Munson & Murdock: The Pharaoh Renaissance @murnsondock - Tumblr Blog

murnsondock

Jun 22

fairyysoup

me envenena, te envenena

pairing(s): lyutsifer safin (no time to die) x fem!reader

summary: You wanted him dead. You were supposed to kill the guy, not fuck him. Well... best laid plans, and all that.

words: 18.1k

cw: darkfic, explicit, smut, piv sex, oral sex, biting, pain kink, wet dreams, heavy petting, dry humping, fingering, semi-public sex, getting caught, coercion, captor/captive dynamic, possessive behavior, imprisonment, stockholm syndrome, psychological abuse, manipulation, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, poisoning, (likely inaccurate descriptions of aconite poisoning for the plot), vomit, hurt/comfort, sickbed, death threats, obsession, codependency, religious themes, bible quotes, murder, minor character death, graphic depictions of violence, 'this is my evil boyfriend lucifer satan he killed one william people and if anything happens to me he starts dry heaving like a cat'- reader probably, dead dove: do not eat

a/n: evil rami malek bewitched me body and soul. read the content warnings i beg. do NOT touch or ingest aconite/wolfsbane because you will probably die :)

ALL OF MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

"You think you are possessing me— But I've got my teeth in you." Angela Carter, The Unicorn

You're going to kill him. You know this for a fact.

It came to you as an epiphany. The only way you get out of this is if one or the other of you is destroyed, and it's not going to be you. It's just that he hasn't tried to kill you yet, and you don't really have a plan figured out— he has guards and cameras everywhere, he makes sure you don't get your hands on anything that could be used as a weapon against him. It's irritating, but you're patient. You can play along with his game. So you have, from the moment you realized that he wasn't going to let you off the island.

"If you desire anything," Safin told you early on, "feel free to ask."

"Let me go."

He only smiled at you wryly. "You know I can't do that."

'Can't' and 'won't' seem to mean the same thing, in his vocabulary.

Time moves differently on the island. You can separate morning from night, but the days, weeks, months pass by in a haze. The tide rises and falls. You carved out a routine around his, so that you could avoid the man as much as possible. You go to the rocks and watch the waves beating the shore. You stroll around the World War II era promenades and try not to think about what's happening below. You don't say much, and you sleep in your colorless room that's only slightly better than a prison cell, because at least the bed is king sized.

Or, you did. Until recent developments.

At first, you wrote it off as an anomaly. You haven't masturbated in months, haven't had sex for far longer. You weren't surprised when you had a wet dream, you were just shocked when the subject of it took the shape of your captor.

Safin's glittering eyes and scarred face looming over you, laying you down, beckoning you to follow him into oblivion. You woke up mostly annoyed with how pleasant the dream was, all things considered. You avoided his eye over breakfast that morning, but by the afternoon you'd mostly forgotten about it. The waves continued to rush in upon the land. The world continued to spin on, and you— speck of dust— were simply a blip on its surface. Nothing was of that much importance.

Until it happened again.

Safin's lithe body pressed against your back, bending you over the dining table, his hand wrapped around your throat as he whispered filth into your ear—

You woke up with a headache, for which the offending asshole gave you a special herbal tea, which pissed you off. Because fuck him for making you dream of him twice, and then offering you tea about it.

Safin taking you in his beloved poison garden, with your head using a belladonna plant as a pillow. That one completely threw you. You stared at the very bush in the morning with such vitriol that even Safin seemed to notice it.

"Find something intoxicating?" His accented voice seemed to slither its way down your very spine. You could feel your hackles raise at the sound.

You shot him an ornery look. You stood mere feet away from him, wound up tight as a cornered animal. "Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?"

He hummed, his shrewd eyes seeming to dance over your body. "It would certainly intrigue me."

After that, the dreams came in quick succession. Safin pressing you up against a wall. Safin getting you completely naked on the beach. Safin fucking you eight ways to Sunday in the middle of a crowded street. The mere fact of the dreams' existence in your mind was enough to vex you, yes, but you weren't actually concerned about it. You and he had been tiptoeing around each other for months, circling each other, trying to find a way to devour one another like some two-headed ourobouros.

It was possible that you were having an ill-conceived Freudian dreamscape to compensate for the unspoken war between the two of you. Didn't Freud believe that you are everyone in your dreams? It had nothing to do with Safin; it was all you, and the trouble in your head. At least, that was what you told yourself.

And then the horror struck.

It was a particularly vivid dream, one where you could almost feel the touch of his hands on your thighs, hear his voice in your head. The ghost of his breath lingered on the back of your neck, the soft drag of his tongue against your spine. You woke up with your breath coming out in short pants, your pulse pounding in your ears, and much lower.

You curled into a fetal ball and pulled the covers over your head. You couldn't deal with this, not with everything else going on. You wanted him dead. You had already made your decision. You were supposed to kill the guy, not fuck him.

Unfortunately, your body kept the score. One after the other, wet dreams lead to rude awakenings, leaving you desperate. Aching. Each morning afterwards, you were stuck facing him over breakfast and pretending like you hadn't dreamt about him having you bent over this very table, with his hand around your throat.

Eventually, you got tired of being left hanging, and you tried fixing things yourself.

You didn't think Safin had cameras in your room. The four walls remain drab, grey concrete, the white sheets of your bed not much of a contrast. Not only had you checked the place (what little there was to check), you'd grown accustomed to him well enough to know that he would consider it rude. So, at the very least, you knew you wouldn't be spied on with your hand between your legs.

But when you tried, when you parted the lips of your pussy to dip your finger in and circle around your clit, you found that you simply… couldn't. You were frigid, without feeling or response, utterly lacking any sense of respite. You tried again later, before you went to sleep, and it was the same. You tried in the morning after another, tamer dream about him. Still nothing. No fantasies could warm you up, no memories of old lovers could shake you.

It was just Safin, Safin, Safin, on a loop in your head, without an end, and seemingly without a true beginning. And even the thoughts of him were not enough to help you coax yourself to a climax.

You had been backed into a corner. You were trodding through a desert without water or nourishment anywhere in sight. You had been bested even in your own mind.

"I hate you," you spat at him, one of your first days on the island. He hardly even blinked at the venom in your voice.

Safin's fingertip had grazed just along the edge of your jaw, the barest feather of a touch. It was the only time he ever touched you, and the last time you were touched by anyone at all. His eyes were a deep blue, as fathomless and stormy as a raging sea. You had never noticed them before.

"You are so beautiful, sometimes it troubles me," he said, his voice stretched thin with want.

You had almost laughed in his face. Safin surrounds himself with things that he finds beautiful, and you are no exception. He seems to think he owns you, just because he didn't let you die one time. You are the spoils of his war against the world. You are his Helen of Troy; the difference is that no one is launching a thousand ships to save you. However much of a fight you put up, he finds it cute, like a mouse struggling in the claws of a tiger.

But, you hadn't known that in only a few months' time you would be echoing the same sentiment.

You want to carve out your own eyeballs with a spoon. You want to throw yourself off of a cliff and into the island's tiny harbor. You're going to have a fucking fit and it's going to be his fault.

You have gotten no sleep. Zero. Not even a wink, all because you can't stop thinking about Lyutsifer fucking Safin, lord of the poison garden, your very own captor. Your own body won't stop thinking about him, too, it seems. You spent all night tossing and turning, eyes shut to no end, while you physically shook from the merest thought of him.

Truthfully, you almost didn't come to breakfast. You considered just laying in bed all day until somehow, some way, managing to fall asleep. Even if you had another one of those fucking dreams, at least you would get some rest.

But the one time you had tried to skip out on breakfast before, Safin had no compunctions about sending the goon squad to break down your bedroom door just to tell you that your tea was getting cold. So, you pulled yourself together, at least somewhat.

Breakfast seems to be a thing with him. You can do whatever you want for the rest of the day, within reason. If you wander too far towards the beach, a guard will follow, presumably to make sure you don't try your best Ophelia impression. Otherwise, Safin doesn't vie for your attention any more than you do his. But he always wants you there at the breakfast table, for some inordinate reason, like it's not the start of the day without you.

You'd think it was sweet, if you weren't certain it was a display of his power over you.

You show up to breakfast, but you don't make any attempts to be civil, or look like you want to be there. Still in your silk dressing robe, your elbow on the table top, you rest your head in your hand while you stab at your omelette with your fork and wish it was some one of Safin's extremities.

Safin isn't oblivious, but nor is he impatient. He watches you for a while, and notes the heaviness of your limbs, the way you blink so slowly that you appear to be fighting to stay awake. Finally, he asks, "Did you sleep well?"

"No."

You stab your fork a bit harder, so that it shrieks against the plate. That fucking morning rasp. You want to launch across the table and throttle him. Or maybe throw him across the table and ride him until the damn thing breaks, but the goon squad would probably shoot you before you even fully got up from your chair.

Safin has the decency to look displeased by this. He sits back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. "If there's something that you need—"

"There's nothing you can do to help." Your voice comes out so sharp, so emphatic, that it cuts through the air like a knife. You don't look up from your plate, but you know that he's staring at you— you can feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on the back of your neck.

"Leave."

Like a king commanding his army, the guards around the room turn heel and disperse. It takes half a second for you to be left alone in the room with Safin, the only sound remaining being the distant roar of ocean surf over the balcony ledge. You straighten up in your chair and tilt your head back, praying that whichever god is listening smites you where you sit.

It makes you angrier that you can't even deny your attraction to him. You would be lying. Even beneath all your simmering hatred, you find him captivating. Like the call of the void at the edge of a thousand foot drop. He is beautiful, and wicked, and you have always been attracted to power. It's your Achilles heel, your fatal flaw.

You sit in a drawn out, heavy silence. You keep your head tilted back, counting the cracks in the ceiling, because if you look at him you're very sure you're going to say something so stupid there will be epic poetry written about it.

"You know that I could have anything, or anyone, disposed of. If it pleases you." Safin breaks the silence, tilting his head in a pantomime of thought. "Considering how you've been so agreeable."

"How kind of you." You have not been agreeable, that much you both know. You have no idea why he hasn't tried to kill you with that nanobot cocktail, yet. Something tells you there's a weakness hidden in there, somewhere, which you can exploit if you just find the right angle.

"If you wish to tell me what troubles you, speak freely," Safin says, like you couldn't have thought of that yourself.

"I don't wish to tell you anything."

"Then indulge me," he counters. You reserve the urge to roll your eyes. "If there is a problem, I would like to nip it in the bud."

You finally look at him, giving him a deadpan stare, conveniently over the bud vase on the table with a foxglove clipping in it. "Was that a joke?"

Safin affects a shrug with a wave of his hand. The sight of him irks you, just as you thought it might. He's the kind of beautiful that makes you want to lash out, bare your teeth. It's cruel how he effects you so deeply, when your bones tell you to loathe him.

"Sure, I'll indulge you with my problems," you bite, not withholding the hostility in your tone. Safin simply stares at you mildly, like nothing you can say or do will shock him. "Aside from the obvious," you begin, leaning forward to point between you and him, "You have contractors crawling all over this place constantly, designing and arranging things just right, but I'm still stuck in a concrete sensory deprivation tank. I mean, god, I know this place was a missile siloh or something, but I can't fucking sleep because I can hear myself breathing, it's so echoey in there. What does it take to, I don't know, get a rug? A lamp? Where the hell is your interior designer?"

Safin leans his chin against his hand, his face carefully devoid of emotion. "This is what bothers you so?"

"I— yes." Now is the time for you to shut up, and not incriminate yourself any further. "Yes. The interior decorating of your guest room is found wanting, Monsieur Safin. If you don't mind my humble critique."

You think this is the most that you have ever spoken to him in one sitting. Most of the time you keep your mouth shut, preferring to listen rather than fill the empty air. Up until this point, you really have had nothing to say to him— so, why now? Probably sleep deprivation. Probably the thousand different ways you've had him in your dreams, clouding your judgement.

Safin bending you over the table, his hand fisting in your hair to hold you down while the other lifts your skirt, a lecherous touch dragging up the back of your thigh. The memory of the dream flashes through your head for just a second, and you knock back the rest of your tea like it might make you forget.

It doesn't.

Safin looks down at the table, seeming to process this information, but his lips quirk up at the edges like he finds your outrage funny. "Very well. I will… see to decorating your room."

There's a beat of silence, and you think that it's over, you can go back to suffering in silence. But then, he looks up at you, his wide eyes sparkling in the light.

"There is more, though. Isn't there?"

"Jesus Christ." He's infuriating. Your chair scrapes across the floor with a loud noise as you stand, turning your back fully to him. Your entire body feels so hot, like a live wire ready to spark. You rake your fingers over your face, your tired eyes straining for rest. "Of course there's more, Safin, don't be so obtuse."

Your jab doesn't phase him. He clicks his tongue. "Tell me."

"Can't you see it?" You're so strung out you could scream. You turn toward the balcony, toward the view of the ocean. The endless blue stretches far away, its song like a harmony to the storm in your head. "I'm so alone here. For you, this is your home. You have your purpose and your plans. Everything here is yours. I'm just another piece in your collection, and that's my purpose. I belong nowhere, I have nothing. All I had was my hatred and my pride, and now I don't. Even those belong to you, like everything else. I mean, I can't even have a fucking orgasm without—"

Without you.

It was on the tip of your tongue. You try to swallow it down, stop before you blurt it out as a last confession. But it's the truth, and it's so obvious that it's humiliating. The back of your throat burns, still holding that last unspoken word like a stone.

You open your mouth to say something else, or possibly to shove your foot back in it, but you look over at Safin and you know that it's no use.

You hate the way that he bats his eyelashes; it's altogether too innocent of a gesture for a man like him. He's looking at you in a way that tells you he knows exactly what you were going to say. Maybe he isn't gloating, per se, but he absolutely looks pleased at the knowledge that you desire him, at least in some way.

"Then you're right," he tells you after a moment, and your breath halts in your lungs. "I can't help you."

Right. You shouldn't have expected anything different. You showed your cards and lost the game. You flounder a bit, turn away and wish that you were back in bed, never having mentioned anything or gone on your little tirade.

"Not unless you want me to."

You freeze. All your muscles lock up at once, but you don't look at him again. It feels safer, like if you can't see him, then he can't see the way you're beginning to tremble.

"Do you want me to?"

Safin's voice has gone so quiet, so soft. You wring your hands in front of you, staring back out to sea. Your mind spins, your body feels like it's on fire, and you almost think that you misheard him until he repeats the question.

"My darling," Safin says slowly, and it's the first time he's ever called you by anything other than your given name. "Do you want me to help you?"

You can't say it. To say it is to admit defeat, to admit to weeks of torturous dreams and desires that completely betrayed everything you thought you knew about yourself. Instead, you nod your head enough that your answer can't be mistaken.

He holds his hand out towards you. "Come."

"I can't, that's the whole fucking point."

You don't see Safin's eye roll, but you can hear it in his long intake of breath, ending with a perturbed sigh. "Come here."

With one final breath, you turn your back to the sea and face him. Safin's hand is still outstretched, his palm up in an invitation that you have yet to accept, but he doesn't move to pull away. When you approach him, you set your hand into his, and it feels like the final nail being hammered into your proverbial coffin. This must have been how Eve felt in the garden, staring into the eyes of the serpent.

You can still kill him. That's not out of the question. But you can also fuck him; never were the two ever mutually exclusive.

Safin smirks coyly up at you. "There, now. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"If you think I'm going to straddle you, you can forget it," you retort. That, at the very least, makes his brow quirk up a smidge.

Safin raises his chin to give you a serene, if condescending, look. His hand meets your waist, and he guides you to turn, slowly, until you begin to think that he's about to bend you over the table. You're sure that you're about to live out your dream right here, right now, and without even telling him about it. But instead, Safin pulls you down into his lap so that your back meets his chest.

"Is this more to your taste?" Safin asks, his chin brushing against your shoulder as he wraps his arm around your waist. His body is so warm. He curls around you like he might completely consume you, if he tries hard enough.

You don't know where to look; you never expected to sit on Safin's lap. Your heart pounds within your ribcage. Can he hear it? Feel it? "My taste changes with the tide."

"Then I shall endeavor to be so changeable." His accented voice slithers along your skin like a caress, while his fingers find the edge of your silk robe. "I can be anything you desire."

You scoff as he hitches your thigh over his own. The very idea is absurd. "I'll kill you."

Safin stops, his breath just barely registering in your ear. "And I, you."

His hand leaves your thigh, and for the slightest moment, you think that he's going for your throat. You prepare to flinch away, to bolt, but he merely captures your chin between his thumb and forefinger, and guides you to look at him. This close, you can almost feel the heat of the fire burning in his eyes.

"We are the same, you and I. Both of us driven by passion and marked by death." His dulcet voice dips low, as though he could mesmerise you with his words alone. "When I saved your life, it tied you to me. Your life belongs to me, now, as does mine to you. It is as inescapable as fate itself."

The ache in your core only grows the longer he drags this out, and your hand grips the arm of the chair so hard that you fear you might snap it off. Rage, desire— they're both fueled by passion, and he would know that better than anyone. Safin dips his head the slightest bit, until his nose nearly nudges against your own, like he means to kiss you.

"You think I won't strangle you with our red string of fate?" you snarl furiously at him, shifting in his hold. "I'll make you regret ever laying eyes on me."

"You say that with such conviction. I'd like to see you try," he muses. "What poisons me, poisons you. Remember that."

There are a million things you could say as a rebuttal; how mistaken he is in his comparison, how you are nothing alike, and nothing ties you to him except his own need for control. But, you think he can anticipate every one of those statements. It exasperates you how predictable you've become, and how he can read your mind like a book. You're starting to believe that he knew all along about your dreams, and your growing desire for him, even before you said anything.

You can't help yourself. Your gaze flicks down to his lips for just a moment, so close to your own.

"Ah. We understand each other." Just to twist the knife, he draws his thumb over the curve of your lower lip. He smiles, more to himself than at you. "Now, do you want my help, or not?"

You won't get away with avoiding him this time. He holds you captive in his stare and his embrace, as much as he does the rest of you. Safin tilts his head, searching your eyes as though the answer might be hidden behind them, but says nothing else, awaiting your reply.

"Yes." You speak against the pad of his thumb, and consider biting down on it, just to let him know that you aren't all bark. You almost begin to wonder what he would taste like.

"Then be a good girl," he tells you, his tone so commanding even while his voice is as quiet as a drop of water. "Behave yourself."

Blood rushes hot beneath your skin, but you do not look away from him. Not until his hand finds your thigh again, his thumb pressing against the soft skin beneath the edge of your robe. His hands are so big— why did you never notice before? His palm flat against your thigh, his fingers wrap around the soft flesh like they're meant to be there, and you… you aren't even sure you want to argue with that.

And then you tense as something occurs to you.

You turn your head, your eyes flicking around the room. "Cameras."

"There are no cameras here," Safin reassures you. While you sweep your eyes around the room looking for evidence to the contrary, the hand on your thigh doesn't move. His other hand, however, raises to press against your chest, to guide you back against him— and there, you guess that he feels how fast your heart pounds against your ribcage. "Relax."

"I can't. I—"

"You can." The palm of his hand is so warm as it settles against your inner thigh. "You will."

It takes you a moment, and he waits— ever patient, taking note of your every move— while you gaze wildly around the room, until you're satisfied that he isn't lying to you. Maybe he does feel you relax into his hold, or your heartbeat slow just a touch beneath the still of his hand. Whatever it is, you know that you feel him smile, with his lips so close that they nearly brush against your cheek.

Safin gathers the silk of your robe in his hand, drawing it upward. It falls aside as though you are being unveiled, exposing the rest of your thigh and your hip bone to his wandering eye. You close your eyes, suddenly bashful— you're nervous, which is not something that you normally are when it comes to sex. But this is Terra Incognita; you have no idea what to expect from him.

You certainly don't expect him to be gentle, but he is. Safin finally touches you, and you audibly gasp, choking on your own need. You cover your face with your hands, shaking in his arms. You're wet. You've soaked through the thin fabric of your panties, sitting here in his arms while he toyed with you, threatened you.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

You all but try to slam your legs shut at the touch of his hand, but his own knee blocks your effort. He keeps your legs open, his fingers moving slowly over the wet fabric.

"Don't hide," Safin croons, his voice hushed. "Not from me."

He traces the seam of your cunt with his middle finger, gliding up until he presses down hard on the bead of your clit through the thin barrier. You practically yelp at the electric shock it sends through your body, your hand clapping down over his, where it still rests on your chest.

Safin hums low, turns his head to nuzzle at the crook of your neck. "How long has it been? Too long, I take it." He tsks, and you feel him shake his head. He pets you with his hand like he has all the time in the world to take you to pieces. "Such a shame, to be found wanting."

Ohhh, he's such an asshole. You're speechless; his breath fans over your skin, and you aren't exactly thinking straight as it is. You're so overwhelmed, you don't even have time to come up with a witty response before he's sliding his hand into your underwear.

A high whimper leaves you as his finger slips through your cunt. The touch unleashes a wave of warmth through you, melting up your spine and down your limbs. You arch into his hand, searching desperately for friction, anything that will stave off the need rising like a tempest inside you.

Safin breaks his hand free of your grip and drags you back down against him, planting your hips flush with his.

You can feel how much it effects him— his hard cock presses against your spine. Because, of course, Safin is a man. Of course, he is not as unshakeable as he would have you believe. You know he must like this, must like having the power to command your pleasure as he commands everything else. You know he must love how he got you to beg him for it, even though you were so mortified about it; that must be what this is.

Whatever it is, you don't really have it in you to fight it right now. You've gone a little bit mindless, and the pace he's set feels so good, so right, that you can't think of anything but chasing it to its end.

The tip of his finger rubs tight circles around your clit, making your toes curl, your spine threatening to arch against his hold again. He tucks his face against your neck and he breathes deeply, like he truly needs something from this.

Safin plunges his free hand into the fold of your robe and squeezes your breast, and you moan, rocking against him. At a loss for something to hold, your hands blindly decide for themselves— one hand slams down on the arm of the chair, and the other shoots over your shoulder, burying itself in the soft waves of his hair.

"Safin," you sob his name, your head finally falling back onto his shoulder.

He dips his hand lower, easing two fingers into you. Your own hand flexes, tightening on his hair between your fingers like a lifeline. You feel his mouth open against your shoulder, panting hot against the silk of your robe.

"Beautiful thing," Safin murmurs, just slightly too breathy. "You do not have nothing. You have this." He curls his fingers, his steady pace winding you up far more than you ever could have expected. "You have me."

If he wanted to fuck you now, you think you'd let him. However he wanted to— here, on the chair, or over the table, or on the floor. It doesn't matter. If all he wanted was to degrade you, to render you one of his conquests, he's done it. Why not go all the way? Why not seal the deal?

You make a small, feeble noise in the back of your throat, your hips meeting his hands in earnest. "Do you want to— to…?"

Maybe it's just the way your voice sounds, so far gone in your lust, that he knows what you mean without having to articulate it. "No."

You suck in a stuttering breath that doesn't quite want to seat itself in your lungs. What?

"This is yours. Take what you want," Safin whispers, and as he does, withdraws his fingers to slide back up over your sensitive pussy, to circle around your clit again.

You shudder against him, letting your eyes flutter shut. He remains steady, even as you begin to whimper. He dips his fingers into your cunt and then draws them back out to stroke your clit, never faltering in his pace. And when you give him a tight gasp of warning and dig your nails into his scalp, he simply hums.

"Don't fight it," Safin tells you softly, pumping his fingers into you and curling them perfectly. "Let it happen."

It comes over you like a tidal wave, crashing into you with immeasurable fury. It's been so long, and you're so unprepared that it seizes you entirely. Your cunt pulses on his fingers, and you hear his breath catch before you're spasming against him, your hands smacking down on both arms of the chair, your hips hitching and bucking against his hold.

Christ, it's been ages since you had an orgasm, and you don't recall it ever feeling anything remotely like this. Have you ever cum this hard before? Did it have to be for him? He keeps moving his fingers over your clit until you flinch against him and clamp your hand down over his wrist— and even then, he just rests it there, like he doesn't want to let you go.

You lean against him, letting him hold you up. This is nice, you think in your deepest, most disoriented state. He flexes his fingers— his hand is still inside of your robe, still cupping your breast, but he doesn't move. All you can hear is your shared breath, heavy in the charged air between you as he hugs you against him. You've turned your forehead to rest against his. Your faces in tandem, your lips are so close to his that you can taste his breath.

Then, in the comedown, you realize what you just did.

You just came.

You just came… for Lyutsifer Safin.

You pick your head up, jolting back to reality like from one of your dreams. But this is not a dream. Safin's hand is in your robe, in your underwear. Your hand is still clamped on his wrist, to keep him from moving any which way.

This is what you wanted, what you asked him for. He helped you, gave you an orgasm without asking for anything in return. All that desire for him, all those nights tossing and turning and losing sleep to the thought of him, has come to this. To you, twitching from sensitivity while his hand lingers against your cunt. And you liked it.

You liked it.

In a panicked haze, you wrench yourself free of his grip and jump up. You don't speak a word to him— if you do, you might say something you regret, make promises that you can't keep. You can't trust yourself; you can barely think, no thanks to him. Safin doesn't try to hold you any longer than you let him.

Your legs practically threaten to buckle under you, but you still make a break for the door like it's your only salvation. Maybe, at this point, it is.

So. There's a priceless work of art in your room.

And by priceless, that is to say, a museum piece is taking up almost the entirety of the wall across from your bed. You've been sitting on the edge of it, staring at the painting in shock for roughly fifteen minutes.

Claude Monet's Water Lilies spans from floor to ceiling, so tall and wide that a frame wouldn't even be able to fit in the room. How anyone got it through the door, you have no idea. You don't exactly know what to do about it, since it wasn't there before.

You woke up this morning in the same drab, plain room as always, your breathing echoing in your ears. For the first time in… well, for the first time ever, you didn't go to breakfast. You refused to get out of bed, still reeling from the shock that happened at the last one. Just the thought of looking Safin in the eye after that debacle had you so nervous, your stomach clenched up so hard you figured you wouldn't be able to eat anything at all. So, you rolled over, and you went back to sleep.

And, for the first time, the goon squad didn't come to bust down your door. Which meant that Safin didn't want to see you, either.

Fine. That was perfectly fine with you. The last thing you needed was Safin thinking he was somehow endeared to you, just because you let him shove his hand down your pants. It meant nothing, it was just an itch that needed to be scratched. It didn't change anything between you, and it certainly didn't mean that it was ever going to happen again.

…Do you want it to happen again?

You mulled that one over for a while. You'd finally slept, without having a wet dream about him, which was fortunate. But it meant that the cure for the wet dreams was to recreate them in real life, which was less so. And it had been… good. Annoyingly good. So good, you were actually surprised that you didn't dream about him— but now you were plagued by thoughts of his hands on you while you were awake, so you guess you traded one problem for another.

You resolved to find a way around it. Somehow. There's more than one way to skin a cat, so they say.

When you finally did pull yourself out of bed, you opened the door to find a guard standing outside. You didn't know how long he'd been there. Usually there aren't guards posted outside your door at all hours, but if one sees you wandering around you'll notice them start to shadow you.

You blinked at the man disinterestedly, waiting for him to explain himself. This was your normal tactic, dealing with anyone on the island: stare at them long enough, and they'll start talking just to fill the void. It worked often enough that it became a habit.

The guard pulled something from his vest and handed it to you. It was a small rectangular tin box, colorless and plain save for the monogram etched on the bottom left corner. L.S.

The fucker had his own line of personalized housewares.

"Boss said to give this to you when you woke up," the guard stated as you opened the tin. It was a bento box full of grazing foods— cheeses, sliced fruits, crackers, cured meats. "He also said if you wanted tea, I'm supposed to tell the kitchen."

You glanced up at the guard. "How about a coffee?"

The guard nodded and turned away, muttering, "Right. Guess I'm a fucking housemaid."

You spent an hour sitting on the floor of your room, your back to the foot of your bed, picking from the bento box and sipping a coffee that was burnt to shit, but it was coffee. You'd begun to suspect that Safin didn't even have any on the island, the way he guzzled tea like it somehow sustained him. You savored the coffee the way that you savored sunshine after a long period of rain. You stared at the concrete wall across from your bed, noting its cracks, its pock marks, the subtle changes in shades of grey where the sunlight from the far window hit it.

You inevitably fell into analyzing every detail of what had happened between you and Safin. You turned it over and over in your head, like you could pick up the very moment in time and examine it, puzzle it out like a Rubik's cube. Every little interaction, every touch, every word whispered. There was a meaning behind it, beyond its outward appearance— just because you saw it as a means to an end, a way to stave off the vexatious desire that was plaguing you, did not mean it was the same for him.

Once you finally made the sojourn out of your room, it was already noon. The sun beat down over the island, glittering on the water as you made your usual trek out to the rocks. Like clockwork, one of the guards had wandered along to watch you, but hung back like you wouldn't notice anything. You didn't know if it was meant to make you feel like you had more freedom, or if they really thought you were that dimwitted.

You hated to admit it, but the island was rather beautiful, if you could get past the brutalist megastructures and old wartime factories that dotted the coastline. The island itself juts up out of the water, the peak of its mountain casting a shadow over everything below it. Lush greenery grows wherever it gets the opportunity. You've seen dolphins swimming so close to shore that sometimes, if you listened hard enough, you could hear their friendly trilling. Life goes on around you; the world is indifferent to your troubles.

Your life belongs to me, now, as does mine to you. It is as inescapable as fate itself. Safin's lilting voice beat at the inside of your skull like it was trying to get out. Kneeling by the water, you jammed the balls of your hands into your eye sockets— he couldn't effect you like this. What was it about him that called you to disarm yourself entirely?

You guess that it was for the feeling of freedom it brought that you stripped off your dress. You didn't bother listening to the guard shouting at you, from where he lingered back away from the rocks, as you threw yourself into the water. It wasn't like you could swim toward the small island just barely visible on the horizon. If the sharks didn't kill you on the way, the hypothermia would.

Opting to float on your back, you stared up at the sky as the sound of the water dulled out the rest of the world. Overhead, the sky was a clear blue, as untouched by fog or cloud as it could ever be. You floated there for a while, letting the saltwater lap at your body, and letting the water wash away your concerns.

It was while you bobbed in the water that you saw the plane soar overhead, like a bird swooping down to perch on a tree branch. You hadn't really paid it any mind at the time. Safin gets any and all sorts of imports, it wasn't anything that would have interested you.

But now, staring at the work of art on your wall, maybe you should have. You don't know what you could have done to change anything. Maybe get out of the water, come to see what it was? But how were you to know that it was transporting a bunch of precious cargo?

By the time you'd gotten back to your room, everything was entirely different. You don't know how Safin managed it. He must have had an entire team come in to rearrange things as fast as possible, bring in new furniture, new decorations. There's a red Persian rug where there was once cold concrete floor. There's a bookshelf practically overflowing with reading material, two nightstands, desk lamps. There's a wardrobe, a chaise longue. Curtains— fucking curtains.

The bed hasn't changed; it's still the same basic white, but someone has made it for you. You sit perched on the end of it, staring at the wall opposite. Staring at Water Lilies, and trying to make sense of it.

My beloved is mine and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies.

Maybe you're in shock. You've been in the room for about thirty minutes, and you haven't been able to do anything. It took you a while to even sit on the bed, because it meant you had to walk on the rug. Whenever you managed to wander over and sit down, you lifted your eyes toward the painting and just… stayed there.

You aren't even sure if it's real. Is it? It could be a reproduction, but somehow you doubt that Safin would opt for anything ingenuine. You can see the paint strokes. With its deep blues and bright pink lily flowers, it evokes the twilight hour, where nothing has shadows and everything is in-between.

Admittedly, it takes you some time to finally pick yourself up and leave the room, but you're so scared to touch anything. What else could be some priceless artifact?

Unsurprisingly, you find him in the poison garden. The late afternoon sun illuminates him, makes the silver in his hair sparkle. The scars from his boyhood seem to fade away, leaving behind only the angles of his face. He seems lost in thought, his hands folded behind his back and his head inclined as he meanders through the garden maze. It's only when he stops to admire the oleander plant that you decide to make your presence known.

"Safin." His gaze whirls towards you like you've startled him. He never struck you as a man who could be taken off-guard. "Is it real?"

"Is what real?" He recovers quickly, with his eyes flicking over your frame. As you descend the steps into the garden, something like apprehension crosses his face at the last second.

"The Monet, obviously. Is it genuine?" You come to a stop several feet from him. Not close enough to appear threatening— you don't need the goon squad closing in— but not far enough away that you need to shout to be heard.

"Mmm. Yes, that. It is genuine." Safin hums, turning back towards the oleander. Its pink blossoms jostle in the breeze. "Do you like it? I find it rather meditative."

You open and close your mouth, searching for a reply to that. Do you like it? If you're honest with yourself, you don't dislike it. It's obviously gorgeous, and you're actually rather impressed by his audacity, but you'd never admit it. "That's not my point."

"Then what is your point?" Safin asks, shooting you a sidelong glance. "Do be kind and share it, I'm not fond of guessing."

"Did you buy it?" You ask bluntly.

"Does it really matter?"

You rear back, turning to face the garden hedge. "You put stolen art in my room?"

"You wanted decoration," he retorts, meeting your petulance in stride. "Monet painted two hundred and fifty of them in his lifetime, I doubt that the purchase of one will stop the world in its tracks."

You suck on your teeth. So he did buy it. You don't even want to think about how much he paid for it. Everything is a piece of the same puzzle, no matter its size or shape. The breakfasts, the gifts, the sex. The way that he hasn't killed you yet, despite his threats. You keep giving him reasons to, and he just keeps acting like you're so amusing for it. It means something. What the fuck does it mean?

"What are you playing at?"

"I don't play at anything," Safin tells you, his tone clipped. "Games are for children."

"So you just dropped hundreds of millions of dollars on a work of art for a prison cell, just because it's… meditative?" You squint at him. "You expect me to believe that?"

Safin closes his eyes. It's the only way you know that you're getting to him— he stands perfectly straight, so eerily still that you wouldn't be able to tell anything was amiss. "I expect you will believe what you want, regardless of what I do."

"Then why— why would you do that?"

"Because you asked." Safin finally turns his entire body in your direction, his hands carefully concealed behind his back. He gives you a stern look, his eyes flashing. "Do you not understand? You ask, I deliver. You want, I provide. You beg for help, I give it to you. That is my reason."

His words make you recoil, turning away to hide the utter embarrassment that you're certain is written on your face. "It's that simple, huh?"

"Yes," Safin hisses, testier than normal. "It is that simple."

You nod to yourself, but you're more confused than ever. Confused by his seemingly generous acts of devotion. Confused by his defensiveness when questioned about it. Nothing about him makes sense— it's almost as if he wants you to believe that he actually cares for you. Which is… well. It's completely ridiculous, and entirely out of the question. Safin doesn't care about anything but his own power.

…Does he?

You stare, unblinking, at the plant in front of you. Its clusters of bright blue, trumpet shaped flowers sway gently in the breeze, while you develop a theory so absurd that it would have to negate everything you thought you knew, if true. The hum of the nearby beehive fills the silence, droning in a quiet monotone as you, brat of the century, drum up the dumbest of all dumb plans to test your theory. It's so insanely stupid that it might even work.

Tilting your head, you eye the little blue flowers with keen interest. "That's wolfsbane, isn't it?"

Safin hesitates. Maybe he's suspicious, or maybe he's too irritated with you to actually want to answer. But, eventually, he says, "Yes. That is aconite."

You hum, mirroring his posture as you step towards it, hands behind your back, spine straight. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him shift. It's so subtle, you would easily have missed it if you weren't paying attention. "It's pretty."

"Deadly things usually are."

His words make you bristle, but you have to swallow your reason. If this is going to work, you have to trust that your theory is correct. So, rather than wither away, you reach forward and pluck one of the flowers from its stem.

"Don't." His warning cuts through the air, making you pause even without meaning to. When you look at him, he's watching you so closely that you might shrink away, if you weren't deliberately trying to provoke him. Safin turns his head just the tiniest bit, eyes falling to the blossom in your fingers. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

"But you aren't, are you?" You twirl the flower in between your thumb and forefinger, squeezing just the tiniest bit so that moisture releases from its stem. The longer you do, the more you begin to feel a curious numbing sensation grow on your fingertips, like you've touched a bit of novocaine. "And anyways, if you really are so set on giving me what I want— or, you know, killing me otherwise— I don't really see how it should be a problem."

And you, in all of your glorious wisdom, pop the poisonous flower into your mouth.

"Stop."

You've never really seen Safin lose his composure. He kills people without remorse, threatens without batting an eye. He's always so poised that you thought him absolutely unshakeable. You practically thought him incapable of any emotion, at all. And yet, he snaps in an instant, rushing at you faster than you ever imagined him doing.

Safin snatches you by the jaw with one hand. He doesn't exactly look frantic, but his eyes are wider than they ought to be, his jaw locked with tension. He presses his lips together, and you hear him take a slightly shaky breath. You notice the guards around the garden and in the foyer standing at attention, watching and listening for any orders, but they're never given any.

Safin only speaks loud enough for you to hear him, his voice dangerously void of inflection. "Spit it out."

You refuse to fold. You hold the flower in your mouth and taste its poison on your tongue, sharp and acrid, and you stare into his eyes defiantly.

"If you do not listen to me, within twelve hours your lungs will atrophy and you will suffocate, trapped inside your own body." His fingers squeeze your cheeks in a punishing grip, puckering your lips unnaturally. "Spit. It. Out."

You're sure that the entire situation looks ludicrous, but he squeezes your cheeks until you have no choice but to spit the disgusting little flower into his outstretched hand.

Safin whips it aside in an instant, tossing it into the water of the meditation pond. You, on the other hand, are not particularly keen on actually dying— you bend over and spit out as much as you can onto the ground, trying hard not to worry over the fact that your tongue has gone numb.

He captures you with both hands, examining your face as though you might drop dead in front of him any second. He breathes heavily, a lock of his hair hanging over his brow, having fallen askew in his haste. "Are you trying to kill yourself, you ridiculous girl?" Safin asks, both his frustration and fear evident in his voice.

You're laughing in his face, giggling like a lunatic, because you were right. He won't let you die, and he won't kill you. All his threats have been hollow. This is the reason, the weakness in his impenetrable armor that you've been searching for.

You. You are his weakness.

"I thought you said you'd kill me, Safin," you say, trying to ignore the weight of your tongue and the coolness of your face against his palms. "Seems to me like you need to make up your mind. Either you care, or you don't."

For the first time in all the months that you've known him, Safin looks shocked. He gazes at you in horror like you've just stabbed him in the chest with your words, alone.

In the sunlight, the wolfsbane flower spins around idly in the ripples on the pond. Aimless, going nowhere and serving nobody.

You smile ruefully up at Safin, pressing your face into his hands. "Poisons me, poisons you, right?"

You've done stupider things in your life. It isn't even the first time you've managed to poison yourself, it's just the first time you did it to prove a point.

Nothing much happens for the first little while after the incident in the garden. Safin drags you into the foyer and plants his hands on your shoulders so that you can't move from the sofa while you wait for one of his goons to fetch something. You're not sure what it is, because Safin barks his orders in a language you don't know, but he sounds pretty serious about it.

You're trying not to gloat too hard.

When the guard comes back, he hands Safin a small bottle. You can't make out the label, but Safin tips two pills into his hand and holds them out to you.

You refuse to take them. Out of spite.

Safin sighs, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. Of course, there was never a chance you were going to make this easy for him— you're amusing yourself with his reaction, watching what he'll do with the curiosity of a scientist surveying a specimen.

He claps his hand with the pills over your mouth. You give him a muffled grunt, trying to push his hand away and shake him off, but he barely moves. Safin is a lot stronger than he looks, a fact that is thoroughly annoying to you because he just won't budge. Finally, with his free hand, he pinches your nose and waits.

After about thirty seconds you gasp for air, and Safin shoves the pills into your mouth.

"Swallow." He's seething, and he wraps his hand around your throat to ensure that you follow his instructions. You would be outraged, if you hadn't dreamt about him doing exactly that. Several times.

"What the fuck was that?" you rasp when he finally lets you speak, feeling the pills slide down your throat like two hot coals.

"That was me saving your life. Again." He turns your face to look you in the eye, his hold hard on your chin. "You're welcome."

It takes very little else to get you to storm off in anger. And then it takes roughly forty-five minutes for the poison to take effect.

You don't honestly know what all the effects of wolfsbane are. You figured that since you hadn't swallowed it you were safe, but you start to change your mind when your legs give out from under you while walking down a corridor. You feel yourself inverting, like someone has taken hold of your spine and flipped your entire body inside out. You can't help but collapse onto all fours, searching for a stability that isn't coming.

It's unclear how long you stay there, pressing your forehead to the cool concrete— a pair of arms wrap around your middle to hoist you up, and in your delirium you manage to slur, "I'm gonna throw up."

"Your body is rejecting the poison. Do what it tells you." Safin's voice in your ear is soft as velvet, his palm coming to rest over your damp forehead.

After that, you begin to lose your grip on what happens around you. Safin either carries you or drags you like a rag doll to your room— you aren't entirely sure. Somehow, some way, you know that you end up in a bathroom, on your knees, vomiting up everything but your childhood memories.

Somewhere in your periphery, you know that he's there, too. You know that he's holding you up as the world spins around you and threatens to split in half. You know that when you collapse backwards, your body limp and shaking, that he's there to catch you and cradle you in the shelter of his arms, so that you don't lay on the concrete floor.

"Am I gonna die?" you ask at some point, hiccuping and coughing past the accumulation of bile and tears that flows from you.

"I will not let that happen," comes Safin's reply, authoritative enough that it calms you, as though he's capable of stopping death in its tracks. "Why do you cut off your nose to spite your face?"

"I had to— to see if you c—cared." You hug something to your chest. With your eyes closed, you can't tell what it is, but when you squeeze your hand around it you think that it must be his bicep, and the softness the sweater that he wears. You pull his arm closer, and a hand strokes over your head soothingly while tears stream down your cheeks. "Lyutsifer. Why do you care for me?"

He says nothing for a while, just shushes you while you jolt from your body's dry-heaving. "Why does the sea love the shore?"

"I never took you for a poet," you grumble. You open your eyes briefly, just to make sure that everything is still spinning. Unfortunately, it is.

"I never took you for a masochist," Safin counters, while you lurch forward to be sick again. "And yet, here we are."

You spend ages recovering.

Realistically, you think it's a grand total of three days or so before you can get out of bed, but then again, time escapes you.

You never would have done it if you'd known it would be like this. Sometime during your first day of convalescence, while your body is so drained and lethargic that you can hardly lift your head from the pillow to drink water, you begin to wonder if you should have prayed more. But to whom? Your world has turned upside down and you don't really know if any god is listening to you right now.

On the second day, Safin comes to sit in the chair he had placed in your room. He doesn't say anything, just hovers like a watchful spirit at the end of your bed.

You don't know how he did it, when he was a child. You imagine his scars are worse than just the ones on his face, but you've never seen them. How could he have survived, just a boy, when his family all died around him? With no one to care for him, the way that he's cared for you?

"Why do you have that plant in your garden, anyways?" you ask him, not even rolling over to look him in the eye. You know he's there, because the air shifts like he's released an electric current into the room.

"Usually, to kill people. But there is a first time for everything." His sense of humor is dry as a bone, you find.

That's the last time he visits your bedside. That you're aware of, anyway.

Still, after you recover enough to leave your bed, and you can stomach food without a problem, you take a couple days just to make sure it isn't a fluke. You flip through the books that had been placed in your room, ignoring the one or two botanical manuals tucked on the shelves.

Eventually, you begin to miss the sun.

Regrettably, you begin to miss him.

You wanted to kill him. Somewhere low down inside you, you still think you should— just out of sheer self respect, of course. Since you now know that he doesn't want to kill you. He didn't let you die. He doesn't even want to hurt you, from what you can gather. He just wants you.

At some point, while you lay there in the shadow of Water Lilies, you start wishing that Safin was there to hold you like he did before. To stroke your head while you sleep, and tell you that he would reorder time if only to give you more of it. It almost appalls you, how much you want him. How you begin to ache for him, like all the time you spent dreaming about him and lusting over him was a mere trifle in comparison. It fills you from your head to your toes, like his touch opened up a chasm within you, where there is no bottom to your need.

Why does the sea love the shore? That's a good fucking question. You'll have to ask him, sometime.

Your best guess as to why he stays away is that he's busy and expects you to do as you please until you've recovered. Your worst guess is that he's scared. You figured that fear was a foreign concept to him, the same as love and shame. But now, you're not so sure. Not by the way he'd held you like you were something precious to him, turned desperate at the prospect of losing you. You've proven that he feels at least one of those things— or, you think you did, based on the horror he'd shown at your power play.

Some power play. It had put you out of commission for the better part of a week. He most definitely saved your life. If he hadn't intervened, you would be dead as a doornail. When you step out of your room on the third day, you feel as feeble as a baby bird. The sun practically scorches your eyes, the breeze is far too cold on your skin.

Maybe later, you think as you retreat back into your room, back under the covers. You'll thank him for it later.

When you finally do venture out, you find him in a board room, deliberating over something with a group of his scientists. You rarely see them in the main house; they normally keep to the underground rooms and the factories. But, you guess that there's been some kind of development, since you hear the words test, success rate, and duplicate thrown around.

You're not really paying attention to any of that, though. You're watching him. Every move he makes, the way he shifts, the way he turns his head, the way his lashes flutter while he contemplates one of the papers set in front of him.

You've always found him attractive, and it's hard to deny it now. You could hate him all you want, but you could never refute his beauty, even when you detested the very ground he walked on; it would have been like standing in front of The David and calling it 'primitive.' Safin is beautiful in the way that a landslide is, or a tsunami rushing towards land— overwhelming and marvellous, and capable of destroying you if you let it. It's a bit of a miracle how you held out this long.

You blame your pride. You guess you don't have much of it left.

"Lyutsifer."

Maybe it's the imploring way that you say his name that makes everything come to a screeching halt. Every eye in the room turns toward you, including his. In fact, his head snaps in your direction so fast you think he might bolt up from his chair.

"Sorry. Is this a bad time?" You know it is. You've interrupted him during a business meeting, there's no way that you aren't being a pest. But, as with everything else, you want to see what he'll do.

Safin dismisses the group of scientists with a wave of his hand. It's startling, the way everyone launches up and out of the room without a word, like they all have somewhere else they desperately need to be and they only just remembered it. You shouldn't be so surprised, though, since it's almost the same thing he did the last time you had breakfast with him, what feels like a lifetime ago.

Whatever is between you now feels so much more… delicate, now, as opposed to the blustering anger and hatred you had towards him before, and his impenetrable coldness. Something has shifted. Your roaring fire has turned down to a low smoulder the longer it's gone on. His ice has melted, at least a bit.

He takes in the sight of you, reading you like he can find the answers to your being etched into your skin. After a moment's silence, he says, "You seem to have recovered well."

You physically have to stop yourself from snorting at him. "Yeah, I can tell you're really choked up about it."

"You find it funny." He tilts his head, fixing you with a hard, devouring stare. His features appear sharper now, more severe than they normally are— his scars deeper, his eyes lit with fire from within. He seems so displeased with you that you wonder if you finally did manage to piss him off. "I know you love to try my patience, but I should think you would limit the damage you cause yourself, in that pursuit."

"Please. It's not like the world would have ended if I died."

"That is where you're wrong," Safin says, his finger tapping lightly against the table top. "I would have torn the world apart, if you had been taken from me. There would be no place on this earth safe from my wrath. You must know that, by now."

There is a touch of vulnerability in his tone that makes you pause. He's so poised, so gentlemanly, but something dark lingers in the margins of it. You know that he's not exaggerating— he has more ability to destroy the world than any man you've ever known. That he would do it for your sake, though…

"Well. That's incredibly romantic, isn't it?" Dragging your fingers along the tops of the chairs, you round the table toward him. You probably look like you want to swallow him whole, and you're not even trying to hide it.

Safin lifts his chin at your approach, but his eyes fall to the mahogany table top. A perverse part of you likes watching him squirm, even if his version of squirming is decidedly more subtle than your own. Something about a powerful man refusing to meet your eye is enough to give you an ego.

"Did you interrupt my meeting for any particular reason? Or, was that simply to test my will, too?" He draws out the words slowly, like he's unbothered, but you see the way his jaw flexes when you perch yourself against the edge of the table, facing him.

"On the contrary, I came to thank you."

"Mm. For what, exactly?"

"For saving my life." At that, Safin blinks and looks up at you, his lashes casting long shadows across his cheeks. You have to stop yourself from reaching forward to trace them with your fingertip. "I think you're right. I think we are alike. At least, now we both know what it's like to be poisoned."

His hand twitches on the table, like he wants to reach over and grab you somewhere— place his hand on your thigh or wrap his fingers around your waist. You take note of the movement, and of the way his eyes linger on you, on the space where your nightgown splits at mid-thigh and exposes your skin nearly up to the juncture of your hip. You balance on the edge of that idea for a moment before you make an executive decision, because you don't think you can bear the tension anymore.

Slowly, you lift your knee and swing your leg across his lap. You don't mean to startle him, but his hand leaves the table so suddenly and captures your ankle midair, you think you must have. Safin holds you there, your foot hovering above his lap, his hand wrapped tight around your ankle, and he looks at you like he's prepared for you to attack him, somehow.

"Lyutsifer." His brow tilts at the sound of his name coming from your lips, but he doesn't let you go. He doesn't do much of anything at all until you move, bending your leg at the knee so that you can place it on the chair beside his hip.

"What is this?" Safin asks, his voice just above a whisper as you settle over his lap. He sounds so mystified. His hands almost immediately fly to your hips, fingers pressed into your lower back like he can leave an imprint of them there to mark you.

"This is me thanking you." If you were thinking any clearer, you might recall that you told him you wouldn't straddle him, the last time something like this happened between you. But you're not thinking clearly. Your mind is clouded with nothing beyond him, and how good it feels to have him between your legs.

His eyes crease at the corners, a calculating look crossing his face. You should be scared by that look. Instead, your heart races in a different way, and the feeling settles lower in your body.

"You're trying to seduce me." It's a statement, rumbling in his chest with a pleased hum.

You pause. Heat surges through your body like a solar flare. "Is it working?"

He laughs— actually laughs, shaking his head a bit in disbelief. You don't think you've ever heard Safin laugh. He's only ever given little sighs, puffs of air that convey either irritation or amusement, depending on the look on his face. But laughter, coming from him, doesn't sound like what you thought it would. It sounds… light. Boyish. He tilts his head back with it like there's nowhere for it to go but up.

You feel just a touch embarrassed, like a teenager who's been laughed at for trying to flirt. Heat rises in your cheeks, your mouth wanting to set in a frown. You can't exactly tell what he's thinking; he's such a closed book that it frustrates you. If he was like any normal man, you think he'd take a little more kindly to having you practically throw yourself at him.

But then he looks at you, his eyes shining, his mouth still curved up at the corner. "What in the world makes you think that you have to try?"

That destabilizes you a bit. At least, you weren't expecting such a shameless and bold-faced confession from him. You glance aside as you consider it. Did you really think it would take all that much? Did he not tell you from the beginning how beautiful he finds you? Did he not give you an orgasm without a moment's hesitation? Demonstrate his desire for you by any means necessary?

"Indulge me." You echo his words from all those days ago back to him. You know that it comes out more pleading than demanding, but it elicits the reaction from him that you wanted, all the same.

Safin closes his eyes and smiles fondly. "Don't I just."

Stillness stretches between you both. You hadn't anticipated getting this far with him— but now that you're here, you can't turn back. You don't think you want to.

You drop your hips, and you nearly hiss at the contact of his rough wool trousers against your bare cunt. Because you'd foregone underwear when you'd set out to look for him. Maybe you'd been planning this all along, and you just hadn't been honest with yourself about it. Maybe you aren't as impulsive as you think you are.

Your name leaves his mouth in a rush of breath, and you know it must be hot, and achingly sweet for him. You'd gotten so wet just from riling yourself up, just from staring at him, like a dog salivating over a bone. You know that he must feel it, pressed against him through his clothes. His mouth opens, a quiet breath rattling from his throat as he gapes at you.

God, he's hard. You can't imagine how he isn't absolutely losing his mind. Or, maybe he is? If you know anything about Safin, you know his restraint is second to none. It's like he prides himself on his ability to downplay everything, like nothing in the world effects him. You want him to lose that composure, like you've never wanted anything else.

You capture his face in your hands, your breath mingling with his in the space between you. "I never told you how gorgeous you are, did I?"

"Don't lie to me—"

"I'm not. You know I'm not. Can't you feel it?" He tenses beneath you, his thighs straining and his hips threatening to buck up into yours as you grind yourself against him. The friction is slow and slick, getting wetter as you work yourself over him, the sharp rasp of fabric on your clit like electricity on starved nerves. "You haunt me."

"I haunt you?" Safin parrots your words in a voice so low and bassy that you practically feel it vibrate in your bones. He gives you a look that tells you the feeling is mutual.

You hum, nodding slow, letting your nose nuzzle against his. "You know, I dreamt of you— I still do. I've had you every possible way, in my head. On your back. On mine. In every place, every position, and it's not enough. It's never enough."

You dip your head to drag your tongue over his parted lips, not really kissing him but more just tasting him. Letting your tongue catch just on the edge of his teeth and skip over the curve of his lip.

You don't know how he does it, how he sits there while you rub yourself on him, swollen and dripping, and just holds you. His fingers pressed into your back so tight, you can feel the blunt edges of his nails digging in for purchase. But then you hear it. Safin makes the slightest noise— a barely there thing, just this side of a gasp, but cut from something deeper, more guttural. It's a sound of thinly veiled desperation.

You grin, a giggle slipping from you that's more coquettish than you mean for it to be, but god. His body is so warm and solid between your legs, his breath so sweet in your mouth, sharing air like he can breathe life into you. You hear it catch in his throat when you brush your lips softly against his. "Am I testing you?"

Safin's hooded eyes focus on yours, the picture of lust and livid desire, like he's a step away from destroying you. You just barely fight the urge to bite his lip, feeling the way that his jaw flexes against the palm of your hand.

"C'mon, Lyutsifer," you goad him, grinning a cheshire cat smile against his lips. "Don't fight it. Let it happen."

Then, two things happen at once. You roll your hips down devillishly hard against him, moaning into his mouth at the feeling of his hard cock pressed perfectly against your core. And he shudders out a growl, and he yanks you down to crash his lips against yours.

Safin kisses you like he can consume you entirely with it, if given the chance. His hand finds the back of your head and plants itself there, while he snatches you around the back of the thighs and lifts you bodily, only to effectively throw you across the table.

Your back hits the hard, cold table top, your legs thrown around his waist while he looms over you, his breathing ragged. "Enough with your tests."

He kisses you again, and you could burn alive from the heat of it. To think that you could have been doing this instead of hating him, fighting him every step of the way. Why were you fighting him, again? It would be so much easier to do this, to have him between your legs and behind your teeth when you want him. You're a house of cards, toppling at the force of his storm.

Safin's hand cradles the back of your head, keeping you from knocking it against the table as his tongue dips into your mouth. But the other drags down the line of your body, trailing over the curve of your breast and down your stomach to dip between your legs.

You whine into his mouth, your hands clutching helplessly at him while he takes to you with two fingers. Your legs splayed wide by his hips, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do but take it as he curls his two fingers and sends sharp pleasure rocketing up your spine.

Safin catches your bottom lip with his teeth and you moan, arching against him, trying to chase his touch. You want to feel him everywhere, not just on your lips and between your legs, but pressed against you, pinning you down, holding you captive in his embrace.

"Lyutsifer," you gasp against his lips, trying to pull him down against you in vain. "Please—"

"I love the way you say my name," he whispers back, not even letting you finish your plea, whatever it would have been. "You make it sound so beautiful." His accent comes out thicker, harsher, clipped at the edges like you've made him lose his bearings entirely. And then his tongue is back in your mouth, tasting you, and his warm palm presses hard against your clit, so smooth and soft after the harshness of his trousers, and you—

You're going to cum.

It simmers up inside you, the familiar mounting pleasure riding on the crest of a wave. When the hell did that happen? When you were trying to get him to lose control? Grinding on him like a bitch in heat? He's not fucking you. He's touching you, yes, giving you his fingers the way that he did before, but he's not fucking you the way that you wanted him to. And still, you're going to cum. You have to bite back a whimper, a simpering little noise in the back of your throat at the sheer defeat of it all.

"Stop whining," Lyutsifer chides, but his tone has no real heat to it. His lips drag softly over yours as he hums. "This was your idea."

You do the exact opposite of what he says. "B—But I want you to—"

"Yes," he interjects again, and you feel his lips quirk up against yours, a smile crossing his face. "You want me."

You open your mouth to argue that that was not what you were going to say, that you want his cock, that you want him to fuck you into the table, like you've been wanting him to do forever. But his tongue is back in your mouth and he drives his fingers so deep that you can't think, can't really do anything but claw at his back and his hair. You feel yourself hurtling toward the edge of reason, while he brings you closer, closer—

There's a commotion above you, and Lyutsifer rips his hand away from you to all but slam it down on the table beside your head. You jump at the sound, tightening your legs around his waist like you can pull him down to you like a shield.

"Sir—"

"Get. Out." Lyutsifer lifts his head to growl at the guard who has just burst in on you.

Whoever it is must be getting a great show. You know that there's no mistaking the position you two are in— your skirt is pushed up around your hips, your breasts practically spilling out of the neckline of your nightgown. Lyutsifer is more disheveled than you've ever seen him, his chest heaving, a dark curl hanging low over his brow, dappled with perspiration.

"Sir…" the guard says again, decidedly more hesitant this time, "there's been a security breach. In the factory."

Oh. Lyutsifer's going to kill this guy. You can see it as you stare up at him, the way that he glares murderously over your head as though he could eviscerate the guard with just a look. A vein jumps in his neck, and he grits his teeth like he's lingering on the very thought.

You fight off the embarrassment of being caught with your pants down, and decide to take the proverbial bull by the horns. Sliding your hands from Lyutsifer's neck to capture his face, you tilt his head back down to look at you. His eyes are stormy, rife with frustration, his pupils nearly overtaking his irises.

"It's okay." You watch the anger practically drain from his face the second your finger smoothes his hair back into place. You try to give him your most encouraging, winsome smile, but it feels weak. "Go on. It's all right."

He spends a moment there, hovering over you with his lips pursed, like he'd still rather kill the guy and finish what you started. But then he dips his head and lets out another perturbed sigh, like you've come to associate with him.

Lyutsifer uses the flat of his palm to drag your skirt back down over your hips— as though your decency is something that can be preserved, now. You throb with want, your core begging for something to relieve the tension he's wrought in you, but there's nothing for it.

When he stands, you have to fight not to reach for him again. Mostly because of the dark spot on the front of his trousers, which is entirely of your own creation.

He captures your hand before he leaves, to press a quick kiss to your knuckles. There's something gallant in it, like he's making a promise to you with his lips. You watch him breeze past the guard on his way out of the room, as calm and composed as you've ever seen him, and you think you've done a noble thing, a good thing.

What you don't see is Lyutsifer turning on the guard in the stairway, jamming the tip of a fountain pen into the man's jugular. As the guard burbles and splutters on his own blood, Lyutsifer sucks in a deep breath that doesn't do much to clear the thought of you from his mind.

"Interruptions," he hisses while wiping the guard's blood off of his hands.

Admittedly, it was way too easy to get into his room. Deceptively easy. Stupidly easy. The kind of easy that makes you think that it may be a trap. Except, what else is there to trap you with? This whole island is a trap, the whole thing is meant to keep you here and keep you his.

You didn't know what you expected to find. Perhaps a dank dungeon full of corpses, to make you believe that he's nothing more than Bluebeard, come to life. But, it appears that Lyutsifer must keep his skeletons elsewhere; his room is just as orderly, just as unassuming as he likes to appear, himself.

The room is bigger than yours. The walls and floors are still concrete, but there's something airy about it. Maybe the ceiling is higher? He has a chandelier that doubles as an abstract art piece, hanging over a king sized bed with midnight blue sheets. The wardrobe has two doors of obsidian glass, to match the obsidian coffee table in a sitting area closer to the balcony doors. When you open the wardrobe, you find nothing but a neatly organized closet. There's not even a lockbox hidden in the back, nothing of curiosity or note.

It's a strange thing, to have a glimpse into the inner world of someone who remains such an enigma to you. Everything is so stark, so… tidy. Nothing really appears lived-in or used. The spines of the books on the shelves are all intact, and you wonder if they've ever been opened. Upon close inspection, you find that Lyutsifer is fond of the Romantics— Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Blake— but notably, Byron has been omitted from the catalogue. You have to stifle a laugh. Night is dark, water is wet. Lyutsifer Safin dislikes Byron.

But even the letter opener on the desk, a silver thing with an ornate handle, appears to have never been used. Perhaps it's more decorative than useful. The blade is not edged, but it comes to a point that glints in the light. You hold it in your hands, feeling the weight of it, the coolness of the metal in your palm.

You could kill him. The voice in your head is quieter this time than all the other times you've heard it, over the months you've spent on the island. Drive it into his heart. Escape before anyone notices.

…And never see him again. That's a new voice. You don't know what to make of it. That voice confuses you, makes you hesitate when you should be acting, instead. That voice makes you crave him more than you crave your freedom, and it's getting louder than the rest all the time. Never kiss him again. Never hold him again. Never look into his eyes and feel…

What? What is it that you feel for him?

"Planning something?"

You jump, your heart rate spiking. You didn't hear him come in— he just appears out of the shadows like a vision. Lyutsifer takes in the sight of you holding the letter opener with a curious expression on his face. He doesn't look surprised to find you in his room, or even bothered by it at all. He seems just as resigned to it as though he always expected you to be here, waiting for him once he'd gotten done with… whatever it was that was wrong in the factory. A security breach, whatever that could mean.

"Oh, I was just thinking about killing you." You say it so flippantly, returning your attention back to the blade in your hand, but you turn it just slightly so that you capture his image in the polished surface. You watch his eyes rake over you, lingering for a moment on the short, insignificant nothing of a skirt on your nightgown. The one he'd had his hand under just a mere hour ago.

"How would you do it, I wonder?" There's a reserved sort of mirth in his voice, like the prospect of you taking a knife to him turns him on. You wouldn't be surprised if it did.

"In your sleep," you tell him, pressing your finger to the tip of the blade and twirling it. It's not sharp enough to do anything but dent your skin, but given the right amount of pressure, it could certainly pierce into someone's chest. If you were resolved enough. If you had the right amount of desperation. "Would you be dreaming of me, do you think?"

"Of course I would be. And I would die in bliss." The earnestness of his words makes you shiver as he steps towards you, draws one gentle finger up the curve of your spine. He pauses at the nape of your neck, resting his hand there possessively. Then, he remarks, "You won't kill me."

"No?" You shoot him a look over your shoulder. Lyutsifer hovers so close, carving out a place for himself in your space like it's his own. "What makes you so sure?"

He reaches forward and takes your hand in his, squeezing your fist before guiding you to turn toward him.

The point of the blade presses into his sternum, and he keeps you there, never flinching. Lyutsifer's fingers flex against the back of your hand, narrowing the distance between you until the hilt practically touches your own chest. In this way he holds your gaze, his mouth curling up in the slightest smirk while you tremble.

You stare at the blade pressed into his chest, drawing the fabric of his blouse taut against his skin. Chewing on your lip, your brow pinches as you consider the possibility. It would take nothing. A sharp thrust, a shifting of your weight, and his skin would give beneath your force. And then, what? You return to your old life, as though nothing happened? An army doesn't come after you?

Poisons me, poisons you.

He doesn't have to say it for you to know that he means it, in his eyes and in his hands. He strokes his thumb over the back of your neck, as though he has already forgiven you for it. Before you've even made up your mind that it's what you want to do.

You blink up at him. He fixates on your lips for a moment before meeting your eye again. His gaze is so adoring in a way you cannot fathom— as though you could do anything to him and you would still have him wrapped around your finger. That look… it goes straight to your core. Heat blooms from every point of contact you have with him, your heart pounding in your chest as though you've been poisoned again. He is the poison. It's him.

"You precious thing," Lyutsifer croons, his hand wrapping around the back of your neck, fingers pressing into the sides of your throat. You know he can feel the way your pulse jumps against his touch. "How lovely it would be, for you to cut out my heart. It belongs to you, after all."

The blade clatters to the floor, skittering to a stop near the bed. You take a deep, shuddering breath, since air suddenly can't get into your lungs and stay there. His scent surrounds you, fiery and sweet like cypress and incense. It disrupts your train of thought, entirely.

"This… This is insanity." You feel yourself nodding, even though the words sound half-baked as they fall from your mouth. "I'm losing my mind."

"You say that as though love has ever been sane." His eyes are darker than they ought to be, even in the low light of the room. "Why deny yourself any longer?"

You breathe tightly, and as arousal beats a steady rhythm in your core, you find yourself fisting his shirt in your hands. You tug him to you and kiss him, like his lips are the only thing that make sense to you right now. His touch, his taste. The feeling of him pressed against you, and the warmth of his skin on yours.

Lyutsifer holds your face in his hands, tilting your jaw and licking into your mouth. However much you want him, he kisses you like his desire for you is tenfold. His fingers circle your throat, holding you steady as he deepens the kiss as though staking a claim to you. You rake your nails through his hair and moan at the feeling, at the sweetness of him, and the relief that it brings.

"Lyutsifer," you speak into his mouth and hear his breath hitch. "Take me to bed."

And he does.

Your silk nightgown flutters to the floor like so much smoke. His hands and mouth are on you, teeth grazing your shoulder as he backs you towards the bed. He lays you down like you are something to be cherished, to be revered. He traces your skin with his lips like you are the most delicate thing in the world, to him.

Kneeling at the end of the bed, he kisses the inside of your thigh. He moves so slow, to savour you in all your nakedness, your legs spread before him on his own bed, stripped down to the bone. Lyutsifer's breath sweeps across your skin, and without even meaning to, you shiver in his hold.

"Do not be afraid, my love." His voice is a delicate purr in his throat. If his objective was to keep you from trembling, that was the worst thing he could have done.

"I'm not afraid." You despise how your words waver, while everything within you draws up tight and aching. "I'm— my god, I just want you so bad, I can't stand it."

"Patience is a virtue," Lyutsifer hums low, using the most patronizing tone imaginable, and you fucking hate him for it right now.

"Don't talk to me about patience when you're between my le—" You cut yourself off on a gasp, because he turns his head and sinks his teeth into the inside of your thigh hard enough that you're sure it's going to leave a mark.

"Quiet." He soothes the bite with the swath of his tongue, lingering on the flavor of your skin for a moment. You lift your head to find him watching you with piercing intensity. "I have been patient enough, waiting for a taste of you. You can certainly learn some of it."

Lyutsifer's hand smoothes down the curve of your thigh before he hooks his hand behind your knee, pulling you towards the edge of the bed, towards him. He dips his head to breathe you in, his nose pressed against your pelvis and gasping like it's all the air he needs. He clutches you in his hands, spreads you open so wide that there can be no more hiding from him, no more shying away.

Goosebumps prickle along your skin when he presses his tongue against your cunt. It's been so long since someone went down on you, and even then it was only as a begrudging favor— but you can tell that Lyutsifer enjoys it, derives pleasure from it, just by the way he takes to you and lets out a content, resonating moan.

Your nails scratch at his scalp, your hips bucking towards him. Warmth spreads through your limbs and twists through your core, as he licks upwards and closes his mouth over your clit. Lyutsifer's hand leaves your thigh so that he can prod his fingers inside. You bend towards him with the surge of heat, a pleading whine issuing from your throat.

"That's it, darling," he whispers as he works his fingers into you. His tongue, dripping wet and hot as sin, strokes long and hard over your clit, his fingers curling up against a spot that makes you cry out.

Like with everything else, he is precise, calculating— he takes note of each hitch of your breath, each time your knees quiver against his shoulders, each soft moan that falls from your mouth. He takes his time, slowly bringing you close to the edge of oblivion, without faltering.

"Lyutsifer—" You gasp his name, your hand tightening in his hair as you feel yourself hurtling toward an orgasm. All your floor muscles clamp down at once, and your eyes roll back. "Oh my god."

Lyutsifer curls his fingers within you, feeling the way your muscles contract and release, the way your hips seek him out desperately. "Go on, sweet girl," he tells you, and his voice is a low rumble in the darkness, far headier than you've ever heard it.

It rises up in you just at the sound of his voice, at his gentle permission to let go. You make an obscene sound, loud and impossibly wrecked as you cum in his mouth. His tongue swirls gentle circles around your clit and every nerve in your body sings. Your hands grip at his head as though he might leave, but he doesn't.

He stays there for a long time. Even after you've come down, after you've stopped twitching against him. Your hips still follow his movements, like he puppeteers every bit of your pleasure, and your body is only a vessel for him to control. But he lingers, until he builds you up again, back towards that same peak.

And then he breaks away. It's maddening. You're there, teetering on the edge again, waiting for the drop that doesn't come. For a second time today, he rips his hand away from you too soon, and you have to bite back a sob. You have the mind to kick him, except your limbs are as strong as gelatin, now.

You make a pitiful sound, your lungs deflating as you grip the sheets, and then cover your face. Laying there shaking, you're sure that you look completely helpless. You open your mouth to snap something impossibly bitchy at him, but then you see a flash of something from between your fingers, and you feel the mattress dip on either side of you. Something warm and wet melts along the skin of your stomach, and it takes you a moment to realize that it's his tongue, dragging up the line of your ribs and between your breasts, as he stalks above you on the bed.

"Look at me."

You pull your hands away from your eyes to meet his. Lyutsifer hovers over you, bracing himself with his arms, caging you in. Thoughts spiral around your head, calling visions of the hundreds of ways you've had him in your dreams, all the times you thought of having him in this exact position.

You drag your gaze down his neck, to his chest, to where his naked hips press against yours, skin on hot skin, your thighs parted for him. His scars are more extensive than you once thought— they stretch down his chest, over his arms and along his ribs like lightning splitting the sky. It occurs to you that this is probably the reason why he has never done more than use his hands on you, up until now.

He's beautiful.

Still trying to wrap your mind around it, around him, you reach forward and rest your hand against his warm chest. His heart pounds beneath your touch. You adore his body, and every inch of it that you haven't seen before enraptures you. Your hands itch to hold him, your teeth ache to sink into him. You want every part of him against every part of you, if you can get it.

"You have never feared me," Lyutsifer says after a moment. And then, his brow draws in the slightest bit of confusion. "Why?"

You search for the answer to that question, endless possibilities spinning through your mind. Of all the emotions he has ever wrought in you, fear has never been one of them. It does strike you as odd, but not unbelievable. You have hated him, desired him, felt… affection for him, if that's what it could be called. But not fear. For all the reasons that he's given you to fear him, none of them have ever hit the mark. Why?

Finally, you settle on the most reasonable conclusion. "Because I know you," you say, and touch his face, sweeping your thumb over his cheekbone. You focus on his eyes, the way his pupils have almost entirely eclipsed his irises. "I know you like I know myself. Because you're mine."

It comes out more possessively than you intend for it to. Lyutsifer searches your face for some kind of deception, but there isn't any. You mean it.

"You're mine," you repeat, and as you do, you drag your thigh against his hip, hooking your leg around his waist. "Aren't you?"

Lyutsifer takes a deep breath in, and lets it out with a long, rumbling hum that makes you lose your grasp on reality. You feel lightheaded, entirely intoxicated by him as he grinds his hips so slowly up against yours, and tips his head to to drag his lips along your jaw, up to your ear. "I've told you before, darling. Take my life. It belongs to you."

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip as he enters you in one slow, fluid stroke. It arrests everything within you. You spread your legs further and arch your back like you can urge him deeper, the thickness of him making your toes curl.

It's been too long. It's been way, way too long since you've been properly fucked— it's made you so sensitive, your cunt tightening around him to the point that it almost hurts. You sink into the mattress beneath his weight, your nails raking up his back. "Fuck—"

Lyutsifer groans into your ear, and shifts against you. He pulls your leg up, angling his hips to hit something absolutely devastating inside you. You cry out, flinging your arms around him as he starts up a steady pace. Of course, he is nothing if not patient, measured as he always is.

There is no rush, only slow pleasure bleeding into everything, and the taste of a thousand sweet deaths rising in the back of your throat, like licking honey from thorns. Your clit is pounding, your head humming with a song that you can't quite figure out the cadence to. Lyutsifer turns his head and captures your mouth in a kiss, moaning as his tongue delves in to taste you. His hand, still holding your thigh, squeezes as he pushes in, feeling flesh give under his touch as his hips meet yours.

"So this is what it takes," he whispers, touched with a note of awe, "for you to stop fighting me, hm?"

You open your mouth to speak, but you're at a loss for any words that could possibly form there. He's so deep, surrounding you entirely. You can't think. It's as though he has crawled under your skin, into the cradle of your ribcage, and made a home within your body that will only ever belong to him.

"I'm t—tired of trying," you stutter out, hissing through your teeth as you bite back a whimper. You seek him out, dragging your tongue along the slope of his neck as though you can map him out with your sense of taste, and let your breath ghost over the trail your saliva makes. "Just let me— I want—"

You hook your ankles behind his back, locking him against you. You sink your teeth into the juncture of his shoulder and he moans aloud, snapping his hips forward and jolting you against the mattress. Something about him has turned you bloodthirsty. Your cunt throbs in warning, hot pleasure erupting through your core at the feeling. Lyutsifer groans, pausing as he closes his eyes, and you know just from the way he shakes that he must be close, as well.

"You can have anything you want," he coos, much gentler than you want him to be. Your eyelashes flutter when he traces the shell of your ear with his teeth. "I'll take care of you. Just tell me."

You know that he means it. You know that he would give you anything that you want. Anything, except for your freedom. For the first time, you're not sure if that's what you desire. "Lyutsifer, please…"

"Tell me." Lyutsifer raises his head to look at you, and a moan chokes off in your throat as though it's been broken in half. Gazing at you like you are the single most perfect thing in the world to him, his eyes are like two glittering sapphires. "What is it, darling?"

You don't really know what you're asking for. He's just so gorgeous— you're entranced by him, completely consumed by your lust for him and your desire to have him in any way that you can. "I just… I just lo—"

You cut yourself off on a gasp, tightening your grip on your senses. No. You can't say that. You don't know where that thought came from, but you need it to go away right now. Biting your tongue, you whimper instead of finishing your sentence.

I just love you. It must have boiled up from the basest part of you, from somewhere deep enough that you never saw it coming.

Oh, god.

You've fallen for him.

It's impossible. Entirely implausible. There's no way that you could have fallen for fucking Lyutsifer Safin. Apathy is easy, hatred is comfortable— love is something else entirely. But there it is, like a bomb that has not yet detonated, or a bullet without its casing. It takes nothing to debase yourself; it takes even less for you to dig your own grave. What a punch line at the end of a very funny joke.

You love him. Fucking great.

"Want you to cum," you pant, as a replacement for what you refuse to say, and clamp your hand around the back of his neck like you can force him to do what you say if you squeeze hard enough.

A small scoff of a laugh falls from his lips, disbelieving. "That's what you want?" You're nodding before he even finishes his question, pulling him into you with your legs and your arms, trying to cling to him and get him closer, although you aren't entirely sure if that's possible.

"I want it," you insist in a wobbly voice, still nodding. You're frantic, scrambling for something to override the irrational conclusion you've just been faced with. "I want you to cum, Lyutsifer. Give it— give it to me."

He rests his forehead against yours, his hips never faltering. He's too pretty. You hate him.

"You first." His gravelly voice is like a bolt of lightning between your legs— but then he reaches between you, brushes his thumb over your clit, and you're done for. Pleasure arcs through you and breaks. You shatter with a loud cry, digging your fingers into his hair, while your hips chase his frantically and you jerk in his hold.

Lyutsifer curses, a broken noise coming from him as he loses himself. He plants his hips against yours, shivering at the feeling of you throbbing and clenching around him, and he cums with your name on his lips. You drag your hand up his spine, feeling the tremors in his body, his shoulders flexing and chest heaving as he lays his whole weight on top of you.

You both lay for a while, sweat damp skin on skin, breathing in each others' air. What hovers between you feels like a blank slate; nothing is the same, but whatever lays ahead is entirely unwritten. He can't know what you were going to say— you think you saved yourself a second before disaster, before you could say something that you could never take back.

But the more you think about it, tracing your fingers up and down his spine, the more you think it wouldn't really make a difference. Would it? If you really belong to each other?

You take a sobering breath, and lift your hand to stroke your thumb over the apple of his cheek. "Lyutsifer?"

He blinks at you slowly. "Mm?"

"Why does the sea love the shore?"

Lyutsifer wets his lip with his tongue, his brow still pressed to yours. He considers the question for a moment, before he answers, "Because nature deems it so. There cannot be one without the other. They are… bound, by their very existence. Made for each other."

"That sounds about right." Sounds about like what you figured he would say, anyway. He rolls off of you with one last brush of his lips to your temple. Without his warmth, the cold air kisses your skin and makes you shiver.

Staring up at the ceiling, your mind inevitably drifts to the letter opener, where it lays on the floor at the end of the bed. You can still kill him, says that ever-quieter voice in your head. Wait until he falls asleep. Stab him in the heart. It's yours, isn't it?

Lighter than a feather, Lyutsifer's hand drifts over the plane of your stomach, and his arm wraps around your waist. He pulls you closer and presses the smallest kiss to your shoulder. The motion is… tender. Sweet. Hinting at a desire for closeness that you had not expected from him.

"Lyutsifer…"

You pause. You open and close your mouth, searching for something to say to fill the silence, to avoid the words that still so desperately want to jump out of your mouth, even as you beat them back. I love you. I love you. I love you. You swallow it down. You simply refuse to say it.

Instead, you finally resort to, "Why do you hate Byron?"

He's quiet for longer than before. Then, he murmurs, "Because he was a simpering little pissant who fucked his sister."

A loud blast of laughter erupts from you, causing him to snicker against your skin.

Maybe later. You have to agree with the second voice. You'll kill him later.

"My beloved is mine and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies." -Song of Solomon 2:16

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