aurelia @peachysull - Tumblr Blog

Aug 7

at your service

“You rang the bell...the bell means you need me.” “I always need you, Zayne.” You guide his hand beneath your shirt, pressing his palm flat against your bare stomach, and the breath he lets out against your neck is almost a surrender in itself. “I think you need me, too.”

synopsis: butler!zayne is trained to anticipate your every need. what he hasn't been trained for is you—home alone, ringing the one bell he's never been able to ignore, asking for the one thing he's never been able to give.

wc: 8.8k | ao3

tags: butler!zayne, brat tamer!zayne, age gap, power imbalance, porn with plot, fluff + smut, comfort no hurt, spanking, edging, cunnilingus, hair pulling, vaginal sex, backshots, prone bone, size difference, aftercare

a/n: giving zayne one (1) barely legal fantasy……..as a treat……….

The first time you tried, you were sixteen.

It was the thick of summer, the kind of damp heat that turns the estate into a greenhouse. Your mother's garden party sprawled across the south lawn, and you’d hidden upstairs long enough to change into a sundress that was definitely too short and absolutely on purpose.

You padded barefoot down the service stairs to the kitchen, where Zayne—the perfect butler, the one who runs the household, the one who never lets anything go wrong—was reviewing the evening's schedule.

You perched yourself on the counter beside his clipboard, crossed your legs, and let the hem ride up.

“I need help with my zipper,” you said, turning to show him the back of the dress, which was zipped perfectly fine and you both knew it.

Zayne hadn't looked up from the schedule, hadn't so much as blinked. He simply reached over, tugged the zipper up the remaining quarter-inch it didn't need to travel, and said, “Will that be all?”

You stared at the back of his head, face burning, and vowed that one day you'd get him to break.

You tried again on your eighteenth birthday.

Your parents had thrown a party, the kind with floral arrangements and a champagne tower and three hundred people who knew your family's net worth better than they knew your name. You spent the evening smiling until your cheeks ached, accepting congratulations from strangers, and dancing with boys your mother hand selected who were perfectly nice and perfectly boring and perfectly wrong.

By midnight, you escaped to the kitchen—kicked your heels off, discarded your tiara on the counter, and sat on the floor with your back against the island eating leftover cake with your fingers.

Zayne had found you there. He'd taken in the scene—the dress pooling around you, the smudged mascara, the pink frosting on your thumb—and silently retrieved a fork before sitting down beside you.

He was still in his suit, still immaculate as ever, but he'd loosened his tie—and the sight of that one concession to comfort had made something hot pulse through you. You sat together in silence for a while, passing the cake back and forth. Then, because you were eighteen and a little drunk and very tired of pretending, you asked:

“Zayne. Do you think I'm pretty?”

He blinked, keeping his eyes shut for an extra heartbeat—processing the question, the context, the thousand reasons he should deflect.

“You've been drinking.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“The answer doesn't change based on your sobriety.”

“So there is an answer.”

He reached over and wiped a smear of frosting from the corner of your mouth with his thumb. The gesture was gentle and natural, the kind of thing he'd done a hundred times when you were small. Except you weren't small anymore, and his thumb had lingered a second too long, and you ached to know if he’d still be gentle if he pressed it against your tongue.

“You should drink some water,” he'd said quietly. “And go to bed.”

“Come tuck me in, then.”

You'd meant it as a joke, but the words came out too soft and the look on his face told you that you'd gotten closer to something real than either of you was prepared for.

He didn’t give you a response. Just stood up, filled a glass with cold water, and set it on the floor beside you.

“Happy birthday, princess.”

You'd sat there alone in the kitchen as the door shut behind him, holding the cup with both hands, and hated yourself for pushing. Maybe hated yourself more for not pushing harder. You'd felt his thumb on your mouth for the rest of the night. For weeks after.

Sometimes, if you closed your eyes, you could still feel it now.

Tonight, you’re twenty, and the house is trying to eat you alive.

You’re home from university for winter break, but the house is empty—your parents are out of the country, occupied by some charity board retreat that requires a week of their attention. The staff has all gone home for the holidays, leaving you alone in a house that was built for thirty.

Alone except for Zayne.

Zayne stays. He always stays, because someone has to manage the property and someone has to manage you, and your parents have never trusted anyone else with either job.

The estate is settling into its bones, creaking and groaning like it’s alive and reminding you how small you are inside it. The hallways are too long, the ceilings are too high, and every shadow seems to have eyes looking directly at you.

You’re not scared.

You’re an adult. You have self-defense training and a home security system that could protect a small nation.

You're not scared.

The floorboards squeak directly above your bed, and you flinch so hard you nearly fall off the mattress.

Okay. Maybe you’re a little scared.

Your eyes find the bell on your nightstand.

It's small—worn with age, fitted with a wooden handle meant for hands of a much younger you. Your grandmother had gifted it after you'd had a nightmare and screamed the house down and said, Ring this whenever you need someone, darling. Someone will always come.

Someone always meant Zayne.

Your parents never really had the time, or the patience, or the interest in dealing with your whims. But Zayne…Zayne always did. He was paid to maintain order after all, and managing you was just another task—though it never felt like one.

Not when he answered the call of your bell every time.

You'd rung it the night of the thunderstorm when you were eight, and he'd appeared within minutes with a flashlight and a copy of The Secret Garden and read to you until the storm passed. You'd rung it the night before your first day of secondary school, sick with anxiety, and he'd brought warm milk and sat with you while you listed every possible catastrophe and he assured you, very gently, that none of those things would happen and that if they did, he would personally intervene.

You rang it less and less as you grew older, saving it for the real emergencies—when your first boyfriend broke up with you by text, or the night before your final exams when you couldn't stop shaking. He always came. Never commented on the hour or the reason, just showed up at your door ready to handle whatever you needed handled.

You haven't rung it in over three years.

You pick it up, letting the cool brass warm in your palm. You turn it over once, feeling the weight of it, the history, the lifetime of someone always coming when you called.

You ring it.

The sound is small in the vast quiet of the house, barely louder than the wind outside your window. But you know he hears it. Zayne hears everything.

Two minutes pass before footsteps echo in the hallway, followed by a soft knock at your door.

“Come in,” you call.

He opens the door and stands in the frame, and the sight of him makes your mouth go dry.

After all this time living under the same roof, you've only ever seen him in his suit, his work clothes, or—once, memorably—a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up that had nearly killed you. But this is something else entirely.

Grey sleep pants hang low on his hips, a white t-shirt stretching across his chest. His hair is tousled over his forehead, glasses sliding just slightly, jaw shadowed with the kind of stubble he'd never allow during working hours.

His eyes find the bell in your hand, and something in them softens.

“The house is making noises,” you explain.

He leans against the doorframe, taking in your oversized t-shirt, your bare legs, the way you’re sitting cross-legged at the center of your mattress on high alert.

“It's an old house,” he says. “It makes noises.”

“Scary noises.”

“You're not a child anymore.”

“Age and fear are not mutually exclusive.” You return the bell to the nightstand with unnecessary care. “I read that somewhere.”

“You read that nowhere.”

“I might have,” you counter. “You don’t know my reading habits.”

“You're currently halfway through a fantasy romance novel you hide inside a copy of The Economist when I bring your breakfast.” He crosses his arms, which emphasizes the broadness of his chest in a way that should come with a warning. “I know your reading habits.”

“It’s romantasy, Zayne,” you correct drily, though your face heats. “And that's—invasive.”

“It's observational. You leave the dust jacket loose.” He steps into your room, letting the door close behind him. “What do you need?”

You. I need you. I've needed you since I was sixteen and you zipped a dress that didn't need zipping and I need you to come here now and hold me and never leave this room.

“Company,” you say instead. “Just—stay for a while. Please.”

“There's a guest room adjacent to—”

“Zayne.”

“—mine, which I can prepare in—”

“Zayne, come on. You used to read to me when I couldn't sleep.”

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “You were eight.”

“And you were a very good reader. I remember the voices you did for the characters.”

“I did not do voices.”

“You totally did voices. Mrs. Medlock had a Yorkshire accent.”

He tries to fight the corner of his mouth lifting and loses. “That's historically accurate.”

A branch scrapes against the window and you jolt, pulling your knees in tight to your chest, and you watch it happen in slow motion—the moment Zayne registers the current of anxiety beneath your bravado, the delicate weight of his propriety crumbling against the fact that you rang the bell, the bell that means I need you, the bell he's never once ignored.

He crosses to your bookshelf, scans it, and pulls out a slim paperback.

“Persuasion?” you say, catching a glimpse of the cover.

He takes a seat on the edge of your bed, leaving a tortuously polite foot of distance between his hip and your knee. “It was on the shelf.”

“It’s a romance novel.”

“It's Austen. It's literature.”

“You just gave me a hard time for reading romance novels.”

“I gave you a hard time for hiding them.” He settles his glasses higher on his nose. “And this is a novel about patience. Restraint. Waiting for something even when it seems impossible. I thought you could use the lesson.”

You scoff in mock offense. “Was that a dig at me?”

“It was a recommendation.” He opens the book, then clears his throat. “Now stop talking.”

He reads.

You lie back against your pillow as his voice fills your bedroom like candlelight, settling into the spaces between the house’s creaking. When you were younger, his reading voice was a sedative, designed to pull you under. Now you're aware of every inflection, every pause, every place where his tongue shapes a word in a way that makes your thoughts drift to what else his mouth could be doing if he stopped being so goddamn careful.

After a few minutes, you start to shift. Not dramatically—just adjusting yourself in a way that happens to settle your body closer to his.

“You're not sleeping,” he says without taking his eyes off the page.

“I’m listening.”

“You're fidgeting.”

“I’m cold.”

“You’re not using a blanket.”

“A blanket isn't warm like a person.”

His gaze drags between you and the blanket you never bothered to use, eyes caught somewhere between mild disapproval and reluctant indulgence.

“Come closer,” you continue. “I’m requesting warmth. As a service.”

He lifts a brow. “You're requesting warmth.”

“From my butler. Who is paid to ensure my comfort.”

“I'm paid to manage the household.”

“Managing me is part of the household.”

“A fact I'm reminded of daily.”

Still, he moves closer an inch. Then another, when you give him a look that says it’s not enough. He eventually ends up beside you, back against the headboard, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from his body but not quite touching.

“Better?” he asks.

You let your head rest on his shoulder, the way you used to when you were small—except you weren't thinking about the way his shoulder felt under your cheek then, or the firmness of the muscle, or the way he smells like clean linen shadowed with something rich and heady and him that you’ve never been close enough to catch before.

“Getting there. Keep reading.”

He obeys, though the words have lost all meaning. All that matters is the vibration of the words from his body into yours, the way the sound fills the aching space behind your ribs with something tender and safe.

You let a few minutes pass, let him settle into the false security of the routine—you leaning on him, him reading, the benign pretense that this is just an act of service. Then you curl closer, tucking your legs up and angling your body until you're pressed along his side with your face against his chest and your hand resting on his abdomen.

His reading stops.

“Comfortable?” he asks without looking down.

“Almost.” You spread your fingers wider against his stomach, savoring the way the muscles there tense beneath your touch. “Your heartbeat is fast.”

“I was reading aloud. That's exertion.”

“Liar.”

“Cardiovascular response to sustained vocalization is well-documented.”

“Seriously?”

“There are several studies. I'll send you the citations in the morning.” He shuts the book and sets it on the nightstand, effectively abandoning the charade. He folds his glasses and places them neatly beside it, pinching the bridge of his nose with a long exhale. “Go to sleep.”

“Hold me first,” you insist, wrapping your fingers around his wrist and guiding it to your waist. “I said I was cold.”

His hand rests at your side, settling on top of your shirt with a minimal contact that technically fulfills the request while giving away not an ounce more.

“Zayne.”

“Mm?”

“If I asked you to hold a box, would you balance it on one finger?”

“If the box asked to be carried with unreasonable specifications, possibly.”

“I’m not a box.”

“No. A box would be far less difficult.”

His arm wraps around you, pulling you against him properly, and the sudden full-body contact is dizzying. He's warm everywhere—the solid plane of his chest against your cheek, his arm heavy around your waist, his thigh pressed along the length of yours.

“There,” you murmur. “Was that so hard?”

“Yes,” he replies simply. “Now sleep."

“I’m not tired.”

“Then close your eyes and try.”

You shake your head against his shirt. “I can't sleep like this.”

“Like what?"

You shift, turning in his arms until your back presses against his chest. His body seems to adjust instinctively, turning with yours before his mind registers the implication—his arm resettling around your waist, chest flush against your spine, and you feel more than hear the sharp intake of breath he tries to hide when your bodies slot together.

“There.” You hum in approval. “Perfect.”

Zayne’s hand flattens against your stomach the smallest fraction, and the silence between you buzzes like a dare neither of you has the courage to break. The wind whips outside your window, but you don’t hear it, can’t focus on anything other than the way his thumb starts to move in a faint line, back and forth, tracing the hem of your shirt where its ridden up at your waist.

You’re barely breathing, afraid that any acknowledgment will make him stop, afraid that the touch you’ve been craving for so long will disappear before you even have the chance to feel it. His thumb runs over the hem again, and this time his fingertips dip beneath it—barely a touch, the rough pad of his finger against soft skin, and the sensation is so acute it makes your spine arch involuntarily.

He freezes, thumb stilling mid-stroke, as if suddenly remembering exactly who he is—and who he shouldn’t be right now.

“Don't stop,” you whisper.

His forehead drops to your shoulder. “You rang the bell.”

“I rang the bell.”

“The bell means you need me.”

“I always need you, Zayne.” You guide his hand beneath your shirt, pressing his palm flat against your bare stomach, and the breath he lets out against your neck is almost a surrender in itself. “I think you need me, too.”

When his hand moves again, it isn’t the absentminded tracing from before. His palm slides across your stomach with intent now, exploring the naked skin beneath your top—up your ribs, down to the dip of your waist, to the space just above the waistband of your shorts.

A soft noise catches in your throat and his hand stills, as if deciding whether to reward or reprimand the sound.

“More?” he asks against your neck.

You nod. “More.”

His hand resumes, but he doesn't go further, continuing the same path—ribs, waist, hip—following it again and again, learning you by touch. And every time his fingers drift close to the waistband, your breath catches, and each time he retreats to safer ground without crossing the line.

“Zayne—” Your voice is thin with want. “That's not—you're teasing me.”

“I’m doing exactly what you asked,” he replies, casually enough to make you want to put a pillow over his face. “You asked me to touch you. I'm touching you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you said. If you want something else, you'll have to request it.” His thumb draws an infuriating circle around your navel. “I’m a butler, not a psychic.”

He's playing the game, you realize. Your game, your rules, following your every request to the letter, and the compliance is intoxicating. He owns the control, yet the way he bends just enough to match your desire feels like a form of surrender uniquely his.

“Kiss me,” you try next.

“Where?”

You tilt your head to the side, certain he can see your pulse leaping where it shows. “My neck.”

He presses his lips there so gently it barely registers as contact, lingering for a moment before pulling back.

“Again,” you whisper.

He kisses the same spot equally soft, and you could scream from the tenderness of it, from how something so gentle can make you feel like you're burning alive.

“More.”

“More what?” His breath heats your skin as he speaks, and the almost-contact is worse than nothing. “Be specific.”

“Harder.” Your hand finds the back of his head, fingers threading into his hair, and the groan that it pulls from him is quiet and improper and makes your thighs press together. “Open your mouth.”

He presses his mouth more firmly against your neck and parts his lips slightly, just enough for his tongue to steal a taste of your skin.

“Anything else, princess?” He holds there, lips parted against the curve where your neck meets your shoulder, breathing you in like he needs this just as much as you do. “I’m at your service.”

The title drips with affection and irony and heat, twisted together like ribbons old and new. Princess. He's called you that since you were small, since you used to stomp your foot and demand things and he'd raise an eyebrow and say as you wish, princess. Except now his tongue is on your body and your ass is pressed where his cock strains against his pajama pants and the word means something it was never supposed to mean.

You turn in his arms until you're facing each other on the pillow, his hand still on your waist under your shirt. This close, you can see where the hazel-green of his eyes has gone dark with desire, where his lips shine wet from where he kissed your neck, where the muscle of his jaw tenses with something that looks like it hurts to hold back.

You bring your hand up to soothe it, the stubble there rough against your fingertips. He leans into the touch, a tiny tilt of his head that presses his cheek harder against your palm.

“I want you to kiss me,” you whisper, “here.” You touch your own lips.

He leans in slowly, mouth stopping just short of yours, hovering over your lips.

“Here?” he asks.

“Yes.”

The kiss is barely anything. A brush of lips, the softest pressure, there and gone before you can feel it. You chase his mouth as he pulls back, but he's already out of reach—settled against the pillow, calm on the surface, though the flush at the tips of his ears betrays him.

“That wasn’t a kiss,” you pout.

“It was, definitionally, a kiss.”

“It lasted half a second.”

“You didn't specify the duration.”

“Zayne.”

“Yes?"

“Kiss me longer.”

He leans in again, pressing his mouth to yours for—you count—exactly two seconds.

“Zayne.”

“That was measurably longer. I can go get a stopwatch if you'd like to formalize the parameters.”

You roll your eyes and swear you feel his wrist twitch at your side.

“I want you to kiss me like you can't help yourself. Like if you have to tear your mouth away from mine you'll lose your mind. I want the kiss I imagine when I’m alone in the bath and I close my eyes and pretend it’s your hands on my—” You stop to catch your breath, frustrated, heat rising to your face that’s part shame, part want, all desperate anticipation. “That kiss. Give me that one. Please.”

His hand slides from your waist to the back of your neck, cradling your head, angling you beneath him. His eyes move between yours and your mouth and back again, and the man who read you bedtime stories and carried you when you fell and tucked your blankets with precise corners is nowhere in this room. The man looking at your mouth right now is one who has been drowning for years and decided that here, now, tonight, he’s coming up for air.

“Hold still,” he says, and kisses you again.

This time he starts slow and stays slow, his lips moving against yours with a patience that burns, learning the shape of your mouth, the way you respond to pressure. His tongue traces your lower lip, not parting it, but outlining the edge, you whimper at the tease of it.

He swallows the sound, feeding it into his mouth like he means to keep it long past tonight, a secret possession for him and him alone. Finally—finally—his tongue slides against yours, deep and unhurried, filling your mouth until there’s nothing left but feeling.

The kiss goes on and on and on. Zayne is in no rush. He kisses you like he has all night, like time is a resource he intends to spend lavishly, like every stroke of his tongue against yours is an end in itself rather than a means to something else. And each time you try to speed up he gentles you, his hand on the back of your neck holding you in place, his mouth setting the pace, refusing to let anything take this moment away from him until he’s ready to release it.

Your hands slip underneath his shirt, pressing flat against his abdomen, and the muscles there flex at the contact. You trail both hands upward, following the ridges of his ribs until he huffs out a breath against your lips.

“Eager,” he murmurs, pressing kisses to the corner of your mouth, your cheek, your jaw.

“Impatient,” you correct, tugging the hem of his shirt up his chest. “And maybe a little eager.”

“A little, hm?” He catches both of your wrists, halting your exploration. “These are going above your head.”

“That seems unnecessarily restrictive.”

“It seems like the only way to keep you from getting ahead of yourself.” He guides your wrists to the pillow above your head, pinning you there with one hand. “Better. Now stay.”

He releases his hold to remove his shirt, and whatever bratty comment you had prepared dies in your throat the moment he tosses it to the floor in a move so unlike your butler you’d laugh under different circumstances. He works your top off next, pulling it up and over your arms, letting it join his on the ground.

The cool air makes your skin prickle, and you fight the immediate urge to cover yourself—a reflex that has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact that you’re not generous in this department, never have been, and lying beneath him with your arms above your head and nothing to hide behind makes you feel completely, uselessly small.

“Don’t,” he says quietly.

“Don't what?"

“Whatever you're thinking right now. Stop.” His fingertips graze your collarbone, then lower, trailing between your breasts. “You have no idea how many times I've thought about this body.”

“About my tragically average—”

“Finish that sentence and I'll make you wish you hadn’t.” His palm covers your breast easily, thumb brushing across your nipple. “These are perfect. And I don't say that about many things.”

“You say that about your silverware polish.”

“My silverware polish is also perfect. You're in excellent company.” He rolls your nipple between his fingers and your back arches off the mattress. “Responsive, too. Do that again.”

“I can't just do it on command—”

He rolls your nipple once more, firmer this time, and your body betrays you with an identical arch, with a sharp hiss of breath you can't hold in. Zayne watches it all unfold with an expression of deep, undeniable satisfaction.

“Interesting,” he says. “So it's pressure-dependent.”

“Are you taking notes?”

“I'm nothing if not thorough.”

He lowers his mouth to your breast, and the first brush of his tongue is almost painful in its relief. He paints a lazy, wet path before closing his lips around your nipple and sucking hard, drawing out a humiliatingly loud gasp from you that echoes through the room.

“That—” he says before his mouth closes around you again, teasing his teeth around the peak “—is my new favorite sound.”

He moves to the other side, giving it the same attention—tongue and teeth and the occasional scrape of stubble that sends sparks straight down your spine. His free hand stays on the breast his mouth just left, rolling your tight nipple between his fingers, then trails down your stomach, fingers grazing along the top of your shorts before retreating. Again and again he teases, each time a little further, each time making you jerk your hips up, chasing contact he keeps pulling away.

“You're doing that on purpose,” you say.

“Doing what on purpose?”

His fingers line the waistband again, dipping just below the elastic, and pull back. He blinks down at you, all wide-eyes and deceptive innocence, and you’re certain you’d be strangling him if your hands weren’t busy holding onto the pillowcase above your head for dear life.

“That. You keep almost touching me and then—“

“Patience—” He kisses the underside of your breast, your sternum, the dip of your navel. “—is a virtue.”

“Patience is for people who aren't this turned on.”

He pins your hip with one hand and you squirm harder, as if your body senses where he's headed and is vibrating with the need to get there faster, faster, faster.

“You never could hold still, could you?” You’re flipped onto your stomach so fast the room blurs. He works your shorts down your legs, leaving you facedown in nothing but your underwear. “Not once in twenty years.”

His hand strikes the curve of your ass.

You gasp, not from pain, more from the shock of it. The thrill that Zayne—controlled, careful Zayne—just spanked you on top of the same pink sheets he used to tuck you into.

“That's for squirming,” he says.

He lowers and presses a kiss to the spot he just struck, then smooths it over with his palm.

“You always needed this part,” he mouths against your skin, where it tingles from the sting. “The injury was never the problem. You just wanted someone to make it better after.” He travels higher, kissing up to the small of your back. “Every scraped knee. Every bruise. Every splinter you could have pulled out yourself but brought to me instead.”

“You had better hands than the first aid kit.”

“I had hands you trusted.” His hand settles at the base of your spine, nearly spanning the width of your low back. “You'd come find me wherever I was in the house and hold out whatever was hurt. Then stand there as long as it took for me to pay attention, looking up at me like I could fix anything.”

“You could fix anything.”

His hand slides up your spine with a familiarity that prickles at the edges of your memory. You've felt this hand on your back before—this exact path, this exact pressure.

Zayne has, too.

“Do you remember,” he says, bracketing your hips with his knees, “when you had me put sunscreen on your back?”

He asks as if every detail isn’t burned into your being.

It was the summer before you left for university—the sun was too bright, the pool smelled of chlorine, and your hot girl summer playlist terrorized every corner of the estate. You lay on your stomach by the pool with your bikini top untied and your bottoms hardly covering anything, and called your butler over with a voice you'd practiced sounding careless in the shower a dozen times.

Zayne, I need sunscreen. I can't reach my back.

He'd knelt beside your chair and obliged. His hands had been cool from the shade inside, the sunscreen warm from the sun. The restraint in his palms as they moved across your bare skin should have been unsexy but wasn't, because you could feel the effort in it as his fingers slid down your spine, across your waist, along the sides of your body.

You missed a spot, you'd said, though he hadn't. Still, he'd gone back and covered the same ground slower.

My legs, too.

His hands had worked your thighs, slick with sunscreen, rubbing the lotion from the backs of your knees up to where your thighs met the barely-there bottoms, the two inches of swimsuit the only barrier between the wet heat pooling between your legs and your butler’s thorough hands.

“I remember,” you whisper.

He traces the path now—down your spine, your waist, to the flare of your hip. The same route, the same pressure, except there's no sunscreen and no pretense, just his hands on your body.

“You lay there for an hour after I went inside,” he says, moving his palms in the upward strokes he'd used that afternoon. “In those godforsaken bottoms that hardly qualified as clothing.”

“They qualified.”

“They qualified as a provocation.” His hands move to your thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft skin. “And every time I moved away from them, you'd wiggle your hips and tell me I missed a spot.”

“You did miss spots.”

“I didn't miss a single spot. I take UV protection very seriously.” His knuckles graze your inner thighs, and your hips lift involuntarily. “You just wanted my hands closer to places they had no business being.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? So you don't remember what happened when I reached right about—” His hand stills at the crease of your thigh, fingers resting against the edge of your underwear. “—here?”

You press your face into the pillow because you remember exactly what happened.

“You spread these legs apart, just enough for my fingers to go somewhere they shouldn't have.” He follows the edge of your underwear with one fingertip, over the swell of your ass, down to the strip between your legs that does nothing to hide how desperate you are for his touch. “And I cleared my throat. And you said sorry, I'm just getting comfortable. And I said of course. And we both pretended nothing happened.”

“Something happened.”

“Something happened,” he agrees. “And you knew. You always knew. That's why you kept pushing me, isn’t it?”

He traces the same line again, the border between what’s covered and what isn’t. Though this time when he dips low, he stays there—hand cupping you fully through your underwear, the pressure of his palm against the soaked fabric at your pussy delicious and unbearable and enough to make you moan.

“Answer me.”

“Mm,” you manage. He rocks the heel of his palm in a slow circle, and your nails dig into the sheets. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

He grinds against you more firmly, pressing the damp cotton deeper between your folds. You try to press back, to reach for the friction you’ve been chasing all night, but he pulls his hand away.

“Yes,” you concede in a shaky exhale. “Yes, I knew, and I—I wanted to see what would happen if you didn't walk away. If you just—kept going.”

“Kept going where?”

You shoot him a glare over your shoulder. “You know where.”

“I have a long list of places I've wanted to put my hands on you.” From this angle, you’re able to watch as he fists his cock over his soft pants, the light grey fabric darkened with precum where the head of him leaks. “So you're going to have to clarify which one you were hoping for.”

“Past my bikini. Past the line you always—” Your breath catches as his fingers brush inside your underwear, skating the skin he's never touched. “—always stopped at.”

“Like this?” His fingers slide deeper, tracing along the edge of your slit as he strokes himself more firmly, still not quite touching you properly.

“Further.”

“Greedy.” He removes his hand entirely, and you wince at the loss. “And then what? If I hadn't walked away. If I'd let my hand keep going while you lay there in the sun pretending to be innocent. What did you want to happen next?”

“I wanted you to—”

Your thoughts are interrupted by a blunt pressure against your center from behind—not Zayne’s hand this time, but his cock. The tip nudges between your thighs over the soaked cotton, the warm weight settling against the outline of your needy cunt.

“Keep talking,” he says, voice nearly a groan. He stays motionless, the thick head of him pressing the fabric further into you, letting you feel exactly what he’s withholding. “You wanted me to what, princess?”

“I wanted—” You try to push back against him, and his hand blocks your hip. “I wanted you to stop thinking and just take what you wanted.”

“What I wanted.” He rocks forward slightly, a small movement that drags his leaking tip down the length of you, his precum mixing with your wet arousal as he slides toward your clit. “You were eighteen years old, lying outside on a pool chair, and you wanted me to put my hand into your bikini and touch you.”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the afternoon. Where your parents could have walked out and seen.”

“As if they’d bother paying attention.” He smacks his cock against your underwear deliberately, and any attempt at keeping your voice casual shatters. “Besides, I didn't care.”

“No. You didn’t.” Your panties cling to every part of you, slick enough that he slides easily between your thighs. The friction is obscene—his cock hard and throbbing where you’re soft and needy, separated by nothing but a scrap of ruined underwear. “I had to care enough for both of us. And you made me pay for it with every little scheme you pulled to put my hands on you and watch me try to walk away.”

“And?” You dare through gritted teeth, smirking into the pillow. “Did it work?”

His hand at your hip guides the rhythm into something more punishing. His mouth finds the back of your neck, and the kiss he presses there is soft and completely at odds with the way his hips are bucking against yours.

“I’m grinding my cock against your pretty little cunt in your childhood bed, sweetheart. What do you think?”

He pulls away suddenly, and between the filthy words and loss of his weight you think you actually could cry.

“These—” His fingers hook under the center strip of your underwear, knuckles gliding up and down between your swollen folds as he assesses. “—have been through enough tonight.”

“So ruin them the rest of the way.”

He tears the fabric with two hands, ripping them off you in one clean pull. His hands spread you open from behind, and the sound he makes at the sight of you—bare before him for the first time—goes straight to your core.

“Christ.” His thumbs trace the inside of your thighs, spreading you wider. “Look at you.”

He lowers his mouth to your low back and kisses his wa down, patient even now, following the path of your spine, nipping the curve of your ass, outlining the crease of your thigh with his tongue. You feel his breath against your center, warm and unsteady, then the lightest brush of his nose against your entrance as he breathes you in.

“Fuck, Zayne—”

“Language,” he chides, the word humming against you. His tongue drags a single, slow line through you from behind, and you both groan at the contact. “If you could follow instructions even once in your life, this would go much faster.”

“I don't want faster. I want more.“

“You'll get more. When I decide you've earned it.”

His tongue works in long strokes, tasting every inch of you he can reach from this angle, and when he finds a spot that makes your thighs tense under his palms, he stays there.

“You're—that’s—”

Your lack of composure only seems to spur him further. “Articulate as always.”

He licks into you over and over again, and you feel yourself clench around nothing, feel your body begging for something to hold onto that he hasn't given you yet. The angle this way, his mouth against you from behind, is indirect and maddeningly intimate and never quite enough and always almost there.

“Zayne—I swear to god.”

“Swear all you want.” His tongue barely grazes you, keeping you suspended with a laziness that borders on cruel. “Begging looks good on you.”

He spreads you apart wider with both thumbs and builds you back up with wet, hungry strokes that don’t have a rhythm, that aren’t meant to serve a purpose other than to let him taste what he does to your body, what he’s been doing to it since long before he answered the bell tonight. Pleasure pools low in your belly, winding tighter and tighter, and you're right at the edge and—

He pulls away.

“No—” you whine. ”I was right there—Zayne, don’t—“

“Shh.” He presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh. “Not from this.”

“You can't just—”

“I can. And I did.” You hear him moving behind you, feeling the shift of weight against the mattress as he discards the last of his clothes. “The only place you’re going to come tonight is around my cock, and that’s not open for negotiation. I've waited too long for it to happen any other way.”

You feel the head of his cock press against you, this time bare against your slick skin. He doesn't enter yet, resting there with one hand on your hip, the other flat on the mattress beside your head.

“Last chance to ring the bell,” he murmurs. “Tell me to stop.”

“If you stop now I will scream.”

He pushes in.

It’s slow, so slow you feel the stretch of every inch building in a long, devastating ache that empties your lungs and fills you with him. He groans hot against the back of your neck, fingers digging into your hip, and when he bottoms out you both need time to breathe. You’ve never felt so complete as you do in this moment, so perfectly full, Zayne’s cock thick and heavy as it throbs inside you. Your walls flutter around him involuntarily, pulling him deeper inside.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“Language,” you mutter, the tremble in your voice undermines any sense of authority.

“You're right. How unprofessional of me.” He pulls back in a slow drag against your walls that makes your mouth fall open—and pushes forward again. “I’ll submit a formal apology. After I’ve made you come so hard you can’t speak, let alone critique my vocabulary.”

He starts to move, the full length of him withdrawing and filling you whole, and when he finds the spot that makes your thighs shake he doesn't say a word. You're soaked—you feel it on your thighs, hear it in every wet slide of him inside you, and your face burns even as your body seeks his with every thrust.

“You get tighter every time I pull out,” he observes. “Like you're trying to keep me inside you.”

"Am not—"

“You are.” He grinds forward and you clench around him again—hard—and his breath comes out in a hiss. “And it's making it very difficult to think straight.”

You turn your head on the pillow, looking back at him over your shoulder, because you need to see his face, need to see what Zayne looks like right now, inside you and undone. With his jaw tense, eyes dark, sweat at his temples—he looks nothing like the butler who irons his shirts twice and arranges bookshelves alphabetically. He looks like a man who has wanted something for a very long time and is finally, finally taking it.

“Eyes on me,” he commands when he catches your gaze drifting away. “You started this. You're going to watch me finish it.”

You scrunch your nose and stick your tongue out at him. “Make me.”

His eyes narrow with a flash between amusement and danger, and he wraps your hair around his wrist and pulls—enough to keep your face turned toward him, your neck arched, your eyes locked on his while he drives into you from behind.

“There's your make me, princess,” he says low, hips bucking harder with the leverage. “Any other requests?”

“Several,” you manage between thrusts, “but at your age I’d hate to put too much strain on you.”

“In all the scenarios I’ve imagined.” He gathers your hair tighter, using the grip to tilt your head back, and his tongue traces the exposed line of your throat from your shoulder to the bone of your jaw. “Not once did stamina come up as a concern.”

“You've been dreaming about me?” You try to sound unaffected despite the fact that your voice is shaking and your knuckles are white in the sheets. “Should I be flattered?”

“You should be terrified. I've had a long time to plan,” he says against your neck. “Though in my head, you were slightly less mouthy.”

You clench around him deliberately, and his groan vibrates against your back. “And in mine, you were considerably less smug.”

Zayne sucks hard at the sensitive skin above your collarbone in response before releasing your hair, letting it fall down your back. He braces both arms on either side of your head, and the change in position lets him go harder and deeper, his hips driving you into the mattress with each thrust.

“You've spent your whole life making sure no one could take care of you the way I do. Making sure no one else fit. Ruining yourself for anyone who wasn't me.” His hand reaches beneath you, and the first touch to your swollen, aching clit makes your entire body tense. He circles with barely any pressure, in time to the grind of his hips, and the combined sensation is almost too much to bear. “So now I’m going to give you everything you’ve been asking for all this time. Take care of you the way I’ve always wanted to. And you’re going to be good for me and take it.”

Every edge he pulled you back from tonight, every almost, every year of wanting with nothing to show for it—all of it—collects into a single climax that tears through your body in waves. You clench around him so hard his hips stutter, and his mouth is at your ear the whole time—

That's it—that's my girl—you've been waiting so long for this, haven't you? So long. I know. I know. I've got you. Feel that? That's all for you. You earned this—you earned every bit of it—

—and his voice is the anchor you cling to while the rest of you drowns, his name the only word left in your mouth, your mind, your heart.

He slows, letting you breathe as your aftershocks tighten around him in involuntary pulses. And you wait for it—for his hips to drive forward one final time, for the heat of him to fill you from the inside the way you've always imagined it would.

He pulls out instead, and the sudden emptiness makes you frown, your hips pressing back against nothing, searching for him.

“Zayne—why did you—” You turn your head, and the confusion must be written across your face, because his gaze softens even as he strokes his cock, slick from you, in long pulls.

“Not tonight, sweetheart,” he says, and the two words form a promise that makes your heart flip—that there will be other nights, that this is the first and not the last, that he’s already planning the ones that come after. “Tonight I want to see it on your skin.”

He straightens behind you, settling both hands on your hips. His thumbs press into the dip of your lower back, pressing circles over the skin there.

“I’ve been thinking about this since the day you asked me to put my hands on you by that pool. And I've thought about it every day since.” His palms trace the canvas of your back a final time. “Marking you. Imagining how pretty you'd look with the evidence of what you do to me all over your body.”

“You don’t have to imagine, Zayne. I’m right here.” You arch your back for him in shameless offering, and the sound he makes at the sight is low and wrecked and strips away any remaining possibility that either of you will ever recover from this night. “I’ve always been right here.”

“You're going to be the end of me,” he says through a ragged sigh. “You know that. You've always known that.”

“Promise?” you murmur, tilting your hips higher, giving him more of yourself.

His laugh is barely a sound, and his hand picks up speed, rougher now, knuckles brushing against your skin with each tight stroke. You watch his lips part, watch his brow furrow, watch the moment arrive on his face before you feel it on your skin—the warmth of his release spilling across the small of your back in pulses, painting your body with the proof that he was here, that this happened, that you belong to him in a way no amount of respectable distance will ever undo.

He stays like that for a while, breathing hard, looking at you looking at him. His expression softens into something so affectionate it makes your chest ache, and he leans down and presses a long, lingering kiss between your shoulder blades.

“Promise.” His hand finds yours on the pillow, squeezing once before pressing a kiss between your shoulderblades and lifting himself off you. “Now don't move. Give me ten seconds.”

“Was that an order? Because I've been told I'm bad at those.”

He grabs his pants from the floor, sliding them up over his hips. “Nine seconds.”

You hear the tap running, the drip of a towel being wrung out in the sink. He's back before you can count to four—warm cloth in one hand, cold glass of water in the other—and sits beside you on the bed.

He cleans you with a care that shouldn’t surprise you but makes tears prick behind your eyes anyway, following the path his mouth traveled earlier, rewarming the cloth twice because it cooled too fast and he noticed before you did. He wipes your thighs, the backs of your knees, places that don't need cleaning but get attention anyway. When he reaches the small of your back, he presses his lips against the clean skin there one final time before setting the cloth aside.

He helps you into fresh pajamas—a matching flannel set he selects from the second drawer of your dresser—lifting your arms, guiding them through the sleeves, smoothing the fabric over your shoulders and down your back. The gesture is so careful, so him, so entirely removed from everything his hands were doing ten minutes ago that a tear actually escapes down your cheek before you can catch it.

His thumb finds it, though, and wipes it away without comment, without concern, without making it into something you'd have to explain. He pulls the blanket up around your shoulders, tucking the edge beneath your chin the way he's done since you were small, and reaches for the glass on the nightstand.

“Drink,” he says, holding it to your lips.

“I’m fine—"

“Humor me.” The corner of his mouth lifts, barely. “I’ve been humoring you all night.”

He watches as you drink, gives a small nod of approval once he’s satisfied you’ve had enough, then sets the glass on the nightstand. He pulls on his t-shirt—you mourn the loss of his bare chest immediately—and slides under the covers beside you.

When you curl against him, his arms wrap around you like a reflex he's done fighting.

“I should resign,” he murmurs.

“You should absolutely not resign.”

“This is a rather significant breach of professional boundaries.”

“I don't care about your professional boundaries. I care about you staying in this bed.”

He lifts his head to look at you in the lamplight. With his hair wrecked, glasses long gone, and an expression so open and unguarded, he looks…younger. Lighter. Like something heavy has been set down after years of carrying it.

“Stay,” you whisper. “Not as my butler. Not as my anything. Just stay.”

His arm tightens around your waist. You feel his heartbeat match yours, both rhythms slowing to something calm. His chin settles on the top of your head, and for a while neither of you speaks, but the silence is nothing like the one that scared you an hour ago.

“Mm,” you hum against his chest. “I always get what I want eventually.”

“You do.” His thumb traces a lazy circle on your shoulder. “It’s your single most irritating quality.”

“And yet you keep indulging me.”

“You are exceptionally difficult to say no to.”

“So stop trying.”

“I suppose that would simplify my schedule considerably.” He pulls you closer. “Free up the hours I currently spend on damage control and cold showers.”

“See? Efficient. You love efficiency.”

“I do love efficiency.” His mouth presses against your hair, and you feel him smile. “Though I suspect you're going to be far more work than you were before tonight. Not less.”

“Probably.”

“Almost certainly.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” His fingers find the spot behind your knee—the left one, the one he knows is ticklish—and you yelp, squirming against him, your laugh bright in the quiet room. He catches you before you can escape and pulls you back against his chest. “Now promise me you’ll ring the bell again tomorrow.”

“That depends. Will you read me more Austen?”

“If you behave.”

“And if I don’t?”

His teeth graze your earlobe, tongue teasing the sensitive skin just below. “Then I suppose I’ll have to resort to alternative methods of tiring you out.”

You give his chest a playful shove and he catches your hand, kissing each knuckle one by one. You melt closer, curling yourself tighter against his chest, letting the cadence of his breathing, the warmth of his arms, the undeniable sense of home pull you under.

The house continues its symphony through the night—wind whistling through the cracks, pipes bellowing deep in the walls, wood floors sighing under the weight of the night.

You sleep soundly through it all.

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