I Keep Reading Balaclava As Baklava 💔

Daughters with Soft Underbellies; masterlist

john price x fem!reader | outlaw/cowboy and preachers daughter | read on ao3 | pinterest board

All your life, you have known nothing but the Word of God and your father's short temper. Every day, you are forced to turn the other cheek for each minor mistake you make within your father's gaze; the old wounds hardly have time to heal before he gives you new ones. Yet, as a devout follower to God and your father, you have no one else to turn to. When the owner of the saloon tells you about some strangers lurking around town, you decide to take your chances with these wayward men in the hopes that they'll save you. But they are dangerous, conniving bandits; a fact you learn a little too late. You should have known that sheep who stray too far from the flock are at the mercy of the wolves. Better sharpen those teeth of yours, little lamb.

a/n: please heed the warnings on each chapter; overall; religious trauma; domestic abuse; reader is christian; western!au;

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve

extras:

moodboard made by @syoddeye

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they need to invent a heart that is not sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal

Lord.

deep end

price x transmasc!reader | 7.9k | AO3

cw: dubcon (power imbalance, price steamrolling reader), hints of daddy issues/mild daddy issues for those who want to see them, abrupt ending, age gap, alcohol, masturbation, praise kink, hand feeding, fingering, oral, anal sex a/n: clit, cock, and cunt are used to describe genitalia of reader's body. reader has top surgery scars.

There’s something to be said for the kind of work that doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. 

It’s not glamorous, but it’s yours—a modest business with your name on the side of a sun-faded van, stocked with gear, and enough regulars to keep the bills paid. That’s more than a lot of people can claim. It keeps the lights on. Affords you food and pride, both. Proof you’re getting by.

This little operation, humble as it is, at least gets you outside. And on days like this, that’s a gift. The cirrostratus looks like pulled strands of candy floss overhead, and the breeze takes the edge off.

You tip your head for a moment to admire the clouds, then tug the brim of your sunhat. It’s too big, like everything else you’re wearing. The clothes came out of the same catalog you order your gear from. A stiff, white button-up with your logo on the pocket and shapeless red shorts that skim your knees. Cheap. Chafes in all the wrong places, but expensable.

You scratch absentmindedly near your navel and guide the vacuum along the pool floor in methodic passes. The water is clear, the motion soothing. Slips you into a quiet headspace. 

It’s satisfying. Calming. The zen and predictability of a repetitive task cannot be understated. Lulls you into a lovely state of not-quite-daydreaming. 

So, you don’t hear Mr. Price the first time.

“You with me, lad?”

The vacuum handle nearly slips as you twist around too fast, your foot catching the edge of the pool. You wobble, free arm flailing for balance. Mr. Price steps forward instinctively—poised to surge across the yard. You manage to steady yourself, weight rocking back in time.

Both of you exhale at once.

He scrubs a hand over his face, dragging it across his beard.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”

“I gathered.”

You switch off the vacuum, the underwater hum fading. “Was there, uh, something you needed, sir?”

His sunglasses are too dark to tell, but you feel him sizing you up, same as he did when you arrived. He hadn’t said much then either, just opened the door, looked you over from head to toe, then gestured toward the side gate with a grunt.

You don’t know what to make of him. In truth, you rarely give your clients much thought beyond big house and lucky bastards. If you see them at all, it’s through the windows.

This is your first time at his place, and you’re still formulating an assessment. 

You don’t know if Mr. Price has a family, but his house is big enough to accommodate one. There’s a sporty car parked outside his garage. A sprawling garden, lined with hedges, mature trees, and a wrought-iron fence. No immediate neighbors butting the property line.

And, obviously, a pool.

What sets him apart is that you met him, and not a housekeeper or assistant. Clients typically let others handle the scheduling and small talk. It caught you off guard, putting a face to the voice, and matching the face to the owner’s name.

Still, your gut says to treat him the same as the others. Another man accustomed to obedience. So, you straighten and lift your chin.

Your change in posture seems to amuse. The corner of his mouth lifts.

“I asked if you needed water.”

Your eyes flick to your bag and your beat-up thermos, plain as day. He had to have seen it. Which means this isn’t really about concern. You’ve done this dance before. A casual, innocuous question preceding a snide comment or suspicion. Are you slacking off? Cutting corners?

Knew it, you think bitterly.

“No thank you, sir.”

His mouth twitches again, this time downward, then flattens. 

“Suit yourself.”

He retreats indoors, and the rest of the visit passes without incident. No more words exchanged. The clouds lift, sharing a rare, naked sky.

You pack your tools and log the time. As you pull out of the drive, you check the rearview.

Mr. Price stands at the back gate with a phone pressed to his ear.

You can’t read his face from this distance—but you feel the weight long after the house disappears from view.

You must’ve made an impression, because Price starts booking weekly. On your docket every Friday afternoon.

It mystifies. His pool is never particularly dirty. Maybe a thin film of grime at the most, a handful of leaves blown in from the hedges and bird cherry trees. No signs of children or pool toys. No evidence of parties. It’s clear he lives alone, and doesn’t host.

Far be it for you to question easy money.

It makes for a pleasant, if not boring, routine. Knock on the door. Head around back. With booking and billing handled online, there’s no need to see or speak to him at all.

For a couple weeks, it’s simple. Another lucky bastard with a big house who leaves blank five-star reviews. The best you could hope for.

Then he starts appearing poolside.

At first, you assume it’s a fluke. That he’s forgotten you’re scheduled. 

He’s the picture of leisure. Drink in one hand, cigar in the other, stretched out on the cushions. If he’s startled or annoyed by your presence, he doesn’t show it. He gives you a polite nod, then buries his nose in a magazine.

But then it happens again. And again. 

Like clockwork. The new fucking routine.

You unlatch the gate, and there he is, waiting. He makes himself comfortable—well, more comfortable, given it is his house—and watches. Or seems to. It’s hard to tell with the sunglasses.

He never interrupts, just smokes and reads. The magazines he cradles are dog-eared, covers curled over. Sometimes you catch glimpses of the topics: cars, golf, current events. None of it hints at what he does for money. If he’s retired or working from home. If he’s ever worked a day in his life.

It changes things.

The calm dissolves. You grow more aware of every little thing. The way your shirt sticks between your shoulder blades. The trickle of sweat down your spine. Every time you bend at the waist or kneel by the pool’s edge. 

You try to ignore it, but you feel his eyes brushing over the nape of your neck or small of your back. Yet every time you peek, he’s not looking. You can’t shake it anyway—the sense of being observed, possibly admired.

That’s when the shame creeps in.

What are you doing? What do you think this is, a slow-burn porno? Are you that vain?

This is just a job.

You scold yourself, cheeks burning hotter than the sun overhead. It’s mortifying. To even imagine that a man like him—older, composed, probably has a different watch and woman for each day of the week—would be watching you. You. You’re not special. You’re a line item on an invoice. Background noise.

The thought that you’ve spun some dumb fantasy makes your stomach knot.

You work faster. Keep your eyes down. Try not to think about it too hard.

But when the breeze shifts and carries his smoke toward you, heavy and spiced, and it curls around your ribs like a hook.

Your first real conversation, you’re in trouble.

“You’re late.”

“I know. I’m sorry, sir.”

Mr. Price’s fists sit on his hips, a cigar at the corner of his mouth held in place by a frown. Sunglasses hiding a glare.

“What kept you?”

You’re sweating from the mad rush, juggling the hose and skimmer, and running on fumes. A dull throb pulses in your skull, the tail end of a headache from your last client’s shrill tirade. His threats to leave bad reviews over a handful of rowan petals in his pool and a perceived lack of hustle.

A nutcase, you want to spit. You want to tell Price about how you skipped lunch and nearly got sideswiped on the drive. Complain about how your life depends on the goodwill of people who don’t remember your name and settle for obscenities or diminutives.

Instead, you drop your armful on the grass and lie. “Traffic.”

He cocks a brow. “Traffic got you worked up?”

“Yes,” you bristle, and slam the gate to storm back to collect the rest of your supplies.

When you return, he’s still at the gate, and this time, one long arm swings past. He slows the metal before it slams, guiding it shut with a quiet click. Suddenly, he’s too close, and you’re boxed in. A meld of tobacco, sweat, and body heat seeps into the space between. It’s toothsome. Heady on the tongue.

You form an apology—you can’t afford to lose business—but he doesn’t raise his voice.

“Whatever’s actually put you in a mood, you won’t be takin’ it out on my property.” He ducks his head to chase your eyes and you’re forced to stare at your reflection in the dark lenses. “We clear?”

The steel of his jaw, his arm flexing, the authority crackling in his tone like fire splitting wood—it shouldn’t make your stomach flip, but it does.

“Yes, sir.”

He smiles then. Not kindly. Smug, maybe. “Good lad.” 

The words hit a nerve you didn’t know you had. They sink in somewhere soft and sensitive. The same place that makes a dog’s hackles rise and puts butterflies in bellies.

“And you better not slack just because you’re behind.”

“I won’t, sir.”

He lets you pass, and follows when you do. It’s a struggle to not trip over your own feet.

This time, he makes no secret of watching. His cigar burns out untouched. The magazine flutters in the wind. He sits with his fingers laced over his middle, legs crossed at the ankles. 

Bent on all fours over the system compartment, a prickle at the back of your neck grows impossible to ignore. You glance over your shoulder. 

He appears asleep—utterly still—until the corner of his mouth lifts. A slow, knowing smirk.

You snap back to the task at hand. 

A chuckle follows, low and indulgent. It drapes over you like velvet and settles somewhere deep, where it can hum and hiss like a wasp caught under a jar.

On a night off, you go dancing. Three glasses of cheap vodka in your bloodstream, the taste coating your tongue. You considered ordering whiskey, but lost your nerve. 

Leaning against a wall outside with your friends, getting air between songs, someone asks if you’ve met anyone lately. 

Or are you all work, no play?

You answer without hesitation. Without thinking.

(It’s not until the next morning, hungover and rueing the sun itself, that you understand they meant someone from an app. A date. A one-night stand, maybe.)

But you’d already blabbed. Confessed.

Mr. Price. 

John.

Your mouth runs wild with the liquor in your blood.

He’s a bit odd, you admit. Hard to read. Just the other day, you’d walked in as he finished swimming laps, and he climbed out the moment he spotted you. You swear it happened in slow motion—water rolling off the hard lines of his chest, the softer spread of his belly, the pelt of hair. The treasure trail and fading farmer’s tan. You nearly keeled over at the sight. And it’s hard to guess his age. He’s fit, and the silver threads in his beard do something to you.

It isn’t until the laughter shifts into something sly, that you realize how long you’ve been going on. The teasing comes fast, merciless but fond. There’s no walking it back.

And when they ask—flat-out—if you’d fuck him, you can’t lie.

That gets them going.

“Do you think he’s—?”

You cut them off. “No. No way.”

Denial is easier than the fantasy of hope.

With an excuse, you peel yourself off the wall and flee back into the fray to shake the heat crawling up your neck.

You attempt to bury it all in the mouth of a stranger. Older, taller, dark hair curling damply at his temples. Broad enough shoulders. A cheap cologne that stings your nose. You let him kiss and paw at you against the sticky wall by the toilets, but it’s no good. He tastes like rum. Too sweet, no substance. Nothing like what you want. 

The night ends early, frustration simmering. Alone in your room, sprawled in the dark, you add one item to the shopping list on your phone:

Whiskey.

The weather turns fast one afternoon.

It starts with the trill of Mr. Price’s phone and a curse. He abandons his post, gritting out a clipped Yeah? before striding toward the house. The glass doors shut behind him, and though they muffle the sound, his voice climbs in volume as he disappears from view.

Almost in answer, the sky darkens. In minutes, clouds quicken and roll in, dragging the light with them and smothering it in a drab, gray sheet. The breeze kicks up and then your sunhat is gone, plucked clean off your head and hurled skyward.

You watch it spiral away helplessly.

Leaving your equipment where it sits, you duck beneath the umbrella between the chairs. It offers little protection. The raindrops fatten, splattering against the stone, and without giving it much thought, you scoop up his magazine and half-finished drink.

Clutching the snifter to your chest, the scent of whiskey rises. You’re more of a wine fan, really, but the smell settles you. Warms you, even as goosebumps sprout along your arms and shoulders. Reminds you of your dad.

You shift foot to foot, back turned to the wind and rain. The uniform clings in cold patches as it soaks through.

Then, from across the lawn—“Inside!”

Mr. Price stands in the doorway, motioning you in.

You hesitate. You have a policy: stay outdoors. Liability. Safety. If rain hits, you wait it out or move on. You know this.

Then a sheet of rainwater sluices off the umbrella as it topples sideways in the wind, sloshing down your back. Shuddering, you shove the magazine under your shirt to shield it and bolt.

The rain lashes your skin. Grass squishes beneath your feet. His drink sloshes over the rim with every step, drenching your fingers in liquor.

You slip through the doors, soaked, clothes plastered on. You produce the rumpled magazine and offer it to Mr. Price with his half-drained glass.

“I, uh, tried to—”

“You’re dripping,” he says flatly, his gaze dropping to the puddle forming at your feet.

You glance down at the water pooling at your feet and almost stumble back outside, stammering apologies, but he cuts you off.

“I’ll get you a towel. Shoes off.” He empties your hands, pivoting toward the kitchen to deposit them on the island. As he rounds a corner, he points at the floor. “Stay put.”

Outside, the rain picks up, and you gingerly remove your shoes and socks, not wanting to make more of a mess. Shivering, teeth clacking from the chill, you rub your arms and gawk. You’ve never been inside a client’s home before.

A polished, heavy table anchors the immediate area. Old wood floors stretch beneath it, the tile under your feet a practical addition. Meant for footprints. Framed photos are scattered throughout, on the walls and sideboard, family portraits old and new you assume.

A grand painting behind the grand table seizes your attention: a small fishing boat, crimson and white, nearly lost in a violent storm. The sea churns around it in deep greens and blacks, lightning tearing across a sickly sky. 

You admire the scene until you hear footfalls.

Mr. Price bears a towel and clothes. You accept the towel, pretending not to notice the second offering. When you peek out from beneath the cotton, he’s holding a shirt out.

Does he seriously think—

“Go on. You’ll catch your death if you stay in that.”

A laugh putters out. You shake your head. “You can’t—I can’t take that, sir.”

His chin dips. “You’re not taking anything. You’re borrowing. C’mon. Shirt off, son.”

An ember catching kindling. You struggle to tamp it down.

“Can’t I change in the–”

He scoffs dismissively. “I’m not moppin’ up a trail. Nothing I haven’t seen before. Transparent, anyway.”

Nothing I haven’t seen before. You doubt that. Your scars have faded into blurs, but they’re recognizable. Obvious in their purpose. 

He is right. Your shirt clings better than cellophane, sheer in all the worst places. You tug at the hem, flustered, burning up under his scrutiny.

Another look at his face says arguing only delays the inevitable. It’s fucked—whatever this is, however he keeps pushing and playing with you. Batting you around like a bored tomcat would a mouse. Worse is how easily you’re letting it happen. Part of you, perversely curious, wants to see where it’ll lead, if he’ll eat you whole or what. Another can’t stop replaying the memory of what he looks like, soaked and shirtless.

One-handed, you work the shirt free, and new goosebumps bloom across your skin. Your nipples stiffen. It shouldn’t be a big deal—but Mr. Price is staring.

Maybe your scars haven’t faded as much as you think. You take the shirt, refusing to shrink, and square your shoulders. Posture makes all the difference amongst men, you learned.

The borrowed shirt slips overhead, and you juggle the towel to thread both arms through. It’s loose in the shoulders, hitting the midpoint of your butt. Plain black, clean-smelling cotton.

Price clears his throat. “Better. Bottoms, now.”

If your cheeks weren’t already warm, they’re scorching now.

“Sir.”

He clicks his tongue and swings the spare shorts. “C’mon, these’ll do if you tie the string.”

“There’s no need!”

“You’d rather make more of a mess on my floor?”

You hold your ground, waiting for an indication he’ll back off, but he doesn’t. An unevenly matched game of chicken and you’re losing one concession at a time. You last all of ten seconds.

With a huff, you wrap the towel around your waist. Wiggling your hips, you coax the shorts down without revealing more than you already have. It takes a long, awkward minute. And when you think you’ve made it through with some shred of dignity intact, he kneels, and closing a hand around your ankle.

“Steady.”

You freeze as he lifts one foot, then the other, helping you step out. 

You snatch the shorts out of his hand and hurriedly shove them on, nearly combusting when the towel comes away in his hand seconds after you pull them over your bottom.

And then he’s up, moving, your wet clothes slung over his arm like nothing happened. Like he wasn’t—like he didn’t just—

“Back in a jiff.”

This is where your curiosity’s led you.

Barefoot, in his clothes, heart fluttering ridiculously. Breaths in short bursts, stifled little things, afraid to be too loud. Dumbstruck.

How ridiculous you must look.

Do you think he’s—?

Well.

You dry off as best you can and sidestep the puddle. Your boxers are likely see-through as well now, but you vow to not mention them. You wouldn’t survive Mr. Price insisting on a fresh pair with your ass on display.

You rinse the whiskey off in a haze and find the kitchen as orderly as the dining room. Together, they’re larger than your entire flat. Modernized, no-frills. 

Through the archway, the hum of a tumble dryer kicks up, and Price reappears.

“Some rain. Didn’t expect it, did you?”

You almost ask which part—the rain, or the forced striptease?

Instead, you mutter, “No, Mr. Price.”

“Think you can call me John now.”

Within minutes, he talks you into tea and a sandwich. While you nibble, he fills the silence with small talk. He doesn’t cook much himself—so if you don’t like it, s’not his fault—and arranges for a chef to deliver meals every Sunday. Nothing elaborate, enough for the week, with extras in case of company.

You work up the nerve to ask what he does for a living.

He’s unfazed. Says his parents passed, left him the house. He’s retired military, lives comfortably off a pension. Mentions he does some consulting now and then—vague, detached, the kind of answer meant to end the conversation, not invite it forward.

“But enough about me. Want to know more about you.”

You wash a bite down with a sip, uncertain that he’s serious. He’s being polite, you reason. A man like him—he doesn’t really want to know. You’re a half-drowned dog he brought in from a storm. A good deed.

“I’m not that interesting.”

“Says the kid with his own company.”

Fair play.

You relent. Share little things. Where you’re from how you started, and that most of your work is seasonal. You help out at a school in the off months, and teach swimming at the community pool when they’re short-staffed. He listens intently, attention never wavering. Probably finds it novel, working more than one job.

“Sounds like you have your hands full.”

You nod, swallowing the last sip of tea. “I keep busy.”

He hums. “You do alright on your own?”

The question is light, but it lands heavy. It’s simple, benign—but it isn’t neutral and it needles. He ducks his head when you look away, searching. Like he’s casting a line, hoping you’ll give something up.

Heat flares under your collar. Your throat constricts, shame blooming sharp and sudden.

You shrug, keeping it light. “I manage.”

When the rain finally stops, you’re overdue, and itching to escape Mr. Price—John’s—attention. There are only so many ways to dodge questions.

He meets you at the van once it’s packed.

“Be seeing you, kid.”

“Yeah,” you nod once. “Thanks again, John.”

You offer a cordial hand, business-like, and his palm is hot around yours. You bet it’d feel like a brand elsewhere.

At a light on the way home, you tug the collar of his shirt up over your nose and inhale. For a brief, blistering second, you imagine his hands around your ankles again. Pushing them up and up and up.

You don’t remember the rest of the drive home.

It’s only after you’ve kicked off your shoes and settled into the couch with a sip of your new whiskey, that it hits you—your uniform’s still in John’s laundry.

Shit.

You go back for it after the weekend, off schedule. Have to. 

Having rung ahead, he’s expecting you. He meets you at the door, phone tucked between his shoulder and cheek. You hand off the spare clothes; he passes yours back. He mouths sorry and squeezes your shoulder, before disappearing back inside like it never happened.

You’re already behind, so you change in the van before your first job. The moment you slide the shorts on, your eyebrows hit the ceiling. They sit higher now, snug around your thighs, hitting well above the knee. You assume they must’ve shrunk in the wash—until you pull on the shirt. It’s been hemmed. Clean, subtle stitching. Tighter at the sleeves, better at the waist.

You consider going back, but your schedule’s packed, and the day runs away from you.

When you see him next, he beats you to it.

“Fits better, doesn’t it?” John claps your shoulder, pinching and tugging the shoulder seam.

“Yes, but did you—?”

“Eyeball the size?” He grins. “Not bad, eh? I’ve got a good tailor.”

It’s not like you can undo it and you’re not about to shell out for a replacement. So you thank him, and receive a pleased, grumbled good lad in return, and a swat to the small of your back, a hair north of improper. 

A wordless dismissal. Back to work.

With every window flung wide, you wage a hopeless war against the stagnant heat. Your sheets are drenched in sweat. Restless doesn’t cover it—you’re strung tight and buzzing, sticky and half-mad with frustration.

Sleep’s not happening, not like this.

You groan and kick your boxers down your legs, then roll to your stomach, pushing up onto your knees. The air’s balmy, sticking in your lungs.

You’re not surprised to find yourself wet. Some of it’s sweat, sure, but the rest—that’s your own fault. The consequence of a wandering mind and no one around to check it.

You let your imagination take the reins.

Face mashed into the mattress, you imagine his foot on your back. Weight bearing down on you, pinning you in place. His cock rutting over your ass, one big hand grabbing himself at the base, slapping it against your hole, and the other digging into a fleshy cheek to spread it.

Your cock pulses between your rubbing fingers and a moan spills out. Your teeth scrape the sheets, eyes welding shut. It’s obscene and loud in your quiet room when you steal slick from your cunt to rub over your asshole.

He would work you open, push one finger in at a time. Get you to cry on two, render you incoherent on three. Your own aren’t enough to bring tears to your eyes, but thinking of what he’d say is.

He’d ask if you wanted it. Needed it. Deserved it. All in that frustratingly even timbre of his.

His voice comes out of nowhere, clear as a klaxon in your head.

Good boy.

You come hard and fast, bucking your cock into your palm, fingertips prodding at your rim. Didn’t even get far enough to slip them inside.

You lie there for ages, gasping, limp. Your muscles are too heavy, and you’re too far gone to care about the mess.

Sleep takes you like that—sticky and spent.

The next morning, you peel yourself out of bed and strip the sheets in silence, tossing everything into the wash, shame eating you alive.

You can’t look at John that week without that memory pumping blood south. Imagining him bending you over a chaise or pushing you into the clover until your uniform turns green.

It’s divine punishment when he decides you need feeding. Like he somehow knows what played out in the privacy of your bedroom, or caught the stench of desperation that only comes with a misplaced crush, and you need your nose rubbed in it.

John presents fruit under a mesh cloche and demands you take a break. Not like there’s much to do, anyway. The pool goes unused most of the time, the maintenance minimal at best. You put up little resistance, beckoned toward him by a crooked finger.

He moves his legs for you to sit as if there aren’t three other loungers ringing the pool. Gesturing for you to scooch closer when he uncovers the fruit, stabbing a cocktail fork into a pink cube dusted with tajin. He offers it handle first.

A drop of juice drips onto his shin, and you think, lick it. You could. You would, if he told you to.

The impulse grips you so intensely, it’s absurd. This whole thing is absurd. Here you are, with a client. Not a date, not a boyfriend. A man with at least ten years on you, casually bullying his way past all personal and professional boundaries, and you’re waving him through as if they don’t matter.

You know he expects you to take the fork from him, but that curious twitch stirs, and instead, your mouth falls open.

His eyes narrow, and he turns the fork, tucking the fruit into your mouth. Your lips close around the bite, tugging it off the tines with your teeth.

“Cheeky.” he murmurs.

A good little pet sitting at their master’s feet.

Your head spins.

You’re convinced now. There’s a tear in reality, one that opens every time you turn onto that private lane. You pass through it like Alice through the looking glass, crossing into another plane thrumming with heat and heavy air, a whole world that revolves around Mr. Price and his whims. 

A gravity all its own.

A special request from John arrives mid-week, close to the hottest day of the year.

Full-service. Deep clean, filter flush, system check—the kind of job that’ll eat your afternoon and keep you working well past quitting time. Two other clients will have to be bumped, but he offers triple your usual rate. Says he understands it’s last minute.

Says he’ll make it worth your while.

For the hundredth time, you’re unable to turn him down.

You tell yourself it’s the money, but that’s only half true. The other half keeps your hands tight on the wheel the whole drive over when Friday rolls around.

Nothing helps your nerves. You can’t stop thinking about eating from John’s hand. The weight of his stare. His attention. About that man at the bar—the cheap imitation whose tongue you sucked in a vain attempt to quiet what’s only gotten louder.

It’s all climbing to a fever-pitch, and you want it to break.

John greets you at the gate.

“Glad to see you.”

He lays a hand across the back of your neck, and you fall into step.

“Hosting a mate’s retirement party. Suspect his kids’ll want to swim.” He continues on about the details, but you’re stuck on how he directs your attention via squeeze.

You expect a mess, or evidence of a gathering on the horizon, but everything’s the same. Practically pristine. Swept and hosed down. You glance sidelong toward John when he sits, buzzing with something you don’t want to name. 

There’s no real reason you should be here.

No real work to do.

But he’s bought your time, so you give it, and it crawls. You move equally slow, checking the seals for wear, inspecting the heater, running tests. All of it busy work and theater.

You’re kneeling on a folded towel, bent over the open housing for the pool’s pump system. Focused until his shadow spills across the ground.

“Don’t mean to sneak up on you,” John says.

You twist to peer over your shoulder and almost swallow your tongue at the sight of his trunks at eye-level, and rise to your feet. “Everything alright?” You swipe your forehead with your wrist, willing yourself to relax.

His knuckles brush your cheek, featherlight. He frowns. “You look warm,” he taps one to your chin. “Come on. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with me, yeah?”

You barely put up a fuss when he cajoles you into a dip. Stripped to your boxers, you wade in, relief singing up your legs. Curling around your waist. You nearly groan from how good it feels.

At the other end, John dives in. He slices through the water, sleek and galeoid, surfacing within reach. Veins of water cut down his chest and stomach, disappearing at the elastic at his hips.

“Better?”

“Loads,” you say, hoarse.

He gives a faint smirk, then turns, launching into lazy laps. Says something about needing to stay limber, working out a knot in his back. You hopeless to watch. He puts those shoulders to use, pulling with long, fluid strokes.

You swallow hard, trailing him shamelessly: the sweep of his back, the bulk and muscles under freckled and scarred skin. You’re greedy. You want him. On you. Around you. Inside you. You want to bite down on that smirk and hear him swear your name.

You sit on the steps, draw your knees in, and press your thighs closed to hold yourself together. Your hands flex on the vinyl. They want to reach. Grab.

He pushes off the wall for another loop, and you stay right where you are, trying to think about anything that isn’t the throbbing pulse between your legs.

John doesn’t bother asking if you’re hungry, or if you’ll stay for dinner.

Haphazardly dressed, shirt half-buttoned and untucked, you stow the last of your gear. You’re in a daze, holding fast to denial. The spell will break, your van will revert into a pumpkin, and you’ll head home to scrub the day from your skin. Send the invoice, knock off a percentage, and you’ll do it all over again next week.

Then smoke hits the air.

John’s at the grill laying down strips of pork, the meat hissing on the grate. He halves peaches with a paring knife that’s tiny in his grip and sets them cut-side down beside the meat. The air turns lush with salt and charred sugars, rosemary and garlic.

You slink to his side, salivating, meaning to say goodbye and thank you. Polite and decisive.

Then he jerks his head to the door and tells you to fetch plates and cutlery, and you bound off. Retrieving them dutifully. Inwardly, a part of you raises the fact you didn’t agree to stay, that you shouldn’t stay—but that flicker of good sense snags on the barb of hunger and all your aching.

By the time the food’s ready, you’re ravenous. You never eat this well. Burnished pork glazed in its own fat and blistered peaches. You stop short of licking the plate.

After washing up, you peek at your phone.

“Stop that,” he scolds. “I know exactly how long I’ve got you for.”

And he does—he keeps you through golden hour.

Abendrot, painted in red and gold and soft indigo, bleeds over the sky. You’re boneless in the lounge chair. Content. Melting around the edges, the line between help and guest completely dissolved. Rendered.

John sprawls the next seat over, holding a lowball glass that catches the last of the light.

You lie on your side, head pillowed on your arm, watching the bob of his throat as he swallows.

“Can I have some?” you ask.

“Don’t think you’d like it. Picture you as more of the daiquiri type.”

“Not true,” you sit up. “I’ve got a bottle of that at home.”

That makes him glance your way. Then, he shifts, patting the cushion beside him.

He walks you through it, clearly doubting your tastes and experience: breathe in first, don’t take too much, let it roll. Savor it.

It burns, but it’s smooth. Honey folded in smoke. Leagues better than what you picked up on sale.

“Good?” he asks.

You wheeze, nodding. Emboldened, you try again twice more under his amused supervision. After a shallow fourth, you push the glass to his chest with a breathless laugh.

John chuckles, shoulders shaking. When the sound dies, you notice how close you’ve drifted.

“Well,” you murmur, easing upright. “This has been–well, I should...”

“That it?” he asks. “Off the clock now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but, I should go, since–”

“Yeah?” he smooths a hand up your thigh. “Aren’t you the boss?”

Your brain stutters. Your mouth moves before your thoughts can catch up. “Aren’t you?”

It comes out soft. Sultry. Unfurls like a red flag in front of a bull.

His face blanks. Then, very quietly, “Careful.”

Panic punches through you. Words spilling fast. “I am so sorry, sir. That was—that was over the line. I didn’t mean—”

Storm clouds darken his blues and you brace for it—for the correction, the ending you walked yourself into.

But he moves.

The glass hits the table with a muted clink, forgotten. His hand shoots out, closing around your wrist, and the next thing you know, you’re hauled straight into his lap.

He’s kissing you.

“John–” you gasp against his mouth.

Devouring you.

His mouth slants hard over yours, tongue parting your lips, taking what he wants with a low sound—part growl, part groan.

You try to breathe through it, to think, but it’s useless. He tastes like smoke and whiskey and stone fruit. He grabs your waist and drags you closer, until you’re straddling him, knees framing his hips.

The lounger creaks.

“Christ,” he mutters against your jaw. His teeth scrape there, making you arch. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to make that face again.”

“What face? A-again?” you moan, dizzy.

“That one,” he murmurs, mouth trailing lower, grazing your throat. “Like you’d let me wreck you right here, out in the open. You make it all the time.”

You shudder. He feels it—laughs under his breath.

His hand slips to your nape. His forehead presses to yours, thumb brushing your cheek.

“You want this, hm?” he asks.

You nod.

“Words, sweetheart.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says, and kisses you again. Rougher this time. Meaner. The decision’s final.

You belong here. On his lap. On his tongue.

“There’s a good boy, fuckin’ good boy.”

A head rush in two ways. The pulse of John’s cock on your tongue rewires your brain, resets it completely when he presses your nose into the steel wool of his hair. Dizzying, both the lack of air and the sheer size of his hand cradling your skull.

Right here, out in the open. Kneeling on a bunched-up shirt.

He had let you take charge to a point. Half-heartedly muttered about there being no need. Though as soon as you slid your tongue along the underside of his cock and hollowed your cheeks, he swore and took the reins.

He fucks your throat in slow, deep thrusts, and tells you what he thinks of your talent. What a nice surprise it is. He coos when tears well and spill, mistaking them, maybe, for strain. But it’s not that. It’s the way he looks at you. He means every word. That’s what’s undoing.

He catches your tears with a thumb, and drags them across his tongue to taste the salt. You could come like this, giving head to a man who calls you kid. When you slip a hand over your crotch he doesn’t stop you. In fact—

“Go on, do it. Show me how desperate you are.”

There’s not a shred of embarrassment when you cup yourself through your clothes, rubbing along the seam, chasing friction. You can’t do much of anything except rile yourself up. It works for John—a line of filthy encouragement streaming from him uninhibited. He grinds his hips up into the heat of your mouth, picking up speed.

John doesn’t give much warning before he comes. A stifled grunt gives it away—then his grip tightens, the pressure turning forceful, insistent, urging you to take more, to take all of him. You gag, sparks bursting in your vision when he spills in your throat. 

He gives another couple thrusts before allowing your retreat. You sputter and cough, lips slick with drool. You curl inward slightly, heels digging into your backside.

While you scrub at your eyes with the heels of your hands, still sniffing, he leans. Drags your lower lip down and hooks a thumb in your mouth to steal a look inside.

“Perfect.”

His bed could eat yours for breakfast.

That’s your first thought when John eases you into it.

Then his mouth finds yours, slower now, pacing himself. He’s got all the time in the world. You’re not going anywhere.

His kiss deepens as he crowds in close, tongue sliding against yours. You can feel every inch of him, chest to chest, the hard line of his thigh slotted between yours. His weight is a delicious trap, anchoring you down.

He shoves your shirt open, one rough palm skimming your waist, the other dragging its thumb across a scar. His mouth works a line down your neck, maw open and hungry.

“You’ve been driving me fucking mad,” he murmurs, gravel-thick. His teeth catch the shell of your ear as he toys with a nipple. “Teasin’ me for weeks.”

You twist your fingers in his hair and pull. He groans, grinding between your thighs.

“I wasn’t trying to,” you gasp. “You—you made me—during the storm—”

“Never made you do a damn thing,” he grunts, tugging at your waistband. “Did I? Didn’t make you wear my clothes. Didn’t force you to eat my food.”

He yanks your shorts and boxers to your ankles, and there’s no hiding it. He finds you wet—slick and ready. His whole body stills to collect himself. Then he exhales slow, grinning.

“Christ,” he kisses your jaw, your cheekbone, your temple. “Don’t need to force a thing.”

John’s touch is as demanding as the rest of him. He learns you fast, using two fingers and his thumb to stroke your cock. His other hand slides under your back, kneading a globe to coax you into another filthy kiss.

He breaks to swipe through your cunt, and you moan into his neck, clinging to him. He groans at the way you flutter when he circles your hole, hips shifting so you feel the hard heat of him against your thigh.

“This alright?”

You nod, helpless.

“Speak.”

“Yes,” you gasp. “Yes, John.”

He slicks his fingers and returns to your twitching cock, stirring you up into a fit of noise, hips mindlessly canting into his touch.

You’re right there—right on the edge—when he pulls away. A desperate sound tears from your lips as he stands, leaving you aching on the bed. You turn, watching him through bleary eyes as he looms.

“John,” you whimper, tilting up.

He doesn’t answer. Just reaches down, huffing through his nose, and rolls you onto your front. You scramble to get your knees set.

“Please, please—”

“Know what you need,” He grits, hauling you by the hips to the edge of the bed, swearing when you’re completely exposed. “Fuck, look at that. Could sink my teeth in right here and eat,” he swipes over your flesh, chuckling at your whimpering. “Another time, baby. Don’t worry.”

You hiss as he massages your rim using the mess from your cunt. Firm circles to ease you open. When he finally breaches, sinking to the first knuckle, you lose a little time, and come back to feel the prodding of a second digit. It’s a touch too soon, but you don’t stop him.

Don’t think you could. Not sure if you’d want to.

Soon enough, you’re tearing at the sheets. Tears roll over the bridge of your nose and slopes of your face, staining the cotton. You’re trembling, hiccuping, overwhelmed—barely able to keep up with him working you over on three of his spit-coated fingers.

Just a job, you told yourself, and now you’re crying into his bed. Listening to him purr your name. You sob once—high and cracked—and he hushes you, holding you still at the base of your spine.

“That’s it, sweet boy. Let it out.”

You cling harder to the sheets, the salt of your tears burning where they admix with sweat. You’re not sure what you’re crying for anymore—relief, need, shame. The staggering, unbearable pleasure of being wanted.

Again, he stops short of letting you come.

You’re too far gone to complain, every nerve lit up and raw. The last of your common sense, a final coherent thought raising the issue of a condom, is seared out of your mind when his cocks glides through your folds. When it slaps over the cleft of your ass. Once. Twice.

Then he’s pressing in.

It’s almost unceremonious—the weeks of simmering tension finally and suddenly boiling over—white-hot and unbearable. It ruptures, spills molten in your veins, and splits you wide open.

John’s belly brushes your lower back, then presses, cushioning when he curls over to push until he’s flush.

“Oh–oh fuck, John,” you choke out, grappling the pillow half-tucked under you.

“You’re alright.”

He keeps you close, anticipating the kick of your legs, the instinct to wriggle away. One hand smooths over your flank, gentle as breaking in a wild thing, until the worst of your shaking settles.

Then he hooks an arm snug across your chest and the other under your stomach. He finds your leaking dick, thumbing it with a hum while his own stretches you out.

“Kept this waiting, didn’t I? Sweet boy, such a mess.”

He saws in and out slowly, luxuriating in it. The rough scrape of his stubble drags over your shoulder and neck, the humid gust of his breath puffs in your ear. His fingers dip and trace your seam, circling your neglected hole. 

“Please,” you try to buck against him, but it’s impossible to move.

“Greedy,” He grunts derisively, though the eagerness with which he burrows a finger in your cunt, betrays him.

He stalls his thrusts to a grind as feeds your cunt his fingers until you cry and shake anew. They probe deep, the rub of his palm to your aching cock almost too much. You snake a hand under to push his wrist away, but his teeth find your shoulder.

“You begged for this,” he growls. “So you’re gonna let me.”

It’s not so much permission as surrender—inevitable, all-consuming. You don’t allow it so much as you yield, helpless but to drown.

The squelch of your cunt around his fingers is damning. Thicker than yours with a longer reach, he finds what makes you clench around him tight, earning a clipped curse. His wrist must be sore with the angle, but he doesn’t let it stop him. He picks up his pace again, keeping your cunt stuffed and smothered, hurtling you toward your release at last.

“John, I-I’m gonna…” you pant, breath choppy. Drool sticking to the corners of your lips.

“That’s it,” he growls. “Give it.”

Eyelids slipping shut, lightning splits the black and shoots through your nerves and muscles. You seize up with a shout then jerk, orgasm rolling through you in waves.

The rest blurs—distant. Muffled.

A guttural sound, John’s fingers retracting. Clenching around nothing and everything. Two sweat and cum-damp palms flitting over your hips and tugging, guiding you back to meet the erratic snap of his hips. 

Clarity returns with the first spurts of his cum. Mouth falling slack all over again around a feeble, surprised moan as it floods you. You can’t see him, but imagine it. Head thrown, a coat of sweat over his front and back, glutes flexing. Rooted in this deep, all-encompassing.

It’s a while before he pulls out. Seconds, minutes. Doesn’t matter. 

It beads out of you like a pearl, smeared under a thumb, then wiped by a towel.

You don’t fight him when he tucks you into his side. It’s far too hot to be this entangled in each other’s arms, but the musk of sex and sweat soothes. Easy to overlook discomforts when you’re so sated.

He sighs sweet dreams into your ear, but you’re already gone. Pulled under.

In the morning, you wake to a scorching quilt over your back. 

His chest fitted to your spine, cockhead nudging at your sore hole. He contorts you some when you rouse enough to sleepily relax for him, hooking a thick arm beneath both knees and drawing them up. They press toward your chest, folding you like a bug. Tight and close to him until there’s no room, until you’re just a precious thing for him to fuck awake.

Dozing anew in bed, you draw circles through the hair on his stomach, lazy and absent, while his fingers trace soft, idle patterns between your shoulder blades. You yawn, stretching a little into him.

“Shouldn’t you be decorating or something?”

He grunts, the movement of his fingers pausing to scratch his stubbled jaw. “Hm? Wha’s that now?”

“The party,” you murmur, eyes half-lidded.

John exhales, then folds you tighter against him, dragging the duvet higher.

“What party?”

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anatomy of us (final) | alpha!ghost x f!omega!reader

type: limited series, final part (14.6k), AO3 in an attempt to tame an unruly alpha, you are given. he did not come with warning labels. but neither did you.

series cw: reader described as plus-sized/curvier, alpha/beta/omega dynamics + universe, dark!simon, mature language and content, suggestive language and content, graphic depictions of murder + violence, military criticism, protective!simon, dubcon (but reader does consent), possessiveness, dom/sub dynamics, size kink, praise kink, unprotected piv, cumplay, oral (fem!receiving), allusions to poly!141, this part contains minor physical assault against reader (not by simon) 18+

PART 1 ⏤ PART 2 ⏤ PART 3

You make a deal with the devil.

Simon was right, as much as you don’t want to admit it. You cannot fight your omega. She is stupid, and she is careless, but she controls some of the parts of you that you have never been able to reach. She can kill you with it. You’ve heard of these kinds of things, the places omegas can take you—a spiral so far into yourself, that the only protection your brain has for itself is to turn off.

Brain-dead. No signal. In an effort to conserve life, it turns itself off, but it doesn’t think about the fact that there will be no one there to turn itself back on. In the fight to save itself, it self-destructs, and there is nothing to do but cut the cord.

She can do that to you, if she really wanted to. Feral enough, she can tie a noose around your neck and pull it, and you will have no choice but to fall into yourself. You cannot fight her, but you cannot love her either; so you make a deal.

If she sweetens her scent to Simon’s pack, you will let Simon in. You won’t fight the ticking timer in your head. You’ll let yourself relax. You’ll give her the control to let herself indulge, since you never have before, and all she has to do is make sure every one of those alphas are at your heel. She needs to be good—she can’t half-ass this kind of thing. You need a leash around each of their necks, and you need it to cut off their oxygen when you pull on it. If someone gets loose, you’ll find a way to suffocate her for good. You swear it, promise it, tell her you’re going to drown her even if it drowns you, too—

I can do it, I can do it, I can do it.

Eager little thing, she is. Sweet as honey, but deadly like poison. She’s a carnivorous plant, and ever since you stopped taking your meds, her roots have grown into you—attaching to your veins, tainting your blood, weaving itself into your brain stem like a cancerous cell. You won’t let her take it all. If she gives you a little, you’ll give, too, and that is how the balance can be kept.

You’ll make a man-eater out of her. You think she’ll prefer the taste, and perhaps it will dull the sharpness of her teeth when they sink back into you again.

She lets go of you for now. When you feel her teeth pull back from behind your eyes, you’re gasping for breath, and there is a great weight hanging over your back. You’re dragging someone along with you, leaving behind a trail of blood and hard bootprints, and you can feel the adrenaline that’s been keeping you going slowly start to melt away. You have a pounding headache. There’s something in your mouth that tastes rotten. There’s something that you’re carrying that you’re going to drop any moment as your muscles give out on you.

You smell him before anything else. The stench of him hits your nose so hard that you flinch. You cough, spit dripping from your mouth, and you breathe a mouthful of his pain and his anger. It stings, his scent, but your omega recognizes him enough that you find it in yourself to keep your feet going as you hold him up with a heavy arm around your shoulders.

“Kitty.”

“It’s…I-I got it, Simon. Just hold onto me. We’re almost there.”

Your eyes water with relief when you see Johnny’s terrible hair and Gaz’s dark eyes. Their faces fall in tandem, and you cry with exhaustion when Gaz slings Simon’s other arm around him and grunts as he takes the excruciating weight off of you. You fall, your knees giving out, but just before you hit the ground, Johnny’s got his big arms around your waist, and he’s pulling you back onto your feet. You dig your nails into his forearms, finding your footing, and you lean back against him as you watch Gaz get Simon onto his back so he look at the blood that still wets his mask.

You don’t really remember making it back to the plane. Every time you blinked, the setting was new. Your nose buried in Johnny’s neck—shhh, it’s alright, bonnie, he’s right here, we’re here. Your hands finding Simon’s, squeezing, not stopping to cry until he squeezed back. The whir of a helicopter. The gravel beneath your feet, kicking up with all the boots, dust in your nose. A ramp closing behind you, and then the constant whir of the jet engine. Johnny drags you to sit, and you can still taste blood in your mouth.

Who’s the man-eater?

When you open your mouth and reach in, you pick out something stringy from between your teeth. With a tremble to your bottom lip, you realize it’s flesh. Viscera and muscle, blood and skin, flooded into the crooks of your mouth and notched between your molars, against your gums. Your vision goes blurry, and you realize it’s just more tears when they fall warm and salty down your face. You taste old pennies as it carries blood from between your lips as they come down your cheeks, and you lean forward to spit, splattering wet saliva and dark pink onto the floor of the plane. You cough, wiping your face with the back of your hand, but then your hands shake when you realize they are covered in blood. You look down and see much of the same—your shirt, your jacket, your tact vest, the entire front of your body has splatters of dark red.

“Oh—God—”

You feel sick. It’s all coming up, all of it, you ate something foul, and now you need to be rid of it—

“None o’tha’ now.”

You sob, jerking your head to the voice in front of you. Knelt down, Captain Price is bending to meet your eyes. Your hands tremble, and you shake your head, but he just kisses his teeth and reaches into his vest to retrieve a rag. He unravels it, reaching for your hand, and you give it to him easily as he draws you closer so he can wipe at your face. He uses a canteen to get it wet, and when he wipes your face again, the rag is soaked in red.

You’ve killed before, in some sense, but never in this way. Everything you have ever done in the service has always been tactical and removed—firing a weapon from hundreds of yards away, clicking a button and watching some screen as you blew a building to dust. Even a phone call, you think you made once, and although you weren’t pulling any triggers, the location you gave them would end up on some list somewhere. You never felt good about it, but you didn’t see the aftermath, not up close. You kept your hands physically clean, and in that way, you told yourself that it was acceptable. That you were good.

Forgivable.

It is the first time you see yourself as animal. Sharp teeth, a static mind, driven by aggression and the feeling of a threat. Someone stepped into your space, challenged your territory, and now that your omega has her teeth in you, you couldn’t stop her.

You killed a man.

But he tried to kill mine.

“I did that—” You hiss, and the agony on your face is palpable. It’s in your scent, and it clouds the small plane. You can see the scrunch of John’s face when it hits him head-on, and he shakes his head when you keep talking. Rambling. Babbling about I killed him, I killed him, what did I do—?

“Look at me, Kit,” John says. He says it with his chest, and your omega freezes when she hears the only thing she really understands. You blink, bottom lip still wobbling, but you quiet. When you meet John’s eyes, all you can read is his frustration. He looks tired. He looks doubtful. He looks worried. “What did you do?”

“I killed him.”

“That’s right,” John murmurs. “And if you hadn’t, he would’ve killed you.”

His explanation is clinical and matter-of-fact. You aren’t speaking to a man, not a normal one—you’re speaking to Captain John Price, who has enough confirmed kills to make any immediate superior nervous. The only reason John Price is not a rank higher is because that means sitting at a desk, and that just wouldn’t do for a man like this. Not for one this hungry. Not for one with eyes like that and hands that fidget the way they do. There is no way this man understands you; what you have done is what he does before breakfast. Licks his fingers afterwards even, just to savor the way it tastes.

You shake your head, “I mauled him. L-Like an animal, I—”

“You survived,” John explains. He tilts his head to the side, and he sucks you right in. “What the fuck did you think this was, Kit, hmm? Think we don’t get our hands dirty? Think the shit we do is easy, tha’ it? No—look at me.” Your eyes are wild. There’s something terrible going on in your head, and you can’t shake it. Something awful is happening to you. The you that you know is trying to understand how easy it was to do such a horrible thing. The other part of you, the one you’ve been ignoring your whole life, will sleep just fine knowing her mate is alive and well. John snarls a little, and your trembling hands find his vest and hold onto it for stability. You try to ignore the fact that the broadness of his chest dwarfs your hands, but your omega notices.

Your hands curl there, latching on, and while your omega knows this isn’t your alpha, she sighs a little at the feeling of him anyways. Stability, authority, the way he takes control—he feeds her well. Even if you cannot do what’s necessary, she can, and John and his alpha know this feeling well. It’s why he’s still alive. It’s why he’s still here.

Justified murder. Sanctioned killers. The lesser evil. Joining their pack means you are one of them now—does that mean swallowing these half-truths, too?

“You did what you were trained to do. You were backed into a corner, and you used every last weapon you had. You saved yourself, and you saved Simon, and you did exactly what a soldier is supposed to do. Repeat after me—Look at me, Kit! Keep your fuckin’ eyes on me, and repeat after me—I did what I was trained to do.”

You dig your nails into the flesh under his shirt. It barely gives, and John doesn’t flinch. Your eyes on his are so intense. This is a man that has been in your place often, for longer. He wears his experience in his eyes and in the careful movements he makes in the field. There is no hesitance when John Price makes a decision. He’s fought too hard and seen too much to ever do anything with half his heart, half his mind. The lines on his face tell a story—he isn’t this old because he hides, he’s this old because he knows exactly what to do and when to do it. He wears his alpha like armor, and they work together, in parallel, to get each other home.

Your fingers shake a little less when you feel his thick hands resting on your thighs, tugging you just that much closer.

“Say it. That’s a fucking order,” John says again. His scent is warm. It softens your insides. His eyes will never give you the forgiveness you seek, but they will forgive you anyways, and maybe that’s all you really want. Maybe it’s all you really need.

Tell me what I’ve done isn’t wrong. Absolve me. Put your teeth to my neck and tell me that everything I’ve done was going to happen anyways.

“I…” Your voice falters. Your foreheads touch, just for a moment, and your breath comes out with barely even a stutter. “I-I did what…I did what I was trained t-to do.”

“Again.”

“I did…I did what I was trained to do.”

When John stands, your eyes follow. Your head tilts back, and you blink up at him with watery eyes, and there is no mistaking the hand that comes up to cup the side of your face. You look just like the feral thing you fear you are. The cracks of your lips are still dark with blood. It’s still stained along your skin, a thick kind of war paint that you wear apprehensively, but John knows what he sees.

It’s been a long time since he’s had an omega this close. They are distractions. Giving Simon an omega meant needing to accept her into their pack. A pack of four alphas is unusual. No betas, no omegas, just four dog-like alphas that followed each other anywhere. They had an unspoken, silent agreement to keep their pack this way. Betas waste time, and omegas complicate things. They are self-sufficient, John is sure of this fact. They have never needed anyone but each other.

The moment you set foot on base, John felt it—the balance tipping. Simon had seemed indifferent to Kate’s proposition. He had never voiced his desire to claim an omega or to have a mate; his life had been a reflection of how wrong even the most natural of relationships could go, and he was not eager to try it his own way. As soon as you arrived and were tucked into your room, the change in Simon was immediate. You were here, and you would be his mate, and while Simon had never been privy to what it meant to really court an omega, his instincts took over.

John knows why. Nothing in Simon’s life had ever really been his. His entire family was dead, and even his life was not his own—he followed orders. He lived because they allowed him to, and he would die when they told him to die. The simplicity worked for him, and John never questioned that. Having nothing to lose made Simon fearless and smart. He trusted Simon to do what was necessary, and even when Simon knew he was the sacrificial lamb, he never said anything—all that came through on the radio was a curt copy tha’.

Kate gave him something, something soft and pretty, with a bite. Kate mentioned something about her being special, but John is having trouble remembering why. Something about this is the one I can’t have, but it’s white noise in his mind now. He used to think it was about control—if Kate could take you away and give you back, it might give her leverage over Simon, but he knows that’s just a fleeting idea.

No alpha in their pack would let them take you away. Not now. Not anymore. John wasn’t sure before; he had half a mind to tell Simon that this new dynamic wasn’t working, but then he heard your voice breaking over the radio, and then he saw you hauling Simon’s giant body covered in someone else’s blood with nothing but instinct driving you forward. The look in your eyes—he knows what that is, he recognized it as soon as he saw it. Someone tried to take Simon from you, and you did not let that happen. Visceral, that kind of killing. Tormenting. Immutable. It will be with you forever, but so will Simon now.

Just like that, you are accepted. Even John won’t turn you away. Couldn’t. It’s not possible. Fate has fuck-all to do with this kind of pairing.

There is a popular belief that mates are not chosen carefully—when you see them, when you smell them, it is known. The hierarchy of society that is chosen by the presentation of your own self, decided by nothing but your DNA, is divinely driven when it comes to how you pair. Your mate was already decided for you at birth, and you will discover them in your own time, because fate will have it so.

That is a lie. John won’t believe it. Simon certainly will never call this that. Kate propped a door open, and Simon simply decided that yes, he gets to have his cake and eat it, too. The waiting game is over. The chosen misery of not having an omega to knot ends. Simon knows when an opportunity presents itself, and he knows exactly when to take it. It’s pulsing under John’s fingers—a strong pulse you have, the gland just under your ear beating hot and thick under his thumb like it taunts him.

What if he leaned over and sunk his teeth there? What then?

She will never be warm enough. Her food will never be good enough. She’ll always sound distressed. The water in the showers will always be too cold. There are too many lights. She will never have enough pillows, enough blankets, they will forever torture her in a space too small, she’ll never be truly happy. They will always look for the void, for the empty spots, and they will forever try to occupy them. Fill them. Make you happy.

John understands. Maybe even from the moment he met you.

The smell of you. The sight of your doe eyes, your soft skin, the clear distress you were in—fuck, he had forgotten why omegas were kept so far apart on bases like this. Just one whiff, and John fought hard not to break right through his grip on the doorway. Enough to tempt a man; to stuff her away in some box, tuck her somewhere dark, keep her safe, sound, fed, warm, fat, happy, pleasured. A good man would be rightfully tempted by it, even with the claim over you, even with Simon’s scent sticky against your skin.

John’s alpha is not immune to that innate desire. He might not be your mate, but the cry for help is all the same, and so is the itch that his alpha wants to scratch. There is an omega in need—we have to help her.

Looking at you now, he couldn’t stop himself. Those big, wet eyes of yours, the sound of your cries. Your omega is smart. She curls your tears and your whimpers in just a way that makes every alpha in your vicinity stiffen. They all can hear it. They all can hear the clawing of her blunt nails. They all can smell the need to be comforted. Your omega is a magnet, and she’s strong; stronger than John is used to, and he thinks it’s because you don’t know how to control her.

When Simon shuts the door on his room later that evening, John isn’t the only one lingering. He sees their shadows, his sergeants, watching the door until that lock clicks. They all meet eyes, but they say nothing to each other. Perhaps it’s just another unspoken rule.

Not yet. Patience is rewarded.

Simon refused medical, naturally. He slumps onto the floor, back against the wall, and you won’t sit on the bed in your clothes, so you sit down next to him. Your knees wobble a little, and you have to hold onto the wall to sit to keep yourself from falling over as you slide down against it. You lean your head back against the wall, blinking up at the ceiling. There’s a fluorescent light that flickers, making you flinch, and then it goes eerily silent in the room. You feel nothing; it’s blissfully still, only the sounds of barely-there breathing, but then it hits you like a crashing wave. When you start to cry, Simon moves, shaking his head. He huffs, low sounds of disapproval as he shifts next to you.

“I can’t listen to you. Cryin’ like tha’.”

You don’t think he means that. From your peripheral, you can see the way his gloved hands curl into tight fists against his thighs. It’s taking everything inside of him not to reach for you. The need to touch you is something that must be burning under that thick skin of his. You hope it fucking hurts. You hope your omega is making it itch and sting so badly—you hope the discomfort makes him dig his nails so hard into his palms that it makes him bleed even more.

“I hate you.” It comes out of you too fast. You say it without thinking, but it comes out shaky and quiet. You feel defeated. You were someone else only hours ago; you were prepared to do anything for him, and all he can say is that he doesn’t want to hear you cry?

“Didn’t ask for you to do tha’. To do those things. I had it.”

You turn your head to look at him. Your guilt turns to anger. Your face drops into a tearful scowl, and your bottom lip trembles with it.

“What?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

The fucking audacity of this two-faced asshole of an alpha—

“No, I need to h-hear you say that again. I need to hear you say you fucking had it. I need to hear you say that you had it after getting shot in the fucking head!” You cry. You lean towards him, glaring up at him. He refuses to look at you, just keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “Look at me if you’re going to lie to me.”

He doesn’t. He just breathes deep, angry purrs that you don’t believe. You sit up on your knees, facing him.

“Coward,” you spit. “Is that what you’re gonna put in your report? That you had it, and an insubordinate rookie put your life in danger? I can’t wait to see it, Lieutenant, I cannot wait to see what kind of bullshit story you come up with. You make me so fucking sick. I can’t believe I even saved your life, cause what good does it do me?”

Simon finally turns to look down at you. Even sitting, he’s still much bigger, much taller, and he narrows his eyes. Deadly. Hateful. You are caught in a line, but you are prepared for it.

“Careful,” he warns. You gather up some saliva and spit onto the floor next to you. You wipe your wet mouth after, running your tongue over your teeth. Simon eyes the blood that still stains your mouth. Instead of horrifying him, there’s a rumble that happens deep within his chest that he cannot control.

“Don’t test me, Simon,” you throw right back at him. “He’s only dead because he doesn’t get the satisfaction of killing you. If anyone’s gonna kill you, it’s gonna be me.”

A flame that becomes a torch. That’s what you and Simon are. You do not complement each other, you set each other ablaze. That’s what it feels like, anyway.

Your faces crash together in a hard, nasty mess. His mask is first, shoved up over his nose, and then his mouth is on yours. You scramble to get undressed, fumbling to get your tact vest off as Simon’s hands paw at your cargos. You hear fabric tear, but you don’t register it. All you can think about is getting naked enough to get close enough to him so you can feel the pulse of his heartbeat against your skin.

He’s eating you; as close as he can get, anyway. His teeth anchor into your throat, scraping the delicate flesh, and then his tongue is wetting the blood that’s still on your skin and sucking it into his mouth. The taste of torn-apart alpha wasn’t apparent to you, but it must be to him—the way he’s snarling, biting, slobbering as he makes you his dinner plate.

“My pretty omega,” Simon growls. It comes from deep within him, a drawl that makes your pupils dilate. Whenever his alpha shows his face, it’s never for long, but it makes your entire body shake. You don’t really remember taking all your clothes off, but Simon’s gloved hands are on your tits, and he’s thumbing at your nipples, licking over his teeth, snapping his jaws as if he wants to bite you again. “Mine. Mine to fuck, mine to protect, mine to play with.”

“Fuck you.”

“Your heat…I can taste it,” he continues. It’s in your sweat, in your scent, he can feel it boiling under your skin, begging to come out. The way your eyes shift in and out of something, it’s the cloudy haze of it hanging over your head. “Is that how you got your leverage over ‘im? Did he get a whiff of you and forget who he was?”

“No,” you pant, slipping your hand down his pants. You cup the underside of his cock, and he hisses, putting his hand over yours and pressing you harder against him. He squeezes, and your fingers wrap around him, tugging gently. He’s pulsing hot under your touch, and you move to shove his pants lower as your knees fall open. “I saw his gland. It was so…” You falter, whining. “I didn’t think. I just did.”

“My omega,” he sighs, shaking his head. Simon grips the side of your head by your hair, and he shakes your head as he forces you to look at him. Dark eyes. Blonde lashes. A face so terrible and so beautiful and so horrifyingly yours. “You must be mine, you know tha’.”

The quickness to violence. Your unapologetic nature. Because I will do anything for him, because nothing is too much, because death is inevitable if someone gets in my way—

You do. You know it. It’s as true as your nature, as true as the voice in your head, as evident as the bones under your skin and the hair on your head and the beating heart under your ribs that feels like it’s about to break right through. Simon will put his teeth on your gland, and he’s going to bite there, and he’s going to steal everything you are and tuck it inside. You have this disgusting image of the puffed skin around his scars opening up and attaching you to him, bleeding you of any life you still have until you are nothing more than a shriveled, dry cavity.

I won’t let that happen. He might have you, but I have him, too.

When you kiss, you dig your nails into his scalp. You feel him in your guts when he slips inside, pussy opening up and squeezing right back down to keep him in. You whimper, drool spilling out of your mouth, and Simon is there to lick it right back up as he hikes your hips up and grinds into you. It’s not the worst place you’ve ever fucked, but the hard ground under your head won’t feel nice in the morning. He must know, somehow, because one of his big hands cups the back of your head, pillowing his harsh thrusts as he gives it to you good. He’s there, right there, right against your sweet spot, and you drag your nails down his back as he finds it so easily. Simon knows you—he knows you so well. His alpha knows your body, knows how to make you speechless and stupid, and you hate him and love him all the same. The emotions are so hot in your throat, wanting to come right up. You want to scream at him, you want to tear the flesh right off of his face, but you will always stop yourself with delicate hands. You will always want to save him. You can beat him and curse at him and cry all you like, but when there is a bullet that goes flying, you know you will throw yourself in front of him.

There is little safety in this world for you. You will always be nothing more than your body to others, but here, underneath him, clinging to him as he fucks you right into that plane of existance between pleasure and pain, you are you. You are more yourself than you have ever been. Half of yourself doesn’t belong to you, and yet he’s brushing your hair back and kissing you hot, and he’s saying your name, and you feel more like yourself than maybe you ever will be.

You love him. You love him. You love him.

Do you love him because you love him? Do you love him because she loves him? Do you love him because there is nowhere else to go? Because he is your only means of survival? Because if you don’t love him, you might fall into yourself like a dying star and let her finish you off?

Maybe that’s why you hate him so much. You hate him because not loving him is impossible. You hate him because you want him to prove how horrible of an alpha he really is, and yet his hand is taking the brunt of the pain, and he kisses like he’s sorry, and the scent of him relaxes you like nothing ever has before. You’re safe here with him. You always will be. It makes you so fucking sick.

“Please,” he groans. He whispers it against your cheek. His cock feels so good, hips grinding against your clit, and he’s so warm. “Let me ‘ave it. Give it t’me, omega.”

“Beg me for it.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Bite me.”

You cry when he sinks his teeth into your jaw. It stings, in a good way. It nearly comes out, when you come for him. You nearly say it. You would mean it, if you did, but it takes everything in you to keep it down, to swallow it back inside, to keep it mashed under your tongue and sour between your teeth.

Your back bows when he comes. He always comes so much. You love the way it feels. You love how it can’t stay inside, too full, dribbling between your thighs. You love the sound it makes when Simon keeps moving—nasty, messy, lewd, a slick, slick, slick that makes you dizzy all over again. You could come again just listening to it, you could come again just hearing his choked breaths in your ear. He smells so good. You put your face into the crook of his neck and take a deep breath, and you whimper as it curls into the tendrils of your brain. Intoxicating—like you’re high. Right from the source, Simon smells delicious. You think love makes him smell better. You think love makes your omega even more feral, more than she already is, and the heat that stays in your chest tells you all you need to know.

You’re at the edge of that cliff. You’re about to fall over.

“S-Simon—”

Your voice pulls his eyes back to yours. He uses his hands, brushing your hair out of the way so he can look at you better. You cough, still a little delirious from your orgasm, but you’re coherent enough to communicate with him. You don’t need to say anything, you know that. Simon will look at you, and he will know.

“I have you,” he says. You knew he would say that, and yet you weren’t comforted until he did say it. “It’s happening, innit?”

I’m here, so close, I’m coming—

You just nod. He sits up, picking you up off the floor. All the blood in your head rushes down, and you hold on around his neck as he hoists you up around his hips. You press your face to his, cheek to cheek, and he carries you to the bathroom. When he turns the shower on, he sits you onto the toilet, and you watch him strip from there. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen him, all of him.

He’s a canvas of war. Your breath stops in your throat as he turns to shuck his trousers off all the way and steps out of them. He’s covered in marks. Fleshy, pink spots that must be from third degree burns litter his left leg. They make a map of rivers along it, spreading out to his ankle. His other leg must have been slashed to bits. There’s long lines of it all, deep flesh wounds that run along the length of his thigh and his calf. Someone made a knife sharpener out of his skin, and there are dips where the flesh could not be replaced. Your eyes scan over his torso. Simon is the picture of strength. He’s big and beefy, with a solid stomach, and he just looks heavy, but even that isn’t enough to fill out the mess of his skin. Gunshots, knife wounds, cigarette burns scattered along his arms. Simon’s body wears his history like a bright neon sign. He doesn’t cover up because he’s ashamed of it—he covers himself because he doesn’t want people to ask.

He doesn’t want people to know what used to be.

You stand up on wobbly legs, putting your hands on his lower stomach, pudgy to the touch but rigid against pressure. Your fingers wander, smoothing over the lines and taking in the landscape of his body. Simon stiffens just a little, but his breaths even when you lay your cheek against his bare chest. You shut your eyes, and the only sounds are the water from the shower and the beating of his heart. It pumps strong—Simon’s blood sounds thick, tar and honey.

Under the hot water, you watch as the water runs red. You watch it carefully until it runs clear, and then you look up at Simon. He’s already looking at you.

“I’m scared,” you tell him honestly. You are afraid. You try so hard not to be, and you know deep down that your omega’s true nature is to protect you, but you’re afraid. Trusting her means giving up control, real control. Even if it’s only for a period of time, it’s long enough that you are so fucking terrified. You don’t know what to expect. No one ever taught you what to expect, no one ever told you what would happen, what you would feel. You’ve been drowning your omega so long, you are afraid of what she will do once she comes out—kicking, screaming, clawing, burning, biting. You’ve been doubtful and spiteful all your life, and now you have to just hand yourself over?

It’s mother nature; and she is such a bitch.

“Do you trust me?” Simon asks lowly. You touch his face, and he bends to keep his eyes to yours. You see nothing but honesty in them, and that terrifies you even more.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“That’s not wot I asked. I need ta hear you say it.”

“Yes,” you sniffle. “Yes, Simon. I trust you.”

When Simon tucks you into bed, you fluff the pillows. You keep doing that, picking up pillows and shaking them, tucking them into new corners until it looks…right. You stop when you’ve got the blanket scrunched up in your arms, and you blink up at Simon who’s standing by the side of the bed.

You’re making a nest. A God-awful, terrible, messy shitload of a nest, but you’re making it. You put the blanket down gently, pushing it into the corner, and then you play with your fingers in your lap, twisting your hands over each other nervously as you look around the bed. The shadow comes over you before you feel him at your back. Heat like no other, and then you feel his fingers on your arm, tracing a line from your shoulder to your elbow.

“Wot is it?” He leans over your shoulder, and you feel his lips touch the side of your head. “Wot’s wrong?”

“I need more,” you say softly. “More things. Uh…” You look over your shoulder, and his lips brush over your cheek. “Some of your clothes, maybe?”

He drops them beside you. A couple shirts, a couple hoodies, and when you hold them up for him, you hold each other’s eyes as he scents them for you, rubbing the fabric against his wrists and along his neck before you find a spot for them in the pile. It’s haphazard and not at all neat, but it’s the first time you’ve done anything of the sort. It doesn’t feel perfect, but it feels like yours, and you will always remember the look in Simon’s eyes when you invited him into your nest.

It’s shockingly intimate. There’s something so warm, something so lovely, about tugging on his arm and pulling him into the space you’ve made. He climbs over you, sinking into the blankets, and you lay back with him into the warmth. You curl up into his side, closing your eyes, and when he hooks his forearm around the small of your waist, you go with him.

It is close. You can taste it. It will be easy with him here, with her.

I know what to do. It’s okay. When you wake up, you’ll be new again. I promise. I’ll make you new. I’ll make you better. I’ll have them, I swear it. It’s okay.

It’s okay.

Okay.

You dream in a haze. The visions spill like water, crashing and moving, but you never get to focus on them long enough to see what’s really happening. You feel dirt under your nails and between your fingers, can feel the rocks cutting up your feet as you try and climb a high mountain. When you come to the top, you feel your feet slip, but someone grabs onto your wrists at the last second and pulls you upwards.

When you blink awake, all you can feel is the heat. It licks up your spine and curdles there at your back. You’re drenched in sweat, and it’s hard to breathe. The world looks like your dreams, but you can blink into focus. When you do, Simon is there, leaning over you. You whine a little, and when you rub your thighs together, you nearly choke at the feeling of how damp they are, sweat and slick staining your skin and the mattress beneath you. You didn’t expect to feel coherent. You do feel out of your body, but not in a frightening way. Maybe it’s your omega, or maybe it’s Simon, but all you feel is this immense pressure in your chest, something telling you to find and seek.

Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

“I’m ‘ere,” Simon murmurs. He passes a thumb over your forehead, pushing some of the sweat out of your eyes. Your throat is dry, and you croak a little as you smack your lips together and arch your back up into him. “Right ‘ere.”

“Hurts,” you whisper. It does. There’s a pain in your belly that aches, and when Simon presses a hand there, you whine, immediately sensitive. There’s something missing inside of you, and your omega is singing for it to be filled. “Simon, it hurts—”

“Gonna make it better,” he says against your lips. When he kisses you, it feels like drinking fresh spring water. His saliva hydrates you, the taste of him satiating some deep-seated hunger that you’ve never felt before. It isn’t enough, but it’s good, tastes good, and you grab at him from all angles, trying to bring him closer. “Fuck, my pretty omega…” He gets between your legs, prying them apart, and you moan when you see the strings of slick that follow the motion. He seats himself there and pushes you backwards. “Present for me, kitty. Show me.”

You’ve never heard the phrase, but your omega knows what to do. She draws your hand down and uses your fingers to spread your puffy folds apart, and Simon sighs through his nostrils, hard and heavy, when he sees you spread open for him. He bends down, nudging your hands away, and when he closes his mouth over your pussy, you cry with relief. He groans. You are so warm, and you are positively sopping. He swallows mouthfuls, and it is still not enough—he bends your knees and hugs your thighs and tries hard to taste more, but it’s difficult.

“Simon,” you whimper. “Simon—” You choke on a moan as he tightens his grip. His fingers dig into you, bruising and hard, and you cry big, salty tears as he slips his tongue inside of you and fucks you with it. Soft, snarling licks, a devouring that you know is nothing short of primal. Your omega is stepping through the door, and his alpha is clawing at its fence, and soon they will meet, and you can do nothing about it but hope that they don’t kill each other.

Never. I can do it. You’ll see. I’ll make it so good.

“Alpha.”

The word resets him. He finally removes himself from between your thighs, dog-like expression on his face as looks up at you. Tongue out, drooling, that dead, loving look in his eyes. You cup his cheeks, drawing him up, and when you kiss, you note how sweet it is. How sweet you are. Natural pheromones that your body emits, something so luscious that her alpha cannot refuse it. It really is brain-swelling. You start to feel the spiral, a buzzing in the back of your head that is starting to get louder and louder and louder. Once you come for the first time, it’s like tinnitus. She’s here. She’s in your head.

She is not going anywhere.

It’s my turn now. I’ll give you back after I get what I want.

It must be revenge that she wants. Revenge against you—for every time that you’ve taped her mouth shut, every time you’ve scruffed her by the nape of her neck and forced her to quiet down. Revenge against Simon—for acting like he could do anything but submit to you, for being a right asshole just to fall at your feet for a taste of your cunt. Revenge against everything—for being underestimated, for being ignored.

You don’t know how long it’s been. A few days must have passed by now, but time slips through your fingers like water. You close your eyes to sleep, and when you open them again, it’s to fuck your pretty alpha until you need to sleep all over again. You wake up in increments of lucidness, feeling Simon tip your head back and feed you small bites of something savory or a few sips of water. You lick into his mouth after, purring as you rub your nose against his jaw, and he always presses back tenderly. Smiling as he fixes his fingers under your jaw, murmuring something soft into your ear, slipping a few thick fingers inside of you to make you relax for him.

He’s underneath you right now. Your hands are wrapped tight against the headboard, and you’re straddling his face. His thick arms are hooked over your thighs, and you whine as you draw your hips back and forth against his tongue. He eats hot and heavy, his nose and mouth wet with slick as he alternates between flattening his tongue for you to ride and forcing you to sit still as he pushes his tongue inside of you and swirls it all sloppy.

You suck it out of his mouth after, like you always do. You sink down until you’re straddling his thick middle, your mouth against his as you kiss with gritted teeth, all giggly and wet. Simon is a good kisser; the mask shouldn’t fool anyone. You reach down as he does, feeling around until you cup the underside of his cock and guide it inside of you. His knot swells as soon as you sit on it, and Simon grips you under your thighs, spreading your legs a little more until his balls are nestled between them. You whine when his knot catches, already pulsing as your mouth drops open and your eyes roll back into your head.

Simon’s always been big—but the hormones he’s been producing in response to your heat only make him thicker, and his knot nearly splits you in two. You love it, and you chase it all the same.

He hasn’t claimed you yet. You don’t remember how many times you’ve taken his knot, or how many places you’ve fucked in this room, but he won’t do it. His teeth have just grazed the spot, teasing, but he never seals the bond. You cried about it a few times, in between rounds, but he just stuffed you full again to distract you. It doesn’t always shut you up, but then he’ll hook his forearm around your neck and nearly suffocate you as he comes deep, and you’re so delirious, you forget about it for awhile.

Your omega doesn’t though. Your gland protrudes, swelling, and she wants him so badly to claim you. Half of her job is to get him to do it—she’s supposed to take his knot and entice his claim, that’s what she’s made for, and she doesn’t want to come out of this empty-handed.

I’ll give you back after I get what I want.

She fixates on his mouth. She draws you to it, making you cup his face and lick over his teeth. She makes you shove his face into your neck, makes you smother him in your scent, but Simon, to no surprise, holds his composure. He’s too capable and too aware, even in his moments of staticky pleasure, to give into her all the way.

It’s a few days later when you start to feel less out of control. Your omega still tugs at the strings; slick still pools between your thighs, the heat of your body is still making you sweat, but Simon is in focus, and you are aware as he ruts into you. Your hands cup his cheeks, and you kiss tenderly as he grinds into you with shallow thrusts, low grunts from deep within his chest making you whimper.

“I-I love you so much, Simon.”

It’s instinctual. You couldn’t stop yourself. You’re crying, so overwhelmed with sticky pleasure and soft insides.

Simon knows it’s the same when he falters. His elbows give out, his mouth grazes your jaw, and before he can think twice, his teeth sink right into the skin under your ear.

Now that is fate—Simon had set his sights on you. There was never going to be any other ending.

You cry out. Your eyes widen, bugged out, and your pupils dilate. You dig your nails into his back, right up against his other scars, and you feel blood under your nails as he presses his hips to yours and comes, more than he has before. Your toes curl, your back arches off the bed, and you choke on squeaking gasps as he shakes his head a little, sinking his teeth in deeper, holding himself there.

Animal. Bear. Hook, line, sinker—there was something that once belonged to you, but now the seal has been broken, and the golden ichor inside bleeds, and Simon takes it into his mouth like its the essence of life. Maybe it is. There will be no one else. There will never be another omega. There will never be another person that tastes the way you do, that fucks the way you do, there will never be another cunt that opens up like yours and swallows his knot just like this.

Simon’s been at death’s door far too many times. It is only now that he thinks he’ll be afraid to see it again.

You go blind for a few moments. You see spots, glittering ones, and something trickles from the base of your spine all the way to the top of your head. It feels like you’re floating—as if your blood inflated, picking you up, taking you somewhere warm and safe.

A cocoon. A protective blanket. The space against Simon’s chest, the place you’ve made under his skin.

When he pulls back to look at you, your blood between his teeth, you feel your omega come right back. You thought it was over; you thought the days of dreamy fucking and scalding sweat and mindblowing orgasms was done.

Not even close.

You’re alone when you wake up. Your eyes blink, adjusting to the soft yellow light of Simon’s desk lamp. You can smell him—he’s nearby, you hear some noises, but he’s not in your line of sight, and that makes your insides clam up.

“Simon?”

Your voice comes out more broken and sadder than you wanted it to, but your emotions feel like they are all over the place. You feel happy and sad at the same time, elated and entirely too depressed. You feel overwhelmed and also too empty. Your body aches, and you feel like there’s something wrong with you, but also that nothing is wrong at all.

“S-Simon?”

You blink through warm tears, and then you feel a hand brushing your hair off your face. Simon bends down to meet your eyes. His mask is back on, but he’s without a shirt, and you swallow at the sight of the intense bruises, hickies, nail scratches, the bite marks. The relief you feel once you know he’s here deflates your insides so warmly. You hold onto his wrist, keeping him close, and there’s a rumble that happens under his chest that makes you whine to get him even closer.

“Good morning, kitty,” Simon murmurs. He must be smiling under the mask; you see his eyes squint a little, and you hear it in his voice. “Feelin’ olright?”

You sputter and shake your head. “No.”

Simon snorts, thumbing at your cheek. You chase the feeling, following his thumb, not satisfied until he cups your cheek with his big hand.

“Tha’s olright. Y’r just hungry.”

The bath Simon leaves you in melts your bones in the best way. You sink into the hot water, humming, watching from the open door as Simon changes the sheets and cleans up the leftover food wrappers and empty beverages lying around. You remember Simon feeding you between rounds, letting you lick his fingers, suck on them—

You clench your thighs together, gripping the edge of the tub.

“Simon…” You call for him. He drops the trash he’s holding, running a hand down his bare chest as he comes into the bathroom. He kneels down beside the tub, tilting his head to the side, and you guide his hand into the water and between your thighs easily. He chuckles lowly, tipping your head back, and you sigh with relief when his fingers slip inside of you.

“You are insatiable,” Simon hisses. “Fucking for nine days ain’t enough for you, kitty?”

“N-Nine days?” You gasp, grinding against the heel of his palm. You cling to his thick bicep, the water sloshing as you squeeze your thighs around his hand. Your nipples touch the cool tub, and you hiss at the sensation, leaning up to press your face to his. He grunts as he pumps his fingers, kissing his teeth as he leans his forehead against yours a little harder.

“Nine fuckin’ days,” Simon echoes. “Nine days of fucking my best girl.”

“Mmm—” You giggle, but it’s cut off as you gasp when he adds another finger.

“Nine days of you,” Simon clicks his tongue. He sounds starved. He sounds intense. He sounds determined, and you feel it in the curl of his fingers and the way his thumb swirls over your clit. He knows just how to make you shake. “It’ll never be enough, kitty.”

“N-Never.”

“Ahh—fuck—” Simon groans when he feels you tighten up and come. You’re so sensitive, it only took a minute or so, but he slips his fingers out and keeps stroking your clit with a thick thumb to keep you whimpering. You blink up at him, and Simon feels a deep satisfaction in his chest. He knows that look in your eyes, he knows it now.

You want to go again.

Simon has never been an affectionate person. You think it’s a sound assumption for how he behaved before you met him, but it was certainly not true anymore. When you were near him, he tended to stand close to you or guide you with a hand a few inches away from your back, but Simon kept to himself. He was not romantic. He took care of you—he made sure your meals were good, ensured the water for your shower was warm, but he didn’t hold your hand. He didn’t hug you or touch you beyond what was necessary.

Things are different now. Things have changed.

He’s warm behind you as you walk. His hand is fixed on your waist, occasionally hooking a finger around your belt loop and pulling you back when you walk too far ahead. You giggle when he yanks you back, stumbling in your boots before he rights you with a firm, gloved palm against your belly.

Touchy. Possessive.

The boys are all seated and enjoying their lunch when Simon opens the doors for you. You make your way towards the table, taking a seat, and the entire group goes quiet as Simon walks past to go into the kitchen. You adjust your hair, resting your chin in your hand, and you smile knowingly at John when he meets your eyes. He sizes you up; it’s been a few days since he’s seen you, and you already look different. Looser. Warmer. Thicker.

“Ye hungry, bonnie?” Johnny finally asks. You turn your head to look at him. You really look at him this time—you notice his eyes, bright and blue, and you take in the sight of him after morning training. His cheeks are a little flushed from the workout, his arms are bulging as he sips from a paper cup of coffee, and he’s smiling like he knows a secret about you that no one else is privy to. His hair has grown out since you last saw him; the mohawk takes up the curls of his natural hair, and you reach over absentmindedly and twirl your finger around the curl that falls over his forehead.

He holds his breath with your hand so close. Your scent is strong, sweet as he turns his head just a little to take a deeper breath from where your wrist lays. You follow the swirl of his hair before letting it go, smiling wider. Johnny is terrible at hiding what he’s feeling; his eyes obviously glance around your face, lingering a little too long on your lips, until they brighten a little at the sight of the mark that peeks out from your shirt.

“Mmm…” You lick over your top row of teeth. The action is too wet to be anything but enticing. “I’m starved, Johnny.”

His knee gives out and bangs against the table at your response. You giggle, and Simon places down a tray of food in front of you just as John grumbles under his breath as he picks up his cup of water that’s spilled over the edge of the table.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Simon mutters, taking a seat next to you. You take the fork from his hand and look down at your plate. Pasta. Garlic bread. An ungodly amount of parmesan cheese on the side. Your stomach growls looking down at the food, and Simon seems to hear it. He scoots just that much closer, and it’s nothing but instinct that draws him close. His mask brushes against your shoulder and the side of your head, and his fingers trace the scabbing outline of his teeth just peeking out from the high collar of your shirt.

“Bloody hell,” Gaz hisses, leaning back in his seat. You blink away the fog in your brain, feeling your face heat. “You both reek of it.”

“Of what, Sergeant?” Simon bites, and John is the one to curl his fist around his cup and crush it with a scowl.

“Don’t play stupid, Simon,” John murmurs. “You both need another hosing down.”

“Anyone wanna join me?” You purr, and Simon curls his fingers around your hair and yanks your head back with a huff.

“Oh, you’d like tha’, wouldn’t you, kitty?”

“You have no idea, baby—”

“Bleedin’ Christ!” Johnny groans. He’s gone before you turn your head to look at him, and you smile to yourself, amused, but Simon tugs you back to him, pressing his nose to the side of your head.

“What are you doing?” He whispers in your ear. You twirl your fork before pushing his hand off, taking a bite of your food. You chew and swallow before taking a few more pieces of pasta and holding it up to his masked mouth.

“Nothing. You want a bite, Simon?” You ask. You meet his dark eyes, raising a brow as you hold up the fork a little more. He narrows his eyes a little before hiking the mask up, and you feed him with a little laugh. You wipe his mouth gently before tugging his mask back down. “You know, I’d really like some iced tea, Simon. Do you think they might have some in the back?”

Simon’s eyes twitch a little. He looks over your face for a moment longer before standing, and you bite your lip as you stare a little too long at him in those cargos before he disappears into the back again. Your omega warms you, all down your spine. It tickles—her fingers curl around your bones, licking at your insides, purring—bite him, bite him, bite him—

“Real subtle, Kit,” Gaz comments. You take another bite of your food, leaning forward a little. You point the fork at him, tilting your head to the side.

“You know, I remember having this conversation with you not that long ago,” you tell him. “Something about how much you stink even this far away. You got something in your pants, Gaz, or are you just happy to see me?”

“Piss off,” Gaz snaps, and you smile. You know you’re getting under his skin when you smell ash in the air, something bitter and eye-watering.

“Is that a kink of yours, honey? Real subtle.”

“Knock it off, you two,” John sighs, shaking his head. He leans back, running a thick hand over his beard, and you go back to eating. “Gaz, you’re gonna be late. Get a move on.”

The air feels a little tense when it’s just you and John. You move your food around on your plate, frowning a little, and John shifts where he sits.

“How…” He clears his throat. “How are you feeling?”

You look up a little at him. He’s staring at you curiously, arms crossed over his chest. You shrug lightly. It’s humorous seeing him behave so awkwardly.

“I’m okay,” you tell him. “Sore. Really tired.”

“You been to medical?”

“No.”

“Consider it an order,” John nods at you, looking at the collar of your shirt. “Those things can be nasty if you neglect it.”

You put your fork down, and when you and John look at each other, you have to swallow your omega back down your throat. She’s salivating—look at him, he likes us, he’s worried—

“Oh, yeah?” You smile a little, coy, demure. “You know a lot about that, Captain?” The use of his rank makes his jaw clench, and you wet your lips with your tongue. “Claiming omegas?”

If the air was tense before, it’s scorching now. John is white-knuckling his own arms, and his entire body is stiff. You blink, not looking away. You hold him there, and his nose twitches at the way you pin him against some invisible board. You’re already acting so differently—so confidently. There is nothing to fight for anymore. Your omega won her prize, and now she can reap her rewards.

Your omega is greedy.

Four is just so much better than one, isn’t it?

“You seem lonely,” you say softly. He sniffs a little, laughing dryly, and your boot moves just enough to touch toes with his. “Are you lonely, John?”

Are you lonely, John? Do you need me, John? Do you see me when you close your eyes, John?

You barely contain your jump when an ice-cold glass is slammed down on the table in front of you. You blink up at Simon, who’s standing there beside you breathing hard. He sniffs, looking between you and John, but you’re quick to pick up the glass of iced tea and nearly drink the entire thing in one sip.

If Simon notices John following the drop of tea that traces along your jaw and down your neck, he doesn’t say anything.

Your omega purrs, and you nearly do, too. When Simon grips your wrist, you follow him out, but not before catching John’s eyes right before you turn the corner. He watches you the entire way, until you disappear behind a wall.

You think you smell anger on Simon. It makes you cringe a little when you get a deep breath of it, but when he presses you up against the door back in his room, you realize it isn’t anger. You smile up at him, hands behind your back, and Simon fists your hair and kisses you hot. Nope, not anger. 

Fuck, he’s horny.

It’ll never be a level-playing field. From the moment you first presented, you didn’t think there’d ever be a real future for yourself. The social order that exists has always been well-maintained and aggressively understood. You exist all the way at the bottom; your kind is meant to get on their knees, be weepy and soft, and submit. You’ve always been told that is the easy life—you aren’t like betas who have to find their way, and you aren’t like alphas who have to continuously prove themselves. All you have to be is be quiet and obedient and gentle, and everything you want will come to you.

Even wants for omegas are understood. You aren’t supposed to want anything other than a cozy nest, a locking knot, or fat babies. You aren’t supposed to want anything at all other than the alpha that claims you and whatever they decide is right for you.

Your family abandoned you. Your caretakers lost you. Kate gave you away. Simon is the only one that has never asked you what you want, not because he doesn’t care, but because it’s not what matters. All he asks is what you need—everything else will follow as it’s supposed to.

He’s staring at your mark again. He does it often; he gets lost in his thoughts, and his eyes fixate on the faint bite mark that’s there behind your jaw now. It’s since healed nicely—all that is left behind is a faint indentation that would match Simon if he hinged his jaw open and bared his teeth. He has a strange obsession with it; not only does he stare, but he likes to touch it, too. He likes putting his gloved hand on the back of your neck and stroking it with his thumb, warm circles that make your entire body relax for him.

Simon’s not so bad. Things could be worse. Simon’s purebred, that’s for certain, but that also means his relationship with your omega is a bond unbreakable. All she does is flutter her lashes, and Simon’s alpha is on a leash, pulled taut, choking him of air. She likes that the most; she likes when he stumbles, when he falters, when his alpha is huffing and puffing because he can’t contain himself when she wags a treat in front of him.

You let her have it. It’s the least you could do.

Simon’s pack is no better. Sometimes, you think your omega feels guilty, but you push it down just like you’re used to. They deserve none of your pity. Entitled shits, they all are, and if it wasn’t for the fact that you are in their pack, you would never give such fragile egos the time of day; but they are in Simon’s pack, which means they’re in yours, which means you at least try to play nice.

Sometimes, though, it’s real funny watching Simon’s sergeants covering their crotches and waddling out of a room.

You can’t figure out John. He’s difficult to pin down. He has a special bond with Gaz and Simon, but every time you think you and your omega have figured out his wants and needs, he surprises you or oddly turns you down. While you already have an alpha that satisfies you entirely, it still stings, the rejection. Your omega whines. She is a part of their pack now, and the cold shoulder from even just one makes her upset—it does not help that John takes the place as head of this pack, either. She wants his approval, and she begs you to get it.

“Does John like me?”

Simon pauses at his desk. His pistol is disassembled in front of him, parts laid out carefully in a pattern only he might understand so he doesn’t lose any of the pieces. There’s gun oil and a rag to accompany him, and he’s methodically running that rag over the barrel when he stops. You turn your head from your place on the bed to look at him.

Simon shrugs. “Dunno,” he says finally, continuing with the rag. “Would think so.”

“I don’t think so,” you say softly. “Not like Johnny does. Or Gaz.”

“Tha’s cause they wanna fuck you, kitty,” Simon snorts, and you draw your knees up a little, squeezing your legs together. You think about Johnny’s wagging tongue or Gaz’s wet lips too long, and you’ll drag Simon over, even knowing his gear is filthy.

“John doesn’t?”

“John is…” Simon shrugs again, sighing deeply. “Him and omegas. It’s…complicated. Wot do ya care, anyway? Three alphas not enough for you?”

Three. The thought makes your omega giddy. You have yet to have them, but just knowing you can makes her so lightheaded. Since meeting her, you’ve come to know her as selfish and entirely too greedy. She’s a fiend for Simon’s attention the most, but you know she aches for all of it. She wants all four of them to fuss over her, to follow her like dogs.

“Maybe for me,” you agree, but your voice longs. It carries weight to it, and that makes Simon pause. “But not for her.”

Simon drops his things, standing up from his chair, and you smile wide as he comes towards the bed and grips you by your jaw with a shake. You blink up at him with a shaky breath, and his eyes crinkle, like he’s smiling, too, under his mask. Your omega will never be afraid of him. She adores him, far too much for your liking.

“Well, then. Maybe I should let my sergeants have a taste, and then we’ll see what’s not enough for her, eh?”

Your omega sighs. She just loves getting what she wants.

But it’s not enough. It’s not enough.

One reprieve you do get now, however, is that your heats are predictable. Like clockwork, every ten weeks, you can plan for those seven to ten days of complete bliss underneath Simon. You can lock him away, pull him out of any obligation or any mission, and he’s in your nest, staring down at you, feeding you between intervals of intense sex to keep your omega happy and satiated. John just bites his tongue when you take his lieutenant away—even if he wanted Simon not to go, he would never command it. He couldn’t do that to you, not to their omega.

She gets whatever she wants. No questions asked.

The balance is certainly well and tipped. It is no longer a clean-cut ladder with John at its stead. Now, it’s a foot on the tightrope, with each alpha fighting to make sure it does not tip over. As long as you are happy, their footing holds. They feel it steady and still, and they breathe easy.

There is still something that has the ability to disturb the equilibrium your omega has maintained. You just never thought you’d see it again—or smell it.

Your omega knows what it is as soon as gets the scent—who it is. Familiar. Edgy. Dark chocolate and herbs, a scent that used to comfort you, and now one that makes you hot with disdain.

She looks older. Tired. Stressed. You see it on her face, and you smell it on her, too. She wants to take them away from you. Not one, not two, all of them—and she doesn’t want you with them when she does.

She waves her hand like she always does. She throws her orders around, expecting everyone to move as soon as she says to. She’s not prepared for the tension, and she’s not prepared for the reluctance she’s met with. Instead of four bloodthirsty dogs, she stares down at outright disobedience.

She’s disturbed a den—and she doesn’t understand what stands in her way.

You remember the first time you saw Kate Laswell. Freshly 18, nowhere to go, no family. The streets weren’t suitable for you; omegas are vulnerable on their own, and if you didn’t choose the pack you got swallowed up in, it would get chosen for you. The doors for the service were always open. That’s what they do, that’s what your country does—they break their people down to the bone, down to their knees, and then the only way to build themselves back up is to put shackles on their ankles and cuffs on their wrists. It is the circumstances your country thrives on. They build the walls that cage you, and then barely wrench the door open enough for you to breathe.

You will always be kept at the same level—you always beg them for more, and Kate is just one cog in the wheel that keeps the machine running. She saw your face, saw you for what you were. She promised you a life worth living, and then she pulled the rug out from underneath you. She put you in her pocket; she tucked you away for a rainy day. Her precious 141 was slipping away from her, and she played her cards.

You want her to hate the hand she is dealt.

You’re outside when she finds you. You’re sitting outside the mess hall, where the benches are plentiful, and you’re staring down at the pack of cigarettes you stole from one of Simon’s jackets. The lighter is in your other hand, but you can’t get yourself to try one.

“Didn’t peg you for a smoker.”

You keep your eyes down on the cigarettes. You smooth a thumb over the label, licking over your teeth. Despite everything else, her voice hasn’t changed.

“I’m not,” you say softly. “Just…”

When you look up, you meet Kate’s eyes, and those have not changed either. They are still looking right through you, just as they always have. You used to think you loved her, at one point. She always would check on you. Visit your base herself, call if she couldn’t—ask how things were, if your CO had given you the accommodations she ordered him to. She made you feel like you were her favorite, as if she cared for you differently in some way. Surely, she did not check up on others the way she did you. She had other soldiers she must have kept her eye on, other places her guidance was needed, but surely, you were someone special to her.

You had been around plenty of alphas before her, but she was the only one that used to make you feel like you couldn’t rightly breathe. The first time you felt your omega bobbing her head to the surface of where you stuffed her, it was when Kate stood just this close to you. There was a time when you thought maybe Kate was reserving you. When the time was right, she might you ask the question you always thought she would—the terrifying world she tried to protect you from, she’d really do it, she’d take you away, take you with her.

Grass is always greener, you suppose.

You swallow hard when she takes the pack of cigarettes from you and brings one of them to her lips. She steps closer to you, jutting her chin out, and you raise a hand to flick the lighter on and burn the end of it until she puffs out a breath of smoke.

“Nasty habit,” you say softly, and Kate just laughs bitterly.

“Got nastier vices, kitty.”

Your eyes flick back up to hers, and you narrow them stiffly. Maybe she thinks she’s being cute, but all you see when you look up at her is someone alone. Someone reaching. Someone desperate. There’s an edge that Kate Laswell is known best for, but you don’t really see it anymore.

You tilt your head up a little, relaxing your face. You smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes.

“How’d your meeting go?” You ask. She takes a long drag from the cigarette, blowing it out just to the side. You reach over and put a hand to the collar of her shirt, straightening it out. “Hope you got what you needed. I imagine you don’t wanna be here long.”

“Interesting you asked,” she says lowly. “I, in fact, didn’t get what I needed. I’m not leaving until I get it.”

“That’s too bad,” you tut. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You always do, don’t you?”

You have to lean back a little when she steps closer. Kate has always been someone who was more or less affectionate with you. Soft touches, shoulder squeezes, comforting words. You don’t remember what you used to see in her. You can no longer recall an instance of ease, a time when she was kind. You can only remember her words of rejection and her dismissiveness of your fear. Every warm memory has been replaced with her abandonment of you and her autonomy over you. Building you up just to knock you right back down.

You used to want her to want you. You used to pray that she would wake up one day and realize you would be content to live out a quiet life somewhere secluded, even if your relationship would be nothing but platonic.

You were wrong about her, and she was wrong about you.

“I don’t know what you’ve said to them,” Kate murmurs. “But I need this. You wouldn’t understand, but this isn’t…I’m not dealing with trivial matters, Kit. This is life and death. International security, and I’ve never expected you to understand where I was coming from, never wanted you to—”

“They said no,” you whisper, laughing a little. “They said no to you, didn’t they?” You tip your head back even further, staring up at the night sky, and you laugh again as you close your eyes.

“John said no.”

When you open your eyes again, Kate is sitting down, leaning her head back against the brick wall of the building behind you. She takes another drag of the cigarette, her face scrunching as she breathes it in deep. She flicks the ashes off the end of it, looking down at her feet.

John said no.

“John said no,” you echo, crossing your arms over your chest. “And Simon?”

“I expected that,” Kate shrugs. “A given. You did good there, Kit.” When you sit next to her, you notice her knee spread a little wider, just barely touching your own.

“But you weren’t prepared for John,” you finish for her.

“If anything, I can always count on John to separate…” Kate scoffs, “wants and needs from what needs to get done.”

“From what you want to get done.” You turn to look at her. “Did you ever think that…maybe this wasn’t meant for them? That they wouldn’t do this forever?”

“That’s a dangerous way to think for men like that,” Kate snaps. “You don’t want them out of here, living a civilian life.”

“The only person this is dangerous for is you,” you throw back at her. “Who else is going to clean up your fucking messes if not them?”

“Watch yourself, Kit.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

You don’t realize you’ve said it until it’s been said. You nearly cover your mouth, horrified by what you couldn’t stop yourself from spitting at her. You can feel your omega’s fingers in your mouth. She’s feeling around your gums, drying out your tongue, cackling as she shows her newfound teeth. She never thinks any harm will ever come to her—the hollowness of your scent gland is proof of that. She’s been claimed but something foul, by something mean, and now she’s not afraid to do whatever it is she wants to do. You thought she’d given you back, but she’s still here, still causing trouble, and now Kate is forcing herself onto you. Her fingers are tight around your throat, and now you’re pressed up against crumbling brick, gasping as she crowds your space and attacks your nose with the bitter, poisonous concoction that her anger emits into the air around you.

“Don’t forget yourself,” she spits. Her lips nearly brush against yours, and you breathe in mouthfuls of her scent. It’s achingly heady, and it tastes like it’s filling your lungs with smoke. There’s something else there that you can taste, however—something warm, spicy, something a little less sour. Acid turns to sweetness, and you laugh between gasps of breath as you grip her wrist and dig your nails into her to try and get her to loosen her grip. When she finally lets you go, you take in a deep, shaky breath of fresh air. The tension never leaves her shoulders, but she steps back, away from you, and you smooth a hand down your own neck and brush yourself off.

You adjust the collar of your shirt, looking down at your feet.

“You owe me,” you say, throat scratchy. “I’ll do it. Whatever you’re here to ask me to do, I’ll do it. But you…owe me.”

You slam the doors behind you as you leave her there. Cigarette still burning on the floor, light flickering overhead—when you turn to glare at her from over your shoulder, she’s still staring after you.

You wonder if she looked at you this way when she left you the first time.

You remember when you used to be wary of Simon—when just the sight of him made the blood under your skin heat and bubble just under the surface. What you can’t remember is why; he’s standing between your legs right now, head bent forward, forehead brushing against yours occasionally as you gear him up. You pick up a few rifle magazines from beside you, trying to ignore how warm he is even under his gloves as you fill up every pocket of his vest. You pick up a pair of scissors and tuck it into another pocket, tugging to make sure everything is secure before you start to load the first aid kid that’s on his front.

You close your eyes when he juts his head forward just enough, his masked face pressing into the side of your neck. Your hand slides up, over his chest, just to cup the back of his neck and hold him close. His nose touches just under your jaw, and you make a small sound as his big hands grip you under the thighs and tug you forward. Your knees widen to accommodate him, and you scrunch your face at the feeling of his gear digging harshly into your middle.

“What is it, Simon?” You whisper, and he just huffs. You lean your head back a little, giving him more room, and you squeeze your legs around his hips when you feel his tongue from under his mask, wetting where your scent gland is. “Simon—”

“Smell nice,” he tells you. You laugh a little, and when he stands up to stare back down at you, you give him a nervous smile. “But I know how y’r feeling. Can’t hide tha’ from me.”

You don’t say anything. There isn’t anything you want to say. He’s right; you are nervous. The last time you followed Simon out in the field, he nearly died, and so did you. Sometimes you wake up thinking your saliva is someone else’s blood; and when he isn’t in bed when you wake up, you think you’ll see him again, sprawled onto his back, a bullet too close to his head.

You feel his fingers on your throat, blinking up at him, and when you meet those dark eyes, you feel your bottom lip shake. You’ve never been scared, but you feel so out of yourself when you join them. The 141 aren’t called in when the job is easy—they only do the things that no one else has been able to do. Your training is tested every single time you join them. You’re not like them; you cannot turn everything off. Simon is someone else on the other side. Johnny is fucking crazy. Gaz goes somewhere else in his head, and you don’t always recognize his voice. John—always level-headed, that one, but his gentleness with you is nothing short of an exception. These aren’t good men. They’re war criminals with badges.

“Ya don’t have ta come,” Simon says lowly. “I could ask Price, you—”

“No—!” You sit up straighter, your hand gripping his wrist to keep him close. You shake your head adamantly, squeezing his arm. “No, that’s…it would be worse.”

“Worse?”

“Who the fuck else is gonna watch your six?” You ask. “You suck at it.”

Simon laughs, from deep in his chest, and you press your lips against his from over his mask.

“Oi—kitty,” he murmurs, tilting your head back. He kisses you from under the mask, a soft peck through the fabric that leaves you with a light stomach. His attention is always too much and not enough. “Tha’s never gonna happen again, ya hear me?” He shakes his head. “Didn’t do my fuckin’ job tha’ day. Won’t be like tha’ anymore. I have you.” Simon kisses you again, pinching your chin, and you don’t let him move away. “My omega. Mine.”

“Wheels up in 15, lovebirds.”

Simon stops you from going too far when you hop down from the table. He tugs on your tact vest, making sure it’s tight enough, and then he picks up your helmet to fit it over your head. He picks up your sidearm next, releasing the magazine to make sure it’s full before hitting it back inside and loading the chamber. He bends to secure it in your thigh holster, and then he’s tugging on the straps of it, making sure it’s not loose around your leg. You can’t hold in your smile anymore when he stands and reaches under your chin to buckle your helmet.

There’s no reason to be scared. Not around him, not underneath him, and certainly not under his command. Maybe you’d step in front of a bullet for him—maybe you’d throw yourself in front of whatever someone tossed his way, but he would do the same for you. You don’t doubt that. You don’t think there’s anything someone could do to you that he wouldn’t give back to them much worse.

Simon’s love isn’t typical. It’s not sweet, nor does it fit inside its confines. He isn’t violent at his core, but it’s a response ingrained in him. Possessive, sick, overbearing to a fault—he’s too much all the time, but maybe it’s because Simon’s never been allowed to ever love anything without terms.

Everything has always been decided for him. How long he got to play as a boy. How tight he could hug his mother. How high he could raise his voice, how big he was allowed to grow, how he must behave once he presented. He’s always been too much, and he’s always been told what to do, so to have this thing, this one thing that could belong to him—who the fuck are they or you or anyone else allowed to tell him how to feel? How could anyone tell him the pedestal he puts you on is too high? Too warm? Too comfortable?

He’s died twice before in his life, but it wasn’t enough to keep him buried. Now he’s here, and he’s with you, and it wasn’t a coincidence. Fate handed you over, but by sheer will, he will keep you, and you will stay here, rooted to this spot, to the space between love and hatred and what overwhelms you and what lives inside of you between the hollow of your ribs. There’s a heart that beats there, too fast, too hard, knocking against the bones, and whenever Simon is near, it aches. You are bonded for life. Even if you lose him, you’ll never want another, not in the same way. It’s only ever been Simon that’s ever told you that it’s okay to be what you are; you cannot change your anatomy, you have to understand it at its most basic level and learn the rhythm of every song it sings.

I am not your enemy. I am your best friend. I will do things for you that no one else can do, I can hear the things you can’t tell anyone else, I’m the thing between what you really are and what you’ve always wanted to be, I know you, I know you, I know you—

“You trust me?” Simon asks. The ramp of the jet lowers, clattering against the tarmac, and he fits his thumb under your chin to bring your eyes back to him.

“Yes.” You smile up at him, and his thumb falls to touch the imprint of his teeth that’s there, right under your shirt. Only when he feels the dip where his canines have marked you does he look into your eyes again. Dark. Honest. Content. “Yes, I trust you, Simon.”

Simon drops his head, and you flutter your lashes when his helmet hits yours.

“On me, then, kitty.”

Simon is the thing that hides in the dark. The dark figure at the wrong end of a gun. He is the silhouette that takes the shape of your own shadow, and he is the terrible monster that hides under your bed; and yet, here you are, falling into step with him. It is not your omega that carries your feet—it is yourself, you, the one you’re hyper-aware of, the side of yourself that you have known for too long and neglected because you were taught the very worst enemy was the one inside of your own head.

If she was so bad, you don’t know why Simon’s hand would feel so warm in yours. If she was so terrible, you don’t know what makes his eyes so difficult to look away from. If she was so horrible to you, you don’t know why Simon is standing over a man that pointed his gun at you and forcing a blade so deep into his throat that the tip dents against the concrete.

It’s not that bad. Simon’s name will forever live in you, in the shape of his teeth under your ear.

Simon looks at you when he wrenches his blade back out, blood against the sharp edge. He lifts it to his face, and your lips part when he wipes it against the mouth of his mask, painting the skull teeth red.

No, it isn’t so bad. She’s smiling. No, you are. You’re one and the same, and you know her the same way you know yourself. She’s home, tucked into the warm places you know you’ll keep her, and you—

Well.

You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Fierce wars and faithful loves

It isn't easy being a woman, especially an omega, in the military. Both your primary and secondary genders marking you as inferior in others' eyes. But not every man, and not every alpha, thinks that way. Captain John Price, an alpha if there ever was one, knows something special when he sees it, and the new omega on base may be just what his pack needs.

poly!141 x fem!reader, omegaverse

1: first sight 2: the offer 3: transfer paper 4: family talk 5: introductions 6: decision time 7: joining the 141 8: making it official 9: meet Ren 10: what glass ceiling? 11: settling in 12: asset retrieval 13: nesting? 14: undercover work 15: preparations 16: small comforts 17: new beginnings 18: homecoming 19: a change in the air 20: wine and dine 21:

main masterlist

CW: explicit sex.

Simon’s never really been into movies. Or television. Books, comics, music—it’s never been his thing. Too much fluff. Too much noise. But when it comes to Sunday mornings? That’s when he gets his real entertainment. Birdwatcher, the fellow.

And no, it’s not some nature documentary or a wildlife show. He’s not interested in birds perched on trees or fluttering about. Simon’s into his bird.

You.

The sunlight pours in, streaming through the curtains and hitting your body just right as you move above him. He’s laid back on the bed, hands behind his head, the sight of you doing everything for him. The way you roll your hips, grinding down on him with slow, deliberate control—fuck, it’s all he can focus on. You’re everything he wants, everything he needs in that moment. His eyes track every little movement, the way your cunt sucks him in every time you rock back. Tight. Wet. Perfect.

Your moans, the little gasps you let out when he hits that spot—he could fucking live off it. You're magnificent, and he knows it. The way your body moves, the way your hips bounce up and down, you're giving him a show he'd pay for if he had to.

“Should be charging me for this view, love,” he mutters, his voice rough and low, watching as your body moves like it was made just for him. You’re his, and he’s taking it all in, relishing in every inch of your skin. You’re bouncing on him like you own him, and god, you do. Everything about you in that moment is fucking perfect, and Simon’s losing it, his cock twitching inside you as you get rougher, faster.

Every ounce of him is tuned into you, watching, listening, feeling the way your cunt grips him, pulling him deeper, tighter. And he can’t help but curse, a smile tugging at his lips as you move just the way he likes.

peristalsis - vi

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." somnophila. dubcon. smut. manipulative soap. unreliable narrator. terrible food. social isolation. suicidal ideation. suicidal resolve. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

A hand pets between your legs sometime in the early morning, fingers searching for tender flesh. The other slips up the front of your naked body, cradling one breast, thumb flicking gently across the nipple.

The covers over you are warm with yours and Johnny’s shared body heat, the both of you having gone to sleep naked. His body curves around you, the hair of his chest and thighs tickling your bare skin. Water laps at the outer hull in quiet breaths.

You’d dreamed. You don’t remember exactly what of. Only impressions are left behind—the rocking of the trawler following you into sleep. Darkness. A sense of displacement. Your throat closing and opening.

When you crack open your eyes you feel it in the pit of your stomach. A storm to match the one that blew across the night.

If you give into it—it will hurt. You recognize it in your bones.

Johnny groans behind you when his callused fingers find your cunt warm and soft for him. His cock is a column of heat against your low back, morning-stiff. He circles your clit, mouthing the back of your neck and nudging his knee between yours, hooking your leg over his thigh to spread you open.

Fresh arousal wells up to coat his fingers. You hear him huff behind you, amused; he reaches down between the two of you to palm himself, cupping his shaft up between your folds and thrusting shallowly between them. Catching the flow along the length of his cock.

You don’t move, other than to breathe.

He toys with the breast in his hand as he tracks humid kisses up behind your ear. When he angles the head at your entrance, he slides in with minimal resistance—seats himself to the root.

You release the airy moan it draws from you. Snug—he’s snug inside you, cockhead sitting against your cervix. When he rolls his hips, he barely pulls out, just far enough that you feel where his cock begins to widen, thickest in the middle, before pushing back in again.

He rocks against you, playing with your clit. His other hand moves to your leg, drawing it outward a little farther. You stay limp in his hold, eyes closed.

He can do what he wants with you. Anything. If it keeps what’s happening in your belly contained—anything.

It doesn’t take long—you’re not awake enough to brace against it. He winds you higher and higher until your spine goes-arrow straight, your climax spilling through you, drawing you tight around him, and Johnny pistons into you with a few rapid thrusts before groaning, long and satisfied, as liquid heat fills you once again.

“Mm,’” he murmurs, “mornin,’ bonnie.” Angling himself to kiss the corner of your mouth. “Gonna get us goin,’ hm?”

You’re not entirely sure what he means until he pulls away from you. He stands up from the bed and tugs the sheets back up over your naked shoulders, humming some tune you don’t recognize—it sounds vaguely like a hymn—as he dresses and disappears up the stairs.

You feel the trawler rock and shift as he takes it away from the pier, back into the open water. Gray morning light shafts in through the small window triptych above the head of the bed.

You turn onto your back. Johnny’s spend seeps out of you slowly as you shuffle into the heat his body left behind on the sheets. You look inward.

It’s still there. Quelled—for now. If you think too hard about it, you might summon it up.

But Johnny is just upstairs, and the last thing you want is for him to hear you, to hear the poor, crazed animal you can become. There is only so much of you that you are willing to inflict upon him. There is only so much you would ask him to tolerate.

Although it strikes you, as you stretch under the covers, that you don’t believe he would resent you for it.

Probably, he would just wrap his arms around you, and coo at you in that smarmy way of his. No big deal. You can have a breakdown, bonnie, and he’ll make you something for breakfast after. And do you want him to eat your pussy again? Bet you’ll feel better after that.

You almost give in then and there just thinking about it. Wind shear pressing against the inside of your tear ducts.

That would make it worse—if he were to comfort you. You don’t think you would make it out to the other side.

So you swallow hard. Swim your legs through the tangled sheets and find the floor with your bare feet. Your carry-on still sits up in the bridge, so you drag a blanket around your shoulders and climb the stairs to retrieve it.

“There she is!” Johnny exclaims as you surface. He looks over his shoulder at you, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cup of coffee. He grins at you. “Hell’s bells, don’ you look beautiful.”

You sneer at him, knowing your hair is a rat’s nest and the bags beneath your eyes have had no chance to deflate. Another drop of his cum falls down your thigh; you grab up your bag and retreat back into the bedroom.

When you return to the bridge dressed and brushed, face washed and moisturized, Johnny brings you a second steaming mug, white ceramic, with “Hers” in black cursive printed on the side.

“Stupid,” you say, when you see it.

Johnny kisses the side of your head. “I’ll make eggs.”

“Shouldn’t you be driving?” you ask, as he sets a pan down on the stove. You eye the trawler wheel nervously, waiting for it to spin.

“Is no’ a car, bonnie,” Johnny snorts. “Dinnae have to watch for traffic.”

You eat the breakfast he makes you in disgruntled silence. Overhead, clouds pass, intermittent gaps allowing yellow sunlight to peek through, though never for more than a moment. You might’ve expected the day to be clear again, after the storm.

Six hours is six hours. You return to the novel you began yesterday, perched on the booth couch, though every time the hour changes your stomach draws tighter, as if winched.

At the end of the trip awaits more of the solitude you’ve been seeking. Johnny will deposit you onto the cove, and traipse off to his boy’s night. Possibly his old squad mates—team members—whatever they are, will be staying for more than one day.

You know. You know how it goes.

It’s better this way, you remind yourself. It’s what you wanted.

You pass the crags you saw on yesterday’s journey, and today they are vacant of their pinniped occupants. The island wildlife overall seems to be absent, perhaps hidden away in whatever sanctuary they found during the storm. A few seabirds circle above the dune grass, or trail after the trawler, but other than that, sky, sea, and land are vacant.

You reach the naval battle, and discover what the author spent the most time researching. She describes in exhausting detail how long it takes to load cannons, the role of current and wind speed in the maneuvering of ships, the bailing-out process of a breached hull.

It’s dull, and completely incongruous with the romantic melodrama of the previous chapter. You can see exactly why a former soldier would enjoy it.

You do not tell Johnny you’ve reached it.

Finally, sometime after noon, the cove comes into view. Johnny brings the trawler as close to shore as he can get it, and then drops anchor.

You sling your bag over one shoulder as you stand, lungs shaking in your chest.

“Well,” you say, “have a good time with your friends.”

He pauses, and then looks at you. The expression on his face is completely nonplussed, lips pursed, brows raised.

“What?”

“Your guys’ night.”

“What about it?”

You frown. “Aren’t you taking me to shore?”

“Why would I do that?”

Apprehension trickles down into your belly.

No. Oh, no.

“So you could go meet them?” you say, with growing trepidation.

Realization opens up his expression. Brows lift over blue eyes blooming. “Aw, bonnie, s’that why you’ve been cranky? You think I’m gonna abandon you?”

No—oh, no.

He comes over to you and gently nudges the strap of your bag off your shoulder, smiling.

“Course you’re invited, hen, what kind of bastard would I be if I left you all alone?”

Something breaks.

“No,” you say.

“Yeah,” he croons, bringing his hand to your jaw. Caressing the curve of it with his thumb. “Want you to meet my mates—”

You slap his hand away.

Panic, fully formed, climbs up your trachea.

It’s one thing to be left behind for better friends. It’s quite another to be subjected to them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap. Fury boiling. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

Johnny blinks. You wrench yourself away from him, shoving against the pull of his gravity—smacking him in the chest with both of your hands.

“Was it getting shot?” you snarl, pickaxing your temple with two fingers. “Was it drowning? Because something made you fucking delusional, and I don’t know what it was, but I’m fucking sick of it. I don’t fucking like you.”

Johnny’s expression flattens. The gleam dulls in his eyes as he gazes at you.

“I don’t give a shit about you,” you tremble on. “You’re nothing to me. You’re a hookup. You’re good dick and that’s it. You don’t mean anything to me. Nothing.”

He takes a step toward you. You step back.

“And you don’t give a shit about me either! You’re such a fucking asshole, you know that? You don’t have to act like this is anything but you do anyway, and you make fun of me the whole time, because you know I’m easy, because I’ll still let you fuck me, because I don’t have—because I’m just convenient pussy to you.”

He advances. You retreat. The cocky, confident Johnny that has been your unwelcome companion these past three days now is gone, as if a mask tossed away.

The line of his mouth is sharp and straight. His nostrils flare. A severe crease cracks the space between his drawn-together brows.

You’re not seeing the thing you saw on the beach, that first day. You’re not seeing the carefree bar cook or the island enthusiast.

You’re seeing the special forces soldier. Advancing on a target.

And you can’t stop yourself, even as terror runs a live wire up your spine.

“Like what do you think this was, Soap? I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your friends. I don’t care about your life. You’re wasting your fucking time. I don’t give a shit about you, and I never have, and I never will, and you’re too fucking stupid to notice—”

You run out of room to retreat. The backs of your knees run into the booth seat, but Johnny keeps coming. He invades every inch of your personal space, getting right up into your face, staring down at you with a hard jaw and sharp, spear point eyes.

“Stop it,” you flounder, “just stop it, just leave me alone, just—”

He closes thumb and forefinger around your chin and presses his warm mouth against yours.

You fight him. You clench your fists and beat their heels against his chest, but he wraps his other hand around the back of your head and sweeps his tongue between your lips. You screech into his mouth, but he hums back, the subvocal tones of calming an animal before it hurts itself. You sink your teeth into his bottom lip, seeking to draw blood, but it only eggs him on, makes him slant his head to kiss you deeper.

Even as you wear yourself out against him, his grip doesn’t loosen. He holds you in place as you struggle. Frighteningly strong—utterly indomitable; he overwhelms you with seemingly no effort on his part at all.

There’s bitter, black coffee on his tongue. Acidic. He presses it into yours, circling inward, making space for himself where you would give him none—

Insisting on it.

You gasp hard. Whimper futilely against his mouth. A few sharp tears escape the clench of your eyes, cutting down your cheeks.

Your fists land on him one final time, and then remain where they are. Your entire body slackens, submitting. Your lips find the curves in his where they fit the closest, and stay there. Bokeh spots dance across your closed eyes as your alveoli demand oxygen.

When you pull your mouth away from his to breathe, he lets you. Johnny rests his forehead against yours, hands coming around to cup your cheeks.

“Feel better?” he murmurs lowly, caressing the corners of your mouth with his thumbs. “Now that you got that all out?”

You take a shuddering breath. “You’re an asshole,” you repeat miserably.

Johnny kisses you softly again, first on the mouth, then the tip of your nose, then between your brows.

“Don’ be scared,” he says, mouth still on your forehead. “It’s gonna be alright.”

You sniff. “I hate you.”

He huffs—a small laugh, one that lacks his usual good humor. His hands slide down your shoulders to wrap his arms around you, and he tucks you beneath his chin, against his body. Even after so little time, the bulk of his frame is familiar, aligning with the shape of your body.

You don’t hug him back. You let your arms hang at your sides. If you nuzzle your face in between the soft slopes of his pectorals—you will take the truth of it to your grave.

John Price shows up in a motorboat, bringing along with him several grocery bags and a young man close to Johnny in age.

The two grin at each other and embrace, slapping backs in the masculine fashion and making loud, friendly noises as Price sidesteps them to bring his goods to the kitchen, where you’re hiding.

When he catches sight of you, his step falters.

“I don’t know why I’m here either,” you say, preempting him. You’re cloistered on the booth couch.

His mustache tilts at an angle. As with every other expression you’ve seen him make, you have no idea what it means, and it makes your stomach clutch.

Price is saved from having to respond as Johnny drags the other young man in behind him, beefy arm around his neck in a headlock. They’re laughing together, smiles wide as Price sets his bags on the counter.

The three of them populate the tiny space with the ease of years spent sharing little room between them, and you’d be shrinking back into the couch if Johnny’s friend hadn’t already caught sight of you. The surprise on his face is evident, even as he greets you with a polite, “Oh, hey!”

You make yourself stand up, pasting on a smile that feels more like a grimace. “Hi,” you say.

Johnny gestures at you with a proud, open hand, saying your name as fondly as if he’d just had it in a chokehold. “Stayin’ at the croft, the one I told you about? Just got back from Lewis today, we did, showed her the stones and everythin.’”

He winks at you. You fight not to scowl at him.

“Nice to meet you,” the young man says, disentangling himself from Johnny and extending a hand. “I’m Kyle, but everyone calls me Gaz.”

You shake. “Sorry to interrupt your, uh, your reunion.”

You can’t tell how sincere the smile is that Gaz gives you. Are the corners of his mouth too tight? The polite look in his eyes too saccharine? “The more the merrier, aye?”

“That’s what m’saying!” Johnny enthuses.

“Soap been behaving?” Gaz asks.

“Uh,” you say.

“Soap, you got a griddle on this dinghy?” Price calls, setting out packages of meat and buns. He bends down to root around in the under-cabinet, stored cookware clanging as he digs.

“Cap, tell me you didn’t get the patties,” Johnny complains, picking one up. Ground beef pre-molded into burger pucks, shrink-wrapped in their own thin red juice.

“What’s wrong with patties?” Price asks, still half-submerged. “Easy, innit?”

“For kids’ birthday parties, maybe,” Johnny protests.

“When’d you get so fussed about food?” asks Gaz, sipping from his can. “Not like this is London, mate, you get what you get.”

“Some of us have time to eat like human beings,” Johnny snipes. “You might have to choke on MREs, not like the rest of have to as well.”

“Soap,” Price says, “griddle.”

“Oh, nowhere near there.”

“You fucking muppet…”

Gaz and Johnny cackle. Price straightens, frowning gruffly, in a way that suggests he has regularly endured this hazing from the two younger men and no longer has the patience even to scold them for it.

Walking paths made together, now retread. Old stone, formed when the earth was young.

You step backward. Find the edge of the couch with your calves. None of the three men look at you as you settle back down into your seat. Your book lays half-open on bent pages.

“No Simon still?” asks Johnny as he cracks a beer off the pack.

“Still no word,” says Price. “Said he’d try, last we chatted, but wasn’t sure.”

“Hm,” says Johnny, sipping his beer.

His gaze slips over to you. You feel it like a rasp over your bare skin.

He cracks another can off and brings it over, sitting down to sling a heavy arm over your shoulders. You take the beer and open it, but do not drink.

“Not the same out there without you, mate,” says Gaz, folding his arms comfortably over his chest. “Neither of you, really, Cap.”

“Ah, you’re doin’ just fine, I bet,” replies Johnny. “You and Ghost? Dream team, right there.”

“Never gonna be you, Soap,” says Gaz.

Johnny’s replying smile is—contented. Satisfied. As if he’s hearing news he expected, but is pleased to hear nonetheless.

His arm hangs loosely over your shoulders as it continues like that. Johnny and the other two men punt the conversational shuttle back and forth, voices weaving with the cadence of an old scarf unraveling; the yarn thread frozen by time and tension into a shape that can wrap back around its fellows as easily as it came undone.

Unfamiliarity with their rhythm transforms the bridge—which has been, if not a safe space, at the very least something of a sanctuary to you for the past twenty-four hours. Someplace you could be your worst self without much worry of offending.

But Johnny’s old team members are not Johnny. You can’t speak to them the way you have spoken to him. They do not share his knack for inclusion—

At least, they don’t seem to, until, without you expecting it, the shuttle passes to you.

“What made you come out here?” asks Gaz, startling you.

You look up from the can of beer you have been staring at the whole time, warming between your palms, to find Gaz, Price, and Johnny all looking at you expectantly.

“Um,” you say, flushing with embarrassment. Completely unprepared to be treated like a conversational prospect.

“The quiet, didnae you say?” Johnny supplies, laying his hand along your upper arm, rubbing up and down.

He might as well have shoved that hand down your shirt instead—you catch the other two men seeing it. Noting it. Reevaluating who you are, who you might be, and why you’re intruding on their day together.

And Johnny mustrecognize it too, because he squeezes the soft part above your elbow.

Warmth like a candle flame in your chest.

“Yeah,” you say, lamely. “Just—tired, of the city, I guess…”

“I like the quiet too,” Gaz says diplomatically. “Bet it’s good surfing here too, in the summer.”

“No’ much,” says Johnny. “The wildlife’s the point here, innit, bonnie? Great seal watching, out here.”

You meet his gaze. Edges of sapphire blue are soft in your direction, mouth corners curled.

No obfuscation. No derision.

“Yeah,” you find yourself saying—and meaning. “The seals—the seals are cool.”

“Birds, too,” Price says, unpeeling patties after finally locating the electric griddle.

“How can you tolerate mucking around with two old codgers like this?” Gaz laughs.

Something effervescent infuses your bloodstream. Light and bubbly.

“As if Johnny has let me hang out with anyone but him,” you say, as if it has been a desire of yours in the first place.

You hear Price snort at the griddle. Gaz quirks a brow at Johnny without making any effort to hide it, and then clinks the belly of his can against yours before drinking.

You finally have a sip. It’s nice—hoppy, lightly sweet, fizzing on your tongue. Still cool enough to enjoy.

“Might take ya diving tomorrow,” Soap begins, fingertips twirling up your shoulder—

But then a distant voice cuts through the afternoon.

“Oy! Johnny!”

The three of you look around. Soap pulls away from you, warmth retreating with him, as he goes stick his head out of the door.

And then he dashes toward Price’s motorboat.

The engine revs as you, Gaz, and Price follow him out, watching as he speeds toward the shore. On the beach, a large man in dark colors, half his face covered by a black surgical mask, angles toward him, hands on his hips.

Johnny stops just shy of beaching the boat before he leaps out into the water, wades up the sand, and launches himself at the man.

They embrace like tectonic plates colliding. Even at a distance, you can hear the sound of hands slapping backs, feel the way their bodies meet and sway—so resonant with shared affection that you can feel the shocks of it across the water.

Glacial ice pushes through your veins.

“There he is,” Price says fondly. “Knew he wouldn’t miss this.”

“Ghost’s always gotta make an entrance,” Gaz agrees.

Ghost.

Or, as it must be—Simon.

Simon turns the snugness of four bodies into an overcrowd of five. In the bridge, there is little room to maneuver around him, massive as he is, and he seems disinclined not to claim as much space as there is available.

“Bonnie!” Johnny exclaims. “Want you to meet my old partner, Ghost.”

His eyes are dark, the color of a full whiskey bottle. They gaze at you without interest, even as he proffers his huge hand.

“You’re Johnny’s tourist,” he says, in a flat, brassy tenor. The sound of a metal grate closing.

Johnny.

Johnny.

“Yes,” you say, in a voice as irrelevant as a minnow’s.

He shakes your hand with a perfunctory grip, and says absolutely nothing more to you. He turns, and leans his bulk against the counter in the kitchen—galley, Johnny informs, as he explains the ship, and its story, to Ghost in rapid fire.

Had he been as excited to introduce it to you?

Ghost swigs from his beer, mask hooked under his chin. “What the fuck you even do on this thing, anyway?”

“Fish from it,” Johnny says. He’s standing close to Ghost, second can in one hand as he gestures with the other. “Got crab and lobster traps all over the place, that’s where the money is.”

“Always did like fishin,’” says Ghost, as warm to Johnny as he had been uninterested in you.

You cloister back in your place on the booth couch.

You can’t blame him. You can’t blame either of them. You can’t. You can’t. You are extraneous in this situation and always would have been.

“This isnae really fishin’ though, see?” Johnny goes on. “I mean, I use the dragnet time t’time, but rich tits on the mainland, they can get cod anywhere.”

“Become a real foodie, he has,” Gaz chuckles.

“Knob,” Ghost agrees.

Johnny grins. It’s a soft thing, an expression of sinking into warm bath water in a familiar tub. Ghost grins back at him, more with his eyes than his mouth.

If what’s between Johnny, Gaz, and Price is an unraveled scarf, easily knit back together, then what’s between Johnny and Ghost must be the tight-woven threads of fine, raw silk. It’s visible to the naked eye; if you reach out, you think you could brush against it with your bare fingertips.

Impenetrable. Gleaming.

You, a loose, dropped thread.

Price announces that the burgers are ready, and the men crowd the counter before he snaps at them to back off. You hook one heel around the other, twisting your fingers in your lap. An invisible wall between you and them.

The men bring the food over, setting down plates of sliced onion, limp lettuce, squishy tomato. Everything has been sitting out too long. Price sets down a platter of patties, cookie-cutter uniform, some blanketed with yellow, processed cheese.

Your empty stomach cringes in on itself. You don’t want to eat. Johnny slides in beside you, trapping you in, and his friends drag chairs over. Ghost claims the head of the table. They dig into the food with gusto.

“This is awful, Price,” says Johnny. “Told you, shoulda had seafood.”

“I’m sick of fish,” Price grunts.

Something about fresh oysters is at the tip of your tongue, but it’s trapped behind the bars of your teeth. And anyway, Gaz beats you to speaking.

“So you decided to kill the lot of us?” he asks. “Forgot we never let you cook in the field.”

“Nah, that was Johnny’s job,” Ghost says. “Where’s a meathead Scot learn to cook anyway?”

“Quite disrespectin’ my mum,” says Johnny.

They all chuckle at that. It loops around them, that ripple of laughter, and they go on to bandy stories about their captain’s culinary misdemeanors on deployment.

You shrink.

You look at Johnny. His face is animated; vibrant. The lines at the corners of his eyes have not smoothed once, with how much he’s been smiling. It’s as if sunlight is radiating from his chest, warming the room.

It visibly brightens his friends, sitting around him. Price’s gruff demeanor has softened. Gaz leans inward, elbows on the table, as if magnetically drawn. And Ghost—

You catch them exchanging a look. Speaking without words.

You don’t belong here.

The few bites you’ve managed to take of a burger surge against the walls of your stomach. Your trachea quivers against your spinal column.

“I need to use the bathroom,” you say. “Excuse me.”

It halts the flow of conversation. The four men look at you as if suddenly remembering you’re there, expressions paused in whatever shape they’d been in before your interruption.

No one says anything at all.

And why would they?

Johnny stands to let you out of the booth. You extricate yourself, and hold your gaze on the stairwell, refusing to look twice at them.

The belly of the ship swallows you with a whirlpool’s vacuum; you veer into the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Overhead, the conversation resumes, as if you left no empty space within it to compensate for.

Heat leeching up your face. Heart beating against your sternum, so hard it must be about the split the bone.

You don’t belong here.

You start heaving. Big, hard breaths, truncated, refusing both to be drawn in or released without a fight. You stagger to the sink and grip it with both hands, shaking so hard you can barely stand.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with anyone. You don’t deserve—

Your stomach shoves upward. You tip your face over the basin, throat convulsing, but nothing comes up.

Your vision swirls. You feel Johnny’s hand on your back, but it’s only a ghost of his touch. He’s still upstairs, with his friends.

You hear a sunburst of laughter above you, hearty and deep and shared by four voices.

Tears start streaming from your eyes, though you can barely feel them. You vibrate. It builds and builds inside you, a scream, a hurricane, gale forces whipping around and beating the inside of your skin. The quiver of your skull sends a high-pitched squeal up through the canals of your ears.

You sink to your knees.

“No,” you whimper, in the midnight zone of your voice, so that no one can hear you. “No, no, no, not again, no…”

The bath mat touches your forehead. Your shuddering mouth hangs open. You dig into the soft skin of your forearm with the nails of one hand, seeking blood.

You are a wound in the world that refuses to close. A cyst. Something here that should not be. Wherever you go is a mistake.

Heartbeat like a drum in your ears. Entire body drawing up, higher, tighter, trembling, seams pulling, self receding, bones exposed, so far out you will never make your way back.

You’re going to burst. You’re going to make a mess, right there on the floor, and they’re all going to come down and see it. It’s building in your throat. It’s at the dam of your teeth.

You wrap your arms around yourself, gripping tight.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here—

You don’t belong anywhere.

Suddenly, you go still.

Flying debris settles. Your airways open.

Stillness. Quiet. The next breath you take is slow and smooth.

You hear the far-away slosh of the ocean moving beneath the hull of the trawler.

Yes, of course.

You clamber upward, using the counter as leverage. As you rise, you catch yourself in the mirror.

Your face glistens. Your eyes are swollen, bags heavy beneath. It does not reflect what’s behind it—

Tranquility.

It isn’t about resolve, after all.

The truth of it settles gently in your chest. Of course. It’s about certainty. It’s about knowing, in your bones, what should and shouldn’t be. What is and what isn’t.

The way things will be, and the way they won’t.

Simple. Natural.

The evolutionary processes of your body simply hadn’t caught up. The genetic predisposition toward persistence, the silly, reactionary aversion to pain, to danger, the biological imperative of a time before now.

Now—

Turning the cold tap, you wet your fingers and dab at the puffy skin. You pull some toilet paper from the roll and pat at your face. You breathe easily through your nose, and on steadied feet, you leave the bathroom.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” you hear Gaz saying as you climb the stairs.

“Aw, gimme some credit,” Johnny protests.

You stop.

“No,” Ghost says, and it’s odd to hear contemplation in the knife’s edge of his voice. “Somethin’s changed.”

“What’s that?” Johnny asks.

“You’re…calmer,” says Ghost. You hear Price hum. “Never seen you sit this still, not long as I’ve known you.”

You hear Johnny huff a little laugh. “Guess this place’ll do that to you.”

“Hey, Johnny?” you say, surfacing.

The conversation pauses again. He looks up at you. Blinks beautiful, blue eyes.

The rueful smile you give him is easy.

“I don’t feel very well. I’m sorry. Can you take me back to shore?”

Some tiny muscle at the edge of his expression shifts.

You don’t know what, exactly, it could mean, but it doesn’t matter.

“Sure, bonnie,” he says slowly, setting down his half-eaten burger.

“It was nice meeting you all,” you say to the three other men.

They echo something back—insincere. Obligatory, you know. They’ll forget about you the moment you leave their view.

That doesn’t matter either. Nothing does.

You don’t think about it at all as Johnny helps you down into the kayak, taking your overnight bag first and then your hand. It’s cloudy overhead, cool without being cold. The wind is gentle.

He stares at you the whole time he rows. You don’t meet his gaze. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his eyes narrowed, the line of his mouth tight again.

“Thank you,” you say, when the kayak reaches the beach. “Have fun with your friends, Johnny.”

“Sure, bonnie,” he says.

You indulge yourself—you look him up and down.

He really is an attractive man. Beautiful. Like the crash of a wave. You get that sense again—that he’s more real than anything surrounding him. More real than the ground beneath your feet. Than the ocean behind him.

More real than you.

“See you later,” you say, and turn away from him.

You walk the trail back, thinking about the anonymous feet that carved it into the grass. Years, generations walking the same way, down to the beach and back up. People you’ll never know. A part of something you never will be.

When you crest the rise, you see the cobbled siding of the cottage. You’d never looked at the back of it before—never thought to. It was unimportant in the face of everything else, irrelevant.

Maybe that’s why you look now. The finiteness making room for it.

At the cobbled wall’s base is a little mound of piled sand.

You go to your knees in front of it. The soil is cool to the touch, loose. Easily disturbed.

Somehow, you know what you’re going to find, even as you dig. Your fingers brush against it even before you uncover it fully, and it doesn’t surprise you at all.

Folded tightly, in a divot in the ground, is the paint-splash riot of Johnny’s pelt.

next chapter early access

a/n: had to add one more chapter because otherwise this would have been 9k words long lol

forreal this time—two chapters left!!

sea fog comes, like a river rolls a stone, it's rolling me

hands like barbed wire

John Price x Reader

18+ | dubcon that flirts heavily with noncon. fingering (in public). manipulation. slight corruption kink. sheltered reader forced into a wife-grooming speed run. lotsssssa good girl/sweet girl/baby abound. implied kidnapping.

You meet him in a bar.

He's sitting alone in the corner, body angled towards all the exits. There's a glass of scotch on the table that drip, drip, drips these big, teardrop-sized droplets of condensation down the glass, kept cradled between a thick, grizzled hand. The scabs on his knuckles remind you of ripe, sour cherries when they flex under the coarse dusting of hair.

There's something about his hands that catches your attention first. Keeps it.

Your daddy used to say there was a lot to learn about a man by the shape of his hands. And his, this magnetic stranger's, are rough. Worn. Dangerous. Blistered and torn up. Caution tape in pale peach. Dirt under his nails. Ash on his forefinger. Stay away, it says. Run.

But the flicker of orange sparking up in the gloom draws you in like a moth to a flame. Stupid girl—

(just like daddy always said)

He doesn’t look up when you step closer. Little moth drawn to that orange light, the shift of those fingers wet with condensation. But you catch the slightest shift of his chin from your periphery. A silent acknowledgement, but it’s all you get. He keeps his eyes glued to the newspaper he has spread out on the table. Disregarding you entirely. Ignoring you. 

(and you keep yours fixed on the clench of his hands—)

"Not supposed to smoke in here," you murmur, voice a little slip of a thing when it shudders out of your throat. 

You don’t mean to say it. You’re not sure why you do. The words roll to the tip of your tongue and drip down your chin when your mouth shifts on a small, soundless gasp. Beneath the scabs on his fingers, his skin is all scar tissue—

In an almost laughable contrast, he growls, purring like a tiger, a diesel engine, when he speaks. 

"m'not supposed to do a lot of things—" When you finally, finally, drag your eyes away from his hands (the flex of his fingers, wondering how they'd even fit inside—), you catch a flat, uneven line buried under untameable brown. But he still doesn’t look at you. "But who is gonna tell me that?"

You don't get it. Sheltered girl—little girl, he adds, all ugly and cruel; cold in his mockery because that's what you are to him: little—growing up buried in the mountains, left to rot on the fecund plains where your daddy sowed seeds and mama pickled the wares for the market. Barely scraping by on a farm doomed to fail. Some poor man's burial ground, the locals say. Cursed. But hindsight—the gold band on his ring finger, one half of a matching set belonging to a woman who isn't you; and the patch on his leather jacket, faded yellow and bold, 141 with a twisted skull—bring you to a neat conclusion:

he's a bad man. Stupid girl, daddy would bark. Ain't you know nothin'? Stay away from them folk. Bad news. Nothin' but trouble.

(Mama would laugh. And oh, honey, did trouble find you—)

Between the heavy thud of your heart, the words slip out. “Well, I just did.”

More gall. Cheek. You don't know where it comes from.

Mama would have washed your mouth with soap. Dragged you to the washroom, spitting about respect as she twisted her gnarled fingers into your lips, and tugged. 

You expect the same from him. Maybe worse. Much worse. But he just looks—

His eyes peel away from the article (train robbery down south, it says in bold, ugly letters), finally darting to take you in. There's shock, you think. Stupefied by your audacity. The disrespect. But when he rests his eyes on you—cold blue, like a glinting gem, a lagoon—the slow climb of his brows, drawn up high until three deep lines stretch across his skin, comes to a stop. 

He seems to pause for a beat. Just long enough for an exhale of smoke, twin funnels of dragon's breath, to pour out of his nose. They draw together, but it's not in anger. Scorn. It's a rough sort of contemplation. Eyes narrowing into slits as he stares at you. 

And the weight of his gaze is a palpable thing. Heavy. You try to fight the urge to fidget as he sizes you up, rolling your eyes down the length of his body above the table to skirt around intense, dizzying blue. 

But your avoidance makes him huff, and he leans back, sucking in another breath. 

"C'mere," he demands. Doesn't say, doesn't ask. Just growls the words out between the clench of his teeth buried in that cigar you tried to nitpick him about. "Come sit."

And you do. of course, you do (stupid girl).

But when you reach for the chair next to his, he scoffs. "Didn't tell you to sit beside me."

"Then where—"

He's pushing back in his seat before the words are out, thick thighs open wide (impolite mama would say), stretched tight over a pair of jeans. But even with the wide spread, you can't even see the cheap red plastic in the open v of his legs. When you don't move quick enough—head all thick, syrupy—he grunts. Reaches down mockingly and pats his thigh.

"Come sit, little girl—"

It's demeaning. Embarrassing. But there's something about him that seems to negate choice the closer he gets. Renders it into dust between his fingers. Head syrupy. Empty. No thoughts needed when he'll just think for you—

And oh. 

Oh. That thought does something to you. Static in your veins. An electric shock. Mind reeling, spinning around that single, wayward idea.

Your head is hot. Feverish. Everything inside is melted, liquified, and drips out of your ears to pool between your thighs. 

(Under the white cotton of your modest summer dress, they squeeze together, sliding in the gathering slick—)

When you don't move fast enough for his liking, he grunts. "Ain't gonna tell you again—"

And you listen. Obey. Because that's what you are: a good girl. You do what you're told, don't you?

So you slip onto his lap, letting those big, gnarled hands wrap around your waist. Holding you steady (keeping you trapped) as his thick, warm thigh splits yours apart. Wrenching you open for one of his rough, dirty hands to slide between.

His forearm anchors you to the broad, dizzying spill of his chest, head dipping to nuzzle against the shell of your ear. Shushing you softly as you squirm around the hard, thick press of his thigh against your core—cunt, he bites out, teeth nipping along the skin of your ear; can feel your hot little cunt, sweetheart—and grapple with the strange, dirty-wrong, sensation of sitting in a stranger's lap as he slowly pulls up the dress you wore to church this morning, fingers hot on your inner thigh. Chasing that sticky-slick dampness that makes him groan low in his throat when he first touches it. Softly still, a hoarse good girl—

But this isn't what good girls do.

Mama says no man is allowed to touch this hot, slick little place between your thighs until you're married. A sin, she called it. Wrong. The pastor, too. Only when you're married. Only as a wife.

You don't think he has any intention of marrying you, but he touches you like a man would a wife. Knuckle hard, firm against the thin, worn cotton of your panties. Grazing. Rubbing. All soft and slow. Not even much of a touch—just the whisper, the idea, of one.

The rasp of his smoke-scorched, whiskey-scented voice in your ear, peppering filth, sin, out as he tells you he can feel how wet your little pussy is. Feels it against his finger. And can you feel that, sweetheart? when he pushes a little harder, digging the peak of a bent knuckle into the seam of you. Can you feel him through your pretty little panties?

"Mm," he grunts, pushing harder. Arm tightening around your waist when you squirm, and squirm. "Can you?"

Yes, you think around a long breath. A little stretch. Your legs kick out under the table when he grazes over a spot that blooms a vicious, intense pleasure through your belly. Something that feels so good, that it makes you a little sick. Makes you want to run. Maybe that's why your legs kick and kick, and—

"Be good." It's a snarl. A warning. "Or I'll take you over my knee—"

Be good, he adds again when you whimper, softening the grit in his voice from granite to soot. The same tone Daddy uses when they bring him a broken horse. "Jus' wanna make you feel good, sweet girl, mm. Want that, don't you?"

"We're n-not supposed to do this if we're not—not married."

Shivering it out into the balmy, smoke-dense air of the bar feels almost like a release. Baptismal. Like maybe now you've said it, whatever spell has fallen over the two of you will be broken. He'll blink awake and right the wrong you've committed with a quick, decisive shake of his head. You'll go back to being a good girl, a simple girl from a simple family, and he'll be the stranger in a bar you think about sometimes, like the real man mama loved but her daddy wouldn't let her marry.

(A sweet little fever dream, she'd said fondly. Sadly. And then, scared, tense: don't tell daddy, though, okay?)

He hums around it, but it sounds accommodating. Placid. Like an adult entertaining the whims of a child.

"Want that, mm?" He digs the question in with a slip of his finger over the cheap lace lining the hem of your panties. "Want me to marry you?"

You're not sure. You don't know him, but he's touching you in public. Has you sat—spread—on his lap with his hand under your dress, touching you the way a husband would. There's a ring on his finger already. The suggestion of a wife. A life outside of this hovel where nothing grows, and you're just expected to roll over and grow old with whatever man daddy approves of.

"No," you stammer out because he's married already, and that's what daddy will say. "No—"

"Shame," he grunts, and his nail catches on the edge of coifed lace. Scraping it over slick, damp skin. "Jus' lost mine, you know. Been thinkin' 'bout takin' another."

A good little girl to warm my bed is said as his nail drags your panties over your swollen, slick folds.

It's instinctual to want to snap them shut. Keep him out. But his knee lifts like he's expecting that, keeping you spread. Open. His hand is hot on your skin. Burning. His thumb wedges into the hem of your panties, stretching the fabric to tuck the edges together, exposing your cunt to his wandering, blistering fingers.

There's no quarter. No choice. He doesn't let you think. Doesn't give you a minute to breathe. It's just—

Skin on skin.

His knuckle slides between the seam of your swollen folds, parting them as he touches that slick, hot space cradled inside. Groaning, too, when he does; like he touched fire. Like you burned him. Hurt him even though you know you never could.

The noise balms the panic and clots thick tufts of cotton inside your ears. The low, rolling brass trembles in your belly. A small quake. You feel it in your cunt; a strange, throbbing little hum that makes you clench down twice on nothing but the idea of that sound. The echo.

He tells you he feels it. Feels how desperate you are for him.

Needy little thing, he rasps, and it isn't kind. It isn't nice. There's a reprimand needling in against the grain of his praise. An unspoken good girl said in the tone of a man who thinks you're anything but.

"Been thinkin' about takin' a wife," he says again, dragging the rough, scabbed tip of his knuckle across the powder-soft flesh of your folds. It's ticklish. Weird. Something that makes you want to giggle and cry. Pull your blankets over your head. Lean into it more. Spread your legs wider until he touches that spot that made you shake. "But the mistake I made the last time was not testin' 'er out before I married 'er. Turns out—" the tip digs in between your swollen folds, touching where you're hot and sticky and far too sensitive for such rough hands. "She wasn't as sweet as I thought she was."

And it's electric. The rough, calloused scrape of his finger stroking up and down your split seam (your clit, he mumbles into the hollow space behind your ear, giving it a little swirl that makes your toes curl; to your hole, nice and tight and so fuckin' wet f'him, mm?) is a jolt of that dizzying, too much-not enough pleasure. A shock. Mouth open, toes clenched tight. Legs kicking. Muscles seizing as he works you over with just the tip of a finger. Barely even a touch.

"But you're sweet, aren't you?"

It sounds like he's chiding you all over again, but the cotton puffing up against your eardrums, the pleasure buzzing in your belly, between your thighs, makes everything sound so sweet. Enticing. So you agree. Nod feverishly on a gasp when his finger trails down to where you clench tight around nothing, circling your opening with the tip of his finger, nail skimming over swollen, slick flesh.

You're not sure what this is. Don't even know where to begin to articulate what you want, need, but each pass makes you feel every bit of the needy little thing he called you earlier. An admonishment drenched in fondness. Wrapped up so tight in a soft, velvet cloth of amusement that you could barely feel the pricks of barbed wire nestled inside when it rubbed against your skin.

Sweet enough that it makes you turn your head into his bicep, nuzzling against the fabric of his jacket as he works his fingers between your wet, slick thighs. Thumb against your clit. A brand. Pressing down, down, and then softening when your legs kick out, too much. That dirty, awful kind of pleasure that makes you feel like a balloon being pumped too full, ready to burst. His finger slips inside. Just a tease. As gentle as a kiss. Only up to his cuticle. Barely even a knuckle.

He tells you all of his with his beard scraping against the flushed, damp skin of your cheek. Murmuring the words into the pool of blood throbbing against your cheekbones. Reinforces them with a sharp nip of his teeth when the shame trickles in—when the easy pump of his finger, not even a knuckle, makes a wet, sticky noise as it pushes into that pool of heat inside of you.

And it's all good girl, sweet girl against the sticky-slick shine of your raw cheek when your needy little cunt sucks him in deeper. Beggin' for it, and sweet little pussy wants it so bad, mm, needy girl? and don't worry, baby, m'gonna make you feel so good.

Baby. It catches, loops. Makes it easier to ignore the noise spilling out under the thick spread of his palm, finger digging in deeper (the first knuckle is a soft good girl, the second is a rough a doin' so good, sweetheart; and the third, slipped right up to last is a low, rumbling that's it, baby, takin' it so well, ain't you?), and the clatter around you. A semi-crowded bar.

You forgot, you think, squirming suddenly. Stiffening around him, on him, as the world sharpens into a whistle. Glass on worn wood. Thud, thud. Legs squealing against herringbone as a heavy chair is dragged back. Low murmurs. Laughter. Noise spilling out from the front of the room, calls for more beer. Another shot. Hey, bartender, gimme another Jack on the rocks—

"Shush-shush, baby," he coos, finger dragging out a lewd squelch when slides back inside of you, as deep as it'll go. The slap of his bent index and ring finger hitting your puffy, drenched folds when he thrusts. "They can't see you. Can't hear you. Jus' be good for me, mm? My sweet girl."

Nothin' matters except me, he adds, curling that finger inside of you until it hooks on a spot that makes you whimper into his arm, teeth sinking into leather. I own this bar, he promises, lifting his arm up as you cling to him with your teeth. A block against the world. Nothing but faded, aged leather and stale smoke. Gunpowder. The slick glide of his finger inside of you, the sting of the stretch dissolving into a wet, sticky pleasure.

His own teeth dig into the curve of your neck. A pinch. Sucking in a mouthful of skin as his ring finger extends, drags over your messy cunt until it's pushed up against your stuffed hole, nudging inside. A shallow dip. Lemme in, it says as he bites through blood vessels with the hard suck of his mouth. Lemme in because—

"I own this town. This bar. Jus' like I own this sweet little cunt."

A shove and he's in. All the way. To the last knuckle. Quick and sudden, the sting is an afterthought; the burn is a hazy, ephemeral throb in the back of your head. Balmed by the drag of his thumb over your pebbled clit.

It feels like a seesaw. Up and down. Bending your knees, feet planted into the ground, and then kicking up, up. Weightless. Over and over again. An ebb and flow. Higher and higher until you slowly fall down—

(—into his lap. the cup of his palm.)

You tell him as much. Mewled out into spit-drenched leather as he rumbles against your spine, his voice so deep, so full, you can feel it humming in your chest when he speaks.

(feel it drip down your spine like hot wax where it pools between your thighs—)

"Good girl," he says, and you feel like anything but. Less like the girl who sat in the pew this morning, humming along to hymns in a modest, cotton dress and more like gum spat out onto the pavement. Squished down under his heel. Dragged along beneath his boot. Pretty, dizzy pinked up remora. "Bein' so good, mm? Maybe you deserve a reward."

It comes on the crook of his fingers twisting inside your slicked up cunt; blunt nails pressing against soft walls until it stings like the nip of his teeth over your cheek. You're not even sure if it feels good. It's just—

Pressure. A burning stretch. The foreign sensation of something detached from your body squirming inside of you, touching places you've never been able to reach before. Too deep and too full. His index finger is nearly double the width of your own.

It makes you mewl like a child. Twisting on his lap, trying to pull away from the place that parts for him so easily, opens up with just the crook of his finger. Leaks slick down his palm, drenching his pants. Makin' a mess, he growls, and pulls you back down on his lap. Feel it, sweet girl? Mm? Feel the mess you're makin'.

And you hate that you can. That each thrust of his hand between your thighs sounds wetter and wetter than it did before. That it pulls it out of you until it drips down your inner thighs and pools against the back of your dress. Stains his thighs. The hard thing—his cock, he tells you, dragging your ass over it with a grunt—under you that jerks and throbs and flattens up to a size that makes you want to curl into a ball and weep.

(that makes your knees twitch, wanting to spread wider—)

It's a lot. It's too much. You're not even sure you like it ("ain't nice to tell lies, little girl;") but he doesn't stop. Won't. Not even when tears drip down from the corners of your eyes, and you hide whimpers into the damp, sticky leather of his sleeve. It doesn't really matter because—

"mm, you look so pretty when you cry."

You feel drenched. Liquid. No longer a person but a puddle. Melted, leaking. Dripping down his lap and pooling onto the dirty barroom floor. A slippery little thing held together by the cup of his palm, the hook of his fingers sinking into you over and over again.

"Are you watchin'?" The arm wrapped around your waist shifts until his dry, rough hand is cupped under your wet, sticky chin, curling over your throat. "Look at us."

Between the spread of your thighs, white cotton dress rumpled and rucked up around your hips, the sight of his hand—masculine: dangerous; knuckles bruised and scarred, cherry red; big and rough and hairy—is obscene. Ugly. Wrong.

(a grunt: too tight. his fingers flex, spreading open inside of you, scissoring apart. loosen up, love, before you break 'em, mm.)

So, so wrong.

You feel small with that big, grizzled hand between your legs. Insignificant. A toy to play with. A thing to be used. And that's just what he does.

Shows you how he can play with your body when he peels his fingers out of you nice and slow until just the tips keep you open, skin shiny and wet. Glistening in the flushed, low light of the bar. And then slides them back inside, just as slow. The first knuckle. The second. The third. Wiggles them around. Scissors them apart.

Pulls them out faster now, and thrusts them back inside hard.

This cunt belongs to him, he grunts, words nestled beneath the slick, sticky-wet sound of him taking what he owns. Over and over again. That big, bearish hand works at your messy cunt until your thighs tremble, and your head throbs.

The hand on your throat is firm. Tight. And when it pulls away to slip inside your cotton dress, you realise you've forgotten how to breathe without him controlling every breath.

"Come on," he rasps, fingers working harder. Faster. His thumb catches your clit, rubbing small, tight circles; each pass brings a new, terrible pleasure rippling through you. A crescendo that builds and builds. Higher on the seesaw—up, up—

His hand is scorching as it cups your breast, index and middle finger scissoring over your nipple until it's caught between the two. A pluck. A pinch. It buzzes down your chest, sinks like a stone into the wet, muddled mess between your hips.

And that's all you are. Nothing but a soaked, hot mess of a thing in his lap. Putty. Messy girl. Silly girl. Sweet. Stupid. His.

(his low, growling voice in your ear: mine, mine, mine;) "aren't you, little girl?"

The leather between your teeth tastes like ash. Smells of gunpowder. Fresh hide in the summer's sun. Smoke. Tobacco. Potent. Masculine. Grizzled, like his hand between your thighs. The other cupped around your breast, pinching and pulling and kneading flesh you hadn't realised could feel so good when it was touched like this—

By his hands, palms hot enough to scorch, to brand. To melt you from the outside in until you leak all over his lap where you're cradled like a child. Obedient and docile.

Especially when he makes you come on his fingers. Tells you that's what you'll do before it happens—a grunt, a command, in your ear. Do it, sweetheart. I ain't askin' again—

And you do. Pulsing like a heartbeat around the thick stretch of two fingers digging deep inside of you, stabbing into that spot that makes you pant like an animal. Blooms more heat, more pleasure, that thickens inside your navel—molten. Spilling out from between your hips. Up, up, up on the seesaw—

"Good girl. Good fuckin' girl—"

He doesn't even sound like a man anymore. The rough, feverish grit of his voice pitches low into his throat, hums in his chest. Rattles like bones in the wind. Howls. Sharpens in the pit of your belly, another liquid pulse around his fingers. It sounds animal. Primal. Bearish as he claims you as his, as he curls his fingers around the heart of you, and tugs. Leaving you spun around those thick, grizzled fingers like fresh cotton candy, sticky and sweet. His to keep.

And that's what you are,

"aren't you?"

Good girl, he coos when you nod, sniffling into creased leather that smells of cade and motor oil. Too dizzy to make sense of what he's asking for, too incomplete.

Your neck feels cold without his touch, but you don't know how to ask for something you don't even think you really want. Shouldn't want.

You feel feverish, too, and it's an all-over thing. From the space between each toe, to the backs of your ears—everything is too hot, too cold. You're shivering, but you want to sink down into a pool of ice, a blanket of heat and warmth. Wrap yourself around the hot, oozing insides of a chest—like the hunter who slept inside his beloved horse—and bathe in the waters around the polynya. Icy and dark.

Mostly, though, you just feel raw. Wrong. Scraped out and hollowed. Broken into pieces and put back together with mismatched parts.

And it's worse, you think, when he pulls his fingers out of you, and you're reminded of what it feels like to be empty all over again.

"Shush, baby," he's cooing when you whimper. Chiding. "Let's have a taste, mm? Find out if you're really sweet."

His hand is drenched when he pulls it from between your thighs. Thick, clear strands make a bridge between his fingers when he splits them apart, rumbling low and brassy in his chest at the sight. Spits like a burning log, crackling sap in a dry fire, when he says, look, baby, got me all fuckin' wet—

But you can't. Not when he drags his hand up, up, over your shoulder, above your head, and sinks his fingers into his mouth with a groan that raffles through you, all the way down to your toes. Slurps on his hand, on the slick you left behind, like a man half-starved. Grunting at the taste. Cock throbbing beneath you like a heartbeat. Pulsing and angry. Enough that you cower a bit, flinching back into the broad expanse of his chest as his thick, fat cock twitches under you, eager for something you only really know about as an abstract concept. Knowledge gleaned through rummaging around in cupboards when no one was looking. Playground tales; cupped palms against the side of an ear. Stage whispers.

Husband and wife.

And oh, baby—

"you're the sweetest thing I've ever tasted," he rasps into your cheek, lips shiny and wet. Smearing spit and slick across your raw skin. "Looks like I found my new wife."

It doesn't make sense. Another abstract concept. Fragmented pieces. You want to say we can't get married, but all that comes out is a squeak. A whimper. Some shallow warble in the back of your throat that sounds like daddy, please.

But he's pulling his hand away from your breast, and clasping it tight around your neck before the words can make it through the panic clogging your throat. A firm squeeze snuffs those flames as quickly as they formed, and you swallow down the ash in the back of your throat before it can choke you.

Good girl, he says with a paper soft kiss to the bruised, burning apple of your cheek. Sweet girl, baby girl, and when he smoothes his damp hand across the rumpled fabric of your cotton dress, pulling it back over your thighs, you realise you forgot your own name.

(It doesn't matter, you suppose. You'll have his soon enough.)

When it's back in its proper spot, unblemished and pristine despite the ache between your thighs and the way your panties stick, uncomfortably, to swollen skin, he drags his hand back up your leg until his palm swallows your thigh. The warmth of his skin bleeds through the cotton, and his rough, calloused fingers catch on loose threads when he splays them wide, touch firm, possessive—as if he has the right to hold you like you're his.

But his skin is still wet, and when it catches in the light, you feel a sinking weight in your belly. An echo in the back of your head that says you already are.

His thumb strokes over cotton, and it's almost obscene, really: soft, virginal white against marled, cherry red and scarred peach; from his knuckles to the hem of his leather jacket, he's covered in a dense swath of hair. Veins bulge when he flexes, thick lines running down the back of his hand like little rivers of blue beneath raw peach flesh. He's just so—

Different.

Masculine. Big. Dangerous, you think again, and hear that muffled echo in the back of your head that said run, stay away.

(except now it sounds like stupid girl, you're much too late—)

Trapped like a fawn under his paw. One on your thigh, the other on your throat. The phantom burn, the hollow echo, of his fingers tearing through the too-tight space inside of you, making room for the heavy, fat length under you.

Soon, it seems to say, still as angry as it was when he feasted on your sweet taste.

His hand leaves your thigh, reaching up towards the half-drunk glass on the table beneath a puddle of condensation. It, too, is swallowed up under his bearish hand when he curls his fingers around it, tugging it closer, over your shoulder.

You smell whiskey as he takes the last swig, grunting at the burn, the sting. When he's finished, he leans forward, warm chest glueing to your spine, and places the empty glass back in the puddle.

The hollow thud of glass on wood seems to shake loose the cobwebs that spooled around your head. It feels like blinking to life. Waking up from a deep sleep.

The bar is still buzzing with noise, but you can hear it clearly now. A constant, endless press of voices and low hums, words you can't make sense of. You're too far back in the bar for anyone to have seen you—the bulk of his arm is a wall between you and the world—but you wonder just how much your whimpers carried under the static chatter. The wet, messy squelch—

"You're fine, sweetheart." A squeeze and the panic welling in your throat is choked under his palm. Snuffed out. "No one heard a thing."

You're not sure you believe him, but it keeps the embarrassment from eating you alive, and so you let it go with a slow, sleepy nod. A sniffle. Wet, weepy: I want to go home.

"S'right, sweetheart," he soothes, pressing another brittle kiss to your temple, one that feels the sting of a scraped knee. "We'll get you home."

(Chiding. Look at what you've done to yourself. Pitying. Patronising. Poor thing.)

His home isn't the same as the one cradled in the maw of a mountain, where the land is always barren, and your mother weeps when your father isn't around, but you relent when he tugs, pulling you into his arms. Holding you like a small child as he bites down on his cigar, and moves through the blanket of silence in the once rowdy bar. Hands firm, tight like shackles when they close around you.

Your father used to say you could tell a lot about a man by the look of his hands, and when he slips his fingers between the soft brackets of yours, filling the spaces you hadn't realised were empty, you know one thing:

these are not the sort to ever let go.

(bassbround. apodictic.)

and when he slips his ring on your finger and tells you to wear that little white cotton dress for him, you suppose you have no one else to blame but yourself.