*Warnings: 18+, smut (pretty much the whole story)
*This is a work of fiction.*
*I recently saw a picture of Dragon Lee's without his mask... I got inspired. This is VERY smut heavy. I'll be breaking it into two parts because I got carried away (shocking, I know) The smut comes in heavy in the second part. Also, the google machine tells me that his real name is Emmanuel, so we'll be calling him Manny for my story purposes.*
Part 1
Nighttime pressed against the windows of their cramped rental car, turning the world outside into flat silhouettes. Samara claimed the passenger seat, her feet propped up on the glove compartment. Manny hunched forward as he drove, jaw tight, fingers drumming an anxious rhythm on the steering wheel. Behind them, Penta sprawled across the back seat, his frame contorted around their luggage.
Samara tapped her nail against the cupholder rim, matching rhythm with the radio’s beat. From the backseat, Penta’s face appeared between the headrests, his words brushing her ear. “What time are we supposed to be there?” A shiver crawled up her neck as she laughed softly, shoulder hunching. “Quit that,” she murmured. “You know what your whispering does to me.” .
“Why I do it,” Penta replied with a smirk.
Manny’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror for the dozenth time, catching the smug look on Penta's face and the way Samara leaned into the whisper. His knuckles were bone-white against the steering wheel. “Stop flirting,” Manny cut in, his voice sharper than he intended.
Samara caught the slight movement at the corner of his mouth, noticed the tension pulsing along his jawline. She shifted toward him, letting her hair cascade over one shoulder, “Lighten up a little,” she said, jabbing his ribs playfully.
The casual touch sent a jolt through him, but he forced his posture to remain stiff. “Trying to focus here,” he muttered, desperate to keep his eyes on the dark road instead of her. “Don’t see either of you offering to take the wheel.”
From the back, Penta’s drowsy voice; “Pull over. I’ll drive.”
“No!” Samara and Manny shot back simultaneously.
The dynamic churned on, week after week, through a succession of endless drives. Penta never let a silence settle, always filling the gaps with some twist of a phrase or a sly, well-timed glance. He flirted relentlessly, with words, with silence, with the slow, deliberate way he read billboards aloud in a bedroom whisper. Samara acted immune, rolled her eyes, batted away his comments with practiced sarcasm, and yet even her barbs had a way of curving back toward him, laced with something softer. She’d accuse him of being an idiot, but the way she said “idiot” sounded almost affectionate, a syllable she tasted before letting go.
Manny watched this with an ever-growing knot in his stomach. He tried to convince himself it was mere annoyance, an irritation at being stuck with the two of them, their private universe expanding to consume all available air. But each time Penta leaned in close, lips brushing the shell of Samara’s ear, and each time Samara’s laughter spilled out, Manny felt the sting of being surplus, a third wheel spinning without purpose.
———
“Now that Wrestlemania weekend is here and you’ve won the tag titles… let’s have some fun tonight! We don’t have anywhere to be until Monday! We’re in Vegas…” Samara’s eyes glittered as she bounced on her heels. She was radiant, all sharp angles and kinetic energy, the sort of beauty that made it impossible to look away for long.
Manny hesitated, glancing past her at the mass of bodies swirling around backstage. “We’ve got press after the show…” he mumbled, but it sounded weak even to him. The excuse was threadbare, and Samara saw right through it.
“So… after that!” she said, reaching up to grab his bicep, then leaving her hand resting there with calculated intimacy. She’d always been a little too close, a little too much, but tonight she radiated the kind of confidence that made Manny’s resolve leak away in tiny increments.
“We should probably rest,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction. “Don’t you wanna, like, decompress?” He tried not to stare at her mouth, but the way she grinned at him made it difficult.
Samara rolled her eyes, an exaggerated gesture that managed to be both flirtatious and slightly mocking. “I wanna celebrate. I’m the manager of the best tag team in the world.” she said, leaning in so her lips brushed the shell of his ear, a move she’d clearly learned from Penta, though her version was less calculated and more reckless. “We beat the best. The company’s finally giving you a push. Please…”
The idea of them, alone together in a hotel room, sent a jolt through Manny’s chest. He cleared his throat, “Just me and you?” The question came out smaller than he intended.
Samara pounced on the opportunity. “Yeah,” she said, pulling at his arm as if testing the tensile strength of his will. “Let’s see where the night takes us.”
Penta, who’d been idling by the monitors, watching the show, called back to them with a singsong lilt. “Oh, so I’m chopped liver now?” He draped the championship belt over his shoulder, but his eyes were fixed on Manny, waiting to see if he’d take Samara’s bait. Samara shot him a look that was half fondness, half challenge.
Manny felt a warmth creeping up his neck, the kind of blush that made him remember every embarrassing thing he’d ever said or done in Samara’s presence. “Didn’t mean to…” he started, but Samara cut him off with a bright laugh that echoed through the noise.
Samara turned back to Penta, the glint in her eyes daring him to say more. “You can come if you can keep up, old man.”
Penta grinned, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening, and he leaned in low, conspiratorial. “My room, two hours, you bring the food, I got the beer. I’ll show you how to keep up!”
“Deal,” Samara said, “You want sushi or Thai?”
Manny’s tongue felt thick. He knew he should say “sushi” or “Thai,” whichever she actually wanted, but the thought of going back to the hotel and sitting on the bed, the three of them with their takeout boxes, the crackle of cheap beer and the possibility of all the things not said between mouthfuls, he’d never craved anything and dreaded it so thoroughly in the same breath.
“We could do tacos,” he said, and immediately hated it for being so painfully normal, a safe, stubby answer.
But Samara just grinned, so sharp it almost hurt to look at her. The wrestler in her, the part that could summon a stadium’s attention with a flick of her wrist, she aimed it all at him. “Tacos are good,” she said, like she’d never heard a better proposition in her life.
Penta’s room overlooked the far end of the Strip, where the casino lights bled together in the weathered window glass. Manny showed up first, still in the clothes he’d worn to the arena, a case of beer in hand. Samara arrived five minutes later carry two bags of tacos from a random taco truck.
The three of them sat circled around the table in the corner of the hotel suite. Their spoils from the taco truck lay scattered between them; crumbled napkins, half-squeezed lime wedges, and the dull, greasy sheen of cooling carnitas. Samara’s hair was still damp from the world’s fastest shower; she’d towel-dried and let it fall in syrupy coils down her back. Manny nursed his first beer, swirling the mouth of the bottle in small, anxious arcs. Penta sat across from him, still wearing his suit from the arena.
Penta set a deck of battered playing cards on the table, the pack so worn the edges looked soft. “Let’s play,” he said, voice smooth and predatory, the barest hint of a slur leaking in at the edges.
Manny cocked his head, a slow suspicion clouding his features. “Cards? We could just go downstairs and play for chips like normal people.”
“Not chips,” said Penta, his tone loaded with promise. “Not that kind.” He thumbed the flop of cards, watching Manny over the top of his bottle like a cat regarding a wayward mouse. “Strip poker,” he announced finally, with a flourish.
“Fuck no,” said Manny, the words out before he could throttle them down. “I’m not that drunk. Yet.”
Penta fanned the cards out with a magician’s flourish, then sipped his beer like that settled it. A smile curled along the edge of his mouth, the kind that made you think he never stopped smiling, only took breaks.
Samara’s laugh was a sharp, delighted yelp, pure mischief. “Oh my god, yes, yes, yes!” She clapped her hands together so hard a drop of beer arced from her bottle and landed on the table. “Let’s do it.”
Manny stared at her, stunned. “You’re serious?”
She grinned, teeth bared. “Come on. You go out there in the world's tiniest gear but you’re scared of a little skin?”
“It’s not that I’m scared,” he said, but his voice cracked, and Samara’s eyes flickered, catching the tell. “I just think it’s a dumb game.” He looked at Samara, then at Penta, who seemed to be vibrating with anticipation, and realized it was already over; he’d lost before the cards were even dealt.
Samara slumped back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. “Fine. Play for dares, then. Or something...”
Manny tried to picture what sort of dares Penta would dream up, and it made him sweat behind the knees. “No, it’s fine,” he sighed, reaching for the deck and feeling the rough, greasy finish under his palm. “We’ll play.” The word felt heavy in his mouth, but he said it anyway.
Penta’s laugh was low, almost a purr, and he dealt the first hand. The cards slid out in neat arcs, each slap on the table making Samara rock forward in her chair with delight. She tilted her head at Manny, her hair grazing the surface of the table, and said, “Winner gets to keep their clothes on…so there’s that?”
“More fun for you,” Penta muttered, but the tension was bleeding out of him, replaced by something looser, floating and warm.
Manny fumbled with his cards, the glossy surface slick against his clammy fingers. As Penta shuffled and dealt, a low hum of uncertainty buzzed beneath his skin. The weight of Penta’s gaze felt like a spotlight, turning the air electric; the warmth from Samara’s proximity was a heat that both soothed and unnerved him.
“First round, everyone in,” Penta said, the smoothness of his tone betraying nothing about what lay ahead. Manny’s heart raced as he looked at his cards, half expecting some revelation that would set him apart. Instead, he saw only the commonplace: a pair of threes and a six. It suffocated him, that dullness, and he glanced at Samara, who seemed so vibrant, her laughter spilling over like the beer in her hand.
With each card Manny lost, he felt the tightening of his stomach, a pressure building like the moment before a slam into the mat. Samara won the first round, her delight infectious as she tossed her hair over her shoulder, full of bravado. “Okay, losers, what’ll it be?” she asked, her eyes dancing with a mix of mischief and challenge.
Penta shrugged off his jacket with the casual grace of a man who’d known for years that his presence alone carried most rooms. He folded it, set it neatly on the back of his chair, then straightened the black shirt clinging to his chest. The suit jacket had always seemed an extension of his bravado, so seeing it pooled on the upholstery left him oddly softened, less a looming threat than a man at ease in his own skin. Still, the flash of tattooed forearms, the flicker of muscle beneath fabric, was a deliberate show, and he held Samara’s gaze as he rolled up each sleeve, a silent promise that this was only the starting salvo.
Manny, on the other hand, bent down and pulled off his left sock, a maneuver performed with the sheepishness of a child sent to the principal. He balled it in his hand, as if unsure where to put it, then dropped it on top of his shoe under the table, a tiny surrender flag in their private battle. Samara, watching, let out a peal of laughter that was equal parts affection and mockery; she might’ve been the ringleader of their circus, delighted each time her players performed the act she’d goaded them into. The air between the three of them seemed to shimmer with possibility, equal parts ridiculous and intimate, and for a moment Manny forgot his lingering embarrassment, caught up in the currents of their shared dare.
Penta reached for the deck, his hands deft as ever, and began to shuffle with a flourish. “Next round, no mercy,” he declared, cutting a sly glance at Samara, who grinned back, her eyes sharp with challenge. Manny flexed his toes against the carpet, acutely aware that every loss would be a tightening spiral, every forfeit a step deeper into the unpredictable. But when Penta dealt the cards again, Manny found himself leaning forward too, anticipation beating louder than dread, hungry for whatever would come next.
Samara lifted her chin with mock solemnity, elbows on the table, and said, “This time, loser has to take off two things. Let’s make it interesting.”
The sound of the cards hitting the cheap laminate table was the only noise in the room, save for the hum of the mini-fridge. Samara fanned her hand out, a pair of fours and a handful of nothing. She looked up, her expression unreadable, and watched Manny flip a pair of Jacks.
Penta didn't even show his cards; he simply leaned back, his smirk widening as he tucked his chin. "Two things, Sam," he reminded her, his voice a low, gravelly hum. "Your rules."
Samara didn't hesitate. She didn't flush or look away. Instead, she leaned back in the wobbly chair, the damp coils of her hair catching the dim light.
She reached down first, unlacing her shoes one by one. She dropped them with two heavy thuds that seemed to echo Manny’s heartbeat. But she didn't stop there.
With a slow, deliberate shrug, she reached for the buttons of the oversized flannel shirt she’d thrown on after her shower. She didn't rush. She unfastened the middle two, then the bottom, before sliding the fabric off her shoulders. It pooled on the back of her chair, leaving her in a thin, ribbed tank top that left very little to the imagination in the chilly hotel air.
"Shoes and the shirt," she said, her voice steady as she met Manny’s eyes, which were currently glued to the floor. "Happy?"
Penta reached for the deck, his eyes never leaving Samara. "I think Manny is the opposite of happy, cara mia," he murmured. "He looks like he’s forgotten how to breathe." He began to shuffle, the snap of the cards sounding like tiny gunshots. "Round three. Who's feeling lucky?"
“Deal the cards, Penta,” Manny grunted, his voice dropping into a low, flat tone. He didn't look at the floor anymore; he looked right at the man across from him, his eyes hard.
Penta’s smirk didn't vanish, but it sharpened. He liked the shift in gravity. He snapped the cards onto the table, the sound like a sequence of small gunshots in the quiet room.
Manny didn't even look at Samara as the cards fell. He was reading Penta’s tells; the way his fingers lingered on the corner of his beer bottle, the minute tilt of his head.
“Bet,” Penta murmured, sliding his half-empty bottle into the center of the table as a placeholder.
“I’m in,” Samara said, her voice light, though she was watching Manny with a newfound curiosity. She could feel the heat radiating off him.
Manny didn't hesitate. “Raise.”
Penta’s eyes narrowed. He looked at his cards, a strong hand, likely, then back at Manny’s stony face. “Bold for a man with only one sock, Emmanuel.”
“Less talk, more cards,” Manny countered.
When the final cards hit the table, the room seemed to hold its breath. Samara folded early, leaning back to watch the collision. Penta flipped his hand with a flourish: three Sevens. A killer hand in a game like this. He started to reach for the center of the table, his fingers already curling in victory.
“Not so fast,” Manny said. He flipped his cards one by one. A straight.
The silence that followed was heavy. Manny didn't smile; he just let the victory sit there, a silent demand.
Penta stared at the cards for a long beat before he let out a short, dry laugh. He held up his hands in a mocking gesture of surrender.
“Two things, right?” Penta said, his voice smooth as silk despite the loss. He didn't look bothered; he looked impressed.
He reached for his feet first. With a slow, deliberate movement, he kicked off his expensive leather loafers, letting them clatter against the floor. Then, his gaze locked onto Manny’s, he reached for his belt.
The click of the buckle was loud. He slid the belt through the loops with a rhythmic hiss of leather on fabric, tossing it onto the table right over Manny’s winning hand.
“The shoes and the belt,” Penta said, leaning forward until he was in Manny’s space. “But don’t get too comfortable, hermano. The deck is still in my hands.”
Samara leaned back in her chair, the tendons of her forearm tensing as she pointed the bottleneck at the ceiling. “I need more beer.” Her words sliced through the silence; there was a brittle edge in her voice, a challenge or a plea depending on how you angled your ear. For a moment, neither man at the table spoke. The tension of the last hand lingered like ozone. Penta, who had only just set his jaw back in place after the loss, didn’t move. He watched her with a glint of admiration, pushing his own half-empty bottle closer to the center of the table as if daring her to return with something stronger.
Samara didn’t wait for an answer. She stood, the movement abrupt enough to knock her chair into the wall behind her. The motion broke the spell; Manny let out a low whistle, shoulders dropping as if some current had been switched off. She padded to the shadowed corner where the mini-fridge hummed against the baseboard, bare feet silent on the cheap carpet. The blue glow from the fridge’s interior splashed her face, painting sharp hollows under her eyes and cheekbones. She yanked out three bottles, balancing them awkwardly against her hip, and shut the fridge with a knee.
For a moment, she just stood there, eyes hooded, letting the cold glass leech the heat from her palm. She could feel the stare of the room on her, Penta’s predatory amusement and Manny’s uncertain loyalty both like invisible hands at the back of her neck. She wondered, as she sometimes did, if she liked the attention or merely needed it to keep from vanishing altogether. Then, as quickly as the thought came, she shrugged it off. There was another round to win. Or lose. Either way, she was done with hesitation.
She returned to the table, sliding the three bottles across its surface, one for each of them. The labels were already beaded with sweat. Samara didn’t sit right away, just hovered over her chair, chin tilted. “Next round, stakes go up,” she declared, voice bright but eyes narrow, like a poker player already planning her own funeral.
She twisted her cap off, took a sharp pull, and finally sat. The moment she did, the air shifted again. She could feel it: they were all in this now, for real, and the veneer of casual bravado had peeled away to something rawer, more dangerous. Her pulse thrummed with it.
Penta took his bottle and tipped it towards her in a kind of mock salute, a single brow arched in anticipation of whatever she had planned.
She set the bottle down without breaking his gaze. “I hope you’re ready to lose the shirt, Penta. Or more.”
The table was reset, hands reaching for cards, and the game rolled on. Manny picked up his new hand, the cards sticking slightly to his damp palm as he fanned them out. The pair of eights stared back at him, mediocre at best, but he kept his face blank, refusing to let the knot in his gut show. The beer tasted flat on his tongue now, the fizz gone, leaving a bitter edge that matched the twist in his chest every time Samara’s laugh cut through the air, light and teasing, directed at Penta again. He glanced up, catching the way Penta’s fingers lingered on the deck, that smug tilt to his head, and felt the heat crawl up his neck, not anger, exactly, but a sharp, uncoiling pressure that made his jaw clench. This was stupid, reckless, but the thrill of it hummed in his veins, louder than the doubt.
He bet low, sliding his bottle forward with a nudge, the glass scraping against the table’s worn surface. Samara’s foot brushed his under the table, accidental maybe, or not, her bare skin warm against his socked one, sending a jolt up his leg that he tried to ignore. Focus on the cards, he told himself, but his mind kept replaying her shrugging off that flannel, the way the tank top hugged her curves in the dim light, and now this challenge hanging in the air like smoke. Penta called, his voice a lazy drawl that grated on Manny’s nerves, and when the card came down, a queen, a four, another eight,nhe felt a spark of hope ignite, faint but real, pushing back the dread of losing more than just his other sock.
Samara folded early again, her bottle clinking as she set it down, and he could hear the shift in her breathing, quicker now, like she was riding the same edge he was. Penta raised, eyes locking onto his, that predatory glint making Manny’s stomach tighten further, but he matched it, pushing his own bottle in without a word. The turn card hit, a useless two, and he bluffed hard, staring Penta down, willing him to fold. Sweat prickled at the back of his neck, the chair creaking under him as he leaned forward, every sense tuned to the flicker in Penta’s expression, the way his fingers tapped once against the table.
When Penta finally called and flipped his hand, a flush draw that hadn’t connected, Manny laid down his cards with steady hands, the victory tasting sweeter than the beer ever could. He didn’t gloat, just let the cards sit there, but inside, a rush of triumph surged through him, hot and satisfying, easing the coil in his gut for the first time that night. Penta chuckled, low and resigned, kicking back his chair to stand, and Manny watched him unbutton his shirt slowly, the fabric parting to reveal inked skin and muscle that gleamed under the lamp’s glow. The shirt hit the floor with a soft thud, and Penta sat back down, bare-chested now, rolling his shoulders like it was nothing.
Samara’s gaze flicked between them, her lips parting in a grin that Manny felt more than saw, the air thickening with unspoken possibilities. He reached for the deck, his turn to deal, fingers steady despite the pulse hammering in his ears, ready to push this further, to see where the night cracked open next.
“Alright, new rule, if you fold, you take something off.” Manny’s voice rang out with a certainty that surprised even him, slicing the tension like a coin drop in a silent room. For a half-beat, nobody moved. Penta’s lips curled in appreciation, but it was Samara he watched, the way her pupils dilated and her tongue pressed tight against the inside of her cheek. She didn’t even flinch, not at first; she just blinked, once, slow, as if to savor the new arrangement before responding.
Instead of answering, she leaned back farther in her chair, arms crossed under her chest, the bottle balanced on her thigh. There was a heat in her stare now, directed at Manny, not Penta, a current that ran both electric and dangerous. For a second, it looked like she might say something cutting, a joke or a jab, but it never left her lips. She just smirked, the corners of her mouth twitching up, and set her bottle down with a single, deliberate clink.
“Your rules, then?” Samara said. Her tone was teasing, but Manny heard the dare threaded underneath. If anything, this was the exact provocation she’d been hungering for, and he was the one to serve it up. “Fine. But don’t be a wuss when your luck runs out.”
Penta waggled his brows, shifting on his seat to bring the deck closer, his bare chest a study in self-confidence. “It is a pleasure to play with such fearless company,” he said, shuffling with a flourish intended to show off his hands. The cards sounded like a deck of knives.
Manny’s hands were steady now, the beer’s bitterness fading into a heady, adrenal hum. He liked the way she looked at him, even when it was a threat. Especially then. He caught the faintest flicker in her eyes, a dare, or maybe a kind of gratitude. She wanted the stakes to matter. She wanted to see who’d break first.
Her deal came fast, the cards flicked with a practiced wrist. Manny’s hand, a king and a four, nothing special, felt heavier, more consequential. He slid a bottle into the pot without hesitation, never breaking eye contact. Samara mirrored him, chin lifted.
The first round went brutal and quick: Penta folded, stripped off his watch with a flourish, and Samara won on a flush, her laugh a little too loud, her smile too sharp. “Your turn, Manny,” she said. “Let’s see if you can handle the heat you brought.”
He didn’t know if it was the beer or the new rule, but he was burning up. His next hand was a disaster; he barely made it before Samara’s raise forced him out. He hesitated for a second, then peeled off his t-shirt, heart hammering as the cotton stuck to his skin, his breath coming shallow.
Samara’s smile softened, almost imperceptibly, as she took in the sight of him. She dealt again, and the game went on, the stakes now as real and raw as the flesh they bared.
Samara’s leg brushed his under the table, firmer this time, not at all by accident, and the air between them arced and snapped, a pulse of something that neither of them named. Penta played it cool, but his hands trembled slightly as he drank, watching the two of them with sly amusement.
With each round, more clothes pooled on the floor, the room growing tense and electric. Samara’s tank top went next, and her black lace bra gleamed in the lamplight, collarbones sharp against the shadows. Nobody joked now; the game was an engine, running hot and fast toward something neither of them could call out loud.
Another hand, another loss, Manny stood to unbutton his jeans, fingers stiff, but he made himself meet her eyes as he did it, refusing to flinch. The tension, the risk, the proximity, he realized this was the only thing keeping him from flying apart completely. She knew it, too.
The next deal, his luck turned: trip sixes, enough to flatten Penta and force Samara into the fold. She stood, unhurried, and untied the string at her waistband, letting the shorts drop to the floor with a soft exhale. She sat again, legs crossed, as unashamed as a statue, and reached for her next card.
“Your move, Manny,” she said, voice low and even.
He swallowed, tasted the metallic air, and reached for the deck, ready for whatever came next.
After another beer, Penta drew Samara’s leg across his lap. His fingers traced her thigh, each touch sending electricity through his veins. The weight of her leg against him, the subtle shifts of her body, it woke something dormant inside him.
Samara turned her head slightly, catching his gaze. Her lips curled into a playful smile, one that promised mischief and something more. Penta’s heartbeat quickened, syncing with the pulsing rhythm of the bass from the music playing softly in the background. He shifted slightly, aware of the way her leg pressed against him, the heat radiating from her body almost palpable. He wanted to explore that closeness, to close the space between them.
With deliberate slowness, he let his thumb drift along the arch of her calf, tracing lazy circles that summoned a faint shiver in her muscles. He watched her reaction closely, hungry for each involuntary flicker; the way her mouth tensed at the corners, the flutter of her eyelids, the gradual parting of her lips.
He flexed his hand, squeezing gently, and her leg rolled slightly under his palm, yielding to the pressure. She bit her lip, and he could see the pulse at her throat, steady but unmistakably faster. The game was still going, somewhere; he could hear Manny’s laugh at the edge of his attention, brittle and bright, but it barely registered. All he could think about was how close she was, the possibilities stacked on a razor’s edge.
Samara’s hand slipped from her own lap to his, fingers grazing his knee and then settling there. The contact was feather-light but electric, a point of focus so severe it made the rest of his body blur. She didn’t look away; if anything, her stare sharpened, drawing him in until he was certain she could see every thought flickering behind his eyes.
He didn’t look away, not when her grip tightened on his leg, not when her bare foot pressed suggestively into the hollow of his hip, not even when Manny, oblivious to the shift in power dynamics, called for another hand. Penta was locked in, unable to break the circuit they’d formed, waiting to see who would fold first.
The buzz of the alcohol suddenly hit Samara in a warm wave. With an abrupt, clumsy motion, she pulled her leg off Penta’s lap. The sudden loss of contact made the air in the room snap.
She stood up, swaying just a fraction of an inch, and rounded the corner of the small table. Before Manny could react, she dropped into his lap, her bare legs straddling his thigh.
"Penta’s getting too comfortable," she murmured, resting her hand on Manny's broad shoulders and leaning in until her breath fanned over his mouth. She gave him a lopsided, devastating grin. "Show him how a real main-eventer plays the game, Manny. Deal the cards."
Manny barely had time to register the heat of Samara’s body settling over him before her lips brushed against his ear, sending a rush of adrenaline through him. He could smell the lingering shampoo from her shower, something light and citrus that enveloped him, intoxicating and heady. The sensation of her weight, pressing into him with warm urgency, sent his heart racing, pounding against his ribs like it wanted to break free.
“Deal the cards,” she whispered, her breath a tantalizing caress, and he felt the sharp edge of desire pulse through his veins. There was an authority in her tone, a challenge laced with something more primal. He was acutely aware of the soft thud of her heart against his chest, mirroring his own frantic rhythm.
With shaking hands, he reached for the deck on the table, fingers trembling slightly as he shuffled the cards, the sounds of the casino outside fading into a dull murmur. The anticipation hummed between them, charged and electric, and he focused on the feel of the cards, their slick surface grounding his thoughts amid the chaos of her presence.
Penta leaned back in his chair, his posture loose, angles open, as if he owned the room and the air they breathed. He crossed his arms over his chest, every inch of his expression dripping with the kind of smug self-certainty that Manny found both irritating and faintly awe-inspiring. The guy radiated the easy arrogance of someone who’d never once doubted himself, or if he had, had papered over the cracks so effectively that even doubt itself would have trouble clawing its way back in. Penta’s grin, sharp and wolfish, seemed etched into his face, and for a moment his gaze flickered to Samara and then back to Manny, as though daring him to respond, to match his calm, to expose some falter in the mask.
But for all of Penta’s bravado, Manny felt it only as background noise, a distant vibration in the periphery of his attention. His senses had collapsed into a tunnel, vision pinwheeling down to the woman in his lap, the weight and heat of her, the way her skin sparked along his thighs and arms.
He found himself memorizing everything about her; the way her hair fell forward, brushing his cheek every time she moved; how she twisted her wrists, fingers flexing and unflexing with restless confidence; the slight tremor that ran through her, not from nerves, but from a kind of kinetic joy, as if she was barely keeping herself from erupting into motion. Manny could feel the shape of her, the length of her, the press of her thighs against his, the skin-to-skin warmth that made his whole body hyper-aware. It wasn’t just lust, though there was plenty of that, hungry and insistent, but something sharper, hungrier, a gravitational pull that distorted the space between atoms.
He tried to steal a glance at her face without being obvious, but Samara caught him anyway, pivoting her gaze onto his so abruptly he felt himself flush. Her eyes were impossibly clear, the color of river rocks just beneath the surface, and right now they were locked onto his with a concentration that bordered on predatory. She didn’t speak, didn’t even smile, but she didn’t need to; the message in her stare was loud enough to rattle his teeth. Play your hand, the look said. Let’s see what you’ve got.
Dealing the cards with Samara straddling his thigh was an exercise in pure agony. Manny had to reach his arms around the curve of her waist to deal, his forearms brushing against her bare hips with every motion.
He forced his eyes down, focusing entirely on the slick surface of the cards. He dealt a King, a Nine, and a Two.
"Bet," Samara murmured. She didn't look at her cards. She didn't have to. Her entire strategy was sitting right beneath her, and she could feel the rigid, trembling tension in Manny's muscles. She leaned a fraction of an inch closer, the warmth of her chest radiating through the thin fabric of her bra.
Across the table, Penta watched the display with a tight, unreadable expression. He tossed his bottle cap into the center. "Call."
Manny's hand was shaking as he flipped the next two cards. He wasn't even playing the game anymore; he was just surviving it. But when the final card fell, he glanced at his own hand. A pair of Kings.
"Show them," Penta prompted, his voice rougher than usual.
Samara flipped her cards with a lazy flick of her wrist. A pair of Fours. She clicked her tongue in mock disappointment. "Shame."
Manny exhaled a shaky breath and laid his cards flat. Kings over Fours. He had won the hand, but as he looked up into Samara's dark, predatory eyes, he didn't feel like a winner. He felt like prey.
"A deal is a deal," Samara whispered, her breath fanning over Manny's lips. “Can you help me?”
His hands hovered, paralyzed by the gravity of the moment, the trembling in his fingers contagious as it pulsed up his arms and burrowed into his chest. He hesitated at the clasp, the little patch of fabric and metal suddenly more complex than quantum mechanics. Her breath was steady, her eyes unwavering, and he felt her heart thud, a steady drumbeat against his own hammering pulse. His first attempt slipped; his hands were too slick, too jittery, and he felt the flush of embarrassment crawl up his neck. Samara didn’t mock him, she only shifted, arching her spine to make his task easier, her lips parting with a soft, approving exhale that made him ache. When he tried again, the clasp gave way with a tiny, liberating snap that echoed in his skull like a starting gun. The straps slid from her shoulders, and he ran his thumb along the exposed skin, the curve of her shoulder blade delicate and fierce at once.
The bra dropped to the floor, and for a moment he simply stared, struck dumb by the reality of her, the way she met his gaze with absolute, unblinking certainty. In that instant he was a machine of nerves and want, every molecule straining toward her, incapable of thought or speech.
Across the table, Penta’s gaze dropped to her breasts, the shift in his attention so sudden and seismic that it tilted the very axis of the room. For an instant, the cocky, performative mask he wore so well wavered, replaced by a raw, unfettered hunger that seemed to shock even him. He tried to play it cool, rolled his shoulders, jaw tensing, arms still in that calculated bracket across his chest, but the blood had drained from his face and pooled somewhere lower, betraying him utterly.
Samara, still perched in Manny’s lap, noticed. Of course she did; she noticed everything. Her mouth curled, not a smile but a baring of teeth, a warning and an invitation. She slid her arm around Manny’s shoulders, pressing her body even tighter to his, as if to claim her space, to flaunt it, to dare Penta to look again. She stretched herself upward, catlike and languid, a slow arch that put her on full display. The gesture was both challenge and reward, and for the first time all night, Penta had nothing to say.
Manny felt the effect of that gaze like a punch, a secondhand jolt of adrenaline that made his whole body tense. He wanted to shield her, to pull her closer, but he also wanted to stand back and admire–no, worship, the audacity of her. The way she could own a room just by existing in it. The way she could make both of them, two men who had never given up anything in their lives, feel like they might surrender everything for another second of her attention.
The silence was thick and primal, a pressure front settling over the table. Penta’s tongue darted over his lower lip, a sharp, involuntary motion. He finally spoke, but his voice cracked on the first word, and he had to start again: “You think you’re gonna rattle me?” He tried to laugh, but it came out hoarse, a cough instead of a chuckle. “You got nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Samara flipped her hair over her shoulder, “I’m not here to rattle you. I’m here to win.”
The room seemed to constrict around them, the background noise evaporating until all that was left was the pulse of three bodies locked in orbit, two of them barely breathing and one of them, Samara, completely, terrifyingly in control.
Penta's usual grace is finally starting to fray. He’d been playing the long game, but the alcohol and the sight of Samara on Manny’s lap have made him reckless.
Manny dealt the cards with a newfound, stony confidence. He didn’t even flinch when Samara’s fingers traced the line of his jaw. He flipped the cards; a Full House.
Penta stared at his own hand, three of a kind and for the first time tonight, the wolfish grin faltered. He looked at the cards, then at the two of them, and let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "The deck is cursed," he muttered, though his eyes were dark with something that wasn't frustration.
"Your rules, hermano," Manny said, his voice a low rumble that Samara could feel against her chest.
Penta didn't hesitate. He stood up, the chair scraping harshly against the floor. He didn't look embarrassed; he looked like he was making an entrance. He unzipped his trousers with a slow, deliberate metallic hiss that seemed to echo in the small room. He stepped out of them, kicking the expensive fabric toward the pile of discarded clothes near the middle of the room.
Penta leaned over the table, his bare, inked chest just inches from them. "Are we done being polite?" he asked, his voice dropping to that dangerous bedroom whisper. "Because I'm tired of playing for clothes. Let's play for something that actually matters."
Samara looked up at him, her eyes bright and predatory, her hand still resting on Manny’s shoulder. She could feel Manny’s heart racing under her palm, a frantic, heavy thrum. She wasn't just managing a tag team anymore; she was managing a powder keg.
Samara stretched her spine, letting her bare shoulders roll back as she considered Penta’s proposition. The old rule, clothes as currency, vulnerability meted out in careful, calibrated increments, had become background radiation, a familiar danger. Now she sensed a shift; Penta’s eyes had lost their playful glint, replaced by something wilder and more naked than the skin they’d already revealed. The room’s stale heat seemed to pulse in time with their held breaths.
She hooked her ankle around the leg of Manny’s chair, stood up and closed the gap between herself and the table, eyes locked on Penta’s. “What’s the new rule then?” Her tone was almost lazy, but the challenge in it was a razor under silk.
Penta leaned in, hands braced against table. His biceps bunched, tattoos flexing. “Winner names their dare. Loser does it. No limits. No takebacks.” He let the words hang for a moment, testing their weight.
Samara’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, not quite a threat. She didn’t look at Manny, “That’s it?” she said, tilting her chin up. “I was expecting something with teeth.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Penta nearly growled, and suddenly his voice was low, private, meant only for her.
The silence was more dangerous than anything spoken. Manny’s hands hovered over the deck, but he couldn’t move until Samara did. He felt himself shrinking, atomizing, becoming a background field to the two predators circling above him. Samara met Penta’s gaze for a long, measured beat, and then she nodded, once, sharp as a gunshot.
“Deal, let’s see what you’ve got,” she teased, her voice low and sultry, a clear challenge as she settled back into Manny’s lap, the pressure of her weight igniting a fire in his veins.
“Don’t get cocky,” Penta said from across the table, his expression becoming predatory.
Manny's fingers itched to touch her, but he stayed grounded in his seat, feeling the weight of Penta’s gaze, challenging and alive, an unspoken battle heating the already charged atmosphere.
Penta shuffled the deck with practiced ease, breaking the taut silence as he looked at Manny, an amused glint in his eyes that only deepened the unease in Manny’s gut. He thought of the burgeoning intimacy of the last few rounds, the way the fabric stripped away could somehow feel more exposed than skin itself.
“Ladies first,” Penta drawled, his words honeyed but edged with provocation, a throwdown disguised as chivalry. He flicked the cards across the table with a flourish, the deck bending to his will, but his eyes never left Samara. They glittered, hunger layered with something darker; admiration, maybe, or the anticipation of a worthy opponent. Manny felt it like static, the way Penta’s attention zeroed in on Samara, as if she was the only real player left at the table.
Samara’s lips curled at the edges, acknowledging the dare. She never broke eye contact, her posture unflinching. She reached for the deck with a deliberate slowness, letting her hand brush Manny’s in the process. He caught a whiff of her, skin and sweat and a touch of perfume, and it nearly short-circuited his brain. She drew her cards, fanned them like a poker queen, and arched an eyebrow at Penta, your move. The silence pressed in again, thick with the knowledge that whatever happened next, the boundaries of the night had been redrawn.
She considered her hand, then looked right at Penta and said, “Fine. I call.” There was a sharpness in her tone, a promise of escalation, as if she was daring Penta to go further, to match her audacity, to see if he could keep up with the game as she redefined it.
For the first time all night, Penta’s smile faltered, a barely perceptible tremor in the taut line of his jaw, the practiced coolness draining from his eyes as Samara’s words speared him. He looked at Samara not as a rival or a conquest, but as something altogether more dangerous; a person who could dismantle him with a glance, who saw straight through his pantomime and dared him to blink.
Manny witnessed the moment, the shift in power, the silent capitulation. He’d always known Samara was fearless, but this was something else; a kind of predatory self-possession that made him, for the briefest second, afraid of her. He wondered if Penta felt the same chill run down his spine, if he, too, understood the new terms of engagement. The contest was no longer about luck or bravado; it was about who could command the most space, whose will would bend the other’s to breaking.
Manny caught the flicker in Penta’s eyes, not defeat, not exactly, but a recalibration. The man had been bested, and now he was recalculating the distance between himself and the table’s new center of gravity. Samara had become the axis, the rest of them merely satellites.
“Show me your hand.” she commanded.
Penta didn’t move for a long second, his eyes tracing the line of Samara’s bare shoulder down to where she was pressed against Manny’s chest. Finally, his fingers twitched. He flipped his cards one by one, the sharp snap against the table top sounding like a surrender.
A pair of nines.
Samara didn’t even look at his hand. She simply fanned hers out, three Queens, their regal faces mocking him in the dim light. She’d known she had him. She’d baited the trap and waited for him to walk right into it.
“You lost, Penta,” she whispered, the words humming against the back of Manny’s neck.
Penta’s jaw worked, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He looked at the discarded pile of his own expensive clothes, then back at her. "The dare, then," he said, his voice a low, rough growl. "Name it."
Samara leaned back, her skin warm and soft against Manny’s chest, her weight a grounding anchor as she considered the man standing before them in nothing but his ink and a pair of boxers. A slow, predatory smile spread across her face, not a playful grin, but something sharper, more clinical.
"I don’t want your boxers. That’s too easy," she said, her voice dropping to a sultry, dangerous silk. She reached out, her fingers curling around the neck of her beer bottle, but her eyes never left Penta’s. "I want you to get on your knees. Right here, at Manny’s feet."
Manny’s heart nearly stopped. He felt the air leave the room.
"And once you're there," Samara continued, her gaze flickering to Manny with a spark of pure, unadulterated mischief, "I want you to tell him exactly what we did last night. Every word. No edits. No lies."
Penta froze. The recalibration in his eyes hit a dead end. The cool, detached wolf was gone, replaced by a man who had finally been forced to play a hand he couldn't bluff his way out of.
Manny felt a surge of something hot and triumphant bloom in his chest. He tightened his grip on Samara’s waist, pulling her closer, his eyes locking onto Penta’s. The power had shifted. The backseat games were over.
"Well?" Manny prompted, his voice a low rumble of command. "We're waiting."
Penta didn’t move at first. He looked like he was weighing the cost of his dignity against the crushing weight of the silence. Then, with a slow, agonizing grace, he lowered himself. The sound of his knees hitting the thin hotel carpet was a dull, final thud.
He was at Manny’s feet, stripped of his suit, his bravado, and his secrets. He looked up, his eyes catching the dim, yellow light of the bedside lamp, and for the first time, he looked caught in a trap of his own making.
"It wasn't even a plan," Penta began, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely carried over the hum of the air conditioner. He didn't look at Manny; he kept his eyes locked on Samara’s, forced to witness the hurt he was about to inflict.
Manny wrapped his other hand around Samara’s waist. He felt her shift against him, her breathing shallow and rhythmic.
Samara didn’t give Penta a chance to gather himself. Already the air was brittle, the silence splintered by his shame, and she pressed the advantage. Her voice was syrup-slow and unyielding as she said, “Not the story you’d want to tell, but the one that happened.” She punctuated it with a slow tilt of her bottle, the beer catching the light as she drank deep, her throat working in a way that seemed deliberately obscene. She made a show of savoring it, as if she had all the time in the world.
Penta’s jaw clenched so hard Manny half expected to hear a tooth crack. The man’s tattoos almost seemed to writhe on his skin, alive with the humiliation that flushed his chest and neck. It was obvious this was the precise moment Samara wanted: the wolf, muzzle to the floor, forced to speak as a supplicant.
But Samara wasn’t here to make it easy. She shifted in Manny’s arms, one knee digging pointedly into his thigh, and Manny could feel the heat of her anger, her triumph, her hunger for more. She was remaking the space between the three of them, setting the rules, and it was clear Penta understood; no more games, no more bluffs, just the naked truth, handed over like a Penta dragged air into his lungs like a drowning man. “She was right where you are now,” he said, each word seeming to cost him something. “You’d crashed already in your room. We kept drinking, bourbon, straight from the bottle and she–“ He stopped, met Samara’s amber-flecked, unflinching stare, and his broad shoulders sagged beneath the weight of invisible chains. “Fine. I made the move. We fucked, right there, in that chair. There it is.” His mouth clamped shut against whatever else might escape, but Samara’s smile only grew, a predator savoring the moment before the kill.
Manny’s hands moved, almost without thought, bracing her hips, grounding himself as the room seemed to shrink down to the three of them and the ugly little truth Samara was determined to wrench into the light.
He felt his heart thump like a war drum in his chest, each beat a chaotic reminder of the game they were now playing, the stakes uncomfortably clear. Penta was kneeling at his feet, stripped of defenses, and as much as he tried to maintain an air of authority in this moment, he couldn’t ignore the slight tremor that ran through Penta’s posture, the way his gaze flicked anxiously between him and Samara. The dynamics had shifted in ways Manny hadn’t anticipated.
The silence stretched taut, an invisible line, waiting for someone to snap it. What did it say about them, he wondered, that they had arrived at this point? They had made a pact from the beginning not to cross any lines with each other, that this was all just business. It struck him then how raw and dangerous this was. Samara’s presence was magnetic; her confidence wrapped around them like a warm blanket, but for Penta, kneeling there in only his underwear, it must have felt like standing naked in front of a crowd.
He stole a glance at Samara, her lips curling into a wicked smile, a mix of triumph and mischief dancing in her eyes. She leaned back against him, every inch of her radiating a bold energy that enveloped him.
Samara’s voice sliced through the haze of tension, seductive but merciless; “Show him how you kissed me.” She didn’t say it as a dare, but as a decree, her tone teasing the edge of cruelty. The words landed like a slap against the raw surface of Penta’s pride, and for one exquisite instant, all the bravado in the room evaporated. Even the hum of the air conditioner seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the inevitable collision.
Samara leaned back, her back arching slightly, presenting her throat and mouth with feline confidence. Manny’s hands felt huge and immovable on her waist, as if anchoring her to the moment, refusing to let her drift or escape. She tilted her chin, her lips parted just enough to promise more, and the smirk on her face was half invitation, half command.
Penta rose from his knees just enough to close the distance, his movements stripped of swagger, raw with something unpolished and desperate. He reached for her, cupping her jaw. The contact was gentle, almost reverent, a wordless apology buried in the press of his thumb beneath her cheekbone. He kissed her, and it wasn’t possessive or performative. It was the kiss of a man who knew he was being watched, who had no illusions left to protect. It was a confession and a capitulation all at once.
Samara let him, but she didn’t relinquish control. She deepened the kiss, drinking from him, making a spectacle of it, as if to show Manny, and maybe Penta himself, who owned the memory and who was merely its instrument. The air thickened with the electric current of humiliation and arousal, and Manny felt his pulse throb in strange, unfamiliar places.
When Samara broke away, she did it slowly, savoring the finality, her lips wet and bruised. She fixed her gaze on Manny, steady, unblinking, a silent challenge written in the curve of her mouth.
The moment snapped tight, drawn thin as a wire between the three of them, and Manny knew without question that something irreversible had happened.
Samara drew in a breath, a long, measured inhale, then, with a gentle but unmistakable authority, released Penta from the crucible of her attention. “You can go back to your seat now,” she murmured, the words so gentle that, for a split second, it almost seemed like a kindness.
This is a mix of 2 requests I got from @cam-cams-world here & here 😊
—PAIRING: Seth Rollins x Virgin Fem!Reader
—SUMMARY: After a nice date and a surprise proposal, you decide it is finally time for you to lose your virginity to the love of your life.
—WARNINGS: MDNI 18+, first time sex, making love not fucking, p in v, use of condom, oral (both receiving), shy/innocent girl, pain at penetration, fingering, handjob, over all sweet loving guy, consent and attentive behavior
—WORD COUNT: 4.5k
—AUTHOR'S NOTE: I finally finished this one and I'm glad it's done so I can move on and work on something else. 😅 I struggled at first but managed to cook something I hope you'll enjoy. Seth is not someone I write for on the regular (my people know I'm obsessed with Roman) and I'm not sure I did him justice as I don't know if this really is in character or whatever but oh well I tried lol. It's my first time writing for him except for the Rolleigns smut I made for Kinktober. Not 100% satisfied but it's decent I think 😅
Being a virgin as a grown adult isn't easy. I'm not a forced virgin—I have been in relationships before, men wanted me and all of that. It's a choice.
I just don't want to give my body to anyone. I want my first time to be special. It should be intimate, two people loving each other and sharing pleasure. My first time has to be more than sex. It should be reserved for a man that loves me and deserves to take it from me.
All the men I've been with before made fun of me for still being a virgin. Unfortunately, as much as I loved all these men, none of them made me feel comfortable and confident enough to let them take my virginity.
Except him.
My Sethie. The love of my life—my soon to be husband. The man who shared my life for the past 2 years.
The day I gave him my virginity was nothing like I had imagined it. Nonetheless, I wouldn't change it for the world.
It was perfect
It all started on a date night at the restaurant. Just the two of us. Followed by a visit to the beach. Holding hands, shoes in the other while we walked in the warm sand as water splashed on our feet from the waves of the ocean. When the sun started setting down, coloring the sky in a beautiful mix of pinks, oranges and reds, we sat down in peace—alone with the sounds of the waves and the occasional birds not yet asleep at this time.
And before I knew it, Seth surprised me with something he had planned for a while already. Something I was far from expecting and didn't prepare for myself.
After silence fell between us, he was the first to say something.
"I could never thank you enough for what you do for me and Roux. She's not yours, but you almost treat her like she is. It means a lot to me. Thank you."
At his words, all I could do was smile. It was normal—the bare minimum even. I liked—no, loved—her dad and he didn't come alone. I couldn't reject his daughter. They came into my life as a pair and it would stay like that.
Grabbing my hand in his, I looked down at our intertwined hands and squeezed his, lifting my gaze to look into his eyes. "I love her. She's amazing. The cutest and sweetest little girl," I chuckled, thinking about Roux. "The funniest too, she took that from you."
We continued talking for a little bit. About his daughter. About us. About his breakup with Becky. Anything. After a while, Seth stood up. He looked nervous all of a sudden but I couldn't understand why.
Next thing I knew, he was dropping down to one knee in front of me, his right hand in his pants' pocket.
"W-what are you doing, Seth?"
He ignored my question, his attention now moving to the jewelry box in his hand—the one who was in his pocket seconds ago.
It didn't take long for me to realize what was going on, my mouth left open in shock. Seth opened the box and smiled up at me as my eyes went wide at the beautiful diamond ring he was holding in the palm of his hand.
"Huh," Seth cleared his throat. "I practiced a speech and everything, but I forgot it all now. Didn't think proposing to you was going to make me this nervous."
I was still left in shock, making Seth relax and smile at me. "Baby," at the nickname, I finally lifted my eyes and looked up at him. "My love. I am so grateful I have found a woman like you. Beautiful. Funny. Intelligent. The perfect step mother for Roux. The perfect eyes. A smile that makes me weak in the knees. But the most important thing," he smirked. "A really sexy woman."
I rolled my eyes, giggling. He continued his improvised speech by just looking at me and getting inspired on the spot. I listened to each words like they mattered because they did. Everything he says and does is important to me. I remember each and everyone of them.
Until he finally dropped the question, the one that changed everything. Forever.
"Will you marry me?"
My hands came up to my face in shock. Tears already close to falling down my cheeks. I couldn't believe it. Stuck in place, I lost track of time and the fact Seth was still there waiting for my obvious answer.
"You have to say yes or no," Seth laughed nervously. "Don't leave me hanging any longer, baby."
Rolling my eyes, I cursed myself for making him look stupid, when all I had to do was say a simple three letter word.
"I'm sorry. Y-yes. Yes, of course it's yes," I smiled, happy tears running down my face. "I want to marry you."
"Yes?" He wanted to make sure he heard right.
My head moved up and down before my legs moved on their own. Dropping down to my knees, I put my hands on his forearm—the one holding the nice box with the expensive ring. "I want to be your wife. Your forever."
This was less then 2 hours ago.
It almost felt like a dream but looking down at my hand, my ring finger wasn't bare anymore. It was now decorated by a diamond ring I was almost embarrassed to wear because it looked expensive—too expensive.
I was no longer at the beach. Now, it was just the two of us sitting down on my bed. Taking me home safely, I couldn't let Seth go yet and by the look on his face, he didn't want to leave either. I invited him inside and we chatted some more.
Eventually, the conversation brought us to talk about sex. Well, I finally felt ready. Ready to let him take my virginity.
"I-I," I nervously said, looking at Seth. "I'm ready."
He reached for my hand reassuringly and smiled down at me. "We don't have to do it now. I can wait. You know-"
I knew we could wait. The idea of giving Seth my virginity once we were married sounded really amazing but it was too far away. I had been ready for a while but only waiting for the right moment.
This is it. I know it is.
"I know all that already. You don't want to pressure me. We will go at my pace, at my time," I smiled, repeating the same words he told me times and times again. I scooted closer to him and cupped his cheek, I was so nervous I could hear my heart beating fast. "I am ready. I want to do it now. After the proposal and all, it's just perfect."
Butterflies in my tummy. Goosebumps. Sweaty hands but most importantly that warm feeling inside of me that meant I was in love with the man next to me. Those were all signs I was ready and that it was the right timing. Nervousness was normal and I have to overcome it or I wouldn't go anywhere, stuck in fear.
I even surprised myself by straddling him and kissing him tenderly. I really couldn't stop myself, I had to do it. This was all new to me. Never have I ever felt this need for someone else—at least not this strongly.
The moan that came out of me when he slipped his tongue inside my mouth, was too loud and I would have pulled away if it wasn't from him tasting so good. His hands claimed my body like it was his, grabbing my hips and pulling me closer to him as if I wasn't close enough already.
He pulled his lips away from me to catch his breath and I smirked, grinding timidly against him. I could feel him grow in his pants from under me. "You want this too?"
Licking his lips and letting out a low whimper, he chuckled. "Of course, sweet pie." I yelped feeling him grab me and gently put me down on the bed. Hovering over me he looked at my face, with his eyes filled with lust and love. "I have dreamed almost everyday about this, about having you all to myself and showing you how good sex feels when you're in love and it's done right."
My cheeks flushed at his words and I wanted to hide myself. "Hey, don't hide now," Seth quickly protested, moving my hair away from my face so he could see it better. "I wanna see your face the whole time, baby."
We made out again, our hands roaming and exploring the other's body, impatient to see more and touch the exposed skin under all those clothes. I moaned, feeling Seth dip his head, moving down to kiss my jaw and neck until he made it under my ear, where he left a little hickey.
"Only for me to see," he smirked in my ear.
Facing me again, he looked at my face for any signs of discomfort, but the smile on my face was almost hurting, from how happy I was in the moment. "Still want me to continue?"
I nodded, bringing him down for a kiss, before I leaned my forehead on his. "I'm ready, Sethie. Take my clothes off. Please."
"Yes, ma'am!"
I chuckled, watching him sit on his knees and look at the dress I was wearing. He sighed and pouted quickly. "It's a shame. It looked so good on you."
I rolled my eyes with a little smile. "What's underneath is even better."
Seth chuckled and winked at me, rubbing his hands on my thighs from under the fabric, starting to lift the dress slowly. "I know it is. Let's take this off now, shall we?"
I bit my lip and nodded. Seth had seen me in a swimsuit before. Plenty of times. It wasn't that different from seeing me in my underwear and bra just now. I wasn't nervous about that.
Nerves kicked in again at full force when the dress came off and Seth hungrily looked down at me. I closed my legs in embarrassment when he looked down there and cursed.
"Shit. Soaked already?" His hand moved to cup my cunt, forcing my legs open, rubbing and feeling how messy it made my underwear, ruined by my own arousal—his own fault. "Don't be embarrassed," he leaned down to kiss both my cheeks. "It's normal."
I nodded, reopening my eyes, met with his own already looking down at me. My body was starting to get hot feeling him rub my sides up and down until he reached for my legs. He was working on making me feel comfortable by doing things slow, with a gentle touch.
"Can I?"
At the question I bit my lip and nodded timidly. "Y-yes."
"Are you sure?"
I nodded again.
That was all he needed. He then proceeded to reach behind my back, unclasping my bra. Followed by his fingers moving the straps down my shoulders and then my arms, until the cups followed and my breasts were released and free.
My eyes fluttered shut and I shivered when I felt the cold air hit my sensitive buds. Seth's breath instantly hitched when his eyes were met with what he only could daydream about all this time—my uncovered boobs.
"Gorgeous," he mumbled lowly, leaning down to kiss a trail down my cleavage. A straight line he followed to my belly button, where he stopped and played with the waistband of my underwear.
My back arched before I even realized it, feeling Seth so incredibly close to where I needed him the most. I couldn't bring myself to tell him to hurry up, but my eager and impatient body did all the talking for me.
Seth understood, chuckling lowly and removing the soaked piece of fabric, his nostrils overwhelmed by the smell of my nectar, making my pussy shine and look oh so inviting and tasty. He took a deep breath and made sure to engrave the smell in his brain for future reference when he won't have me next to him. "Beautiful," Seth mumbled in awe. "So, so, so beautiful." He almost couldn't believe his eyes.
My cheeks flushed and felt hot from his sweet words but it didn't help that he was now moving his lips on my soft skin.
His lips worked with purpose. He didn't just want to touch, taste and please me.
No.
It was all about worshiping and making love to me. In all the ways. The softness of his lips on my legs, as he kissed down one of it. Starting at the feet and finishing on my inner thigh before he switched to the other and gave it the same attention.
Lifting his eyes, he licked his lips and grabbed my legs, putting them on their resting place for the time being—his shoulders. Rubbing them up and down feeling how soft my skin was, he leaned down and shifted his body to lay on his stomach.
"Can I get a taste of this pussy?" He smirked, seeing me answer him quickly and silently by nodding my head.
Pulling me closer to him by the thighs, he kissed just above my clit, making me squirm under him. "I will make you feel so good baby," using his pointer and middle fingers he spread my pussy lips, watching the pink color inside glisten from my juices, only making his mouth water even more than it already was.
"S-Seth," I whimpered, making a little jump at the feeling of his mouth touching my pearl, the most sensitive part of my body. It was only a kiss but it was enough to make me want more. I needed him to touch me there and make me feel good—my own fingers unable to reach the same level of pleasure by themselves.
He gladly obeyed, encouraged by the sweet sound of my voice. Wrapping his lips around my clit he sucked gently, making my whole body feel hot and enveloped in a warm feeling, shivers on my skin.
I wanted to focus on the feeling of his mouth—a new experience, a sensation I had never felt before. It was hard to do it, overwhelmed by the pleasure and how aroused I was. Lifting my head to look down at him, the sight alone was enough to make the butterflies wake up in my lower belly.
Seth not only looked beautiful, his eyes not leaving my face, but he looked concentrated, determined to make this first time the best experience.
His mouth was glistening in my juices but he didn't care—moving and finding all the pleasure spots. My pussy wasn't a known territory to him. Still, he claimed it as if it always was his, like he always knew how to please it. Knowing exactly what felt good and what would make me let out pleasured sounds.
"Feels good?"
I dropped my head back on the pillow, my eyes fluttering close. "Y-yes. Fuck Seth."
"I'm just getting started."
Indeed, he was.
His mouth went lower, tongue licking up and down my slit, the tip poking inside like it wanted to take a peak but not yet get in. I felt his fingers spread my lips again, as he leaned back to have a better look. "God. Such a pretty pussy," he growled, licking a long stride. "Taste divine too, you have no idea."
"Seth, please," his name wouldn't stop coming out of my mouth as I moaned it again and again. Almost like a prayer.
Body on natural ecstasy, I knew if he kept going like this, he would make me cum. My eyes went wide when I felt him start entering me with his finger, a burning sensation following soon after.
"Relax, baby," he spoke, kissing just under my knee. "It's only one finger. It's okay, I'll go slow."
I scrunched up my face at the intrusion and uncomfortable feeling. It didn't feel good but it was to be expected—first time my pussy was being stretched even if it was just a little finger and not a whole dick.
Seth moved slow, aware of me not being used to this kind of touch. He paired the moving of his finger with his mouth on my clit. Almost instantly, his mouth helped the pain and intrusion to feel better. I wasn't pleasured but I wasn't hurting, it was just there.
He smiled, feeling me relax once again, my eyes fluttering shut while my mouth was left open in the shape of an O. Slowly but surely, pleasure took over. "Better, now?"
I nodded, the tip of my tongue slipping out of my mouth to lick my now dry lips. The orgasm that followed after took me by surprise because I knew what cumming felt like—I touched myself before and experienced an orgasm—but nothing, nothing compared to the mix of a mouth sucking my clit while being penetrated.
Maybe it was just normal but I think it's just my Sethie being good at it.
"Good?", I heard Seth ask, after a little while of me trying to recover from the orgasm he gave me, finding my way back down to earth. A smile on his beautiful lips and his big hands caressing the flesh of my thighs.
"Huh?" I asked, still confused and dazed, lifting my head. "Oh. I'm good—I'm good, yeah."
Seth chuckled, kissing my stomach. "I'll take that as a compliment." I watched him as he removed his face from my middle parts, instead sitting on his knees.
Removing his shirt—finally—he discarded it uncaringly by throwing it on the floor and hovered down over me to give me a kiss. My hands immediately went for his chest, fingers wanting to feel his strong muscles and the shape of his six pack. The hairs on his chest were soft under my fingertips, tickling the skin.
As soon as my lips met his, I gasped and pulled away. "You still have my cum all over your mouth," I chuckled shyly. "I can taste myself, it's… weird."
"It's not weird. You taste good, right?", he smirked, licking his lips clean.
I shrugged, unsure of what I thought. It was a first for me. "Yeah. I think."
It was time to get to the point. The foreplay was over and I was ready to take him. We were both naked, bodies waiting to be met together for the first time, craving the touch and feel of the other inside or around them—skin brushing against the other's in a dance of love and affection.
Eyes stuck on him—his dick to be more exact—I didn't know what to do. What I knew for sure is that I was attracted to dicks because this sight made me turn horny, hungry even. I felt my pussy leak, arousal evident. A new feeling I never felt before.
"You want to touch?"
My eyes went wide. "Hmm, I—I don't know."
Did I want to?
I wasn't sure. His hardened and leaking dick looked inviting and tasty. After all, it was the first penis I ever seen—the ones I saw in school books, porn and in unsolicited dick pics on social media didn't count.
I was nervous though. I didn't want to embarrass myself. What if I did something wrong? What if he didn't like it? I didn't want to hurt him or leave him not feeling pleasure when he did nothing but make me feel good.
Taken out of my head, Seth did what he had to do to reassure me. My hand in his, he brought it to his mouth, kissing the top of it. My attention switched to him, no longer overthinking.
Pulling on my arm, I sat up in the bed with his help and I gulped, glancing down as I felt the tip of his sex brush against my thigh. "Want me to guide you?"
Seth was still holding my hand, ready to move it lower, to make me feel how bad he needed this—needed me. Waiting for my approval, he moved his hand, controlling mine and helping me grab a hold of his length.
"Just like that, slow and gentle," he whimpered, feeling my hand move repeatedly in slow up and down movements. My movements were unsure but I grew more confident as I heard his sounds of pleasure. "Rub the tip with your thumb."
Following his instructions, I started rubbing his tip, the precum that leaked out of him serving as some kind of lube. The sensitive and now red mushroomed part of him reacted to the touch, making him let out a hiss that almost scared me.
Did I hurt him? Was that wrong? He said it was fine, right?
"I'm just sensitive, baby," he smiled, his voice dropping from his arousal. "You're doing good." Knowing I was doing fine made me relax. All was going well. It made me want to return the favor—make him feel good. "You wanna try putting it in your mouth?", he asked, his hand cupping my cheek as he looked down at me, noticing the way I bit my lip and looked hungrily and curiously at his hardened dick under the touch of my hand.
No need to say anything else, I used my mouth instead, hesitantly leaving a kiss on the tip, my tongue poking out to get a little taste. I tasted the saltiness from his precum, unsure about the taste but it's whatever.
I proceeded to push his tip only in my mouth, sucking on it like it was a lollipop. Wanting to give him a proper blowjob, I pushed his full length inside my mouth, until I couldn't fit anything else.
"Ah, shit," Seth chuckled in a moan, enjoying what I was doing to him. He was about to reach his limit and he didn't even take my v card yet. "I-I think it's enough. I want you now."
The way he said you made me shiver. The restraint in his voice was evident, he was torn between letting me keep on sucking his dick, getting pleasure from my mouth or making love to me.
The choice was easy and evident but he couldn't say he hated the sight of me, so innocent learning how to please him by sucking him off, looking cute and sexy while doing so.
He couldn't wait to make love to me and see the bliss drawn all over my face, once the pain switched to pleasure from the magic of his slow thrusts inside my untrained cunt.
It didn't take long for him to pull out of my mouth and help me put on a condom on his more-than-ready dick.
Safety first. Always. Wrap it up kids.
Hand reaching for his hard and aching dick in between us, he placed his tip right at the entrance. Unlike his usual way of penetrating a woman, he did things gradually—one step at a time. He started by rubbing his tip in my juices, coating himself and preparing the both of us for the first inch to go in.
Locking eyes with me, it was all the confirmation he needed to push his way inside—no need to knock, he had the green light. Immediately, he stopped moving when he felt me tense, a gasp slipping out of me. "Are you okay? Tell me if it hurts, I'll pull out."
Obviously, even when going slow, it will still hurt and be uncomfortable for me, at least in the beginning. Seth was really attentive, paying close attention to me for any signs of discomfort.
I was grateful to him for that. Helped making this first time memorable.
Shaking my head, I reassured him. "I'm fine," I smiled, lifting my head to kiss his nose. "You're being gentle and I appreciate it."
"I'd do anything for you my love," Seth smiled. "I want this to be a good experience for you. A good memory."
I smiled, looking at him lovingly. "It already is, Sethie."
We made love. Not fucking. Intimate and slow, each touch, kiss and thrust was a showing of love. We showed each other how much love we had with our bodies dancing against one another and making one. Not one part of my body was left untouched. His eyes never left me and mine wouldn't have left his if him loving me like this didn't feel as good.
"I-I love you," I gasped, holding him tight as I started feeling my climax approaching. This one would be special and different than all the other times I came only by touching myself.
Knowing exactly what was going on, feeling me clench around his dick, he leaned down, resting his forehead against mine. "Just let it go, pretty girl. Let me make you feel good," he kissed me. "I love you so freakin' much."
"S-Seth," I moaned his name, in a begging manner. "More. I-I want more. I-I don't k-know I-"
Seth smiled sweetly at my innocence, flushed face making me look that much more cuter than normal. He had to control himself, not wanting to cum just yet.
It was hard though. He had been waiting for this moment for so long and I looked so beautiful, surrendering while being under him. The moment was perfect and his love for me was almost too much.
Still, he focused on me. It was all about me. "Want me to go faster?" He talked for me, starting to increase the pace of his thrusts. "Like this? You like that?"
The sounds and facial expressions I made were all the signs he needed to know he did his job right. He hated how I tried to keep silent. "Don't hold it in. Let me hear you. Let me hear how good I make you feel."
He wanted to hear me?
That's what I gave him. Not loud to the point of risking a noise complaint the next day, but it was enough to show how much pleasure I was getting from him. It was my first time, I was nervous and shy, but it didn't stop me.
Seth had always made me feel comfortable. Even if I felt exposed—too exposed—the way I was feeling right now was bigger than all of that. It beat all of my insecurities. I couldn't stay quiet—and I didn't want to.
The room quickly filled up with my sounds of pleasure mixed with his. Even when we both finished, tangled together, we were glued, unable to move away. Needing to stay close, we fell asleep in each other's arms.
Read Previous Stories Here: Penta Master List (If you're new to this series, Chapters 1-6 are in order. The others are just snippets in this universe.
*Also, I apologize because this one is a little long. I didn't feel like splitting it up into two parts.*
The air in Conference Room B was aggressively conditioned, designed to keep the creative team sharp, awake, and slightly shivering. Lola sat near the far end of the long mahogany table, tracing the rim of her lukewarm coffee cup with a manicured thumbnail. For the last forty minutes, she had successfully maintained her "listening intently" face while a junior writer pitched a convoluted betrayal angle for the tag team division.
She was physically in Stamford, Connecticut, but mentally, she was still tangled in the sheets of an Atlanta hotel room. She could still feel the phantom weight of Penta’s arm across her waist, the faint scrape of his stubble against her collarbone. Three months. Three months of stolen nights and weekends, text messages, and a secret so heavy and hot she felt like she was swallowing a live coal every time she walked into the Corporate office.
"Alright, let's pivot," Hunter said, his voice cutting through her daydream like a guillotine. He capped his dry-erase marker with a sharp snap and leaned against the whiteboard. "We need to talk about Penta."
Lola’s hand went still on her coffee cup. She kept her eyes fixed on her open laptop screen, forcing her breathing to remain perfectly, boringly even. Work first, always, the voice in her head reminded her.
"The Mexico vignettes you produced, Lola… incredible stuff," Hunter continued, gesturing vaguely in her direction. A few heads around the table nodded. "The audience is eating it up. The metrics on his unmasked teases are through the roof. But it’s too artistic for the weekly cable crowd. It’s got prestige, but it doesn't have hooks. We need to ground him. We need crossover appeal for the female demographic."
"You wanna soften him up?" Jason, one of the senior producers, asked, frowning. "He’s a killer, Hunter. That’s his whole gimmick."
"I don't want to soften him, I want to complicate him," Hunter corrected, tapping the table. "We need to give the audience a reason to care about the man behind the mask, not just the Luchador. And there is only one universal language for that in this business." He looked around the room, a shark waiting for the guppies to catch up. "Soap opera, guys. We need a romance angle."
Lola felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. The fluorescent lights overhead suddenly seemed blindingly bright.
"A love interest," Hunter confirmed, nodding at his own brilliance. "A damsel, but modern. Someone he has to protect. We bring up one of the girls from NXT–maybe that blonde, Cassie? We script some backstage run-ins, build the tension. Give the fans a will-they-won't-they. We culminate in a ring-side save and a kiss at the next PLE."
Lola’s throat closed. She pictured Penta in the dim light of his kitchen in Ecatepec, his voice dead-serious; I want to show my people. The history. Not the soap opera. The truth. She pictured the way he had looked at her just two nights ago in Atlanta, breathless and murmuring against her skin.
"He's gonna hate it," Lola said. The words slipped out before she could catch them. Her voice sounded too thin, too tight, but she quickly cleared her throat and armored herself in her professional persona. "I mean, with respect, Hunter. You know how protective he is of his character's tradition. A fake TV girlfriend is exactly the kind of Americanized melodrama he despises."
Hunter didn't miss a beat. He just smiled, pointing the capped marker directly at her. "Which is exactly why you are going to pitch it to him, Lola."
Her lungs stopped working. "Me?"
"He listens to you.," Hunter said, oblivious to the cruel, literal truth of his words. "He trusts you. You got him to open up his home to the cameras. If anyone can sell him on playing ball for the sake of the ratings, it's you. Write up the treatment, cast the girl, and break the news to him before TV on Monday." Hunter clapped his hands together, signaling the end of the discussion. "Make it authentic, Lola. I want it to feel real."
Lola stared at her blank laptop screen, the cursor blinking back at her like a mocking metronome.
"Consider it done," she lied.
———
The hum of Manhattan traffic twenty stories down was a steady, abrasive white noise that usually helped Lola sleep, but tonight, it only made the silence in the hotel room feel louder.
Penta emerged from the bathroom with a towel slung low on his hips, his hair damp and curling slightly at the ends, water beading over the ink on his chest. He looked entirely stripped of the operatic arrogance of his ring persona, just a tired, beautiful man who had spent the last hour throwing himself at the mat for a house show crowd.
Lola sat cross-legged on the edge of the unmade king bed, her laptop closed on the nightstand beside her. She had spent the last two hours pretending everything was fine. She had kissed him in the elevator, ordered them late-night room service, and let him fuck her against the heavy hotel door the second the deadbolt clicked. She had taken exactly what she wanted, knowing that what she had to say next was going to poison the air between them.
Penta paused, catching the stiff line of her shoulders. He was too observant; he always had been. The soft, unguarded look in his eyes sharpened slightly. He crossed the room, the carpet silencing his steps, and dropped a heavy, warm hand onto her bare knee.
"You are a million miles away," he murmured, his thumb brushing a slow circle over her skin. "Qué pasa, hermosa?"
Lola felt a physical ache in her chest at the nickname. She forced herself to gently pull her knee away from his touch. It was the hardest physical movement she’d made all week.
"We need to talk about TV on Monday," Lola said. Her voice sounded thin, so she cleared her throat and reached for the only shield she had left; her professional armor. She sat up straighter, crossing her arms. "I had a meeting with Hunter and creative on Wednesday."
Penta’s hand dropped to his side. He didn't move away, but the distance between them suddenly felt oceanic. The metaphorical mask was already sliding back over his features. "And?"
"The Mexico vignettes are pulling massive numbers. The network loves them. But..." She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to use the sanitized corporate vocabulary that protected her. "They want hooks. They want crossover appeal for the female demographic."
Penta stared at her, perfectly still. "Speak plainly, Lola."
"Hunter wants a romance angle," she said, the words tumbling out like a confession. "A soap opera. He’s calling up Cassie from NXT to play your on-screen girlfriend. Backstage run-ins, ringside saves. A will-they-won't-they that culminates in a kiss at Money in the Bank."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Penta didn't yell. He didn't pace. He simply looked at her, and the absolute coldness in his dark eyes was terrifying. He looked at her not as the woman he had unmasked for in Ecatepec, but as a suit. As a producer.
"I told you," he said, his voice dropping into a register that was dangerously quiet. "The very first day we spoke. No soap opera. I am a Luchador. I do not play the fool for the cameras."
"It's not playing the fool, it's… business," Lola countered automatically, her corporate reflexes kicking in to defend herself. "It's a work, Penta. We all play parts to drive the narrative."
Penta’s jaw ticked. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the mattress on either side of her hips, trapping her in his space but entirely devoid of the warmth from an hour ago. "You want me to touch another woman," he stated, the words flat and heavy. "You want me to look at her, in front of the world, the way I look at you?"
"It's not real!" Lola’s voice cracked, betraying her. She hated the desperation leaking into her tone. "It's a script. It means nothing."
"A script," Penta repeated. He tilted his head, studying her with a brutal, dissecting gaze. "And who is writing this script, Lola?"
Lola’s lungs stopped working. She looked down at the comforter, unable to hold his stare. "Me," she whispered. "Hunter told me to make it authentic."
Penta let out a short, hollow laugh that held zero humor. He pushed off the bed, putting distance between them, and grabbed his gym bag from the armchair. He pulled out a clean t-shirt and dragged it over his head, effectively covering the skin she had been memorizing just moments before.
He stood with his broad back to her, the muscles in his shoulders tense and unforgiving beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. For a moment, he looked like he was trying to bore a hole through the window with the force of his anger. When he spoke, his voice was a low, lethal monotone.
"So, my producer who is also my girlfriend uses our real life to write our fake TV show," Penta said. He did not turn around. Instead, he gripped the windowsill so hard the tendons in his hands became stark, pale ridges. "Tell me, Lola. In your script, do I call this girl Amor? Do I whisper in her ear all the same things I say to you? Tell me what pieces of us you sold to Hunter to keep your job."
The accusation landed with the weight of a thrown belt across bare skin. Lola flinched, as much at the clarity of his insight as at the bitterness in his voice. She opened her mouth, searching for something to say, but the words caught on the barbed wire of her own guilt.
Penta kept tearing into her, each word impossibly calm and methodical, as if he were laying out match tape and calling every spot before it happened. "Did you tell them that we slept together the first time you came to my home?" he pressed. "Did you write down all the stories I told you about my brother, or what I said about my father before he died?" He finally turned then, the lines of his eyes pinched and dark with betrayal. "How much is left for me if you spend all our truth on camera?"
Lola’s anger flared; a small, defensive flicker trying to keep her head above water. "Don’t you dare," she bit out, but it sounded weak, even to her. She tried again, louder. "Don't you dare pretend I’m the only one who has to play a role here. I am fighting for both of us. If I don't keep this job, if I don't keep you relevant, you know what happens? You get replaced by someone who can stomach this shit without complaint."
He shook his head, almost pitying. "So you protect us by selling us?"
"It wasn’t my idea!"
"You think I don’t see what’s happening?" Penta said. "This is the same game, Lola. They want you to think you can keep some part of yourself safe, but you can’t. Not when the story is more important!"
She wanted to punch a wall. Instead, she grabbed for her own defense, the only thing she knew how to wield: words. "This isn’t real," she said, hating how desperate she sounded. "It’s a television angle. It’s not us. I would never–" She stopped herself, realizing that was a lie, that she already had. She felt suddenly hollowed out, every protest she could think of sounding cheap and borrowed even as she said them. "I'm not the bad guy here, Penta. I'm just trying to keep you in the main event. I’m trying to do my job, so you can do your job.”
The words hung in the air, limp and impotent. Penta stared at her, unblinking, his expression giving nothing away. "You say it is for us," he said, softly now. "But it feels like it is for you."
Lola wanted to argue, to build some elaborate defense, but all she could do was grit her teeth and look away. The gulf between her and Penta, so small and surmountable in the dark anonymity of a hotel room, now yawned wide enough to swallow them both. She stared at her hands, suddenly ashamed of the expensive manicure, the way her thumbnail glittered pink under the bedside lamp. She had always believed she could separate the work from the life, but now it was plain: the work had never left her untouched, and the life she wanted was slipping like sand through her fingers.
"Do you think I want to watch you kiss another woman?" she said, softly, but Penta was already zipping his bag. She wanted to reach out, to touch his arm, to anchor him in the room with her one more time. But he was already gone, even before he closed the door.
Lola sat on the edge of the bed for a long time after, staring at the city lights through the hotel window, her reflection ghosted in the glass. When her phone buzzed, she ignored it, knowing it was only a calendar reminder to file her story notes with Creative before morning.
She was good at her job. She had to be. And that was what terrified her most.
———
The two days of silence had felt like walking around with a mouthful of glass.
Lola had spent forty-eight hours sequestered in her condo, staring at a blinking cursor, trying to perform the impossible alchemy of turning her private sanctuary into a public commodity. Every time her phone buzzed, her heart had hammered against her ribs, but it was only ever production assistants or Hunter asking for an ETA.
Now, sitting in a windowless backstage production office hours before doors opened for Monday Night Raw, the silence was finally about to break.
The door clicked open. Penta stepped in.
He was already in his gear, black and white, heavy boots, and the mask securely in place. The man she had tangled with in the sheets of a Manhattan hotel room was gone, replaced entirely by the untouchable Luchador. He didn't offer a greeting. He simply pulled out the metal folding chair across from her and sat, crossing his arms over his chest. The room suddenly felt incredibly small.
Lola’s throat was dry. She reached out and slid the manila folder across the cheap laminate table.
"Here are the pages for tonight, and the outline for the next three weeks leading to the PLE," she said. She hated how crisp, how painfully corporate her voice sounded. "Hunter signed off on it this morning."
Penta didn't touch the folder. He just stared at it, then slowly lifted his gaze to her. Through the eyeholes of the mask, hidden behind contacts, his eyes were unreadable, devoid of any of the warmth she’d grown so used to.
"I told you I do not want to do this," he said, his voice flat.
"I know," Lola whispered, dropping the producer voice for a fraction of a second. "I know. But I didn't have a choice. If I didn't write it, Hunter was going to give it to Jason, and Jason would have made it a cartoon. I tried to keep it grounded. I tried to make it… respectful."
Penta finally reached out. He flipped the folder open. The silence stretched so tight Lola thought her eardrums might pop as she watched his gloved finger trace down the printed lines of dialogue and stage directions.
She felt sick. She knew exactly what he was reading.
His finger stopped halfway down page three. He went entirely still.
"Stage direction," Penta read aloud, his voice dropping an octave, razor-sharp and laced with ice. "Penta corners Cassie backstage. He reaches out, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. His thumb rests on her jawline. He leans in close and calls her 'hermosa'."
Lola closed her eyes. She couldn't look at him.
Penta tossed the script back onto the table. It landed with a heavy smack.
"Respectful," he repeated, the word tasting like venom in his mouth. "You tell me you want to protect my culture. You tell me you want the truth. And then you take the things I do to you in the dark, the words I give to you, and you print them on paper for a blonde girl who doesn't even know me."
"Hunter said he wanted it authentic!" Lola’s voice cracked, defensive tears pricking the corners of her eyes. "He said he needed it to feel real, or he'd scrap your whole push! I had to give him something he believed!"
"So you gave him us," Penta said quietly.
That hit harder than if he had shouted. He stood up, the metal chair scraping harshly against the concrete floor. He towered over the table, the intimidating, untouchable talent once again.
"You did your job, Producer," He said as he tapped a gloved finger against the script. "I will memorize the lines. I will touch her face. I will play the fool for you. But do not ever ask me to show you the truth again. Because clearly, you do not know what to do with it."
He turned and walked out, letting the heavy door slam shut behind him, leaving Lola alone with her perfectly formatted script.
———
The camera followed Cassie, a bright-eyed NXT call-up with a choreographed look of distress, as she hurried through the backstage hallway. Then, the frame shifted. Penta stepped out of the shadows.
He was perfect. That was the problem.
He didn't just walk; he stalked. He used the same slow, predatory grace that Lola had watched in the dimly lit hallways of his home in Ecatepec. He cornered Cassie against a row of equipment trunks. It was a mirrored image of how he had backed Lola against the hotel room door in Manhattan.
Lola felt a cold stone settle in her stomach as she watched his gloved hand rise. With brutal delicacy, he tucked a stray blonde curl behind Cassie’s ear. His thumb lingered on the girl’s jawline, a gesture of ownership that Lola knew wasn't in the playbook. It was theirs.
Then came the line. The one Lola had typed with shaking hands.
Penta leaned in, his mask inches from Cassie’s face. The arena went silent, hooked by the sheer gravity he brought to the moment. He didn't shout; he didn't need to. His voice, caught perfectly by the boom mic, was a low, intimate rasp.
"No tengas miedo, hermosa," he murmured. "I am the only one you need to watch."
The crowd erupted. The romance angle was a certified hit.
Lola looked away from the monitor, her throat tight. She had wanted to show the world the truth of him, but seeing him weaponize their intimacy for a three-minute segment felt like a violation.
A moment later, the curtain pulled back. Penta stepped through, the adrenaline of the performance still radiating off him like heat. He didn't look at the producers or the cheering stagehands. He looked directly at Lola.
The mask was back on, but the man behind it was cold. He didn't stop to talk. He didn't offer a good job for the ratings-gold script. He simply walked past her.
As he passed, he spoke just loud enough for her to hear, his voice devoid of the warmth she loved.
"Was that enough truth for you, Lola?"
Lola stared at the space where Penta had just been, her heart thrumming in her chest, a raw indignation swelling beneath her skin. The air felt thin; she could barely breathe, choked by a cocktail of confusion and a sickening sense of betrayal. She had always known this was a risk, merging their personal lives with business, but seeing Penta, her Penta, shift into a role, into someone's fantasy, felt like a wound reopening.
—---
The heavy security door to the locker room clicked shut, cutting off the distant, muffled roar of the arena. Penta was seated on a low wooden bench, his back to the door. He hadn't started unlacing his boots yet. He sat perfectly still, the black and white mask still pulled tight, making him look like a statue carved from leather and spite.
"Penta," Lola said, her voice echoing too loudly against the cinderblock walls. She didn't stay by the door; she marched into his space, her heels clicking a sharp, frantic rhythm. "Don't do this to me."
He didn't turn. "I am doing exactly what you asked for. I am staying in character. I am protecting the story."
"You know that’s not what I meant," she snapped, reaching out as if to touch his shoulder, then pulling back when she saw the rigid set of his spine. "That scene… the way you looked at her. You didn't just follow the script. You weaponized it."
Penta stood up then, the movement so sudden it made her catch her breath. He turned to face her, towering over her in the cramped room. Up close, the black paint around his eyes made him look demonic, but the voice that came out was low and dangerously human.
"You wrote the words, Lola," he hissed. "You put the hand on the jaw. You put 'hermosa' on the page. You took the only things that belonged to us, the things that weren't for sale and you handed them to Hunter on a silver platter."
"I’m doing my fucking job!" Lola cried, her professional composure finally fracturing. "Hunter was going to give that storyline to someone who would have made it a joke. He would have had you doing comedy skits in a week. I used what was real because it was the only way to keep the gravity you wanted!"
"You did not keep the gravity," Penta countered, stepping into her personal space until she was backed against a row of lockers. "You stole the truth to sell a lie."
He reached up, his gloved fingers hovering near the edge of his mask, but he didn't pull it off. The man she had fallen for was buried under layers of pride and professional hurt.
"Tonight, when I touched her face," he whispered, "I didn't see you. I saw a script. I saw a job. And I realized that to you, Lola... that is all that matters."
Lola felt the sting of tears and blinked them back, refusing to let them fall. "That’s not fair. You know what we have."
"I knew what we had," Penta corrected. He reached into his gym bag, pulled out a fresh towel, and draped it over his shoulder, a clear signal of dismissal. "But tonight, the audience loved the show. Hunter is happy. Your ratings will stay up. You should be celebrating."
He walked past her toward the showers, the heavy thud of his boots sounding like a funeral march for the last three months. At the doorway, he paused, but didn't look back.
"Tell Cassie she did a good job," he said coldly. "She’s a very convincing actress. Almost as good as you."
———
Lola sat hunched over her drink in the hotel bar, swirling the ice with her straw, watching the thin ripples settle each time she put the glass down. The lobby was thick with the after-midnight hush that came only when the day’s shows had wound down and the only people left were the diehards and drunks, or the ones with nowhere else to go. She counted herself in the last category, though she wondered if that was a kind of self-pity. Every so often, someone would glance over at her, recognizing the WWE lanyard tucked into her purse or the producer’s shirt she wore, but nobody approached. Not until Rey appeared, sudden and silent at her side, as if conjured from the shadows.
She hadn’t seen him come in. He didn’t sit down, just planted himself next to her stool, arms crossed over his chest, eyes sharp and searching, the way Penta’s eyes used to look at her before the fight got too big to see around.
"Some of the guys told me you were here, alone," Rey said, nodding to the bartender, who slid him a bottle without asking. He didn’t look at her at first, just stared straight ahead, his reflection fractured in the mirror behind the bar. "Where is my brother?"
There was something accusatory in the way he asked. Like maybe she’d left Penta behind somewhere, or maybe she was supposed to know his exact coordinates at all times. But she was only half sure herself where Penta might be right now. And that made her feel exposed, as though she’d forgotten some basic obligation of loving him.
She tried to sound casual, but her voice came out brittle. "I figured he’d be with you. He left before I did."
Rey didn’t answer right away. He drummed his fingers on the bar, a nervous staccato. "He’s not answering his phone."
Lola’s mind flashed to the coldness in Penta’s eyes, the edge in his voice as he told her she didn’t know what to do with the truth. She wondered if she could track him through the Life 360 app, but decided she didn’t have the energy or the right to try.
"Maybe he just needs to cool off," she said, taking a measured sip. "It was a rough night."
Rey’s mouth twisted, part skepticism, part concern. "That’s not like him. He always checks in. Even when he’s pissed."
Lola didn’t know how to respond to that. There was a point, she thought, where you stopped being the person someone checked in with, and started being the reason they vanished. Maybe she had crossed that line tonight.
Rey finally slid into the stool beside her, his shoulders slumping just slightly. "You know him better than anyone," he said quietly. "What happened out there?"
Lola picked up her glass and finished the rest in one gulp. “Turns out that maybe I don’t know him at all.”
Rey shook his head, his brow furrowing with confusion. "You know that’s not true." His voice held an accusatory edge that made her squirm. "This isn’t just another storyline for him. You know that, right?"
Lola picked at a stray thread on her sleeve, feeling the fabric fray under her fingers. "This is what he does," she replied, keeping her eyes locked on the bar top as if it might reveal some secret she desperately needed. "He’s always been a performer. He puts on the mask and… becomes someone else."
Rey leaned closer, the bar's dim light catching the worried creases in his brow. Lola could smell the faint edge of the beer he had just opened, a sharp, tangy scent mingling with the heavier aroma of her drink. She rubbed her palms against her jeans, fingers fidgeting, almost aching with a need to pull away from this conversation, from him, from everything.
“This isn’t just another storyline for him,” Rey said, his voice imbued with an intensity she hadn’t expected. “He cares about you. You know that, right?"
The weight of his words pressed down on her, a quiet pressure that made her throat tighten. She couldn’t meet his gaze; instead, she swallowed hard as she processed the sincerity in his expression.
“You’re not hearing me, Rey,” she said, her words slower, more deliberate. “I’ve been trying to keep us separate from work, and I thought that's what he wanted. But I’m not–” She hesitated, raising her glass for a moment, feeling the cold against her palm. “I’m not here to explain myself to you.”
“Then to who?” Rey asked, the question landing between them with a gravity that was all the more striking for its softness. He reached for her hand, his callused fingers brushing the thin skin of her wrist, but Lola pulled away with a small, involuntary flinch, a motion so fast and automatic it felt less like rejection than self-preservation. She tucked her hands under her thighs, anchoring herself to the sticky barstool as if she might otherwise float away or collapse entirely.
Rey exhaled sharply, as if deflated by her retreat, and then tried to catch her gaze in the bar mirror. “You can’t just keep running from this,” he said, his voice lowering so that only she could hear. “If you keep hiding it from yourself, it’s only going to get worse, for both of you.” Lola stared at the array of liquor bottles behind the bar, tracing the neat, bright rows with her eyes, wishing she could line up her own feelings so tidily. She could sense Rey’s sincerity, feel the pulse of it coming off him in waves; but the more he tried to reach her, the more she wanted to shrink away. She didn’t want to be explained to. She didn’t want to be rescued.
“He won't listen to me.” Lola’s voice was barely above a whisper, but every word came out raw and splintered. She stared down at her empty glass, tracing the rim with a finger that trembled ever so slightly. “I didn't have a choice.” For a moment she let herself imagine what it would feel like to shed the weight of the entire night, just peel it off her body and leave it slouched and empty on the barstool. But even that fantasy felt too indulgent. She could feel Rey watching her, his concern a slow, circling pressure against the side of her face.
She resented him for it, and yet she wanted to be near it. Maybe that was what made her so reckless with Penta in the first place. She had always been drawn to proximity, to the heat of someone else’s urgency, so different from the calculated detachment she’d been taught to keep. But that never ended well. She pushed people away with the same force that she pulled them in.
“I mean it, Rey,” she said, her voice sharpening. “He stopped listening the moment I told him. He made up his mind, and I just…” Lola shrugged helplessly, as if the gesture might conjure the right words from thin air. “I have to keep the show running.”
Rey was silent, absorbing her confession with the same gravity he brought to every fight. Lola remembered watching him wrestle once, years before she knew Penta, saw how Rey let himself get battered, thrown, battered again, just to draw his opponent in close enough to take them down. She wondered if that was his plan now, if he would let her keep talking until she wore out her defenses and collapsed into the truth.
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” she said, her voice so much smaller now. “But I couldn’t–” She stopped herself, and for a moment Lola wished she could just evaporate into the bar top, become an unremarkable stain that no one would ever notice or remember.
Rey reached out, set his hand gently on her forearm, and this time she didn’t pull away. The touch was brief, but it lingered in the air between them.
“Let me talk to him,” Rey said, his voice so steady it almost sounded like a promise. “Maybe he’ll listen to me.”
Lola let her breath out in a slow, shaky exhale, not quite trusting herself to believe him or anyone else.
Rey laced his fingers in front of him for a moment, the offer gathering in the air before it left his lips. “Let me walk you to your room,” he said, quieter now, as if he were afraid that the weight of the night might shatter if he spoke too loud. His hand hovered in open invitation, not quite touching her, but close enough that she felt the implied warmth of it, a small, unspoken assurance that there was a way out of the bar, out of the tension, out of the spiraling stories running loops in her head.
For a long, humming moment, Lola didn’t move. She just studied his hand as if it might morph into something else, as if she might misread the gesture for what it was: not an overture, not a threat, but something like mercy. Rey’s skin was rough with calluses, and in the soft-lit gloom of the bar it looked like the hand of someone who’d spent a lifetime patching up other people’s messes. He didn’t repeat himself, didn’t push, only waited, a kind of patience, just like his brother.
Her stomach twisted as she considered what it would mean to accept. Not just the walk, but the wordless concession it represented; that she was tired, that she was vulnerable, that she maybe, just maybe, wanted someone to care how she got back to her room. The admission stung, but the alternative, sitting another minute in that dead-air silence with nothing but the taste of regret, felt worse.
Lola felt the exhaustion pressing down on her body, in her feet, in her head, but she walked with Rey step for step, letting the silence grow between them until it felt less like a barrier and more like a blanket.
At the elevator, he pressed the button for her floor. The mirrored doors caught their twin reflections, close but not touching, and for the first time Lola realized how small she looked next to him, how the slope of his shoulders eclipsed her own. Rey rocked back on his heels, glancing at her sideways but never quite meeting her eyes.
When the doors slid open, she stepped inside. Rey hesitated at the threshold, then followed. The hum of the machinery filled the space between them. Lola stared at the numbers above the door as they ticked up, up, up, and for a moment, she imagined herself as a little red light, blinking forward into some new version of the night.
She didn’t speak, didn’t need to. Rey’s presence was enough. When they reached her floor, he let her exit first, then trailed behind at a respectful distance. At her door, she stopped and turned. Rey was still there, hands in his jacket pockets, waiting for her signal. There was something in his face now, a flicker of concern, yes, but also something softer, almost reverent, as if he held her heartbreak like a fragile relic.
“Thank you, Rey ” she managed, her voice steadier than she felt.
He nodded. “You need anything, you call me. Any hour.”
She nearly laughed, but the sound died in her throat. Instead, she gave him a small, tight smile, then clicked the keycard and let herself in. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, the cool wood at her back. For a moment, she pressed her palms flat against the surface, as if holding it closed could keep the rest of the world away.
Then she slid to the floor, knees drawn up to her chest, and let herself feel the full weight of what she’d lost.
And what she might still have left.
———
The atmosphere backstage was the usual controlled chaos, the hum of the generators, the distant roar of the crowd, and the frantic energy of producers with headsets. But for Penta, the noise was a background blur. He was looking for the one person who made the concrete walls of the arena feel less like a cage.
He found Hunter in Gorilla, hunched over a monitor with a headset pushed back off one ear.
Penta didn't wait for a lull in the action. "Lola. Where is she?"
Hunter didn't look up at first, his eyes tracking a sequence on the screen. Then, he sighed, a heavy, professional sound that made the hair on the back of Penta’s neck stand up. He straightened, turning to face the masked man.
"She’s not here, Penta," Hunter said, his voice flat.
Penta’s brow furrowed beneath the mask. "She’s late? That is not like her."
"She’s not late. She resigned. First thing this morning."
The words hit harder than any chair shot. Penta stepped back, the air in the cramped space suddenly feeling thin. "Resigned? Why?"
Hunter rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking more like a tired father. "She met me in the hotel lobby at 7:00 AM looking like she hadn't slept in a week. Handed me her badge." He paused, his sharp eyes cutting through the mesh of Penta's mask. "I didn't accept it. Not yet. I told her to go home, and take a few days to actually think before she throws a career like hers in the trash."
Penta remained silent, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Hunter stepped closer, lowering his voice so the nearby techs couldn't eavesdrop. "Look, I’m not an idiot. I’ve been in this business a long time. I see how she looks at the monitors when you’re out there. I see how you linger in Gorilla."
He shook his head, a mix of frustration and genuine confusion on his face. "Why didn't you guys tell me you were dating?" Hunter asked, throwing a hand up in exasperation. "I wouldn't have pushed this storyline with Cassie. If I’d known it was her life too, I would’ve pulled back. I wouldn't have put her in a position where she had to choose between being a good producer and being a good girlfriend."
"She is at home?" Penta asked, his voice a low growl of urgency.
"I hope so," Hunter said, turning back to his monitors. "Go. You’re not in the main event, get out of here. But Penta? Fix it. She’s too good at her job to lose it over this."
– – –
Lola was sitting on the couch, knees drawn tightly to her chest in the quiet of her apartment, when the knock came. It wasn't a tentative tap. It was three heavy, deliberate thuds that rattled the wood.
She didn’t need to look through the peephole.
When she opened the door, Penta filled the frame. He was in his street clothes, a dark jacket over a black t-shirt and jeans, his chest heaving slightly as if he’d run up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, the sheer force of his presence displacing the stagnant air in her apartment.
"You quit," he said. It wasn't a question. His voice was a low, rough scrape in the quiet room.
Lola crossed her arms, suddenly feeling entirely too exposed in her own living room. "Hunter told you."
"He told me to fix it," Penta replied, taking a step closer. "But I do not care about Hunter right now. I care about this." He gestured between the two of them. "Why did you run, Lola?"
"I didn't run," she fired back, her defensive instincts kicking in. "I made a choice. You made it pretty clear that we were done. Why should I stay?"
"Bullshit." The word was sharp, cutting straight through her practiced corporate armor. He closed the distance between them, his bare face hard and uncompromising. "You threw away six years of work. For what?”
Lola felt the sting of tears on her cheeks and hated herself for it. "Yes! I couldn’t stand the way you were looking at me! Like I’d ripped your damn heart out!" She threw her hands up, the exhaustion and frustration of the last twenty-four hours boiling over. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit in Gorilla and feed the best thing that’s ever happened to me into the corporate machine."
Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. When Penta finally moved, it wasn't to argue. He reached out, his large hands gently but firmly gripping her shoulders. He waited until she had no choice but to look up at him. His hands slid up her neck, his thumbs tracing the line of her jaw. "They do not own this," he said fiercely. "They own the man in the ring. They own the merchandise. They do not own the man standing in front of you." He rested his forehead against hers, forcing her to breathe the same air, to feel the steady, grounded reality of him. "You don't quit the thing you love because someone else tries to make it ugly," he murmured, his breath warm against her skin. "You set a boundary. We tell Hunter no. We give him a story, but we keep us for ourselves. But you do not shrink your life for me, Lola. I won't let you."
Lola closed her eyes, a tear slipping free to track down her cheek. The suffocating weight in her chest was finally beginning to lift, replaced by the terrifying thrill of actually standing her ground. "What if he fires me anyway?" she asked, the vulnerability bleeding through. “Because I won’t follow his orders?”
Penta let out a low, huffing laugh, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. "Then we let him. And I walk out the door right behind you. But you don't surrender before the bell rings."
The fight drained out of Lola all at once, leaving behind a sudden, bone-deep exhaustion. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against the solid warmth of his chest. Penta’s arms wrapped around her instantly, pulling her flush against him. One large hand settled at the base of her spine, the other cradling the back of her head.
His voice dropped to a rough whisper against her hair. "Lo siento. I have not slept these last three days without you."
For a long time, the only sound in the apartment was the hum of the refrigerator and the steady, synchronized rhythm of their breathing. "Have you eaten?" Penta asked, his voice vibrating through her cheek where it rested against his collarbone.
Lola let out a breathy, half-hearted laugh. "No."
He gently untangled himself from her, though he kept one hand firmly on her waist. "Sit," he commanded softly, nodding toward the couch. "I am going to see what you have in this kitchen. Though, knowing you, it is probably just coffee and… hot sauce."
"There might be some leftover takeout in the back," she offered weakly, sinking onto the sofa. She pulled her knees up, watching him navigate her small kitchen.
He found a half-empty bottle of red wine on the counter, poured her a glass, and brought it over with a kiss before returning to scavenge through her fridge. He settled on making an impromptu omelet with the random ingredients he managed to salvage; some spinach, a little cheese, and eggs.
The smell of butter and cooking food began to fill the apartment, chasing away the sterile, anxious air that had settled there all day. When he finished, he didn't sit in the armchair opposite her. He sat right beside her on the couch, the cushions dipping under his weight, and handed her the plate.
"Eat, Amor" he said, bumping his shoulder against hers.
Lola took a bite, surprised by how ravenous she actually was. "You're too good at this," she murmured between mouthfuls. "Taking care of people."
"I take care of what is mine," he replied simply. He reached for her wine glass, taking a slow sip, his dark eyes never leaving her face. "And you took care of me. Even if your method was… extreme."
Lola set the empty plate on the coffee table and curled her legs beneath her, shifting so she could face him fully. She reached out, her fingertips lightly tracing his arm. "I just couldn't stand the thought of sitting in that control room, watching something I didn’t agree with. I love you, Penta. I wasn't going to let them ruin it."
It was the first time she had said the words out loud, dropping them into the quiet space between them without fanfare or hesitation.
Penta’s breath hitched. The guarded, intense expression he usually wore melted away entirely, leaving him looking open and beautifully vulnerable. He set the wine glass down with a sharp clink and pulled her into his lap. His mouth found hers, and the kiss was different than the desperate, hungry ones they had shared before. This one was a vow. It was slow, deep, and grounded, tasting of red wine and the overwhelming relief of a shared burden.
When they finally broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers again. "Te amo, Lola," he whispered fiercely, the Spanish rolling off his tongue with a gravelly weight.
Penta shifted, pulling her back so she was lying against his chest, her head pillowed over his heartbeat. He reached over to the end table, grabbed her cell phone, and deliberately powered it off, dropping it face down.
"Tomorrow is tomorrow," Penta murmured, his fingers trailing lazily through her hair, massaging the tension from her scalp. "Tonight, there is no Hunter. There is no storyline. There is just us."
Lola closed her eyes, the last of her anxiety dissolving into the dark. The wrestling world, the cameras, and the corporate machine were still out there, waiting. But as Penta's steady breathing lulled her toward sleep, she finally felt completely safe.
———
The morning light in Lola’s apartment was usually something she ignored, a harsh reminder to check her phone and start putting out the day’s fires. But today, the sunlight spilling through the blinds felt different. It was softer, catching the dust motes dancing above the bed and illuminating the heavy, tattooed arm draped over her waist.
Lola blinked awake, her senses slowly coming online. The first thing she registered was the heat radiating from Penta’s chest against her back. The second was the quiet. There were no ringing headsets, no frantic text notifications, just the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing. She turned carefully, trying not to wake him, but as she shifted, his arm tightened instinctively, pulling her flush against him.
Penta’s eyes fluttered open. Without the mask, his face in the morning light looked impossibly soft, the sharp, guarded edges replaced by a sleepy contentment. He blinked, focusing on her face, and a slow, genuine smile spread across his lips.
"Buenos días," he murmured, his voice a gravelly rasp completely devoid of its usual arena projection.
"Morning," Lola whispered back, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw. "You take up a lot of space, you know that?"
Penta chuckled, a low rumble against her collarbone. He leaned in, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead. "I told you. I take care of what is mine. That includes the bed…and the woman in it."
He rolled onto his back, stretching his arms above his head with a groan of popping joints; the physical toll of his profession momentarily visible before turning his dark eyes back to her. The reality of the past few days was beginning to seep into the room, creeping under the door like a draft.
He reached for her blindly, his arm snaking out from beneath the tangled sheets to seek the warmth that had already become indispensable. He caught her wrist and tugged her forward, gentle but insistent, until their faces were level and she hovered above him, hair tumbling across his chest in a waterfall. For a moment she propped herself up on her elbows, taking in the incongruous sight of him flat on his back, maskless, morning-stubbled, and smiling up at her like a man who had never once considered the possibility of heartbreak.
She laughed, breathless, unable to resist the gravitational pull of his hands guiding her to straddle his hips. The motion was effortless, practiced, as if they'd spent every morning of their lives reconciling the space between bodies. His fingers traced slow, absent-minded circles over her thighs, drawing patterns that felt at once ancient and brand new. She braced herself with a palm on either side of his head, and he grinned, teeth flashing sharp and white in the diffused light.
"Is this how all the best luchadors wake up?" she murmured, voice husky and soft, her body already fitting itself to the lines of his chest and the ridges of the scars he wore with such ease.
"Only the very, very lucky ones," he replied, the words a low rumble that vibrated through her. He reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, thumb lingering on the delicate line of her cheekbone. His eyes, so fearsome in the ring and so devastatingly earnest now, searched her face with unhurried affection.
She bent down until their foreheads touched, the tip of her nose brushing his. "I could get used to this," she whispered, meaning more than just the shared bed or the slow sunrise or the easy laughter. She felt it in her bones, the possibility of a life uncoupled from perpetual crisis.
He nodded, the motion barely perceptible, and let his hands settle on her lower back, anchoring her there like he intended to keep her in that moment indefinitely. "Then you should," he whispered back, and before she could answer he rolled them both in a single, fluid motion, the way he might reverse a pin in the ring. She let out a startled yelp that dissolved into laughter as he pinned her arms above her head, his weight deliciously solid on top of her.
She squirmed beneath him, feigning protest, but he just grinned wider and dipped his scrape his teeth over her earlobe, "You're ridiculous," she said, and he nodded solemnly.
"Sí," he agreed. "Ridiculous for you."
Her arms were pinned overhead with a single, sure grip, Penta’s fingers easily circled both her slender wrists, holding them against the mattress as if she’d ever truly wanted to escape. His body pressed her into the sheets, heavy and immovable, and she felt both owned and worshipped, each nerve ending awake and greedy for his touch. He grinned over her, a wolfish glint in his eyes, and then bent his head, catching the hem of her tank top between his teeth. The fabric stretched tight across her stomach, riding up slowly, every inch a calculated tease. His stubble rasped against her skin as he tugged the shirt higher, inch by inch, the heat of his breath ghosting over her belly, her ribs, the curve of her breast.
She arched up, trying to help or maybe to dare him further, but he only tightened his hold on her wrists, a silent command to stay put. Light and shadow played across his face as he shifted, the morning sun turning his usually intimidating features strangely gentle, almost boyish in their anticipation. He let go of her wrists for just a moment, just long enough to pull her shirt over her head in one smooth, practiced motion. Then his hands returned, not to restrain her this time but to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking over her cheeks.
For a moment he hovered, just looking at her, as if trying to memorize the precise arrangement of freckles and scars and sleep-creased skin. She found herself holding her breath, waiting for the next move, and sensed that he was doing the same. It wasn’t about rushing or taking; it was about savoring the rare, precious seconds when they could pretend there was no war, no vendetta, no monstrous expectations waiting for them outside this narrow bed.
"You are so beautiful like this," he said, voice low and reverent, and even though Lola had always thought herself immune to cheap lines, the way he said it made her believe it, just for a heartbeat. She reached up, tugging him down by the back of his neck until their mouths met, slow and greedy at once. His hands skimmed down her sides, relearning the length of her, his touch alternately gentle and rough, always exactly what she didn’t know she needed.
She wondered if he felt the same sense of suspended reality, this fragile, unsustainable peace. Maybe that was why he held her so tightly, as if to keep her from dissolving when the morning inevitably broke.
He shifted his weight, rolling them again until she was back on top, her knees bracketing his hips. She braced herself on his chest, feeling his heart race beneath her palms. He just looked at her, hands resting lightly on her thighs, grounding her in the moment.
"Your move, boss," he murmured, softened with affection, and she laughed, surprised at the catch in her own voice.
"Oh, I’ll make my move," she promised, and in the golden morning light, she believed it.
She pushed herself upright, palms planted on the hard muscle of his chest, and rocked her hips back until she perched on his thighs. The sheets bunched up behind her, pooling around her waist, leaving the two of them exposed to the rectangle of warm sunlight that sliced across the bed. Lola felt the shift in air as she drew herself up, her hair falling in loose tangles down her back, and looked down over him with a sly, appraising gaze. She let her fingers trail down his torso, following the dark line of hair that arrowed toward the waistband of his boxers, the motion deliberate and almost lazy in its confidence.
She hesitated for effect, she could feel Penta’s attention sharpen, his breathing quicken and slow, waiting for her next move like a predator biding his time. Her nails scraped lightly over the ridges of his abs, a teasing threat of pain, before she hooked her fingers beneath the elastic. She didn’t tug, not yet. Instead, she made a show of tracing the edge, pulling it away from his skin and letting it snap back with a soft pop. Her grin was wicked; she met his gaze and held it, daring him to break the spell.
He didn’t. He watched her, eyes dark and hungry and unwavering, mouth slightly parted. He made no move to stop her, or to urge her onward, he simply waited, muscles tensed and ready, surrendering the initiative to her in a way that said everything about the kind of power they could safely trade here, in private, with nobody watching. It was a luxury neither of them had ever really believed in, and she wasn’t about to waste a second of it.
The sun caught the tattoo on his hip, distorted by the flex and release of muscle as he shifted beneath her. She leaned over, brushed her lips over the ink, then straightened again, hands returning to the band of his boxers. Her pulse thrummed in her wrists; she had the dizzying sense that she could do anything, say anything, and he would simply receive it, hold it, give it back. So she pushed her luck.
"You gonna just lie there and look pretty?" she asked, voice low but full of mischief.
He lifted his head just enough to see her more clearly and shrugged, a single fluid motion. "If the boss says so," he replied, echoing her words from earlier.
She laughed, and this time it was bright and unselfconscious, the kind of laugh that left her feeling a little off-balance and utterly alive. She let her hands resume their exploration, finally easing the waistband down, inch by inch, exposing more of his skin to the light and to her touch. She watched his eyes go half-lidded, saw the way his breath shivered as she went lower, saw the anticipation transform into something raw and unguarded.
She leaned forward, hair falling forward like a curtain, and nipped at his collarbone. "I think I like this version of you," she whispered.
"Good," he said, voice gravelly with want. "It’s yours."
She felt something clench and spark in her chest, sharp and bright, a pulse of sensation that was almost vertigo, as if the ground beneath her knees had abruptly tilted toward a drop. It wasn’t just lust, though God knew that was there, coiling hot and urgent in her belly, but a heady, terrifying sense of consequence, of what this morning meant, of the thousand futures that might unspool from a single, deliberate act. She hesitated, her hands gripped tight around the band of his boxers, thumbs pressing into the lines of his hipbones, feeling the wild, steady thrum of his pulse beneath her fingers. His gaze was fixed on hers, face slack with anticipation, the slight furrow of his brow the only sign that he was as thrown by this as she was.
The next motion was deliberate, ceremonial. She tugged his boxers lower, the elastic resisting for a moment before yielding, then sliding over his hips, down his thighs, bunching around his knees. The exposed skin was impossibly warm, alive in the cold air that sliced across the bed, and she marveled at how familiar and alien it felt at once, this man she was beginning to know better than her own reflection, suddenly revealed in a context that made him a stranger again.
She paused, let her gaze wander the length of him, the contrasting lines of violence and vulnerability etched into his body. Scars, old and new, interrupted the topography of muscle; she traced one with her finger, not as an afterthought but as a promise, a worshipful acknowledgment of what he’d survived.
He made a small, involuntary sound, somewhere between a sigh and a growl and reached for her, but she swatted his hands away with a look that said, Not yet. She wanted to memorize him, unguarded and unmasked, for just another moment. The light caught the sheen of sweat already starting to bead at his sternum; she leaned down and licked it away, salt and warmth, and felt him shiver hard beneath her. His hands fisted in the sheets, the only concession to his need, and she felt power and tenderness twist together inside her, indistinguishable.
She closed her fingers around him, the motion slow and almost reverential, as if she were handling something rare, or breakable, or both. The heat of him startled her even now, every time; it was as if some private furnace lived just below his skin, as if beneath the veneer of muscle and ink lay a coal seam that would never cool. She took her time, mapping the shape and texture of him with thumb and palm and the lightest press of her nails, learning him anew with every flex and twitch. He hissed a breath through his teeth, the sound all the more satisfying for how he tried to muffle it, and she smiled, a wicked, lazy thing that was all satisfaction and promise.
She shifted her weight, sitting on her knees between his legs, and let her free hand splay across his hip, holding him down as if he were in danger of bolting. The power in the gesture surprised her, the sense of control both intoxicating and delicate, as if she could steer the whole future by the angle of her wrist or the pressure of her grip. She moved slowly at first; deliberate, almost clinical strokes, a metronome of pleasure designed to keep him at the edge but never push him over. She watched his face for every tremor, every tightening of his jaw, and relished the way his composure would flicker and nearly fail with each pass of her hand.
He reached for her, then, a reflex or maybe a challenge, but she stilled him with a look; a warning or a dare, she wasn’t sure. He let his arms fall back, fingers digging into the sheets, surrender absolute except for the pulsing insistence of his need. She felt a surge of fondness and something more dangerous, a desire to mark him with this memory, to leave him ruined for anyone else who might try to touch him this way.
She leaned in, her hair brushing his lower belly, and pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh, soft, almost apologetic, a benediction before the breaking. He shuddered, his whole body taut as a bowstring, and she trailed her tongue upward in a slow, meandering path. She kept her eyes on his, wanting him to see her, to know that this was no accident or mercy but a choice she was making, again and again, for as long as the world allowed it.
She let her tongue flick over him, the taste sharp and intimate. She sucked him into her mouth, slow at first, and closed her eyes at the violent tenderness of the sensation, how it filled her, how it erased everything except the press of her tongue and the impossible heat of his skin and the quiet, ragged breaths she drew between each motion. Her jaw ached, but she wanted that; she wanted to remember it later, the soreness a reminder of her choice.
Above her, she heard the start of a curse, a raw sound that trailed off into a groan as she took him deeper, hollowed her cheeks, and worked her hand at the base to match the lazy rhythm of her mouth. She set the pace to drive him crazy, incremental increases in pressure, then slackening off, then building again; she wanted him helpless, wanted him to have no control over the pleasure that she gave, wanted to prove that she could hold him together and then break him apart with nothing but her mouth and her will. She could almost feel the fight inside him: the urge to thrust up or to grab her hair, the pride that made him want to hold on and the need that would eventually make him let go.
“Look at me.”
He obeyed; the effect was electric, seeing him lock in on her, seeing the raw, helpless need there, the war between wanting to let go or to hold it back forever.
The hunger in his eyes was almost an electric current, thrumming from him to her and back. His hands gripped the bunched sheets at his sides, tendons straining, every muscle locked. For a moment it was just them, the bed, the sunlight, and the wet, obscene sounds her mouth coaxed from his body, growing wetter, dirtier, needier with each desperate flick of tongue and twist of wrist. She let herself play with him, savoring the way he moaned her name, the broken whispers of Lola, Amor, por favor, as if the words alone might save him from flying to pieces.
Lola slipped her hand between his legs, cupping, squeezing, rolling the weight of him in her palm the way she remembered he liked, and he bucked, losing the careful rhythm they'd built together. She relished the loss of control, the way his head thudded back against the pillow, the way his hands finally invaded her space, fisting her hair in desperate handfuls, cradling and guiding but never forcing.
“If you don’t stop…amor, por favor.” he begged softly.
She released him with a soft ‘pop’ and stretched, catlike, over his body, letting her skin brush and drag along his, savoring the friction. Her hair swept over his ribs and hips, and she felt the way his hands twitched, wanting to seize her, to flip her, to take, and how he held himself back, letting her set the terms with a trust that was as rare as it was fragile. For a heartbeat, she hovered there, just breathing him in, letting the weight of what she was about to do settle between them. She kissed her way up his body, slow and exploratory, tasting sweat and skin and morning, and when she reached his mouth, he met her with a hunger that was half gratitude, half plea.
She broke the kiss, grinning against his lips. “You gonna behave?” she whispered. He smiled back, a dazed and crooked thing. “Not if I can help it.”
She felt his hands tighten on the fleshy backs of her thighs, thumbs pressing out against the muscles, then sliding inward in a slow, kneading motion. It made her shiver, sparks jumping from her knees to her sternum, but she kept her balance and her cool, rocking her hips forward just enough to feel how hard he was for her, the heat of it pushing up against her and making her catch her breath.
He held himself there, letting her set the pace, letting her feel every inch of his want. It was the patience that undid her. The way he could take all of her teasing and not rush to tip the board. That, more than anything, drove her pulse into frantic staccato.
She reached out, threading her fingers into his dark hair, still messy from sleep and whatever complicated dreams had brought him into the morning this soft. She pulled him up, brought his mouth to her collarbone, her neck. He kissed her like he was trying to start a fire with just his lips, nuzzling at the tender spot under her jaw until she writhed.
His hand drifted from her thigh, fingers hooking into the curve of her ass, then sliding further up, tracing the bottom edge of her breast. He slid his other hand up her bare back, fingers splaying wide under her shoulder blades, and bucked his hips once, hard, so she collapsed against his chest with a muffled curse.
She felt, before she registered, the thickness of him pressed against her, the steady heat of his hunger shameless and unmasked. She smiled thinking, he’d wake up to a five-alarm fire and try to fuck it into submission. She ground down, slowly at first, then with purpose, and watched his face contort with a rush of pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain. She loved that.
Neither of them wanted to drag this out; there was too much history, too much muscle memory, driving them forward. With the patience only barely earned, he reached between them and fit himself to her, the heavy, blunt pressure of it so impossible not to think of anything but how perfectly, monstrously good it felt to have him inside her again. She pushed down, the initial burn fading to fullness, anchoring herself on the bones of his hips as she took all of him. She could feel every pulse, every twitch, the answer to some question she’d forgotten she’d ever asked.
Penta let out a gasp, the sound so intimate and so full of need it felt like a secret she needed to guard. She set the rhythm, a slow undulation, savoring the friction and finding a groove that felt less like fucking and more like a territorial claim. His arms wrapped under and around her, dragging her down until her torso pressed tight against his, nipples grazing his chest, her heart smacking the inside of her ribs, running triple time against his. He set his chin on her shoulder and whispered her name, rhythmically.
She wanted him wild. She wanted him to lose the leash, to come apart under her. So she upped the tempo, flexing her thighs, grinding in little circles that made both of them see flashbulbs on the insides of their eyelids.
He matched her pace, hips thrusting up, then pulling back, then up again. The pressure inside her grew with alarming speed, until the only sound in the room was the slick, desperate cadence of bodies colliding, hers driving the pace, his driving the depth. Neither of them said a word, as if even a syllable might shatter the spell. She heard only the rough scrape of his breath, the groaned curses in Spanish and English.
She rode him harder, chasing something beyond the quick, dirty heat of orgasm; the sense of being seen, of being claimed, of knowing that no performance for any camera could touch the unfiltered truth of this. She felt her own orgasm building, an ache that gathered low and slow until it twisted sharp behind her ribs. He dug his fingers into her ass, holding her steady so he could fuck up into her, the force of each movement making her gasp that much louder. She realized, in a flash of lucidity, that she wanted the neighbors to hear, wanted the world to know that she was taking this for herself, and for him, and for every unguarded morning they’d ever doubted was possible.
Lola had always considered herself composed, a woman who could master her own appetites, keep her body in check even as she let the world think she was running loose. But when it finally hit her; when the pressure inside her snapped she wasn’t prepared for how total the detonation would be. Her thighs locked around him, trembling with an intensity that bordered on violence. It was like being struck by a live current, her body arching and caving and grasping for some impossible anchor as the contraction overtook her.
She ground down with a force that threatened to bruise them both, and the sound that tore from her throat was nothing she’d meant to release; half shriek, half sob, as if pleasure and pain had fused into a single, wordless demand. For a moment she floated at the edge of herself, blind and shuddering, helpless to anything but the bright, obliterating pleasure radiating out from her center. The bedframe rattled, the sunlight shimmered behind the red scrim of her eyelids, and all she could taste was the salt of his skin and the blood-sharp tang of her own bitten lip. She clung to him, nails digging into his shoulders, desperate to ground herself in the heat of his body, the reality of his hands and the wild, animal sounds he made as she broke apart above him.
The involuntary crescendo of her climax snapped something in Penta. He’d been holding back, even when he’d begged her to stop, even when he’d surrendered to her every whim, but hearing her lose herself, hearing her cry out, shattered the last of his willpower. He bucked up into her, hard, the urgency in his body suddenly feral, his control gone. She felt the way his grip on her hips shifted from tender to bruising, how his whole body went rigid, then shuddered in perfect sync with her own tremors, his release as immediate and wild as hers had been. He clutched her to him, gasping and cursing into her hair, his fingers splayed so wide it was as if he wanted to memorize the shape of her body, to hold it inside himself forever.
She tried to move, to shift the weight of him from under her, but before she could accomplish more than a twitch of muscle, Penta’s hands locked hard around the rise of her hips. She grunted in surprise. The pressure of his fingers, calloused, hot, flattened the air between them into something bright and tensile. “Not yet,” he said. His tone was calm and rough, the fray of restraint underlaid with a promise.
Lola stilled, poised and alert, bracing herself on his chest with both hands and feeling the desperate throb of his heart beneath her palms. He flexed his grip, thumbs digging deeper, pressing her down until she could do nothing but yield to what he wanted. She grinned, tried to wiggle free anyway, but he just laughed softly and manhandled her back into place, pinning her with a kind of reverence. The words, not yet, hung between them like a magic spell, and she felt herself go pliant; amused, curious, turned on by the sheer gall of him.
He coaxed her back into a slow, rolling grind, guiding her hips with both hands, dictating the rhythm and pace until even the fleeting thought of escape felt ridiculous. There was no room for pretense, no daylight between their bodies, just the slick, delirious heat of flesh on flesh and the fine tremor of muscles exhausted but unwilling to quit. His hands roved, one slipping up her spine to cup the nape of her neck, the other holding her steady, and she realized he wanted her to ride the aftershocks, to wring every last fragment of sensation from the moment before letting it go.
She gave in. She let him tilt her forward, let him keep her so close she could barely breathe without tasting him. Her hair fell into his face, and he didn’t brush it aside, just nosed through it, lips grazing her jaw as he drew her down. Each movement felt like the end of the world: tiny detonations rippling outward, echoing in her bones. She closed her eyes and let herself be piloted, steered by his insistence, until all that remained was the rhythm and the bright, empty space inside her head.
He whispered again, lower this time, as if it belonged only to him, "Mi principio y mi fin." (My beginning and my end)
𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: woke up yesterday morning with jari on my mind. big head dropped the video, and here we are. this takes place shortly before the first chapter. there might be a hint or two in this one...
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: joe anoa'i (roman reigns) x black!oc
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 4.5k+
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: angst. fluff. some spice.
𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭: graphic made by me. dividers by @cursed-carmine
𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 + 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
January, 2024
There are a several other things, many other things, that Mariella would rather be doing right now.
Skiing. Pilates. Unclogging her bathroom drain. Mowing the lawn of her massive ass estate, even though the one time she tried to surprise her dad on Father’s Day by doing the yard work, she ended up in a cast for six weeks.
Even that, however, would be preferred over this.
Anything would be preferred over this.
He hasn’t looked up from the phone in his hand, though in his defense, neither has she. Not outside of the subtle glances here and there she’s snuck in his direction since they climbed into the back of the SUV. Glances that never last long and only seem to further irritate her. Make her wish she’d sat in the middle row instead. The empty seat and space between them may mimic more than just the literal, but it’s not enough.
Them being hundreds of thousands miles apart from one another that was the amount of distance between them while she was on tour….that….that was enough.
But, that was then, and this is now. And now is not only award season for her but Mania season for him.
It’s time to emphasize the Academy Award winning actress in her Wikipedia article.
Too bad no one can ever know the best and most awarded performance of her life was not as Ally Bell in A Star Is Born.
It’s as Mariella Anoa’i.
Unlocking her phone and tapping her foot against the floor of the SUV, she turns her head and looks out the window, reaching to lower it, hopeful that the outside breeze will flow in and out some of the tension that follows whenever he’s around.
More specifically, when he’s around and they’re alone.
“Don’t open it.”
Mari turns to look at her husband and immediately regrets it, because while her eyes roam over him—the fitted, short sleeved back dress shirt, dark shorts, and Nike sneakers far too simple of a combination to look that good—his eyes remain lowered. Still focused on the phone in his hand.
Just like that, uncomfortable feelings of lust are shoved to the side and replaced with irritation at his interjection but also the fact that he can’t even be bothered to look at her.
What an asshole.
“Why?”
Another tier of frustration is reached when he continues to type away on the iPhone Max that looks like a fucking mini in his big ass hands. Still with no eye contact.
“Your hair is down,” he answers. “The wind will fuck with it, and then you’ll be irritated because it’s messed up.”
Mari isn’t sure what steals the honor of first place in the annoyance category. The fact that he’s still focused on that damn phone, that he’s trying to tell her what to do, or that he’s right.
Perhaps it’s all three.
Regardless, the winner doesn’t matter when all three are rewarded with the same prize. “I think I’ll be fine.”
Except, it’s her dismissal that finally grants her eye contact that, at this point, she couldn’t give two shits about.
It’s always after the fact with him…
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fucking hell, Mariella.” Index finger tapping against the button, she watches the way his mouth shifts into a frown, phone once in his lap now on the empty seat between them. “Why do you always have to be so goddamn difficult?”
“I’m difficult?” At that, the desire to lower the window is a null and void point. Nothing is capable of easing or cutting this tension that’s only about to grow as they approach yet another argument. It’s their third of the day. Maybe even forth. “I know this might be a shocker to you, what with your ego being almost as big as your fucking head, but difficult people don’t agree to attend promotional events with their spouses to benefit their career—”
“Me?” He points to himself, Mariella unable to ignore whatever ticks in her stomach at the sight of the black band on his wedding finger. A finger that was empty this morning as they maneuvered around each other in the kitchen. Half sleep, trying to brew some coffee to help her wakeup while he mixed up his protein drink, towel over his shoulder after finishing up a workout. “You really gon’ sit there and act like this don’t benefit you just as much as it benefits me?” He shakes his head, grabbing his phone once more. “You sound fucking stupid right now.”
It takes her back for a moment. Mariella should be used to this. Used to this mean, cruel side of him. It’s been the norm for almost two years now, but for some reason, it’s as if she’s taken back to a few years prior. Where he’d act like he was incapable of keeping his hands off of her, her straddling his lap, giggling into his mouth and playfully warning him not to mess up her makeup. Simpler times.
Happier times.
But, those are no more. It doesn’t make sense to dwell on what will never be the same again. “Excuse me?” She’s half tempted to snatch that phone out of his hand but ultimately decides not to.
She doesn’t want to risk seeing what’s on it.
Knowing is one thing. Seeing is another.
Been there. Done that.
Never again.
“I’m stupid?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s not what I said.”
Her jaw drops. He can’t seriously think he can gaslight her like this, can he? “That’s exactly what you said—”
“God, you literally never listen—”
“I don’t have to listen to you, Joe—”
“No, you don’t want to listen. That’s the problem. That’s always been the fucking—”
“Umm—”
It’s the introduction of a new voice, one not belonging to Mariella or Joe that interrupts their heated argument and brings them both to a state of realization and remembrance.
Realizing that they’ve clearly arrived at their destination as the vehicle is stilled and remembering that it’s not just the two of them but the driver that makes nervous eye contact through the rearview mirror.
Mariella looks away and closes her eyes.
Thank God for the automatic NDA’s signed by most drivers contracted through either her team or Joe’s. Regardless, she hates that once again he got under her skin just enough to get her out of character. And perhaps the same can be said for him.
Except, once more, a masterful performance is put on the minute the door is opened and Joe offers his hand for his wife to climb out after him. Mari whips out that million dollar smile and waves at the paparazzi who snap photos and bombard the famous duo with question after question, most of which she doesn’t pay attention to. Just how she doesn’t pay attention to the way Joe brushes his thumb over her knuckles, like he always did—or does—when they’re out in public. Primarily walking red carpets. Back during the early stages of her career when watching award shows on their crappy 30 inch television in an even crappier apartment turned into her not only attending but sometimes performing at said award shows.
There was always a bit of anxiety that made her nervous and had her reaching for clinical strength deodorant to help with the extra sweating that always accompanied her anxiety. But, it was always helped by when and if her husband could attend with her. The brush a gentle reminder that she had this. That he was here.
And, that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Again, that pitted feeling in the base of her stomach.
God, how things have changed.
——————
It’s a brand event. Hosted by Fanatics and Omega in early promotion and buildup for WrestleMania in a couple months. For Joe, as she stated, but also, like he stated, for herself, as it’s award season, and she she currently leads the nominations in most major categories, including the Grammys.
Guided towards a room where he’s shown the items they’d picked out not only for him but her as well. Watches that cost more than some make in a year before taxes shown to the power couple as she playfully interacts with the staff and makes her usual joking comment or two, ensuring to feign the role exactly as she’s rehearsed and done over the past few years now. That’s not the hardest part though. The hardest part always comes in the form of the photography and video aspect. When a camera is placed in front of them either for photoshoot purposes or promotional videos.
Today is both.
She adjusts her strapless top at least once or twice, D’s sitting nice and cleavage perked up, the black stretch pants holding in her tummy just enough while still accentuating the deep curve of her ass. Finished off with some accessors and black heels, white polish on her toes the perfect contrast to her warm brown complexion. The perfect not too much but just enough outfit for the occasion. Like most shoots, their poses are directed though most stem from muscle memory and having done so ten million times over.
Her holding and hugging him, hopping on his back, his arms around her, holding her from the back. The hand on her ass and playful grope of her breast. The more seductive and steamy photos. Mari is used to it all.
But, truth be told—not that she would admit it to her narcissist of a husband—neither of them really need to do much promotion at all. They’ve both reached a point in their careers where less is just as much as more. An interview and appearance here and there along with social media posts would be just as good.
It’s something that she plans to bring up sooner rather than later, because though she plays her role well, occasional glances and touches between the two of them, like everything is fine when everything is wrong, it’s a miserable experience. Mariella has always been an honest, transparent person. What you see is what you get, so to sit here and laugh and smile like the supportive, loving wife that everyone thinks she is….it’s uncomfortable, to say the least.
And, she’d bet the man sitting beside her feels the same.
Naturally, as it’s a sports related event, many of the questions are directed towards Joe, as he easily slips in and out of character depending on what’s being asked. It used to impress her. How he maneuvered the two sides of him with ease. Roman and Joe.
Now….now they just feel one and the same.
Roman is who he’s always been.
Joe is just who he pretended to be.
At least, as it pertained to their marriage. Their entire relationship, possibly.
“Now, of course, it would be remiss of me to not congratulate you on your historic nine nominations at the Grammy’s this year, Mari.” It’s the interviewers redirection towards Mariella that allows her to widen her smile and clap happily, the latter less performative and more of her actual reaction. It still blows her mind to think that she is the most nominated artist this year, including the coveted record, song, and album of the year categories. “Has it set in yet?”
She has to think about it. “Yes and no. I mean, I was still on tour at the time when they were announced, so I was literally about to go on stage and was so focused on the show that I don’t think I gave myself the time to really sit on it. And, I just got back home a few days ago, so…I don’t know.” She sighs dramatically, giggling and shrugging. “I’m very honored and blessed though. Immensely grateful, too.”
For her fans, especially. She couldn’t have asked for a better fan base. They support her in any and all the ways, and it’s played such a massive role in her success.
“That’s so awesome” Erin, the interviewer, nods, green eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “And, of course, another big congrats on the tour. The second highest grossing tour of all time for a female artist .” Mari is eternally grateful Erin doesn’t bring up the lady who holds the number one spot. She’s already faking the shit with her husband; she doesn’t feel like doing it for the sake of not wanting to deal with the psychotic swifties. “Seriously, you have just been killing it the past few years.” Mari readies to thank her for the massive compliment, a true, genuine gesture when Erin’s eyes flicker to Joe. “You must be insanely proud of her.”
How she manages to remain in “character” is a miracle to Mari. She shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a natural, expected follow-up considering the public image regarding her marriage, but still, there’s something moderately uncomfortable that has her shift in her seat, playing it off as she turns to look at him.
The discomfort shifts to shock though as Joe answers with natural ease. “For sure. I’ve always been proud of her, and I always will be.” A beat. “But, none of it’s a surprise. Mariella is single handedly the most talented, creative person I’ve ever met. There’s no one like her, and there never will be another after her.”
If not for the bright lights, cameras, and woman across from them, Mari is certain that she’d allow her outward reaction to be mirrored by what brews within. The flutters in her stomach and tightening in her chest not from stress or irritation but something genuine and authentic. The lingering feelings hidden underneath layers of hurt and anger that always stir just ever so slightly whenever they have to “fake” it.
Because, truth be told, it’s not 100% faking.
To some extent, the way she leans over, holding his arm, head laid against his shoulder and the brush of his lips atop her head feels a hell of a lot more real than anything she’s felt with him in some time.
——————
Joe’s words stick with her like a melody she can’t get out of her head. Except, unlike a simple trip to the recording studio, either the one in their home or fifteen minutes away, the solution is not an easy one. Mari isn’t even really sure what a solution would look like.
She can’t talk to him.
She doesn’t even know what the hell she would say. Or, rather, she’s not able to bring herself to admit what she should say.
“You saying that about me makes me wonder if you actually still feel that way or if it was just another masterful performance.”
Because Joe has said as such to her before. Over and over again. Even before she finally “made it big.” Once upon a time, he was her biggest fan, and she, his. But, that feels so long ago. Like a lifetime ago. Who they were then is vastly different from who they are now.
But, it’s moments like this, experiences like this, that make her wonder. Wonder if the past is not as inaccessible as she often believes.
The fact that “acting” like she’s still madly and stupidly in love with him doesn’t always feel like a performance in as much as it feels like attempts to recreate.
To revive.
It’s these thoughts and a million and one more that result in her doing what, to be fair, Mari has always done best.
Finding herself in a situation that only she could get into.
How exactly it happens is a mystery in and of itself. One minute she’s walking out the kitchen with a bowl full of goldfish in her hand, and the next she sees herself about to fall, feels the pending fall, and makes a last attempt effort to reach for a lifeline. Grabs for the back of the stool by the island only for it to accompany her on the descent down.
She curses loudly, palms down on the hardwood flooring, goldfish crunched and smashed under the weight of her. The sight of the barstool across her legs that accounts for the pain shooting up her lower half.
“How the hell—” She turns to look over her shoulder, Joe standing there with his hands on his hips. Like herself, he’s changed out of his clothes and into some basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. His hair is down and brushes against the sides of his face as he shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Always something with your ass.”
His last statement, however, makes her groan and huff. “I’m fine.” Except, the minute she attempts to get up, completely forgetting the barstool across her legs, she’s proven wrong. “Okay, maybe I'm not.”
Joe is already three steps ahead of her—literally and figuratively. He places the barstool back upright and offers his hand to help her to her feet, which she ignores only to end up braced against him when she almost tumbles while trying to stand up.
“Stubborn ass,” he murmurs, but she’s too distracted by the feel of his hard chest under her palms and how good he smells. Neither of which should really faze her, because the man has always been fine as hell, and he always smells good.
But, it’s being in this close proximity again….especially for reasons not related to public obligation.
A loud gasp leaves her mouth when he lifts her up and places her on the island, scooting her back just enough so he can examine her legs. That shift allowing her to realize just why he turns away almost immediately and opens the cabinet under the double sinks.
There’s a nasty cut on her left shin, most likely sustained from either the metal legs of the barstool or, hell, maybe even the damn goldfish. It wouldn’t be far fetched.
Injuries always seem to find her one way or another.
Joe returns, first aid kit open on the island beside her as he pulls out the required items.
The silence bothers her, a low, “I’m fine” the only thing she can say as he darts his gaze to her, looking at her through those long eyelashes of his.
He gestures down to her leg. “This look fine to you?”
“I’ve had worse.”
He chuckles. “You’re not wrong about that.” Mari’s eyes remain on him, studying the outline of his broad shoulders and back as he turns to wet the cloth with warm water. While he’s lost some weight and leaned out over the past two years, it hasn’t changed a damn thing about how big he is. In some ways, he seems and feels even bigger.
Just as fine, too.
Actually, that’s a lie, and she realizes it when he turns back around to finish cleaning up her wound. Mari studies the grays spread throughout his beard and mustache, some silky white strings mingled in his locs, the fine lines in his face and light bags under his eyes. Joe will be turning forty this year, and while some level of aging is evident in his changed appearance, it’s also somehow made him look even better.
He’s even finer than he was when they were younger.
And, that’s saying something.
“Do I even wanna know how this happened?”
She’s grateful for his question, because it redirects her to the more important thing at hand, like pushing back some of her hair behind her ear and being obtuse.
“I plead the fifth.”
“So, you tripped.”
“Allegedly.”
Once more, he gestures to the proof before them. “This don’t look very alleged to me.”
“Well, you don’t have your glasses on and you’re old now so your two cents is invalid anyway.”
“Well, you’re four years younger than me and you don’t even wear glasses yet your ass still somehow tripped over air, so what’s your excuse?”
Mari gasps loudly and leans forward to shove on his shoulder. “Shut up, old man.”
It’s not missed upon her the way the corners of his mouth lift into a small, amused smile that mirrors the one on her own face.
Both remain as he gently taps on her calf. “Can you roll your ankle for me?” She does as he asks, the wince on her face giving away the discomfort. “Hurt?”
She nods. “But, not sprained or broken hurt.” It’s a distinction she knows well, as she’s had both happen before. More than once, actually. “Do you…” Her smile widens as she shakes her head. “Do you remember the first time I broke my ankle?”
Joe’s eyes squint as if his mind is working overtime to recall what she’s referring to, only for him to roll his eyes and also shake his head. “It was one of the fifteen different times you broke down on the side of the road because you ran out of gas.”
“Okay, in my defense, how was I supposed to know that gas thingy—”
“The fuel range?”
“That liar.” She glares, recalling the way it betrayed her, making her think she could make it home and just get gas the next day. The deception. “But, yeah, and all I was trying to do was help you out—”
He cuts her off, pointing out what she can still hear him saying that warm summer day. “you would have helped me out by staying your ass in the car like I told you to.”
Joe had been clear in his instructions. Told her to wait in the car while he gave her a jump. But, she’d felt bad calling him. He and BJ just got back home for summer break the night prior, and he had to have been exhausted. Mari felt terrible about him having to come out so late to meet and save her. She just wanted to help but somehow tripped over something, faceplanted on the ground, and spent the rest of the evening in the ER with what was later diagnosed as a broken ankle.
“Sorry for trying to be helpful.”
Ignoring the petulant pout on her face, he steps back and reaches for her. “Come on.”
Mari obliges and slides to the edges off the counter until she’s standing on her feet. But, once again, she moves too fast.
“Whoa.” His hands are on her hips, hers back on his chest, her fingers slowly raking at his shirt as he keeps her upright. “But, you’re fine, right?”
“Shut up,” she repeats, lightly shoving him away, but he doesn’t budge. What does slip though is the small smile on his face. It slips into something….something else.
She does the same. Mari is fully aware of the way his fingers lightly dig into her skin through her shorts as well as how his eyes bounce back and forth from her eyes to her mouth.
Maybe it’s the lingering emotions from their interview from earlier. Maybe it’s the lingering emotions and tension that brews whenever they’re around one another. What lies beneath thick layers of hurt and betrayal. Or, maybe a combination of everything. Whatever the case and cause, she just knows it has to be that which doesn’t cause her to pull away when he kisses her.
It makes her kiss him back.
Makes her wrap her arms around his neck as he roams his hands to her backside, squeezing her ass at the same time he runs his tongue over her bottom lip before using it to part her lips. She moans into his mouth, at the taste of him—clean and spearmint—as her hands move to the sides of his neck, his hair grazing the back of her hands. Her thumb brushing over the top of his earlobe the thing that earns her a groan as he hikes her up on his waist and props her back onto the island.
Standing between her spread thighs, he tugs her to the edge, Mari gently biting down on his bottom lip. Her eyes flutter as he breaks their kiss only to drag his mouth along the perimeter of her jawline before shifting once more to her neck. She grasps at his biceps and locks her ankles just below his ass as he greedily sucks that sensitive spot.
“Joe…”
Her body is on fire, her stomach is in all sorts of knots, and the combination of his hands continuing to feel all over her as his teeth lightly graze against her skin has her several shades of discombobulated. Especially when his left hand moves between her thighs, past her shorts and underwear, fingertips collecting the wetness she can feel soaking her underwear.
“Fuck, Ri.”
As he enters one finger and she grips his shoulders, hissing at the intrusion and slow pump, she tries to remember. Tries to remember the last time he’s called her that.
Called her Ri.
It’s been so long.
Too long, perhaps.
But, then the memory returns of that last time and just why it’s that.
The last time.
Not the actual occurrence, the last time she was intimate with her husband—or anyone for that matter—not even the day where it all came to a head and words were spoken, on both sides, that can never be taken back.
No….
No, she remembers that day.
That night.
The one she’ll never forget as long as she lives.
Tremors wrecked her entire body. Everything around was a haze, nothing but thick, dense, indistinguishable clouds of blurred surroundings. The smell was overwhelming, the feel of it all drenching and suffocating. She couldn’t breathe properly or think straight. It took everything in her to do it, to power through it all, to overcome what felt like was going to overwhelm her.
In many ways, it did.
A sob rose from the back of her throat as she gathered her bearings just enough to send a simple message. The only word she could bring herself to send.
Help
Mariella gasps loudly, the memory shaking her to her core and snapping her back to reality. She uses all of her strength to shove him away, Joe’s confused gaze making his swollen lips drop down into a frown.
Hand over her heart, she ran her free hand through her hair, the heat suddenly jumping 100 degrees higher for completely different reasons. Her distress must be written all over her face as he steps forward.
“Ri—”
“No!” She shouts, instinctively closing her legs and eyes. A deep shaky breath as she recalls what brought them to this very moment. Not this morning. Not reflections on years prior. But, everything. It’s what makes her mouth shift into a deep scowl, tears burning her vision, her hand dropping from her chest, knuckles against the cool granite. “You want to fuck someone? Go fuck them.”
Joe looks at her, and she sees it. Sees the flash in his eyes. An emotion that looks suspiciously close to hurt. “You still….” But, just as soon as it’s there, it’s gone. Replaced with that infamous sneer and shift of his jaw. Like he’s about to say something hurtful and reckless. Because that is who he is. “Just forget it.”
He shakes his head and turns to leave the kitchen, Mariella jumping when the slam of one of the doors—probably to his office—travels from down the hall. She takes another breath, grateful and thankful, in a strange sort of way, that she remembered.
Remembered that no matter what fond memory is invoked or brief shared encounter that’s reminiscent of the time before—it’s just that. The time before.
Do you have any tips for beginning fan fic writers?
READ! Read everything. Read other fanfics. Read books, old and new. The more you read, the more you’ll learn.
DO NOT USE AI! Don’t rely on an artificial tool to come up with ideas or help with the writing process. This is an ART. Art is distinctly human and AI has no place in it. Rely on your own imagination and abilities. Take the time to learn and practice. Don’t cut corners or try to pass off something artificial as your own. It’s an ethical responsibility to the fanfic community but also to yourself. Every time someone shares their own unique ideas and writing style, the world becomes a better place.
PRACTICE! Don’t worry about perfection. Don’t even worry about being good. Write about things you like and are passionate about. If you can, make friends with other writers and learn from them. Find some reliable beta readers who give you helpful feedback. But most importantly, remember this is meant to be FUN. If it’s not fun, then something’s wrong 💙
