were rounded with fatigue, one hand braced beside the keyboard, the other resting near a chart he had stopped pretending to read.
You needed a pen. Probably pens were everywhere, from drawers to pockets. But the nearest one was tucked behind Jack’s ear.
And before you could think, ask, or remember that things had changed, you reached for it.
When your finger brushed his temple, he froze, went still under your hand. It was as if he had ceased to be the steady centre of anything and became a statue under the smallest possible kindness.
Your hand closed around the pen, but you did not pull it free yet, and Jack just looked at you. No, not at you. More into you.
As though your touch had interrupted something inside the machinery he had built to keep himself distant, as if it suffered a catastrophic failure at the contact of your fingers.
Slowly, carefully, his eyes dropped to your mouth. Heat moved through you instantly. It struck low and sharp, almost carnal in a sudden awareness of your own mouth and the small distance between you.
His gaze stayed there for longer than it should have. When he lifted his eyes again, he looked almost angry. Not with you. With himself, with the want that had become visible despite all his effort.
You could have made it easy for him then. You could have laughed, taken the pen, turned away, restored the moment to something ordinary again. You could have pretended not to notice the way his pulse had changed, or how the tips of his ears turned red, or even how his eyes had betrayed him.
Instead, you just stayed close, too. Just long enough to let him understand that you had seen him.
Then he moved back gently.
After that, you stopped pretending you didn’t know.
Not loudly. There were still patients to be seen, families to call, rooms to turn over before the next emergency arrived.
But still, you knew now.
You knew in the way he went still, when you came too close with the sudden arrested quiet of a man holding himself back by force. Or how he stared at your mouth too often in a way that couldn’t be denied. And, of course, in the way he had asked about a partner and retreated the moment your answer removed the last clean excuse between you.
He wanted you. But it felt like a man standing very still in a burning room because he was more afraid of harming you than of being consumed himself. And so you gave him the choice to leave.
You wouldn’t - couldn’t - demand a confession from him when he seemed so torn between his inner demons and what he wanted so clearly.
So you started to behave normally again. Standing beside him instead of across, touching his shoulder or arm in passing once more. Nonetheless, you always made sure he could step away if he wanted to.
Sometimes he would, and those times always hurt. Not because you thought he didn't want you, but because you know he did and chose distance.
But sometimes, he did not.
Sometimes, when you touched his wrist and said his first name, he looked down at your fingers, not like a man rejecting a boundary crossed, but like a thirsty man refusing to drink the water in front of him.
These moments were almost nothing: a pause, a breath, a hand not withdrawn, a man allowing himself to be touched.
And somewhere in those small permissions, the thing between you stopped being imaginary.
It became waiting.
_____
It happened after a child with appendicitis turned septic faster than anyone would have liked.
That was how Jack would have described it later, if anyone had asked. Nothing catastrophic, in the end: Surgery took him, and the vitals steadied. The boy was alive. His mother had only stopped crying after Ellis had told her that her son had arrived in time and that he was in the best hands. The machinery worked as it was meant to work.
And still, by the time you slipped into the medication room, your hands were shaking. Not enough for anyone else to notice in the hall. You had kept them useful when it mattered, held pressure, passed instruments on, spoken gently.
But in the narrow privacy between shelves and drawers with the door half-closed behind you and the worst over, your body had demanded compensation.
Jack found you there, your fingers trembling around nothing.
“Hey,” his voice was low and careful.
You looked down at your hands, “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask.”
His dry retort almost made you laugh, almost broke you too.
The laugh rose first, small and helpless, because of how he had said it. But under it, something hot and sudden began to manifest itself behind your eyes; you had to press your lips together to keep it from becoming a sound you would not be able to take back.
Jack stepped closer to you, not much. Just in the way it had been now for quite some time, only allowing proximity in measured doses as though closeness was some volatile drug to be administered with caution.
For a moment, he only stood there, the war in him obvious. Something between you had been stretching for weeks now. Thin as wire. Hot as a live current. Every almost, every retreat, every glance too long had pulled it tighter.
And as his hand rose and settled at the back of your neck, you knew something in him had snapped.
Your breath caught, and for one second, the world seemed to stop turning. His palm curved around the nape of your neck with a restraint so delicate it was almost worse than hunger. His fingers rested beneath the fall of your hair, not gripping, not claiming, only there - steady and human and closer than he had allowed himself to be in days.
The touch should have calmed you, but instead it felt like oil thrown onto the flame.
Your skin seemed to know him before the rest of you could decide what to do. The warmth of his hand spread down your spine, across your shoulders, beneath your ribs, until the shaking in your fingers became something else entirely.
Jack felt it too. Or maybe he only felt his own ruin answering yours.
“You did well,” he said, his voice was rougher than usual, and his thumb moved once, barely.
In any other world, the words should have just steadied you. Returned the moment to something safe, something professional; just one colleague comforting another one. You should have just nodded, thanked him and stepped back.
Instead, you looked up. And his gaze dropped to your mouth again.
This time, he did not look away immediately.
That was the difference. That was the match.
For weeks, he had glanced and retreated, wanted and punished himself, let his gaze fall to your mouth only long enough for both of you to know before turning away with the grim discipline of someone believing he was doing something right.
But now he just looked. Really looked.
“Jack,” you whispered, and whatever he saw in your face, your eyes, ruined him.
You could watch it happen, the small collapse inside of him. The flare of want before restraint closed around it, and how his eyes darkened.
His hand tightened by a fraction at the back of your neck. Not enough to hurt, but enough to tell the truth.
You just stood inside the tiny room, close enough that the air seemed shared and everything beyond the door became distant and irrelevant. His hand was on your neck, your eyes on your mouth. And that was all that mattered. The fire had caught now, and all his carefullness, all his distance, all his noble, miserable retrauint had only fed it.
Then someone shouted from the hall and tore through the moment.
Jack stepped back so quickly that the absence of him felt like a slap. His face closed again, and then he left.
And for the next hour, he was furious with himself. Not because he had touched you. No, it was because for one second he had believed he was allowed to.
That was the dangerous thing. Desire could be mistrused and eventually starved. Permission was worse.
The look on your face had not been pity. And he couldn't make it pity no matter how hard he tried. It had been wanting. Unmistakable enough that even Jack’s considerable talent for self-denial could not fully disfigure it.
You wanted him. Possibly. Probably.
That thought moved through him like a second ignition, heat catching where he had already been burning.
And still, he couldn’t let go of his thoughts. He was too old, too damaged. He was sure you only wanted the idea of him. The controlled version you saw.
You didn’t know the rest; the bad nights, the stiffness, the pain.
You deserved better than a man who would have to explain himself before letting you undress him.
Better than a body that came with history written into muscle and bone.
Better than a man who had learned to survive so thoroughly that he no longer knew whether he could be loved without first apologising for what survival had made of him.
Better than Jack Abbot.
That was what he told himself like a mantra through the rest of his shift. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. As he corrected a resident too sharply. As he avoided looking towards you because he knew if he saw you again, the thing in him might snap a second time.
And next time, he was not so sure he would step back.
_____
The night that continued the unravelling began badly and then worsened with an almost theatrical dedication.
Rain came down hard enough to turn the outside almost silver. It sheeted over the asphalt in violent, glittering bursts beneath emergency lights, gathered in gutters, and struck the roof with a steady metallic insistence. The city seemed to empty itself into the Pitt one siren at a time.
By midnight, every bed was full.
By two, the hallways had become waiting rooms.
By three, even Shen had stopped making jokes.
Jack had not eaten since noon, and had only had half a cup of black coffee that now stood forgotten on the counter next to a protein bar he had taken one bite from. You had not sat down in six hours, and your body ached with it.
Around dawn, the department seemed to quiet down a bit. At least it gave the illusion of rest, ten stolen minutes in the staff room beneath humming lights. When you entered, you found Jack already there.
He was sitting on the worn couch with his head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed, one hand resting loosely over his abdomen and the other along the cushion at his side. Exhaustion had stripped something from his face. Without the sharpness of command and the motion of work, he looked older.
Not weaker. Just… unbearably human.
His hair was damp at the edges, curling even more than normally. The shadow of the stubble along his jaw was more pronounced than at the start of the shift. He looked like a man assembled out of duty, pain, caffeine, and refusal. And for one aching moment, you wanted nothing more than to touch the place where the world had rested hardest on him.
“You should go home,” he said without opening his eyes.
“So should you.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” you mumbled as you sat down beside him, the couch dipping beneath your weight.
Once again, you were too close. Your knee nearly touched his, and the heat of his body met yours in the narrow space between you.
For a while, neither of you spoke. But silence did what speech could not: It softened the edges and let the hospital drift away inch by inch. Somewhere outside the ER continued breathing, but inside the room, the world narrowed down to you and him.
Exhausted, you leaned against him in a small surrender. Jack went still beneath the contact, his body reacting with that familiar restraint as every muscle seemed to hold its breath. His arm was warm and solid against yours had become the nearest real thing in a room that had been moving all night.
Your temple came to rest against him next.
“This okay?” you asked, barely above a whisper.
It was not. It was the least okay thing that had happened to him all week. Because it was so gentle and the question gave him a chance to refuse you, but some starving part inside him knew that he did not want the distance.
“Yes,” he said. The word came out low and rough, nearly unrecognisable.
You relaxed against him by degrees. First, your shoulder settled more fully against his upper arm, the tension easing from you in small increments. Then your head came to rest more heavily against him, your temple warm through the fabric near his shoulder, your hair brushing the side of his jaw whenever you shifted. Your hand, loose and tired and utterly thoughtless, drifted towards his forearm.
He had the kind of arms that made restraint look physical: broad through the forearm, corded not in any decorative way but with the practical strength of a man who had spent his life using his body because there had never been another option. There were small marks there too, old nicks and pale scars, the sort of evidence a life left behind without ever asking whether it would be welcome.
Your fingers touched him lightly, and Jack stared down.
You traced the inside of his forearm slowly, not with the deliberate confidence of someone trying to seduce him, but with the absent tenderness of a person too tired to keep desire and comfort in separate rooms.
Your fingertips followed the raised path of a vein beneath his skin, then drifted over the firm muscle beside it, then back again, slow enough that every inch of contact seemed to enter him with impossible precision. You felt the warmth of him, the roughness of fine hair under your fingers, the faint tension that moved through his arm each time your touch passed near the bend of his elbow.
He smelled closer like this. Less than the department and more like Jack.
Beneath the traces of coffee, rain and disinfectant was the living warmth of his skin, the scent held at his collar and in the fabric of his scrubs after a night of work and fear and too little rest. It made you dizzy in a way that exhaustion could not fully explain.
Jack watched your hand as though it contained instructions for his destruction.
He knew he should move, should sit forward or should clear his throat. Should do any number of sensible things before the thread between you, stretched for weeks by almost-touches and almost-confessions and the cruel oil of hope poured again and again onto desire, finally snapped.
But you were so warm against him with your fingers on his arm and your head beneath his chin. And Jack, who had spent weeks starving himself of the exact tenderness, found that self-denial had a limit after all.
He didn’t decide to kiss the top of your head. Because a decision would have implied a process, a moment in which consequences had been weighed and accepted or rejected. But consequences belonged to a version of Jack Abbot who had slept, eaten, kept a better distance and had not spent the last several months becoming quietly and completely undone by the way you touched him when you thought you were being gentle.
So his mouth found your hair before he understood that he had moved.
It was barely a kiss, barely anything,
Just the lightest press of his lips to the crown of your head. It should have been innocent, but Jack felt it go through him like a match to oil.
Your hand stilled on his forearm, and you lifted your head, slowly but not startled or pulling away. And that, more than anything, destroyed the last fragile thing holding him back.
Jack’s hand was still on your arm, though he had no memory of putting it there. His fingers curved around you with careful pressure, thumb resting against the soft skin just below your sleeve, not gripping, not yet, but holding enough that both of you knew he could not pretend this was merely fatigue.
Your hand remained on his forearm, your fingers spread over the vein you had been tracing, and beneath your palm, his muscles were tense with the effort of not reaching for more.
For one suspended second, you looked at him with the same softness that had been ruining him for weeks.
“Jack,” you whispered.
His name in your voice was the final pull on the thread.
His hand rose from your arm to the side of your face as he leaned in, broad palm warm against your cheek, fingers sliding carefully into the hair near your temple as though even in surrender, he could not stop himself from being gentle with you. His mouth found yours slowly enough to give you one last chance to turn away and urgently enough to confess that he had been wanting this for longer than he could bear to admit.
You did not turn away but moved into him.
So he kissed you like a man arriving starving at his own destruction.
Your hands caught his shoulders, fingers gripping the fabric of his scrubs as though some part of you needed more proof that he was solid and that this was real.
He responded by deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding against yours in a slow stroke that made your stomach clench.
His own fingers could not seem to decide where they were allowed to belong.
They found your waist first, large and careful and so unsteady, drawing you closer and closer. Then one slid to your back, pressing between your shoulder blades as if he could keep you there. And then it rose to your face, his thumb brushing over your cheek with an overwhelming tenderness.
Your hand slid from his shoulders to the back of his neck. Your fingers found the short hair at his nape, and Jack made a sound, low and involuntary, that vibrated through the narrow space between your bodies.
He pulled back just enough to look at you, to make sure that this was real. That you were real. His thumb brushed over your cheek again, and when you tilted your face up, he kissed you again.
You shifted on the couch, turning towards him. His hand slid from your jaw to the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair, and you felt the gentle pressure of his palm. His tongue brushed against yours and responded in kind, tasting him and deepening the kiss even further.
Driven by hunger, his hands found your waist, and he lifted you up until you were straddling him on the narrow couch. You settled against him, your knees bracketing his hips, and the first thing you felt was the solid wall of his thighs beneath you.
“Jack-” you started, voice breathless even to your own ears.
“I’ve thought about this,” he murmured against your throat, interrupting you. His lips moved over your pulse point, his stubble scraping over it. “Thought about you … for months.”
His thumbs started to trace slow circles against the jut of your hipbones through the fabric, and you arched into him instinctively.
You felt him hardening beneath you. The thick length of his cock pressed against your cunt through too many layers of fabric, and you rolled your hips without thinking, chasing the friction. The sensation sent sparks up your spine, and you gasped against his neck.
His head fell back against the wall with a soft thud, eyes closed and throat exposed. You took the opportunity to lean in and press your lips against the hollow of his neck.
When he let out a low groan, you rolled your hips again, slower this time. His fingers dug into your hips, guiding you, pulling you harder against him. You could feel the tension coiling in his body, the way his thighs tensed, and the ragged catch in his breathing.
“Fuck,” he gasped. “Fuck, wait..I-”
But you were already moving again, lost in the heat of him and the taste of his mouth when he pulled you back in for another kiss. His hips bucked up against you, and you felt him throb against you.
Then he went rigid beneath you.
A low, broken sound escaped his throat. Half groan, half something like aguish. Jack’s hands clamped down on your hips hard, fingers curled in the fabrics of your scrubs hard enough to wrinkle them, as his whole body shuddered.
You felt the warmth spreading against you even through the fabric.
A flush of shame rose to his face. Colour high along his cheekbones now, through the stubble and the exhaustion of the shift.
“Fuck,” The word came out strangled. “I’m so sorry.”
His jaw tightened, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at you. He could feel the cooling wetness against his skin, the uncomfortable cling of fabric. It had been years since anyone touched him with intention. Years since he had let himself want something enough to lose himself in it.
“I need to change my scrubs…” He said quietly, words rough and scraped raw by embarrassment.
“It’s been a while,” he said finally, the admission dragged out of him like a confession. “A long while. This doesn’t usually…”
He could not finish the sentence, couldn’t articulate the way his body had betrayed him, had responded to you with an intensity he had forgotten he was capable of feeling.
You watched the shame move through him like a wave. Watching how his eyes could not quite meet yours, the way his jaw worked around words he could not say. Nonetheless, your body still hummed with want; you could feel the ache between your thighs that hadn't been satisfied yet. But you also felt a fierce tenderness for this man who looked at you like you were something precious and terrifying.
“Jack.” You kept your voice soft and steady. “It’s okay.”
“It's not,” he exhaled sharply. “That wasn’t…I wanted to...”
“I know.”
You leaned in and pressed your forehead to his. The gesture was intimate in a way that made his chest tighten. He could smell your shampoo, feel the warmth of your breath against his lips.
You stayed where you were for another long moment. The fluorescent lights hummed. The clock on the wall ticked. Somewhere in the ER, the night shift continued without you, but here in this small room, time had become something elastic and strange.
Finally, reluctantly, you began to move.
His hands slid from your hips as you rose, but not before he squeezed them once - hard, deliberate, a silent promise. The fabric of your panties stuck to your cunt, and you were acutely aware of how muhch you wanted him.
Jack watched you stand. He remained on the couch, making no move to rise, and you understood why. The evidence of his orgasm was visible if you looked, a slight darkening of the fabric at his groin. He kept his thighs pressed together, one hand resting casually over the affected area, but his ears had gone red again.
Then, very gently, you cupped his cheek.
Jack stopped breathing.
Your palm fit against the side of his face with a tenderness that made his expression change before he could prevent it. Your thumb brushed once beneath his eye, over the tired skin there, near the place exhaustion had settled into him so deeply that it seemed part of his bone structure. His stubble rasped faintly against your palm. He smelled of coffee and rain and hospital soap and the warm, human aftermath of being kissed past his own defences.
“It’s okay, really,” you murmured.
Finally, Jack looked at you properly again.
Something steadier had begun to settle behind the embarrassment now. Not calm exactly. Calm would have been too clean a word for it. This was darker, quieter, more deliberate. Determination, perhaps. Or surrender wearing the clothes of decision.
“Come with me after shift,” he said.
Not a question.
The command seemed to surprise him the instant it left his mouth.
His expression shifted, the old caution returning so quickly it almost hurt to watch, and his voice softened immediately afterwards, roughened by the effort of giving you room.
“If you want,” he paused and swallowed. “I’ll do better. I’ll make it good for you…I-”
“Yes.”
You answered before he could finish or spiral into self-doubt or find reasons why this was a mistake.
“Yes,” you repeated softly. “I want that. I want you.”
Something low and helpless moved through Jack’s expression before he looked away from you entirely.
It was not quite a smile, not quite a grimace, not quite surrender, but some private combination of all three - desire and disbelief and the terrible relief of being answered. His hand flexed once against the couch cushion, as though he had to remind himself not to reach for you again when the door was unlocked, and the department still needed him.
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.
You laughed softly.
And for the first time in weeks, he did not step back from the sound.
I'm trying to think of Ed Warren Smuts you can write cause I've read like....all of the Ed Warren Smuts in Tumblr! So hopefully I can plan some good prompts for youuuu anyway love your Ed Warren and Patrick Wilson Smuts❤
Aaah thank youuuu. I love love LOVE your requests so much! Promise I'm gonna get to it hopefully sooner than later ✨
doormatty, how I've missed you and your patrick wilson fanfics✌️🥹
🖤🖤 well I am back! And I'll try to write more! I will also dabble in some other fandoms when I feel like it, BUT there will certainly be more PWilz fanfics. I've got some planned but if anyone has some requests, let me knooow ~
I just read unravelled and im obsessed!! The way it didnt even feel long because it was so delicious and i just wanted to immerse myself in it
Thank you so much 🥹 I'm so so happy that so many people like it. I'll probably write part 2 at some point as well! Originally, I didn't plan for it but yeah 😄
NOTES:This has been in my drafts embarrassingly long...so I figured it's time to finally finish it. I may have gotten completely carried away lo
SUMMARY: It’s supposed to be the last carefree night before your new job begins - just a drink, maybe two, and a chance to forget the nerves waiting for you in the morning. Instead, you meet him. Aaron Hotchner. Calm, controlled, and devastatingly handsome, intense in a way that makes your skin itch to find out what’s hiding behind that commanding shell. And before the night is over, you do find out exactly what happens when he lets go of all that careful control.
OR: Aaron puts the hot in Hotchner and makes you obey.
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦
To be honest, you are not sure why you are here - here, of all places, in a bar thick with low murmurs and the clink of glass.
Tomorrow is your first day with the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI. A fresh start. A career people would kill for. And yet tonight, instead of preparing or sleeping or doing anything remotely sensible, you’re sitting beneath warm amber light with a drink in your hand.
Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the uncertainty curling in your stomach every time you think about tomorrow. Maybe you just needed one last night of being no one important yet.
At least you chose well.
The bar has the kind of charm that can’t be fabricated. Age settled into the dark wood panels and worn floorboards, into the brass fixtures dulled by time, into every nick and scratch left behind by years of strangers passing through. It feels lived in, familiar, like a place that has seen a thousand stories and kept every one of them.
The lighting is low and golden, casting everything in softness. It catches on framed photographs lining the walls, on polished bottles behind the counter, on the edges of glasses raised in quiet toasts.
And the varied crowd reflects just that. A few play darts with quiet intensity, while others linger at the bar, absorbed in conversation that hums rather than roars.
Behind the counter, the bartender moves, pouring drinks with careful precision. Ice knocks softly against glass, laughter rises and fades, and the room vibrates with the easy comfort of a place suspended somewhere between celebration and escape.
A quiet sigh slips from your lips as you study the depths of your glass, where the scotch rests in a pool of amber fire, gathering and releasing the low light of the room. It was a good choice. It’s something warm, expensive enough to feel indulgent, strong enough to quiet the edges of your thoughts.
The tumbler sits heavy in your hand, its weight oddly reassuring, as though anchoring you in the sea of uncertainty that you’re afloat in.
When you tilt the glass, the liquid clings for a moment to the crystal walls before slipping downwards in thin golden rivulets. You watch them with more attention than they deserve, grateful for the distraction, however brief, from the shape of tomorrow waiting just beyond midnight.
“A beautiful woman like you shouldn’t be here alone.”
The voice arrives like a stone through still water, disturbing the fragile calm you had so carefully constructed around yourself.
You lift your gaze to find a man standing beside you, perhaps near your own age. His eyes are a washed and uncertain blue, curious in a manner that feels less charming than practised. Angular features are softened by an uneven stubble, and brown hair falls untidily to his ears.
He is not unattractive…only uninteresting. Too young, too eager, and possessed of that particular energy, you have no patience to entertain tonight.
You offer him the kind of smile civility demands and nothing more.
“Sometimes being alone is rather nice,” you reply evenly. “Besides, I’m not alone.”
Demonstratively, you lift your glass a bit - the whiskey is your company.
He grins, entirely untroubled by your refusal, “Fair enough. Mind if I join you? The night’s still young, and good company is hard to find.”
For a moment, you let the silence linger between you, hoping it might accomplish what politeness had not.
“I appreciate the offer,” you say at last, measured and clear, “but I was rather enjoying some time to myself.”
You hate men who just don’t get it. How broad should the hint be, you ask yourself.
His expression does not so much as flicker. With the confidence of a man long accustomed to mistaking persistence for charm, he draws the empty stool beside you and settles onto it as though invited.
“No harm in a little company, is there? Name’s Sean, by the way.”
You give your own name with a restrained inclination of the head, the sort of courtesy you extend to strangers and endures.
“Nice to meet you, Sean.”
It is, in fact, not.
Jesus, you’re not in the mood to deal with someone like him today.
Sean continues on, filling the air with the easy, thoughtless chatter of someone entirely content to occupy more space than he has been given. You scarcely hear the words. Your attention has already turned elsewhere, your gaze moving over the room in quiet calculation, searching the dim corners and crowded tables for some means of escape from the tedious siege of unwanted conversation.
And then you see him. Dark, serious, and older.
He takes a seat at the counter with the quiet assurance of a man who never needs to announce himself. One hand settles around a glass of amber liquor, the other resting loose beside it, every movement economical, precise. There is nothing ostentatious about him, and yet the room seems to bend, almost imperceptibly, around his presence. He is magnetic, drawing you in and captivating you.
Dark eyes, brown, you think, though the light keeps their true colour half-concealed, view the room from beneath a stern, thoughtful brow. There is intelligence there, sharp and watchful, the kind that misses very little and forgives even less.
His hair is black, neatly kept, touched by the faintest suggestion of silver at the temples. It frames a face cut in decisive lines: strong jaw, straight nose, a mouth made severe by habit rather than nature.
His dress shirt is charcoal, sleeves rolled once at the forearm, collar open just enough to suggest the night has coaxed some small concession from discipline. Broad shoulders strain the fabric in a way almost indecently distracting. Everything about him speaks of control - careful, practised, absolute.
He is all sharp lines and silent strength.
His gaze rests now on you and Sean with calm, unblinking attention. Not intrusive. Not idle. Merely observant. But there is a flicker in those unreadable eyes. Interest, perhaps, or disapproval, or the private consideration of a man already deciding what to do next.
You decide to use a subtle diversion tactic, seizing the opportunity, offering Sean a polite smile, “I appreciate the conversation, Sean, but I’ve just spotted someone I need to catch up with. Perhaps another time?”
Before Sean can gather himself enough to object, you slip from the stool, leaving him in a brief and well-earned silence.
You cross the short distance to the stranger and offer him a small smile.
“Mind if I join you?”
The mysterious stranger glances towards the empty stool beside him and gestures to it with a quiet inclination of his hand.
As you settle onto the chair your initial impression is confirmed: He is, indeed, remarkably handsome.
The dark dress shirt fits almost too well, stretching lightly across broad shoulders.
Your gaze lingers on his hands; large, capable hands. The fingers are long and precise, the nails neatly kept, each detail suggesting a man who values order, control, and competence. Yet there is nothing delicate about them. They look built for command.
Your eyes trail upwards, and you can’t help but notice the soft shadow that graces his cheeks and chin. You wonder whether you would feel the gentle prickle of stubble if your fingers were to trace the contours of his face?
And then there are his eyes.
Exactly as you suspected: dark brown, deep-set and observant. Yet up close, they are warmer than expected, touched by an intelligence that feels almost tangible. They hold yours with calm steadiness, and in their depths a warmth that draws you in.
You’re interrupted when Sean returns a moment later, his expression sharpened by annoyance, as though your leaving had been less a choice than a personal affront.
“It’s not very nice to just walk away, you know,” he remarks, his tone laced with irritation. A cringe creeps over you at the edge in his voice, but before you can respond, the man beside you speaks first.
“Walk away, Sean.”
His voice is deep and level, not raised in the slightest, yet it cuts cleanly through the room and through Sean’s indignation with equal ease.
Sean lets out a humourless laugh. “Oh, fuck off, Aaron. Stay out of it. I wasn’t talking to you.”
Wait, they know each other? They seem so different: Sean all noise and entitlement, this man all restraint and consequence.
Aaron.
The name suits him. You turn it over once in your mind and find you like the sound of it far too much.
Sean, determined to prove himself a fool in every possible manner, places a hand upon your shoulder as though to reclaim the conversation. Irritation flares hot and immediate. You knock his hand away without hesitation.
Before he can speak again, Aaron repeats himself.
“Walk away, Sean.”
This time, the words arrive colder. A warning stripped to its essentials. His expression scarcely changes, yet the faint furrow between his brows deepens, and the air about him seems suddenly sharper, charged by something carefully leashed.
Sean scoffs, though less convincingly than before.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Aaron? She doesn’t need you fighting her battles.”
Aaron turns his gaze fully upon him then, and it is remarkable how much force can exist in stillness.
“She doesn’t need anyone harassing her either.” He pauses only a beat. “Walk away.”
Aaron’s words, a silent warning, hang in the air.
You feel both discomfort and an undeniable relief, as though someone has finally spoken aloud what should have been obvious from the start.
“I’m not taking orders from you,” Sean says, but the bravado has thinned. Uncertainty frays the edges of his voice.
Aaron’s reply is calm, almost courteous, which somehow makes it more threatening.
“You should. It would be in your best interest.”
Silence stretches between them. Then, with the sulky resentment of a man who knows he has lost but cannot bear to admit it, Sean steps back.
“Fine. Have it your way.”
He casts you one final bitter glance before disappearing into the shifting dimness of the bar.
Aaron’s gaze turns back to you once Sean has vanished into the crowd, and with the shift comes a subtle but unmistakable change. The severity that had sharpened his features moments ago eases; the hard line of his mouth softens, the tension at his brow loosens. It is as though some private switch has been thrown; the man who had stood like a blade now becoming something quieter, steadier.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
The question is simple, but there is nothing careless in it. His attention settles on you fully, deliberate and searching, as though he intends to make certain of the answer rather than merely hear it.
You nod, still feeling the remnants of adrenaline fluttering beneath your ribs.
“Yes,” you say, then with greater sincerity, “Thanks to you.”
For a moment, he only inclines his head, accepting the gratitude without ceremony.
“No problem.” His glance flicks briefly towards the direction Sean disappeared. “Some people require a clearer message.” A pause, almost dryly amused. “My brother especially.”
You blink. “Your brother?”
Something like resignation passes over his face before he sighs, “Unfortunately, yes. Younger brother.”
The revelation rearranges the scene in your mind: The hostility, the familiarity, the confidence with which he had intervened.
“Well,” you say slowly, “family dynamics can be... complicated.”
A low sound escapes him, half breath, half laugh. He leans back against the counter then, one elbow resting on the polished wood, glass turning idly between long fingers.
“Complicated is one word for it,” he says. “Sean has a talent for finding trouble wherever he goes.” His eyes lift to yours. “And I have a talent for getting him out of it.”
You laugh despite yourself, the image too fitting not to.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
The answer comes at once, dry and honest enough to surprise another laugh from you. A faint smile touches his mouth in response, brief as light on water.
“But I’d rather not spend the evening discussing my family’s flaws.” He tilts his head slightly, studying you now with that same measured attentiveness. “What brings you here tonight?”
The question turns the light back onto you, and under his gaze, you find yourself answering more openly than you intended. You tell him about tomorrow: Your first day at your new job, the weight of beginnings and expectations pressing against your thoughts. You speak of wanting one quiet evening before life becomes something faster, louder, and more demanding.
Aaron listens without interruption. His eyes remain on you, dark and steady, reflecting understanding without pity, interest without intrusion.
When you finish, he glances around the room - the clatter of glasses, the murmuring crowd, the dartboard thudding softly in the distance.
“Well,” he says at last, voice touched with dry humour, “you chose an interesting space for peace and quiet.”
You laugh aloud, genuinely this time, and the sound appears to please him more than he lets on.
Then he smiles.
It changes him.
Until now, you had admired the stern architecture. But a smile dismantles all of it in an instant. Warmth spills suddenly through features once guarded. The lines of tension vanish from his brow; his eyes brighten, revealing a softness you would not have thought possible in them.
There are dimples, faint but unmistakable, appearing at the corners of a mouth that seems built more for command than delight. They lend him an almost dangerous charm, because they humanise what was already striking.
You stare a moment longer than politeness allows.
He notices, surely. A man like this notices everything. Yet he says nothing. And somewhere, with startling clarity, a thought forms.
You want to see that smile again.
Even want to be the cause of it. You want to peel back every careful layer of restraint he wears so elegantly and discover what lies beneath the discipline, beneath the severity, beneath the immaculate control.
All in all you want, quite suddenly and quite seriously, to be the making of his undoing.
You chat a little longer, conversation flowing with surprising ease over the slow passage of drinks and borrowed glances. There is something effortless in it now, the earlier reserve worn away until words pass between you as naturally as breath.
After a while, you excuse yourself to the restroom.
As you slip from the stool, your phone happens to fall from your hand, striking the floor with a sharp little sound. You bend to retrieve it, slowly, deliberately, so that the hem of your skirt rises just enough to flash more of your thigh and ass than appropriate. You linger there longer than necessary, arching your back a touch more.
From above comes the low, rough sound of a man losing patience with restraint.
You glance back only briefly, catching the dark heat in Aaron’s eyes, and give your hips the faintest sway as you straighten. Then, with a look of playful innocence that fools neither of you, you turn and make your way towards the corridor.
Footsteps follow behind you - swift, purposeful, leaving no doubt as to their owner. Then strong hands find your waist, firm and certain, turning you in one smooth motion until your back meets the wall and Aaron stands before you.
He is close enough now to feel rather than simply see. The breadth of him blocks the narrow hall, his body a wall of warmth and solid strength, every line of him commanding space with effortless authority. His chest rises beneath the dark fabric of his shirt, close enough that you feel the heat of it through your own clothes. His thighs, thick and unyielding, bracket yours, making escape impossible even if you wanted it.
His eyes hold yours, dark and intent, searching your face for something deeper than permission.
“I’ll stop,” he says quietly, voice lowered to a gravelled murmur, his breath warm on your lips, “if you don’t want this.”
But you just smile, tilting your head up in invitation.
It is all he needs.
He crashes his mouth to yours, hard and demanding, his full lips claiming you with a force that steals your breath. His tongue pushes past your teeth, stroking deep, tasting you like he’s starved.
One massive hand cups the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair to angle you just right, while the other slides down to grip your hip, pulling your body flush against his.
Your fingers dig into his shoulders, tracing the broad expanse, and he responds by pressing his hips forward, letting you feel how hard he’s getting. His hand dips lower, cupping your ass and lifting you slightly against the wall, his thigh wedging more between your legs to rub against your aching pussy.
The friction makes you moan into his mouth, and he swallows the sound, kissing you like he never wants to stop, his stoic mask shattered by the raw need in his eyes.
You tease him by grinding your hips forward, feeling the thick length of his cock strain harder against his jeans, rubbing right along your thigh. He groans low into the kiss, his big hand squeezing your ass tighter, fingers digging in to pull you closer, while his other palm slides up to cup your breast fully, thumb circling your nipple through the thin fabric until it peaks stiff and sensitive.
He breaks the kiss just enough to nip at your jaw, whispering hot against your skin, “You like that, don’t you? Getting all worked up in a hallway where anyone could walk by.”
You whimper in response when he captures your lips once more. His touch turns bolder, hand slipping under your skirt to trace the edge of your panties, fingertips brushing your damp pussy, making you whine and buck against him.
But then it hits you- the distant hum of voices from the bar, the risk of someone rounding the corner. You’re in public, exposed in this dimly lit hallway of a busy bar, and the thrill mixes with a sharp jolt of reality. You pull back, breathless, your lips swollen and tingling from his assault.
“Not here,” you murmur, eyes locking on his darkened gaze. You’re almost surprised how strongly you’re reacting to him, but can’t find it in yourself to care, so the next words tumble our breathlessly, “My place.”
For a moment, he says nothing. Then Aaron gives a single nod, sharp and decisive. Desire has coloured the stern planes of his face, though discipline still holds him in check by sheer force of habit. A fleeting smile touches his mouth, rare enough to feel like a private reward, before he reaches to smooth the hem of your skirt back into place with a touch that is both practical and unmistakably possessive.
He grabs your hand, enveloping it completely and leads you back through the crowd.
When you near the counter to settle your tab, Sean notices at once.
He is leaning against the bar with the sullen posture of a man still nursing his humiliation, and the sight of you beside Aaron sharpens something ugly in his expression.
“Well, look at that,” he drawls. “Guess playing hero worked out for you after all.”
A few nearby heads turn, sensing conflict with the vulgar instinct of crowds everywhere.
Aaron does not so much as glance at him at first. He sets payment on the bar, calm and precise, as though Sean were no more than background noise. Yet the line of his jaw tightens.
Sean mistakes silence for permission once again.
“What was it this time, huh?” he continues, bitterness creeping into each word. “Flash the badge, give the big speech, scare everyone into line?”
Aaron turns then. Slowly.
“You’ve embarrassed yourself enough for one night,” he says, voice low and controlled. “Don’t continue.”
Sean scoffs, but there is uncertainty beneath it now. “You always think you know best.”
“No,” Aaron replies evenly. “I usually just happen to be right.”
You cannot help the small laugh that escapes you. Sean hears it, flushes, and glares.
Aaron merely offers him one final look. Cold, steady, final enough to end the matter without another word. Then he takes your hand again and guides you toward the door.
Outside, the night air cools your heated skin as you hail a cab. It pulls up quickly, and you both slide into the back seat, Aaron’s massive frame taking up half the space, his arm immediately draping around your shoulders to tug you close.
The driver glances in the rearview, muttering about the address as you rattle it off, but you barely register. The second the cab lurches forward, Aaron’s mouth is on yours again, kissing you fierce and unyielding, his tongue sweeping in to tangle with yours.
You tease him relentlessly, straddling his lap despite the cramped space, your skirt bunching up as you rock against the hard bulge tenting his jeans. His hands grip your hips, guiding your movements, while you suck on his lower lip, then trail bites down his neck, feeling his pulse thunder under your teeth.
“Fuck, you’re killing me,” he rasps, voice rough, one hand shoving up your top to palm your bare breast, pinching the nipple until you gasp.
You grind down harder, the friction against your soaked pussy making you slicker through your panties, and he thrusts up to meet you, the cab’s motion adding to the rhythm.
The driver clears his throat loudly, eyes flicking to the mirror with clear irritation. “Hey, folks, keep it PG back there! This ain’t a motel on wheels.”
But you ignore him, moaning softly as Aaron’s fingers dip between your legs, rubbing your clit in firm circles over the fabric. He kisses you deeper, swallowing your sounds, his free hand fisting your hair to tilt your head back for better access.
The cab swerves a bit, driver’s dismay obvious in his grumbled curses, but neither of you cares, lost in the building heat, Aaron’s cock throbbing insistently against you as the city lights blur past.
It screeches to a halt outside your building, the driver’s final grumble fading as the door swings open. Aaron’s hand is already fumbling for his wallet, tossing bills onto the front seat without breaking eye contact with you. His gaze is dark and predatory, promising everything you’ve been building toward.
“Keep the change,” he mutters to the driver, who shakes his head in disbelief but doesn’t say anything anymore.
Before you can slide out on your own, Aaron’s grip clamps around your wrist, strong fingers wrapping like a vice as he hauls you from the back seat. He almost drags you across the sidewalk, your heels scraping the pavement, his other arm snaking around your waist to steady you or maybe just to claim you outright.
The cool night breeze does nothing to temper the fire raging between you; your thighs are slick with arousal, panties soaked from the ride, and his cock presses insistently against your hip as he pulls you close to his side.
“Inside. Now,” he growls low, voice gravelly with restraint barely holding. You don’t even register the cab driving off with screeching tyres.
You fumble with your keys at the front door, fingers trembling from the adrenaline and his proximity. His massive frame looming behind you, chest brushing your back, one hand splayed possessively over your stomach while the other cages you against the doorframe.
He teases you mercilessly, lips grazing your ear as he whispers, “Look at you, shaking already. Bet that pussy’s dripping for me, isn’t it? Been thinking about how tight you’ll feel clenching around my cock since that hallway.”
His free hand dips lower, thumb pressing just above your cunt through your skirt, circling slow and firm enough to make your knees buckle. You gasp, keys jingling as you finally slot the right one in, twisting the lock with a click that echoes like permission.
The door swings open, and you barely cross the threshold before Aaron kicks it shut behind you, the sound sharp and final. He spins you around in one fluid motion, his shoulders blocking out the dim hallway light as he shoves you back against the door.
Solid wood meets your spine with a thud. His body crashes into yours, pinning you there, those muscular arms bracketing your head, biceps flexing under his shirt sleeves. Up close, his stoic mask is shattered; sweat beads along his jaw, dimples flashing in a wicked half-smile as his hips grind forward, letting you feel every inch of his thick erection straining against his zipper, right up against your belly
“Fuck, I’ve wanted this since you bent over in that skirt,” he rasps, voice dropping to a dangerous timbre, his breath hot on your neck as he nuzzles in, teeth scraping your pulse point.
One hand fists your hair, tilting your head back to expose your throat, while the other yanks your top up in a rough tug, exposing your tits to the cool air. His mouth descends immediately, latching onto one nipple, sucking hard and wet, tongue flicking the peak until it throbs.
You arch into him, moaning, but he doesn’t let up. His free hand shoves your skirt higher, fingers hooking into your panties teasingly.
He straightens just enough to meet your eyes, his own burning with raw intent, that captivating smile twisting into something feral.
“I’m gonna take you apart, piece by fucking piece,” he promises, voice thick and commanding, his thumb tracing your lower lip before pushing inside your mouth for you to suck.
His hand slides between your thighs now, two fingers plunging into your slick cunt without warning, curling to hit that spot that makes stars burst behind your eyelids. He pumps them slowly and deliberately, thumb grinding your clit, while his mouth claims yours in a bruising kiss, tongue fucking in rhythm.
“You’ll cum on my fingers first, then my mouth, then my dick…over and over until your voice is hoarse and your body’s shaking. I won’t stop until you’re ruined for anyone else, dripping with my cum, marked everywhere.”
He adds a third finger, stretching you wider, his palm slapping lightly against your pussy with each thrust, the wet sounds filling the entryway. His cock twitches against you, desperate for release, but he holds back, eyes locked on yours, watching every gasp and shudder as he edges you closer. “Say it. Tell me you want it. Want me to fuck you senseless right now…”
Your moans spill out uncontrollably, body arching into his touch as his fingers drive you wild, that relentless rhythm building the pressure inside you until you’re teetering on the edge. But his words hang there, demanding a response, and in the haze of pleasure, you can’t form the words fast enough. Just more whimpers, your lips parting around his thumb earlier, now gasping against his mouth.
He pulls his fingers free with a slick pop, the sudden emptiness making you whine in protest. Before you can catch your breath, his hand comes down in a sharp, light slap against your soaked pussy, the sting sending a jolt straight to your core.
You yelp, thighs clenching, but it only makes you wetter, heat flooding your cheeks as his eyes darken with approval. “Already speechless, huh?” he growls, voice low and mocking, his free hand gripping your jaw to force your gaze to his. “That’s fine for now, but listen up: When I ask you something, you answer. Clear and quick, or I’ll make you wait even longer for what you need. Understand?”
You nod frantically, biting your lip, the lesson sinking in amid the throbbing ache between your legs. He smirks, satisfied, and without another word, he yanks you away from the door by your wrist, his grip iron-tight as he drags you down the hall.
He doesn’t hesitate, kicking open the first door he finds. Your bedroom, like he already knows the layout of your life, and hauls you inside, slamming it shut behind him.
The room spins for a second before his mouth crashes back onto yours, rough and demanding, teeth nipping at your bottom lip as he backs you towards the bed. His tongue invades, while his hands roam possessively, squeezing your ass, pinning your arms when you reach for him. He’s in complete control, growling into the kiss when you try to touch him too freely, batting your hands away.
“Not yet,” he murmurs against your lips, voice gravelly. “This is about you learning to take what I give.”
He breaks the kiss just long enough to shove you down onto the mattress, your body bouncing once before he follows, caging you beneath his weight. His hands are everywhere now, rough and impatient as he tears at your clothes. Yanking your top over your head in one swift motion. He doesn’t waste time, palming one roughly while his mouth descends on the other, sucking hard enough to make you cry out.
“Fuck, these tits are mine now,” he rasps, biting down just enough to leave a faint mark, his tongue soothing the sting before he switches sides. “Gonna suck bruises into them, bite you until everyone knows you belong to me.”
Your skirt gets hiked up and ripped away next, his fingers hooking into the fabric and tearing it with a sharp rip that echoes in the room. He doesn’t bother with finesse, shoving your panties aside before stripping them off completely, leaving you exposed under his hungry stare.
“Look at you, all spread out and dripping for me,” he says, voice thick with lust as he kneels between your thighs, forcing your legs wider with his knees. His hands grip your hips, thumbs digging into your skin hard enough to bruise. “I’m gonna mark every inch. Hickeys on your neck, handprints on this ass, my cum leaking out of your pussy so you feel me for days.”
He leans down, capturing your mouth again in a bruising kiss, his cock, still confined in his pants, grinding against your thigh, hard and insistent. You buck up instinctively, but he pins you harder, breaking away to trail bites down your neck, sucking dark spots into the sensitive skin.
“Say it now,” he demands between nips, his hand sliding up to wrap around your throat, not squeezing, just holding, a reminder of his dominance. “Tell me you want me to mark you, to fuck you until you’re covered in me.”
“Yes, Aaron, mark me, fuck me…please, make me yours,” you gasp out, your voice trembling with raw need as his hand tightens just enough around your throat, his eyes burning into yours with that feral intensity.
A low growl rumbles from his chest, satisfaction flashing across his face. “That’s my good girl,” he murmurs, releasing your throat to shove himself up from the bed.
He stands there for a moment, towering over you, his shirt already half-unbuttoned from the frenzy at the door. With quick, impatient yanks, he strips it off, revealing his body. Lean and powerful, the kind of trained dad bod that’s all honed muscle under a layer of soft give, his arms thick and corded from years of lifting and holding control. His chest rises and falls heavily, a light sheen of sweat already glistening on his skin.
He kicks off his boots, then shoves his jeans and boxers down in one rough motion, his cock springing free. Hard and thick, veins bulging along its length, the head already slick with pre-cum.
You can’t tear your eyes away, your breath hitching at the sight of him, so ready to claim you. He steps closer, grabbing his discarded belt from the floor with a deliberate snap that makes you flinch in anticipation.
“Hands up,” he orders, his voice like gravel. You obey instantly, lifting your arms towards the headboard, wrists together. He loops the belt around them, threading it through the sturdy wooden post and pulling it tight. Not enough to cut circulation, but firm, unyielding, pinning you in place.
The leather bites into your skin just right, a constant reminder that you’re his to use, spread out and helpless on the bed.
“There,” he says, testing the bind with a tug that jerks your arms higher. “Now you take every fucking inch of what I give you. No escaping, no hiding.”
He climbs back onto the bed, settling between your spread thighs, his strong hands gripping your hips to hold you steady. His cock brushes against your inner thigh, hot and heavy, but he doesn’t enter you yet. Instead, he slides one hand down, his fingers finding your soaked pussy without hesitation.
He pushes two fingers inside you roughly, no teasing warmup, just a deep thrust that stretches your walls and hits that spot that makes your back arch.
“Fuck, you’re dripping for me,” he grunts, curling his fingers to drag against your inner walls, pumping in and out with a brutal rhythm. His thumb circles your clit, pressing hard, building the pressure fast and relentlessly.
You moan, your bound hands straining against the belt as pleasure coils tight in you. He watches your face, his expression dark and focused, adding a third finger to scissor inside you, stretching you wider, his pace unyielding.
But just as the edge rushes up, your body tensing and breaths coming in sharp pants, he pulls his fingers out completely, leaving you clenching around nothing.
“Not yet,” he says, smirking at your whine of protest.
He slaps your pussy lightly once again, the sting sending a jolt through you, mixing pain with the ache of denial. Then he’s back in, fingers plunging deeper, faster, his free hand pinning your thigh down to keep you from bucking too wildly. He edges you again and again. Thrusting hard until you’re right there, sobbing with need, then withdrawing, spanking your slick cunt to heighten the torment.
“Please, Aaron,” you beg finally, your voice breaking as he works you towards that peak once more, his fingers relentless inside you. “I need to cum…please, let me cum on your fingers. I’ll be good, I swear, just... fuck, please!” The words tumble out desperate and raw, your hips grinding against his hand.
He chuckles darkly, leaning down to bite at your collarbone. “Cum for me, then. Soak my hand like the needy slut you are.” His fingers slam home one last time, thumb grinding your clit, and the orgasm crashes over you. Your pussy clamps down hard around him, waves of heat pulsing through you as you cry out, body shaking against the restraints
As the aftershocks ripple, he doesn’t let up.
Instead, he yanks his fingers free and brings his hand down in a sharp spank right on your throbbing cunt. The slap echoes, fresh sting blooming across your sensitive skin, making you yelp and twitch.
“That’s for making such a mess,” he says, his voice laced with approval, already positioning himself closer, his thick cock nudging at your entrance. “But we’re just getting started.”
He drags the thick head of his dick along your slick pussy, pressing just inside your entrance before pulling back out, repeating the torment a few more times. Each shallow thrust leaves you aching, your hips bucking up desperately to chase the fullness you crave. A pathetic whimper escapes your lips, your bound hands straining against the belt looped around the bedposts.
Aaron tsks, his dark eyes gleaming with wicked amusement as he withdraws completely, his cock bobbing heavy and glistening with your arousal. “Not desperate enough yet, huh? I can see it in those pretty eyes…you need to beg like the filthy little whore you are before I’ll fuck this greedy pussy.”
He shifts up your body, his rough palms cupping your breasts, thumbs flicking over your hardened nipples before pinching them hard enough to make you gasp. He leans in, sucking one into his mouth, teeth grazing the sensitive bud while his stubble scrapes against your skin, sending sharp tingles racing down your spine. His other hand kneads your flesh roughly, twisting and tugging until your back arches off the bed.
“Remember what I promised?” he murmurs against your tit, his hot breath fanning over the wet skin. “An orgasm with my mouth. Time to deliver.”
He releases your nipple with a pop and trails his lips downwards, nipping at your ribs, your stomach, until he settles between your spread thighs. His strong hands grip your hips, pinning you in place as his mouth descends on your soaked pussy.
His tongue lashes out flat and broad, lapping up your juices in long, firm strokes that make your clit throb. He doesn’t hold back. Sucking it into his mouth, nibbling the swollen lips with just enough edge to sting, his stubble rasping against your inner thighs and the tender skin around your cunt like coarse sandpaper, heightening every sensation.
You moan, the roughness of his face grinding into you as he devours your pussy, his tongue plunging deep to fuck you with wet, insistent thrusts.
“You taste like sin,” he growls against your flesh, the vibrations humming through your core. “Dripping all over my face…such a perfect, needy hole for me to ruin.” He slides two thick fingers inside you, curling them to hit that spot again, pumping in and out with brutal precision while his mouth seals over your clit, sucking hard.
The pressure builds fast, your body coiling tight as his fingers stretch and stroke your walls. You’re teetering on the edge when he presses his thumb against your asshole, circling the tight ring before pushing in knuckle-deep.
The sudden intrusion overwhelms you. Fullness in both holes, his stubble scraping, tongue flicking relentlessly. “Come on, cum for me now,” he demands, voice muffled but commanding. “Milk my fingers with that tight ass and pussy. Show me how much you love being my dirty fucktoy.”
It hits you like a freight train, somehow more intense than the first. Your orgasm rips through, pussy clenching around his fingers, ass fluttering against his thumb as waves of ecstasy crash over you. You scream, body convulsing, tears pricking your eyes from the intensity, every nerve alight as you gush against his mouth. He doesn’t stop, lapping up your release greedily, drawing out the shudders until you’re a trembling mess.
Finally, he pulls back, lips shiny with your cum, a smug grin splitting his face. “That’s my girl. So fucking responsive. But don’t think we’re done. Your ass is next, and I’m gonna make you scream even louder.”
Your body is still quaking from the orgasm, every muscle twitching uncontrollably as overstimulation sets in, your nerves raw and firing on edge.
Aaron’s fingers remain buried deep in your pussy, and he starts scissoring them wide, stretching your slick walls with deliberate, ruthless pulls and twists that make your hips jerk involuntarily. At the same time, his thumb rotates inside your ass, circling the tight ring with firm pressure, grinding against the sensitive inner walls and sending jolts of electric pleasure-pain shooting up your spine.
You thrash against the belt that’s binding your wrists to the bedposts, the leather biting into your skin as you yank desperately, your back arching off the mattress in a futile bid to escape the overwhelming sensations.
Whimpers spill from your lips. High-pitched, broken sounds that mix with your shaking breaths. Your thighs are trembling around his hand, pussy is fluttering erratically around his invading fingers.
“Look at you, thrashing like a wild thing,” Aaron growls, his voice low and gravelly, eyes locked on your face as he watches every twitch and gasp. “Already overstimulated and shaking like a leaf, but your holes are sucking me in deeper. You love this, don’t you? Having both your pussy and ass filled up, clenching so greedily around my fingers and thumb,” He scissors harder, spreading you open wider, the wet squelch of your arousal filling the room, while his thumb twists deeper into your ass, rotating with unyielding insistence.
You whimper louder, tears streaking down your cheeks from the intensity, your body a live wire of too much, too soon. But he shows no mercy, his free hand pinning your hip down to keep you from bucking away.
“Oh no, baby, I’m not done with you yet. Not by a long shot. You’re gonna take everything I give until you’re begging for my cock in every hole. See how your body’s betraying you? Fuck, it’s a shame I don’t have two cocks to pound this pussy and ass at the same time…stretch you out proper, make you scream until you can’t think straight. But don’t worry, I’ll fill you up anyway. Gonna wreck you with what I’ve got until you’re ruined for anyone else.”
Aaron’s eyes gleam with wicked intent as he pauses his relentless assault on your holes, his gaze flicking towards the bedside table. On a hunch, he reaches over and yanks open the drawer, rummaging briefly until his fingers close around the smooth length of your vibrator. He pulls it out, holding it up with a slow, predatory smile curling his lips, the toy’s silicone shaft glinting under the dim bedroom light.
He withdraws his fingers from your pussy and thumb from your ass in one slick motion, the sudden emptiness making your holes flutter desperately, clenching around nothing as a fresh wave of need cramps through your core. A soft whimper escapes your throat, your body still trembling from the overstimulation, hips twitching in protest at the loss.
He wraps his hand around the vibrator’s base, stroking it slowly from tip to hilt as if it were his own throbbing cock, the motion deliberate and teasing. His real dick twitches visibly against his thigh, hardening further at the sight, pre-cum beading at the slit as he watches you squirm.
“Open your mouth, slut,” he commands, his voice rough and unyielding, leaning in close enough that his stubble scrapes your cheek. “Get this ready for your greedy little cunt. I want it dripping before I fuck you with it.’
You part your lips obediently, and he pushes the vibrator past them, sliding the thick head over your tongue and deep into your mouth. You whimper around the intrusion, the silicone filling your mouth with its unyielding girth, your saliva coating it as he rocks it gently in and out.
All the while, his free hand roams your body. Fingers tracing your hardened nipples, pinching them sharply to draw out more muffled cries, then dipping lower to stroke your inner thighs, brushing feather-light over your fluttering pussy lips without giving you the pressure you crave.
“That’s it, suck on it like you wish it was my cock,” he murmurs, his breath hot against your ear. “You’re such a filthy girl, aren’t you? Tied up and whimpering for more, even after I’ve already made you cum so hard. Bet you’ve used this toy thinking about a man like me ruining you.”
After a few teasing thrusts that make your jaw ache, and your whimpers vibrate along the shaft, he pulls the vibrator free with a wet pop, strings of your spit trailing from your lips. He drags the slick toy down your body deliberately.
Over your chin, between your breasts, circling each nipple until they pebble tighter, then lower across your quivering stomach, teasing the sensitive skin just above your pussy.
Finally, he positions the tip at your entrance, rubbing it up and down your soaked cunt to coat it further in your arousal. “Time to fill that needy pussy,” he growls, and with a firm push, he drives the vibrator deep into your cunt, the vibrations coming to life on a low setting as it stretches you wide, buzzing against your overstimulated walls and sending shockwaves through your bound body.
The vibrator hums steadily inside you, its girth splitting your slick walls as Aaron grips the base and starts thrusting it in and out with deliberate, shallow pumps.
You’re already so overwhelmed. The orgasms have left your pussy raw and throbbing, every nerve ending screaming from the overload, but he doesn’t stop. He leans over you, his free hand pinning your thigh wide open, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough to leave marks.
“Fuck, look at how that toy stretches your greedy little cunt,” he rasps, his voice low and gravelly, eyes locked on where the vibrator disappears into you. “Gonna fuck you with it slow, make sure it’s soaked through. Can’t have my second cock going in dry…needs to be dripping with your slutty juices so it glides right in later.”
He twists the base slightly on one thrust, angling it to grind against that swollen spot deep inside, and a sharp jolt of pleasure-pain shoots up your spine, your back arching off the bed as you gasp and clench around it.
He pulls it back almost all the way out, the tip catching on your entrance before plunging in again, deeper this time, the hum intensifying the stretch as it bottoms out. Your walls flutter helplessly, trying to adjust, but the overstimulation has you trembling, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from the relentless buzz against your clit indirectly through the pressure.
“That’s it, squeeze it like you mean it,” Aaron growls, pumping it faster now in short, teasing strokes that keep you hovering on the edge without mercy. “Feel how it’s buzzing right up against those overworked nerves? You’re gonna beg for it to stop, but I know you won’t. Not when it’s prepping that tight hole for more.”
Sweat beads on your skin, your breath coming in ragged whimpers as the toy fucks into you rhythmically, coating itself thoroughly in your arousal with each wet slide. He reaches down with his thumb, pressing it firmly against your clit in slow circles that sync with the thrusts, amplifying the vibrations until your thighs quake and your bound hands yank at the belt. The build-up coils tight in your belly, heat flooding your limbs, but just as you’re teetering on the brink, he yanks the vibrator free with a slick sound, leaving your pussy clenching around nothing, aching and denied.
“Nope,” he chuckles darkly, holding the glistening toy up so you can see how it’s drenched, strings of your cream clinging to its length. “We’re just getting started. Your ass is next, and I want it ready to take us both.” He trails the buzzing tip along your inner thigh, teasing the puckered ring of your asshole without entering, watching you squirm and whine from the denied release, your body a quivering mess of need.
Aaron’s cock throbs heavily between his legs, bobbing with each shift of his hips as he kneels between your spread thighs, the thick shaft veined and leaking pre-cum from the tip.
He circles the tight ring of your asshole with the rounded head again, pressing just enough to make the sensitive pucker twitch and flutter under the teasing pressure. Your body jerks from the overstimulation, pussy clenching emptily after the denial, every nerve fried and begging for relief that he won’t grant.
“Has this virgin ass ever had anything shoved inside it?” he demands, his voice a rough command laced with hunger, eyes flicking up to meet yours while he rubs the vibrating tip insistently against your hole, coating it in the remnants of your pussy juices for lubrication. The vibrations send unwelcome sparks through the untouched entrance, making your hips twitch away instinctively, but his free hand clamps down on your hip, holding you steady.
You're too far gone to form words right away. Your mind is a haze of buzzing need, breaths heaving as the toy’s hum echoes in your core, your clit pulsing from the earlier denial.
The question hangs, unanswered, and Aaron’s jaw tightens. Without warning, his hand cracks down on your soaked pussy with a sharp smack, the wet slap echoing in the room as pain blooms hot and sharp across your swollen folds, jolting you back to focus with a cry, reminding you that you are to answer his questions.
“Speak up, slut,” he growls, rubbing the sting in roughly with his palm before pulling back. “Answer me: Has anyone ever fucked this tight little backdoor?”
“N-no,” you gasp out finally, voice breaking on a whimper, the smack leaving your cunt throbbing anew, heat flooding the abused flesh. “I’ve never... never had anything back there.”
A wicked grin splits his face, dark satisfaction gleaming in his eyes as he notches the vibrator’s tip right at your resistant entrance.
“Good girl. Means I get to break it in first.” He pushes forward steadily, the buzzing length breaching your asshole with a slow, unyielding pressure that makes the ring stretch and burn around the invading girth. Inch by inch, it sinks in, the vibrations rattling deep into your untouched ass, forcing your walls to yield as they clamp down in protest.
You whine high and desperate, the fullness overwhelming. Your ass is so tight and unaccustomed, every buzz amplifying the stretch until tears spill down your cheeks. Aaron pulls it back out halfway with a slick drag, your hole gaping slightly before he thrusts it in again, deeper this time, twisting to work it around and loosen the clenching muscles.
“Fuck, feel that? Your poor neglected hole’s gripping it like a vice,” he rasps, pumping the toy in shallow strokes now, in and out, the wet sounds mixing with the hum as he coats your inner walls with the lube from your pussy. “Gotta prepare you right…stretch this virgin ass wide so it can take my cock later. Can’t have you tearing when I split you open.”
His free hand wraps around his bobbing cock, stroking himself lazily as he watches the vibrator fuck into your ass, the sight making his length twitch and harden further.
The dual sensations, the toy’s relentless buzz stretches you from behind while your overstimulated pussy aches, untouched, have you thrashing against the belt restraints, body a trembling wreck of denied pleasure and building intensity. He doesn’t let up, driving the vibrator deeper with each pass, rotating it slightly to widen you, his dirty words pouring out like gravel. “That’s it, take it deeper for me. Your ass is gonna be ruined for anyone else after tonight…gaping and hungry for cock, just like your sloppy cunt.”
Aaron eases the vibrator out of your ass with a deliberate slowness, the buzzing toy dragging against your clenching walls until it pops free, leaving your hole stretched and gaping slightly in its wake. A raw, puckered ring that twitches and winks open, exposed and vulnerable under his hungry gaze.
The sudden emptiness makes you whimper, your body shuddering from the lingering vibrations that echo through your core, your ass muscles fluttering helplessly as cool air kisses the abused entrance.
“Fuck, look at that,” he murmurs, voice thick with lust, his eyes locked on the way your hole refuses to close fully, quivering from the preparation. “Can’t wait any longer. Gonna bury my cock in that dripping cunt now. Been teasing you long enough.”
He sets the slick vibrator aside on the bed, the toy still humming faintly, and grips his throbbing shaft at the base, the thick length heavy and flushed, veins pulsing as he lines it up with your soaked folds. The broad head nudges your entrance, parting the swollen lips with a teasing rub, smearing your arousal along the underside before he presses forward.
He doesn’t rush it. Oh no, Aaron savours the stretch, inching his bare cock inside you with controlled pressure that makes your pussy walls yield around the invading girth. You’re so wet from the earlier torment, but the fullness hits like a shock, his thickness splitting you open as he sinks deeper, the bare skin of his shaft gliding against your sensitive inner flesh without any barrier.
“Feel how you’re sucking me in? This greedy little pussy’s been begging for it,” he growls, hips rolling in a shallow grind to work himself further, the head bumping your cervix with a jolt that has you arching off the bed.
He teases you, pulling back just enough to let the ridge of his dick catch on your entrance before thrusting in again, stretching you wider with each pass, your body trembling as it adjusts to the raw, unyielding intrusion.
Once he’s fully seated, balls-deep and grinding against your clit, he starts thrusting. Hard, deliberate strokes that punch into you, his hips snapping forward to fill you completely. The rhythm builds quickly, his cock pistoning in and out with wet, obscene slaps, your pussy clenching around him in desperate pulls.
It doesn’t take long; the overstimulation from before has you teetering on the edge, and after just a few deep, punishing thrusts, the coil snaps. Your orgasm crashes over you without warning, walls spasming wildly around his buried length, milking him as waves of heat rip through your core, a broken cry tearing from your throat.
“Tsk, tsk,” Aaron chides, his voice a low rumble even as he doesn’t stop, pounding through your climax with unrelenting force. “Cumming already? I didn’t give you permission, did I?”
But there’s a dark thrill in his tone, and as your body convulses around him, mind fracturing into a haze of white-hot bliss, thoughts scattering like ash, he reaches down with one hand, snatching up the abandoned vibrator. You’re still lost in the throes, barely registering the world beyond the pounding in your pussy, when he angles it back toward your ass.
The tip presses against your gaping hole without mercy, and he shoves it in deep in one firm push, the buzzing girth reclaiming the stretched passage while his cock continues to fuck your cunt.
The dual penetration hits like lightning: the immense stretch overwhelming, your ass walls clamping down on the invading toy even as they burn from the renewed fullness, vibrations rattling through the thin barrier separating it from his thrusting shaft.
It feels impossible, too much, your body locked in a vice of sensation as he holds the vibrator buried to the hilt, twisting it slightly to amplify the buzz against your most sensitive spots. You gasp incoherently, hips bucking wildly against the restraints, the combined assault dragging out your orgasm into something endless and shattering, every nerve screaming from the intensity while Aaron’s grin widens.
He grips your hips hard enough to bruise, fingers digging into the soft flesh as he pulls you back onto his shaft with every thrust, the dual invasion making your walls flutter and spasm around both the thick toy and his bare length.
“That’s it, take it all,” he snarls, voice rough and commanding, leaning over you to pin you down further against the mattress, his weight pressing you into the sheets as he rutted like an animal. The vibrator stays lodged deep, its base flush against your skin, and he twists it occasionally with his free hand, grinding it against your inner walls to heighten the vibrations that rattle your core, making your ass burn and pulse around the intrusion.
He teases you through the haze of your shattered mind, slowing his pace just enough to drag his cock out to the tip before ramming back in, the head battering your cervix with each punishing stroke.
“Look at you, so fucking wrecked already. Pussy squeezing me like it never wants me to stop, even with your ass stuffed full.” His words drip with dominance, a low chuckle escaping as he feels you tremble beneath him, your bound wrists straining against the belt, body arching involuntarily into the relentless pounding.
Sweat slicks his chest, dripping onto your skin as he picks up speed again, thrusts turning erratic and savage, balls slapping against your ass with wet smacks that echo the obscene squelch of your soaked cunt gripping him.
The pressure builds unbearably, the vibrator’s merciless hum amplifying every slide of his cock along your sensitive nerves, pushing you toward the edge once more despite the exhaustion ripping through your limbs.
You’re a mess of gasps and whimpers, mind blank and floating in a sea of sensation, every nerve ending raw from the onslaught. Aaron senses it, growls low in his throat, and redoubles his efforts: fucking you harder, deeper, the friction between the toy and his shaft creating a friction that has you seeing stars.
“Cum for me again, slut. Milk my cock while I fill you up.” His command shatters the last of your control, and your fifth orgasm rips through you like fire, pussy convulsing violently around him, walls clamping down in rhythmic pulses that drag a guttural moan from his lips.
He doesn’t stop, pounding through your climax with savage grunts, the way your body seizes around him tipping him over.
His cock swells inside you, thrusts stuttering as he buries himself to the hilt one final time, hips grinding against your clit. Hot spurts of cum flood your pussy, thick ropes painting your inner walls as he roars his release, holding the vibrator steady to prolong the torment. You feel every pulse, the warmth spreading deep as he empties himself, your wrecked body quaking from the aftershocks, ass still clenching around the buzzing toy while his seed leaks out around his softening shaft.
Finally, he stills, breathing ragged, but doesn’t pull out yet, but rather lets you lie there utterly spent, limbs limp and trembling, mind fractured into pieces from the endless pleasure. Your pussy throbs around his cock, ass stretched and vibrating faintly, every inch of you marked and claimed, completely wrecked.
Aaron’s breaths slow from ragged pants to steady draws, his body finally easing off the frantic rhythm as the haze of his orgasm clears. He shifts his weight carefully, one hand still resting on your hip, thumb brushing lightly over the red marks he’s left there.
“Shh, easy now,” he murmurs, voice dropping to a low, soothing rumble, all traces of the snarling dominance gone, replaced by a gentle tenderness that surprises even in the afterglow.
He reaches back first, fingers wrapping around the base of the vibrator still humming faintly in your ass. With deliberate slowness, he eases it out inch by inch, the toy slick with your arousal, popping free with a wet, obscene squelch that makes your oversensitive nerves twitch.
Your ass clenches instinctively at the sudden emptiness, the ring of muscle gaping slightly, raw and fluttering from the prolonged stretch, a dull ache throbbing in its wake. You whimper high and broken, body jerking faintly against the restraints, the overstimulation hitting like a wave now that the relentless buzz is gone.
Aaron hushes you softly, “I’ve got you, just breathe,” as he sets the vibrator aside on the nightstand with a quiet click.
Then, he grips the base of his cock, still half-hard and slick with your combined fluids, and pulls out gradually, dragging along your swollen walls until the head slips free. The withdrawal drags a lewd, sucking sound from your pussy, followed by a thick gush of his cum spilling out, warm and viscous, dripping down your folds and over your ass to pool on the sheets beneath you.
Your pussy gapes too, stretched wide and pulsing, the inner lips puffy and red from the rough fucking, every tiny movement sending sparks of sharp pleasure-pain through your core.
You’re a trembling mess, whimpers turning to soft whines as the dual emptiness leaves you feeling exposed and achingly hollow, your body too wrecked to do more than quiver under his gaze. Tears prick at your eyes from the intensity, limbs heavy and boneless, mind foggy with the overload of sensations that won’t quite fade.
He unties the belt from your wrists with careful fingers, gently rubbing circulation back into them, then gathers you against his chest, one arm wrapping around your waist to hold you steady. “There you go, sweetheart, you’re safe,” he whispers, pressing soft kisses to your temple and forehead, his free hand stroking down your back in slow, reassuring circles.
He shifts you both slightly, pulling a blanket over your cooling skin, his touch light and protective now, letting you sink into the warmth of his body as the whines quiet to shaky breaths.
Your breaths even out gradually, the whines fading into soft sighs as Aaron’s steady presence anchors you, his hand still tracing lazy patterns along your spine. The overstimulation lingers like a low hum in your veins, every nerve ending raw and tingling, but the exhaustion creeps in heavier now, pulling your eyelids down despite the ache between your thighs. You’re drifting, words too far away to grasp, body limp and heavy in his arms.
After a few quiet minutes, Aaron presses one last kiss to your hair and carefully disentangles himself, easing your head back onto the pillow with a murmured, “Stay right there, I’ll be quick.” The bed dips as he rises, his footsteps soft on the floor as he pads to the bathroom.
The sound of running water filtering through the door. Moments later, he returns carrying a small ceramic bowl steaming faintly with warm water and a soft white washcloth draped over his arm. His expression is calm, attentive, all sharp edges softened in the dim light.
Kneeling beside the bed, he dips the cloth into the water, wringing it out with careful squeezes until droplets cease falling. Starting at your face, he dabs lightly over your cheeks and forehead, wiping away the streaks of dried tears and sweat with feather-light strokes that make you sigh. “Good girl, just relax,” he says softly, his voice a low anchor.
You manage a faint hum, too sleepy to form anything more, your eyes fluttering half-closed as the cloth moves down your neck, tracing the curve of your collarbone with feather-light pressure. He avoids the tender spots at first, dipping the cloth back into the water to refresh it, then works lower, cleaning the sweat and spit from your breasts, circling each nipple with careful swipes that make you twitch faintly from the sensitivity.
He works methodically lower, parting your thighs with gentle hands to access the mess between your legs. The cloth presses tenderly against your inner thighs first, cleaning the sticky trails of arousal and cum that have cooled there.
You flinch slightly at the initial contact, your nerves still raw and buzzing, but he pauses, blowing a cool breath over the area before resuming, the warmth seeping in to ease the hypersensitivity. He folds the cloth to a fresh side and wipes along your swollen folds, careful not to press too hard on your puffy clit, though the mere brush sends a faint echo of pleasure sparking through you.
He dips it just inside to scoop out the thick globs that linger, each pass drawing a soft whimper from your lips. Your pussy twitches under the attention, gaping slightly as he works, but his touch remains patient, thorough, without overwhelming. He shifts to your ass next, lifting your hips with one steady hand while the other guides the cloth over the tender ring, washing away the slickness with slow circles that make your muscles flutter in response.
You squirm a little, too worn out to protest, just a soft whine escaping as sleep tugs harder at you.
Once satisfied, he rinses the cloth in the bowl and repeats the process, ensuring every inch is tended to until your skin feels clean and refreshed.
“All done, sweetheart,” he whispers once you’re fresh and the bowl’s water is murky, setting everything aside and drying you off with a soft towel from the bathroom. He tucks the blanket back around you, pulling it up to your chin, and brushes a strand of hair from your face. You barely register him standing, your mind already slipping into that fuzzy space between wakefulness and dreams.
The shower starts up in the bathroom, a quick rush of water that lasts only a few minutes. Enough for him to rinse off the sweat and scents of your encounter. When it shuts off, he emerges, skin damp and towel slung low around his hips, the air carrying a faint clean scent.
He dries off swiftly, then slides into bed beside you, the mattress dipping under his weight. His arm drapes over your waist, pulling you back against his warm chest, his breath steady and even against your neck. “Sleep now,” he murmurs, lips brushing your shoulder, and you do, sinking into the safety of his hold as darkness claims you.
You sleep dreamlessly and utterly exhausted when morning comes softly.
At first it’s just light slipping through the curtains and stretching across the bed in quiet lines. It brushes over your closed eyelids, warm and insistent, until you stir.
You’re aware of him before you even open your eyes.
The weight of his arm is still draped over your waist, heavier now in sleep. His chest is solid against your back, rising and falling in a slow rhythm that feels almost grounding. One of his legs is hooked loosely over yours, keeping you there without effort, like even unconscious he hasn’t quite let you go.
You shift the smallest amount.
Behind you, he makes a low sound, half breath, half murmur, still lost to sleep, merely reacting to the disturbance. His arm tightens instinctively, drawing you nearer by an inch.
The movement sends a dull ache through your body.
Right. Last night.
Your muscles protest in tender places. Your skin feels strangely sensitive, as though it remembers every touch with greater clarity than your mind yet does. There is a lingering heaviness low in your body that sends embarrassment and something softer, deeper, curling together through your stomach.
You open your eyes fully and lie still for a moment.
The room is quiet, washed in the pale morning light that slips through the curtains in narrow bands. Dust drifts lazily in it. Somewhere outside, traffic murmurs at a distance, softened by glass and height. Inside the room, there is only the warmth of tangled sheets, the faint scent of sleep and skin, and the steady presence of the man behind you.
It is almost strange how peaceful it feels.
Not awkward. Not hurried. Not like a mistake waiting to be regretted or an encounter from which one ought to make a graceful escape before daylight can expose it. Merely quiet. Merely still.
Carefully, you tilt your head enough to glance back at him.
His face is relaxed in sleep, all sharp edges softened. Hair messy, a little damp at the ends. There’s something unexpectedly gentle about him like this, nothing like the version of him from last night.
Your chest tightens, just a little.
Then you glance toward the bedside table and your eyes lock onto the clock. Your eyes widen at once. Panic strikes so suddenly it feels physical. You jerk upright too fast, a sharp breath catching in your throat as every part of your body objects to the abrupt movement.
“Fuck,” you whisper to no one in particular, already clawing your way out of sheets that seem determined to hold you hostage.
Behind you, he stirs properly this time.
“…what?” His voice is roughened by sleep, deep and disoriented, dragged reluctantly into consciousness.
“I’m late,” you blurt, pushing hair from your face as you scan the room in mounting horror. “I’m…I have my first day today, I..”
Words abandon you. You reach for your shirt from the floor, snatching it up with frantic hands.
There is a brief pause behind you. Then the mattress shifts with his weight. A hand closes gently around your wrist. Not hard. Not restraining. Simply enough to stop the frantic motion for a moment.
“Hey.”
You turn, breath still uneven. Aaron is sitting up now, sheets low around his waist, eyes half-lidded with sleep yet already focused, already gathering himself into alertness with that unnerving speed some people possess.
“It’s okay,” he says, voice quieter now, steadier. “What time do you start?”
“Nine,” you answer, the word coming out thinner than you intended.
Aaron shifts slightly beside you, leaning toward the bedside clock with the lingering heaviness of someone only recently dragged from sleep. He narrows his eyes at the display for a moment before speaking, voice still roughened by sleep and entirely too calm for the crisis you had just convinced yourself was unfolding.
“It’s eight ten.”
You stare at him.
For a second, your mind refuses the information outright, as though it has already committed itself so thoroughly to catastrophe that reason can no longer gain entry. Then, slowly, reality catches up. You are not late. You had never been late. You had simply panicked yourself into believing it.
The realisation moves through you all at once. The rigid tension in your shoulders collapses, leaving behind a dizzy mixture of relief, embarrassment, and the near-hysterical urge to laugh at your own foolishness.
“Oh my God,” you breathe, dragging a hand down over your face. “I thought - I genuinely thought it was nearly nine.”
“Clearly,” he murmurs.
There is amusement in his voice now, though it is subtle, restrained by the same natural control that seems stitched into every part of him.
You sink back onto the edge of the bed, your heart still pounding from the rush of alarm, clutching your shirt in one hand as though it were evidence in some private case against your dignity. Morning light spills across the sheets, across the floor scattered with clothing, across the broad line of Aaron’s shoulders where he sits half-turned toward you.
Then you feel it.
His hand, warm and fully awake now, settling lightly at the small of your back. The touch is gentle enough to surprise you.
“You okay?” he asks.
It is such a simple question, asked without teasing, without smugness, without any attempt to make light of your brief unraveling. He is not laughing at you. He is only checking.
You glance at him, momentarily thrown by the sincerity of it.
“Yes,” you say after a pause, softer now. “Just… first day nerves, apparently mixed with temporary insanity.”
He gives a small nod, as though that explanation accounts for everything. Perhaps, to him, it does.
“Come here.”
The words are quiet, lacking any of the command they might have carried the night before. There is no force in them now, only invitation.
You hesitate for scarcely a heartbeat before shifting back toward him.
His arm slips around you once more, slower this time, deliberate in a way that feels almost careful. He draws you against him - not tightly, not with the consuming urgency of last night, but just enough that you settle easily beside him, your shoulder against his chest, your temple brushing the warm line of him.
“You’ve got time,” he murmurs near your hair.
Your body still aches in small, lingering ways, every muscle aware of the night behind you, yet held like this the soreness feels less sharp, less startling. It becomes something softer. Something grounded.
You allow yourself to remain there for longer than you probably should, listening to the measured rhythm of his breathing, feeling the quiet steadiness of him beneath your cheek.
Eventually, reality returns in the practical form of needing to get ready, and the two of you move around one another in that peculiar space shared by strangers who are no longer strangers, but not yet anything clearly defined either. There is a slight awkwardness to it, though not an unpleasant one. Something intimate and uncertain at once.
The bathroom mirror fogs as you wash your face, and when you glance at your reflection, you scarcely recognise the woman looking back. Your hair is unruly, your mouth still faintly swollen, your cheeks touched with leftover colour. There is a softness to you that had not been there yesterday.
When you step back into the bedroom, Aaron is pulling on his shirt. He does so with easy, efficient movements, fastening buttons as though mornings after unexpected nights are either common enough not to trouble him, or rare enough that he has learned not to show it.
“Coffee?” he asks, glancing over.
You nod at once. “Please.”
The kitchen is small, the sort of space that was never meant for two people moving through it, and yet the quiet between you remains strangely comfortable. He moves with competence there too, finding mugs, measuring grounds, setting water to boil with the calm assurance of a man who prefers order wherever he can create it.
A minute later he hands you a mug. Your fingers brush as you take it, and a faint spark passes between skin and skin, something of last night returning in gentler form.
You lean against opposite counters, sipping in companionable silence for a while. It is not awkward. It is merely new.
“So,” you say at last, blowing lightly across the surface of your coffee, “is this how your mornings after usually go?”
He lets out a low breath that might almost be called a laugh and shakes his head.
“No.”
You look up.
He is already looking at you.
“This isn’t really my thing,” he adds after a moment, voice quieter now. Then, as if unwilling to let the confession grow too serious, he reaches into his pocket. “But.”
He steps closer and sets his mug aside. From his pocket, he produces a receipt and a pen, scribbling something quickly before taking your hand and pressing the folded paper into your palm.
You unfold it. His number.
When you look back up, he is wearing the faintest crooked smile. It transforms him again, softening the severe lines of his face into something unexpectedly warm.
“I’d like to take you out properly,” he says. “Somewhere that isn’t your bedroom.”
Your lips curve despite yourself.
“Properly?”
“Yes,” he says, and there is something in the steadiness of the word that makes your chest tighten. “Properly.”
A pause settles between you, though this one feels different from the earlier uncertainties. It is not tense or awkward. It feels open, as though something has quietly begun without either of you naming it.
He glances toward the door, then back to you.
“I should head back. Need to change before work.”
“Okay,” you reply.
Neither of you moves immediately.
Then he steps nearer one final time, lifting a hand to brush an errant strand of hair behind your ear. The gesture is so small, so ordinary, and yet it lands with surprising force.
“Good luck today,” he says softly.
“Thank you.”
He leans in then, pressing a brief kiss to your lips, gentle, warm, and far more affecting than the fiercer ones that came before it.
And then he is gone.
The door closes with a quiet click, leaving the apartment still once more.
You remain where you are for a moment, coffee warm between your hands, his number folded in your fingers. Outside waits your first day, your new life, the sharp unknown of everything ahead.
After a long breath, you set the mug down and begin to move. The day, after all, is waiting.
You arrive at the building with a curious mixture of anticipation and unease, around ten minutes later.
The structure itself rises with an austere authority, all clean lines and guarded entrances, as though it were less a place of work and more a vessel for serious, unspoken things.
Inside, the air is cool, almost clinical. Your footsteps echo faintly against polished floors as you are directed forward, deeper into the heart of it.
You find her soon enough.
Erin Strauss stands waiting her posture impeccable, her gaze sharp but not unkind. She greets you briskly, her words precise, and without delay begins to guide you through the corridors. As you walk, she speaks of procedures, of expectations, of names that pass you by too quickly to properly anchor themselves in your mind.
You try to listen. You truly do. But there is something about the place, a quiet tension beneath its order, that unsettles your focus.
At last, she leads you into a wide, open office.
Desks stand arranged with a peculiar neatness, papers stacked, screens dark or idling. Yet the room feels… absent. As though its occupants have only just departed, leaving behind the faint impression of movement and thought.
“There you go,” Strauss says, gesturing with a measured hand. “This is the BAU.”
Her voice carries easily in the stillness.
She turns slightly, indicating a door at the far end of the room - closed, yet not entirely concealed. The blinds are open, and through them, a figure may be glimpsed.
“And this,” she continues, “is where your Unit Chief, SSA Hotchner’s office is. I’ll get him for you.”
Your attention, already drifting, settles fully upon that door. There is something almost involuntary in the way your gaze lingers.
Inside, you see him.
A man, tall even in repose, seated behind his desk, his form bent slightly forward in concentration. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. The quiet intensity of someone wholly absorbed in his work. Papers are spread before him, and though you cannot hear him, you can almost imagine the faint scratch of pen against page, the steady rhythm of thought made visible.
There is something strikingly familiar about him. In the stillness he seems to command, as though the room itself conforms to his presence.
Strauss moves away from you, her heels marking a deliberate path across the floor. She knocks. The man looks up and rises.
You look away then, perhaps too quickly, your attention shifting across the empty desks, searching for signs of the rest of the team Strauss had mentioned. It is a small, instinctive act, an attempt to steady yourself, though you cannot quite say why.
Fragments of the morning return unbidden: tangled sheets warmed by sunlight, the pressure of an arm around your waist, the low roughness of a sleep-heavy voice, the brush of fingers against yours over a mug of coffee. The softness that had followed the storm of the night before.
You push the memories aside with some effort.Not quickly enough.
You do not hear the office door open. You do not notice footsteps crossing the floor. But you are aware only of a subtle change in the air beside you. A presence close enough to alter the space itself.
You turn.
And in that instant, the world seems to contract violently around a single, impossible fact.
Your breath catches so sharply it almost hurts.
Your mouth goes dry.
Because you know him.
Not as a superior waiting to be introduced. Not as a stranger glimpsed through office glass.
But as the man whose hands had been on you only hours ago. The man who had kissed you goodbye this morning. The man who had fucked you within an inch of your life, who had stood half-dressed in your kitchen making coffee as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The man who had pressed his number into your palm and said, with quiet certainty, that he wished to see you again.
Aaron.
Only now -
Aaron Hotchner.
He stands before you immaculate in a dark suit, every trace of the night before hidden beneath the severe authority of his position. The shirt is crisp, the tie exact, his expression composed to the point of austerity. He looks every inch the unit chief people speak of in lowered voices.
If he feels even a fraction of the shock that you have just gone through, he does not show it.
Only the faintest tightening at the corner of his gaze betrays that he, too, is affected.
He extends his hand.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The words are smooth, measured, impeccably professional.
As though nothing at all has passed between you.
And yet, standing there with your pulse hammering and the memory of his mouth still far too vivid, you know with sudden certainty that everything has.
PUT A BOW ON IT
ed warren x reader ✦ 3,816 words ✦ 18+
WARNINGS: 18+, smut, dirty talk, flirting, oral sex, rough oral sex, come swallowing, face fucking
NOTES:This is based on an ask I got from @imobsessedwithslipknot - I hope you like the smutty Ed Warren fic! There’s not enough out there. It's a bit shorter than normal, I know...But I figured I should also try different things and not stress so much to reinvent the wheel. Like with every story I write, I feel like I need to make it more 'spectacular' than the one before. So: Here's to trying to not do that anymore.
SUMMARY: Your first Christmas as Ed Warren’s wife starts quietly. Just the two of you, a glowing tree, and him waiting on the couch in nothing but a white shirt and a smug little smile. You’re confused about the early present. He’s more interested in unwrapping you.
OR: Ed surprises you with a different kind of present .
✦ masterlist ✦ ao3 ✦
You wake up slowly, as though the morning itself is coaxing you back into the world.
At first, there is only warmth. Soft sheets gathered loosely around your body, the faint lingering heat of sleep, and the quiet hush that belongs only to early hours.
Then, slowly, awareness seeps in. A pale gold light presses against your closed eyelids, insistent yet tender.
When you open your eyes, the room is bathed in colour.
Sunrise has spilt itself generously through the curtains, painting the bedroom in hues of amber and rose, the kind that seem almost too vivid to belong to winter. The shadows are long and delicate, stretched thin across the floor and the rumpled bed.
For a moment, you simply lie there before you stretch. It is an instinctive thing, almost unthinking, your body arching slightly as sleep loosens its final hold. Your arm drifts across the mattress beside you, seeking without question the familiar solidity that should be there.
Instead - cold.
Your fingers meet only the faintly chilled sheets, the fabric already losing the memory of his warmth.
You frown, not sharp but rather confused. The absence feels louder than it should, as though the room itself has shifted subtly in his absence.
“Ed?” you murmur, your voice still thick with sleep, barely more than a breath in the quiet.
No answer.
You push yourself upright, the blankets slipping from your shoulders as the morning air greets your skin with a coolness that makes you shiver faintly.
A small smile tugs at your lips despite yourself. He is an early riser - always has been. There is something steady, almost comforting, in that predictability. And yet, this morning, you feel the absence more keenly.
Perhaps because it is Christmas.
The thought settles softly in your mind, bringing with it a quiet warmth that has little to do with the room.
And suddenly, you find yourself craving something simple and immediate. Coffee. And him. The rich, bitter scent curling through the house, of his arms warm and solid around you, grounding in a way nothing else quite manages. It pulls you fully from the remnants of sleep.
You swing your legs over the side of the bed, your feet meeting the cool floor with a small, involuntary intake of breath.
Wrapping a robe loosely around yourself, you cast one last glance at the sunlit bed before you step out into the quiet house.
You step into the hallway.
Fairy lights have been strung along the railing, their glow soft and unwavering, little constellations brought down to earth. They do not flicker, but hum gently with a steady warmth, casting delicate reflections against polished wood and glass.
A few ornaments that you insisted on hanging, despite Ed’s mild amusement, catch the light and scatter it in quiet, prismatic fragments across the walls.
You remember decorating them together.
It had not been a hurried task, nor a particularly efficient one. He had handed you things instead of placing them himself, watching more than working, as though the act mattered less to him than the way you smiled while doing it.
The Christmas tree stands in the middle of the living room.
It may be a bit too large for the space, although neither of you was willing to admit that when you brought it home. It reaches almost to the ceiling, its branches full and unapologetically alive. The deep green is now softened by a careful layer of lights. Not the garish kind, but warm ones - golden, almost candle-like in their glow
They wind through the branches in patient spirals, illuminating the ornaments you had chosen together. Some are delicate glass, catching the firelight and the morning sun alike; others are older, more worn, carrying the quiet weight of years. A few hang slightly crooked, placed with more enthusiasm than precision, and left that way because neither of you had thought it worth correcting.
There is a small wooden angel near the top, slightly off-centre. You had gently argued about before deciding together that its imperfection suited it.
Tinsel, used sparingly, drapes here and there like frost caught mid-fall. And at the very tips of some branches, a dusting of artificial snow clings.
You find yourself smiling.
It is your first Christmas as a married couple.
The fireplace crackles softly to one side, its flames steady and low.
Above the fireplace, the mantle is decorated with a garland of evergreen that stretches across its length, threaded with warm lights. It features small, thoughtful touches: candles, a few ornaments, and a pair of stockings hanging side by side.
Yours and his. They gently brush against each other where they hang.
Outside the window, the world is hushed beneath falling snow.
It drifts steadily, thick enough now to soften the edges of everything outside, turning the world into something quieter, gentler. The glass has begun to fog faintly at the corners, the warmth inside pushing gently against the cold beyond.
And beneath the tree lay presents. Not an overwhelming number, but enough.
Each one wrapped with a kind of deliberate care, paper smoothed neatly, ribbons tied with quiet precision. A few bear small imperfections, creases where the paper had folded awkwardly, corners not quite as sharp as intended, but those only make them feel more real, more yours.
For a moment, you simply stand there, taking it in: the light, the warmth, the quiet evidence of shared effort and shared life.
Ed sits on the couch as though he has been there for some time, not restless, but waiting in that patient, grounded way that seems so entirely his.
The firelight catches him first, tracing warm gold along the edges of his figure before the morning light from the windows finds him too, softening everything it touches.
He is still in his pyjamas.
A plain white shirt, slightly rumpled from sleep, clings just enough to hint at the warmth beneath it - simple, unassuming, and yet somehow unfairly distracting in its simplicity. The sleeves are short, the fabric is worn soft with time, and it deliciously highlights those big arms of his.
His checkered pants sit low and comfortable, as though he had dressed without thinking, more concerned with the moment than appearance.
And his hair is still unruly.
Not styled, not tamed, but left as sleep had made it, falling slightly out of place in a way that feels so quietly intimate it makes your chest tighten, just a little.
For a moment, you simply stand there in the doorway, watching him.
There is a box in his lap.
Wrapped.
Carefully, though not perfectly - one corner folded just slightly off, the ribbon tied with more determination than precision. His hands rest lightly on either side of it, not fidgeting, but not entirely still either, as though he has been aware of your absence and the anticipation of your return in equal measure.
He looks up then.
“Good morning,” you say softly, your voice carrying a warmth now that had been missing moments before.
His face changes. Ed’s eyes soften, something bright and unmistakably fond settling into them, and then he smiles.
Open, warm and immediate. The kind of smile that feels as though it belongs entirely to you in that moment.
“Good morning,” he replies, his voice low, still roughened faintly by sleep.
There is a small pause, just long enough to take you in properly, as though he is making sure you are really there, standing in the doorway with the morning wrapped around you.
Then, softer: “Merry Christmas.”
The words are simple, but they settle into the room with a kind of quiet significance, threading themselves through the light, the fire, the scent of pine and coffee.
His gaze lingers on you for a moment longer, something unspoken passing through it - something warm, something certain - before one hand lifts slightly from the gift in his lap.
An unspoken invitation to come closer.
You hesitate only a second before crossing the room, drawn in by him in a way that feels both natural and inevitable.
The floor is warm beneath your feet here, kissed by the fire, and as you move closer, the details of him sharpen. The faint crease in his shirt, the way his fingers rest against the edge of the box, the quiet steadiness in the way he watches you approach.
You lower yourself onto the couch beside him, close enough that your shoulder brushes his and your gaze drops to the box in his lap.
Your brow furrows slightly.
“…Ed,” you begin, a small note of confusion threading through your voice as you glance back up at him, “isn’t this… a little early for this?”
There’s something almost amused in the way you say it, but it’s genuine too. Habit lingers: Christmas mornings filled with noise, with family, with the slow, shared ritual of waiting until everyone is gathered.
A slow, knowing smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, subtle at first, then deepening just enough to betray that he has been expecting exactly this reaction.
He shifts slightly beside you, turning just enough that his knee brushes yours, his body angling toward you in a way that feels deliberate without being forced.
“Yeah,” he says, voice low, edged with something warm and teasing. “I know how it’s usually done.”
There’s a beat.
His gaze lingers on you - not fleeting, not distracted, but steady, intent, as though he’s choosing his next words carefully… or perhaps enjoying the moment just a little too much.
“But this isn’t usually.”
Your breath catches, just slightly.
He watches it happen. Of course he does.
That smirk shifts into something gentler, though no less dangerous in its own quiet way. His thumb brushes absently along the edge of the ribbon, not looking at it, his attention entirely on you.
“It’s our first Christmas,” he continues, voice dipping just a fraction, “as a married couple.”
The words settle between you, heavier now, more deliberate.
His shoulder presses a little more firmly against yours - not enough to trap, but enough to anchor.
“And,” he adds, tilting his head just slightly, eyes flicking over your face with a softness that contrasts the teasing curve of his mouth, “you’ve been a little… stressed lately.”
There’s something in the way he says it - not accusing, not even questioning but rather observing.
Your lips part, perhaps to protest, perhaps to dismiss it - but he doesn’t quite give you the chance.
His hand shifts, just barely, brushing against yours where it rests between you on the couch. The contact is light, almost accidental in appearance, but it lingers just long enough to be anything but.
“So,” he says, quieter now, his voice carrying that low, familiar warmth that seems to settle somewhere just beneath your skin, “I figured I’d do something about that.”
His eyes meet yours again - steady, unwavering.
And then, with the faintest lift of one brow, the smirk returning in full.
“What?” he murmurs, voice soft, teasing, unmistakably flirty now. “You gonna tell me I’m not allowed to spoil my wife a little?”
His blue eyes sparkle with mischief, that bright smile widening just a touch as he nods toward the box. “Go on, open it. It’s all for you.”
He doesn’t shift an inch, keeping the box firmly in place over his crotch, his body heat radiating through the thin material.
Curiosity piqued, you reach for the ribbon, your fingers brushing the edge of the box.
You untie the bow and lift the lid, a soft gasp escapes your lips.
There, nestled in the tissue paper like the most forbidden present, is Ed’s cock - thick and hard, poking up through a cleverly cut hole in the bottom of the box.
The shaft stands proud, veined and flushed a deep pink, curving slightly toward you with a glossy bead of precum glistening at the swollen tip.
It’s girthy, easily filling the space, the smooth skin stretched taut over the rigid length, his heavy balls tucked just below, peeking out from the opening in his pants that he’s obviously freed himself from.
Ed chuckles, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrates through his chest. “Surprise, sweetheart. Merry fucking Christmas. See how hard I got just thinking about you opening this? Your present’s been waiting all morning for you...”
He shifts his hips ever so slightly, making his cock twitch in the box, the tip brushing the edge of the tissue paper.
“Go ahead, touch it. Wrap your hand around my fat dick and feel how much I want to pound into you right here on the floor, make you forget every damn worry. Or maybe slide your mouth down on it - suck me off like the naughty wife you are while I watch those pretty lips stretch around me.”
His voice drops lower, laced with hunger, as his free hand guides yours toward the box. “What do you say? Ready to unwrap the rest of your gift?”
Your eyes widen in genuine surprise, a bubble of laughter escaping your lips before you can stop it - nervous, delighted, and utterly turned on all at once.
The audacity of it hits you like a warm wave, your cheeks flushing hot as you stare at Ed's exposed cock in that ridiculous, genius gift box.
It's so him: playful yet filthy, knowing exactly how to catch you off guard and ignite that spark low in your belly. Your heart races, a mix of shock and arousal pooling between your thighs, making your pussy clench with anticipation.
“Ed! Oh my god,” you manage between giggles, shaking your head in disbelief, but your gaze lingers on the thick cock, already imagining how it would feel sliding inside you.
Ed’s bright smile turns downright predatory, his blue eyes darkening with lust as he watches your reaction.
“Yeah, laugh it up, baby. But I see that look - you're soaked already, aren't you? Thinking about how my big cock’s gonna fill you up, make you scream my name while I fuck you senseless under this tree before our families arrive.” His voice is a gravelly whisper, dripping with promise, as he reaches for your hand, his strong fingers wrapping around yours with gentle insistence.
He guides your palm downward, pressing it against the warm, velvety skin of his shaft. The heat of him sears into you, the rigid girth throbbing under your touch, veins pulsing as you instinctively curl your fingers around it. His dick is heavy, the precum slicking your skin as you give it a tentative stroke.
A low groan rumbles from his chest, his hips bucking slightly into your grip.
“Fuck, that's it...stroke my cock like you own it, wife. Feel how hard you make me? Been dreaming of your tight mouth wrapped around the head, sucking me deep while I tangle my fingers in your hair and thrust down your throat.”
His words send shivers racing down your spine, your laughter fading into a soft moan as arousal floods your cunt, your nipples hardening against the fabric of your robe.
You pump him slowly, savouring the way he twitches in your hand, the salty scent of his arousal filling the air, making your mouth water. Every glide of your fist heightens the ache between your legs, your clit throbbing with need.
After a few more teasing strokes, Ed’s breath hitches, his free hand abandoning your arm to grip the edge of the box.
“Enough playing, sweetheart. Time to taste your present.” With a swift motion, he lifts the lid and shoves the box aside, his cock springing free.
The sight makes your pulse pound, desire overriding any lingering surprise as you lean forward without hesitation, your robe slipping open slightly.
Your lips part, tongue flicking out to lap at the tip, over the salty bead there before you take him in - stretching your mouth around the swollen head, hollowing your cheeks as you suck him deeper.
He fills you so perfectly, the musky flavour exploding on your tongue, and you hum in pleasure, your hand still working the base while waves of heat build inside you, eager for whatever comes next.
Ed’s fingers thread through your hair, gripping firmly at the roots as he tilts your head back just enough to meet your eyes, his gaze smouldering with that mix of affection and raw hunger.
“Look at you, baby - already so eager for my cock down your throat. But let’s see how much you can handle this morning. Tap my thigh if it's too much, okay? I want you to take it all for me.” His voice is a husky command, laced with teasing challenge, sending a fresh rush of heat through your veins.
You're nodding before you even realise it, the thrill of his control making your pussy throb, slickness gathering as you relax your jaw wider around him.
He eases in shallow at first, his hips rocking gently to slide just the head past your lips, letting you swirl your tongue along the underside while he watches your every reaction.
The velvety texture drags against your mouth, his precum mixing with your saliva, and you moan softly, the vibration drawing a sharp hiss from him.
His free hand cups your cheek, thumb brushing your stretched lips, the tenderness contrasting the building intensity as he pushes a little further, testing your limits with each incremental thrust.
Your body responds instinctively, arousal coiling tighter in your core, as you hollow your cheeks and take him deeper.
The stretch starts to build, his thickness pressing against the back of your throat, but you’re so into it - the way he fills you, the power dynamic that makes your clit ache for friction.
He talks more now, words tumbling out in a gravelly stream as his grip tightens. “Fuck, your mouth’s so hot and wet, swallowing me like a good little wife. Deeper now - relax that throat for me, let me bury my dick all the way in.”
His hips snap forward with more force, driving past your gag reflex, the intrusion deeper than he's ever gone before.
The sensation borders on uncomfortable, your throat constricting around the invading girth, muscles fluttering as you fight to breathe through your nose.
Saliva pools and spills from the corners of your mouth, dripping down your chin in messy strings, but the discomfort only heightens the pleasure surging through you - waves of endorphins mixing with the burn, making your thighs clench together for relief.
You gag wetly on the next push, the filthy, choking sound echoing in the quiet living room, but he doesn't stop, holding you steady as he grinds in further.
“Gag on it, sweetheart. I love hearing those slutty noises. You’re taking me so well, throat, squeezing my cock like it’s begging for my load.”
Tears prick at your eyes from the effort, but you’re lost in the intensity, drool slicking his shaft and balls as you manage to take every last inch, your nose brushing his trimmed pubic hair.
The fullness is overwhelming, your body trembling with the effort to accommodate him, yet the ache in your pussy intensifies, turning the almost-pain into pure, electric need. He fucks your mouth relentlessly now, pace quickening as wet slurps and gurgles fill the air, his balls slapping lightly against your chin with each deep plunge.
“All of me, baby…Fuck, you’re perfect. Gonna cum so hard watching you choke on my dick like this.”
His rhythm falters, breaths coming in ragged pants, and you feel him swell impossibly thicker against your tongue.
With a guttural groan, he pulls back just enough before cumming, half his length still buried in your mouth. Hot spurts flood your tongue first, salty and thick, coating your throat as you swallow what you can, the taste exploding with his essence.
He yanks free on the next pulse, ropes of cum painting your lips, cheeks, and chin in sticky white streaks, some landing warm on your closed eyelids.
You gasp for air, chest heaving, the mess dripping down your neck as aftershocks ripple through you, your own arousal at a fever pitch, body buzzing from the raw claim he’s just made.
Ed’s chest heaves as he stares down at you, his blue eyes darkening with a potent mix of satisfaction and lingering desire.
Cum glistens on your skin, warm trails cooling against your flushed cheeks and neck, while the remnants in your mouth pool thickly on your tongue.
He doesn’t let the moment fade; instead, he cups your jaw gently, thumb swiping across your lower lip to gather a stray rope of his release.
“Open up for me, love. Don’t waste a drop. Show me how much you love tasting me.” His voice dips low, coaxing rather than commanding, but the heat in it stirs the fire still smoldering in your belly.
You part your lips obediently, letting him slide his thumb inside, pressing the salty essence against your tongue.
Obediently, you close around the digit, sucking softly to draw it clean.
He watches intently, a soft groan escaping him when you swallow, the motion visible in the bob of your throat. “Good girl,” he murmurs, repeating the gesture with his fingers, scooping more from your chin and feeding it to you bit by bit.
Each swallow sends a shiver through you, your body humming with submission, pussy clenching emptily as you take every salty bit he offers, eyes locked on his until the mess is mostly gone, leaving only faint shiny streaks.
Once he’s satisfied, Ed pulls you up into his lap, his strong arms wrapping around your waist to tuck you against his broad chest.
The white shirt clings to his skin, damp from the intensity, and you can feel the steady thump of his heart under your palm as you rest your head on his shoulder.
He grabs a nearby throw blanket from the couch, draping it over both of you, his hands roaming soothingly - stroking your back, brushing tangled hair from your face, wiping the last traces from your eyelids with the soft fabric.
“You were incredible, baby. So brave taking all of me like that. Merry Christmas. Couldn't think of a better way to start our day.” His words are tender, laced with that bright smile you adore, as he presses a kiss to your forehead, then your temple, nuzzling into your hair with affectionate hums.
But even in the afterglow, one hand drifts lower, palming your ass through the thin robe, squeezing the flesh as he shifts you closer, his semi-hard cock pressing insistently against your thigh.
"Fuck, you’re so wet for me, aren’t you? I can feel it soaking through.” He nips at your earlobe, breath hot as his fingers tease the hem of your robe, dipping just inside to trace the slick folds of your pussy.
The gentleness mixes with renewed hunger, promising he’s far from done spoiling you this morning.
The Space Between Instinct and Ruin (Zayne | Li Shen x Reader)
Masterlist Ao3
Summary
[Zayne| Li Shen x Female Reader] [Zayne| Li Shen x You]
He kept his distance like it was the only way to survive. Controlled. Careful. Untouchable.
Until the moment he almost lost you, and everything he had been holding back started to fracture.
When he came back, there was no space left for restraint.
Because the moment he touched you again, it stopped being about healing.
And started becoming about everything he’d been denying.
OR
How Zayne snapped and performed more than just a medical checkup on you
A/N: Okay... so I’m back with something different. I have some time off and check on the boys every day. And since HE KEEPS WEARING THAT DAMN RED SCARF, here’s some trauma for our boy Zayne (he also gets laid so it's fine)
You didn’t remember the moment of impact - only its echo, carved into you like something ancient and merciless. A sound came first. Not just loud, but primordial. A deep, guttural roar that felt less like it travelled through the air and more like it erupted from the marrow of the world itself.
Your lungs emptied in an instant, breath stolen by the force of it, leaving behind nothing but a hollow, aching void.
Then came the pressure, violent, suffocating, absolute. It crushed against your body like an invisible hand determined to fold you in on yourself. Heat followed close behind, blistering and relentless, licking across your skin with a hunger that felt almost alive.
And the ground beneath you didn’t just shake. It twisted and warped. Heaved like something wounded and furious. Walls convulsed around you, metal groaning in protest as if the structure itself was trying to scream. Jagged shards of metal protruding at unnatural angles, like teeth bared in a silent, predatory grin.
For one impossibly disorienting moment, even gravity lost its meaning. Up dissolved into down. Down fractured into nothing at all.
So the world didn’t just fall apart - it exploded sideways.
Smoke slithered through the corridor in slow, serpentine trails, coiling through broken support beams and gnarled wiring, winding itself through the wreckage like it had nowhere better to be.
The air itself tasted wrong. Thick with the stench of scorched metal and something sharper. It coated your tongue, your throat, your lungs. Everything. Each breath was a struggle against something sharp and invasive.
Lights flickered overhead, their weak pulses casting fractured shadows that jerked and trembled along the walls. They didn’t move naturally. They twitched, like they were trying to escape the ruin that birthed them.
Sparks sputtered from shattered consoles, brief arcs of dying electricity that flared and vanished like the last breaths of something already gone.
And somewhere far off in the distance, sirens wailed.
Their cries stretched and warped, as if dragged through layers of debris and damage before reaching you. Both muted and mournful, like they were grieving something they already knew couldn’t be saved.
The comms crackled with static. No voices, no signal. Just the hollow, broken sound of something trying and failing to speak.
When awareness finally returned to you, it came in fragments.
You felt him first. Before the pain could find you - before fear had the chance to take shape, before the chaos could settle into something your mind could understand.
A weight pressed over you. Not crushing or trapping, but shielding, almost like sheltering you from the fractured world around you, with a quiet, unyielding certainty that spoke of instinct rather than thought.
Zayne.
His body covered yours completely, a barrier between you and everything that had just torn the world apart. One arm braced beside your head, the other planted firmly on the opposite side.
His arms were trembling slightly as if the effort of holding himself up had only just begun to register.
Dust clung to him like a second skin. It streaked across the dark fabric of his jacket, settled into the sharp lines of his face, caught in the strands of his hair. Smudges marked his cheekbones, dulled the edges of him - but somehow, impossibly, he still felt solid. Anchored. Real in a way that nothing else around you did right now.
He wasn’t moving, just breathing.
Each inhale scraped in too quickly, each exhale leaving him in a rush that brushed hot against your cheek, stirring the fine layer of ash and debris on your skin.
He was close - closer than he’d ever been - and for one fleeting, suspending heartbeat, that mattered more than the wreckage around you. More than the silence. More than the pain you hadn’t yet started to feel.
Just him.
Zayne was staring, just looking at you unblinking and unspeaking. As if the simple act of glancing away would undo something fragile and irreversible. And in that gaze was something raw and wild and tacit like he was still trying to convince himself you were really there.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
You tried to speak, but the sound dissolved before it could leave you. The words caught, snagged somewhere deep in your throat, choked by the thick, acrid taste of smoke and ash your lungs burnt with.
So you didn’t speak. You just kept looking at him, trying to make sense of the situation you’ve found yourself in.
And even now and even here, in the aftermath of something violent enough to tear reality apart, he didn’t feel real.
Zayne looked like something pulled from memory rather than the present. Like a figure drawn in firelight and shadow, too vivid, too sharp.
The flickering emergency lights carved him into sharp contrasts, outlining every angle of him with almost unnatural clarity. His dark hair, usually so carefully kept, had fallen loose in the chaos - strands clinging damply to his forehead, tangled with sweat, streaked with blood.
A thin crimson line traced from his temple, cutting cleanly down along the ridge of his cheekbone. It caught the light with every flicker, gleaming briefly before slipping back into shadow, like it couldn’t decide whether to be seen or hidden.
The black fabric beneath his coat had fared no better. His shirt was scorched, torn along the seams, the clean, tailored lines distorted by heat and impact. It looked wrong on him - this disarray, this evidence of something breaking through the precision he carried so effortlessly.
His eyes remained locked onto yours with unwavering focus.
That familiar undertone of smouldering bronze flickered within them, but now it burned differently. There was something in his gaze you had never seen before.
“Zayne,” you whispered, the name left your lips as little more than a breath, fragile and uneven, nearly swallowed by the high, relentless ringing that filled your ears. “You’re hurt.”
His brow tightened almost imperceptibly, like the echo of an emotion he hadn’t decided whether to acknowledge.
He still didn’t move - not until you reached up, your hand unsteady, heavy in a way that didn’t feel entirely physical. Dust coated your skin, mixed with streaks of drying blood you didn’t remember earning. Your fingers trembled as they reached him, almost hesitant until they brushed against the fabric of his sleeve.
That simple contact broke something behind his eyes. A fracture that hadn’t been there before. A tremor that rippled through the carefully maintained stillness he held around himself.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted his weight, pushing himself up and away as though afraid even the act of moving might hurt you more.
For a single suspended breath, he lingered above you, not pulling back completely. Staying close enough that you could still feel the warmth of him. Close enough that his gaze didn’t waver, still searching your face with that same quiet urgency.
“Are you okay?” Your voice cracked under the weight of the question. It was almost a paradox that you’d chosen to ask him that when pain radiated through your whole body, setting everything in its way ablaze.
He didn’t answer, instead just pulled back more, distance returning in slow, reluctant increments. The space between you reopened, inch by inch, until the absence of him felt colder than the debris beneath you.
No sound fell from his lips even when your trembling fingers brushed his sleeve again, a silent, desperate plea for him to stay.
He didn’t react.
Then the med team arrived, loud and sudden.
Shouts tore through the corridor, echoing off broken metal and fractured walls. The sharp rhythm of boots striking the ground followed, fast and relentless, cutting through the haze like a second wave of impact.
Figures emerged through the smoke - indistinct at first, then clearer. Hazmat suits. Masks. Gloves. Movement driven by training and urgency rather than hesitation.
And Zayne, without a word, without a backward glance, stood completely.
The motion was smooth, controlled - almost eerily so, as though none of what had just passed between you had ever happened.
He stepped away, into the drifting smoke, into the chaos that was beginning to swallow everything whole again.
The haze wrapped around him almost immediately, softening his outline, blurring the sharp edges of his form until he became something indistinct and unreachable.
As if he had never been there at all.
___
Hours later, you surfaced into a world of blinding white and bone-deep silence.
The first thing that returned was your sense of smell.
It came sharp and immediate, cutting through the fog before anything else could follow. The air was too clean, sterile in a way that felt unnatural, almost invasive. Bleach lingered heavily, crisp and clinical, undercut by the faint, acrid sting of burnt wires that seemed to linger like a ghost.
A cold settled in next.
It crept through the thin hospital sheets, seeping into your skin, your bones, leaving you hollowed out and trembling before you even fully realised you were awake. The fabric beneath your fingers felt too light, too insubstantial, like it couldn’t quite anchor you to anything real.
So you didn’t move, didn’t open your eyes. Just existed in that strange, fragile space between unconsciousness and awareness, where nothing had formed yet, and nothing could hurt you.
Machines whispered somewhere nearby, their steady, mechanical rhythm threading through the silence like a quiet reassurance that time hadn’t stopped completely.
Your brow furrowed slightly, the first conscious movement pulling faintly at muscles that felt unused, unfamiliar.
Then you forced your eyes open, and the light hit you instantly.
Not gently. Not gradually. It struck.
The overhead LEDs bled into your vision, flooding everything in stark, sterile brightness. It was too much, too sharp and too sudden, like your eyes hadn’t been meant to handle it yet.
So you blinked rapidly, but the world only wavered and reformed in uneven pulses, as if reality itself was still struggling to piece itself back together around you.
For a moment, you lay frozen, trapped between confusion and fear, your mind whirling in slow, broken circles.
Nothing made sense. Not the room. Not your body. Not the cold, coiled knot of dread that had wrapped itself around your chest.
Until it did, and the memory seeped into your tired mind.
The mission. The detonation. Zayne.
Your pulse surged hard and completely uncontrollable. It slammed against your ribs, loudly dragging the rest of you along with it.
You pushed yourself upright on instinct alone, elbows digging into the mattress as your body protested. Pain flared across your ribs, dull but insistent, while a pounding headache roared to life the second you moved, loud enough to rival the explosion still echoing somewhere in your mind.
Your head snapped to the side, eyes raking the room in a frantic search as if he might be there, lurking in the shadows, waiting.
But he wasn’t.
There was nothing. Only white walls. Only machines. Only the hollow, echoing absence where he should have been.
And yet when the door finally sighed open some minutes later, its mechanism releasing with a soft, pneumatic hiss that seemed almost indecently loud in the stillness, you just knew who it would be.
You could see him already, so vividly that the image overlaid itself upon the doorway before anything had even crossed its threshold.
Zayne - shoulders straight beneath the familiar fall of a white coat, stethoscope resting like a quiet declaration of purpose at his collar. There would be tension in him, subtle but unmistakable. A crease drawn between his brows, the faint downturn of his mouth betraying what he would not say aloud.
He would move quickly - decisively - each step measured, controlled, as though precision alone could contain the concern that threatened to surface.
But…it wasn’t him. It was a nurse.
She walked into your room with a practised quietness, her presence neither abrupt nor gentle, but something in between. The soft soles of her shoes whispered faintly against the polished floor, a sound so subtle it seemed swallowed almost as soon as it was made.
In one hand, she carried a tablet, its screen casting a pale, sterile glow across her features. In the other, nothing though her fingers moved occasionally, as if accustomed to holding instruments not presently required.
Her expression was composed into something approximating warmth, though it bore the unmistakable marks of repetition. A smile worn smooth by overuse, offered not unkindly, but without depth.
There was no hesitation in her movements as she approached your bedside, no curiosity, no acknowledgement of the fragile stillness that had settled around you. Her attention fixed itself upon her task with quiet diligence.
Cool fingers found your wrist.
They were steady, almost impersonal, devoid of hesitation, devoid of familiarity. She measured your pulse with the same detached precision one might apply to machinery, her gaze flickering only briefly between your face and the data displayed before her.
When you spoke, the question came haltingly, almost against your own better judgment.
“Did… did anyone come with me?” The words felt strangely ill-formed, as though they had not quite belonged in the air once spoken.
For the briefest moment, something shifted across her expression. Not enough to name, only the faintest interruption in the smooth, practised neutrality she wore. Then it was gone again, and you wondered whether your fragmented mind had played tricks on you once again.
“No one was authorised to stay.”
Her voice was gentle, but there was a finality to it. A clipped precision that suggested this was not the first time she had delivered such an answer, and that she had long since learned not to let it linger.
You nodded, though the motion felt disconnected, as if your body were performing it without your consent. You attempted a smile in return that didn’t hold, as something in your chest tightened gradually.
A slow constriction, like a pressure building inward rather than out. The edges of the room seemed to tilt, not enough to disrupt your vision, but enough to unsettle it. Enough to make the ground beneath you feel uncertain.
And beneath it all, there was a quiet, sinking certainty.
He wasn’t coming.
The rest of the process unfolded with a kind of impersonal efficiency that left little room for pause or protest. You were examined, assessed, and recorded. Each step was conducted with the same quiet detachment as before.
No fractures. No lasting structural damage.
A minor concussion, they told you. Irritating, but not uncommon. Your lungs, though irritated by the smoke, would recover. The damage was superficial, and treatable…temporary.
You were fortunate.
The word lingered unpleasantly in your mind. You didn’t feel like the lucky one.
They administered medication, something to dull the ache behind your eyes, something to steady the rhythm of your breathing, and placed a clearance form into your hands.
On paper, you were fine. But none of it mattered to you because Zayne hadn’t contacted you. Not a word. Not a message.
You told yourself, with a persistence that bordered on desperation, that there were reasons.
He was busy…of course he was. The aftermath of such an incident would demand attention at every level. Reports to complete, injuries to assess, procedures to oversee. He would be needed elsewhere.
The thought repeated itself, over and over, until it began to lose meaning.
And still, you waited.
___
Without quite deciding to, you found yourself lingering.
The common areas became familiar in a way they had never been before. You passed through them more often than necessary, your steps slowing without instruction, your gaze drifting inevitably towards the entrances, the corridors, the spaces where he might appear.
You told yourself it was nothing.
But your path drew you near the hospital again and again, as if guided by something quieter than intention.
Your phone became a constant presence in your hand. You checked it without thinking. Again, and again, and again. Each glance driven by a faint, unreasonable expectation.
As though at any moment, something might appear. A message. A name. A sign that you had not imagined the intensity of what had passed between you.
Nothing came.
___
Sleep was a joke; it came in fractured, unreliable fragments. Never long enough, never deep enough to offer rest.
Every time you closed your eyes, you were back again. Not in the explosion nor the chaos but in that moment after.
You felt the ghost of his weight over you, saw the way he’d looked at you like you were the only real thing left in the world and that he’d die ten times over before losing you.
Eventually, hours bled into a day. And one day into two.
You passed him once after that in the sterile, brightly lit corridors where light pooled too brightly against polished surfaces, leaving no room for shadow when you had to come in for a checkup.
He appeared without warning. The space between you collapsed in an instant as you passed one another, his coat brushing lightly against yours. A fleeting, almost imperceptible contact that nevertheless sent a sharp awareness through you.
And for a moment, you thought he’d look up. He would stop.
But he didn’t.
His gaze remained fixed on the datapad in his hand, fingers moving across its surface with practised ease. There was no acknowledgement. It was as though you were not there at all, and your presence did not register within his field of awareness.
Like he couldn’t bear to look at you. Like you hadn’t nearly died under him. Like he hadn’t stared at you in that ruined corridor as if you were the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
___
On the fifth night, sleep still refused you.
It lingered just beyond reach. Close enough to tease, never close enough to claim. The hours did not pass so much as they thinned and stretched, each dissolving into the next with a quiet, indifferent persistence, offering neither rest nor reprieve.
The room itself had long since surrendered to stillness. Whatever life the world beyond its walls possessed had faded into a distant, indistinct hush, for existence itself had drawn a curtain and withdrawn.
Yet your mind refused to follow suit. You were lying in the half-dark, suspended in that peculiar state where silence grew loud, where one became acutely aware of the absence of sound, until it felt indistinguishable from its presence.
It was in that strained quiet that you heard it.
A sound so slight that, for a moment, you wondered if your tired mind had conjured it.
Soft. Tentative. Two gentle taps against the door.
Not the assured knock of someone who belonged, nor the sound of someone to be expected. This was something altogether different. Hesitant, almost apologetic, as though the one who stood on the other side was uncertain of their right to disturb the stillness within.
Your breath caught before, and you were conscious of it, you were already moving.
Already crossing the room with a quiet urgency that outpaced reason itself. Your hand found the door before your thoughts had time to assemble into anything resembling caution, and you pulled it open quickly
He stood there.
Zayne, framed by the dim, diluted glow of the hallway light, which seemed to gather around him without ever fully illuminating him, softening his outline into something almost unreal. For a single, disorienting second, there was a sense of unfamiliarity. Not because you did not recognise him, but because you had never seen him like this.
There was none of the usual structure about him, none of the quiet authority he wore like it was second nature. The careful composure, the subtle armour that seemed always to exist between him and the world was just…gone.
His hair was still damp, the dark strands falling loosely about his face, curling faintly at the ends where they had begun to dry. There were traces of water still clinging to his temples, catching the low light in brief, shifting glimmers.
Fatigue had etched itself into the hills and valleys of his face. His eyes were tired and almost hollow. A disarray that made it obvious something had changed.
“Can I come in?” he asked quietly at last.
You did not trust yourself to answer, so you just stepped aside.
He passed you then, close enough that you felt the faint warmth of him in his movement. Yet he did not go far into the room. Took only a few measured steps, as if uncertain of whether he was still welcome.
The door, closing softly behind him, gave a quiet click. Yet in the stillness that followed, it seemed disproportionately loud.
For a second, neither of you spoke until you finally broke the silence.
“You saved my life.”
The words escaped you almost involuntarily, loaded by everything you didn’t say yet.
Zayne’s reaction was subtle, yet unmistakable. A faint flinch, so controlled it might have escaped anyone else’s notice, flickered across him. It was gone almost as quickly as it appeared, like a passing shadow, but not without leaving its mark.
“It was instinct,” he replied. The answer came too readily. Too smooth.
It almost seemed as if he’d prepared it long before this moment and repeated it until he himself believed it.
“Instinct,” you recounted, though the word came out sharper than you intended. “So was disappearing, I guess?”
Zayne’s jaw tightened as his posture became more rigid and his hands gradually curled into fists at his sides, fingers pressing inward, seeking some anchor in the pressure.
“I had to walk away,” he said. His voice, though still controlled, had shifted. It carried strain now, a tension that suggested effort. Effort to contain, to explain, perhaps even to endure. “I couldn’t - ”
“Couldn’t what, Zayne?”
The interruption came, once again, sharper than you had intended, cutting through his unfinished sentence with a clarity that left no room for evasion.
His gaze, which had held yours until that moment, faltered. It dropped, settling upon the floor as though it offered some refuge, some answer he could not find elsewhere.
The silence that followed was no longer fragile. It was weighty. Dense with all that had not been said.
So you moved then, though you were scarcely aware of the decision forming. Only knowing that your addled brain could not have made up the situation.
One step, tentative at first, then another, each bringing you closer, each heightening the quiet rhythm of your own heartbeat until it seemed to reverberate within you.
“You acted like I meant something to you,” you said. Your voice had softened, yet it carried a tremor that betrayed its steadiness. “That moment, under the rubble…you looked at me like…”
The thought faltered, the words dissolving before they could fully take shape, suspended somewhere between feeling and speech as you stopped just before him.
And for a moment that almost felt eternal, he didn’t move or speak. Then, with a deliberateness that suggested effort rather than ease, he lifted his head.
That’s when you saw it. Gone was the composure, the quiet certainty that so often defined him.
Everything he’d been hiding was right there in his eyes - fear, guilt, something deeper. Something carved into his bones, almost ingrained, as though it had shaped him in ways that could not be undone.
“You terrify me,” he said. The words emerged low and hoarse, like they had been forced through resistance. He did not avert his gaze this time. There was a steadiness in it now, though it came at a cost. “Because I almost lost you. And if I let myself feel that… I don’t know if I’d come back from it.”
The admission settled into the room with a quiet finality.
There was no defence in it. No attempt at distance. Only the plainness of truth, laid bare before you.
You reached for him - not because you had forgiven him yet, nor because the hurt had vanished, but because, in that moment, you understood.
Your fingers found his wrist, resting there lightly.
“I am here,” you said, your voice scarcely above a whisper, yet steady in its certainty.
In the next second, Zayne surged forward with a raw hunger that shattered any lingering restraint, his body crashing into yours like a dam breaking after years of pressure. His hand tightened around your wrist, pulling you into him, closing the distance so abruptly it stole the breath from your lungs.
And then his mouth was on yours.
No hesitation, no measured control. Only urgency, raw and consuming. The kiss was fierce, almost overwhelming, driven by something that refused to be quieted any longer. It wasn’t polished or precise.
His lips crushed against yours, tongue pushing deep to tangle with yours in a sloppy, urgent rhythm that left you breathless. He tasted of salt and heat, his breath ragged as he sucked on your lower lip, biting just enough to sting and send sparks racing through your veins.
You moaned into his mouth, your body igniting under the onslaught, every nerve screaming for more as heat pooled low in your belly.
He backed you up step by step, his hand shifted to your waist, firm, guiding, holding you close as though he had no intention of letting you slip away again. Each step sent a new wave of sensation through you, your thoughts dissolving beneath its intensity.
Your back met the doorframe with a soft impact, the cool wood a sharp contrast to the heat that had begun to spread through you.
Zayne pulled back a bit. His forehead hovered close to yours, his breath uneven, his gaze searching.
“You sure?” he asked. His voice was low, quieter than usual. Not because he lacked certainty, but because it seemed to cost him something to keep it steady. Like the words were held together by effort alone.
It took you a moment to understand the question fully, your mind still caught somewhere between sensation and thought.
“I’ve never been more sure.” The answer left you with a clarity that cut through everything else.
He hesitated only for a second.
Then the breath left him, slow and heavy, like something tightly held had finally slipped loose. With a low growl, he pushed you inside your bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him without breaking the kiss.
His hands moved as though they had long since learned the shape of you.
One hand roamed up your side, palming your breast through your shirt, thumb circling your nipple. The other hand found your hair, fingers threading through it with a firm gentleness, guiding rather than forcing, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss.
You barely registered the movement until you felt the mattress beneath you. As he eased you down, his body following yours in a slow, deliberate descent that pinned you beneath his weight without crushing you.
The gentleness in his touch lingered for a heartbeat longer.
His hand shifted, leaving your hair to follow the line of your jaw and down your throat. His fingers came to rest across your collarbone, pausing there, gentle and unhurried, like he needed to remember exactly how you felt beneath his touch.
“God, I’ve wanted this for so long,” he murmured against your skin, his voice roughened by restraint, lips brushing your earlobe as he nipped at it lightly. “You have no idea how many nights I lay awake thinking about you.”
The words hit you like a spark to dry tinder, your pulse racing, a flush creeping up your chest as heat flooded your core.
His mouth captured yours again, the kiss starting tender but quickly igniting into something fiercer. Your thoughts dissolving under the sensation, while his hand dipped lower, shoving up the hem of your shirt to expose your stomach.
Cool air kissed your skin, but his palm followed immediately, hot and possessive, flattening against your abdomen before sliding higher to cup your breast. He squeezed firmly, thumb flicking over your nipple until it stiffened into a tight bud, drawing a gasp from your lips that he swallowed with a hungry groan.
“Fuck, you’re so responsive,” he growled, breaking the kiss to trail his mouth down your jaw, sucking hard at the sensitive spot just below your ear.
The sting of his teeth grazing your skin sent shivers cascading down your spine, your back arching off the bed as you pressed into him. Every nerve ending buzzed, alive and demanding, the ache between your legs growing insistent, your pussy slick and throbbing with need.
You could feel the hard length of his cock straining against his pants, grinding against your hip in slow, deliberate rolls that made your breath hitch.
Zayne shifted his weight, hooking one leg between yours to nudge your thighs apart, his knee pressing firmly against your cunt. The friction was electric, rubbing right where you craved it, and you rocked against him instinctively, a soft whimper escaping as pleasure spiked through you.
His free hand gripped your thigh, fingers digging into the flesh as he hauled your leg higher around his waist, opening you up further.
“That’s it, spread for me,” he rasped, his breath hot on your neck. “I want to feel how wet you are for me, how much you need me to take care of that pretty little pussy you’ve been hiding from me all these years.”
The dirty words from his mouth made your head spin, vulnerability mixing with the hunger in his gaze. You tugged at his shirt, yanking it up to expose the lean muscles of his torso.
Your fingers followed instinctively, tracing, then scraping lightly over his ribs as you explored the warmth of his skin. He hissed in response, his hips bucking forward, cock twitching against you through the layers of fabric.
He drew back only as much as necessary, his movements quick but not careless, fingers catching the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head in one smooth motion. For a brief second, you simply looked at him.
The lines of his torso were lean and defined, not overly sculpted, but strong in a way that spoke of quiet endurance rather than display. The dim light traced along his shoulders, catching on the subtle tension still held there, before slipping lower across his chest. His hair fell messily into his face, and there was something almost undone about him now.
Then his attention was back on you.
His hands found your shirt with a kind of practised efficiency, lifting it away in a single, fluid motion. There was something almost clinical in the precision of it, but it didn’t quite hide the faint tremor in his fingers, the way his touch lingered just a fraction too long to be purely methodical.
Before the thought could fully settle, he leaned down, his breath warm against your lips, and captured your mouth in another kiss. Deeper this time, his tongue sliding against yours with a hunger that made your head spin.
One hand roamed freely now, calloused palm gliding over the dip of your waist, sending tingles skittering across your skin like sparks. It followed the swell of your hip, pressing just enough to ground you in the moment, before venturing lower, dipping between your thighs.
His fingers teased over the seam of your pants, rubbing deliberate circles right over your clit through the rough denim. The friction built an insistent, throbbing pressure, your body betraying any pretence of restraint as it responded with raw instinct. Your pussy clenching rhythmically with desperate need, slick arousal soaking through the fabric in a way that would have mortified you under normal circumstances.
But nothing felt normal now; the pleasure overrode any embarrassment, flooding you with a hazy warmth that made your skin flush and your breath come in shallow, needy pants, every nerve attuned to the promise of more.
Each stroke drew gasps from you, your hips bucking up to chase that building ache, the sensation coiling tighter, making your thighs tremble, and your heart hammer against your ribs.
“Tell me you want it,” he demanded, voice low and edged with urgency, his forehead resting against yours as he watched your face contort with pleasure. “Say you want me to fuck you senseless, to fill you up until you’re coming around my cock.”
The plea in his eyes, that mix of reverence for what you’d shared and raw hunger for what was to come, hit you hardest. You nodded frantically, words tumbling out in a breathless rush: “Yes, Zayne, please... I need you inside me.”
With a satisfied rumble, he unbuttoned your pants, peeling them down along with your underwear in one swift motion, exposing you to the cold air.
His gaze darkened as he took you in, fingers parting your cunt to slide through your wetness, to coat themselves before circling your entrance teasingly, the sensation making your breath hitch and your hips shift restlessly.
“So fucking soaked,” he praised, the words rough with awe, as he eased one finger inside you, then a second, curling them expertly to stroke that hidden spot deep within that exploded stars behind your closed eyelids.
You cried out, walls clenching around him as he pumped slowly, his thumb pressing your clit in firm strokes. It sent jolts of electric pleasure radiating outward, your body arching off the surface as the tension coiled impossibly tighter with every thrust of his hand.
He leaned down then, his mouth closing over your nipple with a firm suck that drew a keening moan from you, the wet heat of his tongue laving the sensitive peak while his fingers drove deeper into your pussy, the dual sensations crashing over you like a tidal wave.
Heat radiated from every point of contact - his tongue on your tit, his stubble scraping your skin, the obscene, wet sounds of his fingers plunging into you filling the room.
Then, with a slick, deliberate withdrawal, he pulled his fingers free, the sudden emptiness wrenching a plaintive whine from your lips as your pussy clenched around nothing, protesting the loss. Your eyes followed him hazily as he shifted, dropping to his knees on the floor between your spread legs.
And when he looked up from there, it stole the very breath from your lungs, leaving you lightheaded and aching.
“Let me take care of you,” he murmured, voice roughened by desire yet softened by an unguarded tenderness that made your chest tighten with emotion. “Let me learn everything about what makes you feel good.”
Zayne’s hands clamped onto your thighs with firm, possessive strength, spreading them wider as he positioned himself properly, his breath ghosting hot and teasing over your sensitive cunt, making you shiver and clench in anticipation.
“You’re flushed here,” he observed quietly, his lips grazing the tender skin of your inner thigh, the light touch sending goosebumps racing up your spine. “Blood pressure’s spiked. Pupils dilated. Heart’s racing.”
His eyes lifted to meet yours, dark and smouldering with intent, holding you captive.
“Do you know what that tells me?” You shook your head, body already trembling on the edge, every inch of you alive with need.
“That your body’s begging for me.”
And then he devoured you.
Zayned started with a slow, deliberate lick - a long, flat stripe from your dripping entrance up to your swollen clit, savouring your taste with a deep, approving hum that vibrated against your skin and drew a gasp from your parted lips.
You arched your back off the mattress again, fingers instinctively tangling in his damp curls, tugging lightly as he dove in deeper, his mouth sealing over your clit with a gentle suck at first, soft pulls that made your toes curl and your breath hitch in short, desperate bursts.
Then he increased the pressure, sucking harder, his tongue flicking in quick, insistent circles around the throbbing nub, each lap sending jolts of electric pleasure racing up your spine, making your thighs quake around his head. The wet sounds of his lips and tongue working you filled the air - slurps and smacks mingling with your escalating gasps and moans.
One hand slid up your inner thigh, calluses rough against your smooth skin, fingers parting your pussy wider for better access. Broad, sweeping strokes that covered your entire slit, coating his chin with your wetness, alternating with targeted sucks on your swollen clit that made stars burst behind your eyelids.
Your hips bucked wildly against his face, chasing the building pressure, but he held you steady, his free hand pressing down firmly on your lower belly, pinning you in place.
“Fuck, you taste so good,’ he murmured against your skin, the vibration sent sparks through your core.
He slid two fingers into you, curling them just right to hit that spot inside again while his tongue relentlessly circled your clit. The pleasure built fast, coiling tight in your belly as he pumped his fingers in rhythm with his licks, drawing out every whimper and plea from your lips.
Your thighs trembled uncontrollably around his head, muscles straining as the edge approached, and he knew. sensing the spike in your pulse, the way your breath came in ragged sobs.
He ramped up the pace, sucking harder on your clit, fingers thrusting deeper and faster, curling with precision to grind against that spot until the wave crashed over you in a blinding rush.
You cried ot, a broken keen of his name as your pussy clenched rhythmically around his thick fingers, flooding his mouth with your release, waves of ecstasy pulsing through you, making your vision blur and your body convulse.
Zayne didn’t stop, licking you through every shudder, his tongue gentle now but insistent, prolonging the bliss until you were a shaking, breathless mess beneath him, sweat-slicked and utterly spent
His gaze lifted to meet yours with a mix of triumph and tenderness that made your heart stutter.
“You taste better than anything I’ve ever known,” he growled, voice husky and edged with awe. “And I’ve memorised every cell in the human body. But this? This is what I want to study forever - every quiver, every gasp, the way you grip me like you never want to let go.”
His fingers slid inside you again - slow, deliberate, pushing impossibly deep this time, scissoring gently to stretch your walls, the sensation reigniting sparks without pushing you over. He rose slightly, his other hand reaching up to cup your breast, thumb rolling your nipple in firm circles while he pumped his fingers lazily, building friction but holding back the rhythm that would tip you into another release.
“Gotta stretch you out good first,” he continued, voice dropping lower, eyes darkening as he added a third finger, the fuller stretch burning sweetly, your pussy yielding to him inch by inch. “Because my cock’s thick. It’s gonna fill you up so completely.... Can’t have you hurting, not when I’ve waited this long to claim you.”
He leaned in to capture your other nipple between his teeth, nipping lightly before soothing with his tongue, his hand kneading your tit while his fingers twisted inside you, exploring, preparing.
“Feel that? How you’re opening for me? It’s just the start - soon you’ll be taking all of me, clenching around every inch like you were made for it.”
The pleasure built agonisingly slow, coiling but never cresting, your hips rolling to meet his thrusts, pleas bubbling up, but he withdrew just as you teetered on the brink, leaving you panting and empty, frustration mingling with the ache of anticipation.
When he was done, he brought his glistening digits to his lips, sucking them clean with a deliberate slowness, eyes never leaving yours as he savoured your taste.
He rose up on his knees between your spread legs, popped the button of his slacks first, the sound sharp in the charged air, then dragged the zipper down tooth by tooth, the metallic rasp amplifying your ragged breaths.
His movements were unhurried now, teasing you with the anticipation, drawing out the reveal like a deliberate torment, your gaze fixed on the bulge as your mouth went dry and your pussy throbbed in response. With a slow tug, he shoved his pants and boxers down his hips, freeing his dick.
It stood heavy and thick, curving slightly upward, the shaft flushed a deep, angry red and so girthy that your breath hitched, eyes widening at the sheer size of him. The broad, mushroom-shaped head gleamed under the dim bedroom light, already slick with a bead of precum that welled from the slit.
Zayne wrapped a hand around the base, stroking himself lazily from root to tip, a low hiss escaping his lips as his thumb smeared the precum over the sensitive head, making it glisten.
“See what you do to me?” he rasped, pumping his fist a few times, the slick sound joining your quickened breaths, his free hand trailing up your thigh to tease your cunt lightly, dipping just the tip of a finger in before pulling away.
He leaned in closer, the heat of his body radiating against yours, and dragged the swollen head of his cock along your slit in a torturously slow glide. The velvety skin of his tip parted your lips, coating itself in your wetness, bumping against your swollen clit with each pass until a whimper tore from your throat.
Your hips bucked up instinctively, chasing that electric friction, the pressure sending sparks racing up your spine.
“Been hard for you since the moment I touched you,” he growled, his breath hot against your ear. “Gonna slide in so deep, make you feel every inch of me.”
Just as he notched himself at your entrance, the thick head pressing insistently against your fluttering cunt, you grabbed his wrist, your voice coming out breathless but resolute. “Wait! Condom, I’m not on the pill.”
He froze, his dark eyes locking onto yours, searching for any hint of doubt amid the haze of lust. A flicker of raw vulnerability crossed his face, chased quickly by unbridled hunger, before he nodded, a crooked, predatory smile curling his lips.
“I’ll pull out, I swear. But fuck, I don’t want anything between us if we can help it. Not when this feels so right.” His words hung heavy, laced with promise and risk, your heart pounding as you released his wrist.
With a controlled roll of his hips, Zayne pushed forward, the blunt head of his dick breaching you slowly, stretching your walls with a burn that bordered on exquisite pain. Inch by thick inch, he sank deeper, your pussy yielding to him reluctantly at first, the girth forcing you open wider than you’d anticipated.
The sensation was overwhelming - a delicious fullness that made your toes curl, every ridge and vein dragging along your inner muscles as he filled you completely.
You gasped, nails digging into his shoulders, feeling the heat of him pulsing inside you, bare and unprotected, the slick slide eased only by your arousal coating him. He bottomed out with a deep groan, his balls pressing snug against your ass, the tip nudging that sensitive spot deep within.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he rasped, holding utterly still to let your body adjust, his hips flush against yours, the coarse hair at his base grinding rhythmically against your clit with the slightest shift.
The pressure there sent jolts of pleasure radiating outward, your walls clenching around him involuntarily, drawing another hiss from his throat.
Then, he began to move. Pulling back almost to the tip before thrusting in again, slow and measured at first, each drag and plunge pulling fresh gasps from your lips as he claimed you fully. The rhythm built steadily, his cock pistoning in and out with increasing force, the wet sounds of your bodies connecting filling the room like a filthy symphony.
His hands roamed your body possessively, one pinning your hip to the mattress to control the angle, fingers bruising in the best way, while the other returned to your tit, teasing your hardened nipple between thumb and forefinger. Pinching, twisting just enough to make you arch into him.
You hooked your legs around his waist, heels digging into the firm muscles of his ass to urge him deeper, harder. The slap of skin on skin grew louder, punctuated by your mingled cries.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he muttered through gritted teeth, his hips grinding slow and deep on the next thrust, burying himself to the hilt as your pussy fluttered around him.
“Clenching me like a vice and so wet, soaking my cock. You need to be fucked right out of your mind, don’t you? Filled up until you can’t think straight. Doctor’s orders…” His words dripped with filthy intent, each one syncing with a powerful snap of his hips that jolted you up the bed, your breasts bouncing with the force.
You moaned in agreement, lost in the haze, and he leaned down to capture your mouth in a bruising kiss, tongue mimicking the thrust of his dick as he picked up the pace.
“God, I could stay like this forever. Raw inside you, feeling you milk me dry. Imagine if I didn’t pull out, baby... pumping you full of my cum, breeding this tight little pussy until it takes. You’d look so good swollen with me, wouldn’t you? My seed deep in your womb, marking you as mine.”
The breeding talk sent a forbidden thrill through you, your walls spasming harder around him, the risk amplifying every sensation - the stretch, the heat, the raw intimacy of nothing between you.
Zayne fucked you even more relentlessly then, his control fraying as he drove into you with punishing strokes, the bed creaking under the assault. Each plunge hit that perfect angle, his cockhead battering your cervix with just enough pressure to blur the line between pleasure and ache, your clit grinding against his pubic bone on every inward push.
Sweat slicked your bodies, his muscles flexing under your hands as you clawed at his back, urging him on. He shifted, hooking one of your legs over his shoulder to open you wider, allowing him to go even deeper, the new position making you cry out as he hammered into you, the obscene squelch of your arousal echoing with every withdrawal.
“That’s it, take it all. Every fucking inch,” he growled, his voice breaking on a moan as your pussy squeezed him tighter, the coil in your belly winding unbearably.
His hand slipped between you, thumb finding your clit and rubbing firm circles that had you seeing white, your orgasm crashing over you in waves, walls convulsing around his pistoning length as you screamed his name.
He didn’t stop, his hips thrusting with desperate urgency, each drag slamming his thick cock deeper into your clenching cunt, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room like a frantic rhythm.
Your body trembled beneath him, still quaking from your own orgasm, but Zayne was lost now, his breath ragged and hot against your neck, muscles taut and straining as he chased the edge.
“Fuck. I’m right there... gonna cum... tell me to pull out. Tell me now before it’s too late,” he groaned, voice raw and pleading, his length swelling inside you, the veins pulsing against your sensitive walls as he buried himself fully one final time, grinding against your cervix with a shudder.
Your mind swam in a thick fog of pure ecstasy, the risk and heat overwhelming, and you locked eyes with him. Your voice emerged as a ragged, pleading whisper, barely audible over the harsh rhythm of your shared breaths. “Don’t. Don’t pull out. Fill me up.”
Those words shattered the last thread of his restraint. Zayne’s eyes flashed with a feral, unbridled hunger, pupils blown wide as a low, guttural growl ripped from deep in his chest, vibrating against your skin. He surged forward in one powerful thrust, burying his thick cock to the hilt inside your clenching pussy, the head pressing firmly against your cervix as if staking a permanent claim.
He stayed locked there, hips rolling in tight, deliberate circles that ground his length against your sensitive walls, forcing every inch deeper. His body tensed above you, muscles coiling like steel cables, and then he came.
Hot, thick ropes of cum flooded your cunt with relentless spurts. The warmth spread instantly, viscous and heavy, coating every fold and crevice of your pussy until you felt impossibly full, your belly swelling slightly with the sheer volume of his release. It seeped into you, marking you from the inside out, a primal declaration of possession that left you trembling.
Your walls spasmed around him involuntarily, gripping and fluttering in rhythmic pulls that milked his cock greedily, coaxing out every final drop as if your body refused to let go.
The sensation triggered your second orgasm, a brutal wave crashing over you. Sharper than the first, ripping a shattered cry from your throat. Your back arched off the bed, nails digging deep furrows down the taut muscles of his back, drawing thin lines of blood that only seemed to heighten his groans.
Pleasure tore through you in electric shocks, your pussy squeezing him in vice-like contractions while your legs locked around his waist, holding him captive as stars burst behind your eyelids.
Finally spent, Zayne collapsed onto you, his weight a comforting press as his length twitched weakly inside you, excess cum trickling out where you were joined. You both lay there panting, hearts thundering in unison. Sweat cooled on your skin, mingling with the musky scent of sex that hung thick in the air.
After a long moment, he shifted. He lifted his hips slowly, withdrawing his softening dick with a wet, obscene pop that echoed in the quiet room. A fresh gush of his cum followed immediately, spilling out of your gaping pussy in a messy rush, coating your thighs and pooling beneath you on the sheets.
But Zayne had no intention of letting it go to waste. His fingers dipped between your legs, gathering the leaking cum. He pushed it back inside you without hesitation, two long digits sliding deep into your cum-slicked cunt, curling gently to press it against your walls and seal it in.
“I’ve patched up bullet wounds with steadier hands than the way I just touched you,” he murmured against the damp skin of your collarbone, his voice rough and wrecked. His breath ghosted hot over you as he continued the slow, rhythmic thrusts of his fingers, each one sending fresh sparks through your oversensitive nerves. “You do something to me. You always have.”
A soft moan escaped your lips, unbidden, as your fingertips traced idle paths along the sweat-damp curve of his spine, feeling the play of muscles beneath. Words failed you in the haze. What had just happened between you felt too vast, too consuming to articulate.
He lifted his head just enough to meet your eyes. His gaze softened, still possessive and intense but now laced with something quieter. Almost reverent.
“You terrify me,” he said again, but this time there was no distance in it. No fear of you. Just a truth too big for him to hold inside. “Because I’ve studied anatomy. Neurology. Chemistry. I’ve memorised what makes the human body function.”
His hand cupped your face with his free hand, thumb brushed tenderly across your swollen lower lip.
His fingers inside you stilled for a moment, as if the weight of his admission demanded focus, before resuming their gentle exploration. You could feel the subtle stretch, the way his touch coaxed your body back to awareness, arousal simmering anew despite the exhaustion.
“But there’s no textbook that explains what the fuck this is. What you do to me.”
A small smile tugged at your lips. “Maybe that’s because it’s not something meant to be studied.”
Zayne leans down and kisses you again - slower this time. Deep. Thorough. Like he’s not rushing anymore. Like he has all the time in the world to rediscover every inch of you.
When he finally drew back, it was only inches, his breath mingling with yours. A smirk curved his lips, wicked and knowing. “You know… I never finished my assessment.”
Your brows lift. “Doctor.”
He grinned, slow and wicked, his fingers scissoring inside you with deliberate pressure. resh slickness gathered around his digits, your pussy clenching in response. “Vital signs still elevated. Skin flushed. Pupil dilation’s gotten worse. And -” He twisted his wrist slightly, pressing against that sensitive spot that made your breath hitch. “You’re already getting wet again.”
You gasped.
And Zayne just smiled like a man about to write a thesis - with you as his favourite subject.
