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#U.N. Plug
ieatratsforlunch · 4 months
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Assigning songs to Sparklecare characters part 1(?)
Yeah so I thought this would be a fun idea, so here goes nothing
Barry ill ~ "Oh No!" ~ MARINA
Uni Cornelius ~ "a girl like me" ~ flowerovlove
Caroline Coughs ~ "I Hate My Mom" ~ GRLwood
Dr. Party ~ "Two Time" ~ Jack Stauber's Micropop
Nurse Doom ~ "Prescription" ~ Mindless Self Indulgence
Dr. Cuddles ~ "Dentist!" ~ Little Shop Of Horrors
Plus some ocs of mine reheheh
Jinkles ~ "ChuChu Lovely MuniMuni MuraMura PrinPrin Boron Nururu Rereo" ~ MAXIMUM THE HORMONE (not for the actual lyrics, but it suits his vibes)
Professor Plug ~ "Primadonna" ~ MARINA
Mortician Heartz ~ "Something For Your M.I.N.D" ~ Superorganism
Anyways I might make more of these :3
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swldx · 4 months
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BBC 0408 15 May 2024
12095Khz 0358 15 MAY 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 45434. English, dead carrier s/on @0358z with ID@0359z pips and Newsday preview. @0401z World News anchored by Stewart Macintosh. The US Justice Department on Tuesday notified Boeing that it breached terms of its 2021 agreement in which the company avoided criminal charges for two fatal 737 Max crashes. After a series of safety missteps earlier this year, including a door plug that blew off an Alaska Airlines flight shortly after takeoff in January, the Department of Justice said Boeing is now subject to criminal prosecution. Thousands of people in western Canada are facing the wrath of wildfires this week amid severe drought. YouTube on Tuesday said it would comply with a court decision and block access inside Hong Kong to 32 video links deemed prohibited content, in what critics say is a blow to freedoms in the financial hub amid a security clampdown. The action follows a government application granted by Hong Kong's Court of Appeal requesting the ban of a protest anthem called "Glory to Hong Kong." The judges warned that dissidents seeking to incite secession could weaponize the song for use against the state. The White House has informed Congress it wants to send more than $1bn (£800m) in weapons to Israel, officials say. The package would include tank rounds, mortars and armoured tactical vehicles. Last week President Joe Biden said he would halt weapons shipments to Israel if it launched a major invasion of the Gaza city of Rafah. Mr Biden said last week that he had delayed the shipment of 2,000lb (900kg) bombs to Israel because of how they might be used in such a ground operation. U.N. agencies are banding together in coordination with Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban rulers to aid hundreds of thousands of survivors of devastating flash floods that struck northeastern Afghanistan Friday. The United Nations and Taliban authorities said Saturday that the death toll from flash floods following heavy seasonal rains in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province had risen to a least 300. Millions of middle-aged people have been mistakenly led to believe they are not obese, according to an Italian study that looked at body-fat percentage instead of body-mass index. Using a new, lower BMI cut-off for obesity would give a truer picture of who is affected, the researchers say. With age, muscle declines and fat builds up around organs in the waist region, often with no change in weight. @0406z "Newsday" begins. 250ft unterminated BoG antenna pointed E/W w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), JRC NRD-535D. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63° . Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2258.
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esgdatainrate · 1 year
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Pneumatic Positioner In-Depth Profiling With Key Players and Recent Developments, Forecast Period: 2021-2031
A pneumatic positioner is a force balance device that uses controlled pneumatic output pressure for adjusting positions of valve actuators. The application of pneumatic positioners in industrial automation for controlling the motion in valve actuators improves the productivity of the equipment. The Pneumatic Valve Positioner is an instrument working on force balance principle to position the Control Valve stem in accordance to a pneumatic signal received from a controller or manual loading station, regardless of packing box friction, actuator hysteresis or unbalanced forces on the valve plug. Thus, the positioner ensures a reliable and accurate operation of Control Valve. The position of the plug, is directly proportional to the controller output pressure. The Positioner compares the forces generated by the control signal and the control valve stem through the motion connector and the feed back cam, and accordingly it feeds or bleeds the air going to the valve actuator. Thus, the positioner ensures a reliable and accurate operation of the control valve.
COVID-19 scenario analysis:
COVID-19 pandemic has shut-down the production of various products in the global pneumatic positioner industry, mainly owing to the prolonged lockdown in major global countries. This has hampered the growth of global pneumatic positioner market significantly from last few months, as is likely to continue during 2020.
COVID-19 has already affected the sales of equipment and machinery in the first quarter of 2020 and is likely to cause a negative impact on the market growth throughout the year.
The major demand for equipment and machinery was previously noticed from giant manufacturing countries including the U.S., Germany, Italy, the UK, and China, which is badly affected by the spread of coronavirus, thereby halting the demand for equipment and machinery.
Further, potential impact of the lockdown is currently vague and financial recovery of companies is totally based on its cash reserves. Equipment and machinery companies can afford a full lockdown only for a few months, after which the players would have to modify their investment plans.
Equipment and machinery manufacturers must focus on protecting their workforce, operations, and supply chains to respond toward immediate crises and find new ways of working after COVID-19 infection cases start to decrease.
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Top impacting factors: Market Scenario Analysis, Trends, Drivers, Opportunities, Restraints and Impact Analysis
The increasing demand for customized pneumatic positioners is a key factor behind the growth of the pneumatic positioner market. A wide range of customizable products in terms of coating and body material of the positioners are available in the market. Wide availability of customizable products help different end-users to select the appropriate products as per their application requirements. For instance, vendors in the chemical and petrochemical industry select anti-corrosion coating enabled valve positioners as these positioners are exposed to numerous chemically harsh liquids. The fluctuation in prices of raw material for manufacturing is a restraining factor as any volatility in raw material prices prevents manufacturing companies from adopting pneumatic positioners, thereby restraining the growth of the market. The opportunity for growth of pneumatic positioner market comes from the increasing popularity of smart positioners that are increasingly being adopted by end-users as it offers more operational efficiency than the other conventional positioners.
The global pneumatic positioner market trends are as follows:
Growth of global oil and gas industry
According to data of United Nations (U.N) more than 54% of global population is living in urban areas, which is generating employment opportunities and improving income level of individuals. Due to the aforementioned factors of growing population, urbanisation and increased standard of living of consumers around the world, creating opportunities for the global automotive market to expand. This in turn is aiding the growth of the global automotive, airline and tourism industries. With the rising construction activities across the globe, the use of fuel has considerably increased in the recent years. These factors contribute to the growth of the demand and consumption of oil and gas around the world and continue to aid the global oil and gas industry grow. Therefore, by extension, this helps the global pneumatic positioner to grow as well.
Growth in global automotive industry to help the market grow
Technologies like IoT, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have helped develop pneumatic positioner market massively. Increasing usage of digital or smart valve positioners is a key trend that is driving the market. These positioners can analyze the functioning of the valves by collecting data about the valves. Therefore, manufacturers are able to produce analytical models which help to improve the operational efficiency of the plant. This is expected to help the global pneumatic positioner market grow in the future.
Full Report With TOC:-https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/pneumatic-positioner-market-A09756
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opedguy · 2 years
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Ukraine’s Amb. Tells Musk to “F-Off”
LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Oct. 3, 2022.;--Telling billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEP Elon Musk to “F-Off,” Ukraine’s Gemran Amb. Andrj Melnyk mirrored Kiev’s attitude toward peace, with Musk tweeting that there’s a way out of the conflict for Ukraine.  But Musk found out quickly that Kiev is perfectly content to battle the Russian Federation as long as the U.S. government foots the bill.  Musk tweeted out a possible solution to the conflict, trying to save lives and more destruction as the conflict goes on.  Former Centcom Commander and disgraced 69-year-old CIA Director David Petraeus has been making his opinions known on Sunday morning talk shows, telling ABC’s “This Week” that the Russia army is in “dire” shape.  Like most Western propagandists, Petreus doesn’t say a word about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seven-moth campaign in Ukraine seizing the entire Black Sea Coast and all of Ukraine strategic ports.  
Petraeus doesn’t give an honest appraisal of the Ukraine War, only saying that it’s impossible for Putin to win over the long haul, because of a determined U.S. and NATO effort to keep supplying Ukraine unlimited cash-and-arms.  Petraeus paints Putin as a defeated Russian adversary, having nowhere to go in Ukraine but surrender.  Ukraine’s war efforts centers on taking back sovereign territory seized by Putin over the last seven months.  Every time Putin leaves a Russian occupied territory, Petraeus calls it proof of Russian failure.  Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky has zero interesting in resolving the conflict with Putin controlling so much sovereign land.  Zelensky said Oct. 1 that there can be no negotiations unless Russia has new president, something bound to irk the Kremlin.  There’s zero evidence that the Kremlin wants Putin removed from power.
Melnyk’s hostile vulgar to Musk mirrors the kind of attitude seen by Zelensky, where, with U.S. cash-and-arms, Kiev thinks they can keep the war going indefinitely.  Members of the European Union see the damage the war does to the EU economy, seeking an end to the conflict.  Zelensky refuses to deal with Putin because, unlike the analysis given by Petraeus and other U.S. generals, Putin has the upper hand in Ukraine for now.  Ukraine’s armed services can be expected to pick up some previously lost territory.  But whether that translates into getting rid of Putin remains unknown.  Musk only suggests to redo election in Russian occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhahia, where Russia has current control over the territory.  Whether admitted to or not, Zelensky lost 25% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, losing the entire Black Sea coast and all its strategic ports
Biden has said that Ukraine can’t start negotiations now with Russia because they occupy too much of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.  So, instead of listening to Musk to try to end the conflict, Melnyk tells Musk to “F-Off.”  Must wants elections redone in Russian occupied territories under U.N. supervision.  “Russia leaves if it’s the will of the people.” Musk tweeted. “Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 [Until Khruschev’s mistake].  Water supply to Crimea assured.  Ukraine remains neutral,” Musk tweeted prompting the insulting response.  Musk followed up saying it’s  “highly likely to be the outcome in the end—a question of how many die before that,” Musk said.  “The only outcome is [sic] that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f-ing Tesla crap,” said Melnyk.  “So good luck to you.”  Things would change abruptly in Ukraine if the U.S. pulled the plug on government and war funding.
Lucky for Zelensky, at the moment, that he has the full backing and support of Biden, whose lost to Putin in Syria and doesn’t want it to happen again in Ukraine. Musk sees the big picture that Ukraine will have to make territorial concessions to Russia or the war will go on indefinitely.  It’s easy for Melnyk to tell Musk to “F-Off,” when he has the U.S. treasury behind him.  Zelensky and Melynk want to continue battling the Russian Federation as long as they get a free ride from the U.S.  Good Samaritans like Musk see war as a total waste, knowing the mayhem created for ordinary citizens and world economies.  Melnyk’s vile response shows in Zelensky’s ciricles Ukraine wants to battle the Russian Federation to the death.  Pundits like Petraeus, who was stripped of his security clearance in 2012, make things worse by denigrating the Russian military to cater to the Western press.
Zelensky responded to Musk’s tweets with equal disdain for the world’s richest—and probably smartest—man.  “Which @Elongmuk do you like more?  The options    were “one that supports Ukraine” and “One who supports Russia,” tweeted Zelensky, completely missing the point. Musk wants peace at the earliest possible time seeing the ongoing carnage and destruction in Ukraine and beyond.  Zelensky gladly takes U.S. tax dollars to pay for his bankrupt government and war against the Russian Federation.  Musk raises entirely valid points as to what would end the conflict at the earliest possible time.  Zelenky and Melnyk only see the fight against the Russian Federation because they have the backing of the U.S. government.  Without the cash-and-arms, Zelensky would be forced into some kind of compromise.  Zelensky gambled with Ukraine’s sovereignty and lost Ukraine’s land to the Kremlin.
About the Author  
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
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furious-rogue-stuff · 2 years
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Façade - A Dave York Drabble
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So! This was originally a drabble prompt from my good partner in smutty crime, @just-here-for-the-moment​, but since this stupid hell site can’t work properly and allow me to copy this into my response to her ask, I’m relegated to posting it as a stand-alone blog. 
Pairing: Dave York x OFC | Dave York x Spitfire
Disclaimer: Written in 2nd person narrative, you can safely assume our heroine and love/lust interest is a Latina, written by a Latina. Here's my philosophy on my writing, for further context.
Rating: Mature/Explicit 🔞
🚨Author chooses not to include detailed warnings, but if you know the Equalizer universe and read Dave York fics, you know the kind of content to expect. This is depraved smut of the filthiest caliber, so you’ve been forewarned. However this story includes mentions of adultery/infidelity, allusions to violence, combative sexual dynamics, implied obsessive behavior, dominance fixation, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and unhealthy coping mechanism.
Word Count: 19,500+
Façade
It’s your assignment.
And you’ve had just about enough of him derailing it.
The conference room is charged with the acrimony that is incongruent with the affable expression plastered on the lead intelligence advisor’s face across from you. Yeah, fine – he’s the man who oversees all divisions of the agency’s work. And sure – the fact he’s the senior person in the room with the most awards and has the brass’ ear on almost everything doesn’t help, nor the fact that he’s Plummer’s favorite errand boy.
Nope. None of it bodes well in your favor, and that doesn’t help your simmering irritation from spiking sharply at the broad set of his shoulders or the aloof purse of his lips as he looks over the plans.
You don’t like Dave York.
Not because he was so well-liked around the building, or because he seemed to enjoy coming in and sabotaging your surveillance assessments or pulled the plug on special ops you’d painstakingly coordinated last minute because he ‘didn’t think the human intelligence data at its foundation was sound.’ Oh, no. All of that wasn’t new. You’d put up with plenty of C.O.’s and lily-livered analysts contracted by DOD who lived for leaving you and your team in professional squalor in the middle of hell while they fleeced the government by providing shit oversight and shoddy equipment.
You don’t like Dave York, because you see the real him he hides behind his sculpted façade.
Family man, jovial mid-leveler within the D.I.A. was his sanitized, 40+ hour week civilian day job. What he put on his taxes and got to sigh tiredly about with friends and family on weekend backyard shindigs or during Sunday football. The easygoing everyman swagger, the friendly regard of his smile, and the varnish of his deference for the people around him were expertly chiseled to hide the multifaceted truth of his character. It was an effortless camouflage – a blending in amongst the uninitiated. A decent fucking front…
How do you know it’s all a front? Because you have your own mask to wear, and the façade you’ve built is one you don’t like the likes of Dave York trying to fuck with by incessantly needling you with contrarian double talk.
After all, your meticulously crafted persona within the agency is that of the competently judicious yet charming field analyst who specializes in human and counter intelligence. For all everyone in the office knew, you went to the best schools, did a tour in the U.N. as an intern for a high commissioner through the Middle East, and were a convivial delight when you weren’t honed in on a delicate operation.
This specific operation is quite delicate, and having fuckin’ Dave York contradict you is testing your patience.
“—Looking at the latest reports, I don’t get a sense that there’s a need to hurry into the zone. Have you considered waiting until extraction is completely necessary?” Dave is cutting into your current remark justifying your timetable, and the way he flicks his gaze up from the satellite maps to glance at you?
Sure, to the rest of your team, it seems like just a musing look, waiting on you to share your thoughts. But you see it. How his dark brown eyes flare with something goading.
You feel the blazing disdain crest to the top of your head. Fuck it.
“That was the first thing we did, Dave,” you coolly scathe and cross your arms over your tight pearl-white silk blouse-clad chest, straining the fabric of your black blazer cinched snug to your biceps and slimming at your waist. “Are you concerned that my team is inept? Or are you merely suggesting you know more than us about this assignment?”
You can feel the other fellas bristle while the man stands straight from his leaning position to cross his own arms and jovially snicker, “Not at all! Really – this is stellar,” he’s gesturing to the presentation laid out on the conference room table before drawling, “But, timing is everything. And I don’t think yours is as urgent as you’ve outlined—”
“Look, I know it isn’t big ticket jihad-level stuff like you are always so keen to signoff on, but this is a dangerous cell of wannabe domestic terrorists going abroad for training on not-so-homegrown hobbies,” you contradict with a sarcastic edge, dropping your arms so one hand props at your hip while the other fans out in curt gesture at all of the work laid out before him. “The way things are going, domestic threats are going to blow foreign terror attempts out of the water—”
“And that is obviously on our radar, but not top priority,” Dave’s tone begins to dip from the practiced easygoingness to a sharper, terser quality as he eyes you now with a surly glint he quickly sweeps away by idly rubbing the inside of his palm along the line of his jaw while he flicks a glance at the others. “I know you all feel strongly—”
“What we feel has nothing to do with it, Dave. If you have another assignment you’re going to bump ours for, I’d rather you just say so and spare us the shine on,” you can’t help slash like a knife through a carotid artery.
He looks at you behind his mask as he trains his features into polished marble, where only the little furrow between his brows betrays his annoyance as he clears his throat, crosses his arms tightly over his slate-colored blazer and light-powder blue dress shirt before he stares over at your colleagues. “Foster, Hurley, Estrada – give us the room?” Dave asks in a firm baritone, shoulders squaring while a no-nonsense air about him fills the space.
The men nod and spare you varying glances of awe and appraisal before they head for the exit. Once the frosted glass door shuts behind them, you turn to eye him coolly. His stare is electric, charged with something cunning, lips pursing in what you would describe as a considering scowl before he exhales out his nose and leans edgewise on the table while he seemingly sizes you up.
“Besides the obvious, is there another reason why you feel compelled to buck every fucking thing I say?”
You hold his gaze as you sweep all your work up and stuff the files and maps into their folders before deliberately remaining leaned over the conference table in order to tilt your head in feigned contemplation at him. Dave fixes in on the soft way your full lips look when you feign a neutral smile.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The cavalier tone of your retort? That seems to goad him enough to dropping the mask.
His façade falls away to reveal an etched expression of a man not amused by you, but also smug and exacting as he flicks his dark eyes down your blouse before perniciously snickering as a slow, sly smile quirks his pillowed lips and threatens to reveal the dimple in his right cheek.
“I think you know exactly what I mean, spitfire.”
Oh, yeah…the other reason you know everything about Dave York is simply a fucking front, is because you saw him.
That night over a month ago, when an interagency party upstairs went long and you’d found yourself wandering back to your floor and down to the secluded nook around the corner from the old emergency stairwell. The one that’s great for slipping away and being isolated enough from the foot traffic of the office compartments beyond the heavy interior door with the sidelight. You hadn’t wandered down there alone.
The threat-assessment analyst was a contractor Estrada knew and vouched for. The fact he was hot and bold enough to suggest going somewhere more secluded, compounded with the fact that you’d had a bad week and definitely needed to let off some steam, were enough motivation to take him up on the suggestions. So, you’d led the way to the secluded ante-room, pulled him along to the corner across from the door and leaned into the inset counter used to stack phonebooks and the like back in the day.
A heated make-out session and his discovery that you had a thin lace thong on under your black cocktail dress later, and he had you bent over the bulky chair adjacent the wall-backed couch, with him fucking you fast and hard. Your vantage point and grip on the chair would allow the best chance to maneuver into the blind spot of the room if someone was to walk in, and allowed you to keep an ear out for anyone approaching before then.
Or so, you’d thought.
When you’d gasped after a particular slam of his hips into you and looked up, you noticed the silhouette of someone standing just out of sight of the sidelight. Your hookup for the night – Samson, was it? – was too focused on railing you as best he could to notice if there was a fire in the room, let alone someone possibly watching you. No, only you’d noticed, and rather than the voyeur get spooked at you staring ahead at them, making it clear you knew they were there, the boldness of it all had been enough invitation.
Dave had watched you. His dark eyes cataloguing how your breasts bounced in your bodice while you got fucked from behind. He’d admired how you’d reveled in it without shame, and when you’d noticed him? Rather than balking or hurriedly stopping or alerting the guy railing you, he watched as you stared right at him, like you were daring him to come in – seemingly projecting with the unspoken heat of your gaze and pout of your parted lips, You want this? Come and take me, if you fucking dare.
Or so, he’d thought.
After all, you hadn’t shown any indication prior to being attracted to him, let alone being open to a sexual encounter. Was he reading what he wanted to from your unabashed reaction? Or did the challenging heat in your gaze as you stared sinfully at him come from true desire? In the moment, he burned with the allure of seeing what seemed to be the real you: a stunning vixen.
Dave hadn’t had much interaction with you, other than the occasional assignment assessments he’d undertake of your division’s work. You’d come in from the Department of State’s New York office. Once you’d gotten to lead your team and put in for assignments, he’d gotten to know the surface facts about you from others in the office. But, after that first time? When he’d scuttled a project from moving forward into an operational phase? He’d seen it plain.
Dave had seen your eyes sharpen, even though your frame had remained poised and your expression hadn’t betrayed any ill will. But he knew that searing disdain better than anyone else. It had been a flicker, the pinprick dilation and darkening of your eyes before you’d been able to catch yourself and flicked your gaze away.
It had made him hard, and he didn’t know why.
And when he’d followed you and your hookup down from the top floor? He’d expected to catch you fooling around. Really, he’d hoped to get a glimpse – to find out how reckless and filthy you’d be by your selection of venue for the tryst. So, peering into the sidelight and seeing you getting fucked from behind, all the while your gaze had gone faraway as you bit back your sounds of pleasure? It had made Dave’s cock fill out instantly, throbbing with the ache of wanting to be balls’ deep in you. Instead, he’d watched, wondering how he could maybe spin this in his favor – how he could ensnare you with it, when your gaze had cleared and looked right at him.
Dave rarely got a thrill when he wasn’t on a job, or expending his baser urges with his vetted resources suited explicitly for that. But the exhilaration that burned in his gut and made his heart race at you watching him play the voyeur? It was an undercurrent that had singed through him long after, and had left him wanting.
When you’d gotten off, your eyes had screwed shut in ecstasy, mouth falling open on a breathy gasp. It had been intriguing, wondering if you’d come because he was watching you, or in spite of it.
After, when you’d blushed and looked back at the sidelight, you’d found it empty – as if no one had been there at all and you’d made the whole thing up just to get that deviant thrill needed to make you climax. Samson had been mindful of the condom, tending to it and rambling about how hot that was. You’d gone to splash cold water on your face and got cleaned up in the ladies room before sneaking down to your car and getting the hell out of there.
But, you’d wondered. Wondered how long it would take until he’d make it known – that he’d validate once and for all that you had not conjured him watching you get fucked that night. And, you’d wondered what he would do once he did.
And now, here it is.
So, you sweep the folders up from the conference table and pin them in the crook of your arm while reaching for your phone you’d left aside, sparing him an aloof glance as you retort neutrally, “Only reason I can think of? Is that you devalue our work. And I didn’t much feel like pretending it doesn’t aggravate me today. That’s all.”
The smug smirk flints away at your dismissive remark, replaced by a surly glare and the clench of his jaw as his eyes narrow on you. Feeling accomplished, you hum and turn on your heel to head for the door.
“Guess you’ll have to try harder to prove your work is of any value to begin with.”
The dark mutter of his low tone makes something deviant curl inside the pit of your stomach while a flush of warmth zings through you.
With a glance over your shoulder at him, you betray a goading smile, one Dave feels equal parts incensed and enticed by.
“Well then, I guess we’ll both have to do a lot more trying to find a happy medium,” you silkily drawl, opening the door, and then sighing, “Although, I doubt you’ll be able to rise to the occasion.”
You’ve breezed out the door before Dave can snap his mouth open to retort. Fuming, he glares about the vacant conference room and exhales his testy umbrage through his nose before grabbing his own leather planner to stride out. When he does, the easygoing veneer is back over his features, but his eyes are flinty and dark. Fucking little bitch… Dave snarls in his mind, but then the scintillating look in your eyes as you’d smiled back at him flashes bright. How am I gonna get my hands on that sexy fucking bitch…
He couldn’t deny it now. Sure, he’d conveniently tried to glaze over his recollection of the first time he’d seen you. Of how bewitchingly gorgeous he’d found you then, as you’d chatted in the lobby and accepted the cup of coffee from the chain store around the corner the department rep offered you. While the two of you came strolling towards the elevator banks he was at with a small crowd of nine to fivers.
When you’d got onto the same elevator as his and kept amiable chatter going, he’d stepped to the back corner, using the moment to covertly admire your profile. And he’d been more than pleased when you got off the elevator on the same floor. But even then, the calculating voice in his head had chided him. You don’t fuck around at work. That’s what the escorts are for. Keep shit compartmentalized. Can’t have things bleeding into each other—
“Oh, Dave! Come meet the new analyst we poached from DOS.”
He’d glanced around and paused in his stride towards his office, easily smiling and putting on his seamlessly affable cover as he strolled back and greeted the rep before exchanging introductions with you.
You, on the other hand, do not like Dave. Sure, at first, you found him innocuous. But now, after every major interaction with him becomes a test of your will? No, you can decidedly say you do not like Dave York.
No matter how handsome he is.
Or how enticing his voice is hitting that low register when he’d sniped gruffly at you just now.
Fuck, fine…he’s sexy. You grumble to yourself as you get back to your section. Sure, there were plenty of times you’d clandestinely stared at his broad shoulders in his well-fitted blazers, and admired his chiseled features. And yes, there’d been several occasions when you’d passed each other and you’d gotten an appealing whiff of his cologne. Which, then had you absently wondering how warm his skin is, or if his natural musk matches the rich darkness of his deep brown eyes.
But, then you’d see him wearing the façade to hide the real man he was. And more annoyingly enough – and probably what should be quelling your terse attraction to him – was the glaringly obvious gold band around his ring finger. Normal people don’t omit that. And after everything…you shouldn’t either.
“Jesus, girlie. You got a set of brass ones on yah.”
Your wandering thoughts snap away to focus on the trio of gazes that are on you once you’ve turned the corner into your section of shared desks. The fellas are conglomerated around your workspace, clearly on pins and needles, so you scoff and shake your head derisively before giving them a good-natured smile.
“You’re just mad I got a bigger pair than you, Hurlz,” you joke as you shrug your blazer off and toss it to hang on the back of your desk chair, slink onto the seat, and let it spin, unable to not shoot Matt Hurley a silly glance. “Anyway…it had to be said.”
“I mean, did it?” Johnny Estrada can’t help challenge as he crosses his arms and leans his hip into the tall file cabinet that bisects your workspace from his. “York is easygoing, but no one’s cool with taking that level of shit from anyone, chica.”
“Yeah, and unlike you three? I get stuck working on a lot of processing requests with people who report direct to him. I’d like to not end up on someone’s shit-list,” Sam Foster grumbles at you before nursing his morning-old coffee. “So then? I take it the assignment is another dud?”
Grunting to yourself when you realize nothing netted out definitively between you and Dave regarding the matter, you reply neutrally, “He’s taking it under advisement.”
They exchange varying looks of bewilderment before you sigh and spin your chair to face your computer.
“Fine. Yes. I lost my patience. I’ll work on it. Sorry, fellas,” you yield tersely.
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky we like you,” Matt quips before loping back to the opposite workspace he and Sam share. “Oh! Tomorrow? I got an in on that happy hour I told youz about. All you guys are down, right?” he exclaims and enthusiastically lobbies, patting Sam eagerly on the shoulder and punching Johnny on the arm when they give lukewarm grunts in response. “C’mon! Fancy bourbon bar at the top of a high-rise overlooking the Potomac, aka guaranteed to be busting with singles, if not swanky elite connections.”
“Wanna carpool tomorrow?” Johnny nudges you platonically with the back of his hand at your arm. “Do that workout class in the morning, and we can try this foofy bar?”
“Sure, but I want that muffin from the bakery,” you haggle, smiling when Matt cheers and starts hassling Sam to cave. “If you go, I’ll buy you all an ‘I’m sorry for being sassy to the boss’ round, ok?” is your suggestion when you look impishly at Sam.
“Ah, fuck it, fine,” the man relents, comically shoving Matt along to get back to work. “We’ll all go right after work tomorrow.”
What had you been thinking about? Oh, yeah…Dave York.
As you zone out into your clerical tasks, typing away and staring at your computer screen, you can’t help try and drudge the foreboding feeling that you’re dismissing something you shouldn’t. What was it?
Your mind slaps you with Dave’s silhouette, standing behind the sidelight of that door. Oh yeah…I should feel alarmed by that, right? Earnestly, you insist to yourself that surely having a man you work with lurking and leering at you in such a vulnerable circumstance is something a normal woman should have been seriously concerned – perhaps even fearful of. But that anxiety never hits. Even when you’d rushed out of the building that night, it was more to get out of the awkward parting of ways with your hookup rather than being put out or mortified by being watched by the lead intelligence advisor you’d had to bury your rancor towards.
As the day goes on to early evening and each of the fellas file out and offer you their varying farewells, you keep working, and psychoanalyzing yourself.
And then, just when you feel obtusely detached from the inscrutable reason trying to cull you into concern, your mind skids to a halt on the sudden thought.
He’s dangerous. Something about him is familiar because he’s a threat.
Pausing to contemplate that, you lean back in your chair and dazedly look around to find the office and other workspaces empty. Checking the time on your phone, you realize it’s later than you’d intended to stay, so with a mind-clearing shake of your head, you logoff your computer, grab your purse and loop your blazer to drape over it as you hang the strap on your shoulder. The muted sound of your heels becomes a rhythmic click as you traverse through the office and out to the tiled foyer towards the elevator banks. You press the button and push your blouse’s sleeves up to your elbows before glancing at your smartphone’s screen to idly check messages while you wait.
The elevator arrives and its doors slide open smoothly, so you breeze in and with practiced sense-memory, press the button to the garage level without looking up from your phone. Just as you’re taking a measured step back towards the wall while the doors begin to slide shut, you make out the sound of footfalls in long strides across the tiled floor before the doors pause and accordion back when the person places their hand to trigger the safety sensor.
Once the elevator halts, you flick your glance up just as Dave steps in and settles to stand next to you, with a respectable pocket of space between you both.
For some reason, your pulse races, and that familiar tingle of trepidation flickers through you, but you don’t outwardly betray anything and simply resume perusing the article you’d begun to skim through on your phone. As soon as the doors slide shut, Dave shoots you a sidelong glance and adjusts the strap of his soft leather workbag higher up his broad shoulder before flicking his wrist up to glance at his watch.
“You make it a habit of working late on days you backtalk to superiors?”
That little deviant thrill buzzes through you at his menacingly gruff remark. You don’t look at him though. Instead, you flick your gaze from your phone to the floor number display on the elevator’s panel, seeing it’s ticking down slow and making it obvious it’s going to meander all the way down to the G-level, as it always does. You then spot the security camera mounted not-so-covertly in the ceiling corner of the elevator, and realize he’s being mindful of its watchful lens, hence why his body language and expression don’t match the provocative tone of his voice or the edge of his words.
With a musing sigh, you glance back at your phone and close out the article as you retort glibly, “I work late most days, Dave. In spite of whomever might’ve gotten my backtalk.”
It’s then you betray an aloof glance his way, and smile when he raises a stoically quirked brow while his dark brown eyes snap appraisingly along the length of you before boring into your now unbothered gaze. It’s fleeting, but you both see the flare of something charged in each other’s eyes before you turn to feign you’re checking the floor number display again. Really, you’re looking at how his jaw squares before the hinge clenches. Admiring his 5-o’clock shadow along his cheeks and jawline, as you watch the tendon in his neck flex when he grunts and looks down at his own phone he’s just pulled from his blazer’s pocket.
“You seemed to be incapable of backtalk when that prick was railing the fuck out of you.”
His voice is a velvet pitch, rich with surly wickedness. Dave said it with his features relaxed, tip of his tongue darting to dampen the top rim of his lips as he feigned boredom and looked up from his phone screen now to shoot you a carefree smile.
It shouldn’t turn you on. None of this should be something you’re entertaining. But then you offer him a congenial smile, the one you let reach your eyes. They crinkle prettily and make your lashes seem longer just as you bat them at him. Dave’s pillowed lips pull into a handsome, albeit amused smirk, so you slip your phone into your purse and coolly brush your fingers to tuck your hair behind your ear as you regard him with a heated stare.
“Hmm, I suppose that was the case, seeing as he was giving me something I wanted rather than pretending to appease me with his good-guy façade,” is your sibilant drawl as you give him an easygoing, one-shouldered shrug.
Dave’s expression darkens, and you can feel the rancorous windup radiate off of him and reverberate onto you just as the elevator dings, announcing you’ve arrived to the garage level. He’s hot under the collar now – cock thick and hard in his slacks in spite of his dueling outrage and wanton urge warring for dominance. It leaves him feeling like his skin is pulled too tight and the conflict of it has wound tight into the pit of his belly.
When the doors slide open, you politely nod in farewell and nimbly breeze out, intending to stride off to your car while nursing the gloating delight of wiping the smirk off his good-looking face.
Suddenly, before you’ve registered the shift, you’re whipped around by a vise-like grip snapping around the back of your arm. In a blink, you’re pressed up against the cement retaining wall that creates a corner separating the elevator banks from the approaching curb leading out to the sprawling underground parking. Your neck cranes back so you can stare up at Dave as he looms over you before he briskly presses into your personal space and causes your breath to hitch in your chest. His dark eyes unearth a shiver to skitter up your spine, and the imposing way he crowds you, leaning close enough for you to smell his mint-tinged breath and the intertwined scent that makes up the warm musk of his cologne, soap and skin.
“I guess I don’t have to pretend anymore on your account, seeing as you enjoy being a smart-mouthed bitch,” Dave growls darkly, adding in a hushed rumble, “The kind of disrespectful tease that secretly aches to be punished. That why you strut around, talking to me like you do? Because you wish I’d drag you into a dark corner and fuck you speechless, you wicked little bitch?”
Your thighs clench from how hard your pussy throbs at his nasty come-on, and you dimly wonder if he can smell how wet you are – well, how wet you’ve been since he stepped onto the elevator, because your panties are drenched through now as you press your shoulders back into the cement and defiantly stare up at him, hands snapping up onto his blazer-clad biceps. His arms are boxing you in against him and the wall, and he expects you to push him away, or maybe even dig your nails into his arms in retaliation. So, when you instead grip them and pull him closer, his surly expression cools long enough to take in how you’re looking at him.
“Is that why you watched? Because you wanted to be the one fucking me, Dave?”
His expression hardens, jaw ticking as he exhales harshly out his nose and glares scathingly down at you from how lilting and smug your tone was.
Humming a sultry sound of amusement, you gloat, “What, you can’t admit it? Is it too much of a dangerous threat to your dashing Dave shtick? Or you can’t accept that you want what you can’t have—?”
“Who fucking said I can’t have it?” Dave snarls turbulently as he suddenly un-shoulders his satchel and lets it plot to the floor. Your eyes flash with surprise when he grabs your waist, digging his thumb into your hipbone while his other hand clasps around your slender neck and pins you into place so he can tauntingly lean dangerously close. He ghosts the tip of his aquiline nose across your cheekbone as he husks, “From the way you were looking at me? I think you only managed to come that night because you were pretending it was me railing you from behind. Wishing it was my cock fucking your pussy raw,” he pauses to see if you’ll object, or try to contradict him. Your only reaction is for your breath to quicken, and he smirks maliciously when your eyes get dark and glossy as he lightly kneads your throat with his warm palm and thick fingers clasping threateningly as if contemplating squeezing. “Tell me I’m wrong, spitfire. Talkback. Say you don’t want it, and—”
Dave’s command cuts off when you swiftly maneuver your arm in a way that it sweeps his hand from your throat while your other hand snatches around his nape to hook and haul him down so you can challengingly glare into his wide gape. “You want control?! Then you say it,” you hiss daringly, heart pounding in your chest and core cloying with desire. Dave deliberates tensely as he wraps his arms possessively around your frame, so you airily murmur, “If you want it, then take it.” He bristles at your tone, so you sigh, eyes lowering alluringly as you whisper, “Drop the façade and show me…”
Fuck. Dave feels off-kilter and ravenously turned on by your defiant-yet-beguiling come-on. His eyes sear into yours as he leans into a breath’s width of your mouth and curls his palm up from your waist to drag up your soft blouse, fondling you over the thin material before he curls his hand around to grip the back of your neck and yank you forward to meet his bruising kiss.
After so long, and despite all the roiling angst that’s been crackling between you, your mouths are demanding and warm as the tether keeping you both at odds snaps loose. There’s no security camera to worry about now, so Dave revels in kissing you breathless after having longed to do it, and your mouth worships his with just as much gusto. It proves to him you’ve wanted him just as much, and he blazes with savage pride while you relish feeling so engulfed-yet-grounded in this all-consuming passion he’s stoking out of you.
You cling to Dave as his tongue plunders your mouth and his knee jams between your pencil-skirt-clad thighs to force you onto your tippy toes so you can drown and burn all at once. The heat of your clothed cunt as it grinds against his thigh makes Dave growl into the kiss before you suck hard on his bottom lip and gasp from how his other hand gropes the globe of your buttock and digs his fingers into the plump swell. Your hand tightens in the neatly-trimmed tufts of hair at his nape when your pussy throbs in response to him grinding his hard-on against your hip while he presses his thumb below the hinge of your jaw to pin it open when you mewl into the torrid kiss.
Just as your brain begins to haywire with debauched yearning and reluctant apprehension at being dominated by Dave out in the open like this, you hear the ding of the elevator chiming its sudden arrival.
With automatic force, you recoil and shove Dave back before snapping your purse strap up from the tangle it’s in at your elbow to snag on your shoulder as you agilely sprint off. He is equally swift in retrieving his satchel and scrubbing his palm over his features to swipe any possible remnants of your lipstick that may have smudged on him, as he breathes in a charged inhale and holds it the entire time he walks briskly to his car. As he hurries on long strides, he covertly watches you clear the expanse of the empty spaces towards your compact little sedan tucked into a spot across the way. You don’t spare a backwards glance at him, which Dave takes umbrage to and begins to simmer with disdain over while he stalks to his own black Mercedes in the top corner.
The office workers who’d filed out of the coitus interruptus elevator were now loudly saying their farewells as they broke off to head to their own vehicles just as you hop into yours. Dave scans your license plate as you back out of your spot and maneuver to pull out and cruise out of the level up towards the exit ramp. With a gruff grunt, he gets in his car and sits there while the engine warms up. He palms his hard-on over his trousers and feels himself throb while his face flushes with surly frustration.
Fucking Christ. What’re you doing – what the fuck even was that?
With a huff, Dave snaps his seatbelt on and notices the damp spot on his pant leg, just above his knee. Don’t blur the fucking lines, dammit. Keep shit separate. Work. Family. Hookups. Contracts. Each walled off so one doesn’t fuck with the other. His palm rubs the spot clean enough to not be traceable to the naked eye. Before he puts the car in reverse, he raises his hand to his nose and breathes in the scent of your wet pussy. Blood rushes to his groin and his hard-on strains in response. Fuck…you have to keep it all compartmentalized. Fucking a hot piece of ass from the office is not the way to go about it…
Annoyed, Dave backs out of his spot and heads home, intending to force his wanton desire for you into the dark pit with the rest of the things he can’t have.
But then the drive is filled with snapshots of all the things he’s catalogued about you. His mind falls into the loop of things he finds the most enticing. Starting with how good you looked getting fucked. He’d always wondered whether he’d misread the standoffish vibe he kept picking up from you, but since that night, it had become clear that you were on guard and perceptive. Like you’d seen something in him that he actively worked to conceal.
It’s now that he realizes it: Whatever you’d seen in him? He got a glimpse of the same thing in you that night, and today. But rather than put him on guard like it had for you, Dave felt some subliminal gravitation towards you. Reckless, fucking wild energy…but with something else teeming just beneath the surface…
You’d been strong. No hesitation in your movements, and the way you’d shifted his hand away? It was practiced and fluid. Self-defense courses? He hummed to himself as he drove down the suburban block, nearing home.
He tries to snuff further impulsive scrutiny on the subject – Fuck, she’s going to be trouble – as he idly scrubs his hand over his face, rubbing his fingers absently at his nose before exhaling a tense huff while he concentrates on the road, but his mind just keeps snapping back to the standout things he’s found so alluring; that had left him simmering with intrigue.
Your impatience and sheer inability to keep your umbrage at bay today, when he’d shut your team down. How you smiled deviously the few times you’d walked by each other, when you thought he wasn’t looking. The way your eyes heated when he’d talked dirty to you.
And, unbidden, his mind starts fixating on how your mouth tastes and the way you fit against him when you’d made out.
By the time Dave gets home, it’s late enough that the girls are tucked in, so he walks into his bedroom, kicks off his shoes and hurriedly strips his blazer and tie before rolling up his sleeves.
He eyed Carole intensely as he prowled up to her on the bed and yanked her down onto her back before he shoved her nightgown up so he could bow his head between her thighs. He fucked her the way he reserves only for her – passionate, present and pent-up as he loomed over her. Dave wrecks her easily with his wound up need, and he makes her come a second time before he pulls out and finishes on her nightgown. The pressure of the frustration of before eases with the needed release, and he’s able to easily put his façade back up as he settles down into bed post-coitus.
Still, when the lights are off, he lies in bed with her sated and curled up against him, blissfully oblivious while Dave becomes still as he stares into the dark.
Compartmentalize.
He wonders if you’re touching yourself, thinking about him…
***
The entire ordeal had been something visceral for you. One moment you were at the safe distance you figuratively always demarcate between you and a perceived threat. And the next?
You shiver. The heat of it – how much you’d wanted it, has you still tingling with a libidinous urge. Never have you felt that jolt of sheer panic the way you did when that elevator had chimed. It had flooded you so fiercely that you’d pushed Dave back and practically broken into a mad dash to your car. Your face had burned with your mortification, and the shame of it had been so potent that you couldn’t muster the gumption to look back at Dave, fearing he’d be able to see it plainly carved in you. That you would become a pillar of salt if you looked into his dark brown eyes and etched features.
You were also so turned on that you weren’t sure what you would’ve done if your eyes had locked onto those dark brown pools of his – that they would’ve stripped you to the fibers and rewired you to let them sway you the way they had into whatever the hell that was. So, you’d gotten in your car and made your needed exit before the impulses that had gotten you into so much trouble to begin with further wrought you into an even precariously reckless state.
The next morning, you are more than able to make the early wakeup call to meet Johnny at the curb in front of your apartment building for the kickboxing session. After all, you’d spent the entire night tossing and turning, with Dave on your mind.
Sure, you’d touched yourself in the shower after trying to rinse his cologne off of you, but the desire you have for him was a molten well you’d sprung, and even when you’d gotten off, it hadn’t been enough. You’d wanted him curled around you from behind. Ached to be pounded mercilessly into the bed. To walk around with the burn of his cock having stretched your muscles, and throb with the sting of his rough touches. To feel that stabilizing bliss of being dominated seep deep to your bones and soothe the roiling darkness in you.
He’s dangerous. That was unsustainable. You can’t want him. You don’t even like him, remember?!
It’s the mantra you harangue over and over in your mind as you nibble on the muffin Johnny got you from the bakery around the corner from his place while he drives you both to work, chatting amiably.
You keep it on repeat as you ride up in the elevator, and then stroll to your workspace. But, when you log onto your computer and pull up your email, all the heckling grinds to a halt.
“…He approved it…”
“Huh?” Johnny spins sidelong in his desk chair to peer over at you. “What’s that—?”
“Holy shit! Did you read your email?!” Matt suddenly pops up from behind the divider separating he and Sam’s workspaces from yours. “The assignment got approved!”
“Oh fuck, really?!” Johnny balks, surprised. “He really took whatever you told him under advisement, chica!”
“Sam!” Matt is shouting and waving enthusiastically at the man as he emerges from the reception area and lopes down inquisitively towards your group. “Check it out, man! ‘Assignment Approved,’ so no more sulking into your mug. Tonight we’re definitely celebrating!”
You’re bemused and concealing it expertly from the fellas. After all…what was this? Did Dave really approve your assignment as what – some kind of show of goodwill? An olive branch? A way to kowtow you?
Was this some sort of quid pro quo?!
It eats at you all day.
So, by the time you’re heading out to happy hour a little after 5-o’clock, you feel unsteady and unsettled. But, you’re a master of guarding your true self and exuding unruffled ease, so you summon that and head up into the glass elevator with the fellas to the top floor of the building.
Matt is true to his word, and you’re all able to get in and take up vigil at a bar-height table before they muscle in to get the drinks ordered. You’re able to admire the elegantly timeless ambiance of the exclusive bar, then move onto the sprawling view out at the Potomac River as the early evening sun reflects across it, backlit by the highways and other glass buildings flanking it. Johnny comes back and hands you a martini, settling in next to you to kill time people watching and commenting on the swanky vibe of the place. Once Matt and Sam shuffle through the crowd to park around the table, you all share a toast.
“—To a hopefully more promising future in getting shit done!” Matt cheers and you all exchange good-natured clinks of your drinks before sipping.
“How’d you get us in here, by the way?” Sam asks as he swirls his old fashioned.
“The hostess is dating my brother!” Matt drawls and grins as he gestures to the back corner across from the bar, where cozier seating options are, away from the bustling bar patrons. “And it’s a total bonus that I got word that they’d be here.”
Following his stare, the rest of you turn to see that Susan Plummer and the usual suspects of her inner circle are sitting around a circular dining table, shooting the shit over side plates and aged bourbon.
You can feel you pulse race and that wanton desire spread a dull ache in the seat of your core at seeing Dave with the seasoned lead within the agency. What the hell?!
“Dude, don’t tell me this is gonna be your attempt at worming in there to network with the head honchos,” Johnny can’t help deride Matt as he nurses his beer.
“C’mon man, you wanna stay on an assignments team forever?” Sam mutters, taking Matt’s side. “This is actually not a shit plan—”
“Jeez, thanks,” Matt elbows him and bounces his brows triumphantly at you when he adds, “Besides, wouldn’t it be awesome to get some face-to-face time with the boss lady? Let her get a good look at the badass who wore York down?”
You snicker and finish your martini, outwardly humored, but internally ready to shrink into the shadows and get the hell out of there. “Well, count me out on that. I don’t think rubbing that fact in will improve any of our standings, but feel free to go over, if you dare,” is your amused retort as you idly glance towards the illustrious group of senior-level leads to find that Dave has spotted you. “I’m gonna see if they’ll make me a martini with vodka next,” you announce as you slink away and weave through the crowd to what you hope to be a secluded spot you see open up at the bar.
The boys exchange looks and decide to go for it, and you watch them stroll over to the wood paneled section of the bar to introduce themselves to the top brass. You watch as Dave turns on the affable charisma and waves them over once he spots them, giving each of the fellas a friendly handshake before gesturing to Plummer as everyone shares greetings. Satisfied to have avoided that, you turn your focus to the bar and wait to be attended. After several unsuccessful attempts to flag down a bartender over the bustling and chattering din of the crowd, you’re weighing giving up and just leaving your empty martini glass on the bar top. Just as you consider whether you could get away with doing the Irish goodbye on the fellas and going to a normal bar to decompress, you feel someone tall sidle up next to you at the counter. The warm, spiced hints of a familiar cologne filter over your senses when they lean their large hand on the counter top and authoritatively whistle for the nearest bartender’s attention.
“Hey, I’m switching to a whiskey. Neat.”
The face of the watch peeking from the suit’s sleeve and the gold of the wedding band glint under the pendant light directly above this corner of the bar, and you steel yourself, despite the deviant thrill that surges through you. Arousal tingles through you and throbs wet heat to radiate through your pelvis before zinging into the clutch of your pussy, which makes your thighs clench and breath flutter.
Guardedly, you glance up at Dave and silently spectate how the bartender attentively backpedals and takes his empty glass with a curt nod, about to hop to it when Dave flicks his dark eyes down at you before nodding in your direction as he drawls, “And whatever she’s having.”
You tap the rim of your empty martini glass and order smoothly, “Vodka martini with a twist, please.”
Nodding, the bartender grabs the glass and goes off to make your drinks.
You feel the heat of his gaze flick away as Dave neutrally glances over the crowd to where your happy hours have seemingly merged. “I would’ve figured you for a dirty martini kind of girl,” he drawls in a laconic mumble.
Unable to suppress your devious smile, you try to conceal it by busying yourself looking through your purse for your phone. “And I figured you for a light beer type of guy,” you offer glibly. Checking the time on your phone, you spare a craning look towards the fellas, hoping they’re not going to just camp out with the big wigs now, and frown when you see they’re pretty much settled in at the large round table, talking congenially.
“So is this standoffish attitude just for me? Or do you have an aversion to networking and getting in good with the bosses,” he queries sarcastically as he leans his elbows over the countertop.
He’s in a nice dark gray suit, the knot of his burgundy tie loose and the top of his crisp white dress shirt collar unbuttoned, hair looking like he’s run his fingers through it a few times in the last hour. He looks good enough to eat.
Slipping your phone back into the purse, you covertly glare at him under your lashes. “You’re quite vain, Dave,” you chime deridingly, glance daring now as he flicks his intense gaze down at you. “Maybe I just want to get my work done without you derailing it on a whim? And perhaps I don’t want to suck up to you and the bosses on my time off?”
He looks stonily at you, about to say something, but the bartender appears with your drinks, so you accept the martini and hold it up in gesture of thanks before motioning with a tilt of your head that you’re going back to your table. However, you find your plan to abscond from him thwarted when you clear around enough of the crowd to see the bar top table has been taken over by other patrons. Goddammit…
“You have a bratty fucking inability of showing gratitude, you know that,” Dave mutters darkly, close to your ear before covertly herding you by the back of your hip to return to your spot at the counter. “And this trying to have the last word before strutting off bullshit is not gonna fly with me anymore…” is his warningly low rumble before he turns back to his drink and takes a long pull from the amber liquid in the glass.
Your eyes flash with something searing, and he smirks around the rim of the glass.
“Oh, there you are!” You turn to see Johnny approach with a glass of bourbon in his hand, so you shoot him a mocking look, as if to say ‘Really? You’re a bourbon boy now?’ “I saw we lost the table, so wanted to make sure you were good.”
“Yeah, sorry. Took way longer for me to get a drink. Luckily Dave here has the gravitas to have the bartenders at his beck and call,” you can’t help charmingly quip and raise your glass to Dave before taking a sip.
“Is she always this mean?” Dave jokes and gives Johnny a faux-forlorn headshake.
Your friend and coworker laughs. “Pretty much. Don’t take it too personal.”
“Oh, nice. Thanks for selling me out, Estrada,” you comically hiss and punch him lightly on the arm.
Dave chuckles, but secretly catalogues your seemingly platonic, carefree ease with the other man. He wonders if you two fuck. If after the bar, he’ll take you to his place and make you whimper and come as hard as he’s fantasized about when he’d thought about you every time he’d jacked off since watching you get railed that night.
“—C’mon, chica. Won’t hurt to make a round and say hello!” Johnny is cajoling, and Dave drains the remainder of his glass before gesturing for a refill by holding his empty tumbler up for the bartender to see.
“Ugh, fine. You’re all a bunch of social climbers!” you heckle and goofily thread your arm through his as you taunt, “Lead the way, then.”
You don’t spare a look back at Dave, but you can feel his stare rove your indigo-blouse-covered back and invisibly fondle over your black-pencil-skirt-clad ass as you go.
Feeling pretty good about extricating yourself from that possibly sticky situation before it could become as torrid as last night’s brief encounter, you let Johnny take you over and introduce you to the legendary Susan Plummer and the other department leads. She’s friendly and boisterous, telling you to pull up a chair and join them as she put in another round of bourbon servings for the table. You do, pleasantly joining the conversation.
“That martini looks awfully good. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one from here,” Susan is commenting as the server hands everyone their bourbon drinks. “I’ll have one of those, please,” she impishly tells the server and smiles broadly as Dave appears with his whiskey and shakes his head at her while he lopes around the seated parties. “What?! It’s Friday, and I got a driver!”
“I didn’t say anything,” he quips, pursing his lips derisively at her as he takes the vacant seat next to the chair you’d pulled over to sit in. “But since I do have to drive, this’ll be it for me,” Dave remarks glibly as he tips his drink at her and takes a swallow.
“Ah, well then, one of you boys, don’t let Dave’s bourbon go to waste!” Susan chuckles, and you amusedly reach for the filled glass and slide it over to Sam – who’s sitting on the other side of you – while finishing your martini with a pristine gulp. As you settle back and push your empty glass to the center before you scoot your chair further into the table, you grab for the glass of bourbon that’s your serving, internally grimacing and squinting at Matt and Johnny when they shoot comical looks at you. Snickering, you cup the crystal-carved glass in your palms and try to steel yourself to drink it when you suddenly feel warm, deft fingers skim over the outside of your knee before a large palm wraps around it and squeezes possessively. Your pulse jumps and your pussy clenches, but your expression doesn’t betray a thing, which is good, since Susan asks, “Aww, are you not a fan of bourbon? We could get you something else—”
“N-No, it’s fine. I’m just cautious with dark spirits. They tend to go to my head and flush my cheeks,” you persuasively assure before taking a fortifying breath and drinking. As you do, Dave chooses that moment to glide his hand up your thigh, pushing the hem of your skirt in his wake. It makes it easy for it to slip between your thighs and clutch your supple flesh until his fingertips are kneading greedily enough to make your cunt pulse and a rush of arousal ache down with it.
It steals your breath, and you fight the urge to gasp out by hiding it as a little hiccup into the glass before you place it back down on the table.
Mercifully, the fellas and the other leads at the table keep the conversation flowing, so you’re able to feign like you’re shifting in your chair when you’re really grabbing Dave’s wrist and doing a pressure-point squeeze to it, manipulating the joint and causing the tendons in his hand to jolt.
He bites back his hiss and shifts his hand away, but you think the action will bring attention to you both, so you bump the back of your hand against the appetizer dish and cutlery closest to you. “Ugh, I’m such a klutz! Sorry,” you exclaim as you grab the cutlery that clattered and busily straighten it while Dave clandestinely studies you, cataloguing what you did. “Told you the bourbon would go to my head,” you chime self-deprecatingly before shooting Johnny ‘the look’ and excusing yourself.
Dave watches as you get up and head out to the main bar area with your workspace mate following you as conversation around the table resumes as if uninterrupted. He realizes you’d snagged your purse and taken it with you, making it all the more likely that you would be once again absconding from him.
And that was totally your intention. You of course make up an excuse to Johnny and assure him that you’re just really tired and will grab a cab home.
With a cool smile and pat of his shoulder as you lean in and kiss his cheek, you drawl, “You just keep schmoozing! Fill me in on everything Monday?”
“Sure thing. But if they ask where you went, I’m going to tell the table it’s you pulling your infamous Irish goodbye!” he jokes and smirks. “Pick you up for kickboxing early Monday.”
Winking and nodding, you turn and saunter out, intending to make your escape. Don’t look back. Don’t fucking do it. After all, you don’t want to keep sending whatever signal Dave keeps pinging onto, and while you can’t deny getting a rush from it, you know you can’t entertain whatever the hell this is. That you shouldn’t be entertaining his lascivious and intense brand of courtship, no matter how much his dark eyes flaring at you, or his pouty, tight-jawed scowl make you yearn for his wickedness. He’s married. You work together. And also: YOU. DO. NOT. LIKE. HIM.
With the new mantra, you successfully weave through the crowd towards the foyer and slip into the first elevator going down. With a stop at the ladies room, you brush your wispy hairs back from your face and undo the top two buttons of your indigo blouse’s collar before shouldering your purse and heading out the lobby towards the glass doors out front. At this time, traffic is bustling and it’s a competition to get a cab. Most are running off the curb, flagging the taxis down and hopping in before they’ve even fully stopped.
You frown and pace towards a less crowded corner of the curb, next to the underground parking ramp for the building you’d just exited. Looking up and down the avenue, you spot a cab cruising your way, so you enthusiastically wave to get the driver’s attention, but he jets right by, and you see there were already passengers in the backseat. Huffing, you pull your phone out of your purse, rescind to opening the rideshare app and seeing what your options were as you step back onto the curb when the parking exit’s security arm lifts and the sound of an approaching car accelerating up the drive echoes over to you.
Distractedly checking the rates for the ride home, you’re idly kneading your bottom lip between your teeth when the car pulls up and halts for the inbound traffic. The sound of the power window lowering is in your peripheral attention when you suddenly feel that sensation of someone staring at you.
“Need a ride?”
Turning swiftly at the smugly purred offer, you hesitate as you eye Dave in his sleek black Mercedes, arm folded over the window’s panel as he smirks at you.
Tersely, you pivot sidelong as you evade, “…No, thank you. I was just about to punch in for—”
“Meaning, you haven’t booked it yet, so you can hop in and let me save you the rush hour rate,” Dave cuts in with a honeyed baritone. When you give him a sarcastic look and quirk a brow skeptically at him, he adds amusedly, “C’mon, spitfire. It’s getting dark, traffic’s a bitch, and I wouldn’t mind going somewhere for a nightcap. It’d be nice to have the company.”
You know alarm bells should be going off, and that some visceral part of you senses the mystique of something deviant and domineering in the way his dark brown eyes are looking at you. But it doesn’t scare you. If anything, you’re feeling a pull, and you can’t deny how he has your heart racing and heat tangling in your core with heady, lurid anticipation.
A car pulls up behind Dave’s and honks, so with a ridiculing tilt of his head at you, he mocks, “You’re holding up the line, buttercup. Get in while you still can.”
Pursing your lips at him, you throw caution to the wind – rounding the front of the car to open the front passenger door and hop in with a derisive snicker.
As you’re snapping your seatbelt on, Dave can’t help internally gloat, pleased to have had made the smart decision to call home and tell Carole he’d be working late and would probably sleep on the pullout couch in his office tonight. She’d affectionately lamented him spending another Friday night hard at work, but was always none the wiser to ever suspect a thing. He knew he was too wound up to go home after the tug and pull at the bar with you, so he’d rescind himself to stewing about it alone, and was analyzing how adeptly you’d applied the wrist pressure move – She’s gotta have learned that in some self-defense class – when he’d driven up the ramp and spotted you on the corner, idling on your phone.
Pulling out onto the avenue, Dave drives through traffic and watches you out of the corner of your eye as you lean back in the leather seat and adjust your purse to sit on your lap. “So? Where to for this nightcap?” you query and glance over at him as you tuck a rogue strand of hair behind your ear.
“I have a place,” Dave retorts, driving expertly to weave in and out of traffic as he heads southbound.
Cataloguing the streets and landmarks he drives past, you figure he’ll take you to some more secluded spot, perhaps in DuPont Circle. But when he keeps going without taking any of the routes into the trendy area, your next guess is that maybe he’ll take you to some posh place in Foggybottom. You don’t feel like filling the quiet with inane questions or idle chatter on the matter, though, so you appreciate the silence and the hum of the air-conditioning and smoothness of the car’s horsepower. The radio isn’t on, and you wonder if he just turned it down before he’d rolled down the window to call out to you.
“Are you and Estrada a thing?”
The absent train of thought of your mind derails, and you blink the faraway contemplating to absorb his question. Part of you is annoyed he would ask. It wants you to snap, ‘Are you and your wife a thing?’ with a snarky edge, but you dismiss the bratty impulse. Glancing over at him, you give him a puzzled look instead, arching a delicate brow as you size him up.
“I’m curious, is all,” Dave mutters, as he continues to head southbound, sparing you a mocking glance. “Wondering if there’s some reason why he wasn’t the one doing the railing that night—”
“Did you approve our assignment as a quid pro quo?”
His mirth cools as he snaps a perturbed glance at you before glaring ahead. “You think I need to exchange favors like some hard-up fucker, desperate to get his dick wet?” is his low grouse, jaw tightening and shoulders winding back stiffly.
“Well…do you?” is your mischievous murmur, and when he shoots a glare your way, you smile – a genuine, brilliant smile that knocks the umbrage loose from his chest and makes heat rise to the back of his neck. “No, Estrada is just a very good friend. And no, I don’t think you’re a hard-up fucker. Just…an instigating asshole who uses a façade in order to keep up with the Joneses, when he’s really the opposite,” you find yourself volunteering evenly as you realize he’s driving you way out of your normal stomping grounds. “Where are we going?” you ask, gaze sharp as you catalogue your surroundings. He’s heading into Navy Yard.
“I told you. I got a place,” Dave rumbles flatly, still stuck on your assessment of him. It’s grinding his gears how accurately you pegged him. Tersely, he retorts, “And no, it isn’t a quid pro quo—”
“So you admit you’ve been just fucking with me,” you cut in and cross your arms, eyeing him wryly.
Dave grunts before sweeping his tongue across his top teeth before answering, “Not yet, I haven’t.”
You scoff and turn your face away, hiding the sardonic smirk tugging at your full lips. “Where are you taking us, Dave,” you ask again, staring narrowly at him when he deadpans a wordless hum. “This is literally how every Dateline starts—”
“Is that a fact?” he sneers in a gravelly drone, brows quirking sarcastically.
With an impish smirk, you chime, “Yep. Suburban husband takes colleague for a drive. She’s found in a ditch, or a swamp. Brutalized beyond recognition, and they come up with a catchy episode title. Something like, ‘She Never Came Home’—”
“Fucking Christ,” he heckles, grinning derisively at you as he looks over with a scathing quirk to his features. “That’s twisted—”
“Look who’s fucking talking,” you deride, licking your lips and snickering, “I’m being driven to an undisclosed location by Mr. Nice Guy, who turns out, makes it sport to fuck with my work, and is holding over my head catching me having sex in the office—”
“When did I do that?” he interrupts acerbically as he pulls down a side street and cruises towards the back entrance to what looks like a former factory warehouse-turned loft spaces.
You hum thoughtfully, turning your attention to the enclosed garage he’s driving into at the base of the building before he parks in a marked space. Cutting the engine, he snaps his seatbelt off and grabs his cell phone from the cubby in his center dash before looking over at you.
“I’m not going to Dateline you, little minx,” he tells you in a velvety scoff and gestures for you to come along before he opens his door and exits the car.
Good to know, you snicker to yourself as you exit the passenger seat and shut the door. He locks the car with the press of the key and pockets it along with his phone as he watches you take quick stock of your surroundings while you stroll to head towards the elevator banks that flank the interior of the garage’s back wall. You can smell how close to the water you are, figuring you’re less than a block from the river.
As he punches the button and slips his hands into his trouser pockets, your mind tries to counsel through these choices you’ve made. What are you even doing? You shouldn’t be here. There’s still time for you to leave. Whatever this is, it’s a stupid, reckless thing to keep walking into—
The elevator arrives, and Dave sidesteps to let you enter first. You walk in without hesitation, and are followed by him. He uses some kind of sensor keycard before he hits the button to a high floor, and as it slowly ascends, he turns to eye you.
He’s internally enthralled that you’ve come this far and not peppered him with the laundry list of questions so typical in this situation. Before he can linger on why that should be equally as alarming, you lean back into the elevator wall – purse hooked onto your shoulder as you rest your hands on the rail at your back. Your gaze is measuring him thoughtfully, and not for the first time, Dave wonders what you’re really thinking behind those stunning eyes. Striding over to lean into the opposite corner, he eyes you with intense want now, head tilting as he stares down your body before flicking his brown pools of desire back up to your face.
“Come here,” he suddenly beckons, thick finger gesturing for you to come to him. When you defiantly stare back at him, his eyes get dark and he pushes off the wall to crowd you. “I don’t make it a habit to ask, spitfire—”
“And I don’t have it in me to come when called to, like a pet. No matter how handsome or fucking sexy the guy doing the calling is,” you tell him silkily as you crane your neck back and grab the sides of his waistband and tug him into you.
He growls and clasps a possessive hand around your throat before engulfing you with a barbarous kiss. The kind that is more tongue, nips, and scrapes of covetous want fueled by surly disdain than amorous passion. But then your hands grip his back, and your breathy gasp make him burn with a base desire that has him throbbing to be buried inside you with his teeth marking into your neck. You’re both getting drunk off of the heat of your torrid kiss and the sharp aftertaste of the happy hour drinks you each have flavoring your mouths. He’s rock-hard against your hip, and you’re so wet that you dazedly wonder if he can smell how bad you want him.
When the elevator arrives to the floor and the doors slide open, you both break the kiss only long enough for Dave to herd you against his side and escort you down the wide hall towards a numbered door that matches the marked spot in the parking garage below. You notice how quiet the hall is and idly wonder if the building is the go-to for recluses and adulterous spouses while you impulsively brush your tousled hair back as you watch him put in a code in the doorknob’s keypad before slipping in his key. He unlocks the door swiftly and sweeps you over the threshold before slamming the heavy door shut.
You don’t even have an opportunity to take in the layout of the high-ceilinged, modern and sparsely decorated loft apartment’s main room before Dave is tossing the keys and his phone onto the nearby kitchen counter, shedding his blazer to be tossed onto the back of the couch. He’s then on you, backing you into a wall in what is a hallway off from the kitchen space to grab you roughly by the waist and haul you up against his hard, strong frame as he kisses you with voracious hunger.
Gasping, you break the kiss by carding your fingers into the back of his hair and yanking so you can stare incandescently into his etched features as you hiss, “You said a nightcap—”
“You’re really gonna deny me now after all the shit you’ve pulled?”
His tone is dangerously calm, and it makes that deviant thing curl intriguingly within you as you shoot him a faux-berating stare while you mock, “When did I do that?”
His features darken, and you scoff and grab his hand to guide it up the front of your skirt so he can feel between your thighs. He didn’t expect that, so his breath hitches as he touches you over your drenched panties. “Jesus, you’re fucking soaked,” he husks and stares openly at you.
“Been wet like this since you stood next to me at the bar,” you confess unflinchingly, tone pitched and airy as he hums appealingly and nudges his forehead against yours in a show of pleased dominance. “Since you must know, I’ve wanted you. Both when I saw you that night, and begrudgingly several times before that,” is your murmur as you curl your other hand around his neck and anchor to him. “I know I shouldn’t—”
“Why shouldn’t you,” he grouses, surly glare crinkling when he leans back to trace his brown eyes into reading your features.
“…Really? Why?” you narrow your eyes incredulously at him as you exclaim, “Well, firstly, you’re a lead I work with, and you’re happily married husband and father, and model fucking citizen, Dave. That’s the cover, anyway, right?!”
That snaps him to stand away from you and war with the impulse to slap you across the face for your audacity to throw such things in his face so cavalierly. But then he sees you looking up intensely at him. “A wicked little tease like you? Quibbling asinine shit, as if you were some demure, chaste fucking angel?” Dave scoffs and scornfully sneers at you. “It seems I’m not the only one with a cover, sweetheart.”
“…This is bordering Dateline again, so I’m going to go unless you quit treating me like a fucking pet,” you snarl and push past him to toss your purse onto the counter next to his phone so you can angrily start looking through his cabinets for a liquor to pour yourself a helping of. “And seeing as you fucked up my happy hour, I’d like that nightcap.”
He is disarmed for a moment before seething in a grumble, “The one over the sink is the liquor cabinet.”
You indeed find a half-full bottle of whiskey and an untouched bottle of vodka, and proceed to pour yourself and him a drink into the glasses left to dry next to the sink.
Dave watches you retrieve ice cubes from the freezer and drop them in your glass before you take a swig of your vodka on the rocks and hold out the whiskey for him. He takes it and downs the whiskey neat before sliding the empty glass onto the opposite counter brusquely, glaring at you with his cold guard up.
Leaning into the corner of the counter, you stare at Dave contemplatively before finishing your drink and leaving it on the counter in order to round the kitchen island separating you from him. He’s wound up, and you know you should tread lightly, but that pull has you gravitating to him when he’s at his surliest like he is now. So, you approach him, and surprise him by reaching up to cup his cheek and stare with barefaced attraction into his handsomely moody regard.
It should unnerve him, but Dave instead finds himself leaning into your touch and closing his eyes to huff his pent-up breath out through his nose.
“I don’t even like you,” you sigh sardonically and brush a soft kiss over the corner of his mouth.
“Good. I think you’re a fucking little upstart bitch,” he grouses, but is chasing your lips, enjoying how you teasingly brush your soft morsels over his. “But I fucking want you,” is his terse murmur as he pulls you close and kisses possessively along your jaw.
You melt into his arms and tangle your fingers into the loose knot of his tie, pulling him down towards your mouth as you purr, “I wanted it to be you. I came on the thought of you dominating me. Pictured you fucking me on all fours, making me come all over your cock before you flipped me onto my back and made me watch you shoot your load over my pussy—”
As you tell Dave this, he feels filled up, yearning to give into the pull that exists between you. The one that’s magnetically charged and lures you both in once your guards are pulled down, and the darkness within you both becomes entranced, like a sated predator under a still night.
“I want you to be mine,” he husks, tone charged and guttural as he envelops you in his possessive embrace, butting the side of his head against yours in a show of dominance. You shiver, and he revels in how your mouth seeks his out when you loop your hands around his neck and pull him to meet your scintillating kiss.
Dave’s hands grab you up and lift you onto the kitchen island so he can stand between your legs as he suckles a searing path down your neck and hurriedly yanks your blouse loose while you’re simultaneously undoing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt with breathy haste. Before you can yank his shirttails from his waistband, he impatiently snaps your blouse open and sends the last button at the bottom flying. You gasp as he manhandles you out of the soft garment and yanks at your skirt until you feel the zipper strain.
“Fuck, Dave—”
“Shut up and get out of this fucking thing right now, or I’m going to rip it to shreds,” he growls as his hands unceremoniously snatch your black bra’s clasp undone and discards it from your torso by whipping it off your arms before he cups your tits and squeezes them together so he can lick libidinously over your studded nipples.
You arch and cry out, struggling to snatch your skirt down your hips and shove it off. Impatient, Dave snarls and manhandles you – tugging you off the counter to yank your skirt down and spins you around to bend over the island as he peels your black lace panties off to bunch around your heels. Just as you’re trying to catch your bearings, Dave kneels at your feet and licks up into your cunt from behind.
“Oh—my god,” you ramble out and arch back, gasping airily as he shoves your thighs roughly apart so he can lewdly lick a hot swipe of his tongue up from your clit to your tight clenching hole.
He growls and suddenly slaps his palm sharply over your ass to watch you jolt and your pussy drip with slick. Drunk on the sight, he suckles a nip into the swell of the cheek he’d spanked, and you mewl so prettily that his brain trips over itself with what to do to you next.
His cock is throbbing, but before he uses it to split you open, he wants to revel in the heat and wetness of your juicy pussy, so he brusquely forces you to stand from the island and spin on your heels so he can shove you back to lean against the counter as he forces your legs over his shoulders so he can devour you and keep you pinned open for him. Your mound is smooth and hairless, and while he prefers to eat out a snatch with a nice little bush he can bury his nose in, he can’t help appreciate your silky flesh and its velvety glide as he runs his lips down your wet seam before sweeping in tongue through your folds.
“Oh fuck,” you moan and toss your head back when Dave hums and nuzzles greedily into your cunt, laving liquid fire tingles with the tip of his lasciviously tongue grinding, licking, flicking your clit before messily rolling the wicked appendage in time with the squeezing of his possessive hands he’s gripped over your tits. He squeezes and kneads them to the point of making you squirm from the dull sting, and when he sucks hard on your clit and pinches your nipples meanly, you cling to the sides of the kitchen island, and cry, “Jesus Christ! Too much—too much, Dave, ple-please—!”
One of his hands abandons his rough touching before suddenly buffeting his fingers down over the top of your pussy with a thwack. You keen and writhe, pain punching up into your pleasure and making you whimper from the aborted orgasm.
“I’ll tell you when it’s too much,” Dave grouses darkly and gruffly shoves your legs back, pushing you further up the counter as he stands to survey how sinful you look sprawled out naked and wet on his kitchen island. Your body has a thin sheen of sweat, pussy shiny and gleaming under the dying light coming from the expanse of windows across the way in the living room, glistening from being fucked by his mouth.
When he looks at your face, a shudder skitters down his body, and tingles excitedly into his cock. Your eyes are glossy and wide, dewy lips parted breathily and skin overheated from your salacious arousal for him. It’s a sight that’s now seared into his memory banks, and he wants to make more visually stunning moments of glorious obscenity, starring you. So, he cards his fingers through your pussy as he rumbles, “Gonna stretch this cunt out to take my cock, and you’re only allowed to scream a safe word once, so now’s the time to pick it, little minx. Tell daddy what it’ll be—”
You sputter a laugh and sit clumsily up to balk at him. “Fuck me, Dave. I’ll literally throw myself out the window before I ever call you ‘daddy’!” you exclaim and grab fast at the front of his open shirt to yank yourself to the edge of the counter so you can wrap your legs around his waist when you see something scathingly furious burn in his dark brown eyes before it begins to tick his features. “I’m sorry. I will do anything for amazing, filthy sex with you, but I won’t do that,” is your daring quip as you bat your lashes and snake a hand down to the front of his pants. When his expression pinches with truculence, you yank his belt loose as you seduce, “C’mon. Don’t get surly with me. Not when all I want is to make you feel good,” you pause and brush your lips over his. “Let me suck your dick, boss. Please?”
His eyes darken and get heavy with want. Boss. Fuck…I like that.
Dave gruffly grunts and nods before fisting a hand into the back of your hair and pulling you from the counter to slink down his body. “For being such an insolent little bitch though, you lost out on your safe word privilege tonight,” he husks grumpily, eyes casting a moody glare when you smile before angelically nodding and shoving his shirt off his shoulders and arms so you can finish stripping him of his clothes.  
“…I didn’t really wanna use one anyway, sweet boy,” you tease in a smoky purr before shoving his pants and tight blue boxer-briefs down as you crouch to kneel before him. At the sight of his big dick standing flushed and rock-hard for you, a spasm of anxiety flinches into your pussy at the realization he’s going to wreck you. Shit, I’m going to be sore for days…
Unaware of your excited anticipation, Dave huffs testily at your saucy remark and pet name, but when he stares down at you like this? Naked, with just your heels on, and his hard cock jutting thick and ruddy with need mere centimeters from your wet lips? Any outraged grievance stoked by your insolence is forgiven.
Your hands caress up his hips before fanning down to admiringly differentiate the smooth plane of skin on the sides of his toned belly with the coarse trail of dark hair that becomes a thatch downwards to frame his cock. You nuzzle into it and take his velvety erection into your palm as you stare up at him and lick a swipe along the side, smiling as the warm length twitches and he exhales a charged breath.
When you toy your tongue around the sensitive tip and purse your lips around it like he’s the best thing you’ve ever had in your mouth, Dave grabs you by the back of your hair and grips the counter’s edge. “S-Shit! Mmmph,” he hitches between clenched jaw as he clutches the back of your head and starts to buck his hips against your mouth, eyes falling shut as he groans, “Could blow my load just fucking this mouth.”
You hum around him, delighting in having this effect on him as his cock stretches your mouth. He hears the gloating rumble in the bass of it, so he stares down to drunkenly watch you blow him, and makes out the movement of your hand between your thighs. You’re unaware of him watching, too captivated by the steel-wrapped-in-velvet feel of his cock on your tongue while his heady, salty tang makes your senses buzz. You want to breathe it in, to bask in it and feel him tense and whine while you suck his cock dry. To own him while on your knees, and feel the rush of having him desperate for you.
But the sight of you touching your dripping pussy, rubbing your sweet little clit while you start taking his cock down your throat and fight the burn of your gag reflex threatening to well your eyes over? It snaps something viciously sadistic to spring up in Dave, making him seethe from the debauched urges you’ve let loose from where he tries to keep them buried deep.
The sting along your scalp is the first thing that jolts you, and then your world spins as Dave yanks you by the back of your hair off of him so he can haul you up to wobble on your heels before he forcefully pushes you up against the counter again and slaps his broad hand across the tight lower juncture of your rump, millimeters away from your crotch.
You yelp and dissolve into a reedy mewl as your pussy clenches from the sting before throbbing for more.
“I didn’t fucking tell you to rub your wet cunt, darling. You were supposed to be choking on my cock, not getting distracted with getting yourself off,” he menacingly husks against the back of your ear before nipping the shell.
You squeak and flush when a gush of arousal dampens your pussy anew. “Pl-Please, babe—”
“Please babe,” Dave mimics in a mocking croon as he leans to loom over your prone form. “I should smack this needy little ass of yours raw. Make it so you can’t sit for a week without thinking of me,” is his depraved growl as he emphasizes his point by pulling his hand back and spanking you hard across the plump ridge of your ass.
“Nnngth!” you mewl wordlessly and squirm before gasping as the hand that spanked you jams between your thighs and starts grinding the pads of its fingers along your pussy from behind. You moan when two fingers deftly press past your drenched folds to plunge in and curve up away from your pubic bone before flicking a rough throb, receding, then shoving back in to the knuckles. “Mmmmph, Dave!” you hiss heatedly as you involuntarily begin to rock against the counter, seeking the rough, thick stretch of his fingers as they fuck you.
He watches you writhe and chase the plunge of his fingers while he shamelessly strokes and toys with his hard cock, fisting it and hissing just when you arch against the counter and crane to look at him over your shoulder. Instead of umbrage at witnessing his double standard, you smile and stare dreamily at him.
It’s enough to make him feel turned inside out with the wave of arousal that lances through him.
The wet squelch of his fingers plundering your cunt ceases abruptly when Dave yanks his digits out of your rippling heat to suck them into his mouth as he taps your ass in silent command for you to turn around for him. Your legs are trembling though, so you whimper in protest. His hand claps across your cheeks again, and you sob a little sound of frustrated need.
“Dammit, Dave, give me a minute,” you complain huffily as you try to find your center of balance on your heel-clad feet before you stand.
“You have ten fucking seconds to make it down the hall to the bed, or else I’m gonna fuck you wherever I find you,” he warns in a low growl as he moodily toes his dress shoes off in order to kick out of the tangle of clothes at his ankles. When you pout defiantly, Dave steers you to turn and face the hall before he swats your ass and drawls mockingly, “Hop to it, dewdrop.”
You squeal and scamper away to be out of his reach. He chuckles nastily as he watches your ass jiggle from you strutting off, but as he’s reaching down to tug his first sock off, he looks up to see that you paused midway from the hall and kitchen to turn back to him with a coquettish expression pulling at your full lips.
He makes for quite a sight – backlit by the cresting sunset coming through the windows, as its bleeding rays dim along the horizon line. His broad, toned frame shines golden, thick cock blushed with his throbbing need for release, muscles in his arms flexing while his abs tense when he straightens to eye you. Shit…he’s really handsome.Your pussy clenches, want tingling down from the seat of your cloying core as you admire his chocolate-flared eyes and tousled hair.
“Can I take these heels off, boss?” you sultrily query, shoulders rolled back and smugly preening naked in the hall. Smile impish as you begin to gripe, “They’re pinching my toes—”
“No. Keep them on,” Dave orders firmly as he yanks off his remaining sock, kicking his pile of clothes onto yours, and rumbles, “Keeping them on’ll be your punishment for being a naughty little bitch—”
Dave pauses when he sees you cheekily step out of one heel, then the other before sweep-kicking them aside, smiling rebelliously at him the entire time.
His eyes narrow, so you fold your hands behind yourself and teeter precociously on the balls of your feet, silently daring him. Dave burns with sadistic delight at your defiance. It’s not something he’d tolerate if he were blowing off steam with one of his paid hookups, preferring to use that time to vent his frustrations and take out his lurid sexual urges in a manner of his choosing and domineering direction. But with you – in this unguarded, de-compartmentalized moment – after the simmering buildup in the gravitational pull between you? He wants to savor every fucking moment.
So, he lets out a drawn out hum, shoots you an intense look of amused disapproval at your cheekiness, and starts stalking towards you. With a wily grin, you spin on your heel and book it, sprinting off like the hare from the fox. You squeal a peel of excited laughter when you hear Dave gain on you, and before you can turn the corner to cross the threshold into the bedroom, he’s caught you and effortlessly swept you up with a strong arm lassoing around your waist before he hauls you up to be tossed up onto his shoulder.
“You silly little thing,” he chuckles sadistically as he pins your legs in place with his forearm in order to spank your ass gloatingly with his dominant hand as he carries you over to the large bed with the classic metal headboard before he flings you onto it and watches you bounce until you sprawl out on the mattress with an excited laugh. You’re so fucking playful, and he loves it, especially when you roll onto your hands and knees to try to scamper up out of reach. “Hah! Get over here,” he hisses as he snags you by the ankle and hauls you down to glide across the bedding back to him.
“No! Dateline-Dateline!” you goofily declare as you playfully wrestle with him before he easily pins your wrists together in one hand and holds them above your head, pressed against the bed, then snatches his other hand around your throat in order to angle your jaw up so he can boastingly grin down at you. “Dateline!” you coo beseechingly and wriggle in his grasp.
“What the fuck? What’s that even—wait…Jesus, is that your safe word?!” Dave derides and looks at you with obnoxious incredulity as you smile triumphantly up at him. “You twisted fucking lunatic—”
“It’s a good safe word, though,” you cut in and clutch your knees around his hips, smiling brilliantly as you add, “It got you to stop, after all.”
He scoffs and tucks his chin against his chest to try and conceal the stupid smirk your audacious ridiculousness has unearthed from his usually mercurial or easygoing-trained regard.
Letting out a wry huff through his nose, Dave tightens his grip around your pinned wrists and manipulates your jaw down to meet his punchy kiss, and you hum lusciously when he swipes his tongue into the cup of your mouth before sucking hard on your lower lip. You moan, chasing his wicked, pouty morsels when he pulls back from the kiss and stares cockily down at you, relishing the lusted out look softening your gorgeous features and fogging your gaze with yearning.
“Tell me what you want, spitfire,” he purrs against your jaw before releasing his hold on your throat to fist his cock and so he can press the blunt, pre-cum slick tip against your pussy, rutting through your delicate folds as he growls, “Want me here?”
“Yes, yes, w-want your cock buried in me—” you breathily hiccup.
“Tell me how bad you want it, and I’ll fuck you so hard, until I’m balls-deep in this needy little pussy. I’ll make you ache for days. Will fuck my cum so deep in you that you’ll taste me in the back of your throat when I shoot my load,” he grouses in a husky octave, and slaps the top of your mound lightly with the underside of his cock in a nasty show of dominance. You mewl and pull your knees up to spread your thighs wider for him. With a croon of your name, Dave husks, “—Behave, tell me, and I’ll make you my girl.”
You writhe at the depraved delight his petition ignites in you.
“I want it so bad, that all I want is to be your girl, Dave,” is your reedy whisper as you gaze beatifically up at him while you utter your filthy desire as he stares incandescently at you. “Want to get lost in you—consumed by you. Get pounded so good that I’ll only ever need your cock. To belong to you and feel you every time my pussy clenches.”
The depraved praise fills a hole in his chest he had forgotten existed, but now that it felt sealed over, Dave wants nothing more than to keep the source of the miraculously grounding sensation tethered to him for as long as he can. To pour all his power and worship into it, until it overflows and radiates the way it deserves. So, he lines himself up, pulls his hips back and punches them forward, effectively spearing his thick, straining cock in one rough swoop deep into your molten cunt.
The way you light up – how your mouth falls open on the moan of his name while your torso snaps taut off the bed as your cunt ripples – straining around his cock slamming into you? Dave will never feel a more magnificent wave of savage pride as good as he does right now.
He fucks you like a man desperate to hold onto that sensation, to lasso it and ensnare himself so it can’t ever get away from him.
His hand lifts you by the small of your back so he can angle his thrusts into you and have you arched into the bed. You grip the bedding as soon as your wrists are freed, moaning when Dave sets brutal pace, fucking you so hard that you swear you feel him hitting something new inside you that makes you panic. “D-Dave, Dave!” you keen, feeling frazzled and twisting into a tizzy when he bows his head to roughly suck on one of your nipples before nipping on it with a growl. “Dave, I can’t—can’t!” you cry out and screw your eyes shut as you feel flung about by the whirlpool of pleasure roiling in you as he keeps pounding into the ruinous pleasure point crested deep inside you.
Suddenly, he shifts to hover over you and grinds his pubic bone into you as he fists the back of your hair to yank you to crane taut as he sharply slaps the top of your tit before be laves his warm wet tongue over the rising sting. You sob a flustered wail and squirm, features burning with a shameful blush at how overwhelmed and pulsing he’s made you from the inside out.
His thumb roughly presses down into your chin to force you to tip your head down. “You can’t?” he mocks, tone maliciously intrigued as he swivels his thumb over your lower lip before jamming it into your mouth beyond your gasping lips. “You can’t…what? Take it? Get enough?” he purrs hoarsely, grunting in approval when you suck on his thumb. “Aww, did my girl just need to self-soothe? Her little pussy get overwhelmed from getting pounded by my cock so hard?” he rumbles tauntingly as he leans forward to nudge his temple against yours in a show of dominance. “Well? Daddy asked you a question—”
You sputter and graze your teeth over his thumb before he’s able to slip it out of the wicked vise of your mouth. “Fuck’s sake, Dave—!” you snarl and grapple to toss him off of you, but he anticipated your irate reaction. “I was so fucking close, and you just had to drop that goddamn ‘Daddy’ shit on me—?!”
“It’s a force of habit, spitfire!” he chuckles obnoxiously, smiling crassly when you give up and flop onto your back testily. “But the bonus of getting you all bitchy over it is becoming worth it—”
“Well, if your intent is to make my pussy go dry and not come, then mission accomplished, soldier,” is your snarky scoff as you shove at his shoulders for him to get off of you.
It was a button you had no idea you even pushed, not until his eyes went dark and the mirth flinted away from his features. Before you could comprehend it, Dave shoved himself up on his haunches and brutishly flipped you over onto your stomach to flop breathless onto the bed. His hand cracked a slap across your ass, making you jolt forward with a startled shout, leaving you reeling while he forcefully hauled you up onto all fours before he dug his fingers into your hips as he grips them possessively and shoves his cock back into your pussy.
Your gasp becomes an inarticulate series of whimpers and mewls, head tossing back as he mounts you and bites the slope of your neck. Your arousal gushes into the vise of your cunt, wetting over and making a lewd sloshy squelching audible in the room over your moan of, “Oh my god, Dave—!”
“You feel wet enough to me,” he growls dangerously against your ear before suckling on the lobe. “Pussy flooded over just now, proving you a fucking liar, baby,” is his harsh husk he punctuates with a hard slam of his cock into you. “Just can’t help being a goddamn, nasty little brat, can you?”
“D-Dave, please—” you begin to whimper as you buck backwards, seeking more of the plunge of his cock into your most hungry center.
“Please Dave,” he mimics deprecatingly and sneers a grunt as he adjusts to grab the back of your shoulder and clutch your waist while he starts rocking into you, hips snapping brusquely against your ass with a sharp slapping staccato rhythm. “Should just leave this fucking pussy empty. Hold you down – pin your wrists down and force you to choke on my cock while you squirm. You’re such a filthy little bitch though, so you’d probably love it—”
You’re bowled over, at Dave’s mercy as he fucking rails you into the bed now. “N-No! Need you, Dave. Please, I need you to make me come so bad. P-Promise! I’ll be your good girl, please babe, please! I promise,” you’re rambling raggedly, hands reaching backwards to stabilize your carnal mania by grounding yourself with touching him – with clinging to the forearm of the hand gripping your waist and clasping over the one clutching your shoulder. Thighs splayed wide and slick dripping onto the bed with every hammering pulse of his cock in and out of your cunt, you bow your head and sob, “Please, Dave—m-make me yours!”
Hearing you say that with such desperate yearning shreds his sadism into incinerated ash, making that expansive heat sear through his chest, tethering him into the need to do as you’ve begged.
Dave forces you to bow under him as he unleashes his pounding thrusts up into that devastating cluster of ecstasy inside you in time with his fingers rubbing wantonly over your clit as he nuzzles you and groans, “You belong to me. No one else. You’re mine, sweet girl. All mine—”
You cry out and go taut under him, muscles locking up as you gush your climax to squirt all over his apex, mindlessly rocking against him as you dissolve under the onslaught.
“Jesus,” he marvels gruffly, awed by how hard you came, hips picking up intensity again as he chases his own pent-up climax now. “Fuck. That’s it, baby. Such a good girl. Bet you have another one ready to go. Want you to squirt right when I come. Take me deep so your greedy little cunt can soak up my cum—”
“Oh, Dave,” you moan at his filthy order, arching into him, so blitzed out that you want to obey, to melt down for him and settle him deep into your center. “Please! Need you. Please hold me. Can’t…can’t hang on without it,” you gasp out, earnest and genuine in your desperation.
Without even thinking to leverage it against you, Dave envelops you in his arms and pins you to him as he keeps fucking you, cock plunging into you while he holds you and buries his face into your neck to muffle his guttural groans. Having you beg for this kind of intimacy while he’s balls-deep in you sends him into a frenzy that he can’t keep himself from succumbing to, so, he scrapes his mouth over your pulse point and grazes the edge of his teeth against your trapezius as he pounds into you with vigor.
You scream, “Oh fuck, mmph—nngnth! Dave!” as your orgasm hits, then dissolve into reedy little whimpers as you clamp around his cock and slot it home in you just as Dave snarls into your neck and comes.
Overawed, you moan at the incredible sensation of him holding you tight in the vise of his embrace as he shoots his load deep inside you, quivering and mewling when he hitches your name out gruffly before groaning a drawn out husk as he prolongs his pleasure by rocking into you until his hips stutter and your fluttering sheath clings to his dick as you both collapse forward onto the bed together.
“Fuck…oh fuck. Holy fucking hell,” Dave exhaustedly huffs between hearty gulps of air, feeling dizzy and delirious from how mind-blowing that was. He’s never come so hard, or felt so complete after sex, and it leaves him incredulous as he tries to scrape his composure together. Jesus Christ, that was fucking amazing…
You’re so blissed out, that you simply clutch at his forearms to keep them looped tightly around you, not wanting to part from his strong embrace, or the heat of him curled up against you. His breath is hot against your nape, pulse thudding in his wrists under your touch, and chest rising and falling against your back. Feels so good…
You don’t talk. There’s nothing to say, anyway. At least not when you both are so at peace, wrecked, sweaty, and tangled up in each other while your comingled fluids messily cling against your pressed-up flesh.
No, there’s nothing either of you want to say that could shatter the moment. So, you remain in sated post-coital repose until Dave feels you doze off in his arms. With the opportunity presented, he noses into the back of your hair like he’s wanted to do for far too long, then gently loosens his hold from around you so he can skim his fingertips over the smooth skin of your back while he internally snickers at how dark the room is. Didn’t even get to turn on the lights…
When the pads of his fingers brush along your ribs, you sleepily murmur, so he pauses until you settle back down and your breathing softens again. It’s then he feels them.
They’re light, feeling superficial, but they’re there.
Scars. He frowns and fans his fingertips away to wrap around your hip, thumb soothingly brushing along the contour of it as he settles against you and rests his head for a moment. Contemplating for a few silent minutes, Dave decides to ease out of your warmth, biting back a hiss at pulling out of your pussy before carefully untangling his limbs from yours to shift back and out of bed.
You roll with a little mewl of protest when the bathroom light turns on, drowsily curling into a ball to stay warm in the cool air-conditioned room, missing the heat of the body that had been holding you, but too exhausted to move in search of it. But then you feel a warm hand guide you to roll onto your back and unfurl you like a delicate flower, before something damp and cool is caressed gingerly over your thighs, gliding between them to tend to the sticky wetness dripping from your puffy and sore pussy.
You sigh softly and struggle to open your eyes. “…What…mmm, babe—”
“Relax. Almost done,” Dave murmurs in a hushed tone.
You settle down, eyes closed while a serenely sated smile eases over your features as you susurrate, “…Thank you, sweet boy.”
Dave smirks, despite himself. Once he’s cared for you, he flips the washcloth around and scrubs the sticky residue of your comingled fluids from his apex and nether regions before returning to the bathroom to toss it to the floor and shut the light off. With a few adjustments of the covers, he manages to tuck you under before sliding into bed with you, spooning you and pressing his nose to the nape of your neck.
***
In the cold morning light an unmeasured amount of time later, Dave wakes to find you sleeping soundly turned away from him on your side with an arm tucked under the pillow and the forearm of the other folded over it.
It’s a beguiling sight – you in his bed, after he’s pined for you, begrudgingly wanting to make you his. And now…here you are.
And now that the early twilight of dawn chases the penumbra away, Dave can make out more clearly the blanched traces of old scars long heeled along the trunk of your torso – across the costal region. They’ve been worn down fine, barely traceable. He resists the urge to brush his fingers over them, and forces himself to get out of bed.
***
Drowsily, you start to wake up at the sound of running water, and when you stretch and nuzzle your yawn into the pillow, you realize you’re alone in bed. Cautiously, you shift up and peer around the room, trying to get your bearings. The bedroom is sparsely decorated, with just the large bed, single-drawer nightstands on each side of it, and a big armoire dresser up against the wall adjacent to the slightly ajar door leading into the stark-white bathroom. Shit. You fucked Dave and then slept with him all night?!
You’re disarmed – truly befuddled by yourself, which is enough to propel you out of bed on protesting joins and sore muscles as you carefully stretch your arms and scrub at your eyes. Bemused, you ignore the ache in your thighs and tits, feeling tender as hell all over after last night as you toss the bed covers away and shimmy gingerly to the edge of the mattress. This is fucking weird. You need to get off your ass, get dressed, and get out of here before he comes out of the shower.
With the proclamation, you hurry on nimble footing to sneak out of the bedroom before rushing down the hall to where you last remember your discarded clothes being. The view of the glassy riverfront across the way out the large loft windows is a nice sight to peer out at while you hastily rifle through the pile of clothes to separate your garments from Dave’s. Your heels are still flung into the side of the hall, so you collect your blouse, bra, skirt, and then pause as you toss Dave’s slacks and shirt out of the way in search of your panties. Huffing, you wonder if you accidentally kicked them somewhere else while mindlessly in the throes of passion with him?
You look around the kitchen floor and find nothing, so you scoff and wander back to the bedroom to give it a discerning glance over. From where you’re standing, you can glimpse the back of Dave as he stands in the shower stall reflected in the medicine cabinet mirror over the sink. Water is running in rivulets down his broad back, and you can make out the shadow remnants of scars over his back and dusted along the curves of his sides. It gives you pause, so you end up having to tear your gaze away and force yourself to start getting dressed. They must be tangled up in his clothes, and I just didn’t shake them out well enough, you rationalize as you slip on your bra before shimmying into your skirt. Then, a lewd thought pops into your head when you catch sight of the slightly ajar nightstand drawer on the bedside Dave slept on.
Tiptoeing over to it, you yank it open, expecting to see your panties neatly folded over a Bible or something, but instead see a pair of handcuffs, lube, condoms, silk bindings, a ball gag, and a 9mm handgun – all aligned to be within easy reach from the bed. You blush, despite yourself, and shrug into your blouse, judiciously buttoning it closed while ruefully shaking your head at the missing button closest to the hem.
You go back out to the kitchen to sort his clothes, going even as far as to fold each garment and leaving it on the kitchen island as you make one last pass in search of your black panties. Annoyed when you don’t find them, you go to the fridge and retrieve a bottle of water, deciding to quench your rabid thirst as you stew about where the hell your panties could’ve disappeared to in the crash pad. You then remember your purse on the counter, and grab for it to retrieve your phone.
There’s a text from Johnny, checking in to make sure you made it home ok. You unlock your phone and quickly type an excuse back, settling on, ‘Sorry! Yes, I did, thanks. The liquor really went to my head, and I crawled into bed first thing.’ It’s not really a lie. With a sigh, you slip the phone back into your purse and decide to go check in the disheveled sheets on the bed for your undergarment. Maybe he tracked it in by accident?
He’s still in the shower, and you can make out via the fogged up reflection what looks like Dave rinsing suds out of his hair. Humming, you check the sheets, tossing them about and patting your palms along the surface with a fanning sweep. Nothing.
He must’ve taken them. It’s the only explanation.
Feeling a wave of umbrage, you start looking anew, opening the opposite nightstand drawer and finding a silver flask in it. Shutting it and striding over to investigate the armoire next, you miss the sound of the shower cutting off as you pull open the dresser’s door and see your own well-fucked reflection staring back at you. Your neck is dusted with scrape marks and shadowed welts from Dave, hair wild and lips kiss-bruised. Tearing your attention from the mirror to the interior of the dresser, you look through the racks of hung up clothes and notice it’s all varieties of suits, similar dress shirts in varying tones of blue and white, and tie options. Nothing casual. Duh. He needs duplicates of what he wears to work to change into when he comes here and fucks whoever else he has revolving in and out of his bed…
The wave of disappointment surprises you, but you shove it away and go back to searching the closet, and find a curious concealed cabinet within that spans the height of it. When it clicks open to reveal some tactical gear, rolled up set of black underclothes, gloves, and a very familiar case – one that would house the parts needed to assemble a sniper weapon that’s likely military-grade, you still, staring at it and getting hit by a wave of déjà vu.
“What’re you doing?”
You whirl to see Dave standing in the doorway of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, shoulders and hair still damp from the heated steam lingering in the enclosed space. His features are scowling, etched guardedly while his brooding brown eyes glare at you.
“Did you take my panties?”
Dave deadpan stares at you before shifting from one foot to the other as he scrubs his palm over his stubble-covered cheeks while huffing an exasperated sneer. “I have no fucking clue what that would have to do with you snooping in my closet—”
“I looked for them everywhere, and this was the last stop,” you assure and put your hands on your hips as you add, “I suspect you, boss man, of pilfering them at some point, but you must have a special safe for your dirty conquest trophies—”
“You’re a silly nut,” he cuts in and scratches at his damp scalp as he glances over at the nightstands. “…You checked everywhere for ‘em, huh.”
Something about this? Dave being standoffish, you feeling out of your element, and like you’re being pulled into some weird loop spurs you to sigh a miffed exhale before grabbing for your heels and hastily yanking them on.
“Never mind. I gotta go,” you dismissively remark as you turn and storm out of his bedroom.
You don’t make it very far, though. Not when Dave stalks after you and stands moodily behind you when you grab your purse and turn to see him there, looking unpleased, in the way of your exit path. “So, you’re gonna revert to fucking brat mode now?” he heckles angrily, grabbing your arm when you scoff and try to storm past him. “C’mon—”
“No, I just need to go. I shouldn’t have come over. Let alone have spent the fucking night,” you tell him and shrug his hand away. “I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t enjoy it. But let’s not start pretending here, ok?” is your curt reasoning as you look up at him while shouldering your purse and absently brushing your tousled hair back behind your ear. “This was a one-off. We work together, and…” this is something I shouldn’t do. Not after… “And it’s better to not get pulled into something—”
“You said you were mine,” Dave cuts in, resolute and unrelenting as he leans close and cups his hand to the small of your back as he murmurs, “That you wanted this. You can’t just take that back.”
You’re surprised by the genuine umbrage in his tone, in the furrow of his brow as he glowers haughtily at you. Cupping his cheek like you’d done the night before, you resist the urge to kiss him, and instead sigh, “I’m not taking anything back. Just leaving it where it is. We can’t do this—”
“But you want to,” he presses as he shrugs your hand away from his cheek. He’s so close that you can feel the heat coming off his freshly showered skin – can smell his soap and shampoo as they mute the spicy musk of his natural scent. You resist the urge to lean into his broad, bare torso as your eyes stare up ambivalently into his.
“Dave…” you trail off, unable to think of how to articulate what’s in your head, when his cell phone suddenly buzzes loudly where it sits on the counter. You look over and see the email alert light up across the lock-screen image of his wife holding their two little girls while sitting on a porch, smiling at the camera.
He sees it then. The self-preservation-triggered mask that comes over your features and turns your eyes to marble, coaxing a semblance of trained blankness over your demeanor; that shields all on the outside out from the fury you swallow down to be fed to the roiling darkness deep in your core.
“Sweetheart, c’mon—” Dave starts to grouse and tries to tow you into him, but you pull away and breeze to the door on the swift clicks of your heels. “You can’t fucking avoid me, spitfire,” he growls, which makes you pause with your hand on the doorknob. “Shit can be compartmentalized. You and I at work, is separate to us when we’re together. When you’re fucking mine.”
Opening the door, you chime, “I was yours, sweet boy. Just for the night,” then turn and smile at him. “Be satisfied knowing I’ll be aching for days with you. I liked seeing you without the bullshit façade. It made me start liking you,” you purr before winking at him and strutting out the door, sparing him an alluring glance back as you exit.
Dave goes over to lean back against the counter with a surly huff, shooting a moody glance at the cabinet above his phone. He opens it and retrieves your panties, bringing them to his nose and inhaling your sinfully divine scent. It shouldn’t center him – soothe his surly mood as good as it does, but he’d be damned to ever part with the illicit trophy now, let alone admit to taking it.
He picks up his phone and checks his messages while he toys with the lacy garment, already thinking of the request he’s going to put in. “Such a silly, sweet girl,” he rumbles amusedly to himself as he walks down to his bedroom to pick out a matching duplicate to his clothes from yesterday so he can head home.
***
As you ride in the car back to your side of town, you have Dave on a loop in your head. The crush, the voyeur, the asshole, the gaslighter, the stud, the seducer, the everyman, the adulterer, the sadist…the dark eyed addiction that made you yearn and feel safe, even when he was depraved and domineering. You weren’t lying. Seeing him, the real him, made you like him. And the fact he’s the best fuck you’ve ever had; that he’s sex on a stick, intense and sexy, and sadistically funny – not to mention kind of sweet? You sigh, fawning a little, the way you haven’t in a very long time, knowing how stupid and reckless it is, but not really caring right now.
Daddy Dave York.
You snicker at yourself and shake your head.
Sweet Sadistic Dave York. Yeah, that works way better…
_____________________________
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anlian-aishang · 4 years
Text
RED Chapter 1: The Radio
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A multichapter apocalyptic romance
Masterlist // Music // Imagery // Chapter 2
Word count: 2800 Tags: levi x reader, zombie apocalypse AU, modern AU, angst, fem!reader
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You did not believe in peaceful days. 
Things of the past. Factually, they had indeed happened, but it was impossible to see them in the same light. Levi preferred to call them the good old days, but for you, you labeled them simply as before the outbreak. 
A day like today, though, probably as peaceful as they got. Upstairs, you heard him working. Flipping over metal cans, checking for expiration dates. Running knives through sandpaper, sharpening the blades. Probing barrels with a covered rod, keeping your guns clean. As much as he wiped them, though, they would never be pristine - countless bloodshed forever tainting. 
Through the empty space between the door and the stairs, a single ray of sun illuminated your underground workstation. Light, literally and figuratively, was a rare luxury for you now. Your single generator and stash of batteries some of the most treasured necessities you would not dare to waste. Absentmindedly fidgeting, you thought back to before the outbreak - when you would plug in your cell phone, laptop, and television all at the same time. They were simpler times, “much simpler…” you whispered to yourself.
But were they simpler? You thought about your grandparents. Long dead by now, you were thankful they had not lived to the outbreak. If the infected did not get to them, the heart attack surely would have. Even back before the outbreak, they would always say, You kids these days with all these screens! In my day, we only had the radio and we were lucky if we could get anything to come in!
You shook your head and scoffed. Either they were indeed wise beyond their years or could truly see the future. Either way, you should have taken their word for it as here you were now - living by the heat of a fireplace and the entertainment of a radio - lucky if you could get anything to come in.
It was why today only reaffirmed: there was no such thing as a peaceful day.
// // //
Back and forth - AM to FM. Left to right - lowest frequency to highest. Head propped up by one hand. Dial spun by the other. A lone mix of static, buzz, and crackling the only melody to be found.
A disruption from the chaotic song, though, made you shoot up in your seat. Three high-pitched beeps in succession you had not heard since that day. A government alert!? For a second, your lips stammered, but by now - that survival instinct had been solidified. You knew when to call for him and you knew that the time was now.
“Levi!” You shouted then screamed, “Levi!!”
That bloodcurdling shriek of yours, he had not heard it in years - ever since that day. After just a few hours on the run, when you had been grabbed by your first infected of many to come, that was the only other time he had heard you call his name like this. He discerned, however, that this was even more manic than then. In a split second, he began to fear that what lie downstairs was even worse than an infected, even worse than being in the clutches of death. 
Instantly, he dropped his tools. Before he could hear their clang, though, he was already out of earshot. From upstairs, he flung the basement door open and began his rapid descent. Faster than his footsteps, his voice cascaded down the stairwell, “What?! What is it!?”
Your silent answer was deliberate. Levi grabbed the back of your chair, breath at your ear as he bent down to your side. All senses were on high alert to the faint and automated voice of the radio.
THIS IS NOT A TEST.
AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST TO THE REMAINING SURVIVORS OF THE CORDYCEPS BRAIN INFECTION - OR CBI - EPIDEMIC.
THE ISLAND COUNTRIES OF THE UNITED NATIONS ARE COMMENCING PROJECT E.S.C.A.P.E. FOR THE EXIT, SAFETY, CONTINGENCY, AND PROTECTIVE EVACUATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE PANDEMIC. 
TOMORROW, AT 19:00 OF ALL TIME ZONES, U.N. AIRCRAFT WILL BE LANDING AT SEVERAL HELIPAD LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD - THERE TO RECOVER, RESCUE, AND RELOCATE ANY SURVIVORS PRESENT. THE LOCATIONS ON YOUR CONTINENT ARE: 
AUSTIN - KITCHING RANCH HELIPORT
LAREDO - FRIO CANON HELIPORT
BOSTON - BRIGHAM & WOMEN’S HELIPORT
NEWPORT - HOPEDENE HELIPORT
CHICAGO - PRESENCE RESURRECTION HELIPORT
MADISON - MERITER PARK HELIPORT
DENVER - ROSE MEDICAL CENTER HELIPORT
BOULDER - EMANCIPATION HILL HELIPORT
VANCOUVER - VANCOUVER GENERAL HELIPAD
OLYMPIA - CAPITAL MEDICAL CENTER HELIPORT
BRING ONLY ESSENTIALS. BE PREPARED TO ABANDON THEM. THE OBJECTIVE IS SURVIVAL. FINAL DECISIONS TO BE DETERMINED BY THE SCOUTS. 
THIS IS NOT A TEST.
Barely believing what you were hearing, your mouth hung ajar, letting him figure it out for himself. 
 “An escape.”
// // //
It replayed many times - five minutes, ten minutes, thirty, neither of you could keep track - until your spotty signal turned the words incoherent. AN EM-RG-N-Y BR--D--ST T- THE R-MA--ING SUR--V-RS... 
Droning static filled the space, an eerie composition rhythmized by your breathless pants and his pounding heartbeat. After all this time, you had never determined how you felt about omens, but if the announcement - or even the radio itself - was telling you anything: the information had been planted. The decision now lie solely in your hands and with each other.
Finally, attention left the stereo. You looked up to him: brows angled downward in seriousness, eyes widened in shock, his stern mouth a thin line. He looked down to you: brows arched in concern, eyes shining with tears, lips shaking in disbelief. A timeless stare.
Your stomach began to turn. His complexion turned pale. 
“I need some lunch.”
“I need some air.”
// // // 
The pantry made up an entire room, the shelves of which stood taller than him. Yet, each time he examined the stockpile, he could not help but think that it looked dauntingly spare. Luck or hard work, karma or heartlessness, had brought you to this place where a doomsday-fearing couple once lived. The emergency goods they had accumulated over the years, once that dreaded day finally came, they did not live long enough to make any use of it. His twisted reflection in the two cans he grabbed, he frowned at himself, tucked them under his arm, and headed outside.
Taking count earlier this morning, he predicted maybe vegetable medley soup, maybe tuna - they were nearing their end dates. But today was exceptional to all others in that it was unpredictable. There were certain times that called for something special, as special as could be, and this was one of them. 
Though you took a regular inventory, his mental tab of your favorites was a daily concern. On days that anxiety overcame you, he would visit the wine cellar, uncorking your stress relief. On days that you failed to smile, he would crank open your childhood meal - the one your parents microwaved when they had no time. On days that you gardened in the hot summer sun, he would twist open a bottle of sweetened iced tea, served room temperature at best and borderline hot at worst - refrigerators and air conditioning of the past. 
All of these gifts were finite, and he concluded, your happiness as well. Not only that, but one did not have to be a statistics student to realize: the days that called for them were turning more frequent at an undeniably fast pace. Some day, it would all run out and that some day was approaching soon.
Cursing under his breath, the most he could do for now was to grit his teeth and bear it. But starting tomorrow - no, this very meal - there would be something he could do. 
Just one more day of this.
// // //
The cliffs extra crimson, the wind particularly cool, he came to your side and joined you on the porch swing with just a hint of spring in his demeanor. For along with his particular choice of your favorite lunch, it seemed nature was on his side as well, sharing in his objective of making this meal a memorable one.
On any other day, you would have noticed the change in his conduct. On any other day, you would have given him a special thanks - a kiss on the forehead, a toothy grin - but today was not a peaceful day, not that there was any such thing.
In silence, you ate. That was the usual. Distinct, however, was the silence itself. Communal but chill. An understood misunderstanding. A deviation from all the countless comfortable silences previously shared together.
The plates had been scraped. The water bottles emptied. On a regular day, this was all there was to lunch. However, this was no regular day. More important than food or drink was the task that remained.
Over mindless metal clangs, you whispered under your breath, “It’s probably just fake...”
Levi scowled, disrupting the facade of tranquility, “Bullshit it’s fake.”
You rolled your eyes. Of all the times for him to be optimistic, why did this have to be the first? “Remember when they said there were rations? How many people went off and died under those pranksters’ promises?!”
“Those idiots are long dead by now.” Far-off gaze recalled far-back times. “You know just as well as I do -” Levi threw his thumb behind him, back towards the house, “that broadcast was real.” 
Maybe he was right, but in this stage, you refused to admit even the possibility. You crossed your arms and shook your head, ignoring even his eye contact.
Expression morphed, completely dumbfounded at your denial. Here was this miraculous message, yet, here you were - throwing your hands over your ears and going la la la over it. Voice frantically heightened, alarmingly uncharacteristic for him, causing chills to course through your body. “Ever think about how long it’s been since we’ve gotten a single word on that radio?!” His mouth hung agape, breaths turning heavy, “Don’t you ev-!?”
Tears started to prick, stinging, then falling down your cheeks. You hated yourself for it - that after all the tragedy you had seen, the only thing that never failed to make you cry was when he yelled at you. Lord knows what it said for your character, but you had abandoned morality long ago. Ears had gone numb to the screams from the valley. A bullet to the brain for the bodies that wandered too close. Every rest, meal, and minute of your life was lived in a house that had been stolen.
Likewise, the only thing that he felt guilty for was making you cry. Stealing, threatening, even killing, none of his sins could compare to hurting you. Levi clutched his fists together - so hard that he shook. His voice startlingly low and quiet, more somber than you had ever heard. You flung your attention to him, silently gawking. Solemn, “Don’t you ever think… about the future?”
You pressed your lips together, withholding your whimpers. A man of few words, the question reluctant, it was his turn to speak - time for you to listen.
“Remember when…” In those fields of grass, “you said you wanted to see the world?”
It had been ages ago, but you would have been pressed to forget it. College campus. Lunch breaks. Green open. When homework, exams, and group projects were the greatest of your concerns, it made you laugh then cry to think about. If only you had known what was just around the corner. 
On the hills, you sat together. Between bites of sandwiches and sips of juice, you chewed his ear off over longing to get away from here. Where would you go after graduation? Better yet, where would you go first? There was a great big world out there to see and you would never turn a blind eye to a single inch of it.
Five years since then, but indeed, you remembered.
Things had changed, but one truth had not. “Levi,” you held his face in your hands, thumb massaging his cheek, “you are my world.”
He brought his hand atop yours, keeping your touch pressed against him, “and you mine.” 
His life had been hell until he met you, then, your relationship heaven. Not the latest shows, but you would discuss your favorite books, the ones you reread over and over again. Instead of restaurants, dinner dates at home, cooking your favorite meals just the way you liked. On your own, free from the buzz of city life, secluded hikes along the silent bluffs. He used to think he could never get enough. If only he had known what was just around the corner.
Sometimes, he wondered: did that hell really vanish? Or did you pull him up out of it for merely a moment - only for him to drag you back down there with him? On that day, he pulled you up to this hillside hideaway, locked you both inside, never again to leave. You had always dreamed of an escape together, and he used to think you had finally achieved it - no matter how dire the circumstances. However, after many sleepless nights, watching you and your dreams disappear before his very eyes, he learned that this was actually the opposite. This was not the long-awaited getaway, rather, a house arrest with - at the hands of - your lover. Locked up was the adventurous woman with wanderlust in her eyes.
Five years since then, but indeed, he remembered.
Your fingertip at the corner of his eye, you felt a warm wet start to drip from nail to knuckle to palm. After his slow blink, you did not see - but felt more follow. “And I don’t want to see it waste away.”
You could not remember the last time he cried, but when he did - so rarely - it was contagious. A lump in your throat. “So let’s stay! Why risk it? We have the supplies, the food, the -” 
Your continued protests were cut off when fingers wrapped gently around your wrist, tugging to reveal red-rimmed eyes. 
Where he went you followed. After all these years, no matter what came at you from the shadows, the one constant was his conviction and dedication to you and to your safety. But, has it always been for the better?
A cabinet of cans the source of your every meal. The same shelf of books your only entertainment. The only friends you had in each other. Fearful to step foot off your property, yet sick of the same old sights. Afraid of what each day brought, yet boredom never-ending. An anxiety monotonous. Is this a life? That was debatable. Is this the life she deserves? That was no question.
Gentle hands had led you to this spot where the branches of the evergreens bent, where, on a day like today, a single gaze could reveal the entire city, cars looking like carelessly discarded toys along abandoned streets. He molded your hand to point and guided it with his until your line of sight fell upon the spot: past stratus clouds shone one lone light - illuminated cross atop a tall building, nestled just a stone’s throw away from the foot of the hill. 
The calm in his voice erased tears from memory, “That’s where we’re going.” 
“But -” 
“No buts.” He countered, “it’s a couple miles away, barely an hour’s walk. If no one comes or things turn to shit, we turn back.” It all sounded so simple the way he told it, even you were starting to become convinced. It was why the thought of arguing it was unbearable to him, making his voice turn frantic, “but I’m not about to sit here and watch that rescue flight leave without us.” 
“Levi.” 
Warm was the touch that took your wringing hands and brought them to cool lips. Featherlight kisses placed on your knuckles. “We have a chance.” Gaze lifted from the fingertips he kissed to the eyes he fell in love with, “A real chance to get out of this shitty place.”
Cathartic comfort. Hot tears streaked down your face, coating your cheeks in a heated blanket. Clammy hands made sound in his hold, a cover to your cold sweat. Even in the twelve o’clock sun, his pupils had dilated. In them, you saw hope. You blinked twice at the man in front of you, that expression had been long-lost on him, ever since you first laid eyes on the very house itself.
His conviction had pulled you the distance, your history only reinforced. Making it this far, what was a couple more miles? If the last five years had proven anything, it was that there was nothing you could not do together. 
With haste, you intertwined your hands with his. In those faithful eyes, you stared and checked, “Together?”
“Together.”
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party-gilmore · 3 years
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It's like... the american people are Carrie and our government/education system is our abusive religion-cult mother, and instead of being sympathetic and helping us call CPS (I dunno, the U.N. or something?), people from other countries would rather laugh and throw tampons at us in the locker room for not knowing something so "basic" as what periods are, because everyone knows what periods are, surely someone's told you, how could you be so stupid, plug it up!
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mizjoely · 7 years
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I'm dying to know if you are talking about K or T.
Read “Could I Have This Dance” and you’ll have your answer. :P
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ieatratsforlunch · 4 months
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When your art has been improving so you have to introduce your sparklecare oc in the best way possible
This is the first sketch of Plug that I've done lmao
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swldx · 8 months
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Voice of America 0425 23 Jan 2024
9775Khz 0400 23 JAN 2024 - VOICE OF AMERICA (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) in ENGLISH from MOPENG HILL. SINPO = 55333. English, @0400z VoA News read by Tommy McNeil. There have been 151 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East from Iran-backed rebel forces since Oct. 19, Military officials have said. U.S. and British warplanes, backed by surface ships and submarines, launched a series of strikes into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen late Monday, aimed at further degrading the capabilities of Iranian-backed Houthi militants who have sought to carry out attacks against key shipping lanes in the Middle East. The strikes hit multiple targets across eight locations, including an underground storage facility as well as missile launch sites and other locations linked to Houthi surveillance capabilities. The FAA has once again expanded its oversight into Boeing’s (BA) use of door plugs that may be defective, recommending new inspections of a 737 class jet. “As an added layer of safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is recommending that operators of Boeing 737-900ER aircraft visually inspect mid-exit door plugs to ensure the door is properly secured. The Boeing 737-900ER is not part of the newer MAX fleet but has the same door plug design,” the FAA said on its website late Sunday night. Mexico wants an urgent investigation into how U.S. military-grade weapons are increasingly being found in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, Mexico’s top diplomat said Monday. Mexico’s army is finding belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers and grenades that are not sold for civilian use in the United States. The military-grade U.S. weaponry, which cartels have bragged about and openly displayed on social media, poses a special challenge for Mexico’s army, which along with police and the National Guard already faces cartels operating homemade armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones. A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire that Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border, while a lawsuit over the wire continues. The justices, by a 5-4 vote, granted an emergency appeal from the Biden administration, which has been in an escalating standoff at the border with Texas and had objected to an appellate ruling in favor of the state. Donald Trump's last remaining Republican opponent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, was making a final push on Monday to convince New Hampshire voters to turn out and deliver her an upset victory in the state's presidential nominating contest. New Hampshire's primary vote on Tuesday will split the state's Republican voters into two camps: those with former President Trump, and those against him. The contest became a one-on-one race on Sunday, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended his struggling campaign and endorsed Trump. As New Hampshire voters prepared to cast their votes in the state's first-in-the nation primary Tuesday, a robo-call is circulating in the state urging Democrats to stay home, using an AI fake audio of U.S. President Joe Biden. "It’s important that you save your vote for the November election….voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again," the call says. The New Hampshire attorney general, John Formella, announced he is investigating what he called an apparent "unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters." @0405z “Daybreak Africa” anchored by male announcer (w/African accent). Backyard fence antenna, Etón e1XM. 100kW, BeamAz 350°, bearing 84°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 14087KM from transmitter at Mopeng Hill. Local time: 2200.
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newstfionline · 4 years
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Headlines: Friday, September 25, 2020
Tea prices (WSJ) The price of wholesale tea is up 50 percent since March, hitting $3.16 per kilogram, up from $2.13 per kilogram back in March. We’re still not at the $3.29 per kilogram demanded in October 2017, but the price hike is showing little sign of stopping. Every day 3.7 billion cups of tea are consumed, with half the U.S. population consuming tea daily, most of whom like it iced. Tea production is down in major producers like Sri Lanka and India.
California Plans to Ban Sales of New Gas-Powered Cars in 15 Years (NYT) California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars statewide by 2035, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, in a sweeping move aimed at accelerating the state’s efforts to combat global warming amid a deadly and record-breaking wildfire season. In an executive order, Governor Newsom directed California’s regulators to develop a plan that would require automakers to sell steadily more zero-emissions passenger vehicles in the state, such as battery-powered or hydrogen-powered cars and pickup trucks, until they make up 100 percent of new auto sales in just 15 years. Ramping up sales of emissions-free vehicles in California will be an enormous challenge over a relatively short period of time, experts said. Last year, only 8 percent of the nearly two million passenger vehicles sold statewide were battery-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. The order would affect only new-vehicle sales, the governor’s office said. It would not prevent Californians from owning cars with internal combustion engines past 2035 or selling them on the used-vehicle market.
Venezuela’s broken oil industry is spewing crude into the Caribbean Sea (Washington Post) The sun had risen over the Caribbean Sea when Frank González spotted “the stain”—an oil slick on the water that stretched for miles. “The sea looked like butter, because of the thickness of the water,” said González, a fisherman who saw the spill this month while working off the coast of Venezuela’s Falcón state. “It was painful to see.” Venezuela’s once powerful oil industry is literally falling apart, with years of mismanagement, corruption, falling prices and a U.S. embargo imposed last year bringing aging infrastructure to the brink of collapse. As the government scrambles to repair and restart its fuel-processing capacity, analysts are warning that ruptured pipelines, rusting tankers and rickety refineries are contributing to a mounting ecological disaster in this failing socialist state. Oil workers say the gushing crude soiling the coast of Falcón state this month came from a cracked underwater pipeline linked to attempts to restart fuel production at the aging Cardón refinery. Not far from the oil slick, fishermen say, is a jetting geyser of natural gas from a second broken pipeline.
France tightens virus measures, unveils new ‘danger zones’ map (Reuters) France’s health minister unveiled a map of coronavirus “danger zones” around the country on Wednesday and gave the hardest-hit local authorities, including that of Marseille, days to tighten restrictions or risk having a state of health emergency declared there. Olivier Veran told a news conference the country would be divided into zones by alert level with Marseille, the second-largest city, and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe for now the only two areas put on the “maximum” alert level. Like other European countries where the infection rate has soared in the past month, France has been gradually tightening limits on public and private gatherings locally, hoping it will be enough to contain the disease and avoid a second national lockdown. Among other measures, there will be a ban on public gatherings of more than 10 people and, in “maximum” alert level areas like Marseille, bars and restaurants will be closed from Saturday.
Protests Reignite After News of Secret Belarus Inauguration (Foreign Policy) Longtime Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko was sworn in to extend his 26-year rule at a secret ceremony in Minsk on Wednesday, emphasizing the embattled leader’s shrinking authority and increasingly precarious hold on power. No prior announcement was made regarding the ceremony, prompting thousands of protesters to flood the streets of Minsk to rally against Lukashenko once the news broke. Opposition leaders, who have put immense pressure on Lukashenko since he claimed victory in a landslide on Aug. 9 amid widespread accusations of voter fraud, called the inaugural ceremony a “thieves’ meeting” and a “farce.” In a statement, a spokesperson of the U.S. State Department said that “the United States cannot consider [Lukashenko] the legitimately elected leader of Belarus.” The European Union has already said it doesn’t recognize Lukashenko as president.
In India, engineers and MBAs are turning to manual labor to survive the economic crash (Washington Post) On a recent muggy afternoon in southern India, Earappa Bawge hacked at the ground with a pickax, his white shirt pasted to his back. Each dull thud reminded him of how far his hopes had fallen. Just months ago, the 27-year-old engineer was poring over project files in an air-conditioned room at a factory hundreds of miles away. The job was a ticket out of rural poverty for Bawge’s entire family, who had sacrificed for years so he could complete his studies. Now he was back in the village where he was born, propelled by a wave of economic destruction rolling across India during the pandemic. To survive, Bawge began digging ditches under a public works program. Alongside him were a former bank employee, a veterinarian and three MBA students. At the end of the day, each received $3.70. “If I don’t work, we don’t get to eat,” said Bawge, flicking beads of sweat from his brow. “Hunger trumps any aspiration.” As India’s economy reels in the aftermath of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, a rural employment program has emerged as a lifeline for some of the tens of millions left jobless. The government program—which aims to guarantee 100 days of unskilled work in rural areas—was intended to combat poverty and reduce the volatility of agricultural wages. Now it is a potent symbol of how the middle-class dreams of millions of Indians are unraveling.
China to let in more foreigners as virus recedes (AP) Foreigners holding certain types of visas and residence permits will be permitted to return to China starting next week as the threat of the coronavirus continues to recede. The new regulation lifts a monthslong blanket suspension covering most foreigners apart from diplomats and those in special circumstances. Beginning Monday, foreign nationals holding valid Chinese visas and residence permits for work, personal matters and family reunions will be permitted to enter China without needing to apply for new visas, according to the regulation. Those whose permits have expired can reapply. Returnees must undergo two weeks of quarantine and follow other anti-epidemic measures, the regulation said.
Xinjiang crackdown continues (The Guardian) China has built nearly 400 internment camps in Xinjiang region, with construction on dozens continuing over the last two years, even as Chinese authorities said their “re-education” system was winding down, an Australian think tank has found. The network of camps in China’s far west, used to detain Uighurs and people from other Muslim minorities, include 14 that are still under construction, according to the latest satellite imaging obtained by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In total ASPI identified 380 detention centers established across the region since 2017, ranging from lowest security re-education camps to fortified prisons.
Grand Theft Ayatollah (Foreign Policy) Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is investing in a new video game in which Iranian paramilitaries rescue George Floyd from U.S. police, according to Khosro Kalbasi, a reporter for Iran’s independent Financial Tribune. It’s not the first time Middle Eastern powers have used video games and cartoons to make foreign-policy commentary: In 2018, a pro-Saudi group produced an animated video depicting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman commanding a successful invasion of Iran.
Lebanon asks world’s help ‘trying to rise from its rubble’ (AP) Facing an economic meltdown and other crises, Lebanon’s president on Wednesday asked for the world’s help to rebuild the capital’s main port and neighborhoods that were blown away in last month’s catastrophic explosion. President Michel Aoun made the plea in a prerecorded speech to the U.N. General Assembly’s virtual summit, telling world leaders that Lebanon’s many challenges are posing an unprecedented threat to its very existence. Most urgently, the country needs the international community’s support to rebuild its economy and its destroyed port. Aoun suggested breaking up the damaged parts of the city into separate areas and so that countries that wish to help can each commit to rebuilding one. Earlier Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for swift formation of a government to be followed by tangible steps to implement economic, social and political reforms. Lebanon’s government resigned under pressure in the wake of the port explosion, and Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib has been unable to form a new government amid a political impasse over which faction gets to have the Finance Ministry, as well as other disputes. “Without such action, the country’s ability to recover and rebuild will be jeopardized, adding to the turmoil and hardship of the Lebanese people,” Guterres added.
Israel’s Netanyahu brings his dirty laundry to Washington. Literally. (Washington Post) Most politicians go to great lengths to conceal their dirty laundry. And then there’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over the years, the Israeli leader has developed a reputation among the staff at the U.S. president’s guesthouse for bringing special cargo on his trips to Washington: bags and suitcases full of dirty laundry, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The clothes are cleaned for the prime minister free of charge by the U.S. staff, a perk that is available to all foreign leaders but sparingly taken advantage of given the short stays of busy heads of state. “The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of a foreign leader’s visits. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.” Israeli officials denied that Netanyahu overuses his American hosts’ laundry services, calling the allegations “absurd,” but they acknowledged that he has been the target of laundry-related accusations in the past. In 2016, Netanyahu sued his own office and Israel’s attorney general in an effort to prevent the release of his laundry bills under the country’s freedom of information act. The relatively minor accusation joins a longer list of corruption allegations that have threatened the 70-year-old leader’s hold on power and triggered protests in Israel this month.
Australian offers free coffee, chat from his kitchen window (AP) It all started when Rick Everett walked out of his home in Sydney and put up a sign on his kitchen window that read: “Free coffee to combat the virus.” It was March, and the Australian acrobat had lost his job during the coronavirus pandemic. With more free time, he felt he could help out others in need. And he knew how to bake and cook after managing a chocolate and coffee shop and a pizza restaurant. When he started, he said the window would be open whenever he was home. He stressed that it wasn’t a coffee shop business; he just wanted to do something nice and meet his neighbors for a friendly chat during a difficult time. “Think of it as popping over to your mates for a coffee only it is a friend you have not met yet,” he wrote on a sign. “I am not selling anything. This is a gift and all it will cost you is a smile.” Soon his neighbors began to stop by, bringing him everything from cakes and loaves of bread to a six-pack of beer. Strangers began to recognize him on the street and wave hello. “It’s like I live in a small town again, and it’s really beautiful,” he said. “And what’s even more beautiful is people ring my coffee bell just to talk,” he said. “They don’t even want a coffee! They don’t want to take anything from me, but they’re most happy to have a conversation with me, which is really nice.”
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kashimos-hajime · 5 years
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May I have some director’s commentary on Honeyed Tea and Walk Me Home?
yes of course!!
send me a fic/scene you want a “director’s cut” of
Honeyed Tea: so this was written maybe in the week after I saw FFH, and let me just say, i’m a huge fan of hurt/comfort, so when I remembered Quen got fired from Stark Industries (SI), I thought, what if his best friend (occasional hook up) learned about it? I also never write fluff so this was a good chance to get all my soft feels out about Quentin.
The dynamic between them was so fun to write, because Reader definitely knows how to push his buttons, and she’s definitely not afraid of him, straight out telling that she quit for him, as well as unfraid of yelling at him. That kind of Reader is fun to write. I love writing strong characters and this Reader is definitely one of them.
(maybe one day i should write a weak reader, but who knows?)
“Oh, so this is a hookup now?” you whisper, gaze flickering from his eyes to his plush lips. Your hand on his cheek slides to curl around his neck, fingers playing with tiny hairs along the nape as you swallow what’s left of your inhibitions. If you have to sit here another moment with your hot best friend’s hands on your hips without any action, you might go crazy.
“Well, I wouldn’t say hookup. Too crass.”
“Oh, you’re so classy.”
The teasing! The wittiness! I love them so much. It was important to me that Reader’s internal dialogue - describing Quentin as hot in this paragraph for exmaple - reflected her actions. And the tea. Let me just say, I wanted to end this on humour and I thought of this on a car ride to school. Throughout the whole fic, you can tell they know each other pretty well/they’ve done this before, and obviously they’re going to be loose and fun with it, so the tea was just a fun little thing to add going back. I added all the tea bits, about how much reader loved tea after I finished the fic!
Walk Me Home: This fic!! It kinda has an unexpected place in my heart because of how much Reader flip flops between feeling like kissing Quen and slapping him, because human emotions are messy. The idea for a Stark-Parker!Reader came to me at night, when I was trying to think why she was with Peter. Being a SHIELD agent didn’t work, because then she’d have no previous interaction with Quentin. I wanted her to know him intimately well, so in a way, this is kind of like a scorned!reader fic.
I really wanted to emphasize on how much Reader cares for Peter in the few lines I could spare without making it a big thing because otherwise I would’ve gone on and on. Her being protective with Peter, her dad, and the protocols he made, her volunteering in his place, are just some hints. The one conversation Peter and YN have - it’s also clear that they have a very open relationship since she openly accepts Peter calling her bitchy. I also wanted to establish that YN was close to her father and Quentin, despite them being ‘enemies’, and that Quentin’s feelings for reader are 100% genuine. It was hard to find the balance, because Quentin lying and Reader knowing about it made it hard to sway her to keep his secret.
The ring. Ah, the ring. That’s how I fixed it. First off, it established that Quentin was completely serious about her since he is held at basically knifepoint by his ex. 
You want him to dig up his memories, rip him apart, thrash him with his guilt. You want him to hurt, you want him to care enough to say them.
God, you want him to love you, still and you hate yourself for it.
Reader still loves him, which sucks, unfortunately, Quentin is an asshole.
“You suck.” Your voice twists as a flat smile works its way onto your face. “You’re awful, you know that?” Your fingers run over your eyes, trying to plug the tears as you paste on that fake smile of yours. “You might be the worst person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met aliens and killer robots, and people who have bombed the U.N., so it’s actually quite an achievement.”
Once I factored the ring, it became easy to give Reader the fuel to shoot at Quentin. It became easy to show how Quentin thought Reader got him fired, how much he loved her and her, him. Everything just clicked. The ring was the answer! 
(PS, if you want more on specific scenes, go ahead and send me another ask!! im trying to keep these short so they arent too long to read)
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#15yrsago Open letter to crackhead
A San Francisco Craigslister has written an open letter to the crackhead who improvised a pipe from his motorcycle's sparkplugs:
On Wednesday morning I emerged from my girlfriend's building by U.N. Plaza to find that you had sawed the tops off both the sparkplugs on my motorcycle. At the time, I had no idea why anyone would do that. Other than the sparkplugs, the bike was untouched. Some kind of bizarre vandalism? A fraternity prank gone awry? I had no idea. All I knew is that I looked like a huge douchebag riding the Muni to work in a padded motorcycle jacket and helmet.
Because the bike was immobilized I got a $35 street sweeping ticket that night. Thursday I had it towed to the shop ($45) where they replaced the sparkplugs and the boots ($50 including labor). They explained to me that "people" - I use the term loosely here - like you break off the tops of spark plugs and use the porcelain tubes to smoke crack. As an engineer and former MacGyver fan, in a way I think this is kind of cool. But then I remember that I just paid $100 for YOUR crackpipes, and I get angry again.
https://boingboing.net/2004/04/24/open-letter-to-crack.html
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edalaat12 · 3 years
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Leaders vow to protect forests, plug methane leaks at COP26 | Breaking News
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — World leaders promised to protect Earth’s forests, cut methane emissions and help South Africa wean itself off coal at the U.N. climate summit Tuesday — part of a flurry of deals intended to avert catastrophic global warming.
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simonowen · 3 years
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UN food chief on border, pandemic: 'When you don't have food, you pack up and go find it somewhere'
The American chief of the United Nations' food agency was at a hospital in Yemen when he tried to make a child smile.
"Her little feet were sticking out of the blanket, and I tickled her feet," World Food Program executive director David Beasley told Fox News.
"And it was like tickling a ghost. There was no reaction at all."
Six months after his organization won the Nobel Peace Prize, Beasley – a former Republican governor of South Carolina – is just back from his latest visit to Yemen.
With the country in chaos following six years of war, he describes seeing children wasting away from malnutrition.
"It's literally the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet," he said.
"You've got a nation of about 30 million people and 16 million are literally marching to the brink of starvation. We feed about 13 million. And, quite frankly, we're running out of funds."
With fundraising appeals to governments repeatedly falling short, Beasley is trying a new approach: He is asking the world's richest people to help plug the gap.
Citing a recent Forbes report counting the creation of 493 new billionaires in 2020 – despite the coronavirus pandemic – Beasley argues: "That's a new billionaire every 17 hours. And I've got children dying every seven to 10 seconds. So something's wrong here.
"I definitely support and believe in capitalistic principles, but we have got to do more that the wealthy can channel some of their support, particularly in times when governments are stretched."
The food agency chief said the pandemic has made hunger crises around the world "exponentially worse." The World Food Program counts some 270 million people as being on the brink of starvation.
Beasley points to food insecurity in parts of Latin America as a key factor in surging immigration numbers at the southern U.S. border.
He said of people heading north: "When they don't have peace and they don't have food, they can't feed their children, they go do what any of us would do for our family. You go pack up and go find it somewhere."
He added: "We know for every 1% increase in hunger, there's a 2% increase in migration. So we, in my opinion, can eliminate migration by necessity if we reach and address the root cause.
"It's like you've got waterlines in the ceiling, and they're leaking, and everybody's fighting over where to put the buckets. I'm like, come on, it's time to go fix the leaks!
"Covid has absolutely ripped Latin America, and it's compounded an already fragile atmosphere in several of these countries."
Beasley welcomes his agency's Nobel Peace Prize, but also considers it a portent.
"I think the Nobel Peace Prize committee was sending two very, very clear messages.
"One was: Thank you, World Food Program, for your women and men who put their lives at risk every day.
"And I think the No. 2 message was, 'Your hardest work is coming ahead because of Covid.'"
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scinerds · 7 years
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Rising incomes and falling prices for everything from solar panels to fridges drove up the amount of e-waste -- defined as anything with a plug or a battery -- by 8 percent from 41 million tonnes in the last assessment for 2014.
The weight of e-waste in 2016 was equivalent to about 4,500 Eiffel Towers, according the joint study by the U.N. University, the International Telecommunication Union, and the International Solid Waste Association.
Raw materials in the 2016 scrap were worth an estimated 55 billion euros ($64.61 billion), including metals such as gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium, it said.
Yet only 8.9 million tonnes were documented to have been collected and recycled in 2016. Most e-waste ended as rubbish in landfills even though recycling would make economic sense in most cases.
“What is still shocking ... is that only 20 percent is going in the official collection and recycling schemes,” Ruediger Kuehr, head of the U.N. University’s Sustainable Cycles Programme, told Reuters.
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