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Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Mrs. G. J. Holland featured in The Letters of Emily Dickinson

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HAWKEYE (2021) dir. Bert & Bertie

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— Greg Santora (via letsbelonelytogetherr)

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The hotel was a nothing place – all sand-coloured laminate and halogen light, a coffin dressed in bridal satin. It stank faintly of antiseptic, of scrubbed sins and laundering done too late. For now, it was theirs. The sheets, still warm from the sun, clung faintly with the perfume of industrial bleach and the shadow of strangers. Ciaran liked that. She liked pretending she was one of many women, all hollowed out in the same pose beneath the same flickering lamplight. It made her feel eternal.

The television blared dumbly in the background, a crown of static noise and soft moans, absurd in its theatrics. One thumb-press and it had sprung to life, offering her an anaemic procession of flesh and silicone. She left it running. Not out of curiosity, but to laugh, or to sneer, or perhaps to stage herself in opposition. What could those women know of this work? Their pleasure was painted on like frost on a mirror, gone at a breath.

She was not one of them.

She was not faking.

He lay beneath her, that man of noble ruin, half-saint and all animal now. There was nothing of chivalry in the way his hands lay slack by his sides, trembling only when she shifted her weight, his face her seat. Thighs, sun-kissed and toned, tensed faintly around his head. A little cruelly, she rolled her hips. A flicker of protest, muffled and dear, but she knew he could breathe. She could feel it – the rhythm of his life, hot against her skin, laboured and adoring. He would die for her, yes, but she would never let him.

The air conditioning clicked and rattled, struggling to cool the heat they were making. Her long braid lay down the curve of her back like a noose, catching at her ribs. Her phone was discarded on the windowsill, reflecting the city lights like a sliver of moon in a wine-dark sky. Ciaran sighed. Deep, contented, unhurried. Her voice, when it came, was velvet crushed and smoking:

“Mm… I should leave you there, Artorias. Set a crown on your brow and keep you like this forever. My sweet martyr. My ruined king.”

The blue light of the screen cast a pale, flickering halo over the room, over her bared chest and freckled belly, over the fine gleam of sweat at her throat. She dragged one hand down over her ribs, over the flat plane of her stomach, over the notch of her hipbone. She touched herself lazily – not for climax, but out of idleness. A little gesture of dominion. Of luxury.

Her pleasure was not violent. It was not fast. It was a feast that came in waves. Long, slow-dragging breakers that built behind her eyes and pulsed out through her limbs. She did not moan like the women on the screen. Instead, she smiled. Thin-lipped. Glorious. Eternal.

— from @apifacture

There is only her, all around him: the warmth of her sex, inches from his mouth, the rise of her stomach ascending to the gentle curve of her chest, and the press of her thighs to his cheeks. Her king, she murmurs - and she, his kingdom, his home, here beneath her, where has always, always belonged. He watches her hand dip between her legs, spread herself wider, a thumb languidly passing over her clit. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.

He has never wanted anything more than her, and the ache - the delicious ache - sat low in his stomach, thudding through him, is enough to drag his eyes upward, traveling the expanse of her, to meet her gaze with his own naked need.

Before he met Ciaran, he never submitted to anyone, not properly. He took on jobs, and paid due respect to his employers, and made a point of being kind and helpful to anyone and everyone he could - but it was never submission. He never gave up control, just deference. Now: now he is hers, wholly, and he revels in the sensation of it - of being so loved, so desired.

The idea had once terrified him. Now, it thrilled him. She thrills him.

His hands ache, too, to touch her; she has forbidden it for now. If she were to glance back, she'd know the proud of arch of him stands thick and hard with need - he doesn't touch that either, as desperately as he wants to. He can see the television glow paint her in snowy florescence; he can see shadows dancing on her skin. A goddess, wrought immortal in the memory of his moment. He's sure of it. He's sure he'll remember the sight of her, watching him imperiously, awash in snowlight, for the rest of his living days.

The proximity between need and release sings in his chest, in his throat, a taut line throughout his body that feels so, so close to snapping. The tension is incredible, intimate. He's not sure he's ever felt so alive.

In a moment, his tongue will seek out the pleasure in her depths, swipe and caress the hollow of her until her dominion is complete. In a moment more, he will surge upward until she is on her back, and he will rail her into the mattress as they exchange control, and trust, and love. And in the moment after that, they'll tangle up in one another in the sweatslick cool of their hotel room, and neither one of them will have ever better understood what home feels like.

But for now, he watches the way she pleases herself, teases him with those wandering fingers, those breathy little explorations of her heat, and he gives her a helpless, loving smile.

"Keep me here, then," he breathes. "I am yours, Ciaran - to keep wherever you please."

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i'll kiss you tender, tender.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger LUCRETIA

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so what if I sucked his dick. his knuckles were split and bloody from defending my safety and my honour what else was I supposed to do

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ughhh fine *experiences emotional growth*

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if you say i’m too much

baby go find less

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Every inch of me longs for your touch.

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Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias (2011–2013)

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“Sometimes, her heart is the knife she takes to bed.”

— Salma Deera, May All Your Wounds Be Mortal

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the pros and cons of dating me are both my mouth honestly

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my wounds are part of my outfit. you wouldn't get it

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forgive me father for i have sinned in all the most intricate, exquisite and aesthetically pleasing ways i was capable of