He tilts his head, that predator's gesture, his eyes drinking in your terror like it's fine wine. "Did I?" he asks, his voice dripping with faux concern. "That sucks." He whistles.
content warnings - dark!Nobleman (a major red flag), non-consensual themes, misogynistic language, degrading dialogue, threats, physical violence, dacryphilia elements, hair pulling, oral sex (m!receiving), gun references, blood, and death. This story contains coercive and abusive behavior, intimidation, graphic violence, explicit sexual content, aggressive physical contact, and psychologically disturbing themes throughout.
word count : 4.2k
no one writes for him :( so I decided too!
The house was supposed to be safe. That was the first lie. It started with a sound that didn’t belong something heavy striking something fragile. A crack that split the air open. “Oh God, nooo!” Your mother’s voice raw and breaking ricocheted off the walls you’d grown up staring at. The walls that still held your kindergarten drawings. The walls that had once echoed with laughter. Now they swallowed screams. You saw the woman’s arm lower after the blow, saw your father’s body fold like something boneless. The thud of him hitting the floor felt louder than it should have been.
“Ahh, fuck, shut up.”
The man in the long coat moved like he belonged here. Like he had every right to stand in your living room, under the warm yellow light of the lamp your mom always left on. His hand came down hard across her face. The sound was sharp skin on skin followed by the sickening scrape of her body hitting the floor. This wasn’t your house anymore. It was something else. “Please stop,” you heard yourself say, but your voice sounded far away. Small. Like it was coming from someone else.
Your vision blurred with tears, turning them into shadows. The two intruders carved from darkness. They didn’t look real. They couldn’t be real. People like this didn’t just appear inside your home. Not without warning. You reached for the coat. Desperation. His boot came down on your hands. The pressure was immediate, crushing. Bone grinding into hardwood. Your scream clawed its way out of your throat as he leaned his weight into it, pinning it to the floor like something beneath him like something less.
You tried to pull away. Your other hand wrapped around his ankle, nails digging into fabric, skin, anything to make him move. Behind him, the woman laughed. It was light. Amused. Almost playful. “Aww. Poor little baby.” Her voice slithered over your skin. Your eyes lifted despite yourself, meeting his. He was smiling. Smiling. And then he pressed harder. White hot pain shot up your arm, and for a second you thought you might black out from it. Just disappear. That would’ve been easier.
He finally stepped off. You curled in on yourself, cradling your hand against your chest, rocking without realizing you were doing it. The room felt wrong. Too big. Too small. The air too thick. Every shadow stretched longer than it should. “If your dad had just done what we kindly asked,” he said casually, like this was an inconvenience, “you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
You turned to your father like he could still anchor you to something solid. He wasn’t looking at you. He wasn’t looking at anything. His face was no longer the face you knew the one that used to smile across dinner tables and nod from the sidelines at your collage graduation. It was swollen beyond recognition, skin split and darkened, mottled in blooming shades of purple and red. One eye had disappeared entirely beneath puffed flesh. The other if it was open was unfocused, drifting somewhere far beyond the room, beyond you. He didn’t move or couldn’t
“Please forgive him,” you sobbed, your voice cracking down the middle. Your hands came together in front of your chest, fingers pressed tight in a trembling imitation of prayer. You rubbed them together frantically, like friction alone might spark mercy. Tears streamed down your face, hot and blinding, dripping from your chin onto the floor that still smelled faintly of lemon cleaner. The man laughed. It was low. Delighted. “Oh, forgive him?”
He crouched in front of you, bringing his face level with yours. You could smell him. “What would you give me if I do?” Your stomach dropped. There was something in his tone. Something that made your lungs seize and your skin crawl too tight over your bones. His hand rose slowly and settled on your hair. The touch was gentle. That was worse. Your entire body locked up, every nerve screaming. Gentleness didn’t belong here. Not in this moment.
He stood and glanced back at the woman. She rolled her eyes. “Pervert.” The word barely registered before his fingers twisted into your hair. Pain exploded across your scalp as he yanked you backward. The world tilted. The ceiling spun. You clawed at his wrist, your nails digging in deep enough to hurt him, but he only laughed.
Your parents lunged. You saw them move. Your mother’s hand outstretched, your father staggering upright on instinct alone. “No, don’t—please!” The gunshot cracked through the house like thunder inside a coffin. The sound swallowed everything. For a second, there was nothing. Just ringing. Your scream tore out of you, as he dragged you down the hallway. The walls blurred past. The hallway felt longer than it ever had before. Every family photo you passed seemed to watch you go by. The smiling versions of people who didn’t exist anymore. You grabbed at his hand, at your own hair, at anything. Your nails broke against his skin. The carpet muffled your dragging heels, swallowing the sound like the house was trying to keep this secret buried in its bones. He flung you into the bedroom. Your parents’ room.
The door slammed against the wall with a crack that echoed too loud in the space. The scent of your mother’s perfume still lingered in the air. The soft, floral and familiar. It mixed grotesquely with the sharp tang of sweat and blood that followed him in. You stumbled, catching yourself on the dresser. The mirror rattled. For a split second, you saw your reflection wide eyes, streaked mascara, a stranger wearing your face. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. You bolted for the door.
Hope is a reflex. Stupid and automatic. His hand closed around your arm before you made it three steps. His grip was iron, fingers biting into flesh. He yanked you backward and tossed you into the wall like you weighed nothing. The wall cracked as your back made contact. He didn’t even breathe hard. “You’re so fun,” he said, smiling. Fun. Like this was a game. Like you were something he’d unwrapped.
He sat down on the edge of your parents’ bed, your father’s side. The mattress dipped again under his weight. He patted the spot beside him, casual, almost inviting. You didn’t move. You just stared. The room felt distorted now. The dresser loomed too tall. The curtains seemed heavier, blocking out the night like it was complicit. Every shadow in the corners looked deeper than it should have been, like something else might step out of them at any second.
"Oh," he said lightly, dabbing at his cheek with theatrical confusion. "Do I have something on my face?" His smile didn't fade so much as freeze, then crack. "If you don't get your fucking ass over here," he said, his voice dropping to something low and barren, "I'll drag you here myself. And I'll probably break a hand or two so do what feels best for you” The threat didn't move. It just hung there, breathing. Your lungs forgot how to work. You could hear your own heartbeat, pounding in your ears. Every tiny sound felt magnified: the faint hum of the ceiling fan, the creak of the house shifting, the fabric of his coat whispering when he adjusted his shoulders.
Were your parents—You couldn’t finish the thought. You used the wall to pull yourself up, fingers trembling as they scraped along the paint. Your injured hand screamed in protest, but the pain felt distant compared to the suffocating pressure in your chest. Your eyes never left his. You were afraid that if you looked away, even for a second, he’d move. That he’d lunge. That he’d disappear and reappear somewhere worse. Slowly, step by step, you crossed the room that had once felt safe enough to sleep in during thunderstorms.
The bed dipped again as you lowered yourself onto the spot he’d patted. Close enough to feel his heat. Close enough to smell him. The mattress beneath you felt foreign now, no longer a place of comfort, just another surface you could be pinned against. The air pressed down on your shoulders, thick and suffocating. You knew what he wanted. That was the worst part. Knowing. Knowing that screaming would make it worse. He turned his head slightly to look at you, studying your face like you were something delicate. Something he could break just to see how it sounded.
The grip on your face isn't a hand, it's a cage of bone and sinew, fingers digging into the hinges of your jaw until you think the marrow will splinter. He hauls you into his orbit, and the world shrinks to the abyss of his eyes. They're scavenging, rooting around in the wet, raw panic behind your own. "Oh, that fear," he breathes, and the voice isn't right. It's a syrupy, delighted coo, like a child discovering a new toy to play with. "I love that look. It's my favorite." His mouth covers yours. Your body recoils before your mind can catch up, a violent flinch that tears you apart. He just sways forward with the motion, a predator rocking on its haunches, a low, tittering giggle spilling from his throat. The sound is wet. Wrong.
You scrub at your mouth, your skin crawling as if he's left a film of something caustic behind. Your fingers come away clean, but the phantom slickness remains. He raises his own hand, pressing it to his lips like a bashful maiden, but his eyes over the top of it are sharp, gleaming with a horrid, private amusement. The giggles continue, muffled, choking. "Awww," he whispers, the sound a mockery of tenderness. "Was that your first kiss? Your very first?" The question hangs in the air, thick and poisonous. He looks down, a pantomime of sadness, of pity. Then the storm breaks.
His hand twists into your hair, a fistful of sharp, instant agony at the roots, and you're falling, dragged down, the world a dizzying blur of motion until your knees hit the cold, unforgiving ground. He positions you between his thighs, a living cage of denim and muscle. You push, you thrash, a bird beating itself bloody against the bars of its own cage, but you're pinned, utterly and completely owned by his weight, his will.
His breath is a hot, damp promise against the shell of your ear, and you feel your own heartbeat trying to strangle you from the inside. "Let's see," he hums, the vibration of it burrowing straight into your brain, "just how good that mouth of yours can feel. And if you're good… if you're very good… I might consider letting your parents live."
The hum at the end isn't a question. It's the purr of a god deciding on a whim whether to blink a universe out of existence. The air turns to concrete in your lungs. Pleading is a barbed wire knot in your throat, and all you can do is kneel there, drowning in the horror of a choice that isn't a choice, in the absolute, bone-deep certainty that there is no mercy in this world, only him.
His hand is a shackle in your hair, tendons rigid against your scalp, anchoring you to the horror you're about to endure. You watch through the blur of tears you refuse to shed as his other hand works the button of his jeans, the metallic click deafening in the suffocating silence. The zipper's snarl is the only warning before he's freeing himself, stroking himself with a leisurely cruelty, like a man savoring the instrument of your undoing.
"You're going to open up now, love," he murmurs, and the endearment is a blade wrapped in silk. He gives himself a final, languid pull, glossy with anticipation. "And if those pretty teeth so much as graze me..." He leans closer, and you feel the words more than hear them, a vibration against your damp cheek. "I'll pull every last one of them out of that smart little mouth of yours. One by one. You'll swallow them."
Your body rebels, a primal surge to flee, to fight. You wrench against his grip, a desperate twist. He doesn't flinch. He just smiles. It's not a smile you've ever seen on a human face. It's a baring of teeth, a predator's reflex. Then the world explodes in a burst of white light as his open palm connects with your cheek, the crack of it echoing in the hollow space between you.
Before the sting can fully register, he's there. Thick and invasive, shoving past your lips, pressing down on your tongue until your gag reflex convulses, useless and ignored. He holds you there, impaled on the intrusion, letting you feel the weight, the stretch, the utter violation of it. You can't breathe. You can't think. There's only the salty, musk taste of him, the burn in your throat.
His hips piston forward, and your head is yanked back by the roots of your hair to meet him. A brutal, relentless rhythm. He fucks your mouth like a machine, like you're nothing but a warm, wet hole he's purchased with the promise of your parents' lives. Each thrust hits the back of your throat, a bruising, choking invasion. Drool escapes the seal of your lips, trailing down your chin, mixing with the tears that fall. "There you go," he pants, his voice fractured with a sick pleasure. "That's it. Take it. Take all of it. You were made for this, weren't you? Just a pretty little mouth for me to use."
His pace quickens and desperate. The sounds you make aren't sounds at all just wet, strangled gasps around the thickness filling your throat. You're drowning. Drowning in him, in the filth of his words, in the absolute certainty that when he's done, the nightmare will only have begun. And through it all, his hand never loosens in your hair. He owns every inch of you, and you know, with a bone-deep terror that steals what little air you have left, that he always will.
The first thing you notice is the silence after. The wet, sucking sounds of him pulling out of your mouth stop, and the world goes dead quiet except for the roar of your own blood in your ears. His hand is still fisted in your hair, a manacle at your scalp, holding you there. You can feel him, heavy and slick on your tongue, the taste of salt and copper blooming like a bruise. Shit, shit. You heard him. The whisper wasn't for you. It was a secret he let slip, a crack in the mask. You made the mistake of looking up.
His eyes were already on you. Waiting. His eyes were bottomless, black pits with a sheen of something ancient and predatory. They didn't look at you; they consumed you. A shiver, cold and wet, slithers down your spine and pools in your guts. A slow, terrible smile spread across his face, a crack in porcelain. His eyes drifted shut, a look of beatific concentration, of a man savoring a prayer. "I'm gonna cum," he breathed, the words a caress of silk over a blade. "And you're gonna swallow. Every. Last. Drop. Okay?"
It wasn't a question. It was a pronouncement of fate.
His hips snapped forward, no longer a rhythm, but a frantic, punishing piston. Each thrust sent a shock-wave through your skull, a brutal punctuation to his unspoken claim. He held you there, impaled, as he emptied himself down your throat in thick, hot spurts that you were forced to accept. You couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think. Your lungs burned, your eyes watered, and the only reality was the invasive pulse of him against your tongue and the iron grip on your hair.
He stayed there, buried to the root, long after he was done. The silence returned, heavier now, pressing in on you. He was feeling you struggle not to gag, feeling the flutter of your panic around him. He held you there until the very last tremor subsided, until you had no choice but to obey, to swallow every drop of his command.
Only then did he loosen his grip. He pulled out slowly, a deliberate, obscene drag that left you gasping, spit-slick and trembling. He looks down at you, tears and mess smeared on your face, and that horrible smile returns. He thumbs a stray tear from your cheek and brings it to his own lips, tasting your despair. He leaned in, his breath hot against your tear-tracked cheek, and whispered, "Good girl. Told you I'd fuck that pretty throat until you learned your place." He patted your cheek, a gesture so condescending it burned. "Now clean me up. Lick it all off and don't you fucking miss a spot."
You did it. God help you, you did it. You leaned forward, your tongue darting out to trace the evidence of your own defilement from his skin, the taste of it making your stomach clench. He watched, his weight braced on his hands behind him, his gaze a physical weight on your tongue. "Goddamn," he murmured, a low, appreciative sound. "Love a good girl."
Then, a shift. A change in the air so subtle it was more a feeling than a sound. He moved, and before you could process it, he had you, his hands gripping you, lifting you, bending you. The pajama pants he tore down your legs are a puddle of soft cotton around your ankles, a pathetic, childish defense against a monster. His body pressed against your back, solid and unyielding, and his lips were at your ear again. "I know it's your first time," he whispered, and the mockery in the gentle tone was a blade. "And I'll be gentle… since your mouth was so good."
You felt him then, the blunt, wet pressure of him against a place no one had ever touched. He rubbed himself against your entrance, a slow, teasing slide that made your whole body seize with terror. And then he pushed in. A strangled cry was torn from your throat, but his hand was there, clamped over your mouth, swallowing the sound. His forehead rested against the back of your neck, his breathing a harsh, ragged pant against your tingling skin. He began to move, and the world narrowed to the brutal, inexorable rhythm of his hips against yours. Your tears flowed freely now, a silent river soaking his hand. His other hand gripped your hip so hard you knew there would be bruises, purple fingerprints of his claim on your skin.
You could feel him hitting something deep inside, a bruising, relentless pressure that made stars burst behind your clenched eyelids. A horrible, warm wetness began to trickle down your inner thighs, and in your fractured mind, you couldn't tell if it was blood or some obscene proof of your body's betrayal. His voice was a guttural rasp against your neck, his hips never stilling. "Can you feel me in your womb?" he asked, the question a vile, intimate caress. "Shit, fuck… you are a fucking cock-sleeve. Made just for this. Just for me."
The words slithered into your brain, worming into the deepest, darkest corners of your psyche. The panic was a living thing in your chest, a frantic, clawing animal that made it impossible to breathe, impossible to think. You wanted to plead, to beg for it to stop, for the violation to end, but his hand was a solid, unbreakable seal over your mouth. All you could do was feel the invasion, the pain, the terrifying, unfamiliar slickness, and the crushing weight of a monster wearing a man's skin, turning your body into a vessel for his darkest pleasures.
The rhythm doesn’t falter, but the sound of him behind you does. His breathing saws in and out, wet and ragged against your ear, and you feel the shift, the shudder in his thighs. “I’m so close, baby.” Baby. The word cracks on his tongue, splinters into something obscene. It sounds like a death rattle. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” You feel the first hot pulse of it inside you, your entire being revolts, a silent scream clawing its way up your throat, but his hand is clamped over your mouth, grinding your teeth into your lips. The taste of blood and his sweaty palm floods your tongue. “Nooo.”
The sound is muffled, swallowed by his flesh, but you feel it tear out of your chest. Your voice breaks on a sob, a pathetic, keening thing that vibrates against his fingers. Your eyes are on fire, burning with tears that won’t fall, too terrified to fall. You can’t even blink. You just stare at the wall, at the pattern in the plaster, and pray to a god you don’t believe in for it to stop, to be over, for him to just die.
He stays buried inside you for an eternity. A minute. A lifetime. Just his weight, his heat, the sticky proof of his ownership seeping between your thighs. You can feel his heart hammering against your back, a rapid, sickening drumbeat against your spine. He’s catching his breath. Savoring it. Then, with a wet, obscene sound, he pulls out. The absence is a cold rush of air, a phantom pain.
His hands, those heavy, crushing things, finally leave your body. But the space where they were now crawls. Your skin prickles with a thousand invisible needles, each one a phantom touch, a memory of pressure. Your legs gave out, and you found yourself on the floor, back flat against your parents' nightstand. A wave of shame washed over you, and the first thing you did was pull up your pants, craving any feeling of coverage, of privacy. The silence that follows is worse than any sound he could make. It’s the quiet before the blade finds the right spot.
He tucks himself away. Fixes his coat. Like he's straightening a tie after a business meeting. And then he just… looks at you. The look on his face is something vast and empty. Something that sees you as an insect pinned to a board. The look in his eyes isn't human. You don’t think he’s human. He smiles. It's a slow, awful crawl of his mouth. A crack in porcelain revealing the rot beneath.
"You were so good," he says, the words a velvet lie. He steps forward, hands sliding into his pockets with an almost casual grace. The floor doesn't creak for him. The air doesn't move. The whole room holds its breath with you. "But I can't let you go." The words are a physical blow. A spike of ice driven straight into your chest. Your eyes fly wide, the sting of tears finally breaking through the shock. No. No, no, no. This wasn't the deal. This wasn't—"You promised!" The scream tears out of you, a desperate, stupid thing. It bounces off the walls, pathetic and small. "You promised, you promised!"
He laughs again and you hate the sound. It's the worst sound you've ever heard. A light, airy chuckle, like you've told him a funny joke. He tilts his head, that predator's gesture, his eyes drinking in your terror like it's fine wine. "Did I?" he asks, his voice dripping with faux concern. "That sucks." He whistles. Two sharp notes, cheerful and bright, slicing through the dark. And then thunder.
Two shots. So loud they aren't sound, they're just boom. Your whole body jolts, a puppet whose strings are yanked. A scream, your mother's scream cuts off in the other room. You launch forward. Not brave. Not heroic. Just a broken marionette yanked by a single, frayed string of instinct. No. No. Please no. You hit the living room doorway and the world stops. Your feet try to stop, but they skid. The carpet is wet. Slick. Your eyes refuse to understand. You look down at your feet, at the dark, glistening stain spreading on the beige wool. Your gaze, like a camera in a horror movie, tracks it. A river of black treacle, leading from your feet to…
They're on the floor. Near the overturned coffee table. Two lumps. Your parents. They look like discarded laundry. Like mannequins tossed aside. All the color, all the life, just… drained out of them onto the carpet. You stumble back. Your hands fly to your mouth, but the scream inside is too big. It has no throat, no sound. It's just a pressure, a crushing weight in your skull, in your chest, threatening to burst. Your back hits something solid. A wall. A chest.
Warm arms slither around your waist, pulling you back against him. You can feel the broad, satisfied curve of his smile pressed against your hair. "At least it was quick," he murmurs, his breath a vile caress on your scalp. You can't breathe. You can't move. You can only stare at the two still forms on the floor and feel the smile at your back, wide and wet and victorious in the dark.
Artist: Frederic George Stephens (British, 1827-1907)
Date: c. 1850
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
Description
Like many Pre-Raphaelite works, The Proposal critiques the hierarchy of rich and poor, and explores love across social classes. In this scene from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a nobleman has put Griselda through trials, but she has taught him kinder ways. She thinks about her future. The open window suggests she will leave her father’s cottage. The Proposal is the only surviving complete painting by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Frederic Stephens. Griselda was modelled by the artist Elizabeth Siddal.
