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helen ; chapter four

nowhere to run

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Or, the capture.

series masterlist | my masterlist pairing: joel miller x f!reader tags/warnings: 18+ (MDNI), john wick AU, hitman!joel, husband!joel, established relationship, artist!reader, love as worship (and blasphemy), sacrilege in the name of romance, flashbacks, graphic violence, guns, blood + injuries, tommy gets stuck with the babysitting gig, joel is still a bit of an idiot, childhood/religious trauma, joel in a church, violence against pastors, criminal underworld, secrecy/lies, betrayal, Big Angst, we're getting there though, the smut returns, fingering, conflicting emotions, kidnapping, Angry!Joel, cliffhanger (oopsie daisy), the typical alcohol/smoking/profanity, dividers by @/saradika word count: ~ 9k a/n: fucking hell. i'm so sorry for how long it took me to bring this chapter to you, friends! my thesis sucked all the life from me and i had to go on a quick trip to the underworld and back to get it back again. thank you so much to my baby @cavillscurls for beta reading and as always being the biggest goddamn help throughout the process. below is the moodboard that mya made for this chapter and the reason i'm her no. 1 lovergirl. prev | next

When he was young, he fed stray dogs on the street.

He would steal sandwiches, pluck out the meat to gnaw on himself, and toss the bread onto the pavement. He would sit back on his haunches just like them and lick his chops when he was finished. Being a runner earned him good money, but it was hard to find jobs that would take a scrawny eight-year-old with dirt on his nose. His memories of those days are far away, foggy around the edges, but he still smells the eye-watering prickle of trash, cigarette smoke, wet fur of the dogs. He still remembers the moist scratch of soaked-through denim after a night sleeping outside in the rain, the bone-deep chill that lasted for days in winter.

One night, a Sunday in July, a hand stretched out toward him. He had not eaten in days, and he’d begun to feel the stretch of his skin around his ribs. A skeleton haunting the wrong body. The face is blurred now, but he remembers the hand. Long-fingered and a little wrinkled, a bracelet dangling from the bluish vein-ringed wrist, a charm in the shape of a cross.

The hand brought him from his bed of ratty blankets and old newspapers to a giant cathedral. The bold lettering above the grand doors read The Sisters of Saint Eustace. Joel had been too small, too weak, to reach up and touch the golden words, but they were tarnished with age and buffed around the edges. He looked up at the owner of the hand—the hand which then lowered onto his shoulder, collarbones protruding, and squeezed just hard enough to sting.

He felt the warm soak of the daytime breeze on his face.

“You must come inside with me,” said the woman. He remembers that the hand belonged to a woman. There was a black hood around her head that made her appear as wraithlike as death itself.

The Creation of Adam was immortalised on the north wall. It was the first thing he saw when he walked inside.

“I can’t go inside,” he said.

“And why not?”

He turned his head away from the image of Adam and God, whom he did not know at the time, and could never have hoped to know. How could he, after all, when God had never appeared to him? Then, God was only a man, frail and old, reaching out a wrinkled hand. Why should the weak ask for aid from the strong?

“The dogs need someone to feed them,” he said.

He still does not know God. He does not suspect he ever will. But there’s a warm, soft palm encasing the skin and muscle over his heart, irradiating down to the bone. There’s an intermittent puff of air on the back of his neck, slow and ticklish, the way snow melts. The dog that still lives in the core of him shows its belly.

You’ve moved closer in the night, your soft skin warming his back where your shirt rides up. You breathe silently, catlike, as measured as the rise and fall of the winter sun. He listens for a while, his chest pushing out to match you. As he settles into the new rhythm, he feels for a moment as if it’s all been a dream. As if he never lost you, never lied.

His name leaves your sleeping mouth and his heart ceases altogether. It’s the breathless sound of need, of a desire he supposes you’ve forgotten. In your sleep, some stale withered flower blooms under a fresh rainfall, and he wonders what you’re dreaming about.

Before Joel put his mouth between your legs for the first time, you had forgotten what pleasure tasted like.

It was July, sweltering, and you were draped across the sofa with his head in your lap. It was date night, and his turn to choose the movie: some god-awful karate action film that was a sequel to a sequel to a sequel and so on, infinitely repeating. Neither of you were paying attention to the exchange of staged punches. You were occupying yourself with threading your fingers through Joel’s hair, and he’d taken to toying with the little bow that held up the waistband of your shorts. You watched him pull the strings until they unfurled only to tie them again with one hand. The white noise of on-screen blows lulled you into a gentle doze as you both lay idle.

“Joel.”

“Hm,” he said, the scratch of his beard tickling your belly.

“The door,” you said. “Someone’s knocking.”

“Hm,” he said again, his questioning pitch the only indication he was truly listening.

“You should probably get it.”

His sleep-soaked eyes fluttered shut, his lashes brushing your skin. He gently squeezed your hip. “I’m just fine here.”

“What if I told you I had a surprise for you? And what if I told you I worked very hard to find your surprise?” you cooed.

Joel blinked up at you. “You got me somethin’?”

Your heart swelled. “Yeah, I did. Come on, cowboy.”

Outside, Tommy lounged against the hood of the surprise as you guided Joel outside, your fingers over his eyes.

“I don't like bein’ blind,” he grumbled. “Can't you just tell me?”

“How about I show you?”

You lifted your hands. For a moment, Joel blinked, his eyes adjusting to the blazing light of the sunset, and his lips parted at the sight before him.

“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “You… got me a car?”

“It's not just a car. Boss Mustang 429,” you said sheepishly. “1969. You know, the one you never shut up about. I thought this might help.”

Joel’s breath hitched, and you watched him swallow it. “How…”

“Tommy called me a while back. He'd sourced it from another garage; it was bound for the dump, but I wanted to surprise you by fixing it up. So… surprise.”

Tommy tossed the keys to Joel, who caught them without even looking. “Your girl can get her hands dirty. Helped me fix up the whole damn thing.”

You tried to gauge his reaction, the slight hollow in his throat where he seemed to store the falling sunlight, a faint sheen of sweat turning him gold. Your heart plummeted into your stomach when he didn't say a word.

“It's too soon.”

His head whipped around, his brows curving up in the middle. “What?”

You wetted your lips, panic closing your throat in at all sides. “I know we haven't been dating long, but… I don't know, I couldn't pass up the chance. But now I know it's too soon. I shouldn't have presumed—”

Faintly, he shook his head, his eyes darting across your face as if he were trying to trace it, and closed the distance between you. You gasped as he slanted his mouth over yours, his hands cradling your face, old paper and salt and your perfume. You threw your arms around his neck, a buoy for the drowning man whose arms wound around your waist and pulled you so close he could disappear altogether. Maybe he was trying to. Selfishly, you would let him.

Tommy grumbled something—“You’re welcome, asshole,” probably—and his own car roared to life as it pulled away.

The car keys jingled in the bowl in your foyer as Joel tossed them blindly behind him, his heel shutting the front door. He kissed you like you were a fever he needed to burn out, and you felt the match strike where his hand curled its heavy weight around your neck.

“What time do you fly out?” he grumbled against your mouth.

“Not until morning,” you said breathlessly, watching him drop to his knees in front of you, taking your little shorts with him. Your chest heaved at the sight of your Joel, made humble at your feet, pressing his searing-hot lips to the bare skin of your belly. “Joel…”

“Nobody,” he said, his voice the velvety drag of night, “is like you. Not a goddamn soul.”

The admission caught in your throat the way a web ensnares dewdrops. The intricate folds of your brain would forever carry the imprint of the words—words no one else had ever said.

A starving artist, an old teacher of yours had said, remembers every kind word said about their art. They eat from them when there's no other food in the house.

“You're it for me,” he told you. “There's nothing else.”

You wake slowly, serenely, a yawning ache blossoming in the core of you.

Maybe that's why, even now, you cannot forget the way he touched you that night. You still recall every thumbprint, every stroke of his tongue, every soft cry into the otherwise empty room.

The fact is that nobody can love you the way Joel Miller does. Not even when his love hurts more than anything else.

He's watching you now. His eyes are half-open but alert, instinct pulling him closer to your side of the bed. Or, maybe you're the one who’s crawled closer to him.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t speak, but you feel the pads of his fingers on your belly, the soft fabric of your shirt bunching over his bruised knuckles, and his eyes shutter at the touch alone, a worn sinner.

“Tell me what you need,” he whispers, and it's chipped porcelain, the sound of his voice.

A part of you wants to cry, to let the pressure build until it crests, to feel the salt settle in the pores at the sight of him so close, so open. But you've shed your tears and he’s slept in your bed, and now his fingers brush the hem of your panties, not begging entrance, but asking, wondering—

You say so weakly, “I need you to touch me,” and he nods because he knows, because he's Joel, because your body has not become foreign to him even if you've made your heart a stranger.

You shiver as his hand dips beneath the cotton, two fingers sliding through the gathering wetness between your legs. Joel's gaze is fixed on you, black as the sky, his bicep flexing as he parts your folds with his fingers. Absently, possessed, you sling your leg up over his hip to spread your thighs.

The shockwave brings you down as he slides his middle finger inside you, sinking to the knuckle. The gasp that leaves your mouth feels like inhaling glass. You cup the back of his neck for purchase, tugging the little curls at his scalp, and watch as he bares his teeth.

“That's it, baby,” he says brokenly, the heel of his palm applying pressure to your clit as you writhe. Back in his arms, your heart thunders in your chest, the ache of his absence ringing in each rib like the aftershocks of a blow. He pumps his fingers inside you, curling up against the spot he knows as intimately as his own hand, studying your face as if he has become the artist and you the muse. For a moment, you think you see the reflection of your face in the whites of his eyes, and you’re overcome with a shudder that compresses your spine.

He’s too close. Too far away. Your hand curls around the scruff of his neck, a misbehaved dog. You’ve let him in, it’s too late, too soon, and you’ve assumed all the blood he’s spilled, taken it inside your body with the press of his fingertips past your begging entrance.

You hate that your body still sings for him, that your eyes cannot shutter, that you cannot shuck the curtains closed despite all he’s done. You hate that his eyes still hold the sorrow you’d seen in him since that very first night, and you hate that you existed so happily, so blindly, with him, in spite of the arid darkness that has always lingered just under the brown you thought you knew so well.

But he’s always known you, and that may be what hurts the most.

He’s always been keenly aware of your moods, your tastes, your body, and he plays you now like a pipe, lending his body to yours in supplication. Your heart aches as you let him inside, some feeble breach of contract, as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing was a lie.

He slides his fingers from you and spreads them before your eyes, the sight of the slick webbing eliciting a gasp you can barely hear. He licks his fingers clean and dips them back between your bodies, circling your clit with a renewed fervour.

“Fuck.” Your eyelids droop, your stomach tightens, and the glint of Joel’s bared teeth is that of a wolf’s in the dark. “I’m… fuck, I’m…”

“I know,” he says, “I know,” and you wish he wouldn’t.

The rhythmic, meticulous path of his fingers is nothing like the desperate writhing of your hips, the feverish grinding, the cries. Prey caught in a trap, you grasp the iron bars of his shoulders tight and beg for mercy.

And it feels so good, so right, that it slashes open your heart and spills the blood. The cold bite of his wedding ring bumps up against your opening as you blossom, brittle as a new bud, his fingers pumping in, out, in—

“Oh, God,” you whimper, burying your face in his throat, sinking into the familiar warmth.

Joel grunts, his nose sliding across your temple. “C’mon, baby girl, c’mon… I’ve got you… Can feel it…”

Normally, you would lick and bite and kiss the sweet, humid skin of his throat until you came, soft as dough in his arms. There’s a steel edge to the way you come now, fingers stiffly prickling his scalp, eyes bleeding tears into the crook of his neck. It feels good—good to slash at the bars that cage you in, good to weep over the loss of some willpower you let dissolve.

He doesn’t stop until he’s wrung every drop, inhaling the cloying smell of soiled linen and sticky perfume and saltwater. He closes his eyes against your temple and you can feel the caress of his lashes—wet, like yours.

His lips always carried the faint bitter bite of black coffee, and he always said yours tasted sweet. Like goddamn honey, he’d whispered into your throat the first night you let him inside, and you’d laughed—maybe the graze of his mouth was ticklish, or maybe you thought it was funny: the idea that you could be so sweet.

Now, you’re splintering as your eyes flicker down to his mouth, plush lips moist but split from the blow of an enemy. If you kissed him now, he would only feel a sharp sting. If you kissed him now, you’d let the blood win out. You would only hurt him and yourself alike.

“What are we doing, Joel?”

His eyes shimmer in the dark, his palm tentatively cradling the crown of your head. The hollow of his throat deepens, and you hold your breath.

“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” says Joel. “If you want me just to use me, then use me. You can have me whenever you want. I just wanna be someone you need—even if you don’t need me the way you used to.”

The sob lurches out of your throat, your forehead dropping to his as the climax burns out, smoke from a snuffed candle.

When you can breathe again, you push yourself upright and cross the room to gather your toiletries. “I’m not going to use you. I never should have done this.”

“Stop.” Joel grunts as he stands, apparently forgetting about his wounded ankle. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Joel, let’s just—”

“I don't want it to be like this,” he says. “I don’t want it to hurt when I touch you.”

“It doesn't,” you whisper, hugging your bag to your chest along with a bundle of clothes. “That's what scares me.”

His brows curve upward in the middle and you're overcome by the need to fix your eyes to the floor. “Baby, please… Please just look at me.”

You swipe your thumbs under your eyes and pin him with your gaze. “I feel like I’m mourning a marriage that didn't even end,” you tell him, and Joel lurches forward as if he means to grab the words in mid-air.

“And maybe we did lose it,” you say softly, though the words sting on the way out of your mouth. “But maybe that's… good. I don't want a relationship based on lies, Joel. I don’t want to wake up every morning next to the man I love and wonder what he’s still keeping from me.”

Joel lowers himself into the chair by the table like a weight is tied to his chest. He's still shirtless, his wound bleeding through the gauze around his arm, but he's staring at you. Suffocating you.

Twisting his wedding band around his finger, he says, “If there's even the smallest chance that you really could still love me… that this ain't over, even though I’ve done everything wrong by you… I’m gonna fight for it.”

Not everything, you want to say. Not everything, or I wouldn't be so hurt right now. It’s funny that the words won't take shape—wraithlike as the black ink snaking up and down his back. “I know you will.”

“And if you want all the truth I‘ve got, even if it's bloody, I’ll give it to you.” He leans forward, muscles flexing under inked skin. “You’re my everything. Nothin’ about that has changed. Not one goddamn thing.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, the tang of iron flooding into your mouth. “It’s not just about the lies,” you say, dropping into the chair across from him. “You've put me on a pedestal. You may be strong and you may know how to fight, and everyone in the world may know your name, but… I don't think I can survive being all that you breathe for. Not if it leads to this.”

He remembers waking up each morning in the orphanage, sunlight turning technicolour through stained glass images of praying hands. He’d always thought the sun was so strong, gathering pieces of itself just to wake half the world, reviving dead plants, rattling the bones that stirred dead in the earth. He’d put his fingers through the many colours just to watch them dance. He’d wiggle his digits and remember he was alive.

He watched you walk down the long aisle toward him in a white dress, a bouquet of daisies in your hands, the sun carving your path. His hand flexed at his side like it did on those long-gone mornings, and he briefly doubted he’d be able to touch you at all—like you’d disappear, smoke curling around the contours of his fingers, a dream.

“My heart hurts, Joel,” you say brokenly, your palm flattening against your chest. “I’m not as strong as you are. I’m just a girl who married the man she loved. One day, you're going to realise that I don't bleed gold. I’m not a deity. I’m not someone you go to war over. I’m not fucking perfect, and if you keep treating me like I am, you’re only going to be disappointed.”

Joel just watches the tears fall, somewhat enraptured by the way they linger like dew on your lashes, until you blink them away and they cascade down the curve of your cheek. He wonders if this is how it feels to be the painter, desperate to capture even a brushstroke of the subject in front of him. He used to watch you paint for hours, holed up in your studio, covered in splotches of oils he would later take his time to wash away. The colours would curl around the drain, a snake poised to strike, and he’d kiss you, his canvas, tasting the poison of paint at the corner of your mouth.

He’s made something dark of the light that grew inside you. He’s tainted your image with the blood he’s shed, and every one of the thousand cuts has struck true. He thought he was protecting you.

He was only hurting you.

“I just wanted to have you. And you wanted to forget.” Your eyes no longer meet his, tracing the lifelines in the oak table back and forth. “So where do we go from here?”

There’s a troubled tic in his brow, punctuating the feverish flitting of his eyes between each of yours, always restless. “You think I fell in love with you because I thought you were invincible?”

You lift your head, the whites of your eyes gleaming. Joel brings his chair closer to yours, and you don’t make a move to pull away.

“I fell in love with you because you’re human,” he says. “Because you’re kind. Because you have a heart bigger than any I’ve seen. Because you’re funny, and talented, and you love to make art, and when you find something you love, you give your soul to it. I love you because you’re an angry drunk and you hate mornings and you’re so fuckin’ frustrating when you won’t give up. I fell in love with you because you were the only person who’s ever taken a real shot at lovin’ me.”

Your bottom lip quivers and he wants to coax the heavy ache from your very soul, venom from the wound.

“You are my everything, baby. You are. And I know it ain't healthy, but I don't care. If that means I see you as a god, fine. You think I can stop lovin’ you the way I do? I can’t. But I never once thought you were perfect. Perfect people don’t fall in love with men like me.”

You laugh a little, but it’s taut, stuck in the back of your throat.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’m not even sure I want that. But I do want to be the kind of man you’re willing to love again. You’re my best friend, and I’ll do whatever it takes, you hear me? I’m not givin’ up.”

You sniffle, your quivering hands folded into one another atop the table. He wants to reach out and touch you, pull you back into his gravity, smell your perfume. He wants to do a thousand other things he does not deserve.

“You’ve killed Manuel’s son,” you say quietly. “There’s still a contract on your head.”

Joel nods. “And he’s gonna pull it.”

You shake your head, lips parted around words you choose not to say. Instead, you look away, and he feels he's lost something he'd been holding.

“Do what you need to do,” you say, and every syllable cuts him along the bias of the bone.

He has known your hurt, your anger, your sadness. Something in an artist’s heart has never seen a day of peace, you told him once. He thought it was a joke; he may have even laughed.

I loved you.

Joel swallows. “I need you—”

“—to stay here.” The corner of your mouth pulls up despite your sombre tone. “Yeah, I know.”

There’s a knock at the door before he can open his mouth to reply. You stay apprehensively glued to your seat as Joel peers through the peephole only to unlatch the chain on the door.

“Anyone see you come in?” he asks Tommy.

“I’m sure plenty of people saw me, brother. But they can’t do anything, now, can they?”

A muscle in Joel’s jaw feathers. “You bring everything?”

Tommy scoffs, gesturing toward the bags weighing down his arms. “Everything on your fuckin’ mile-long list? Yeah. You gonna let me in?”

Joel ushers him inside and triple-checks the hallway to make sure nobody is lurking nearby. Your voice brightens by a fraction and it feels like an electric shock tingling at his fingertips.

“Tommy.”

“Hey, sweetheart.” He squeezes your shoulder and drops the bags at your feet. “You hangin’ in there?”

Joel watches from the shadows of the hall, his heart leaden at the sight of you smiling for someone else. He’ll do anything to earn that. He’ll forsake all he has, all he is. He’ll crawl on his hands and knees all the way back through hell; he already knows the way.

“Brought your supplies,” says Tommy, kneeling at your feet and opening the bags. Your brows knit together at the sight of your oils from home, your brushes, your pallets long ago stained with colour. “Heard you were feeling inspired.”

Your gaze lifts to Joel, eyes narrowed. “Is that right?”

He’s sheepish, ducking his head. “Just… thought you might be goin’ crazy, stuck in here.”

“That's not why I’m going crazy,” you grumble.

Tommy chuckles. “Well, if anything’s missin’, it's his fault. Most of your canvases were destroyed, but these are all good.”

Your heart feels a little lighter now that you can smell the tangy, cloying scent of your paints and run your fingers over the bristle of your brushes. You give Tommy’s hand a pulse, your thank-you barely snaking past the lump in your throat. “Tell Maria I said hi.”

He gives you a knowing look. “I’m holdin’ you to your promise, y’know. You still have to paint the nursery.”

You cast your eyes toward Joel, who leans against the wall in the dark corridor. “Yeah,” you say softly, stripped to the bone by the way he watches you, unblinking. “I don't break my promises.”

His fingers twitch at his sides, and the gleam of his wedding ring lingers in your periphery long after you've torn your gaze away.

“Tommy’s gonna stay with you,” says Joel, “while I take care of the rest.”

The rest. Of course. “Why now?”

“He just killed Cabrera’s son,” says Tommy. “And we don't want to risk anyone comin’ around, lookin’ for revenge.”

“But you said no business can be conducted here.”

“For enough money, a person will break any rule.”

“That kind of undermines the entire concept of your entire Underworld, doesn't it?” you say. “Rules aren't really rules.”

“But there are consequences,” says Tommy. “Just… if you’ve got enough money, you can hide from ‘em for a while.”

“Until they hunt you down,” you utter, looking across the room at Joel. His silence feels like hot hands on your bare skin. You turn back to Tommy. “What about Maria?”

“She's with her mom this weekend,” says Tommy. “Won't even notice I left the house. You need someone to model, I’m your guy.”

“No,” says Joel.

“I didn’t mean I’d get naked,” says Tommy.

Joel clips Tommy’s shoulder on his way to you, and his brother takes the hint to make himself scarce, disappearing into the bathroom. Joel kneels at your feet and places his hand on your calf. The weight of it is warm, carrying words he has no time left to give.

“This will be over soon,” he says, and he sounds so sure that you almost believe it.

“And then what, Joel?”

He sets his jaw. There's little of the predator, of the boogeyman, in his eyes. All that rich brown betrays now is a quiet resolve. A promise.

“Home,” says your husband. “We’ll make another.”

You squeeze your eyes shut only to open them again and find the hand that rests on your skin. He's bruised, bloodied, and violent, but he does not squeeze or press. He never once has. You wonder idly how often he's put those hands on your body while thinking of a time he'd taken the life of another.

“And what if we can’t?” you ask him.

The first time you'd unveiled a piece to him—the first piece you'd ever painted of you and him, together—Joel had instinctively touched the supple blue skin beneath the woman’s breast, as quickly as a nurse finds a vein.

“She’s blue,” he said. “Is that… how you feel? Like you’re… blue?”

“Blue doesn't just mean sadness,” you told him. “It could almost mean serenity. Stability.”

He looked at you, puzzled, for a while, his hand still extended, pressed to the barely-dry canvas. “Where I grew up,” he said, “I was never really taught anything besides black and white.”

“Colours are different that way,” you said. “They mean a thousand things to a thousand people. They can all look at the same painting and feel something unique.” You gave him a wry smile. “You look at a painting of us having sex and see sadness. I’m trying not to read into it.”

He chuckled. “You should know that's not true. And I like the way you think.”

“You never told me what you think about the painting,” you said playfully. “Do you like it?”

Joel’s hand travelled from the woman’s breast to her hand as if pondering the wash of blues that coloured her skin. Her fingers, intertwined with her lover’s, squeezed down on him—a lifeline.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It's the way I feel when you touch me,” you said. “Like I’m falling apart and coming together at the same time.”

Joel tentatively reaches for your hand and turns it over in your lap, palm to the ceiling. “If you decide a home isn't what you want with me,” he says, tracing your lifeline, “then that’s all right. But I just… I want to know if—”

“Don’t,” you whisper, pressure accumulating behind the inner corners of your eyes. Joel meets your gaze and it takes all you have to suppress the shudder at the feeling of his thumb making its ghostly pilgrimage across your palm. “Don't ask me yet. Please.”

He bows his head and his hand slips from yours, and you choke on the memory of a love uncompromising, effortless, simplistic.

“Just come back alive,” you tell him. “Come back to me, okay?”

Joel rises to his feet, and a kiss plants its roots at your hairline. “Always.”

“When he said to watch me, I don't think he meant the whole time.”

Beside you, Tommy clears his throat, averting his gaze to the floor. “Sorry. Just… it’s impressive, what you do.”

You’re still outlining the tangled limbs of the man and woman, their bodies disappearing into one another, each line indistinguishable from the next. “Well, if it helps, I don't know how cars work.”

He laughs. “Yeah, all right.”

You set down your pencil, casting a glance out the window. Outside, the stars wink down at you. “Will he be okay?” you say softly.

Tommy sighs. Now that he no longer needs to hide the fact that it isn't his brother doing the books, the sting of the reminder rings in your chest with the sound of his binder closing.

“I don't blame you, y’know,” he says, “for stayin’ pissed at him.”

“Good,” you reply, “because he's an idiot.”

“Yeah, that's one thing that's never gonna change.” Tommy leans back in the chair, taking a swig from his beer. “I tried to tell him he was makin’ a mistake. He's a stubborn bastard.”

“He is,” you say, frowning at the curl you've drawn over your subject’s forehead. He looks back at you, brow furrowed, one eye visible, the other blending with hers. It's gruesome, in a way: the frenetic lines, the frantic way their fingers dimple one another’s flesh. “But I can be stubborn, too.”

Tommy leans forward, studying the beginnings of your sketch. “I know he's made mistakes, and Christ knows I’m crazy for defending my dumbass brother. But if you knew how much he loved you…”

“Tommy,” you cut in, setting down your pencil. “Loving me isn’t the problem.” The outline of the bodies on your canvas blur as your eyes burn with tears. “I wonder if he ever really left—in his heart, I mean.”

Tommy’s voice is quiet. He’s twirling a small switchblade in his hand. “All he's ever wanted is peace.”

You cast your eyes toward the ceiling to stop the tears from spilling over, or to find some answer spelled in stars you cannot see. “Then why couldn't he just stay out?” you whisper. “Why did he have to come back?”

“You know, when we were kids, Joel would take all my beatings,” says Tommy, flicking out the blade. It glimmers in a way that catches the light as easily as a flame on kindling. “He'd say everything was his fault when it was really me who knocked over a shitty old vase or vandalised a fresco. And he'd just fuckin’ grin and bear it because that's who he is.”

He’d just been a kid. Just a kid who wanted to protect his little brother, who took every beating, who grew up in a faith he never had faith in.

The fragile wobble in your voice betrays the steel wall of your back. “He let me fall in love with him, Tommy. He let me give my soul to him.”

He ducks his head, folding the blade back into its wooden hilt. “Yeah, I know,” he says softly.

“And Maria?” You let out an airy laugh. “How did she react when you told her about all this?”

He doesn't meet your eye, and you feel your stomach turn over as he sets the blade on the table, bringing his hand over his jaw.

“Oh,” you say.

“We all do things we’re not proud of. Anyway, I had it easier,” he says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m just a mechanic.”

“And my husband’s a killer, right?”

Tommy sighs. “I know you shouldn't take my word for it. But he does want peace. And he came back because he didn't see another choice.”

On the canvas, the man holds the woman close, pulling her tight to his chest, as if he knows she's about to fall. “I hate it,” you say softly, “knowing he's felt so much pain, and I can't make it better. I hate that this is something he needs to figure out himself, Tommy. I hate that I can't be the person he thinks I am.”

“I think you don't give yourself enough credit.” When you turn to face him, Tommy puts the switchblade in your open palm. Your fingers reflexively close around it, and it's cool to the touch. Smooth. The grain in the wood looks like the wriggling lifelines in a human hand. “You made him leave this life. You got him to care enough to make a real one, and you didn't even know it.”

You flick open the switchblade. “This is beautiful.”

“Gave it to me for safekeeping when he retired,” says Tommy. “It was the prize for completing his first job.”

You frown at your reflection, angling the knife up and down. “How old was he?”

Tommy covers the blade with his hand and retracts it. “Keep it,” he says. “It never belonged to me.”

You try to push it toward him, suddenly repulsed. You've heard from his own mouth about the lives he's taken, but the thought of your Joel holding the very same weapon, sinking it into flesh, slicing through the strings that hold a person together, makes your fingers tremble. “It doesn't belong to me either, Tommy.”

“Maybe not,” he says, “but I think you’d know what to do with it better than me.”

You swallow hard. “A man declares war because he wants peace.” Your thumb slides along the smooth edge of the hilt before you hide it inside your bag. “I can't pretend to understand what you both went through, Tommy. But know that I’m glad you found a good life. And know that if you break Maria’s heart, I’ll make you swallow paint.”

Tommy nods sombrely. “I’ll tip the can myself. We're thinking green for the nursery.”

“Green is good.” You give him a conciliatory smile.

“Joel’s a good man,” he says. “He's just… misguided.”

“Are you a man of God, Tommy?”

He laughs. “I don't think anyone who came out of that place alive still believes there's a God. If only the Sisters could see us now.”

“I hope they never do,” you tell him. “I hope they never get the satisfaction of knowing they hurt him.”

“I don't think they’d be much satisfied,” says Tommy, “if they knew he'd found peace after all.”

Hours unfold. The canvas sits untouched as you and Tommy sit next to one another, the moon outside slowly enveloped by clouds. The silver silhouette casts a halo through the grey, and you think of your Joel, alone on his warpath, bloodying the ring on his finger. You think of your name on his back, nestled above the praying hands, and the pit of restlessness yawns wide open.

“He should be back by now.”

Tommy rubs his palms over his thighs, a behaviour you've noticed in Joel. “Yeah, he should.”

“But he'll be okay,” you say, a minute warble colouring your voice, “right?”

“He's Joel,” is all he gives you in return.

Your fingers twist themselves into knots in your lap until the jab of a car horn outside jolts you back to life. “Tommy,” you rasp, wetting your lips. “Go find him.”

He nods, standing abruptly from his chair and yanking his coat free from the hook by the door. “He’ll kill me for leavin’ you alone,” he says.

“We both know he needs you,” you say, turning your head to watch the moon peek out from behind the sheet of grey. “Just bring my husband back.”

There's a distinct sensation that erupts across the skin of a nonbeliever who crosses the threshold of a church. It begins in the floorboards, where the soul of a supposed Christ lingers, and radiates up through the soles of the feet, through the knees, until it circles the brain, persistent as a murder of crows. You don't belong here.

The little church is nothing extravagant, which Joel has to find a little funny. Five rows of pews on either side, a basin of holy water next to the pulpit, a smattering of devotees kneeling on the padded seats in front of them. He swallows the burn and approaches the pastor.

“My son,” says the man, spreading his arms wide as if welcoming Joel back from a pilgrimage. “Welcome. What troubles your heart today?”

Joel pulls the Benelli from his canvas bag and blows out the pastor’s kneecap.

His deafening roar echoes off the domed ceiling and reverberates through the stained-glass paintings of the Virgin Mary. “Fuck!” cries the pastor, scrambling backward with a hand covering his bloodied leg. “Fucking cunt, fucking asshole, vete a la mierda! What the fuck is your problem?”

Joel turns and fires another two shots at the guards on the balcony. One of them tumbles over the edge. The kneeling figures flee the scene, some screaming, some praying.

“Donde esta Cabrera?” Joel growls, bunching the pastor’s white collar in his bloodstained fist. When he doesn't reply, Joel applies pressure to the wound in his knee between his thumb and forefinger. “Habla.”

“Fuck!” he howls. “He isn't here. Hijo de puta, he's not here!”

“Fine,” says Joel, hauling the man upright with little regard for his obliterated knee. “Then we're takin’ a little field trip.”

Joel knew many of Cabrera’s secrets during his time working for the bastard. He would have changed the codes to the vault, but it’s the same nonetheless. Joel shoves the pastor down the winding staircase and aims the barrel of the shotgun between his eyes.

“Open the vault.”

“Manuel will kill me,” pleads the pastor.

Joel lifts a brow. “You see me cryin’?”

A pale, trembling hand rises to the keypad and types in the code. Inside the vault, two women are counting piles of cash behind the counter. Joel gestures toward the door with his shotgun. “Ladies,” he greets, “out.”

They scurry out of the vault with their hands in the air. Inside the small concrete cell, safes are embedded in the walls, twice Joel’s height, one of them unlocked and brimming with neatly piled heaps of bound bills and documents. Joel reaches up and unlatches a shelf, watching the avalanche of blood money cascade onto the floor around his feet. With one hand, he produces a lighter from his pocket and flicks on the flame. It ignites the piles of cash and papers as Joel walks out, leaving the wounded pastor on the floor.

A whisper goes up in flames behind his back. “El espectro.”

At the aggressive slam of car doors, Joel climbs the staircase to the balcony and looks over the rear exit. Outside, Manuel Cabrera and his men cross the concrete toward the church. Joel curses, ejecting the shell from his shotgun and inserting a new clip. The stained glass crumbles with the first shot as he puts a bullet in a bodyguard’s head. The shouts flutter toward the sky in the ensuing panic. Joel hears Manuel cry out his orders: Around the back. You two, flank him. The bastard’s here; go fucking kill him.

The smell of smoke begins to stick to his throat as he takes another shot. The sound of dress shoes clatters, echoing, across the floorboards below him. “Goddamn it,” he growls. He’ll be flushed out before long if he doesn't move. Joel checks his clip, fruitlessly searches the body on the balcony for more ammunition, and kicks him over the edge. The resounding thud of his corpse against the pews is somewhat gratifying. Cabrera’s men crowd the dead man, which gives Joel just enough time to descend the staircase and shoulder open the back door. The parking lot teems with Cabrera’s army ants, creeping around parked cars as they search for the boogeyman.

One of the bodyguards ducks behind a Range Rover, and Joel bares his teeth, the wolf at the hunt. He shoots out the front tires, which deflates the car just enough to give him a glimpse of the man’s head. He takes the shot.

“Puta!” someone cries. Joel ducks as a shot pings off the front bumper of the Cadillac next to him, and he briefly takes stock of his ammunition. Fuck. He would have really liked to keep the fucking high ground. Now, he's as trapped as they are. Rats in a maze of shiny new cars.

Joel peeks around the corner and feels the heat of a bullet seat through the sleeve of his jacket. He shoulders the sting of the new wound and rounds the corner, raising his weapon and firing. He counts another two, three, five dead, and the moist air begins to cling to the back of his neck, sweat lining his collar, blood soaking his sleeve. He calls Cabrera’s name. He calls again.

“Let's end this,” he growls. “Come out, and I’ll spare the rest of them.”

An explosion nearby sets him off-kilter, rattling the earth beneath him. The church goes up easily, flames licking the sky, sirens blaring several blocks over, the steady eruption of chaos like golden nectar in his mouth. Joel rises to his feet and continues his charge.

He calls Cabrera’s name again. He thinks of your body, prone and cold on the floor, reaching for him. He thinks of that night and imagines himself saving you before any of it happened. He imagines turning out of the restaurant that very first night, retreating into the darkness where it was comfortable and you were safe.

No—he'd gone to the light. He’d let it all topple, and he'd do it again. This world is not where he belongs. You are what the word has led him to. All the gospel and the hymnals and the nights spent praying on his knees to a false god led him to your soft, supple side, not to the jagged edges of this unforgiving Underworld.

He calls Cabrera’s name again, but he hears the roar of the engine too late. The circle of vehicles crowds him, claustrophobic, and it's Manuel Cabrera who steps out.

He looks the same as he did eight years ago, when Joel approached him and asked to be released from his contract, if not a little more grey. He's dressed in an Italian suit and his shoes are unscuffed. His hair is combed back and his eyes are sunken into his face.

Something strikes Joel in the back of his head, and he sees the Creation of Adam on the north wall of the orphanage, the wrinkled old hand, the stray dogs.

The starchy scent of the canvas sack jolts him awake. Someone yanks it up over his head, and he blinks in the harsh light of day.

He's in a giant empty warehouse. Light filters through the broken glass windows high above their heads, shards and empty bullet casings and cigarette butts crunching underfoot. Judging from the scuffling of feet around him, ten or so men surround him where he sits in an old folding chair, bound by the wrists. He feels a throbbing ache in his skull and winces. You’ll give him hell for this.

“It’s good to see you, Joel,” says the silhouette sitting across from him, flanked by two more shadows. Joel blinks them into focus. “It’s been a long time.”

The edges soften until he can see the whites of the eyes, the cool detached gaze, the glimmer of a silver watch. “Manuel,” says Joel. “¿Cómo está su hijo?”

A huff of air is all he gets in reply. Manuel sheds his long coat and leans forward on his elbows. “You know, Joel, my son was a fucking moron.”

“I could've told you that,” says Joel, “and I would've saved you a lot of breath.”

“My son,” growls Manuel, “was a moron, but he was my son. I told him as much—told him there was nothing he could do, not when Joel Miller was hunting him down. And when I asked him what he had done to warrant the boogeyman’s vengeance, he said it was because of a girl.”

Manuel rubs his hand over his stubbled jaw, laughing like the situation is amusing. “Well, that’s good for you, Joel. Good to finally find something you care about, to find a reason. I see you're putting your retirement to good use. Fighting for your very own Helen of Troy.”

Joel says nothing, studying the manic glint in Cabrera’s eye. He recalls that same look from the night he asked to leave, placing his gun on the desk between them.

“I want out,” he said.

“Out?” said Cabrera. “And why, Joel, would you ever want out?”

“Because I’m done here,” he said. “I'm done in this world and I’m done with you.”

Joel wonders if Cabrera had been waiting for that exact moment: for Joel Miller, the ghost in the corner of the Underworld’s bedroom, to step forward and give Manuel Cabrera the opportunity he needed to rise to the very top.

“Very well,” he said after a long silence. “But I want you to consider whether your freedom is worth what I’m about to ask of you. It will not be easy.”

“It’s worth it,” said Joel. “Now tell me what I need to do.”

Cabrera sits across from Joel the same way he did eight years ago, the same insidious gleam in those black eyes, smiling smugly without moving his face at all.

“You've changed,” he says. “You’re softer, Joel. That wedding ring must've done a number on my killer.”

“Maybe I never stopped bein’ a killer,” says Joel.

“Maybe not. But the difference is that now, you have a reason to keep living.” Cabrera has the gall to feign remorse as he shrugs his shoulders. “You took my son from me, Joel. You understand how this world works.”

Joel kicks out his leg instinctively, baring his teeth at Cabrera like a caged dog. Two henchmen clap down on his shoulders and abruptly pull him backward in the chair. The rope around his wrists chafe.

“When I signed that contract,” he growled, “I had nothing to live for. Nobody to love. Until the day she showed up in my life. She gave me a word to follow that wasn’t yours or your God’s.” His mouth hardly fits around the name. Yours has always felt softer on his tongue. “Trust that Emiliano deserved worse than the death I gave him.”

“A woman above God,” Cabrera utters under his breath, rubbing his palms over his thighs before he rises to his feet and grabs Joel by the hair at the scruff of his neck. Joel winces at the prickling sensation erupting across his scalp. Cabrera’s breath stinks of weed. “El espectro,” he says mockingly. “The fuckin’ boogeyman. You're not so scary like this.”

Cabrera forces Joel to look up at him. The pressure accumulates behind his nose, painful enough to make his eyes water. “You burned my church down, Joel,” says his captor. “Money is replaceable, sure, but the leverage I had on this city… Hijo de puta. Just for a fuckin’ girl, Joel?”

Joel can't help but sneer. “Yeah, I enjoyed that part.”

It earns him a blow across the jaw, and he relishes the electric lash that wriggles down his side. Cabrera lets go of his hair and gestures with a glance to his men before he turns away, plucking his coat from the chair.

“Manuel.”

He watches Cabrera consider it: to indulge Joel, or to let him rot.

The first hit he executed on Cabrera’s behalf earned him just ten thousand. Then thirty-something, having long ago left the Sisters, the hard wooden floors worn with the pressure of so many kneeling bodies, the Marines, and the sound of warfare, Joel didn’t have many places to stay. He took the red money, earned from the body and probably the pockets of a dead senator, and rented a place.

Nighttime in the city didn't mean quiet, not outside nor in. That night, Joel sat on the side of his bed in a cockroach-infested Brooklyn apartment whose walls smelled of cigarette smoke, and he put his face in his hands. Leaving one war only to enter another, Cabrera told him, is just the way of life. You, Joel, are a killer.

But that can’t be all, he thinks now, his hands bound and his blood singing in his heart. He wonders if you're asleep by now, if you've taken to his side of the bed like you used to, if you've stretched your hand across the linen for a taste of the memory of that love-like-sunlight.

It's your blood, he realises, that courses through him. Your blood that tastes sweet as ichor, your blood that runs in his blue-green veins. It's your blood he hears whispering to him when the dreams go black as pitch and he cannot hope to breathe.

The last contract he took for Cabrera earned him no prize but his freedom. Nothing but the smell of your perfume and your warm body tucked neatly into his every night and the cool kiss of your twin wedding bands could have satisfied him. He was not just a killer. He’d proven it. He’d lived it in eight years of gentle mornings, kissing you awake starting at the roots of your hair, and he’d loved it as much as they all had tried to make him love a God that never loved him.

He’d never forgotten how to kill. But he hasn't forgotten how to love, either. That, he figured out all on his own.

“All I wanted was peace. And your son took that from me.” Joel lifts his head to watch Cabrera: the way his spine stiffens, the way his eyes narrow minutely. “He killed my peace and so I killed him. So you can either pull your contract,” Joel says, feeling the snarl pull at his vocal cords like jagged claws as his voice begins to rise, “or you can die screaming like your bastard son.”

He barely lurches forward in the chair before a plastic bag is shucked over his head, suctioned tight around his throat. Two men hold him down as Joel struggles against his bonds, gasping against the cool plastic. He's overpowered, hands wrenching his shoulders back against the chair. He kicks out for leverage, but his strength is waning, and the brief high of losing consciousness brings him back to you.

He took you to Greece for your honeymoon—or, rather, you took him. You were more travelled, more comfortable in the bright spots of the world, more settled in the spotlight. He thinks about how the sun adorned your skin like sequins, how eyes followed you everywhere you went, how you would see him frowning at all the attention and quietly take his hand.

They don't exist, you would tell him. You're all mine now, Joel Miller. And it’s just you and me.

Maybe there's a scrap of truth to fate. He's always been yours, long before he ever knew your face.

He basks in the sunlight on the beach for the time being. You wore his sunglasses when yours broke. You let him apply your sunscreen and you tucked your head into his shoulder on the luxurious chair. You fell asleep with your hand on his chest. Joel spent an hour studying the band around your ring finger.

Maybe Greece was a dream. Maybe the sun was a trick of the light and the clouds were smoke and the sky was black and the memory dwindles to a pinprick and he's grasping onto the image, your smile, your laugh, bells and perfume and a candle set at the foot of a golden statue—

“Stop.”

“Stop,” says a voice, and the air comes rushing back in. Joel wheezes, blinking hard to clear the spots or maybe to preserve the picture. But you're gone, slipping softly away as the brush of your knuckle over his cheek, and Joel is alive again.

“Tommy?”

His brother doesn't look at him, but Joel sees the brief shimmer of gunmetal hidden in his waistband.

He can feel the bruises blooming in a circle of fire around his throat. You’ll really be furious with him.

Joel watches his brother pull the handgun and feels the ropes cut into the tender skin of his wrists, helpless as he feels now. “What in the hell…”

“I’m sorry, brother,” says Tommy, turning the gun on Joel.

#This au fuels me

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acts of service | frankie morales x f!reader

masterlist | frankie masterlist | kofi | ao3 | follow @swiftispunkupdates and turn on notifications for updates

pairing: frankie morales x f!reader rating: 18+ word count: 7.9k

summary: an unexpected admission leads frankie to make you an offer you can't refuse. this surely won't come with any consequences. OR you've never had your pussy ate and your best friend frankie helps you out. warnings etc: [pre-triple frontier] smut, childhood best friends to lovers, mutual pining, idiots in love are lying to themselves and each other, shy!reader, kind of insecure!reader, pet names in both english and spanish, literal porn, piracy, the US military, oral (f receiving), masturbation (m), a little handjob action, frankie morales has a huge cock, reader is curvy coded but i think anyone could read this fic, pov swapping, this has kind of a bittersweet ending i'm sorry. no use of y/n.

a/n: these two kind of just swept me up and took me on a ride. i headcanon this girlie eventually becomes frankie's "lady," which i tell you now bc i fear i might have accidentally made this sad. thank you @joelscruff for the beta and thank you @adamantiumspy for the notes on the spanish.

“I should get going soon, huh?”

“No.”

“Okay, then,” Frankie shrugs, requiring no more convincing than that.

He hadn’t really wanted to leave anyway. He was just trying to be polite. He knows he doesn’t have to worry about that with you, but still. He doesn’t want to overstay his welcome or anything.

It's just that the times he gets back home are rare, and even rarer are the times he gets with you. His best friend. He doesn’t know if that’s still what you’d call him, but that’s his own stupid fault. Maybe he’s known you the longest but he knows you’ve been busy building your own life, a life far removed from the years you’d spent growing up together.

You’ve got all kinds of friends now. People he’s never met, people that came into your life while he’d been deployed. Hell, you’ve spent the better part of the last six months dating some guy you’d met on a dating app (he didn’t even know you could use those things for anything other than fucking) but that relationship had fallen apart before he’d even gotten the chance to meet the guy. Your first real boyfriend, as you’d put it.

It’s probably for the best anyway. Frankie’s sure he wouldn’t have liked him.

Frankie’s not sure he’ll like any guy you’re dating who’s not him.

But you don’t need to know that. He’d chosen this life, for better or for worse, and the last thing he’s going to do is burden you with his stupid, inescapable feelings when he knows he’s just gonna have to leave again anyway.

So instead, he overstays his welcome.

The bowl of popcorn you share sits half finished on the end table, your cozy little living room cast in the faint glow of a colourful glass-shaded floor lamp, that one you’d proudly boasted about finding at the antiques market. He remembers the ache in his chest when you’d sent him that picture, that painful longing for a simple life with you, complete with antiquing and brunch and nights like tonight; your feet in his lap, splayed out together on your sectional while Frankie flips aimlessly through your seemingly never-ending list of channels.

“Jesus, how much do you pay for this?” he demands, honestly just curious now as he clicks towards the channel-800 mark, waiting for the numbers to circle back to 1–which he really thinks should have happened by now. “Who even needs all these channels?”

He jumps past a slew of news stations that all appear to be from different countries, perfectly punctuating his point.

Your sweet laughter fills the air. God, he loves that sound. He’s missed it.

“You think I pay for this?” you say. “Frank, this shit is like, so illegal.”

“Excuse me?” He rounds on you, pausing his scrolling on what appears to be a soap opera from Indonesia, “So you’re a criminal?”

“No,” you insist, making grabby hands for the remote, which he deliberately holds just out of your reach with a smirk. “My dad set it up, I don’t even know how it works. I only use it to watch Housewives, anyway.”

“Sure,” he teases as you squirm a little closer, your legs draping over his thighs almost to the knee now. His cheeks warm at the proximity but he pushes down the butterflies in his stomach, twisting away from you as you reach across his body for the remote. “Next time I come home you’re gonna be running some kinda underground piracy ring on the dark web.”

“Whatever.” You slump back into your spot on the couch, adorably mock-grumpy about it. But Frankie can still see the smile tugging at your lips.

“No, seriously,” he presses on, “If I’m gone long enough, I’m gonna come back and find you in jail.”

That quickly wipes the smile off your face. Your mouth forms into a hard line and a sharp twinge of guilt punches Frankie hard in the gut.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t go away for so long,” you grumble, and there’s no hint of teasing in your voice anymore.

Frankie’s own face falls and he swallows tightly against the sudden lump in his throat. He shouldn’t have fucking said anything. And worst of all, you keep looking at him with these big, sad eyes, like you’re heartbroken at the thought of him going away again and goddamnit if you keep that up, he might start to believe it means something more than it really does.

Whatever anguish he’s feeling inside must be showing pretty clearly on his face because before he can even open his mouth to make it right, you’re apologizing to him.

“Sorry, I made it weird,” you quickly amend, shaking your head and forcing a smile. Like it’s your job to alleviate the tension in the room. You’re always doing that. Always making sure everyone else is comfortable. But Frankie’s not gonna let you get away with that. Because you have every reason to be mad at him and he knows it.

“Hey, no,” he sighs, sitting forward and anxiously rubbing at his scruff. “You didn’t make it weird. I’m sorry.”

He’s not sure what for. For leaving, for bringing it up, for loving you. The sympathetic smile you offer him feels less forced now, at least.

“It’s okay,” you nod. You take a deep breath through your nose and Frankie’s relieved to see you let your guard down again, your head falling back into the couch behind you as you exhale. Your eyelids flutter closed for a second and he feels almost envious of how relaxed you look. That is, until a cacophony of blood curdling screams begin erupting from the television and your head is quickly snapping up at the sound.

“What the fuck are we watching?” you demand, your voice coated with genuine laughter again.

“I think she just found out he was having an affair,” Frankie posits, trying his best to make sense of the drama currently unfolding on screen.

“I don’t know, she could be screaming about how much she loves that other woman’s outfit.”

“She’s crying.”

“Maybe she’s just passionate about fashion, Francisco.”

He snorts and for a few minutes, you watch in comfortable silence, taking turns guessing what the hell is going on until you give up and nudge at his leg with your socked toes.

“Keep looking,” you suggest. “I don’t know what else is on here, I’ve honestly never gone this high in the channels.”

“‘Kay,” he agrees easily with a smirk. He’s always loved how you let yourself get a little bossy with him. You’re not like that with everyone. You’re quiet with most people, always trying to make yourself smaller or sweeter or softer. But not with him. And that’s how he likes it. He’d never want you to pretend with him.

He clicks his way higher and higher through the channels, waiting for something to catch his eye or yours. He quickly flies over a long string of radio channels, 60s, 70s, 80s, Easy Listening…he’s flicking through them so fast he doesn’t catch the moment the channel titles lining the bottom of the screen change to XXX–Adult, 24/7 Porn and you’re suddenly being slapped with the image of a woman laid out on a kitchen counter, bare beyond a pair of stilettos, moaning out obscenely while her male scene partner buries his face in her pussy.

“Oh, Jesus,” you groan. You cover your face with your hands, poking an eye out from between your fingers, a sight so fucking cute Frankie forgets for a second that he should probably change the channel.

The woman on screen cries out as the man between her legs devours her–a little overzealous, in Frankie’s opinion. Frankie swallows tightly, pushing down on the unconscious twist of arousal the sound inspires. He’d be lying if he said the images on screen combined with your legs still slung over his thighs weren’t having some kind of effect on him.

“You’ve really got everything on this thing, huh?” he chuckles, working to keep his tone light.

You keep peeking through your fingers at the screen and inexplicably, Frankie finds himself torn, hesitating with his hand on the dial. What would it be like to watch this with you? Would you want that? Why does it feel like crossing a line? Why does he kind of want to?

“Frankie, turn it off,” you beg and that easily settles it. If you don’t want it, then neither does he.

He mumbles a hurried, okay okay, continuing his exploration upwards through the channels but…it doesn’t stop. Just channel after channel of actors in various states of nudity and debauchery.

“Fuck–there’s a lot,” he notes, more to himself than you.

He combs past a few orgies and some painfully inauthentic lesbian stuff. He knows he could just hop back to the guide instead of skimming through it all, but it’s kind of funny now to see just how much porn is baked into this highly illegal cable device your dad had apparently set up for you.

He only pauses when you make a small comment, just as he comes upon another video of a man shouldered between a woman’s thighs, the camera zoomed in close to his face as he flicks his tongue over her clit.

“Ugh, why do they always have them doing that?”

Frankie turns to face you, letting the video continue on in the background. Your hands aren’t covering your eyes anymore. Instead, you assess the scene with furrowed brows and your lips curled upwards in disgust.

“What?”

“Like, there’s no way either of them enjoy that,” you continue, waving your hand at the screen like he should just know what you’re referring to.

Now Frankie frowns, turning back to the TV in case he’s missed something horribly wrong. But no…as far as he can tell, it’s just a man feverishly eating pussy.

“You’re talking about him eating her out?” Frankie asks.

“Yes!”

You say it like it should be obvious.

You watch together now, and Frankie tries his best to take in the scene pragmatically. Which is hard, considering the wet smack of the man’s lips against the woman’s pussy is making his ears burn and the blood rush to his cock.

The male actor is…enthusiastic. Lacking some finesse maybe, but certainly giving it his all. His eyes are closed, mouth glued to her cunt as he rocks his head back and forth. He’s on his knees in front of her, dick hard as a rock between his legs. Frankie can’t really see the problem, but you’re still cringing away beside him.

“I mean, she’s over acting a bit but he seems to be enjoying it,” Frankie shrugs.

At that, you scoff.

“What?”

“No guy actually enjoys that,” you say insistently.

His first reaction is shock; you’re a smart person and he’s never heard you say anything more wrong. But the initial disbelief quickly turns to rage the second it dawns on him that there’s no way you could have come to that conclusion on your own, which means someone else must have convinced you it was true.

“Who the fuck told you that?” he demands.

It comes out angrier than he intends.

“I–”

All at once, you shrink in on yourself, dropping your head and staring down at your hands. And all at once, Frankie feels like an asshole because he can tell you really fucking believe the lie.

“Nenita,” he says, softening his tone.

He turns the volume down on the TV and twists to face you full-on. The obscene images on screen play on in the background but they’re easier to ignore without the wanton moans of the actors. He wraps a hand around one of your wrists and you peer up at him shyly.

“Who told you that?” he repeats.

You take a deep breath.

“You remember that Tinder guy I told you about?”

Any attempt at softness dissipates in a second. Your voice is so timid and Frankie’s blood boils because you’re not supposed to sound that way with him. About a million furious thoughts cross his mind, like how much he’d love to fucking kill the loser who’d made you feel this way, who’d fed you the most absurd, bullshit lie just so he could deny you pleasure–

Jesus. Your first real boyfriend. How many times had you sucked his cock, maybe even let him fuck you and he–

The goddamn injustice of it all has him too mad to even respond. He just makes some noise between a huff and a scoff and squeezes his fingers tighter around your wrist.

“I don’t know, that’s just what he said,” you go on quickly, always trying to diffuse the tension. You shake your head and look down at your hands again. “He said he didn’t like it and any guy who says he does is lying.”

“Well, I like it,” Frankie says reflexively and your eyes snap up to meet his at once.

One thing about you and Frankie is that you rarely ever talk about sex. You’ve been with people, he’s been with people–you both know this. But you don’t…talk about it. Frankie’s not one to kiss and tell anyway, plus, maybe part of him had always thought that if he’d been too explicit about his experiences with other people, you might start to think he hadn’t been dreaming about you through every single one of them.

It’s why this admission, here, in your apartment, on your couch, with some second rate porno playing in the background, has you staring at him wide-eyed. Because it feels like crossing a line.

But Frankie holds his ground, staring right back at you until he sees you nod.

“I fucking love it,” he continues, like he needs you to really hear it. “And I’m not lying.”

You nod again, and even though you still don’t look fully convinced, he leans back into the couch, prepared to let it go but–

“Wait, so.” He sits upright again, and he really shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t go crossing yet another line but some sick, masochistic part of him needs to know. “Does that mean he never even–?”

You just give him this look before dropping your gaze back down to your lap and Frankie sighs, pulling his cap back to comb an exasperated hand through his curls instead of saying what he’d really like to say.

It probably is for the best he never got the chance to meet this guy.

“I mean, it’s fine, I didn’t want it anyway,” you insist with a shrug. “Or…I don’t even–I don’t even know if I like it.”

That’s fair, he guesses, but also–

“You probably just haven’t had anyone do it right.”

Every woman he’s ever been with had seemed to like it when he’d done it, anyway. He’s certain if he got his mouth on you…

Don’t even think about it.

But it’s too late; he already is thinking about it. Thinking about your messy little pussy and how warm and wet it would feel against his lips and how your sweet juices would stain his moustache and beard. How your soft thighs would feel pressed against his ears and how you’d writhe when you came for him. How he’d like to ruin you for anyone else so you’d never again have to doubt how much you loved it.

He’s thinking about it before you even quietly admit, “I haven’t had anyone do it at all.”

And the admission breaks his heart, because you deserve it. You deserve to feel good. He could make you feel good.

He blurts out the offer before his brain can catch up in time to stop him–

“Can I?” he asks in a breathless rush. “Can I do it for you?”

Your eyes widen and something fiery burns in his belly, a tingling, nervous heat expanding outwards to his extremities with a kind of electric shock. Adrenaline, he realizes, coursing in his veins after crossing yet another uncrossable line.

“Frankie,” you breathe and he swears he can feel the same waves of anticipation that are currently flooding his senses rolling off of you in turn.

“Just as a friend,” he lies, inching closer to you on the couch, experimentally resting his hand on your thigh. You both stare at it in wonder, shared breaths coming faster between you.

“You can say no,” he whispers. Please don’t say no.

Your breath catches as he moves his hand higher, intoxicated by the warmth radiating between you. He gets as far as the soft crease of your thigh and then your hand is flying down to cover his, stopping him in his tracks.

“Frankie,” you repeat. He thinks you sound sad, and that’s not right. He lifts his stare from your conjoined hands to carefully watch your face, trying to make sense of the fear there, while you shake your head and nervously avoid his gaze.

“You don’t need to do me any favours, Francisco,” you murmur.

“It’s not–” he starts, cutting himself off with a deep breath as he tries to collect his thoughts.

A favour? Yeah, right. How can he find the right words to tell you he’s dreamt of this a million times? That even if he hadn’t been in love with you since he’d first laid eyes on you, getting the chance to eat you out would still be the sweetest fucking gift in the world?

He hooks a finger under your chin, tilting your face up so he can see your eyes. You glance up at him from under your lashes, doleful and shy, shoulders bunched up to your ears. No. You’re not supposed to look like that with him, you’re not supposed to make yourself small for him.

He presses his fingers down into the meat of your thigh and your lips fall apart as a shallow breath passes through them.

“I want it too, querida,” he rasps. He can hear years and years of pining and desperation underscoring his words. He hopes you don’t.

You’re treading on dangerous ground and you know it.

I want it too, querida.

His whispered words ring out between you and you allow yourself to believe that they’re true. Frankie wants it, he wants to see your pussy and he wants to put his mouth on it, he wants to give this thing that no one’s ever given you before–

As a friend.

It’s fine, you can ignore that part. You can pretend. This is just a friend helping a friend and not the man you’ve always wished would love you back and it’s definitely not going to fuck you up forever to let him do this.

You’re too blinded by arousal to think straight, too caught up in the heat of the moment as he moves your legs off his lap and pulls you down so you’re lying on your back and he’s hovering above you. He slowly strokes his hands up and down your thighs over your leggings, like he’s trying to get a feel for you. And he kind of is, you think. He’s never touched you like this before, all reverent and patient with it as his thumbs near the apex of your thighs before trailing his touch back down to the tops of your knees, over and over until you’re so turned on you don’t even care how much of a mistake this is.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he hums, almost to himself as his big hands curl around your hips and his fingers play just under the edge of your shirt.

He sounds so genuine. There’s no way this is real.

Instinctually, you roll your eyes. “Frankie, come on.”

“You are,” Frankie insists, reaching up beneath the hem of your shirt to glide his palms over your bare sides. He exhales shakily at the feeling of your naked flesh under his hands and your cunt throbs in response, your will to argue with him fading in an instant.

Then he licks his lips, flitting his eyes up to your face as if to ask permission for whatever he’s going to do next. Whatever it is, you nod your acceptance.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, appearing to steel himself before he hooks his fingers under the waistband of your leggings and begins to tug them down your thighs and–

Reality hits you like a ton of bricks. Frankie’s about to see you naked. Francisco Morales is about to see all your imperfections and your curls and your pussy.

“Frankie, wait.”

You clench your legs together and Frankie stops at once. He looks up at you like a wounded puppy, brown eyes all wide and unsure, eyebrows raised in questioning.

Oh god, he’s so beautiful. He has no idea how beautiful you’ve always found him. Not a clue how inadequate you’d started to feel beside him when he’d begun to grow up into such a handsome, desirable young man while you’d stumbled awkwardly through your teen years, always feeling like you’d never be worthy of love or pleasure, least of all from Frankie.

Of course you know now that’s not true; you’ve had plenty of suitors and casual hookups since Frankie’d gone away. Although, you’d never felt comfortable enough with any of them to let them do this for you. And then your stupid ex had to go and make you feel so ashamed for even wanting it that you’d been forced to just accept your fate, that this just wasn’t something you were ever going to get to experience.

And while you have to admit there’s probably no one in the world you feel more comfortable with than Frankie, you’ve also spent years convincing yourself he would never love you the way you’ve always loved him. That he’d never look at you the way you’d always wished he would.

If he’d wanted to, surely he would have done it by now. Right?

“You want me to stop?” he asks.

“I just–”

You do but you also really, really don’t. You throw an arm over your face, debilitating nerves co-mingling with the electrifying need coursing through you. You can’t fucking think.

You take a long, steadying breath, prying your arm away from your face to find him still looking down at you with that stupid, beautiful face.

You’re about to offer him an out but the earnestness in his eyes makes you say something honest instead.

“What if you don’t like what you see?”

The confusion on his face dissolves into something like shock as he huffs out a disbelieving laugh. You frown, embarrassed, and Frankie quickly reins himself in.

“Corazón,” he says, working to sound more serious even as a smile continues to pull at the corners of his lips. He grabs your arm and much to your surprise, places your hand over his crotch. Your mouth falls open with a sudden gasp.

“Feel that? Feel how fucking hard I am?” Frankie murmurs gruffly and you do. Even through his jeans, the thick, prominent outline of his cock is firm and solid under your touch. You don’t think you can speak without moaning, so you just bite your lip and nod in answer to his question.

“Créeme,” he grunts, pressing your hand down into his bulge like he’s trying to prove his point. “I already like what I see. Are you gonna let me see me more?”

You nod frantically, the evidence of his arousal all the convincing you need for now.

“Yes?” he presses expectantly.

“Yes–yeah, Frankie.”

You think you hear him say, ‘kay, under his breath, and then he’s shifting, considering the couch around him like he’s trying to decide how he wants to do this.

“C’mere,” he suggests, not really giving you much of a choice as he guides you towards the corner of the sectional, maneuvering your body until your legs are dangling off the end of the couch. He locates a cushion and places it under your neck and then he falls to his knees on the floor before you.

You’re now face to face with the muted porn on your TV screen, the actors having now advanced from cunnilingus to rabid fucking. It’s kind of a debauched backdrop, you guess, but no more debauched than the sight of Frankie throwing his cap off and darting his tongue out between his plush lips as his fingers make their way under your waistband again. He starts to tug, and this time, you let him.

“Lift up just a bit for me, babe,” he instructs you gently when the fabric bunches around your ass. You angle your hips up and Frankie hums appreciatively, carefully pulling away your leggings and underwear. He keeps his eyes on his hands while he strips you from the waist down, moving without an ounce of haste.

You bring your knees together out of habit once you’re fully bare but Frankie isn’t even looking where you expect him to. He’s looking at your ankles and shins as he draws a line up your legs with his hands, that same up and down pattern he’d painted on your thighs earlier.

“Can’t believe you’re letting me do this,” he marvels softly.

Your heart rate quickens into overdrive when his hands eventually move up to rest on your knees. Something seems to overtake him then as his soft eyes darken and go a bit glassy, dull fingernails digging into your skin with barely-contained desperation.

“Shit, baby,” he breathes, his voice almost a whine. He leans forward into you, teeth grazing at the flesh of your thigh as he peeks up at you from under his dark lashes. “Can I please look at your pussy?”

“Yeah, Frankie,” you squeak. How could ever say no when he sounds like that?

You urge your muscles to slacken as Frankie coaxes your knees apart, pulling back to look at you when he does. You can’t help it; you squeeze your eyes closed and hold your breath, waiting nervously for the moment he decides to end this.

“Fuck me,” Frankie groans.

What does that mean? Is that good?

“Holy shit, baby,” Frankie continues, shaking your leg a bit to get your attention and against your better judgment, you open your eyes. You look at him, rather than your own body laid out like this, because it’s easier that way.

He’s ogling you, sitting back on his haunches with his hands on your knees, mouth agape as he takes in your pussy for the first time.

“You’re so wet,” he revels quietly, glancing up at you curiously. He looks…thrilled about it. “Do you always get this wet?”

You’re not sure you’ve ever been so wet in your entire fucking life actually.

“Mm-mm.”

Frankie smiles.

“Just for me, huh?” he hums, then he’s looking at your pussy again and it’s like it entrances him. He growls, hinging to kiss your inner thighs. He inhales deeply through his nose and you try not to get too embarrassed at the thought of him breathing in your scent. Anyway, he seems to like it, if the ragged sigh he exhales and his fluttering lashes are anything to go by.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna taste so fucking good,” he grits through his teeth.

You’ve imagined your first kiss with Frankie thousands of times. But you’ve never imagined it quite like this. Never imagined his lips on your knees or his scruff on your thighs, his fingers tracing the stretchmarks around your hips like he’s drawing a map across your skin. Every touch, every patient, adoring graze of his hands and his mouth and his teeth both calms and excites you.

“Can I tell you something?” he whispers after several long moments.

“Yeah.”

“You have a perfect pussy.” The smile in his voice is audible and it quickly breaks the spell.

“Oh, fuck off,” you laugh, playfully kicking a leg out at him. “You don’t have to do all that.”

“Do what? I’m being so fucking serious,” he retorts, his sweet smiling fading. “It’s…so pretty. I’m not lying. Okay?”

You nod and choose to believe him. “Okay.”

It’s getting hard to argue with him now, as his hands glide up towards the apex of your thighs, spreading you open wider as he slowly nears your centre. Your heart pounds in your ears, chest light with anticipation as his thumbs brush your outer lips and your eyes snap shut again.

“Can I touch you, baby?” he asks, his voice all low and husky in a way you’ve never heard him sound before.

“Please.”

He sucks in a long breath, which you mirror unconsciously, and then he’s swiping two thick fingers through the seam of your folds, spreading wetness from your hole to your clit.

“Oh,” Frankie sighs reverently as you melt under his curious touch.

Your breaths come fast as he plays with your pussy, running his fingers up and down through the mess of it, getting to know you here just like he had with his hands on your body. This part you know, most men have at least put the effort in to finger you. But the fact that it’s Frankie touching you makes every sensation more electrifying and new.

Never mind that no one’s ever touched you with as much patience and attentiveness as Frankie does, quietly observing every response his fingers elicit from you. He spreads your lips apart and pinches them back together, stroking your clit just enough to make you squirm before pulling away.

You sneak an eye open just in time to catch him sucking his fingers clean, sighing long through his nose before he refocuses on your cunt.

Well, he did say he loved it. Maybe you’re starting to believe him.

He inches closer, broad shoulders finding space between your thighs.

“I’m gonna put my mouth on you now, hermosa,” he tells you. He reaches out to touch one finger to your dripping core. “Right here.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

“It’s so wet there, Frankie,” you protest weakly. Why would he want to put his mouth on the messiest part of you? You can’t understand it. Frankie just smiles.

“I know, baby. I wanna taste you.”

You can only whimper in response, Frankie so close now you can feel his warm breath against your folds. He plants one last kiss to the crease of your thigh and then at last, closes the space between his lips and your pussy.

You feel him lick a thin stripe through the wettest part of you, the slick contact sending an emphatic jolt to every nerve ending your body. He does it again, widening his tongue this time, and your responding gasp is cut off when Frankie fucking moans. What does that mean?

Your head snaps up and you stare down at him in horror.

“What’s wrong? Does it taste bad?”

Frankie detaches his mouth from your cunt, confusion mapping the crease between his brows.

“Bad?” he repeats. You just blink back at him with uncertainty written all over your face and he seems to recognize you’re being serious. His features soften.

“No, querida,” he insists. “Just tastes like pussy. Really fucking good pussy. Did it feel good?”

You nod–you can’t lie.

“Good. I’m gonna do it again. Just relax for me, okay?”

He waits until you nod again and your tense muscles have loosened, then he dives forward for a second time.

Now, you trust that the breathy moan he lets out is one of pleasure rather than disgust. It’s not that hard to believe either; Frankie glides his tongue through the seam of your folds with ravenous interest, up and down, in wide circles around your lips and curious flicks over your hole, peeking up at you with each careful ministration to ensure he’s on the right track.

And, Christ, you may not have any frame of reference but it certainly feels like he is.

It’s so…wet. So dizzying and warm and all-encompassing. Then Frankie dares to spear his tongue inside you–once, twice, a third time–and you keen at the welcome intrusion, moaning out a sound so pornagraphic you could probably rival the woman currently being railed from behind on your TV right now.

You feel–rather than really see–Frankie smile against you.

“Does that feel good when I do that?” he asks and then he does it again.

“Yes, Frankie.”

He hears the silent plea beneath your words and quickly gets back to work.

With his tongue still dancing over your fluttering hole, Frankie closes his lips.

And that’s–oh–that’s so much more overwhelming. His mouth consumes your pussy as his tongue laps and lathes at your core, drinking down everything your body gives him. His eyes close and his brows furrow while his lips move hungrily against you and you imagine this is what it would feel like to kiss him–hot and wet and sloppy and perfect.

He continues like that, making out with your pussy until your hips involuntarily begin to rock up into his mouth in search of more. Frankie groans, sucking at your folds before pulling away with a wet pop.

“You’re so fucking sweet,” he groans. He gazes bearlily at your pussy, his lips coated with arousal and saliva. You don’t miss the way he drops a hand to his bulge.

“Oh, fuck,” he sighs. Usually so controlled and composed, Frankie sounds almost delirious now. “Baby, I’m gonna lick your clit now. Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah–yeah, please, Frankie.”

Frankie makes a wild, guttural noise, leaning in to press a kiss into your pussy.

“Tell me, baby, tell me where you want my tongue.”

But then he’s teasing his mouth over your hole again, making speech nearly impossible as he swirls his tongue around your opening–like a preview of what he’s about to offer the most sensitive part of you.

Desperation takes over and any lingering nerves fade away.

“My clit, Frankie,” you beg him. “Please lick my clit.”

The order has him moaning against you again, the vibration alone enough to make you dizzy even before he’s gripping both your thighs to spread you open further and his mouth is moving to find purchase over your nub.

A sound you’ve never heard yourself make before spills from your parted lips as Frankie begins to deftly work your clit with his tongue. Sparks ignite in your belly at the sensation, so different than how it feels to have someone’s hands on you here. It’s slick and it’s intimate and it’s so much more…concentrated this way. Frankie presses into you harder and flattens his tongue, focusing on drawing precise little circles around your clit that have you seeing stars.

Jesus–did he go to school for this or something? How does he know to apply just the right amount of pressure? How does he never falter in his rhythm or even stop to come up for air? How does it already feel like you could come at any second if he keeps doing what he’s doing right now?

Fully intent on your pleasure, his messy curls frame his flushed cheeks and his hooded eyes. He’s coaxing towards your end like he’s been fucking training for this his entire goddamn life.

You get lost in it, indulge in the feeling and the fact that it’s Frankie doing this for you. Frankie is making you feel this good. Frankie is going to make you come.

You grab at his hair and push his face into your cunt, past the point of caring if he’d be upset about that as your orgasm blooms hot in your core. Frankie just groans appreciatively, laving at your clit and giving you just that much more when he puckers his lips and sucks at the tiny bundles of nerves.

“Oh, Frankie, fuck–fuck, do that again–”

Bossy. He loves when you get bossy. You’re so close and, apparently, that makes you bossy.

He smiles. He doesn’t hesitate to do as you ask, sucking hungrily at your clit and swallowing down your salty-sweet flavour. When he feels your muscles begin to tighten he offers you his tongue again, sucking and licking, sucking and licking. He thinks about the man on screen earlier and takes a page out of his book, slowly moving his head from side to side as much as he can with your hands in his hair–and, yeah, you seem to like that, if your wild, needy moans and your breathless little gasps are anything to go by.

He doesn’t want to leave here ever. He wants to drown and die with his face in your cunt and your hands in his hair. He wants his last breath to be coated with your scent so he can be buried in the ground with it, knowing his life had been worthwhile because at least he’d got to have you this way even one fucking time.

But your pleas are growing stronger and your chest is heaving faster and Frankie knows it can’t last–because you’re going to come. Suddenly, that’s the only thing in the world that matters.

“Like that, Frankie,” you cry, when he finds a new rhythm with his tongue, broad, coaxing strokes over your twitching pearl. Your eyes snap open and find his at once, beseeching him. “Don’t stop doing that, Frankie–I’m gonna come.”

He hums against you and heeds your orders, never stopping or slowing the movement of his tongue. You chant for him–yesyesyes–and Frankie just hums and hums his encouragement.

Come on, baby, come on, baby, he thinks. Let me see what you look like when you come for me. Let me know this part of you.

“Frankie!”

The drawn-out cry of his name is the last warning he gets before your pussy begins to pulse under his tongue.

Your climax is even more beautiful than he imagined it’d be.

You arch up into his mouth and his hands are quick to hold you there, licking you through it as you quiver with the force of it. Wetness gushes from your core and Frankie laps at it greedily, drunk on your taste and your sounds and your writhing form above him.

Years of service to his country, and somehow he thinks this might be his proudest achievement. He’s never felt more gratified than he does watching you fall apart for him right now.

Meanwhile, Frankie’s cock aches, leaking and hard in his boxers and begging to be touched. He’s already so close, he could probably come too if he just–

With his mouth still closed over your pussy and your body still shaking with the swells of your orgasm, Frankie begins to palm himself furiously through his jeans, chasing his own high before you can come down from yours.

But it’s too late. You catch him red-handed.

“Frankie–stop, honey, don’t come like that.”

You pry him off your soaking cunt and Frankie doesn’t fight you. You’re sitting up, watching him, gaze smouldering and fixed on the hand he’s currently rubbing against his clothed cock. He should be embarrassed but he just wants to come.

“How, baby?” he asks you brokenly.

“Take it out.”

“Fuck, fuck–”

He hurries to obey, straightening up off the floor and fumbling hastily with his belt buckle. It takes him three tries to get his fingers to cooperate long enough to figure it out, unzipping his jeans and yanking them down his thighs, completely forgetting this is the first time you’re ever going to see his–

“Oh my god,” you gasp the second his cock is free from his boxers and he’s wrapping a relieving hand around himself. He looks up at you, momentarily concerned until he sees your eyes are trained on his cock.

And yeah, fine–sue him–his ego blooms for a second, watching your eyes widen at his size, breath leaving you in this adorable little sigh.

“Frankie, you’re so–”

“I know,” he interrupts. You share a smile, something so familiar, as Frankie strokes his cock over your cunt, something so decidedly unfamiliar. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna fuck you with it this time.”

This time. Fuck. He hasn’t even finished doing this with you now and he’s already planning when he’s gonna get to do it again. As if he even knows if you want that, as if he’s not leaving again in just a few weeks–

“You can,” you say hurriedly and the offer pulls him off the edge of spiraling and right back into the moment, cock throbbing in his hand as his head falls forward into his chest with a groan. “Frankie, you can fuck me.”

He shakes his head.

“Gonna come in two seconds if I do that, babe.”

He’s also not sure he has the self control to fuck you right now without hurting you.

Plus he really is so fucking close. Your fingers explore his belly and Frankie pumps himself faster. He watches in a lustful haze as your hand moves to hover over his cock, almost curious about it.

“Can I help you, Frankie?” you whisper. Jesus, do you even know how alluring your voice sounds? He’s gonna fucking explode if you keep talking to him like that.

You lightly touch your fingers to the back of his hand–and he’s never said yes so fast in his life.

“Yeah–fuck, yeah, baby, you wanna help?”

“Mhm,” you nod, peering up at him sweetly as you take over.

“Oh, shit–fuck,” Frankie rasps the second you wrap your fingers around him. Then you start to stroke him in long, languid pumps and his eyelids involuntarily flutter.

“Yes, baby, just like that,” he sighs. He abandons the urge to come for a moment, letting his eyes slip closed and really trying his best to just savour the feeling of you touching him. His stomach lurches when he feels you swirl your thumb over his slit, smearing wet drops of precum around the head of his cock. His chest warms with something like pride at learning this about you, that you know what you’re doing when you get a cock in your hand. That you’re good at this.

“Fuck…that’s so good, sweetheart,” he finds himself whispering just because he thinks you deserve to know.

“Frankie.”

Your voice calls out to him through the fog of bliss and he dares himself to glance down at you. Still working over his length in deep, adoring strokes, you bite your lip and meet his stare with wide, faraway eyes of your own. He cups your cheek in his hand just because he can.

“Hm?”

You smile and it’s so fucking beautiful and soft and you that he can’t help but smile right back.

“You made me feel so fucking good,” you tell him earnestly.

“Yeah?” Frankie strokes your cheekbone with his thumb and you tighten the grip of your fist around his cock.

“Yeah,” you nod, just as your smile falters in lieu of something darker. “I want–I want you to come for me, Frankie. I want you to come on my pussy.”

“Jesus,” Frankie grits, nodding frantically as he shoos your hand away and takes his cock in his own hand again. “Yeah–yeah, okay.”

The request alone has him hurtling towards release and in a flurry of desperation, he reaches up under your shirt to palm at one of your tits with his free hand while he concentrates the pumps of his fist to the head of his cock. Your head falls back behind you when he gets one of your nipples between his fingers and you moan so pretty for him.

Fucking hell, he’s not gonna last.

“You want me to come on your pussy, baby?”

“Mhm.”

That pleading lilt in your voice makes tension coil in his core, heat rising up the back of his neck. He can hear the sound of his own heady grunting as he strokes and strokes himself for you, eager and impatient to give you what you’d asked for.

“Whose pussy is it?” he growls.

He doesn’t know why he says it. Maybe part of him just needs to know he’s really claimed this experience for you. That no one’s ever going to make you feel good as he had.

Your eyes lock and you tell him exactly what he needs to hear–

“Y-yours, Frankie. It’s your pussy.”

“Yeah…yeah, it is–fuck!”

He comes with blinding force, his cock twitching violently in his grasp as he paints your mound and lower belly with white ropes of spend. Huffed breaths pass through his lips as the waves pass over him, his knees aching against your floor as he shudders and groans and milks himself over your pussy. His pussy.

Once he’s emptied himself completely, his body still quaking with residual aftershocks, he hooks a hand behind your neck to pull you in closer. Sated, your features shrouded in bliss and gratitude…Frankie’s always loved you, but he’s never loved you more than he does right now.

“Mi vida,” he breathes, clutching your face between his palms. “Can I kiss you?”

And even though it’s beyond backwards, to share your first kiss with your tang on his tongue and his cum on your skin, you nod, leaning into him willingly as he finally, finally presses his lips to yours.

Somehow, even after waiting years for this, he finds it in himself to kiss you slow. You don’t seem to be in any rush either, sighing as you part your lips for him and let him spill his tongue between them. You press yourself closer, wrap your arms around his neck to deepen it and a glimmering warmth trickles down his spine.

Breathless and charged, there’s a change in atmosphere, and suddenly everything feels painfully fragile. Like the moment he breaks this kiss, the earth will crack open under him and he’ll be pulled down into its molten core and it’ll never be like this again.

So he just kisses and kisses and kisses you, finding his way back onto the couch and holding you hostage against his lips. But you make no attempt at escape. You just mould your lips against his and fist your hands into the fabric of his shirt and kiss him right back with just as much force and finality.

He wants to tell you everything, but he doesn’t know how or if that would even be the right thing to do.

I love you. I still have to leave.

No. He can’t do that to you.

“See how good your pussy tastes?” he asks between kisses instead. You laugh against his lips, but when he opens his eyes to see your face, he finds your eyes are wet with tears.

Shit.

“You know that’s not why I’m kissing you so much, Frankie.”

Reluctantly, he breaks away. He holds your face between his hands, his lips hovering just above yours.

“Why are you?” he whispers. Is it the same reason he can’t stop? Is it that same feeling of impermanence he can’t seem to shake?

The tears in your eyes spill over and pool in the webs of his fingers.

“Because I’ve always wanted to,” you tell him shakily. And as quickly as his heart swells with the confession does it deflate with your next words, “And I don’t know when I’ll get to do it again.”

Frankie sighs, his forehead colliding with yours.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, shaking his head. For so many things but mostly–

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, Frankie,” you assure him, scratching your fingernails into his scalp and slanting your head to steal another salty-wet kiss. He thinks he feels you smile, and it almost soothes the ache. “It’s okay now.”

#I’ll never recover #frankie morales x reader

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joel miller in every episode of tlou

1x01 when you’re lost in the dark

#this lighting #yep

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going to make you sweat

javier peña x f!reader | main masterlist

summary: it's the hottest day of the year; you and javi want to make it hotter.

rating: 18+/explicit warnings: explicit smut. somewhat established relationship. jo's spelling, jo putting to practice her spanish. wordcount: 1.9k

It begins with the sound of the fan.

Whirring. Whirring. Blowing nothing but warm, sticky heat around the over-boiled place.

For four days, the sun has been beating down relentlessly, acting as another unforgiving tyrant ruling over Colombia, forcing waves of heat to seep into homes, regardless of whether doors and windows are closed.

All but forcing everyone to seek refuge from the scorching onslaught.

It's why he's home.

It's why you didn't protest when his hand found your lower back, guiding you out to the passenger seat of his vehicle.

The unspoken understanding between you both fizzes in the air. All silence, discreet.

Just like the rest of the clandestine nature of your relationship.

Now, you’re lying as still as possible. Not even considering sliding your leg over to touch his—even if usually, you’d have done it a handful of times.

Cool showers offered no relief—your skin was already slick with dampness before you finished drying off. Every movement made the heat feel unbearable, trickling down your neck. Your limited attire, stuffed in a spare drawer at his, offers no relief; the white tee and panties cling to your skin, feeling like additional layers you long to peel away from your bones, not just your skin.

Your eyes flick towards him at the sound of his lighter—at the paper burning at the end, before the scent greets your nostrils.

Normally, it would barely irritate you, but now it twists your annoyance into a knot and uses it to fuel its fury. A glare not forcing him to stub it out, your mood souring, further making beads of perspiration collect along your collarbone and drip down the valley of your breasts, all but pooling where your body bends and creases as you remain on the sofa.

You can feel him watching.

Eyes likely following the path of sweat descending under your top—because even in unbelievable temperatures, you’re sure he’s mentally undressing you.

Because he looks wrecked, even with the cigarette burning between his fingers/.

Javier Peña's usually put-together look of swept-to-the-side hair is currently stuck damp to his forehead as sweat drips off the end of his sloped nose. The look is so reminiscent of what you’d imagine he'd look like if he had a full free day to fuck you; if it wasn’t rushed quickies or long, drawn-out nights before the two of you collapsed into sheets before doing it all over again on three hours of sleep.

At some point between coming home early and sitting beside you, his barely buttoned shirt has been discarded, leaving him in a pair of shorts he’d pulled on when he’d been grumbling about the fucking heat, paperwork and bureaucracy all in the space of a minute.

The fact he'd shed most of his layers allows you to trace your eyes down his body. Glance at the soft curve of his stomach, the firmness of his chest and those biceps you see flex when he’s leaning when he’s doing all he can not to flick his eyes from your face to your tits.

He's already caught you.

Taking a drag on his cigarette for a suspiciously long time before blowing the smoke out in one smooth movement. Eyes on you. Fixed. Never unfocused.

And fuck, if it doesn’t make you want him that much more.

“It’s too hot.”

“I said nothing.”

You snort. Loud. Full of intent.

Mind a scrambled mess of want, as your hips shift when your eyes flick south of his neck and land on his thighs.

“C’mon, Cariño,” he drawls, stubbing out his cigarette—punching the lit end out until it’s snuffed, “Come sit on my lap.”

A battle ensures in your skull. It’s weak, both the for and against, which is how you find yourself straddling him, palm flat to your thighs—finding the heat from his body no more intense than the sweltering environment around you.

“This what you want, me all sweaty on you?”

He chews his cheek, a glint in the dark of his eyes, a blip in the pool of desire—and your heart pounds in your chest. Breaths coming in short gasps, matching the rhythm of the fan in the corner.

"I'd have you on top of me however I can."

"Course you would," you retort.

His fingers flex, itch. Sneak in inches up your skin as he continues to breathe slowly, in and out, out and in.

You’re not sure who moves first, but your lips find his—passionate, fiery. Teeth almost grazing but your tongue slides in and licks past his teeth, swallowing his moan, his hiss, as you roll your clothed pussy over his hardening cock, tasting nothing but smoke, coffee and mint, a combination you know to be him.

“Mm—fuck,” he groans.

He sounds pained when he drags his mouth from yours, his fist full of the back of your sweat-soaked tee as he drags it off over your head—throwing it, it landing on the tiles with a wet slap, forcing your head to snap to the sound.

But he’s on you.

Mouth latching to your nipple, tongue swirling, before tracing a line up your breast and across your collarbone.

“Taste so fucking good, cariño.”

It’s stifled, the moan—forcing your best smirk to show, “Put your head between my thighs and say that, Peña.”

And he considers it.

Your words.

Head tilting marginally, the slightest of movements that he’ll pretend never occurred. But he moves, shifts. Practically bucks his hips into you as he repositions, and you land on your bare back on the sofa with an oomph.

A comment arrives on your tongue, almost fizzling before it’s swallowed at the way forces your knees together and yanks your panties down your thighs. Soaked, ruined—both from the mere existence of him and the heat. Discarding them, throws them into some dark space as he glances down at the place between your thighs.

“Even in this heat, she’s pretty.”

You try not to turn away, bury your face in the smoked-scented cushions of his sofa as his words meet you. A sudden desire to hide, to cover—

“You not like that, cariño, when I call her pretty?” His knuckles part your folds, teasing, dragging them up and down as you squirm, whine his name. “Tell me.”

Somehow, all fucking unknown to you, more heat floods your cheeks. It's embroiled in embarrassment, shyness—two things you’re sure he spends most of his time trying to fuck out of you, but has failed to do so thus far—

He says your name.

Not your nickname. Not agent.

Eyes snapping to him, throat dry as he continues to tease, as his thumb presses on your clit and makes you hiss.

“No—ffff-feel embarrassed, alright? Fuck.”

You hear his tongue click—it’s the last thing you hear before ringing. Before two fingers slide into you, slide with ease as they delve deep, his frame coming over your body as he moves them, as he curls them. Doing his best to undo as his eyes come into focus, the top of his tongue dragging over his parted lips.

And the ringing dies down.

Forced to as a pebble of sweat falls from his nose and drips to your breastbone.

“No need to be embarrassed with me.”

Your hips try to buck and seek.

“Impaciencia,” he groans—moisture glistening at the base of his throat, palm keeping you down, still, fingers curled inside of you as you gasp. “You’re… fuck. I need to taste you.”

The breath of his words sweeps over your inner thigh.

“Javi, don't tease—“

“I’ve got you, cariño—don’t worry. I’ll make you come again, and again, and…”

You’re not sure if he speaks the last again—or if it’s buried into your pussy. A high chance you blank it out with other noises as his tongue fucks into your hole. Finger on your clit, swirling, drawing shapes your brain can’t manifest or conjure as you become aware of your moans.

Out of instinct, your fingers find his hair—slick with sweat, trying to curl between your fingers as his tongue flattens. All precise, taunting. Forcing you to the edge and dangling you before pulling you back.

It almost makes you thrash, forcibly lift your hips against him when his face lifts—face slick with your want as he smirks.

“Lo sé, cariño.”

“Please.”

It leaves your lips undignified, dignity gone, transformed into more raw, desperate—a plea that cuts through heat. One answered as he lifts your knee over his hip, feeling bare skin, red hot body heat and the nudging of his cock at your entrance.

He steals your breath, it stammering as he sinks into you in one fluid movement. Your fingers grasp, finding the hair at the nape of his neck again as his mouth comes to your ear, hearing it, the hiss between clenched teeth.

When he moves, your lips find his. It’s different, softer and almost gentle. All measured movements gone, lost, thrown out when you breathe him in, when your mouths are open, moaning into each other's throats as your heels dig into his lower back.

And you want to hold on.

But he’s driven you mad. Teeth grating over his shoulder as you tug on his hair. Tasting it, sweat, sex and salt. Your neck further coated in the slick of the heat, the moment; perspiration trickling, sliding over your skin as his hand grasps your hip firmly. Tightly. Practically noticing the hints of intimacy the two of you pretend aren’t there, but rumble and thrum whenever the two of you are alone.

And the thought adds to the feeling of that impending wave rising inside of you again, more angry, needy than it had been before—

“So good for me, cariño. My good girl.”

“Yours.”

It snakes out, too late to retract. Not even caring that it’s there, staining the space between you both, polluting it. Because it’s the truth.

Some days the only thing you can full on believe—

“Yeah, that’s it. Mine, right? All fucking mine?“

His hips thrust into you harder, matching the tone that makes you even wetter than you were seconds before.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

“Yes. Yes. Ye—”

“Fuck, cariño.”

You‘re close. So close. It almost blinding in the way it tries to force your eyes to clench shut, but you can't look away. Not from him. Each flex of his muscles, the way his teeth grit as he fucks into you, makes your body both taut and boneless.

“Wanna feel you, cariño,” he groans, breath ragged, tortured out. “Let me feel you come, baby. Please.”

Tightening around him, fingers jerking on his hair, he meets your eyes.

Not able to fight it, not able to stop it from unravelling as it begins to crest—

"Let me feel you come, baby. Please." His tone all full of gravel, insistent, demanding. Practically unwilling to bend as it brushes itself into your ear.

His name cracks out of your throat like thunder, slamming against the walls as it rips through you. Making your back arch into him, hearing him groan; hearing him hiss and fucking moan as you shake, thighs quaking around his sweat-tinged skin before he grunts as he spills into you.

It’s silence, except for heaving breaths.

The dull noise of the fan comes back to you, replacing the ringing from before as you slowly peel your legs from his body.

You’re not sure what you expect when he lifts his head, but it isn’t the look there. The one matched with a smile, sly but still a smile—chest rising and falling as he kneels, staring down at you.

Taking you in, flicking his eyes to the place the two of you had just been conjoined.

“Fucking hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

And even if you roll your eyes, you hide a smile behind the back of your hand, whispering a "Cállate, Peña."

#you done it AGAIN #🥵

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me n my bestie also made a playlist and update it after every chapter 😭

ok stop this is literally so exciting, i love you guys

#ya wait this is now my car playlist for your visit m fyi #🦅

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So like what if you’re Javi P’s co-worker and you get drawn into going undercover with him at some seedy bar, posing as his… let’s say lady friend for the night.

And you always dress practically, you know? In case you need to give chase, but tonight you’re in a skimpy little dress that makes Javi’s eyes pop.

And at some stage in the night, to lend credence to the facade -or maybe just because he wants to, he isn’t sure - Javi pulls you onto his lap. Your ass perched across his sturdy thighs. The hem of your silly little dress riding almost all the way up, barely covering you. His splayed hand bracing at the small of your back, smoothing up and down, itching to slide down to feel the globes of your ass.

Your hot lips sliding down the column of his throat now to lend credence to the facade - or maybe because you want to, he’s not sure - and he thinks about you tasting the sweat on him but you’re not stopping. Not stopping and he never loses his cool but… damn.

You nip at his earlobe with your teeth before you whisper your astute observations of the scene to him. Never wavering even as you do this, your breath fanning warm against the shell of his ear and he’s convinced he can’t help it as his free hand slides on to your bare thigh, fingers sinking into your flesh and driving up, slow, towards the hem of your dress. His skin is buzzing, all warm from your touch as your hands wander over him too, palm smoothing at the bare expanse of his chest beneath the deep “v” of his shirt. Your scent all over him, his jeans tightening as you wriggle on his lap, curling further into him with his thighs bracing you… and he almost forgets that you’re pretending. That he’s pretending. This is the most secure, straightforward cover he’s ever had and he realises it’s so easy to want you.

He almost forgets why you’re here at all, honestly. That is, until your languid, honeyed movements turn suddenly cool and decisive. Until you whip your head around to signal to another operative in the room that the target is moving out. Until you stand too, grabbing your jacket and concealed weapon and moving out, high heels be damned.

But Javi… Fuck. Javi looks down to his lap, still warm from the press and weight of you on him, and he notices… the wet patch on his jeans. Holy shit. Your wetness on his jeans, where your heat had rested over his sturdy thigh. His arousal swells painfully against the seam of his blue jeans at the thought of it. The thought that being close to him like this had turned you on. Enough to soak through your panties. Enough to darken the denim and leave him a reminder that maybe you weren’t pretending at all. All that for him? So wet that you’ve soaked him, even as he’s sure you would have tried with every scrap you had to resist it?

“You coming?” you hiss from the doorway, and the sudden swell of his arousal makes it hard to stand - but he does. He stands because he’s motivated to wrap this op up quickly. He’s suddenly very motivated, in fact. You step out into the alley together, and you’re stumbling and giggling a little, hooking your arm into his - to add further credence to the facade. Making eyes and him and God.

Javi pins you against the wall. Positions close enough to the mark outside that you can still observe the interaction. Do your due recon. You won’t miss anything, he knows it, and so he focusses on making things look… as convincing as possible.

It’s easy. He pins you to the wall with his body, hips slanting towards you. He tilts your head and his lips hungrily meet your pulse point. He tongues languidly at the taste of your perfume. Across the ridges and cords of your neck as the act punches a breath from your lungs. He works you until no-one could possibly doubt the scene before them. It works him up too, so much so that if you asked him why he was here at all tonight, his first thought would be that he came here for you.

“You want me to take you home tonight?” he purrs, and you offer him a perfectly pitched coy smile as you sling the loop of your arms around his neck. Always on your game. Still watching. Still working. Fuck, you’re a dream, he thinks, and the wet patch is burning a hole in his thigh. He wants to feel it for himself with his fingers, right here. Has never needed anything more.

“Peña, they’re gone,” you impress, your voice trembling with a brazen want which sounds every bit authentic - despite it all. “You can drop the act now, huh?”

“I know,” Javi breathes. “I know they’re gone.” He didn’t miss it. Didn’t fail to hear the thrum of the motorcycle and the sudden hush which has fallen over the alley. He’s definitely not pretending any longer. “So. How about it, darling? Do you want me to take you home tonight?”

You blink at him from beneath your lashes - pupils lust-blown- as Javi kicks your legs open. Shoves his thigh up against your heat as your bare, warm legs bracket him. “Or if you really can’t wait…?”

“What gives you that idea?” you protest, stubborn and proud as ever, even as you grind yourself down on his leg, angling your hips further towards him. “This is just work, Javi… I mean...” Your eyes turn big and searching then, in a rare moment of vulnerability. Despite himself, it makes Javi wonder if that’s how you’ll look the first time his cock spears you, as you wonder for a second if he really is too much. “…Isn’t it?”

He offers you a smug, lopsided smile. “You soaked through my jeans, darling.”

You shake your head softly, more of your weight sinking into his hold as you go even more limp against the wall. “Fuck, I’m-“

“-Don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart. It’s okay.” He dips his lips towards the shell of your ear. “You know? I wouldn’t even mind if you soaked my sheets instead.”

He grabs the meat of your hips in his broad hands. Angles you down to slide your heat against his thigh. The way your eyes flutter closed, followed by a honeyed moan, sends a zip of pleasure straight to his cock. He could drink down those noises all night - and for breakfast. He could have you for breakfast.

“Can I feel you?” he begs, his fingertips lingering at the hem of your dress.

You bite down on your lower lip, eyes darting around the alleyway. “Not here, Javi.”

“No?”

“No. Take me home.”

Reluctantly, he moves away from you, and he groans as he once more looks down at his jeans to see the wet patch has grown.

He is arrested there for a moment, and yet when he looks back up you are already waiting at the door of his vehicle.

“You coming?” You ask him for the second time tonight.

Finally, he finds some game, from somewhere. “Not as many times as you will be.”

Just like earlier, he’s more than confident he can get the job done… it’s just that this time, there won’t be any need at all for pretending.

#I’m sucker for this shit #javier pena x reader

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hanging on the telephone a sex on fire one shot

pairing: ceo!joel x fem!reader

summary: your boss picks a convenient time to ask for a favor.

warnings: age gap eat my fuckin shorts (reader is late 20s, joel late 40s), workplace relationship, imbalance of power dynamic, joel likes (semi) public sex again!, softdom!joel, fingering, unprotected piv, daddy kink, praise kink, cursing.

word count: 2.9k

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 💚

“Sh– Fuck – Shit –”

“So goddamn tight, baby, she’s so –” he pinches your hip with his left hand, presses harder on your clit with his right thumb, “– she’s so fuckin’ tight for me.”

“Daddy, I’m…I’m gonna c…Oh, shit, I'm...”

Joel tips his head back, two beats of cocky laughter pushing from his chest. Even with your vision quickly blurring, your eyes rolling shut, you can still see the way his jaw flexes with it, the way his Adam’s apple bobs. Can hear the curve of the words, shaped by the smirk on his lips.

“You gonna come, baby? That what you’re tryna tell me?”

Your hips circle, body clenching around three thick fingers. “M-hm,” you force through gritted teeth.

“Fuck, pretty girl,” he growls, feeling your little cunt squeezing down to his knuckles. “That two now, or three?”

“Th-three.”

“Three,” he whispers, though you know he already fucking knew. He just wanted you to admit it. Wanted to watch as your lips twisted around an answer, struggled through your orgasm quickly approaching. “’n how long have we been alone?”

Your head tilts onto your shoulder, hands reaching down to clutch around his big wrist. You grip onto the strap of his watch, the cold glass face shocking your burning skin.

Joel laughs again, a hot breath of air across your lips, but he doesn’t slow the snap of his fingers, the circles of his thumb. He takes your jaw in his free hand and turns your ear to his lips, whispering, “Asked you a question, baby girl.”

“F-uh-ck,” you whine, hips beginning to give. “I don’t know, Daddy, I don’t –”

His teeth nip at your lobe, lips press into the skin under your ear. A low rumble, wet on your skin when he murmurs, “Ain’t even been ten minutes.”

There had been no recovery time between your first two orgasms. The first bled straight into the next – Joel and his fingers had drawn them from your body before the elevator had even delivered Martha to the lobby, you’re willing to bet.

She’d buttoned her coat, announced that she needed some fresh air – offered for you to join her, and then shook her head when you called back from Joel’s office that you were fine, thanks, Martha.

Maybe she’s onto the two of you. Maybe she knows all the signs of a secret work romance. Hell, maybe Joel’s done this before. You don’t fucking know.

Reason (and perhaps a smidge of desperate hope) convinces you otherwise. Still – you can’t remember the last time the woman left for lunch alone. Can’t remember the last time she gave you two peace in Joel’s office for more than ten minutes, without popping her head in to gossip or roll her eyes at the pair of you.

You hadn’t been up to anything when she was here, anyways – but it didn’t take long after hearing that sharp ding and the signature rattle of the doors announcing her departure, for Joel’s hands to find your waist.

He made some quip, like, Maybe she’s got her own secret man she’s off to see, and you hadn’t the time to come up with anything worth half a laugh before he pulled you into his lap and slipped his fingers up the inside of your thigh.

When did this become what you do, anyway, you wonder? Sneaking around behind your colleagues’ backs; feeling brave enough to slip a palm down your boss’s front and cup his fucking dick through his pants anytime he looks at you a heartbeat too long. Letting the guy spread your legs on the desk you’ve worked at for three years now; letting him kiss and lick and feast between your thighs.

When did this become normal?

He’s intoxicating. He’s all you fucking think about these days. I’m bored, tell me something funny. Can I sit here while you’re on that meeting? When can we fuck next? No one ever fucked me like you do.

“Fuck,” Joel grunts, wrist slowing as the edges of your vision blur. “Like that, baby girl?”

“Just – just like that,” you beg, hands gripping around his shoulders.

“She likes that, doesn’t she?” Joel utters, pulling you closer. “Come on, baby, give me one more.”

The world halts for a second, splits in two, and crashes back together, throwing you over the edge. You come with a pathetic whimper, folding over Joel’s body and rocking uncontrollably, gripping onto his hair to steady yourself.

His arm wraps around the small of your back, holding you down on his hand until you loosen again – his fingers soaked, glistening. He slips them out, rubbing your clit slowly with his middle finger.

“Fuck,” you breathe, reaching for his hand.

His fingers knot around yours, your release slippery and warm on his knuckles. He takes your jaw in his other hand, pulls you in, and slips his tongue across yours. Something wet and needy, something as meaningless as it is meaningful.

Something which beckons your hands to his belt, your fingers slipping behind the thick leather.

The moment is interrupted by an annoying ping from Joel’s phone discarded to the opposite side of the desk.

Blindly, still with his lips attached to yours, he reaches over and swipes it with one hand. He breaks apart the kiss to look down, blinking at the screen. “Oh, shit,” he says, flatly.

You lean over, one hand still lazily playing with his, squinting at the upside-down text thread. “What?” you ask, fiddling with the undone buttons of his shirt.

“Shit,” again, hissed and now…irritated. “Did you–? I didn’t ask you to book a table at Ricci’s, did I?”

“The Italian place?”

Joel nods, hurriedly.

You shake your head, slowly. A little confused. “Why? What’s…?”

“I’m meeting a client there this afternoon,” he mutters, shifting in his chair. The movement rocks you back and forth, but Joel keeps a hand on your hip to hold you.

A weight you know all too well brushes the inside of your thigh. You both clock it. And then you both ignore it.

“Goddamn it,” Joel groans. “There ain’t no chance that Martha…?”

Your head tilts. “You know damn well you don’t trust anyone with that shit but me. No, it’s not booked. You never asked. But it’s fine, just call ‘em. These places can always make room, Mr. Miller.”

Joel squints, jaw lifting when you drag your nose along it to kiss his neck. His rough beard scratches your nose and chin.

But he’s squinting, when you pull back. Half-turning away from you, one eye closed; mouth twisted in a dumb smirk.

“What?” you ask, frowning.

“You can’t do it for me?”

Your eyes roll. “You fucked up,” you fix the tousled strands of his hair back into place, “fix it. You’re a big boy.”

“Willing to pay you a little extra,” he offers, pulling your hips down against his crotch. “Generous amount.”

“Generous,” you echo, letting him drag your slick mess all over his black pants. Your fingers slip beneath his belt, loosening the fly of his pants.

He’s hard already – solid and heavy when your hand dips below his boxer shorts and wraps around his warm cock. Turned on just by the feeling of you around his fingers, the sight and sound of you unraveling in his lap.

He hisses quietly when you pull him free; smearing wet onto your fingers as you drag your fist up and down. And when you look back up, he’s not watching his cock in your hands. Not looking at the skin exposed by your tangled underwear, your skirt sitting almost as high as your waist.

He’s looking straight at you. Your fluttering eyelashes, your tongue dabbing at the wet forming along your bottom lip. His eyes shoot quick as lightning from one to the other. “Like playing with it, huh?” he asks quietly. “’s your favorite thing in the world.”

You grin. “Like it better when it’s…” you push yourself up, running his wide tip along the seam of your cunt, separating your folds and pausing right below your vagina, “…here.”

Joel’s hands push heavier on your hips – lowering you slowly and gently enough that you could stop him, but sure and steady enough that he knows you won’t dare to. He breaches your opening, intrusion enough to stop your breathing, and slips in.

It glides in so smoothly, so easily that you barely feel the stretch at first. Still soft and soaked from your third release, your body pulls him in – until it starts to hurt.

A tiny gasp from your lips and Joel holds his arms out, letting you clutch onto the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. “Easy, easy,” he says, holding your elbows.

It’s only been a couple times. And as good as they were, you’re still not used to him. He’s still bigger than anyone you’ve ever had before; it still hurts just a little, anytime he pushes in.

But still, you smile bracing yourself now with two palms on his chest – his hair damp with sweat in little swirls on the skin below his clavicle. “Still not – callin’ them,” you pant, taking him halfway.

Joel clicks his teeth, studying your cheeky expression. “Be a big girl ‘n do it,” he whispers, eyes following the round trail of your fingers on his sticky chest. “Do it for your daddy.”

You look up at him, smirk tugging on the corners of your lips. “’n what if Daddy doesn’t deserve it? You – shit – you fucked up,” you repeat.

Joel’s hips lift from the chair, cock slipping deeper, painfully slow as it fills you all the way. When the coarse hair at his base meets your clit, your nails digging little curved marks into his skin, he smirks. “He feel like he don’t deserve it to you?”

“No,” you gasp suddenly, eyes screwing shut, “feels – feels so good, Daddy.”

“Uhuh. You gonna call the restaurant for him?”

Another splintered breath. He’s so fucking big, so uncomfortable when you’re sat on him like this. “Yeah,” you whine, “I’ll call ‘em, Daddy, please just…please…”

His chin lifts, lids flickering over inky eyes. “Ah,” he clips, still holding you up on his cock, “no begging. Not ‘til you call.”

And he drops his hips, holding you off his length as you shakily stand. He helps tug your skirt back into place, watches as you lean over him to reach for the phone.

You do your best to sound annoyed, covering the scratch marks of desperation in your voice when you ask, “What’s the number?”

Joel reads it out, standing up, too, and you rest your elbows on the desk, cracking your neck.

Some chipper voice answers the phone, belting down the line to thank you for your call and ask what he can do for you today. He’s too fucking enthusiastic, too distracting, and only when he pauses to check the system for any free tables do you notice the weight at your ass.

The cold of his belt buckle kissing the underside of your thigh, the peeling of your skirt up, up, up. Hands massaging your ass cheeks; then one cupping between your legs to nudge your clit gently.

You jolt forward, a warped sound crying from your lips. The guy says, Pardon me, ma’am? and you stutter your way through a sentence in reply as Joel hooks your panties to the side.

“We’ve got…let’s see…” The host hums some stupid fucking tune, clicks his tongue against his teeth while you tug on the phone cord – unable to stop from stealing a glance over your shoulder and yet unwilling to give your boss the satisfaction of knowing you’re watching.

Joel pulls the belt free from its loops, drops it to the seat of his chair with a thud, and lines up right behind you.

You cover the microphone. “This what you wanted?” you hiss.

He hums. “You’re the one who bent over, darlin’.”

“Asshole.”

“Way to speak to your boss,” he grumbles, and shoves in.

“Christ,” you yelp, and the host pauses again.

“Um…We have one o’clock?” he asks, keyboard clicking in the background.

Your voice catches, body bouncing against the desk rhythmically. The wooden edge shunts roughly against your pelvis, bruises likely blooming already with the rate Joel’s going.

He bends forward, his right ear lining with the phone. “Say again?” he whispers.

“One,” you repeat.

Joel shakes his head. “Too soon. Ain’t hungry yet.”

“It’s twelve,” you mutter, teeth gritted, “you might be hungry in an hour.”

“Hm,” he considers, leaning back upright. “Maybe, long as I keep myself busy.”

He thrusts forward again, pulling you by the waist until you’re flush against his chest. His hands slip around to cup your breasts, squeezing and pinching and holding you still.

“Anything – later?” you ask down the line, switching the phone to the opposite ear to let Joel in at your neck. His teeth graze the skin, sharp pain when the blood vessels splatter streaks of crimson.

The host offers up a table at two-fifteen, which Joel seems to like the sound of, given the moan he lets free when you ask.

“Two-fifteen’s good,” you say, dropping the phone to the desk when your boss’s hand sneaks around your hip. “Joel,” you gasp, holding your voice at as low a volume as you can, “Joel, I swear to – Jesus Christ, you’re gonna –”

He’s laughing, playing with your clit as he fucks you, lips buried into the crook of your shoulder. “You my good girl?” he asks, bending your bodies forward. “Then book the goddamn table.”

“Ma’am?” the host’s asking, when you lift the phone to your ear again. “You still there?”

“Still – still here,” you breathe, flattening the whine in your voice. Joel’s starting to falter, starting to lose his rhythm. You can feel yourself beginning to tighten around him, give in to the pressure between your hips.

“What’s the name, ma’am?”

“Huh?”

Joel laughs, lips against your ear again. “Tell ‘im, pretty girl. Tell him who your daddy is.”

“My – fuck – M-Miller,” you reply, knees buckling. “Miller.”

“Alright, a table for two for…Miller…And that’s M-I-L-L–”

“–E-R, yep. Miller.”

“Good girl,” Joel pants against your temple, bristles of his beard grazing your cheek. He wraps one arm tight around your waist, clamping you against his body, the other still toying with your clit. Hips snapping roughly into yours, he whispers sharp in your ear, “I’m gonna come, darlin’, gonna fill you up real good, alright?”

“Can you wai–?”

“Alright, that’s you booked in, ma’am! We can’t wait to –”

“Great,” you choke back, falling forward with Joel at your back, “thanks. Thank you, we’ll see you – see you –”

Joel reaches over your shoulder and jams a thumb into the hook of the phone. “Fuck,” he groans, holding you steady as his cock throbs and a wet heat floods somewhere deep inside you.

The handset slips from your grasp, clattering against the desk as your body falls limp, your pussy jolting around him. His hands are the only thing keeping you steady, keeping you from melting into a puddle at his feet. A love-drunk sigh, the word Daddy spilling out into the room – the last thing before your breath cuts and he’s dragging you back down into the chair with him again.

Joel sinks back into the leather, sighing as he settles you again in his broad lap. He kisses you until you stir – lips soft against your temple, your cheek, your neck, to bring you back to him. His cock’s still stiff, half-limp and shining at the bottom of his stomach.

“’s a good girl,” he coos, letting you collapse against his chest.

Your cunt pulses, clenching around nothing; Joel’s come and yours trickling into your underwear.

“I hate you,” you whisper, playing with his hands.

“I know,” he mumbles into your skull, “bad boss.”

You breathe a laugh. “Who’s the client?”

“Mm,” Joel muses, adjusting in the chair, “nobody. Canceled on me last minute.”

He grins when you snap upright, head cocking. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just put me through all that for no goddamn reason?”

“Naw,” he protests, frowning, “I thought the two of us could go.”

There’s a softness to his face which dampens the fire in your belly as quickly as it ignited. Something genuine, something honest. You know him well enough by now to tell when he’s asking something of you, and not expecting it.

You feel your cheeks heat. “To lunch? Together?”

He shrugs. “Why the hell not? We’re going to Paris together.”

You blink at him, considering it. He’s not fucking wrong, is he? That same fire strikes again – only, a little further north, a little harder to control. It tickles your lungs, shaking the breath as you suck it in. You cover yourself with a blunt, “Martha’s gonna be pissed,” laced through as easy-going a sigh as you can manage.

Joel laughs, nodding. “I am sure she’ll get over it. Quiet office for the afternoon. Paradise.”

You smile, looking down at your hands clasped around one of his. You give his knuckles a small squeeze, and mutter, “You’re paying, Miller. And I’m ordering big.”

If not for the dark beard on his cheeks, and the sudden protective movement of his hand over them – if not for the fact that you’ve never in all your time here seen it happen…you’d swear the man was blushing.

“Okay,” Joel says, cheeks lifting. “Anything you want.”

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